Froehlich & Giocondo

Been getting a lot of requests lately from Paul D. Froehlich, local politico, for my vote in the upcoming Illinois primary. (What's the saying? All politics is local, especially around here.) He's looking to retain his seat in the Illinois House of Representatives. As near as I can tell from his circulars, he's running on an anti-pervert platform. Good one, Paul.

Last year, he switched from the Republicans to the Democrats. A somewhat understandable move in Illinois. I was pleased at this frank assessment of the move in Answers.com, of all places, citing the State Journal-Register: "On June 26, 2007, Froehlich announced his switch from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party, for self-enrichment and due to the fact that he wanted to make sure that his family could still obtain jobs with the State of Illinois." I expect that's exactly right.

His name makes me think like a 14-year-old, at least for a moment or two. In high school band, we had some text that translated common Italian and German musical terms, and the English it used for both froehlich and giocondo was "gay." Must have been an oldish text; these days it would probably be "cheerful."

Well, we had juvenile fun with that one. "Hey, so-and-so's acting giocondo today." "He's froehlich." Yuk-yuk. Funny, though, that's the reason I remember those terms. And Lisa del Giocondo was in the news lately.