The dreaded West Nile virus has been found in four Lake County mosquito pools, including Lake Bluff, Libertyville, Wauconda and Barrington, reports the Lake Forester. "The mosquito pools are the first confirmed indicator of the disease's presence in Lake County in 2008. No human cases in the county have been reported so far this year," states the paper's website. To read the full report, click here.

According to the Lake County Health Department and Community Health Center, "West Nile Virus (WNV) was first discovered in the U.S. in New York in 1999. September 2001 marked the first time the virus was identified in Illinois. In 2002, the first human cases of WNV infection in Lake County were confirmed. Since then, there have been a total of 35 human cases in the county with two confirmed deaths.  The Health Department and Community Health Center continues to work with the Illinois Department of Public Health and other agencies to prevent and minimize this infection in humans."

Some local pediatricians, such as Highland Park Pediatric Partners, advise parents to keep kids indoors after dusk. But if kids do go out to play, parents are told to use a mosquito repellent on their children, which they should wash off before putting the kids to bed.

The Lake Bluff School Board got a piece of hopeful news at its meeting Tuesday night: School  construction is oh-so close to getting back on schedule.

Augie Ziccarelli, who represents the school district on the construction sites, reported crews have worked up to 60 hours every week to speed the process at Lake Bluff Elementary and Middle schools. Among the good news: Parents, teachers and the mailman will be relieved to learn the exit at Central School will be clear by the first day of school next week–it has been closed for weeks due to the installation of a water main. Also at the top of the list: Steel should be delivered next week, which will help crews meet their winter-preparation deadlines. The crew needs 13 weeks for steel erection; Mr. Ziccarelli said the steel frame will be up and the exterior cladding well underway by year's end. 

Over at the Middle School, no need to worry about wet heads in a storm: the roof will be on by Sept. 2, if not earlier, and what's left of the parking lot will be cleared for drop-off and pick-up of students. Nor do volleyball players need to concern themselves with the plywood wall that's presently protruding into the gym–it will be replaced with sturdier materials and winter-ready before the season begins.

School District 65 spokeswoman Kathleen Reidy provides weekly and sometimes twice-weekly updates. Click on "construction updates" at the left sidebar of the school's website.

Moments after Lake Bluff elementary students tore open their teacher-assignment letters on Saturday, parents learned school superintendent David Vick is retiring. The Board of Education learned the news late last week.

Dr. Vick will see School District 65 through the construction-heavy school year but will never work in the new "green" building that he has shepherded. His retirement is effective June 30, 2009. Hit the continue button to read the text of his retirement letter to parents and staff members.

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Grandma Salsa's "mango on a stick" has become the "it" treat at Lake Bluff Farmer's Market this summer. The vendor goes through eight cases of mangos every Friday–that's about 100 pieces of  fruit–and usually sells out by 11 a.m. And Grandma will go through an additional case or two in September, when kids stop by for a dribbly treat on their way to school. 

This couldn't happen in the city of Chicago, which bans the sale of cut fruit by street vendors, reports the Chicago Tribune. In yesterday's edition, the paper quoted several city officials who said vendors break the law and face a fine of $50 to $200 every time they slice open a mango. According to the Trib: "We issue peddler's licenses, but they are only allowed to sell whole, uncut fruit," said Efrat Stein of the city's Department of Business Affairs and Licensing. "And we have mobile food dispenser licenses for prepared foods, but they require that the food has been prepared in a licensed kitchen first." Click here for the full story.

But selling cut-fruit is not illegal in Lake Bluff, which is fortunate for the third-grade fruit-lover pictured in the photo above, along with the hundreds of others who love to let the day-glo-colored juice run down their chins.

"They have different rules about things down there than we have up here," said a spokeswoman at Lake Bluff Village Hall.

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Barack Obama's now-famous "Yes We Can" slogan is as ubiquitous as the Democratic presidential candidate himself. Having hit a collective nerve, the three words are making their way around the globe via everything from bumper stickers to speeches to a music video starring famous people on YouTube.

But did you know the slogan was coined by Lake Bluff's own Gary Doyle? He's a creative director at the Cramer-Krasselt ad agency in Chicago who was asked a year ago to write TV commercials and theme lines for the Illinois Senator's presidential bid. Mr. Doyle submitted numerous slogans, including "Yes We Can," which the campaign has since used in critical speeches, TV commercials and even the humble lapel pin. Some of his other lines included "Welcome to Tomorrow," and "A Politician We Can Believe In," which Obama's people altered to "Change We Can Believe In."  That's Gary in the silly hat at left. Click here for a link to his notes about the campaign's ad slogans. 

"I wrote about half-a-dozen TV scripts and a couple hundred theme lines and submitted them to the campaign," said Mr. Doyle. "And one of them was 'Yes We Can.' I can't prove the line came from me," he added. "But I wrote it and after that the campaign started using it. That's my story and I'm sticking to it!"

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A worker paints "Helanders" into the awning above the stationery store’s Lake Bluff location, giving the store a more personal–and stationary–look.

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Lake Forest native Matt Grevers won an impressive silver medal in the 100-meter backstroke in the Olympic Games Monday night as his teammate Aaron Piersol put in a repeat Olympic performance to win the gold. Grever’s time of 53.11 seconds trailed Piersol’s 52.44.

Though he looked disappointed during an after-race interview with an NBC reporter, Grevers was stoic in his responses. "That silver’s beautiful," Grevers said. "That’s what we wanted, one-two, afterall."

Like a lot of local residents, GazeboNews is fond of watching the sun rise over Sunrise Beach. But the vista was tainted this morning by a parade of beer bottles floating in the lake.

Who put glass bottles in the water? As the sun rose over the horizon, brown bottles floated one by one from the rocks in front of the guard house, where a group of hoodie-clad teenagers was hanging out to watch the sun rise and, apparently, slurp a few cold ones at 5:51 a.m.

GazeboNews approached the young adults and asked what they were thinking, dumping glass into a lake where children and dogs and even teen-agers like to frolic.

"We didn’t do it," said one of the young men standing on the rocks. "They floated from over there." He pointed south, toward the sailing beach, Lake Forest and God knows where else.

We had no proof; all we had was a fondness for the environment and motherly guilt. "Well whoever did it," we said, "they should know the broken glass from those bottles is going to wind up in a child’s foot or a dog’s paw. They should think about that before putting glass in the lake by a beach."

A few minutes later, the teens wobbled off the rocks and scurried across the beach and up the steps, pulling their hoodies tight around their faces.

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Just when we thought for-sale signs had become front-lawn perennials, the real-estate industry offered up a bit of better news yesterday: pending home sales rose 5.3% in June compared to May.

While this happy news spread faster than buckthorn throughout the media world, some real estate insiders analyzed the data from a different angle.  "The Paper Economy," a blog published by the Sun Times, overlooked the rosy news and focussed on the fact that the National Association of Realtors report shows "the peak sales month for the year was strikingly weak with a 12.3% year-over-year decline. As the decline in demand for residential housing slumps through its third year, it’s important to consider the significance of the extent of the decline. It is very likely that we are now seeing the spiraling feedback effect of sharply declining prices and both the palpable sense and actual effects of recession and higher energy prices all working to depress buyer confidence thereby causing continued declines in housing demand."

According to TheStreet.com, NAR’s chief economist Lawrence Yun said he "expects new-home sales to bottom around the second quarter of 2009 and show slight gains in the second half of next year." The web site quoted him as saying that "homebuilders need to further cut production in order to trim inventory."