Sound Strategy

ST. LOUIS — Keller Apothecary opened in 1933 and nearly a century later was still filling up to 200 prescriptions a day. It had $2 million in sales last year. Customers were known by name. Help-yourself containers of candy and dog treats sat on the glass countertop. Thank-you notes and neighborhood news filled a corkboard inside the small shop. Then the reimbursements for prescriptions started to drop. When the little south St.

Everyone has their favorite film that serves as alternative Christmas movie fare, with Die Hard (1988) and Lethal Weapon (1987) typically topping the list—at least when all you want for Christmas is buddy-cop banter, car chases, shootouts, and glorious explosions. (Massive gratuitous property damage is a given.) I love me some Lethal Weapon but it's high time to give some holiday love to another great action flick set during the Christmas season: The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996), starring Geena Davis as an amnesiac school teacher who turns out to have been a government assassin in her former life. (Spoilers below for this nearly 30-year-old film.) At the time, Davis was married to director Renny Harlin, coming off a disastrous showing for their previous collaboration, Cutthroat Island (1995), which remains one of the biggest box office bombs of all time.

In the midst of holiday shopping and travel, Colorado resident Tom Pipes didn’t want to spend extra money on a plane ticket. He flew from Colorado to Los Angeles on Southwest, the grandfather of budget-friendly airlines. “If there was a first-class option, I wouldn’t use it,” Pipes said this week after arriving at Los Angeles International Airport.

Workers at more than a dozen Chicago area Starbucks were on strike Christmas Eve, union organizers said, as baristas escalated a national walkout that began in three cities, including Chicago, on Friday. Across the country, baristas at more than 300 cafes were striking, according to their union, Starbucks Workers United. The union had previously warned that the strike, which began with walkouts in Chicago, Los Angeles and the coffee giant’s hometown of Seattle last week, could spread to hundreds of stores if the company did not meet the baristas’ demands at the bargaining table.

When Gindo’s Hot Sauce first moved to the Fox Valley from the West Coast in 2015, its founders had a goal of immersing themselves in the community, knowing where their ingredients were coming from and showing pride in where they make their products. Now, almost 10 years later, the company’s collaboration with Garlic Breath Farm in Elburn made its way into a first-of-its-kind, quickly-sold-out holiday gift box showcasing products made right here in Illinois.

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