A COSMIC ZOOM FROM THE STARS TO STATE STREET

Imagine this. A camera inside one of those eternally circling GPS satellites over North America. It starts to zoom in. Through the emptiness of earth's atmosphere...through the planetary cloud cover.... down to the swatches of white that illuminate the Midwest from Milwaukee curling down around the base of Lake Michigan into Indiana...ending up precisely where I'm standing in Chicago on this holiday Saturday night.

Behold, the brightly lit corner of State Street & Randolph at 11 o'clock. Here's our city strutting its best stuff -- cars, limos, taxis, traffic cops, street vendors, the oohing Christmas kids staring at the decorations. and especially the laughing crowds streaming out of the nearby movie houses and theatre buildings.

This is metropolitan life at warp speed. Living, breathing, doing. Despite a world full of wars and dangers, despite an economy full of greed and failures, city people do what city people do. And -- when looked at from just the right angle and attitude -- it's the greatest show on earth.

But talking about angles and attitudes...

I remember standing on this exact same piece of Chicago pavement 65 years ago. V-J night when the city poured out into this venue to celebrate the end of WWII. Then 45 years ago as we walked our three children past the dazzling Marshall Fields Christmas windows. And again 25 years ago when the crowds were thinner, because the city at night was a more iffy itinerary.

But State and Randolf is once more the place to be on a Christmas weekend. The proud lady of the street -- the marquee-flashing Chicago Theatre -- has been fully restored. Just around the corner the marquees of the Oriental, the Palace and the Goodman all jitter in the night. The noise, the energy, the humanity together capacitate you as you watch. In the midst of a long, dark night in America, this and other such happy corners pulse with hype and hope.

Some things here are admittedly different from those previous years. Marshall Fields, when I wasn't looking, somehow became Macy's. The old restaurant glories of Henrici, Fritzel, and ShangrLai are no more. Taxis are fewer, white stretch-limos more common. Weaponed police more evident. The people...? Well, we are what we are; and -- for good or for bad -- that doesn't change much. To be sure, we no longer "dress up" for a Saturday night. Blue jeans, Dockers, and athletic shoes are now de rigueur. And yet, there are reassuring similarities.

Guys still tend to hold their ladies, and protect them into vehicles. Gals still tend to respond to their men, and allow them to protect them. Still others mix and match genders and races and nationalities more than ever. Altogether, a holiday moment to be savored. To be shared. And, hopefully, to remind us of something important: maybe we're still all worth liking and sharing like this during the other six days of the week too.