CHICAGO — Here's what we're reading today.
Warning, These Bees Lead to Internet Wormhole: Fans of Burt's Bees products are mourning the loss of the company's co-founder Burt Shavitz, who died Sunday at the age of 80. Reading Burt's obit in Women's Wear Daily (of all places), reporter Patty Wetli was surprised to learn not only that there was an actual Burt but that he had a partner in the biz, Roxanne Quimby. How come Roxanne didn't get her name on the company's lip balm, aside from the obvious alliterative answer? Googling that question led down an Internet wormhole into the pair's complicated relationship. The upshot: Quimby may be the lesser known of the two, but she got all the money — and sold out to Clorox. So much for natural and organic products leading to a kinder, gentler form of capitalism.
An End of an Era: CME Group won't let media cover the last day of futures pit trading in Chicago, so reporter David Matthews is reading profiles of these traders in Crain's Chicago Business. Among them: Lee Stern, who started working at the Board of Trade in 1949, and Chris Graceffa, who started his career as most commodities trading already moved online. Monday is the last day of futures trading in the pit at the Board of Trade, closing a long chapter at the country's oldest futures exchange, and one that gave Midwestern farmers access to high finance.
Somehow This Didn't Happen in Florida: A 28-year-old Texas man was killed by an alligator after ignoring marina staff instructions and hopping in for a swim with the reptile. The man's last words were reportedly "f*** that alligator." The man was attacked immediately. Don't mess with alligators.
India's Garrison Keillor has 14 Times the Audience of "A Prairie Home Companion." The fictional Lake Wobegon that put Keillor on the listening map has nothing on Yaad Sheher — or Memory Town — where millions of Indians "tune their radios to the mellifluous voice of Neelesh Misra spinning tales of a vanishing way of life in a fictional Indian town," the Washington Post reports. The Bollywood songwriter and rural newspaper editor's daily show, now in its 4th season, chronicles life in a changing India as millions move from small villages to big cities. "Even the grandparents are busy with their cellphones and sharing jokes on WhatsApp,” Misra said in an interview." Read the whole story here.
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