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Last month Evanston’s public grade schools released their 1988-89 enrollment figures and test scores, and folks there still don’t know how to react. On the one hand, some white residents fret over “white flight,” since black enrollment in several grade schools has climbed above 50 percent. On the other hand, many officials and parents worry because white students performed twice as well as blacks on standardized national tests–perpetuating a gap that has existed for as long as such test-score records have been kept....

The future of Chicago lies in a batch of blue plastic boxes that sit along the sidewalks of Beverly on the far southwest side, Stashed inside is garbage–newspapers, bottles, and cans–waiting to be collected, sorted, and recycled. “Everybody blames the city because we don’t have citywide recycling, but this problem is bigger than that,” counters Leroy Bannister, Sawyer’s deputy chief operating officer. “This is a sad commentary on our country in general....

LA SVENGALI Under his malign, hypnotic influence, Trilby becomes a famous singer, called “La Svengali” after her “manager.” She’s capable of a four-octave range whenever Svengali moves his hypnotic hands, almost choking out her notes, but when Svengali dies of heart failure, Trilby loses her voice. Having already lost her soul, she sickens and dies–just when Billy promises to marry her at last. Like Antonia, the haunted singer in Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffmann, the creature does not dare to outlive its creator....

Marshall Field’s has a motorized Cinderella and Carson’s has mechanized elves, but it’s the robotic man in the frosted window at Mysels Furs and Leathers, 123 S. State, who’s riveting holiday shoppers and lunch-hour office workers. He’s wrapped in a full-length mahogany mink coat, standing on a ten-inch-high pedestal. One by one a dozen people stop in their tracks to look at the man who stares right through them with a vacant, faraway gaze....

The 50-odd groups appealing in the eight-week “festival of Chicago’s international arts” include a dozen theater companies and performance artists; those performing November 15 through 21 are described below. These listings refer to theater and performance art offerings only; on nights when only one performance is listed here, be assured at least one other program of music, dance, or poetry is also planned, with discount prices available to viewers buying a ticket to all performances on a single night....

Rhea McLean likes to sneak through abandoned buildings after dark, preferably industrial ruins in rough Chicago neighborhoods. She brings with her a camera, a tripod, a bag of supplies, and a sturdy human companion. Once inside, she moves by flashlight across dusty floors streaked with the thick shadows thrown by outside streetlights, carefully considering the instability that time and rot may have brought to stairways and surfaces. Best of Chicago voting is live now....

ORQUIDEAS A LA LUZ DE LA LUNA In Carlos Fuentes’s short story “Orquídeas a la Luz de la Luna” (“Orchids in the Moonlight”), the private world belongs to two real-life Latin American screen sirens, Dolores del Río and María Félix. Reality set them a decade apart and on different continents—Félix made films with directors such as Luis Buñuel in Europe in the 1940s, del Río Hollywood movies in the 1950s. But that didn’t bother Fuentes, who threw them together in “Orquídeas” without much regard for the facts of their lives....

If you were to ask people what’s the most interesting thing happening on the near west side, chances are most of them would say “Da Bulls.” The reigning champs are sitting pretty atop the NBA and scalpers are hawking tickets for two to three times their cost. In recent weeks, extra police details have been assigned to traffic duty around the Chicago Stadium, as legions of rowdy fans have turned the area around Ashland and Madison into a free-for-all....

The Proclaimers (identical-twin Scottish nationalists Charlie and Craig Reid) said hello in 1987 with their knockout debut, This Is the Story–a riot of acoustic guitars and shakers and lusty oddball harmonies. Jettisoning all possible distractions immediately established these guys as confident, stubbornly forthright buskers anxious to be understood in a world forever misled by bullshit veneer (in “Throw the ‘R’ Away” a young Scot finds his accent a handicap in trying to romance a prejudiced English girl)....

It’s no wonder that when the Philadelphia pulp writer David Goodis died in 1967, none of his 17 novels were in print in this country but 12 were still in circulation in France. To the French, Goodis was–and still is–a dearly loved hard-boiled, hard-drinking pop existentialist, unrecognized for his literary genius and snubbed by the fame he pursued ever since the publication of his first book in 1938. While Goodis’s return to print hasn’t sparked the cultish enthusiasm the recent Jim Thompson revival triggered, his books outdo Thompson’s for their tangled plots, brooding characters, and–atypical for the genre–singular women....

To the editors: Just as feminists quickly sidestep the a priori issue of murder and portray abortion as a matter of choice, so too does Robert McClory sidestep the issue of what the Catholic Church is before trying to change it. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Later, Donna Quinn claims “I am the church! It’s my church!” Begging her pardon, but isn’t it, or shouldn’t it be, Christ’s church?...

Out on the far southwest side a bruising political slugfest has broken out between old colleagues. Never close friends, congressmen Marty Russo and Bill Lipinski were nonetheless frequent companions over the past decade on flights back and forth from Washington. They are often seen–inaccurately–by outsiders as political peas in a pod, “conservative ethnic Democrats” who consistently vote against civil, reproductive, and women’s rights, but who support most narrowly defined prolabor and urban initiatives....

Next week we’ll do one million. Lorraine V. Forte in Catalyst (May): “Second-grade teacher Barbara Bibbs [of Medgar Evers School, 9811 S. Lowe] introduced her students to the concept of 1,000 by dumping 1,000 popsicle sticks on the floor. The youngsters then picked up the sticks and bundled them into groups of 10. Next they bundled the groups of 10 into groups of 100. Finally, 10 students were chosen to stand up and hold the bundles of 100 sticks in front of the class....

Or you could step on them. Hammacher Schlemmer now sells an “aluminum can crusher,” complete with wall mount, 16-inch compaction arm, and foam-covered neoprene handle, for $22.95. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Invasion for the hell of it. The New Yorker (April 2) reports that “the United States has quietly dropped its request that Panama toughen its laws on the laundering of drug money....

THE DUCHESS OF MALFI Basically, the Brecht/Auden adaptation is a streamlined version, ironing out the plot, unknotting the gnarly Jacobean dialogue, and adding a prologue (lifted from John Ford’s ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore) that explicitly reveals Duke Ferdinand’s lust for his sister, the Duchess of Malfi. The central plot is more or less unchanged. The duke gets jealous and kills the duchess’s second husband, Antonio. Then the duke kills his brother, the cardinal, for branding their sister a whore....

I know this is going to sound crazy, but my Slinky (that’s the Original Slinky Walking Spring Toy) has the power to turn on, turn off, and change channels on our TV set! Shortly after receiving the Slinky as a birthday gift, I was watching TV and absentmindedly tumbling the Slinky back and forth in my hands. The TV went off, then came back on a minute or two later. At first I figured our TV was on the blink....

When John Shimon and Julie Lindemann moved back to Manitowoc, Wisconsin, three years ago, they brought with them a decade of acquired urban crust, tens of thousands of photographs, and enough secondhand stuff to fill a warehouse. Fortunately, they moved into a warehouse. The record got a better reception than they did, and it sold a whole 12 copies. It was 1982, and New York was in the midst of a real estate boom that helped turn thousands of city people into street people....

Friday 3 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The 67 objects in the Art Institute’s exhibit “The Human Figure in Early Greek Art” show one major change that occurred in Greek art, between 1000 and 500 BC–a shift from abstract to naturalistic portrayals of the human figure. Seven scholars will discuss this development in a two-day symposium, The World of Early Greek Art. The symposium begins at 5:30 today with a lecture by Dr....

The 24th Chicago International Film Festival, running from Monday, October 24, through Sunday, November 6, promises fewer programs this year–a little less than 100 versus last year’s 131–with a good many more repeats; and the screenings occupy a much wider geographic spread, with films showing on the University of Chicago campus and at the Three Penny as well as at the two standbys from last year, the Biograph and the Music Box....

City Sets Price of Artistic License: $25 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The demand caught fair organizers by surprise and quickly prompted activist members of the Chicago Artists Coalition to begin investigating the matter. Meanwhile, an assistant to Alderman Natarus swiftly delivered 280 itinerant merchant’s license applications to the chamber of commerce, to be sent to all artists with booths at the fair On April 19, chamber officials mailed out the forms, though they were dubious many artists would meet the fee deadline; most of them were already on the road participating in art fairs elsewhere....