Posts

By now, most artistically literate Chicagoans know the basic facts of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra strike of 1991: that executive director Henry Fogel and his board of trustees demanded that the musicians pay a portion of their health-insurance premiums, and that the players went on strike instead, forcing the cancellation of ten concerts, including the inaugural concert of new music director Daniel Barenboim. The strike was settled after 17 days. Not all the issues were....

Lost, somewhere east of Lake Calumet, in the summer of 1914: a one-quarter-inch-tall bluish-green plant, Thismia americana, member of a mostly tropical family of plants. According to Linda Wetstein of the Morton Arboretum, writing in Conscious Choice (Summer), “Local botanists are organizing to conduct a disciplined search for Thismia americana on August 10, 1991.” No one has seen a live specimen in 77 years. Best of Chicago voting is live now....

A couple questions: (1) Is there any scientific evidence that crystals emit power or store energy? (2) Is it possible to create a comic book-type flashlight so bright the briefest exposure would cause permanent blindness? –Xah Lee, Montreal, Canada Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Quartz, also known as silicon dioxide or silica, is the earth’s most abundant mineral, most often seen in the form of sand....

The 11th edition of the annual festival of black independent films continues through Sunday, August 9, at the Film Center, Art Institute, Columbus Drive at Jackson, and at Facets Multimedia Center, 1517 W. Fullerton. Tickets are $5, with discounts available to Blacklight and Film Center members. For more information call 443-3737 or 281-4114. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » RIGHT ON! THE ORIGINAL LAST POETS A fascinating time capsule–shot in 1968, released in 1970–this is a filmed performance of three angry, talented black poets....

HERE IS MONSTER Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Bullard works magic again in Here Is Monster, with a script that’s significantly richer and stronger. Brock Norman Brock’s dark, nasty play is about a gargantuan brute of a man, Massimo, who beats his wife, abuses his mistress, and murders a stranger’s wife as casually as you might squash a roach. Eventually he’s sent to prison for destroying a man’s cart–a bit of heavy-handed satire here....

Friday 5 Visitors to the Spring Planting Festival at Lincoln Park’s Farm-in-the-Zoo, Stockton Drive east of Wisconsin, can help plant crops, churn butter, and feed the cows today and tomorrow from 10 to 3. The free family-oriented event also includes lectures and demonstrations on sheep shearing, goat milking, horse grooming, and beekeeping, as well as story-telling, sing-alongs, and live bluegrass music. Call 294-4662 for details. Best of Chicago voting is live now....

At first glance, putting Moye and Sparrow on the same stage suggests that somebody shuffled the scheduling cards; on second thought, it makes a surprising amount of sense. Famoudou Don Moye, a creator of the “Sun Percussion” concept (a sort of rhythm gestalt), is the world-renowned heartbeat of the Art Ensemble of Chicago; Sparrow (aka Bradley Parker) is a busy and inventive cog in the local music scene, a recording engineer, producer, label-owner, author, and composer–and a rather limited pianist, whose style is actually more percussive than either melodically or harmonically varied....

What I like about Joanne Brackeen’s piano music is its fierce inner drive. Her sound is hard, clear, percussive, her technique is brilliant, and she’s inclined to aggressive, often exotic rhythms. She’s bursting with angular, often complex ideas, as though she had absorbed the concepts of virtually every pianist–from Bud Powell to Cecil Taylor–who’s had anything to say over the last three or four decades. And she’s equipped with a kind of bullshit detector that prevents her from sentimental developments or cheap, easy resolutions....

To the editors: No one also mentions anything about psychotherapy research. Let’s do that now. Many studies compare the effectiveness of various professionals. There are over 60 at last count. Actually mostly what is compared is the effectiveness of professionals–those with graduate degrees like social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists, psychiatric nurses, family counselors, individual counselors, youth counselors, substance abuse counselors, pastoral counselors, and others with paraprofessionals–those without graduate degrees. Oh, yes, from their talking and arguing you would think that just their three groups–psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers–are the only groups of mental health professionals....

LOOKINGGLASS LAB Such is the Columbus of Lawrence W. DiStasi’s book Columbus Upsidedown: a self-important mystic riddled by bouts of insomnia lasting a month or longer and haunted by the sort of demons that would someday cause another Spaniard, Francisco de Goya, to declare that “the sleep of reason breeds monsters.” In The Third Voyage, an adaptation by Lawrence E. DiStasi, the author’s son, we meet our protagonist on his third Atlantic trip....

Lead Story In October, Duluth carpenter Lance Grangruth accidentally shot a nail from a nail gun an inch and a half into his skull, tacking his cap to his head. Said Grangruth, “I didn’t actually feel it go in. I tried to take my hat off, and it wouldn’t come off.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » A 60-year-old woman on a life-support system died in Hammond, Indiana, in September when the local electric company mistakenly cut off the power to her home instead of that of her delinquent neighbor....

In a saner, less hostile political world there wouldn’t even be a discussion about the ragged, junk-filled road in Uptown that runs from Montrose to Irving Park behind Graceland Cemetery and beneath the Howard Street el. City officials would have blocked that road off years ago and turned it into a park filled with trees and grass. The debate goes back to 1984, when members of the East Graceland Organization–a block club consisting mostly of residents along Kenmore Avenue, the street just east of the el tracks–first proposed converting the road into a park....

This year the Seville fair is plastered all over the travel sections, and Chicago’s 1893 Columbian Exposition has been memorialized in half a dozen recent books. But Chicago’s Depression-era world’s fair, the Century of Progress, rarely rates a mention. True, it never drew the crowds or dollars the city expected, but it may have played a greater role in shaping national tastes than any fair before or since. Exhibitions in architecture, industrial design, and home fashion played key roles in solidifying trends that continue today....

Many writers and performers in the theater, usually out of economic necessity, balance their artistic work with second jobs such as waiting tables or temporary office help–employment that can be dropped or picked up as needed. But Jeff Berkson, a playwright and songwriter with five successfully produced shows to his credit, is a committed and seasoned professional in another, very demanding line of work. Since 1966, Berkson has been a practicing psychiatric social worker specializing in children; for the last 12 years he has been director of the inpatient adolescent psychiatry program at Evanston Hospital, a position that keeps him on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week....

It was morning downtown and the sidewalks were nearly empty except for a few solemn shoppers and people late for work. I was walking east on Adams when a heavyset woman, strolling in my direction with a friend, stopped in her tracks and began to pull violently at her hair. She staggered like a drunk, flailing her arms high in the air, her mouth opening and closing without a sound, until she finally fell slowly backward to the sidewalk like a toppled statue....

IF MEN COULD TALK, THE STORIES THEY COULD TELL Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Elovich plays all the characters in his one-man play. Danny Glick is a cartoon artist battling AIDS, which has already begun to impair his vision. He draws in an attempt to avoid his fears, which constantly threaten to overwhelm him–as he repeatedly states, “Nothing works faster than fear.” Elovich makes these fears highly idiosyncratic, which prevents Danny from becoming simply a stereotype or a statistic....

“Rediscoveries” are rare in blues and R & B these days. About the closest thing recently was the rehabilitation of Memphis soul legend James Carr, the man who recorded the original “Dark End of the Street” in 1966 and seemed marked for stardom until mental illness derailed him a few years later. After decades of torment this frail, elderly-looking man in his late 40s received a hero’s welcome this year from European fans who still revere southern soul artists as much as they do Chicago bluesmen....

S2 These are three imaginative, visually stunning moments in Edward Mast’s new play, S2, an otherwise plodding and heavy-handed diatribe against the evils of drugs, the media, complacency, the U.S. government, and authority figures in general. Unfortunately these three worthwhile moments can easily be missed since they occur long after the urge to take a nap sets in. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Slate (Scott Denny), a 14-year-old prostitute, stumbles into the possession of a suitcase full of white powder: a bliss-inducing drug called S2....

SURVIVORS The setting is a therapist’s office in 1986; the real locale is the mind of Billie, a victim of incest. Terrified of what she can’t face (“It’s all my fault”), Billie suffers from headaches, insomnia, and unprocessed anger. Not knowing why, she alienates her friends, resenting their easy happiness. She hates being touched, loathes men and sex (“They get angry and fuck”). The thought of marriage repels her (“I can’t mate in captivity”)....

There’s probably nothing much of any real value that can be added here to the Cubs’ recent exploits. The Cubs’ rise to first place has had to be experienced to be believed, and it seems almost everyone has followed the team in one way or another–if not by actually getting out to a game, then by watching the Cubs on television or, at very least, catching the highlights on the nightly news....