Winter Woeful-Land

Now that Labor Day has come and gone and the days are getting fractionally shorter with each sunset, the promise of a glorious autumn is imminent. Fall, though, like Spring is a fleeting season with very few days of its own, most of them belonging to either a fading summer or an all too eager winter. Indeed it's at about this time of year that I begin to think about the winter season. Holiday promotions begin to appear in magazines and shop windows and the bitter winds, slushy snow, and frosty nights of January seem no more than a blink away. While the twinkling white lights in the trees and enormous holiday meals shared with loved-ones bring some feeling of warmth to the dreary cold, the essence of a Chicago winter is a brutal and unforgiving one. It is a setting of low, blank skies and an overpowering sense of the color gray. It's an empty, forsaken time wherein one passes few people on the street and those who do pass by walk quickly and say nothing. 

Forthcoming from Arnaldur Indridason

While a Chicago winter might have little or no appeal as a vacation destination, its essence shares something special in common with the gritty atmosphere of many mystery novels put forth by several popular Scandinavian authors. Bitter cold and a sense of pervasive personal isolation feature heavily. For fans of murder and mayhem and for those whose sense of wonder is awakened by the chillingly sinister approach of another Chicago winter I've compiled a short list of new and forthcoming Scandinavian mysteries. Enjoy!

Moving Pictures

This week I experienced a touch of humor, humanity and history all in the course of three hours. I could have been reading a wonderful novel, but this time I wasn't reading but walking Michigan Avenue near Millennium Park. Within three blocks there are three photography exhibits installed at three cultural institutions for free*.

Columbia College houses the Museum of Contemporary Photography where there is currently an exhibit of John Baldessari abstract prints. I smiled through the exhibit of photographs decorated with bright circles of color but struggled with the meaning behind the works. Lucky for me the Chicago Tribune was on my heals and a review appeared in the newspaper the next day.

Next stop was a photographic review of San Francisco in the 70's. Chicago born photographer Jerry Pritikin has an exhibit at the Gage Gallery of Roosevelt University. His photographs are of the people of Castro Street and the Gay Rights movement. The producers of the film Milk must have received inspiration from photos like these.

Last on my tour that day was the massive exhibit at the Art Institute, of the prolific and peripatetic photo journalist Henri Cartier-Bresson from the 1930's - 1970s. This photographer captured moving moments of history like the funeral of Gandhi to mundane scenes of a picnic in a park.


*The Art Institute currently has free admission on Thursday evenings.

Bozo's Circus, Des Plaines, and Lyric Opera--All in One Book!

The Black Sox Scandal

Bozo's Circus

The Chicago Literary Renaissance

Des Plaines

Lyric Opera

What do these five things have in common?

They're all entries in of one of the coolest books at the library, the Encyclopedia of Chicago. I had planned to include the Encyclopedia of Chicago in my post on Chicago theater, but I decided it deserved a tribute all its own.

An authoritative and engagingly written source on the history of Chicago, it also contains information on the surrounding suburbs, including a 523 word entry on Des Plaines. (Who knew that in the summers of the late 1800s and early 1900s, "the idyllic river setting enticed Chicagoans to board trains for Des Plaines to picnic or camp. As many as 8,000 people came in a day, disrupting the quiet community and annoying townspeople whose flower gardens were trampled by visitors.")

That entry, by Marilyn Elizabeth Perry, is just one of the 1,400 A to Z signed entries by journalists, historians and experts. Entries range from Hull House to Machine Politics to Steppenwolf Theatre to one of my favorite features, entries on all the neighborhoods, or community areas, of Chicago, such as Edgewater. (Although the emphasis is on the history of Chicago, the book is also a treasure trove of information on contemporary Chicago and its culture.)

Fun to thumb through as well as a great resource for students, it includes entries on subjects of national concern but with a Chicago slant, such as Environmental Regulation and Urban Renewal. Useful features include census data for counties, municipalities, and Chicago community areas, as well as a Biographical Dictionary at the end.

All of this is contained in one comprehensive but portable volume, complete with photographs, maps and tables. You can always find a copy on the shelf--we own a reference copy for in-library use. (Whenever you see the word REFERENCE in front of a book's call number, that means it's to be used in-library.) There's also a copy you can check out.

Finally, if it's 3 am and you're wondering just why the puppet Garfield Goose, of the Garfield Goose and Friends tv show, wore a crown on his head,* you can look it up in the free electronic Encyclopedia of Chicago, which you can access here, or via the library's guide to history and geography resources online, one of the library's many subject-specific guides to resources.

Although the library has many wonderful reference books, The Encyclopedia of Chicago is my favorite, and a fascinating book to simply browse. (I realize this makes me sound like a total geek. Does anyone else out there have favorite reference book?)

*Answer: Garfield Goose believed he was king of the United States. (The Encyclopedia of Chicago entry on Garfield Goose and Friends.)

Second City? Ha! Not When It Comes to Theater

Back in 2007, The New York Times declared the Chicago theater scene "the country's most vibrant dramatic capital after New York." Now, I'm sure the journalist meant well. But I've lived in both New York City and Chicago, I've attended shows in both cites, and I think the Times got it wrong, and not only because New York imports Chicago productions featuring Chicago actors, such as Steppenwolf Theatre's August: Osage County, which won the Pulitzer Prize and several Tony Awards.

Chicago theater ensembles like The Hypocrites and the crew at The Artistic Home may have small budgets and smaller performance spaces, but their talent, inventiveness, and honesty leave you feeling intensely alive, and also grateful, and not simply because the walls didn't explode from pressure and emotional heat.

From nationally known theater companies like Steppenwolf to exciting and explosive performances at The Artistic Home--the next Steppenwolf--Chicago offers a profusion of choices for theater lovers, and unlike New York, much of it is actually affordable.

To enhance your theater-going experience and to learn more about Chicago theater, check out these resources at the library.

A great starting place for fans of Chicago theater and novices alike is A Theater of Our Own: A History and a Memoir of 1,001 Nights in Chicago. As former theater critic for the Chicago Tribune, author Richard Christiansen had access to some of Chicago's most important theater figures, including John Malkovich and David Mamet, whose comments enliven this already lively history of Chicago theater from the 1830s to the current century. A couple of my favorite things: Claudia Cassidy's review of then unknown playwright Tennessee Williams's Glass Menagerie, which launched his career; and a picture of the "Steppenwolf Kids" in 1978, looking extremely young and endearingly geeky. And in plaid, too! Who knew John Malkovich could look cuddly?!

For a more glamorous look at Chicago's most famous theater export, check out photographer Victor Skrebneski's Steppenwolf: Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Twenty-Five Years of an Actor's Theatre. This glossy, coffee-table book contains portraits of Steppenwolf ensemble members by the legendary Skrebneski, as well as production shots and essays by writers including Kurt Vonnegut and Sam Shepard.

Second City: Backstage at the World's Greatest Comedy Theater also has star essayists including Dan Akroyd, Alan Arkin and Jim Belushi. Written by one of Second City's first directors, Sheldon Patinkin, this glossy but information-packed, oversized book is filled with quotes, interviews and anecdotes from Second City's many famous alumni and others. Appropriately, the book comes with two CDs featuring performances by alumni like John Belushi and Tina Fey. One of the best is "Football Comes to the University of Chicago."

The Oxford Companion to American Theatre is national rather than local in scope, but an essential A to Z dictionary with over 2,600 entries on everything from Arthur Miller to performance art to Chicago's own Victory Gardens Theater.

To see what's playing in Chicago, my favorite resource is Time Out Chicago, available online or in our magazine collection on the 3rd floor. This weekly magazine has a theater section with a complete list of Chicago area shows. Listings include ticket price, running time, and much appreciated public transportation information to the venues. Capsule reviews accompany many listings, and there are feature reviews and articles, too.

Finally, before you call a theater to purchase tickets, check out Seats Chicago: 120 Seating Plans to Chicago & Milwaukee Metro Area Theaters, Concert Halls and Sports Stadiums. With seating charts to many Chicago area venues, you can see just where your tickets are located before shelling out for seats so far to the side they might as well be at the bar next door.

Happy theater-going!

Discovery in the City of Big Shoulders

Being a transplant in this area of the country, I never cease to be amazed at the grandeur and gravitas of the city of Chicago, and I am proud to live and work within the shadow of its skyline. There are a multitude of exciting things about living so close to the city: being able to participate in Chicago's incredible sports heritage; witnessing the unique and diverse blend of cultures throughout the area; and viewing the beautiful, soaring buildings in the city that invented the skyscraper, among many others. One thing in particular that I enjoy is that, in Chicago, wherever you turn history is waiting to speak to you.

In a specific case of history just "happening" to me in the Second City, I went to see a Blackhawks game with a bunch of friends on Valentine's Day, 2004. After the game, we headed up to the Chicago Pizza and Oven Grinder Co. restaurant on North Clark Street (they make a pizza pot pie that is nothing if not sublime). While I was perusing the menu, I noticed a tiny blurb about the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, which I in my East Coast upbringing had vaguely heard about but never known the specifics. My curiosity was piqued as I wondered what a brutal mass murder and this bustling and cozy eatery could have in common. It turned out the two were connected only by the width of Clark Street. The St. Valentines Day Massacre occurred in a garage at 2122 North Clark Street, right across the street from where I was sitting. When I realized the actual date of this heinous act of gang warfare, February 14th, 1929, a chill tickled my spine. I had gone from not really knowing much about the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, to being in the almost exact vicinity of the crime - on its 75th anniversary! Boom, history!

Another nugget of history that I discovered was the Eastland disaster in 1915, though this time I wasn't at the actual site of the occurrence. A few years after I moved out here, I was watching a WTTW broadcast when it showed the story of the Eastland disaster, and I was dumbfounded by my ignorance of such an event. Over 800 people lost their lives when the steamer S.S. Eastland capsized near the south bank of the Chicago River between Clark and LaSalle Streets. Passengers were boarding the Eastland for a lake trip to Michigan City, Indiana when a crowd formed on the port side of the boat, possibly due to a passing canoe race. Suddenly, the boat rolled over onto its port side, coming to a stop on the river bottom just 20 feet below. Many people were able to be rescued, but a large percentage of the passengers drowned as they were trapped below decks. I mention my discovery of this tragic moment of Chicago history because it occurred 94 years ago today.

Am I alone in this? Does anyone else have any stunning experiences of unexpectedly unearthing huge chunks of Chicago's past?