Metal chairs are arranged tightly in four rows of six. The shades are pulled down, but not far enough to hide the grids covering the outside of the windows of Ogden Courts, a public housing development on the near west side. A stack of manila folders, a pad of yellow legal paper, and a phone […]
Author Archives: Ernest Sander
Posted inNews & Politics
Landmark perturbation: home owner struggles with the ghost of Walt Disney
About ten minutes after June Saathoff signed the papers on her new house 21 years ago, the broker told her she had just bought the house Walt Disney was born in. “If I had known then what I know now, I’d have grabbed the check out of his hand and run,” said Saathoff. “I’m supposed […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Dance Notes: the company that thinks on its feet
Auditioning for Abiogenesis is more like an interview with a Fortune 500 company than a dance tryout. For a month applicants are put through a series of “theater games” involving props, mock scenarios, and assigned characters. How fast does their brain work? Do they know how to solve a problem? These are the questions that […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Cheng’s Calling
Since the day in 1942 when he was expelled from high school in Yumping, China, Chen Chan Cheng, proprietor of the Peking Book House in Evanston, has been following a calling: to educate himself and the rest of the world. It is through his store on Sherman Avenue–where he sells everything from abacuses to acupuncture […]