These Parts: A battle for control of a small-town historical society gets ugly. Really ugly.
Author Archives: Fran Zell
Posted inNews & Politics
A House in the Country
I was dating a man who went on a peace mission to Central America and returned to tell me he’d met someone on the trip who could really make him happy. I wanted to be happy too. I bought a house in the country. I was happy for a while. I was ecstatically happy, tossing […]
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Restaurant Tours: fine dining in fish-fry country
That first summer the Jenkinses took over the Wild River Cafe you could almost set your watch by the farmer who stopped by on hot, dusty days for two Diet Pepsis. “He’d take the cans and lay down a dollar bill,” says John Jenkins. “We charge 75 cents a can here for soda, but he’d […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Spring Green, WI
It’s best to have a detailed county map when exploring the beautiful countryside surrounding Spring Green. Otherwise you might never veer off onto the back roads and discover such treasures as the Friendship Historical Wayside on Friendship Drive, about 18 miles north of Spring Green (off highway 23), near Loganville. It’s a restored one-room schoolhouse […]
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Reading: An Urban Expatriate
Jane Hamilton, who grew up in Oak Park and settled in southeast Wisconsin, takes the rural midwest out of its Norman Rockwell frame.
Posted inNews & Politics
Cheap Ticket
“You’ll never sell it.” My brother’s chuckle sounded too loud in my ear. “Who’d want to go to Cleveland?” That’s all I remember about the conversation, even though I know we talked about things besides the airplane ticket I’d bought before the family get-together shifted to a different weekend. “Of course I can sell it,” […]
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Local Lit: Diane WIlliams, a voice from the inner city
Diane Williams is drilling her developmental English class on basic methods for winning an argument: Give a factual reason, refer to an authority, cite a specific example, predict the positive consequences of your argument or the negative consequences of the opposition. The walls at DeVry Institute of Technology are thin; when she pauses to allow […]
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The Chicago Ineffectual Film Festival
Synopses of This Year’s Most Popular Entries
Posted inNews & Politics
Jay Elvis
People always have a favorite restaurant or night spot they want all their friends to try. There’s a guy at work–Joe–he’s got an Elvis impersonator. Joe has followed Jay Elvis from one unfash-ionable north-side tavern to another. A couple of years ago, when Joe lost track of Jay, he wrote to the Sun-Times’s Action Time. […]
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The Work of a Master
I’m sitting in my office one afternoon when a young man I’ve never seen there pokes his head in the doorway. He’s wearing Bermuda shorts, a black-and-white T-shirt promoting somebody’s band, has long brown hair tied behind his neck in a single tightly wound braid. The look is at once clean-cut and 90s-hip. He’s carrying […]
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Chi Lives: Peggy Ascherman and her serious salad bar
The air-conditioning in her restaurant is not working full tilt, but in her dappled green sundress, Peggy Ascherman looks fresh as a crisp tossed salad, her long brown hair twisted off her back into a cool French braid. A party of three walks in and halts a moment, testing the air. “We’ll come back,” one […]