On weekdays from 4:30 to 6:30 PM, curious sounds come out of a powder blue two-story garage on the 102nd block of South Hoyne. Inside the gas-heated building, heavy weights clang, jump ropes swish, feet pound the cement floor. A radio tuned to B-96 blares amid male voices and the steady throb of fists against […]
Author Archives: Susan DeGrane
Posted inArts & Culture
Pit Face
I worked in a fast-food fish place at Navy Pier when I was in college. There was this girl who also worked there named Briny, spelled like the briny deep on her name tag but pronounced Breeny, like beany with an R. I still thought of her as Briny like the briny deep, though. Most […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Group Efforts: praying to be heard
Most days of the week, Ellie Sassana’s hands are spattered with gold ink. For eight hours on Mondays and four hours each day during the rest of the workweek, the self-taught calligrapher sits at a desk near a large plate glass window, writing names in gold lettering on cards that many believe hold the power […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Whole Client
What do you get when you cross a lawyer with a human being?
Posted inArts & Culture
Lecture Notes: the subtle art of punishment
Jade Steel sits at her kitchen table squeezing a phone between her shoulder and ear, talking between bites of custard and rice. The half Chinese, half Thai 32-year-old is dressed in a casual ankle-length jersey dress and a pair of flip-flops. Her face is bare of makeup, her hair piled up and secured with a […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Life During Wartime
By Susan DeGrane On a recent Sunday, Cliff Hullinger tells the 50 people jammed into a room at the Ridge Historical Society about being prepped for surgery to remove an inflamed appendix in a field hospital on the west coast of Italy during World War II. Every time a shell would explode nearby, the army […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Precarious Perch
Are they back? Calumet River fishermen cheer on an old favorite’s slight return.
Posted inNews & Politics
Six Tons of Corned Beef
Once a year, a little shop in Beverly sells an awful lot of meat.
Posted inNews & Politics
A Horse of a Different Calling
By Susan DeGrane Liz Grey strides up a sturdy wooden ramp to the second story of the Noble Horse, the oldest operating stable in Chicago. The smell of hay is sweet in the chilly barn, at Schiller and Orleans, whose stalls are home to 15 riding horses and 35 carriage horses. Grey stops at the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Lecture Notes: novelist Patricia Rosemoor churns out the steam
In 1997, Patricia Rosemoor went to Cook County Jail. She says she’ll never forget the 12-foot fences topped with razor wire, the sniper towers, the metal detectors, the long lines of people waiting to be processed, and the din of the inmates in the two-story cell blocks. “It left me with the impression I would […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Hearts of Ice
Jigs and spud bars top the agenda at the ice-fisherman’s ball.