At 5 PM Saturday, March 21, Governor J.B. Pritzker’s COVID-19 Executive Order No. 8, aka the Stay at Home order, took effect. Here’s a daily-ish journal of how Reader staff, our friends, family—and our pets—are spending our time.
Day 53: May 12
What we’re reading:
- Damon Krukowski on “live” albums (Art in America)
- Peter Margasak thinking about Chicago (while living in Berlin), specifically about Steve Dawson & Funeral Bonsai Wedding and Circuit Des Yeux and Cheer-Accident
- Aimee Levitt on “the world’s only asparamancer” (The Takeout)
- About New England-style hot dog buns, since that was the only kind we could buy on our last trip to Trader Joe’s and we had some questions (The Boston Globe)
- An interview with Reader publisher Tracy Baim about saving community media in Chicago (Newcity (!))
- About requirements for a “modern ‘Hello, World’” program, a reminder—along with yesterday’s chicagoreader.com downtime—that sometimes complex systems make simple tasks much, much more complicated—even as they simplify complicated projects
- @NeinQuarterly on Twitter, “A Compendium of Utopian Negation,”
this might just be the Twitter account for these difficult times,
with recent tweets including: “I’ve stopped following the news. Please: don’t tell me how we end.” See also some good ones about Freud, Marx, and Nietzsche from April.
What we’re watching:
- Giri/Haji on Netflix: eight-episode police/yakuza drama set in London and Tokyo
- NewsRadio on Antenna TV (9.2 over the air) weeknights at 11 and 11:30 PM
What we’re listening to:
- Ono, Red Summer (had tickets to their show that had been scheduled for Friday, May 1 at the Empty Bottle; bought their CD on Bandcamp instead)
- Greg Dulli, Random Desire (was supposed to see him at Metro on April 25; hoping the September resheduled date can happen)
- Lucinda Williams, Good Souls Better Angels
- Ben Joravsky and Mick Dumke talking Bob Dylan’s “Murder Most Foul” from The Ben Joravsky Show podcast early last month
What we’re drinking:
Beer we’re looking forward to picking up in cans: