Posted inAgenda

World AIDS Day screenings, the Buttcracker, and more

Last week, the annual winter flower shows opened at the city’s conservatories in Garfield Park and Lincoln Park. This year, the theme at Garfield Park Conservatory (300 N. Central Park) is “Snow Day,” which they’re channeling with a 12 feet tall “tree” created with white poinsettias, as well as oversized snowmen hidden throughout the conservatory’s […]

Posted inStaff notes

Editor’s note: I remember

The who’s who of local journalism gathered recently at the Newberry Library for the 83rd annual Chicago Journalists Association awards. As the organization’s first in-person ceremony since the pandemic took its grip, a buoyant feeling was in the air (aided perhaps by an open bar), as Chicago journalists rocked their finest duds (props to Sun-Times […]

Posted inMusic

Pioneering electronic producer Man Parrish reworks the music of his departed friend Klaus Nomi

You might expect an album of Klaus Nomi material to sound like Klaus Nomi, but Man Parrish’s Dear Klaus Nomi isn’t that. Instead, the New York producer has added highly technical musical accompaniments to archival recordings of the cult figure’s songs to give them fresh sounds and feelings. The result is a love letter from […]

Posted inArts & Culture

Hidden no more

One of my favorite passages in Chicago journalist Michael J. O’Loughlin’s new book, Hidden Mercy: AIDS, Catholics, and the Untold Stories of Compassion in the Face of Fear, opens like an old-school joke. A nun named Sister Carol Baltosiewich is sitting in a New York City gay bar and eyeing the men around her, when […]