To the editors: An article by Elizabeth Blanchard [“Three Teachers Talking”] in the Reader; dated January 22, 1988 was very offensive to the Hispanic community, its students and educators. The article was read by well over 100 persons, all of whom manifested their deeply hurt community pride at a couple of meetings where a decision […]
Tag: Vol. 17 No. 26
Issue of Apr. 14 – 20, 1988
Posted inNews & Politics
Pride and Prejudice
To the editors: I was chief medical officer on an Illinois Guard rotation to Honduras in April, 1987. Predictably, there was no mention in your article [“Why Are We in Honduras?” March 11] that the assignment was completely voluntary and that we were unarmed. Predictably, there was scant mention of the Honduran lives we saved, […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Human Interest
To the editors: I’ve been enjoying your feature articles for some time now, but I was compelled to send this note to let your writer, Florence Levinsohn, know how much I enjoyed her recent story on Vernon Jarrett (3/25/88). The story was interesting, moving and inspirational. I’m sure Ms. Levinsohn enjoyed her interview with Mr. […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Sports Section
The period just before opening day was a time of gloom and doom for Chicago’s baseball teams–especially for the White Sox. Not only did no one pick them higher than fifth in the American League West, but most large-circulation magazines–where the supposed experts weigh in–picked them last. Meanwhile, the papers were rife with rumors that […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Critical Daze
To the editors: School Daze is a “masterpiece,” huh? Reviewer David Ehrenstein has got to be kidding in giving it four stars (March 18). Just because, as he says, blacks are oppressed and white people aren’t interested in black people at all doesn’t mean that a film about black people from a black perspective ought […]
Posted inArts & Culture
They Might Be Giants
On the other hand, they might be geeks. They Might Be Giants is two endearingly nerdy guys from Hoboken who enjoy messing with accordions and drum machines almost as much as they enjoy messing with your mind. You expect songs with titles like “Youth Culture Killed My Dog,” “Everything Right Is Wrong Again,” and “Alienations […]
Posted inFilm
Mysterious Motives
MELO **** (Masterpiece) Directed by Alain Resnais Written by Henry Bernstein With Andre Dussollier, Sabine Azema, Pierre Arditi, and Fanny Ardant. The exquisite art of Melo, like the art of Alain Resnais in general, bears a certain resemblance to sculpture: it needs to be seen from several different vantage points if one is to fully […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Comedy and Errors
3 GUYS NAKED FROM THE WAIST DOWN Actor’s Repertory Theatre at the Broadway Arts Center 3 Guys is a show-biz musical about a team of three stand-up comedians. You see them onstage and offstage. You follow their careers from obscurity to stardom to disillusionment. Along the way, you see them perform some very funny routines, […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Seed money: the Crossroads Fund, a foundation for the left-out
Gail Smith, a lawyer, needed a few thousand dollars to help incarcerated mothers keep custody of their children, but she didn’t know where to look. For one thing, it was not a popular cause. This was in 1985–at the height of Ronald Reagan’s popularity–when most people seemed more bent on cracking the heads of lawbreakers […]
Posted inArts & Culture
On Stage: cartoon characters in a drama of death
On March 24, 1980, in San Salvador, Archbishop Oscar Amulfo Romero was assassinated while saying mass. The next day in Chicago, Mundelein College professor and playwright Nick Patricca read about it. It was the first he’d heard of Romero. And the news did something to him. “In the lower left-hand corner of the newspaper was […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Music Notes: Anthony Newman gets spme respect
Back in the early 1970s, Columbia Records president Clive Davis decided to capitalize on the tremendous popularity of offbeat keyboard virtuosos of the day: Keith Emerson and Rick Wakeman were busy with their rock arrangements of classical favorites, Walter Carlos and Isao Tomita were busy “switching on” classical music by performing it on Moog synthesizers, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Festival of Animation
This varied collection of shorts represents a certain improvement over the International Tournee of Animation in terms of overall quality. An organization based in La Jolla called Mellow Madness has put it together, and after many successful years on the west coast is taking the show on the road, in competition with the International Tournee. […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Lady Lazarus and Other Women: An Evening of Sylvia Plath
LADY LAZARUS AND OTHER WOMEN: AN EVENING OF SYLVIA PLATH Chicago Actors Ensemble My first impressions of Sylvia Plath came from a murder mystery novel I read as an adolescent. The four main suspects were coeds who worshiped Sylvia Plath, and they were all pale-skinned, dressed only in black, and at least pretended to be […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Button
It was the middle of the night. There were only a few of us waiting for the train, huddled under the electric lamps trying to catch a little bit of heat and get out of the way of the wind. The Belmont el stop was quiet for a change. The clubs had already been closed […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Reckless; This Is the Rill Speaking
RECKLESS Absolute Theatre Company THIS IS THE RILL SPEAKING Raven Theatre In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Wakefield,” a disaffected man leaves his wife and moves into an identical house a block away. So complete is the change that Hawthorne suggests Wakefield might as well have run off to the South Seas. Alienation can go no further. In […]