Dear editors, Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The facts, as some of us know, are rather different. The Jews (isn’t it comforting to keep calling them Zionists in the article, a common ploy by Arabs to play on some unknown and frightening ideology, rather than identify the Jews as Jews?) at this moment in history were weak, barely armed, and hugely outnumbered by both Palestinians and the surrounding Arab countries, all of whom had announced their intention of pushing the Jews into the sea and destroying them completely....

First Bi-Annual Midwest Turntablist Competition A DJ mounts the stage, in front of the storefront window, and drops his cumbersome bag of tricks to the floor. While another guy is finishing his two-minute routine on one of two sets of Technics SL-1200s, he attaches his own needle cartridges to the sleek tonearms of the other set and lays his own felt slip mats on the platters. He then produces two records and cues them up according to colored tape that marks selected grooves....

MOSES AND ARON Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Pierre Boulez claims that in postwar Paris, works by the Second Viennese School–music that had been branded decadent by the Nazis–likewise ran afoul of French nationalism and were rarely performed. Unhappy with this cultural conservatism, he took it upon himself to learn the 12-tone technique pioneered by Schoenberg, which had been the hallmark of the school and one of the greatest artistic achievements of the early 20th century....

Dance Theatre of Harlem at the Shubert Theatre, May 15-18 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Johnson, a charter member of DTH, was the world’s first black Giselle. She achieved her status as a prima ballerina the same way Leontyne Price achieved her status as a prima donna: by performing classical repertory with extraordinary grace and technical command. She secured her role in American history not by bringing street cred or tribal movements to dance but through her artistry....

Jan Erkert & Dancers at the Athenaeum Theatre, through March 21 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Erkert uses her freedom from narrative to burrow deeply into how things feel. Her 1995 Whole Fragments conveyed what recovery from a physical disability felt like. Yet there were no obvious roles, such as patient, doctor, or nurse; the set and costumes gave no hint of hospitals. That dance was dreamlike, set in a morphine haze....

In 1927, when American popular music was the rage in Europe, an acting student in Berlin decided to create a German version of the Revelers, a male vocal quartet from the U.S. That student, Harry Frommermann, had a strange and enchanting ability to imitate musical instruments with his hands and mouth, and he’d already written songs for the nonexistent group. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Frommermann advertised for voices under 25 years old....

By J.R. Jones An ardent lover of architecture, Grannen was collecting stained glass from wrecking sites at an age when most boys were chasing baseball cards. No subject excites him more than Louis Sullivan and the Chicago School, or disgusts him more than the loss of the city’s historic buildings. “We don’t want them to come down, and we have nothing to do with that. But if they’re gonna come down I wanna be the one to save them....

I recently met an ambitious, attractive, charming, talented, and terrific young woman. One major problem, though: it turns out this close friend, whom I felt so strongly about, is a racist. Although she has never explicitly voiced her racism, it’s apparent in some subtle comments she’s made. Learning my friend harbored these feelings hurt me. Apparently it wasn’t obvious to her that I come from a multiracial background. I’m saddened and upset....

Smells Like Team Spirit Here’s an intriguing sidelight to last week’s big story about racial taunting at a Thornton-Brother Rice basketball game. Taylor Bell, the Sun-Times sportswriter who broke the story, hadn’t attended the game. Reporters who did had trouble recognizing it from Bell’s article. Tinderbox? “That’s not true at all,” says Ken Karrson of the Hammond Times. “After the game people filed out. The writers were around another 20 or 25 minutes....

DJ LADY MISS KIER 2/12, METRO Seems like only a couple years ago that Deee-Lite brought a sinfully infectious pop version of dance culture to the masses–particularly those masses who have to go to bed long before the raving hour–and the sight of 12-year-old girls with peace signs painted on their faces was more common than at any time since 1967. But in fact it’s been nearly a decade since Lady Miss Kier’s loopy vocals and foxy duds drove “Groove Is in the Heart” to number four, and after a couple failed...

To the editor: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Is the Reader trying to reinforce the notion of Chicago as a “second city” in the art world? I’ve noticed a disturbing trend in front-page articles (in the Culture Club section) on the Chicago visual-arts scene. There has been an unbalanced focus on galleries closing and galleries and artists moving to New York City. I’m noting the article on Tough Gallery [February 26], an earlier article on Wesley Kimler [January 22], and some months back an article reporting on the possible move of Ten in One [June 12]....

By Adam Langer “I don’t remember.” “Sure, sure. It’s OK.” “I can’t find the umbrella anywhere,” says DeWoskin. “We’ll have to improvise something.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Val Paraskiv was born in 1942 in Bucharest. His mother died when he was six months old, and his father died in World War II, so he was brought up by a great-uncle. As a Young Pioneer in the communist party he developed an affinity for drama....

By Ben Joravsky “We’re not alone. The library bosses say they have too many branches,” says Peter Donoghue, president of the Lake View Citizens’ Council (LVCC). “I’d like to know how in the world can you have too many libraries? That’s like saying, ‘Oh, no, people are reading too many books.’” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “We never pretended that this was a research facility,” says Teresa Gallo, chair of the LVCC’s library committee....

BIG RIVER: THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN, Apple Tree Theatre. This 1985 Broadway hit was originally conceived partly as a vehicle for tunesmith Roger Miller and partly as a showcase for designer Heidi Landesman’s sweeping depiction of the Mississippi River. Apple Tree’s intimate vest-pocket production should by rights draw audiences more deeply into Mark Twain’s coming-of-age tale in the pre-Civil War south, as a young white boy helps his black friend escape slavery....

By Ben Joravsky “The first operation to use cord blood was done on a boy in 1987,” says Dr. Richard Moldwin, director of the cord blood bank. “Overall, worldwide there have only been about 500 cord blood transplants. But when you consider there’s a backlog of at least 3,000 for bone marrow transplants, you can understand the need to build up the supply.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Part of her effort is to offer the public a few elementary facts about birthing....

Bring in the Outsider Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Quinn is quick to concede that point but argues that a sharp marketer can work effectively in any culture: “Marketing is all about consumer behavior and attitudes toward brands, things that have always fascinated me.” She thinks people who spend their careers immersed in a particular industry need objective feedback. “A good marketer will be their eyes and ears to what’s happening in the rest of the world,” she says....

“It’s a sign of how terrified many are of the Daleys’ punitive exercise of their power that few will criticize the brothers for the record,” writes Doug Ireland in the Nation (February 3). “One prominent lawyer, a Democrat who is now out of politics, insisted on anonymity before confiding, ‘My client says Bill Daley told him that if he wanted to get city business, “You need a new lawyer.” So-called honest graft is wildly prevalent in Chicago, and Bill is a practitioner of it....

Headline Schmeadline “Goddamn it. Look at this. What the hell is the matter with you? What the hell have you done to these good pants? You should take better care of your clothes.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Last month I brought in some clothes and was shocked to see a giant Business for Sale sign in the window. I wasn’t the only one: several customers have walked in crying after getting the news the same way I did, impersonally, from a piece of cardboard....

Just before the climax of the Roxy Music-inspired “Crashing in a Plane,” from the superb new Nightlife (Motel), Cobra Verde front man John Petkovic whispers, “Save the song, kill the singer.” But since the mid-80s, when he led the arty Death of Samantha, Petkovic’s striven to be the ultimate rock singer, an entertainer with a capital E–not some shticky Vegas cliche, but one who believes in what he’s doing and tries to make the audience believe too....

EARTH AND SKY, Circle Theatre, and MURDER IN GREEN MEADOWS, Attic Playhouse. Most murder mysteries are just an excuse to look into the heads of the story’s characters. In the “poetic thriller” Earth and Sky, Chicago playwright Douglas Post focuses on a young librarian, Sara, who suddenly finds herself searching the underworld for the truth about her recently murdered boyfriend. Part of us wants to know whether the police are right when they claim this apparently likable man was dirtier than a Chicago alderman....