NOVEMBER
“We used to get a lot of people who were outraged and would say ‘How dare you!’” when Fur-Free Friday started 15 years ago, says Kay Sievers, director of Animal Rights Mobilization of Chicago, the local sponsor of the annual multicity antifur protest. These days, passersby occasionally join the leafleteers. “Fur has become an issue that has sunk into the public conscience. Sales are way down, but nowadays they’re selling a lot of things with fur trim.” Today’s free march–the largest such demonstration in the midwest–starts at noon at the northwest corner of State and Adams in Chicago and proceeds north and east, concluding with a rally at the Water Tower, at Michigan and Chicago, around 1:30. Call 773-381-1181 for more.
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Two heavyweight authors hit Chicago for free readings tonight, and if you’re quick you can catch them both. Downtown at 6 Anna Quindlen, the lighter of the pair, will promote her new tome, A Short Guide to a Happy Life, in which she declares that life is “glorious and that you have no business taking it for granted.” She appears at the Harold Washington Library Center auditorium at 400 S. State; call 312-747-4080. On the north side Margaret Atwood, who recently won the Booker Prize for her novel The Blind Assassin, which was cited by judges as “far-reaching, dramatic, and structurally superb,” will read at 7:30 at the Swedish American Museum Center, 5211 N. Clark. It’s also free, but ticket holders who have purchased the novel down the street at Women & Children First (5233 N. Clark, 773-769-9299) will be seated first.
