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By Michael Miner Mary Schmich penned the words that now nourish a generation starved for wisdom. Her lyrics to “Everybody’s Free (to Wear Sunscreen)” sprang from her brow in the spring of 1997 as a lowly Tribune column. Somehow mislabeled an MIT graduation speech delivered by Kurt Vonnegut, the text hit the Internet and shot around the world. Authorship was eventually sorted out, People magazine called, and Schmich came into “my 15 minutes of fame,” plus something that to a columnist is even more precious–material for three more columns she could write off the top of her head....

It was ten years ago last month that baseball stats guru Bill James declared he was “breakin’ the wand”–ending his annual Baseball Abstract series and abdicating his growing reputation as a wizard of the sport. I apply the overused term “guru”–a label James himself decries–because in his case it is an accurate metaphor. Working from his bank of computers on high–actually in Kansas, not quite as remote as the Himalayas, but close–James served as an oracle, a priest, a man who conveyed his convictions about baseball to whoever was open to them....

How did the myth about the moon being made out of cheese start? –Yoshi1009, via AOL Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Why is it such a problem to convert salt water to freshwater? I remember doing an experiment in eighth-grade science where we put a magnifying glass to salt water, added sunlight, and through the magic of heat and condensation, presto, freshwater! Why can’t a giant magnifying glass be put over a section of the ocean, and the condensation be collected for all of the drought-stricken countries?...

It took Columbus two months in three leaky ships to reach the Americas and open up a new chapter in exploration. The Russians were less than 20 miles from Alaska (two miles if you count a few islands) and never managed to “discover” America before 1492. Why not? –Chris B., Springfield, Oregon Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » One wants to be fair about this....

By Michael Miner New City News is an arrangement the Tribune pulled out of its hat at pretty much the last minute. Execs of the four Tribune Company “partners”–that is, the Tribune, WGN radio, WGN TV, and CLTV–met on February 4, and the topic was, what do we do when the CNB wire is gone? Joe Leonard, a Tribune associate editor and president of the CNB board, says he proposed a bare-bones, low-overhead version of CNB located in the Tower....

Maureen Cummins: Piece Work By Fred Camper Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Choosing compelling cases revealing a history of bad laws and court decisions, Cummins produces a fascinating labyrinth of injustice. Mounting the court documents sideways and the superimposed texts at right angles to them, the artist suggests two viewpoints on justice, hers and the court’s. And the piece has a curious elegance: the grid also includes blank colored pages that Cummins found folded together with the documents....

By Michael Marsh But while Revesz was building his career and enjoying his life, conditions in the country were deteriorating. Nicolae Ceausescu’s decision to rapidly industrialize Romania in the late 70s resulted in a massive $11 billion foreign debt. Austerity measures implemented a decade later to pay off that debt caused catastrophic shortages of milk, food, gasoline, and other necessities. Romanians were reduced to using paint thinner or a mixture of methane and gasoline to run their cars....

CEDAR WALTON QUARTET WITH JAVON JACKSON Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Ever since his stint with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers in the early 60s–in the storied incarnation that also starred trumpeter Freddie Hubbard and saxist Wayne Shorter–pianist Cedar Walton has been a jazz musician’s jazz musician, captivating his colleagues with translucent solos, supple, delicately colored accompaniment, and anthemic compositions like “Holy Land,” “Bolivia,” and “Mosaic....

Friday 7/25 – Thursday 7/31 26 SATURDAY Audience mem-bers are invited to heckle and jeer–er, cheer at the Newberry Library’s annual Bughouse Square Debates. The square’s tradition of public oration dates back to the pre-talk-radio era, when opinionated individuals would argue the issues of their day while standing on soapboxes. This year’s windbags include Judge Eugene Pincham, Jay Miller of the Illinois ACLU, and Jim Tobin from the National Taxpayers United of Illinois; they’ll discuss such issues as physician assisted suicide, the death penalty, and multiculturalism in language....

Don’t Get Around Much Anymore, ETA Creative Arts Foundation. Okoro Harold Johnson’s Don’t Get Around Much Anymore combines storytelling, music, dance, verse ballads, and design images to produce an intimate look at the roots of the Bronzeville tradition (also depicted in ETA’s 1994 Stepper’s Ball) during the south side’s glittering heyday. The show, which Johnson also directs, is framed by a superficial narrative: the Morrison siblings have entered a steppin’ contest, but their grandfather, a former jazz musician, thinks they won’t win without some historical background....

At the end of his relatively somber 1992 poem “After Lalon,” Allen Ginsberg–usually the sunniest of the beat writers–cautioned his readers: Oh yes I was impressed, almost dont follow my path Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Ginsberg’s path had its bumps, which became all the more visible after his death when his critics joined in the postmortem analysis. But Elling does not intend to whitewash the proceedings....

Larry Coryell Trio Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Every time I think Larry Coryell has settled down, he proves me wrong. The guitar wizard’s most recent visit came on the heels of Spaces Revisited, a return to his early days playing rock and fusion with the Free Spirits and the Eleventh House. Last year he released Cause and Effect (Tone Center), a little-heralded and barely distributed date featuring former Journey drummer Steve Smith and onetime Santana keyboardist Tom Coster, who are also bandmates in the head-banging fusion squad Vital Information....

With his deep voice and sensual delivery, Napoleon Williams sounds like he was made for radio. His interest in the medium dates back to his Saint Louis boyhood, when he would stay up late trying to tune in signals from distant cities on an AM radio. Soon he started broadcasting on CB and shortwave radios. His obsession became more than just a hobby after his experiences as a regular caller to a local news- and talk-radio station in downstate Decatur....

A booming industry. Amount Republican leaders raised in 1980 for state legislative races statewide: $325,000. Average amount spent in each targeted legislative district in 1994: $380,000 (House) and $595,000 (Senate) (Illinois Issues, November). Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “Frankly, I very seldom watch television news,” Sun-Times reporter David Roeder told the Chicago Journalist (April), which did a survey on where journalists got their news....

MOS DEF/MOOD/ALL NATURAL Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In the late 80s New York’s Native Tongues crew–De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, and the Jungle Brothers–injected hip-hop with a dose of worldliness, introducing a broad array of subject matter that put the old boasters to shame. And when the posse re-formed a few years back, it avoided the easy rush of nostalgia by bringing in new blood, including Chicago’s Common and New Yorkers like the Bush Babees and Mos Def....

Lead Stories Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » After a two-week hearing in January in Washington, D.C., federal judge Royce Lamberth threatened to hold Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt and Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin in contempt of court for failing to turn over records of federal trust funds held for Native Americans, which Lamberth had ordered released in November 1996. The departments’ staffers contend that the depository in the southwest where the records are located is contaminated with rat droppings, and that researchers will not enter it for fear of being infected with the deadly hantavirus....

wycoff.qxd You both recently reviewed StreetSigns’ production of Helene Cixous’ The Perjured City. I have no issues with your evaluations of the production as a whole, but I was shocked by one commonality. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » It amazes me that you find it strange that one of the leading proponents of feminism in her time should choose motherhood as a vehicle. She has chosen an appropriate path that goes by way of the rage of Electra, the despair of Iphigenia, the resolve of Antigone....

Over the past few years, members of the Curious Theatre Branch have become de facto cultural ambassadors, touring their work regularly to Halle, an industrial town in what was East Germany. It has a thriving avant-garde performance scene, and fortunately for Chicago–where the International Theatre Festival died a pointless death–Curious Theatre has also invited a number of adventurous German performers to join its Rhinoceros Theater Festival. For the past two years they’ve presented Klangbuhne Guricht, a noisy troupe of absurdist pranksters, as well as solo saxophone marvel Gert Anklam....

Peter Holsapple One never knows what to make of reports that a musician has quit a group because of “musical differences.” The expression has become rock ‘n’ roll boilerplate: it can mean that the musician is spending too much time with the lead singer’s girlfriend, or that he feels compelled to strangle the drummer on sight, or that he’s flying to Switzerland for a blood change. Best of Chicago voting is live now....

SPARKLEHORSE Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » If you don’t like a Sparklehorse song, wait a few seconds and it’ll change. The “band,” which actually consists of Mark Linkous and whichever friends happen to be on hand, has just put out its second full-length, Good Morning Spider, and from the very first track it’s hard to hum along with: “Pig” comes on slow and sweet, suddenly shifts into fast and noisy punk, then subsides into a staticky organ loop....