What’s New

Reader senior writer Ben Joravsky riffs on the day’s stories with his celebrated humor, insight, and honesty, and interviews politicians, activists, journalists and other political know-it-alls. Presented by the Chicago Reader, the show is available by 4 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays at chicagoreader.com/joravsky—or wherever you get your podcasts. Don’t miss Oh, What a Week!–the Friday feature in which Ben & producer Dennis (aka, Dr. D.) review the week’s top stories. Also, bonus interviews drop on Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays. 

Chicago Reader podcasts are recorded on Shure microphones. Learn more at Shure.com.

Chicago Reader senior writer Ben Joravsky discusses the day’s stories with his celebrated humor, insight, and honesty on The Ben Joravsky Show.

Read More

An excerpt from DeForge’s Birds of Maine Credit: Courtesy Drawn & Quarterly

On the moon, there are no humans. The birds that populate the lunar planet don’t get caught up in ideas like weekends or “the economy.” They stay connected via a vast fungal network, and there is plenty of universal worm (there’s one big worm that they all eat) to keep everyone fed.

Michael DeForge’s latest graphic novel, Birds of Maine, chronicles this utopian avian society with his usual deadpan humor and surreal drawing style. DeForge’s book tour for Birds of Maine will hit Pilsen Community Books on October 14. The prolific comics artist and former Adventure Time illustrator began serializing these comics on social media in April 2020. In August 2022, publisher Drawn & Quarterly dropped the book.

In Birds of Maine’s moon setting, the birds have abandoned Earth traditions as arcane and laughable. Instead, they have roosted into an easy socialist existence. The systemic conflicts of capitalism may be gone, but there is still room for plenty of plot. A kiwi bird and a penguin attempt a long-distance love. An angsty group of teen birds start a punk band. A young cardinal strikes up an email correspondence with a human stuck on Earth—throwing into obvious light how much bird society reflects and refracts our modern dilemmas.

Birds of Maine by Michael DeForgeDrawn & Quarterly, hardcover, $34.95, 464 pp., drawnandquarterly.com

We talked to DeForge about utopias and dystopias, alternate technological histories, and what goes into building a fully realized fantasy world.

Megan Kirby: How did you start building the world of Birds of Maine?

Michael DeForge: I’d been thinking about ideas around technology for awhile. One of the things that happens when you read the history of computing or the Internet—and you see how both of those things have wound up fairly dystopian—is that you end up seeing this alternate history of technology where things didn’t have to develop according to the whims of capitalism or imperialism. The infrastructure of the Internet is built on those two things, but you can imagine this alternate history of something like the Internet that is built to be as egalitarian and liberatory as some of its biggest cheerleaders were saying at the dawn of the Internet. I wanted to write about technology that was built on a different infrastructure.

At the same time, I remember reading about the ways people have talked about mushroom computing, within fungal networks. I thought that was a really good starting point to build a whole world out of. A lot of the world-building was just me trying to figure out how they developed this technology. They’re not built for humans, they’re built for bird use—and mushroom use. I wanted the mushrooms and bugs to be as involved in the creation of the Internet as the bird. I also wanted it to seem alien and foreign to us. I spent a lot of time thinking about mushrooms, which was a pleasant way to pass the time.

Credit: Courtesy Drawn & Quarterly

Was there a moment you realized this was the project you wanted to pursue?

There was always this issue of Kamandi by Jack Kirby. It’s a future where there’s not very many humans, a Planet of the Apes-style future where animals all have their own kingdoms and technologies and stuff. There’s one where he goes underwater, and he sees dolphin technology. Because they’re dolphins and they’re all underwater, there’s no up or down to them. It’s just a series of connected boxes with little buttons that are pulls, because the only way that dolphins would be able to interact with technology is with their noses. As a kid I thought that was really funny, and as an adult I kept thinking about that. I reread the issue as an adult, alongside an Ursula Le Guin story where in the future people are deciphering ant poetry that’s been written on germinated seeds. When I put those two things together, that was the spark to really delve into thinking about bird communication, bird technology, and what that might look like.

The book really explores capitalism and imperialism through their absence. How did you form the tenets of bird society?

One of the rules I set out at the beginning was that I knew there was going to be conflict and friction within the book, but it needed to all remain interpersonal. I didn’t want there to be scarcity or some war. I wanted to depict a world where there was still conflict and problems and tragedy and grief and despair, but they’ve built a utopia that is sturdy enough to hold all of those things. I didn’t want it to be so rooted in humans and our present culture. I didn’t ever want the birds to explain exactly what type of communist they are.

You’ve explored dystopias and the idea of chasing paradise before. What draws you towards those themes?

I’m interested in the way people try to build up structures for themselves and then fail. There’s been so many utopian projects, especially in contemporary western history. And I think there is a tendency to write off their failures, or if they dissolve, to write off the whole experiment like a failure without maybe properly looking at the things that were successes. Some of the reasons that these attempts maybe collapse is that it’s very hard to build something new within an infrastructure that is already there, and sucks, and is working so hard to destroy you.

Because I do focus so much on our present calamity, I wonder how—not that art needs to be productive, but it can feel a little unproductive to always be fixated on disaster. Because we live in disaster. I don’t always think it’s that helpful for art to explain the disasters. Everyone knows everything sucks. No matter where someone is on the political spectrum, I think most people feel that deeply. I find it more a challenge to write about alternatives than to just write about how things suck.

I loved the way the book explores the Internet. Can you tell me a little bit about your relationship to the Internet as an artist?

It’s weird because I sometimes feel like I should be more grateful for the Internet. I grew up online, and I developed as an artist online. And career-wise, I’m quite reliant on something like Instagram or Twitter. But alongside all that, I’m of course extremely resentful that we are all beholden to these companies that do not really care about the artists using their platforms for their livelihoods. The whims of some company can change and then suddenly you’re out of work. It hits me less hard than if I was drawing more pornography or if I was involved in sex work. You can see these cases of all these people and their livelihoods just getting decimated by these choices.

Are you working on anything right now?

I just started serializing a new comic on Twitter that is about a touring pop group. It’s going to be weekly. I’ve been reading a lot of pop memoirs. Maybe it’s because I haven’t traveled in the pandemic yet, so the idea of touring is interesting to me.

If you were a bird, what kind of bird would you be?

I think I’d be a kiwi . . . That’s been my answer for favorite bird, but I also feel like that’s a very niche bird. Not for everyone, that’s my type of bird.

Michael DeForge and musician and author Sadie Dupuis in conversation with musician and writer Jes SkolnikFri 10/14, 7 PM, Pilsen Community Books, 1102 W. 18th St., pilsencommunitybooks.com 

Read More

An excerpt from DeForge’s Birds of Maine Credit: Courtesy Drawn & Quarterly

On the moon, there are no humans. The birds that populate the lunar planet don’t get caught up in ideas like weekends or “the economy.” They stay connected via a vast fungal network, and there is plenty of universal worm (there’s one big worm that they all eat) to keep everyone fed.

Michael DeForge’s latest graphic novel, Birds of Maine, chronicles this utopian avian society with his usual deadpan humor and surreal drawing style. DeForge’s book tour for Birds of Maine will hit Pilsen Community Books on October 14. The prolific comics artist and former Adventure Time illustrator began serializing these comics on social media in April 2020. In August 2022, publisher Drawn & Quarterly dropped the book.

In Birds of Maine’s moon setting, the birds have abandoned Earth traditions as arcane and laughable. Instead, they have roosted into an easy socialist existence. The systemic conflicts of capitalism may be gone, but there is still room for plenty of plot. A kiwi bird and a penguin attempt a long-distance love. An angsty group of teen birds start a punk band. A young cardinal strikes up an email correspondence with a human stuck on Earth—throwing into obvious light how much bird society reflects and refracts our modern dilemmas.

Birds of Maine by Michael DeForgeDrawn & Quarterly, hardcover, $34.95, 464 pp., drawnandquarterly.com

We talked to DeForge about utopias and dystopias, alternate technological histories, and what goes into building a fully realized fantasy world.

Megan Kirby: How did you start building the world of Birds of Maine?

Michael DeForge: I’d been thinking about ideas around technology for awhile. One of the things that happens when you read the history of computing or the Internet—and you see how both of those things have wound up fairly dystopian—is that you end up seeing this alternate history of technology where things didn’t have to develop according to the whims of capitalism or imperialism. The infrastructure of the Internet is built on those two things, but you can imagine this alternate history of something like the Internet that is built to be as egalitarian and liberatory as some of its biggest cheerleaders were saying at the dawn of the Internet. I wanted to write about technology that was built on a different infrastructure.

At the same time, I remember reading about the ways people have talked about mushroom computing, within fungal networks. I thought that was a really good starting point to build a whole world out of. A lot of the world-building was just me trying to figure out how they developed this technology. They’re not built for humans, they’re built for bird use—and mushroom use. I wanted the mushrooms and bugs to be as involved in the creation of the Internet as the bird. I also wanted it to seem alien and foreign to us. I spent a lot of time thinking about mushrooms, which was a pleasant way to pass the time.

Credit: Courtesy Drawn & Quarterly

Was there a moment you realized this was the project you wanted to pursue?

There was always this issue of Kamandi by Jack Kirby. It’s a future where there’s not very many humans, a Planet of the Apes-style future where animals all have their own kingdoms and technologies and stuff. There’s one where he goes underwater, and he sees dolphin technology. Because they’re dolphins and they’re all underwater, there’s no up or down to them. It’s just a series of connected boxes with little buttons that are pulls, because the only way that dolphins would be able to interact with technology is with their noses. As a kid I thought that was really funny, and as an adult I kept thinking about that. I reread the issue as an adult, alongside an Ursula Le Guin story where in the future people are deciphering ant poetry that’s been written on germinated seeds. When I put those two things together, that was the spark to really delve into thinking about bird communication, bird technology, and what that might look like.

The book really explores capitalism and imperialism through their absence. How did you form the tenets of bird society?

One of the rules I set out at the beginning was that I knew there was going to be conflict and friction within the book, but it needed to all remain interpersonal. I didn’t want there to be scarcity or some war. I wanted to depict a world where there was still conflict and problems and tragedy and grief and despair, but they’ve built a utopia that is sturdy enough to hold all of those things. I didn’t want it to be so rooted in humans and our present culture. I didn’t ever want the birds to explain exactly what type of communist they are.

You’ve explored dystopias and the idea of chasing paradise before. What draws you towards those themes?

I’m interested in the way people try to build up structures for themselves and then fail. There’s been so many utopian projects, especially in contemporary western history. And I think there is a tendency to write off their failures, or if they dissolve, to write off the whole experiment like a failure without maybe properly looking at the things that were successes. Some of the reasons that these attempts maybe collapse is that it’s very hard to build something new within an infrastructure that is already there, and sucks, and is working so hard to destroy you.

Because I do focus so much on our present calamity, I wonder how—not that art needs to be productive, but it can feel a little unproductive to always be fixated on disaster. Because we live in disaster. I don’t always think it’s that helpful for art to explain the disasters. Everyone knows everything sucks. No matter where someone is on the political spectrum, I think most people feel that deeply. I find it more a challenge to write about alternatives than to just write about how things suck.

I loved the way the book explores the Internet. Can you tell me a little bit about your relationship to the Internet as an artist?

It’s weird because I sometimes feel like I should be more grateful for the Internet. I grew up online, and I developed as an artist online. And career-wise, I’m quite reliant on something like Instagram or Twitter. But alongside all that, I’m of course extremely resentful that we are all beholden to these companies that do not really care about the artists using their platforms for their livelihoods. The whims of some company can change and then suddenly you’re out of work. It hits me less hard than if I was drawing more pornography or if I was involved in sex work. You can see these cases of all these people and their livelihoods just getting decimated by these choices.

Are you working on anything right now?

I just started serializing a new comic on Twitter that is about a touring pop group. It’s going to be weekly. I’ve been reading a lot of pop memoirs. Maybe it’s because I haven’t traveled in the pandemic yet, so the idea of touring is interesting to me.

If you were a bird, what kind of bird would you be?

I think I’d be a kiwi . . . That’s been my answer for favorite bird, but I also feel like that’s a very niche bird. Not for everyone, that’s my type of bird.

Michael DeForge and musician and author Sadie Dupuis in conversation with musician and writer Jes SkolnikFri 10/14, 7 PM, Pilsen Community Books, 1102 W. 18th St., pilsencommunitybooks.com 

Read More

Read More

Read More

Credit: Steve Conlin

Longtime journalist and editor Enrique Limón has been named editor in chief of the Chicago Reader, the city’s 51-year-old alternative newspaper, after a national search. Limón will start October 3. 

“For half a century, the Reader has punched above its weight and has set a standard across the alt industry and beyond,” Limón said. “It’s my distinct pleasure to join such a storied newsroom and to work alongside its fearless and forward-thinking staff to sow the seeds for what the next 50 years will look like.” 

“We are so excited to have Limón join the Reader as its EIC,” said publisher Tracy Baim. “His experience at alternative media across the country will provide a great foundation to lead the Reader team. We have built a solid nonprofit newsroom, and he will provide new energy and ideas to take the Reader to its next phase. As an openly queer, multilingual journalist and editor, I know Limón will contribute important new ideas into both Chicago’s journalism community and the Reader.”

Limón will work with managing editor Salem Collo-Julin and the Reader’s editorial section editors to continue the outlet’saward-winning, storied legacy in the Chicago area. “When our staff interviewed Enrique, they were impressed with his alt media background,” Collo-Julin said. “We are looking forward to partnering with him.”

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Limón was selected by The Independent to launch Independent en Español, the British imprint’s latest international endeavor, meant to inform an audience of more than 50 million U.S. Latinos. 

Limón cut his teeth in alt-weeklies before working in the digital space. He began his career in 2008 at San Diego CityBeat, where he was a columnist and features writer. During that period, he was selected as an alternative journalism fellow at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism—an experience that would permanently enrich his professional path. A significant run as arts and culture editor, and later deputy editor at the Santa Fe Reporter in Santa Fe, New Mexico, followed. 

In December 2015, he was named managing editor of Salt Lake City Weekly, and was promoted to editor in chief six months later. During his time in Utah’s capital, Limón led his staff to receive numerous local and national awards, and helped shape stories that sparked the resignation of top brass at the state’s largest fire-fighting agency, and led to the creation of a seven acre city park, among others.

The Chicago Reader is published by the Reader Institute for Community Journalism, a nonprofit organization which took over operations of the Reader this May. See www.chicagoreader.com for more information.

Read More

Credit: Steve Conlin

Longtime journalist and editor Enrique Limón has been named editor in chief of the Chicago Reader, the city’s 51-year-old alternative newspaper, after a national search. Limón will start October 3. 

“For half a century, the Reader has punched above its weight and has set a standard across the alt industry and beyond,” Limón said. “It’s my distinct pleasure to join such a storied newsroom and to work alongside its fearless and forward-thinking staff to sow the seeds for what the next 50 years will look like.” 

“We are so excited to have Limón join the Reader as its EIC,” said publisher Tracy Baim. “His experience at alternative media across the country will provide a great foundation to lead the Reader team. We have built a solid nonprofit newsroom, and he will provide new energy and ideas to take the Reader to its next phase. As an openly queer, multilingual journalist and editor, I know Limón will contribute important new ideas into both Chicago’s journalism community and the Reader.”

Limón will work with managing editor Salem Collo-Julin and the Reader’s editorial section editors to continue the outlet’saward-winning, storied legacy in the Chicago area. “When our staff interviewed Enrique, they were impressed with his alt media background,” Collo-Julin said. “We are looking forward to partnering with him.”

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Limón was selected by The Independent to launch Independent en Español, the British imprint’s latest international endeavor, meant to inform an audience of more than 50 million U.S. Latinos. 

Limón cut his teeth in alt-weeklies before working in the digital space. He began his career in 2008 at San Diego CityBeat, where he was a columnist and features writer. During that period, he was selected as an alternative journalism fellow at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism—an experience that would permanently enrich his professional path. A significant run as arts and culture editor, and later deputy editor at the Santa Fe Reporter in Santa Fe, New Mexico, followed. 

In December 2015, he was named managing editor of Salt Lake City Weekly, and was promoted to editor in chief six months later. During his time in Utah’s capital, Limón led his staff to receive numerous local and national awards, and helped shape stories that sparked the resignation of top brass at the state’s largest fire-fighting agency, and led to the creation of a seven acre city park, among others.

The Chicago Reader is published by the Reader Institute for Community Journalism, a nonprofit organization which took over operations of the Reader this May. See www.chicagoreader.com for more information.

Read More

In football, Notre Dame just earned thier first win of the season on Saturday against California. It was their first win of the season as they are now 1-2. This was also the first win in the coaching career of new head coach Marcus Freeman.

Unfortunately, the new ranking came out and Notre Dame is outside the top 25 for the second straight week after a few straight years of appearing on it. Luckily, football isn’t the only sport played at the University of Notre Dame.

The preseason poll came out for college hockey and Notre Dame is getting plenty of respect. Currently, they are ranked number nine in the poll. It is a great spot for Notre Dame to be sitting going into what promises to be a great season.

Denver is listed at number one with Minnesota, Minnesota State, North Dakota, Minnesota Duluth, Michigan, Quinnipiac, and Northeastern ahead of them. Massachusetts sits right behind them to round out the top ten.

Notre Dame is going to be nationally ranked to start the 2022-23 hockey season.

It is going to be a crazy season with lots of madness all year long. Other teams like Harvard, Boston University, and St. Cloud are also looking to get into the mix as well. A lot of teams believe they can be Frozen Four bound and Notre Dame is one of them.

ESPN’s John Buccigross is one of the best college hockey analysts out there and his ranking looks a little bit different. He gives Notre Dame even more respect for his personal ranking at number four. Only Denver, Minnesota, and North Dakota are ahead of Notre Dame on this list.

Sports fans at Notre Dame should be all in on this hockey team this year. We know how rowdy the school gets over the football and basketball team but there is no doubt that the Irish have a very good hockey program as well.

Seeing them be nationally ranked along with the respect that John Buccigross is giving them should make fans very excited. This program has pumped out some very good NHL players like Anders Lee, Kyle Palmieri, and Vinnie Hinostroza to name a few.

Now, it is time to see who from the program is next. It all begins in October for the Irish as they begin their quest for an NCAA Title in 2023.

Read More

Read More