Cannabis and creativity are often associated with one another. Many people in the arts have claimed that using the plant helps open their mind and can be beneficial to divergent ways of thinking. We decided to explore the relationship between cannabis and comedy with comedian, writer, journalist, and dog mom Lauren Vino. Nature’s Grace and Wellness Coordinator and Field Market Associate Alia Reichert Sparked the Conversation with Vino to learn more about how the pandemic has impacted the intersections between mental health, cannabis, and comedy over the past few years.

AR: Lauren, being a stand-up comedian and writer during the last few years must have been stressful. How has the pandemic impacted the comedy scene, your funny bone, and your mental health?

LV: I think at first there was a sense of relief from not having to “hustle,” and do two or three sets after a full day of writing at my day job. I have always identified as a writer and performer, so there was something nice about being able to focus on writing. But after a few months of that, I really missed having the creative outlet of getting on stage, and interacting with crowds and people in general.

AR: What made you decide to become a stand-up comedian?

LV: I never really made a conscious decision to become a comedian. It was very non-linear. It was just something I always wanted to try and never really had a reason to stop doing. I have taken breaks to focus on different writing projects, and I ebb and flow in terms of my creative focuses.

AR: Is comedy your go-to strategy or tool that helps you maintain your mental health?

LV: In my experience, performing in the comedy space has not been a way to maintain my mental health. I’ve seen how stand-up has a way of reinforcing unhealthy behaviors and justifying it as art, as in other creative communities as well. But that doesn’t mean comedy and mental health can’t co-exist. There is a huge link between creativity and mental health.

I often recommend that comedians work on their mental health as much as they can offstage. So that when you craft jokes about certain topics, like depression, you don’t destabilize yourself further. Otherwise, crowds can usually tell and are not comfortable. Bombing [a set] can destabilize a person further.

AR: Do you feel using cannabis helps you to be more creative when you are writing your jokes or articles, or is it helpful for you in other ways?

LV: I think using cannabis changes your perspectives. At least for me, writing jokes is mostly trying to come at ideas from surprising angles, so thinking of as many angles as possible is super helpful. I’ve heard the saying “write high, edit sober” but I don’t believe that should be the case every time. It’s definitely more balance and situation dependent. For myself and many other people, cannabis can help with getting in the zone, reaching a flow state, or the ideal mindset for creativity. It’s probably because it helps you write without judging yourself. However, if someone isn’t an experienced cannabis user they might have a different experience and be unable to focus on the writing. I think there is something grounding and mindful about smoking in general, but a lot of that can be achieved through breathing exercises, like 5-7-8 breathing. I’ve found it helpful to combine smoking or vaping with breathwork, yoga, or other low-impact exercise. The goal is to write and edit from different perspectives while achieving some sense of flow.

AR: What do you think needs to be changed or improved to help people with their mental health?

LV: From a peer perspective, I think the best any of us can do on an individual level is to try to take care of ourselves with the basics—sleep, eat, treat the people you love well, and do something with your life that matters in some way. I try my best to communicate helpful information on a peer-to-peer level. However, I understand that the greater issues with mental-health systems are something I’m unable to fix individually. It takes constant advocacy and bigger changes. I tend not to dwell on it because that’s a healthy boundary I’ve set for myself. But I know it’s a field that brings other people a great sense of purpose and happiness. It’s all dependent on the individual.

AR: Laughter has been said to be one of the best medicines. Where can we catch your upcoming performances?

LV: I’ll be at the Laugh Factory June 10th at 7:30 and 9:30 pm, and The Beat Kitchen on June 14th at 9:00 pm.

 AR: Thanks for your time, Lauren. Lastly, do you have a Mindful Message you’d like to share that helps you Spark your day? A Mindful Message is a quote, mantra, saying, or affirmation that helps you.

LV: In the movie Meatballs, Bill Murray’s character gives a pump-up speech to boost morale, but the thing is his team [of summer campers] sucks and is definitely going to lose. He ends up getting the kids pumped up and chanting, “It just doesn’t matter!” It sounds negative, but it can be really helpful because we sometimes get really worked up over stuff that doesn’t matter. Being able to acknowledge that and make fun of it is very liberating.

Be sure to follow @naturesgraceil on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

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After two vastly different NBA Finals games at Chase Center, the series shifts to TD Garden, where the host Boston Celtics and Golden State Warriors each look to grab control.

For the Celtics, two keys have emerged through the first two games: Jayson Tatum walking the line between scorer and facilitator, and their ongoing battle against the turnover bug. The latter has had massive implications in Boston getting blitzed by Golden State in back-to-back third quarters.

For the Warriors, the burden lies on Klay Thompson and Jordan Poole to provide Finals MVP favorite Stephen Curry with some offensive support. Whether it’s Thompson hitting YouTube for inspiration or Poole finding a spark after his half-court buzzer-beater in Game 2, both Golden State stars need to find their game.

What lies ahead in Wednesday’s crucial Game 3 (9 p.m. ET, ABC) between the Celtics and Warriors? What trends have developed through the first two showdowns? Our NBA experts break down what will matter most in Game 3 and throughout the rest of the series.

MORE: NBA Finals news, schedules and stats

For Celtics, one stat rules them all

Throughout these playoffs, you can accurately predict what the result will be for the Celtics in a given game based on a single stat: turnovers.

Boston’s record when it has 15 turnovers or fewer: 13-2. Boston’s record when it has 16 turnovers or more: 0-5.

2 Related

That trend has carried over into the NBA Finals, as the Celtics committed 12 turnovers in their Game 1 win and coughed up the ball 19 times in their Game 2 loss.

“That’s been an ongoing theme in the playoffs so far,” Celtics coach Ime Udoka said.

Any team will see better results when it doesn’t commit turnovers, but the contrast has been devastating for Boston. When the Celtics have a chance to set their defense, they are an exceptionally difficult team to score against in half-court offensive sets.

Giving teams free shots in transition as a result of turnovers takes away one of Boston’s biggest strengths. And in the Finals, allowing Curry and the Golden State Warriors fast-break opportunities is a recipe for disaster.

Boston learned that the hard way in Game 2, as the Celtics’ 19 turnovers turned into a staggering 33 points for Golden State. Meanwhile, Boston turned 12 turnovers into 15 points, an 18-point swing in Golden State’s direction in a game the Warriors won by 19.

“I know we can prevent a lot of those,” Celtics big man Al Horford said. “In order for us to [have] a better chance of winning, we have to cut those down.”

2022 NBA Finals: 3rd Quarters

GSBOSPoints7338FG22-48 (46%)11-36 (31%)3-pt FG13-255-16Turnovers510

Those turnovers have also helped fuel Boston’s other recurring problem in these playoffs: awful third quarters. Against the Warriors — through two games, Golden State has dominated the third quarters 73-38 — those lapses in focus will be even more painful than in past rounds against a Milwaukee Bucks team missing Khris Middleton and a banged-up Miami Heat squad.

Keep an eye on Boston’s turnovers in Game 3. Know where that number winds up, and you’ll have a good handle on where the game will, too.

— Tim Bontemps

The Draymond show hits Beantown

To Draymond Green, the playoffs are a collection of best-of-seven chess matches that he calls “a thinker’s game.”

“If I outthink you, I can win,” Green said. “Then to take it a step further, the playoffs are way more physical. They let you hit during the playoffs. They let you get hit during the playoffs. I’m totally fine with getting hit if I can hit. The playoffs is just a totally different brand of basketball.

“The playoffs just wake up a totally different monster … This is the time I need to be my absolute best.”

The Warriors didn’t get the best version of Green in Game 1, and it showed. Boston knocked down nine 3-pointers in the fourth quarter and Al Horford outplayed him in the Celtics’ series-opening win.

But Game 2 showed why Green’s attitude and energy are nonnegotiable when it comes to Golden State’s ability to do this week what it has done in an NBA-record 26 straight postseason series: win at least one road game.

Golden State’s feisty leader vowed to rebound from Game 1, and he made the Celtics feel his presence defensively and hear his trash talk in a Warriors’ Game 2 rout.

So while Curry’s offense is vital, one of the Warriors’ biggest keys to winning Game 3 is Green’s attitude-adjusting energy. When he is at his best, Green is not only flying all over the court, but he is a world-class agitator — or as the late comedian Charlie Murphy famously coined, “a habitual line-stepper.”

Green often pushes the limits of what he can get away with — toward opponents and officials — even with a technical already under his belt, as was the case in Game 2. Green not only wants to outthink opponents; he wants to get inside their heads.

So while another nine-point, seven-assist, five-rebound performance like Sunday will be nice, it will be all the things outside the box score that give Golden State life.

The Boston Celtics and Golden State Warriors are tied 1-1 with the NBA championship on the line. You can catch the action on ABC and in the ESPN App.

Game 3: Wednesday, 9 p.m. ET, at BOS
Game 4: Friday, 9 p.m. ET, at BOS
Game 5: Monday, 9 p.m. ET, at GS
Game 6: June 16, 9 p.m. ET, at BOS*
Game 7: June 19, 8 p.m. ET, at GS*

*If necessary

Warriors assistant Mike Brown likens Green’s freelancing and unpredictability on defense to the deflating impact Curry’s 3-point heaves from near half court can have on an opponent.

“Steph does some crazy s—,” Brown said. “You know those shots if they go in, it’s going to break the spirit of your opponent. Same with Draymond. Draymond’s feel and anticipation and all that other stuff is off the charts, and so when he decides to go make a play, 95 percent of the time, just like Steph offensively, it’s going to impact our opponents’ offense.”

Public enemy No. 1 in Boston this week doesn’t plan on being shy. Golden State can’t afford Green to be timid, either.

“I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I’m going on about my summer and we lost the NBA Finals because we couldn’t meet force with force,” Green said on Tuesday. “That is my department.”

— Ohm Youngmisuk

Tatum walking line between scorer and facilitator

After the Celtics won Game 1 of the Finals behind Tatum’s career-high — regular season or playoffs — 13 assists, ESPN Stats & Information research noted something fascinating: The victory brought Boston to 17-2 (.895) this season when Tatum hands out at least seven assists, the best record in such games among all players with at least 15 of them.

When the Celtics then got blown out in Game 2 with Tatum handing out just three assists, tied for his lowest in a game this postseason, the idea solidified that Boston might be better off with Tatum playing distributor rather than scorer.

It’s worth noting that assists are an imperfect measure of playmaking on a game-by-game basis. Tatum had so many assists in Game 1 in part because teammates shot so well off his passes (13-of-19, per Second Spectrum tracking of assist opportunities).

Although the 19 opportunities were Tatum’s most potential assists in a game this season, according to Second Spectrum, they could have resulted in many fewer assists. Tatum facilitated 18 assist opportunities in Game 4 in Round 1 against the Brooklyn Nets, but teammates went just 5-of-18 on those shots, meaning that game doesn’t qualify. (The Celtics still won.)

If we look at Tatum’s top 16 games by Second Spectrum assist opportunities, featuring a minimum of 13, Boston still plays well (12-4 across the regular season and playoffs) but is no longer quite so unbeatable. More broadly, the modest relationship between Tatum’s assist opportunities in a game and the team’s differential is not nearly as strong as the relationship with assists because of the way his assist totals also reflect how well Tatum’s teammates shoot on his passes.

Additionally, it would be a mistake to paint Tatum’s choice as between being aggressive as a scorer and looking to distribute. It’s not necessarily an either/or decision. Tatum’s shot attempts and trips to the free throw line are a bit lower on a per-minute basis in his games with at least seven assists — combining them, Tatum finishes 21.5 plays per 36 minutes, down from 22.8 in his low-assist games — but the difference in assists per 36 minutes (from 3.8 to 7.8) is far larger.

Boston doesn’t need or even want Tatum coming out looking primarily to facilitate. If the way the Warriors defend Tatum again creates opportunities for him to set up teammates for open shots, Tatum must take advantage the way he did in Game 1. But Tatum’s willingness to score should set up his ability to pass rather than the other way around.

— Kevin Pelton

Warriors need bigger splash from Curry’s co-stars

Curry has provided everything the Warriors hoped for through the first two games of the Finals. In Game 1, he scored 21 points in the first 12 minutes. In Game 2, he finished with 29 points, six rebounds, four assists and three steals.

He’s making a strong argument for his first Finals MVP, but barring a Jerry West moment, the Warriors will need to win the championship for Curry to break through. For that to happen, he needs more offensive help from Thompson and Poole — when each scores at least 25 points, Golden State is 8-0 in these playoffs.

The Boston Celtics and Golden State Warriors are tied 1-1 in the Finals, with Game 3 set to tip off Wednesday (9 p.m. ET, ABC) in Boston.

GAME 2: GS 107, BOS 88
o Steph was a problem for the Celtics
o C’s lament more third-quarter woes

GAME 1: BOS 120, GS 108
o Boston’s win one year in the making
o Celtics beat Dubs at their game

FINALS STORYLINES
o Lowe: Celtics-Warriors could be epic
o Shelburne: Reconstruction of the Warriors
o Why star duos will decide these Finals
o Series keys | Experts’ picks | Odds

Through two games, Thompson is averaging 13 points on 10-of-33 shooting, including 4-of-15 from deep. Boston’s defense has done a good job on Thompson — he shot 1-of-13 on contested shots in Game 2.

Thompson’s 30.3% shooting is his third-worst effort through the first two games of any playoff series in his career, and his 21.1% shooting in Game 2 was his third-worst performance in any of his 141 career playoff games.

Like Thompson, Poole is averaging 13 points but on 8-of-21 shooting, including 6-of-14 from 3.

Poole has also looked rushed and smothered by the Celtics, working without the floor space that unlocks the most dangerous parts of his game.

Poole has seven turnovers through the first two games, the most of any player in the Finals. He has shot 0-for-5 on paint attempts, which have become an important part of his game when his jumper isn’t falling.

But he might have rediscovered his game in Game 2, in which he scored 17 points and knocked down two momentum-shifting 3-pointers to cap off the Warriors’ monster third quarter — including a buzzer-beater from just over half court. There is reason to believe Thompson will turn his series around, too.

Throughout the playoffs, Thompson has averaged 15.4 points on 39% shooting in Games 1 and 2. In the ensuing games, however, he’s averaging 22 points on 50% shooting.

The Warriors need that version of Thompson, along with the Poole from Game 2, to show up on Wednesday in Boston.

— Kendra Andrews

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Early experiences count for a lot. After reedist Aram Shelton moved to Chicago in 1999, fresh out of college, he became an integral part of an interdependent community of jazz musicians who were ready to realize one another’s concepts. Shelton left town in 2005, but he’s continued his practice of embedding himself in a scene, spending years in Oakland, Copenhagen, and Budapest. He’s always made it a point to return to Chicago, though. Since pulling up stakes in Hungary last year, he’s visited the eastern seaboard and Mexico City, but he’s also spent substantial time here, making new connections and rekindling old ones. The Aram Shelton Quartet, which includes bassist Anton Hatwich, drummer Tim Daisy, and tenor saxophonist Keefe Jackson, showcases his intricate writing and his adroit responsiveness to other musicians’ improvisations. The quartet has made two strong albums, 2011’s These Times and 2012’s Everything for Somebody, but prior to a reunion gig in March of this year they hadn’t performed for a decade. During that time, Shelton’s sound on the alto saxophone—his most enduring choice of horn—has grown deeper and more probing, and he’s also changed his compositional approach. In a recent email, he explained that the new material he’s writing for the group “will serve as destination points for improvisations, rather than head/improv/head structures.”

Aram Shelton Quartet, Sat 6/11, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 3111 N. Western, $15, 18+

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Queer garage-pop band Bev Rage & the Drinks have become one of the city’s most entertaining acts since coming together in 2015. Mixing hilariously forthright lyrics, spitfire riffs, and the second-to-none showmanship of lead singer and guitarist Beverly Rage—a seven-foot drag queen, counting hair and heels—they put on a show that’s not to be missed! Over the past few months, the band (Rage, guitarist Dan Jarvis, bassist Sam Westerling, and drummer Mary Rose Gonzales) have been rolling out a series of eye-catching videos for their second full-length, Exes & Hexes, due in August on their label What’s for Breakfast? Records. Today they debut the third video, “Perfect Guy,” in which our heroine discovers a bizarrely powerful drink in a spooky abandoned warehouse and goes on a kaiju-style rampage. Bev Rage & the Drinks perform at Andersonville Midsommarfest on Saturday, June 11, and at Chicago Pride Fest on Saturday, June 18.

The video for “Perfect Guy,” written and directed by Pamela Maurer

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Jordan Wimby was the only Black kid on her Beverly block, and she ate like everyone else: Lunchables, Tyson chicken nuggets, TV dinners, and frozen potpies.

“Growing up I was surrounded by this conversation of racism, oppression, colonialism,” says Wimby, whose mother and grandparents were teachers (most of them CPS) who specialized in American and African American history, and Egyptology. “We talked about slavery. We talked about sharecropping. We talked about all these things I wasn’t learning in-depth in school. But at the same time we weren’t eating cultural foods, which was kind of confusing to me because my family was so embedded in Black history and Black culture.”

But back then, when Wimby was alatchkey kid in a single-parent home, her main priority was afterschool snacks, and the Food Network was there for her. “I always say Rachael Ray was my second mom. 30 Minute Meals was where it was at in sixth grade. My mom started seeing how passionate I was about food and cooking and she was like, ‘OK, I’ll buy the groceries if you wanna try some recipes. Just don’t burn the house down.’”

Today Wimby, who’s 27, is known as The Melanin Martha, a home cook exploring the intersection of food and Black identity, tapping into inspiration from the African diaspora and addressing issues of access, trauma, heritage, queerness, comfort, and self-care through cooking. She’s worked as a private chef, conducted cooking workshops for corporate clients, run bake sales through her Instagram, and on June 20, she’s taking over the kitchen at the Kedzie Inn for a Juneteenth Monday Night Foodball, the Reader’s weekly chef pop-up.

Wimby arrived at her particular focus circuitously—through Italy. Her family’s best friends in Beverly were an Italian family whose matriarch babysat her when her mother went back to school. “Everybody else was Irish, so we kind of gravitated toward each other.” Wimby’s Italian grandmother—she calls her Nonna—steeped her in Italian culture: the music, the language, the food, and after high school Nonna took her on a monthlong visit to Pieve Santo Stefano, her tiny home village in Tuscany.

“My family always talked about small towns being dangerous and not accepting,” says Wimby. “I was probably the only Black girl ever to be seen in this small town. I would get stared at, and there were lots of questions, but because I could communicate in Italian there was more room for understanding than just judgment. So after a month I was like, ‘I need to live here. This is not a question. I feel so at peace here. The food is delicious. People know who they are. People are kind. They’re racist in their own way, but it’s not systemic like it is in America.’ People were actually willing to learn and listen in ways I felt was not happening in the States.”

She came home for three months of waiting tables and babysitting until she had the funds and the visa to return. She spent a year and a half working at her Nonna’s family-owned winery before moving on to Florence, where she took cooking and wine classes until she ran out of money.

Back in Chicago she worked in the wine department at Eataly before embarking on a bleak, lonely year in San Diego, where her only solace was the farmers’ market. “The thing keeping me afloat was going to the market and finding a new item or ingredient, learning about it, and cooking with it.”

She returned to Chicago just before the pandemic. “I felt connected to Italy not because I was Italian but because there was this clear cultural understanding of who they are, and there was a beauty to that I never felt. I was always connected to Blackness through talking about trauma. My family was always talking about slavery, and racism, inequalities. There was never beauty to it. I would hear all these stories about Italians and the trauma they went through, which is very different from the Black experience in America and actually Black people all over the world. They still talked about how they turned that trauma into something that is beautiful, and so that got the wheels turning, especially during COVID and George Floyd.”

Wimby studied Black chefs and food writers like Leah Chase, Edna Lewis, Mashama Bailey, and Michael Twitty, and took deep dives into plantation records and colonial cookbooks, seeking out the enslaved chefs who made extraordinary foods from ingredients that came over with them or had been rejected.

Why is kale held to a higher standard than collards? Why is quinoa a prized ingredient, but it’s somehow unhealthy to eat rice? She wanted to trace the origins of ingredients like okra and how they’ve maintained a connection to Black food despite the brutal history in which they became staples.

“A lot of the time we don’t have a safe space to talk about the foods that we love and enjoy,” she says. “A lot of the time people look at soul food and they say, ‘Oh, that’s just slave food.’ I link [okra] to my identity, not only because it’s a food that is indigenous to African culture but it’s an amazing vegetable. It’s gorgeous. It grows in such interesting environments; people just don’t learn to appreciate it.”

Okra is on the menu June 20 at the Kedzie Inn, probably breaded and fried and served with a creamy, rich sauce. And Wimby is toying with the idea of a crème brûlée infused with hibiscus, the native West African flowers inseparable from Juneteenth celebrations. She’s still working on the rest of the menu, which she plans to drop this week. More on that later here, but follow her on Instagram for updates.

Be assured, each dish will have a story. “I think it’s important to tap into how certain food items got to America in the first place,” she says.“If I can create a space that is about teaching people who they are through where their food comes from and why they love certain flavors and certain dishes—why certain things make them feel like home and give them a sense of comfort and identity—I would feel very blessed. I want people to engage with my food and taste liberation in that way.”

The Melanin Martha
themelaninmartha.com
@themelanin_martha on Instagram

Read More

Queer garage-pop band Bev Rage & the Drinks have become one of the city’s most entertaining acts since coming together in 2015. Mixing hilariously forthright lyrics, spitfire riffs, and the second-to-none showmanship of lead singer and guitarist Beverly Rage—a seven-foot drag queen, counting hair and heels—they put on a show that’s not to be missed! Over the past few months, the band (Rage, guitarist Dan Jarvis, bassist Sam Westerling, and drummer Mary Rose Gonzales) have been rolling out a series of eye-catching videos for their second full-length, Exes & Hexes, due in August on their label What’s for Breakfast? Records. Today they debut the third video, “Perfect Guy,” in which our heroine discovers a bizarrely powerful drink in a spooky abandoned warehouse and goes on a kaiju-style rampage. Bev Rage & the Drinks perform at Andersonville Midsommarfest on Saturday, June 11, and at Chicago Pride Fest on Saturday, June 18.

The video for “Perfect Guy,” written and directed by Pamela Maurer

Read More

Jordan Wimby was the only Black kid on her Beverly block, and she ate like everyone else: Lunchables, Tyson chicken nuggets, TV dinners, and frozen potpies.

“Growing up I was surrounded by this conversation of racism, oppression, colonialism,” says Wimby, whose mother and grandparents were teachers (most of them CPS) who specialized in American and African American history, and Egyptology. “We talked about slavery. We talked about sharecropping. We talked about all these things I wasn’t learning in-depth in school. But at the same time we weren’t eating cultural foods, which was kind of confusing to me because my family was so embedded in Black history and Black culture.”

But back then, when Wimby was alatchkey kid in a single-parent home, her main priority was afterschool snacks, and the Food Network was there for her. “I always say Rachael Ray was my second mom. 30 Minute Meals was where it was at in sixth grade. My mom started seeing how passionate I was about food and cooking and she was like, ‘OK, I’ll buy the groceries if you wanna try some recipes. Just don’t burn the house down.’”

Today Wimby, who’s 27, is known as The Melanin Martha, a home cook exploring the intersection of food and Black identity, tapping into inspiration from the African diaspora and addressing issues of access, trauma, heritage, queerness, comfort, and self-care through cooking. She’s worked as a private chef, conducted cooking workshops for corporate clients, run bake sales through her Instagram, and on June 20, she’s taking over the kitchen at the Kedzie Inn for a Juneteenth Monday Night Foodball, the Reader’s weekly chef pop-up.

Wimby arrived at her particular focus circuitously—through Italy. Her family’s best friends in Beverly were an Italian family whose matriarch babysat her when her mother went back to school. “Everybody else was Irish, so we kind of gravitated toward each other.” Wimby’s Italian grandmother—she calls her Nonna—steeped her in Italian culture: the music, the language, the food, and after high school Nonna took her on a monthlong visit to Pieve Santo Stefano, her tiny home village in Tuscany.

“My family always talked about small towns being dangerous and not accepting,” says Wimby. “I was probably the only Black girl ever to be seen in this small town. I would get stared at, and there were lots of questions, but because I could communicate in Italian there was more room for understanding than just judgment. So after a month I was like, ‘I need to live here. This is not a question. I feel so at peace here. The food is delicious. People know who they are. People are kind. They’re racist in their own way, but it’s not systemic like it is in America.’ People were actually willing to learn and listen in ways I felt was not happening in the States.”

She came home for three months of waiting tables and babysitting until she had the funds and the visa to return. She spent a year and a half working at her Nonna’s family-owned winery before moving on to Florence, where she took cooking and wine classes until she ran out of money.

Back in Chicago she worked in the wine department at Eataly before embarking on a bleak, lonely year in San Diego, where her only solace was the farmers’ market. “The thing keeping me afloat was going to the market and finding a new item or ingredient, learning about it, and cooking with it.”

She returned to Chicago just before the pandemic. “I felt connected to Italy not because I was Italian but because there was this clear cultural understanding of who they are, and there was a beauty to that I never felt. I was always connected to Blackness through talking about trauma. My family was always talking about slavery, and racism, inequalities. There was never beauty to it. I would hear all these stories about Italians and the trauma they went through, which is very different from the Black experience in America and actually Black people all over the world. They still talked about how they turned that trauma into something that is beautiful, and so that got the wheels turning, especially during COVID and George Floyd.”

Wimby studied Black chefs and food writers like Leah Chase, Edna Lewis, Mashama Bailey, and Michael Twitty, and took deep dives into plantation records and colonial cookbooks, seeking out the enslaved chefs who made extraordinary foods from ingredients that came over with them or had been rejected.

Why is kale held to a higher standard than collards? Why is quinoa a prized ingredient, but it’s somehow unhealthy to eat rice? She wanted to trace the origins of ingredients like okra and how they’ve maintained a connection to Black food despite the brutal history in which they became staples.

“A lot of the time we don’t have a safe space to talk about the foods that we love and enjoy,” she says. “A lot of the time people look at soul food and they say, ‘Oh, that’s just slave food.’ I link [okra] to my identity, not only because it’s a food that is indigenous to African culture but it’s an amazing vegetable. It’s gorgeous. It grows in such interesting environments; people just don’t learn to appreciate it.”

Okra is on the menu June 20 at the Kedzie Inn, probably breaded and fried and served with a creamy, rich sauce. And Wimby is toying with the idea of a crème brûlée infused with hibiscus, the native West African flowers inseparable from Juneteenth celebrations. She’s still working on the rest of the menu, which she plans to drop this week. More on that later here, but follow her on Instagram for updates.

Be assured, each dish will have a story. “I think it’s important to tap into how certain food items got to America in the first place,” she says.“If I can create a space that is about teaching people who they are through where their food comes from and why they love certain flavors and certain dishes—why certain things make them feel like home and give them a sense of comfort and identity—I would feel very blessed. I want people to engage with my food and taste liberation in that way.”

The Melanin Martha
themelaninmartha.com
@themelanin_martha on Instagram

Read More

Early experiences count for a lot. After reedist Aram Shelton moved to Chicago in 1999, fresh out of college, he became an integral part of an interdependent community of jazz musicians who were ready to realize one another’s concepts. Shelton left town in 2005, but he’s continued his practice of embedding himself in a scene, spending years in Oakland, Copenhagen, and Budapest. He’s always made it a point to return to Chicago, though. Since pulling up stakes in Hungary last year, he’s visited the eastern seaboard and Mexico City, but he’s also spent substantial time here, making new connections and rekindling old ones. The Aram Shelton Quartet, which includes bassist Anton Hatwich, drummer Tim Daisy, and tenor saxophonist Keefe Jackson, showcases his intricate writing and his adroit responsiveness to other musicians’ improvisations. The quartet has made two strong albums, 2011’s These Times and 2012’s Everything for Somebody, but prior to a reunion gig in March of this year they hadn’t performed for a decade. During that time, Shelton’s sound on the alto saxophone—his most enduring choice of horn—has grown deeper and more probing, and he’s also changed his compositional approach. In a recent email, he explained that the new material he’s writing for the group “will serve as destination points for improvisations, rather than head/improv/head structures.”

Aram Shelton Quartet, Sat 6/11, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 3111 N. Western, $15, 18+

Read More