Thanks in large part to the legacy of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, whose appointment as director of architecture at the Armour Institute of Technology in 1938 would transform Chicago’s skyline up and down the lakefront for decades to come, the city is a haven of modernist architecture. Some of it comes from Mies himself; … Read moreRead More
Buy a High Modernist CondoWhet Moseron February 25, 2021 at 3:00 pm Read More »
Though Chicago has a troubled past when it comes to embracing and celebrating its Black residents, there are clear markers of the ways in which people of the Black community have contributed enormously to this city— despite the obstacles placed in their path. These 5 landmarks of great cultural significance still stand, and serve as reminders of not only the Black history in Chicago has shaped (or endured), but the work that remains for all Chicagoans in the decades to come.
3435 S Indiana Ave, Chicago IL 60616
The Chicago Defender—a paper founded in 1905 and widely read particularly in the wake of the Great Migration— resided at a the former Jewish synagogue on Indiana Avenue from 1920 to 1960. The Defender continues in its mission to “cover the interests of the urban African American community with culturally relevant content not regularly serviced by mainstream media.”
2401 S Wabash Ave, Chicago IL 60616
Quinn Chapel, which is part of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, started as just a small prayer group in the mid-19th century. The original building was destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire, but in 1891 moved to a new location on Wabash, where it still stands today. Its impressive history includes a former life as an Underground Railroad station, as well as a visit from Martin Luther King, Jr.
3831 S Michigan Ave, Chicago IL 60653
The brainchild of a group of Arts Craft Guild members in the 1930s, SSCAC works to “preserve, promote and progress Black artists and their work.” The group included (among many other luminaries) artist, writer, and organizer Margaret Taylor-Burroughs, who later would establish the DuSable Museum of African American History. Through a number of different community-oriented programs, SSCAC has lifted up the work of Black artists since 1940.
7428 S Evans Ave, Chicago IL 60619
“[O]ne of the most highly regarded, influential, and widely read poets of 20th-century American poetry,” Gwendolyn Brooks was raised on the South Side of Chicago. Eventually, the Pulitzer prize-winner would move into this house on Evans Avenue (where she lived from 1953 to 1994) after a long personal battle against housing discrimination.
2120 S Michigan Ave, Chicago IL 60616
Established in Bronzeville in the 1940s and responsible for recording the music of legendary Black artists like Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson, Willie Dixon, and (later) Chuck Berry, Chess Records moved just south of the Loop on Michigan Avenue in the late 1950s, later becoming a landmark of Chicago and of blues music.
Black History Chicago Featured Image Credit: Quinn Chapel
The post 5 Landmarks Essential to Black History in Chicago appeared first on UrbanMatter.
Chicago has plenty of public art; a lot of it appears in Millennium Park, or in other places downtown where visitors to the city tend to gravitate. Some public art, however, includes graffiti art and murals, and often speaks to a more complex and many-layered experience of living in Chicago— particularly when painted by artists from Chicago. Check out these 7 hometown hero street artists from Chicago.
Working in murals, character design, and “everything art” for the better part of a decade, JC Rivera has used his “Bear Champ” character in many of his works to “express his concepts, journeys, and struggles to make it in the art world.”
Lauren Asta made the jump from smaller-scaled art (chiefly photography) to murals when inspiration hit her in the form of a blank wall at the brewery next door to her workplace in California. She moved to Chicago in 2016, and her more recent work includes a mural on an outside wall of Fulton Street Market.
Max Sansing was raised on the south side, and pursued graffiti art before later learning more about other media. His mural “New Frontiers, Same Old Nine” was one of two painted on a 79th Street building in South Shore in 2020.
The other mural painted on the aforementioned South Shore building is called “Joined as One,” and was created by Kayla Mahaffey. Also from the south side, Mahaffey creates murals that are bursting with color, and aims to “paint a beautiful picture of a new world.”
Chicago-born Ruben Aguirre works at “the intersection of abstract graffiti, formalism, and mural painting.” His public murals are largely abstract, very colorful, and appear both indoors and outdoors all over the city.
Joseph “Sentrock” Perez is a self-taught street artist who honed his skills “from graffiti writing in Mexican-American neighborhoods.” Frequently incorporating a “bird-mask” image into his artwork, Sentrock’s recent murals have appeared at SemiColon Bookstore and Chicago Public Library’s Little Village branch.
Brenda “KOZMO” Lopez has been painting her signature “burger-flowers” all over town, blending childhood memories with a love of animated characters to create brightly-colored, cartoon-inspired murals. Find her work in her home neighborhood of Little Village, in Back of the Yards, and other neighborhoods in Chicago.
The post 7 Insanely Talented Street Artists From Chicago appeared first on UrbanMatter.
The Chicago Blackhawks are lucky to have Patrick Kane healthy and going well this season. He has played so well this season and it isn’t going to waste (so far) because of the progress of a few young guys and good goaltending. He is getting into his 30s now and somehow is getting better. When […]
Chicago Blackhawks: Patrick Kane can’t be stopped right now – Da Windy City – Da Windy City – A Chicago Sports Site – Bears, Bulls, Cubs, White Sox, Blackhawks, Fighting Illini & More
Jake Arrieta is back with the Chicago Cubs, but the starting rotation still remains a major question mark heading into the 2021 season. Back when the Chicago Cubs and then President of Baseball Operations Theo Epstein were taking all the top offensive talent in the MLB Draft, it was made clear that pitching would be […]
Chicago Cubs: Rotation is a major question mark surrounding team – Da Windy City – Da Windy City – A Chicago Sports Site – Bears, Bulls, Cubs, White Sox, Blackhawks, Fighting Illini & More
The Chicago Bulls needed overtime to beat the Minnesota Timberwolves, the young Bulls showed their potential but also had some crucial mistakes. The Bulls made a huge mistake down the stretchon Wednesday night. Up by three under five seconds to go, and Coby White fouls a poor three-point shooter in the act of shooting. Some may […]
Chicago Bulls: Youth shows in overtime win over Wolves – Da Windy City – Da Windy City – A Chicago Sports Site – Bears, Bulls, Cubs, White Sox, Blackhawks, Fighting Illini & More
Some mornings are worse than others. There are days when I wake up before dawn with a cramp hardening the calf muscle on my left leg into a rigid burl, knotted and gnarled.
My grimace is a combination of agony, familiarity and resignation; it is not my first time on the rack watching the ratchet wheel turn. I stretch my toes toward my chin to elongate the Achilles tendon and loosen the grip of the spasm that has turned the calf rigid. Mercifully, the jaws of the vice open and the baseball sized knob relaxes, the muscles vibrating rhythmically under the skin, flickering like neuropathic strobe lights.
Gingerly placing the heels of my feet on the floor, I roll my ankles in half circles to loosen the tendons crisscrossing from arch to toes. Instantly I realize my mistake: the rolling motion that lengthens the calf is a seesaw that alternately contracts the elongated muscle embedded alongside the tibia. I am writhing in pain, my calf feeling like a cudgel carved from briar, contorted and misshaped.
I dig my thumbs into the rigid muscles, massaging the tender tissues with long, cajoling caresses. What feels like eons later the nervous system declares truce among its warring axons and dendrites and the cramp unties, leaving me limp, saturated in perspiration.
“What next?” I mumble to myself, limping to the bathroom. The answer comes without warning.
A paroxysm of pain tears through the arch of my left foot like the oblique rip of a serrated blade sawing through the bony arc between heel and metatarsals. I reel in agony, lurching against the medicine chest, somehow managing to fling open the mirrored door. On the bottom shelf is the plastic bottle of quinine tablets, the precious powdered leaf of cinchona officinalis that would ease my pain as digitalis to the trembling victim of a heart attack. I place two pills under my tongue and stifle my whining; then miracle of miracles, the bow in my arch straightens; the pain subsides as the sole of my foot relaxes.
Okay, okay, a bit exaggerated. But I do admit to being creaky and making funny noises before I get warmed up and it is true some days are worse than others. There are mornings when I am hurting and getting out of bed requires some curious yogic twisting and contortions.
I don’t welcome the stiffness and the aches. But I handle it. I remind myself that waking up in some pain does not equate to becoming ineffective and irrelevant. I regard it as a metaphor for the psychic pain I grappled with for too many years. I breathe into the pain and I feel relief.
I look back at my life with a lot more compassion, recognizing it wasn’t all cynicism and competition and pursuit of the corner office; there were accomplishments and friendships and inestimable creative satisfaction. My time as husband and father was considerably more than angst and argument and regret; there were shared events and acts of generosity and limitless unconditional love.
And having seen there was ample good along with the bad, I can be grateful for the moment when at last, I forgave myself and left behind the shame and regret associated with long past events.
I have closed the “What if…” file. I am content with the “This is it” file. I am comfortable in my own wrinkly skin. Instead of bemoaning the unfulfilled ambitions of youth I am reviving them as present day aspirations. I have written books; I write this blog; I do workshops; I edit a digital newspaper for seniors. The process is complete when we let go of what we have done and celebrate what we have become.
The paradox is, although my octogenarian’s eyesight is blurry, I see the sub-text of my blog title more clearly, How to Add Years of Joy and Meaning to Life. I write candidly about the regrets and revelations that accompany the aging process, and in the act of doing so, the motor keeps running. I do not go from zero to 60 in seconds, but I get out of bed a few minutes after the alarm rings, despite the degree of discomfort that I have dramatized.
I can tolerate the ache and stiffness that comes with the morning light, even as some days are more harrowing that others. Dear readers, we “ain’t what we used to be” but we still have work to do.
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Aging, Grief, Love, Spiritual, Uncategorized
Meet The Blogger
In the course of a long business career I held many titles familiar to the corporate world. But as I quickly learned the lofty nameplates no longer apply when your career comes to a close and you move from the corner office to a corner of the den. The challenge was to stay vital and active rather than idling on the sidelines. I had to create a new foundation upon which to build life’s purpose and joy.
I stopped adding up my stock portfolio as a measure of my net worth and developed a healthy self esteem independent of applause from others.
I am the co-author of The In-Sourcing Handbook: Where and How to Find the Happiness You Deserve, a practical guide and instruction manual offering hands-on exercises to help guide readers to experience the transformative shift from simply tolerating life to celebrating life. I also am the author of 73, a popular collection of short stories about America’s growing senior population running the gamut of emotions as they struggle to resist becoming irrelevant in a youth-oriented society.
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