The ChicagoBears need to fire Ryan Pace before they reach the 2021 NFL calendar year.
The Chicago Bears are an embarrassing franchise. If they didn’t have a defense that was good enough to win them a few games, they would be right there with the New York Jets at the bottom of the league. They are so pathetic on offense that they need to make big changes to their organization and fast. By the time that the NFL changes its calendar to 2021, they need to fire Ryan Pace before things get even worse (if that is possible).
Yes, he built a great defense. The Eddie Jackson, Kyle Fuller, and Roquan Smith draft picks amongst a few others were awesome. The Khalil Mack trade has its cons but he is an all-world player on a very good defense. There are many great players on that side of the ball but it makes it even worse for Ryan Pace the way he has left them out there to dry.
They are great but they are out there too much because of the fact that the offense is so bad. They can’t move the ball at all and it comes down to Ryan Pace’s decision-making. The offensive line is so bad and even though there are injuries, that is no excuse because it wasn’t that good, to begin with.
Did they need to add to their pass rush by adding Robert Quinn this past offseason? No, they did not. He hasn’t even been good anyway so it clear that the money was spent in the wrong areas. This line needs to be fixed before anything and Pace shouldn’t be the guy who is given that job.
Of course, the biggest mistake of Pace’s Bears tenure is the Mitchell Trubisky draft pick. He moved up from pick three to pick two to select Trubisky out of North Carolina where he only made 13 starts. Pace took Trubisky with Patrick Mahomes and Deshaun Watson on the board. Now, Trubisky is a backup at best and the other two guys are all-world players with Hall of Fame trajectories.
That mistake set the Bears back by half a decade or more. If they had a quarterback like Mahomes or Watson paired with this defense, they would legitimately be Super Bowl contenders and could have even won one by now. It is such a bad look to have an offense that bad supporting a defense that is that good.
Pace also handpicked Matt Nagy to be the new head coach. It looked like he was the guy after 2018 but things have gone south from there. They have been an awful pair together and it is time to see them both go. Pace deserves to take most of the blame because he assembled a team that just isn’t good. He needs to be gone before the 2021 season gets underway.
The 2020 NBA Draft is upon us, and the ChicagoBulls may be ready to do something big.
Tonight, much of the discussion and anticipation leading up to the 2020 NBA Draft is going to be about the Chicago Bulls and which direction they choose to go with the number four overall pick.
The Bulls have not been in this position for a long time. Chicago is used to picking lower in the draft than they deserve for the last three years. Alas, a little bit of luck.
Most experts agree there is a top three in terms of prospects. But, after LaMelo Ball, James Wiseman and Anthony Edwards, it’s anyone’s guess who will be picked going forward. Even with those top three guys, there’s some question whether or not a team could get a star.
That’s what makes this year’s draft so intriguing. A lack of a sure fire star means that teams are shooting more for upside than anything else. Predicting the future is hard enough as a general manager, but it’s even tougher with a draft class like this one.
The lack of predictability also means we could see more trades today than ever before, and the Bulls are one of the main teams to watch.
Wednesday morning, Bulls fans woke up to a juicy rumor involving Chicago and Golden State.
Sources: The Warriors and Bulls have discussed a trade that’d send the second pick in exchange for the fourth pick and Wendell Carter Jr.
There is little doubt the Warriors will deal their no. 2 overall pick. With a healthy Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson, this is a team ready for more titles. That second overall pick can be used to snag another piece to the puzzle via trade, and it looks like the Bulls might be their partner.
If Chicago trades Wendell Carter Jr. to the Warriors along with the fourth overall pick, it would seem likely that Arturas Karnisovas wants to go after Wiseman. But, will Wiseman be there? We might not know the answer to this rumor until Golden State is on the clock.
Carter would be an ideal big man to add for Golden State. He immediately makes them a favorite out West in many eyes, even with the Lakers’ star-studded cast.
For the Bulls, this move would be totally about ceiling. It’s all about upside — a word you will hear more today than in the next 364 days combined. Chicago is building for the future, and Wiseman very well could present more of a ceiling than Carter if we’re thinking long-term.
The seven-footer presents opponents with an ability to create his own shot, even off the dribble. His skill set is very unique and the athleticism is certainly there. Picturing Wiseman on the floor with Zach LaVine and Coby White is a fun thought. Will it happen? Buckle up.
If someone were to build the perfect way to feed a community, I think it’d look a lot like a farmer’s market.
Douglas Callegario would be there with freshly baked breads. All Grass Farms would have a table with eggs, milk, tons of fresh produce. You’d pickup what you needed and then meet with Leyla and Ahmet from Black & Caspian who’d show you how to make an incredible meal. The whole thing would somehow be free and everyone in the neighborhood would have access to healthy food, from great chefs, never going to bed hungry.
That would be the pie-in-the-sky dream. And on Saturdays at the Nettlehorst Market in Lakeview East or Green City Market in Lincoln Park, that dream is pretty close to reality (minus the free part). Even grocery stores like Mariano’s or Trader Joe’s, I take it for granted, but it’s pretty close to the dream too – fresh food, close by, easy to get there.
The nightmare scenario is, unfortunately, what played out this summer in the food deserts of Chicago. A food desert is an area where residents have to travel more than a mile to reach a supermarket (oftentimes it’s 3-5 miles away). Over 23 million Americans live in food deserts. In some of these neighborhoods, residents have been without a nearby supermarket for 10+ years.
In Chicago, the main way to travel out of the food desert is via public transit. This became dangerous during the pandemic, especially since these were the same areas most highly impacted by COVID-19.
And if that wasn’t challenge enough, come May and June, the few grocery stores around were temporarily closed after significant damage from riots and looting.
“We are worried it could take months for businesses to assess the damage, pick up the mess, bring their people back as they assess the safety conditions of their employees,” Felicia Slaton-Young, Executive Director of the Greater Englewood Chamber of Commerce said in a Chicago Tribune article from June 5th.
Danielle Davis, who’s from the South Side of Chicago, couldn’t take her mind off this situation.
“I was on a weekly work call where we talk about current events and happenings of the areas that we live in,” Davis said. “And I was so incredibly bothered by all of the looting that happened over the course of that weekend. I got on the call and I started to cry. And if you know me personally, I’m not a crier, I’m not really emotional. But I’ve been so bothered, and I think it was just kind of built up. There’s no way that I can sit here at this table, on my computer, in my home eating my food when there are so many kids that don’t have anything and their parents can’t help them either.”
Danielle messaged her boss, asked if she could take the afternoon off. Her boss said yes and Danielle went right to work.
“I went to Costco with my dad and we bought $1,000 worth of food,” Davis said. “I called up a couple of my friends that I knew would be interested in helping, and we just went and did it.”
The idea was to create school lunches for children so their families could easily come pickup food. Danielle shared the news on Instagram and her efforts quickly caught the attention of her friend Cam Dangerfield, Chef and Owner of Meltt Cafe in Atlanta.
“Cam called me and he’s like, ‘Hey, I saw what you’re doing. I think it’s a great idea,” Davis said. “‘What if we take it up a notch and let’s do home cooked meals for kids instead of just a basic sandwich, chips, juice box. They’ll be able to experience something that maybe they haven’t eaten before.'”
Cam is also from Chicago and was visiting family for two weeks.
“He was like, ‘Well, I’m not doing anything. I’ll just cook the first 20 meals while we figure out where we’re gonna get the rest of them.”
Cam went to the kitchen, started to do what he does best, creating home-cooked meals from scratch. He put in the same attention to detail that he does with his catering company.
“Cook the food, style it,” Cam described in an ABC7 news feature video. “And not just any food, we’re doing gourmet, exquisite meals for these people in need.”
One of Danielle’s friends who works as a social worker provided a list of families. They started with 10 families, then found 15 more by the end of the week.
Their dream and vision didn’t stop there.
“We started to just tag random chefs on Instagram like, ‘Hey, what are you doing? Can you help make us meals?” Davis said. “We’ll start you off with your first donation, $75, if you can make a meal for a family of five. And once you do that, pass it on to another chef.”
Danielle and Cam started out in the Chatham neighborhood and expanded over to Auburn Gresham, two of the most severe food deserts in all of Chicago. Some of the grocery stores were closed down for two weeks, so Danielle did food delivery for a little over a month and a half. They kept tagging more chefs in different cities and over the course of four weeks, the effort expanded to feed over 250 families across the country.
“The chefs we reached out to were so willing and so happy to do it,” Davis said. “I hardly got pushback from anyone.”
Of all the families served, one of the dropoffs that stands out most in Danielle’s memory was when she visited a pregnant woman with five children who needed help taking the food upstairs.
“I was carrying the boxes upstairs and I looked around and their apartment was bare bones, no furniture. They were all sleeping on the floor,” Davis said. “And she was so appreciative and so thankful. She started to cry. And that made me start to tear up because she was just so thankful. Her kids were so excited for the fruits and vegetables, because that’s also not something that is easily available within their area.”
Danielle always wanted to start a non-profit and this situation gave her the push to go out and do it. She launched Good Vibes Only Chiwith three friends and their work has included providing these meals along with diaper/wipes/formula/food pickups for new moms and a school supply drive with 250 backpacks + Chromebooks for kids on the South Side.
“We’re doing what we’re supposed to be doing,” Davis said. “And we are where we’re supposed to be at this time.”
For the holiday, Danielle is doing a Chefs For Change Thanksgiving edition. They’ll be distributing meals on Monday, November 23rd at Butler College Prep High School located at 821 E 103rd St from 6-8:30 PM in the Pullman neighborhood. The goal is to feed 25-35 families.
Ways to help and participate are through monetary donations (you can reach out on to good.vibes.only_chi on Instagram or to [email protected]) or continue to spread the word on social media using the #ChefsForChangeChallenge hashtag.
“I just want to add a thank you to everyone that has supported us, whether that is with time, or donations, or attending an event that we’ve had,” Davis said. “Every little bit of support is very appreciated, and it does not go unnoticed. We wouldn’t have made it this far without our community, so we just want to say thank you to everyone.”
I go back to that pie-in-the-sky dream at the beginning of this article, the fictional farmer’s market with fresh food prepared by incredible chefs, free of charge, and for as idyllic and far-fetched as that scene sounded, it’s exactly what Danielle and Cam created. And they did it in neighborhoods who were facing the exact opposite grocery shopping scenario.
It’s amazing to see what they accomplished, what they’re continuing to build, and to remember it all started with an idea during a work meeting, a chef, a kitchen, and one homecooked meal at a time.
If you scratched your head about the Douglas Callegario, All Grass Farms, and Black & Caspian references in the opening paragraph, those are part of an ongoing series this year featuring local restaurants and businesses all around Chicago. I’ve been amazed at how the themes of these different stories are tying together and I’m just continuing to follow where these stories go.
To catch up on some of the previous posts and read about great local spots, here they are below:
I was born and raised in Midland, Michigan and moved here to Chicago a couple years ago after graduating from Hope College. I live in the city with my beautiful wife Ashley.
A little bit about me – I go to bed early, I enjoy greasy food and would wear sweatpants everyday if I were allowed to. I just signed up for a year-long Divvy membership, but could very well be the slowest bicyclist in Chicago.
I write the Medium Rare blog and will have a new post up every Monday.
Tan and Jonathan are fun and friendly, seven-month-old, male guinea pig brothers looking for a loving guardian together.
The boys get along well and jump for joy (adorable) and make wonderful wheeks and whistle sounds.
Guinea pigs eat a diet of unlimited timothy and orchard hays – in fact, hay should be the majority of their diet. They can have limited pellets, and a variety of fresh vegetables daily including romaine, red leaf and green leaf lettuces, cilantro, carrots, and a little bit of fruit as a treat: oranges, apples, etc.
Guinea pigs like humans need a source of vitamin C in their diet which they can get from a one-inch square piece of sweet red pepper, kale, chard and other greens, or you can use vitamin C treats made for guinea pigs.
Please read up on guinea pig care and diet before adopting by visiting this excellent web site http://www.guinealynx.info/.
Most cages marketed for guinea pigs are way too small. Guinea pigs need appropriate room to roam and separate spaces for a nest, bathroom area and food and water. No animal is meant to live in a cage all the time, so make sure to provide your pig with proper exercise outside of a cage with a romp around the home or exercise pen.
https://www.humanesociety.org/resources/guinea-pig-housing
They would love a home with people who will handle them daily, keep them well fed, and keep their habitat nice and clean.
If you’re interested in meeting and possibly adopting Jonathan and Tan, please fill out an adoption application at https://friendsofpetraits.com/guinea-pig-adoption-application/ and follow up by contacting [email protected] to set up an appointment to meet them.
They are being fostered in Chicago’s Andersonville neighborhood.
Their adoption fee as a pair of $75 benefits the Friends of Petraits Rescue. For an additional $75, we’ll include a starter kit of absolutely everything you need to care for them including pellets, large cage, hay, hidey huts and water bottle.
This four-bedroom Glenview home has 4½ bathrooms and 5,337 square feet of space. The Tuscan-style home overlooks a golf course and opens to a family room with a fireplace and three sets of French doors leading to the home’s ample outdoor space. The kitchen is equipped with appliances by Viking, Bosch and Miele, along with a farm sink, a forged-iron pot rack and a zinc-topped antique island. The primary bedroom suite features a fireplace as well, along with a custom walk-in closet and a private balcony. A lower-level wine cellar can hold more than 1,800 bottles, while outside, a fieldstone patio, outdoor fireplace and Sundance hot tub elevate the home’s living experience.
Welcome to 30 Adoption Portraits in 30 Days, hosted by Portrait of an Adoption. This series will feature guest posts by people with widely varying adoption experiences and perspectives.
My Evolving Relationship with Adoption
By Tessie Yarbrough
I am an adult adoptee. Born in the mid-1970s. Adopted at birth through a closed adoption facilitated by a faith-based adoption agency. I have always known I am adopted.
My childhood was a good one. I grew up in a small, rural community. My mom taught school and my dad was self-employed. My grandparents lived next door and went to church with us. My sister and I had weekly playdates, a pony and the Weekly Reader Book Club. My family had a garden and a family reunion every year.
Adoption was not a unique or rare thing in my world. One of my first cousins is adopted and I had schoolmates who were adoptees. I had a storybook about adoption in our regular reading rotation. It was all around me. I have always felt that I belong in my family. My sister was born prematurely. I am adopted. Those are just facts about us.
As a child, most of the time, I did not think about adoption at all. However, there were days when I was curious about the unknown people in my life. Sometimes I was sad about it and wondered why.
Sometimes other people brought it to my attention through their curiosity. I believe my parents handled these different times well. I was comfortable talking to them about my feelings. We had good balance about adoption. We celebrated my birthday and recognized my adoption day.
Dad and Mom always spoke of my birth parents with respect. They genuinely believed my birth parents loved me and made a big sacrifice for me. They esteemed my birth mother for her love and bravery. Mom and Dad always let me know that if I wanted to look for my birth parents they would help. My parents taught me that every day of my life, from the very beginning; I have been loved and valued.
College was a time of transition for me in my relationship with adoption. I had always considered adoption a universal good, and I thought everybody felt that way. I did not know some people thought adoption was a problem. I discovered that other people had negative views of adoption through a casual aside a professor made in class.
One day, while talking on other subjects my professor commented that, “You should feel sorry for adopted people. They carry the sins of their parents in their lives.” Now, I attended a faith-based college, and this was a bible-oriented class, so comments about sin were fair, but this remark immediately enraged me.
I waited to speak to the professor after class. I wish I could tell you I gave an informed and passionate defense of adoption, but I just let loose on him. “I am adopted, I have a great family, you know absolutely nothing about my life, I’m not sure you know anything about grace either, how dare you tell your students to feel sorry for adopted people.” That sort of thing. I do not think I was yelling but I was very, very angry.
To tell you the truth, I was still angry about it when I told my counselor that story twenty years later. The professor did not have an adequate response. I never spoke to him again. I did not drop the class, but I did not get much out of it either.
That encounter was the beginning of my grown-up relationship with adoption. It motivated me to start wondering how other people feel about adoption, to question my own feelings and perceptions, and to be more open-minded and aware. Adoption became a topic of interest to me not just a part of my personal identity.
So how am I doing as an adult adoptee these days?
I think I am doing well. I am capable of loving and accepting love. I still have a close relationship with my family. I am still sure I belong with them. I have been married to the same delightful fellow for many years. I am sure I belong with him as well; no one loves me better or drives me crazier than he does.
I have good friendships and a loving church family. I enjoy my job and have the opportunity to do work I find fulfilling. I have a good life. Nothing fancy but I would not trade it.
I have confidently researched, read, thought, and prayed about adoption a great deal over the years. I got a suggested reading list from my adoption agency and started there. I am fortunate in knowing many people involved in adoption and learning from their stories.
I do my own internet research as well. That is how I became a fan of Portrait of an Adoption! I participated in and completed post adoption counseling. Those seven core issues of adoption were scary to think about, but I am so thankful I confronted them. They do not frighten me anymore.
These experiences and others have led me to a place where I am comfortable with my own experience with and opinions about adoption while being respectful of the many different kinds of individual and collective adoption experiences and viewpoints that are out there.
My adoption is still closed. The adoption agency can tell me very little about my birth family. They did not keep very detailed records in the 1970’s, so a medical history is not available in my file.
That is unfortunate, because at this time in my life, I would like to know more about biological me. I had the agency reach out to my birth mother because I would like to have a full medical history from both my biological parents. The adoption agency will not contact my birth father without express permission from my birth mother.
I requested a medical history from her and permission to have the agency contact my birth father for a medical history as well. I did not receive that information or permission.
I also reached out to my birth mother with a personal letter. I wrote to let her know I have a good life, good family, as well as good physical, mental and emotion health. I also told her that I am genuinely thankful for her and her role in my life.
I hope that hearing from me about my life and feelings toward her contribute positively to her feelings about a decision she made for both of us a long time ago. The adoption agency gave it to her for me.
She has not been able or willing to reach back.
I am disappointed but not devastated over these results. My physician says my personal habits and the habits of my family are just as important as that missing biological information. I was never ready ask for any information before, so I understand her not being ready to share information right now.
I am glad I could give my birth mother that letter. No matter what happens in the future, I took advantage of this opportunity to let her know that I value her. I am proud of doing that.
I still am not sure if I actually want to have a personal relationship with either of my biological parents. I have opened the door to that as much as I can right now. I will see what comes through. For now, my closed adoption goes forward as it always has. I feel comfortable with that.
I understand my relationship with adoption is going to be different depending on where I am in my life. It is different now from when I was in my teens and twenties. It grows and changes right along with me.
It has good days and hard days. My husband and I are currently becoming licensed foster parents. I have already learned a lot about adoption through this process. I expect that in a few years my relationship to adoption will be very different because of the opportunities and experiences we will have.
I also understand that I am a whole person just as I am today. We all need to work at being whole people. Adopted or not we all have to grow into who we are. We are all always in the process of becoming. I love that.
I am proud and glad to be adopted. I believe adoption is a good thing. I understand my adoption experience is unique to me. It is my own. For all of that adoption is just one part of who I am and I love being ALL of me. Each day I am given is a good day to be me, an adult adoptee!
T. A. Y.
T.A.Y lives in Texas. Her favorite thing is being at home with her people and a good book.
* * * * Carrie Goldman is the host of Portrait of an Adoption. She is an award-winning author, speaker, and bullying prevention educator. Follow Carrie’s blog Portrait of an Adoption on Facebook and Twitter
To continue receiving posts from Portrait of an Adoption, simply type your email address in the box and click the “create subscription” button.
For the seventh straight year, in honor of November being National Adoption Awareness Month, Portrait of an Adoption is running a special series called 30 Adoption Portraits in 30 Days. Designed to give a voice to the many different perspectives of adoption, this series will feature guest posts by adoptees, birth parents, adoptive parents, waiting adoptive parents, and foster parents-turned-adoptive parents. Painful and beautiful, these stories will bring you a deeper understanding of what adoption looks like, allowing you to appreciate the many brushstrokes that comprise a family portrait.
I am a writer, artist, wife and mother of three fantastic girls! My new children’s adoption book is Jazzy’s Quest: Adopted and Amazing, and my adult nonfiction book is Bullied: What Every Parent, Teacher, and Kid Needs To Know About Ending the Cycle of Fear. And I LOVE chocolate!
No one else plays the pedal steel guitar like Susan Alcorn. She combines a command of the instrument’s orchestral range with an improvisational fluency that lets her take the instrument far beyond its usual idiomatic settings. She began playing professionally in Chicago country bars in the mid-1970s, then went on to hone her chops in Texas western-swing and country bands. But in 1990 she tapped into another Lone Star sound–the “deep listening” philosophy of Houston-born composer Pauline Oliveros–and she’s been courting unpredictability ever since. Since the late 90s, Alcorn has worked mainly in jazz and freely improvised settings, though in 2015 she recorded an album of Astor Piazzolla’s tangos. She’s added lush harmonies to the rigorously arranged music of the Mary Halvorson Octet, and on 2019’s Invitation to a Dream she spontaneously generated intricate structures with horn players Joe McPhee and Ken Vandermark. One thing Alcorn hasn’t done is put together a band to play her compositions, but that changes with her new album, Pedernal. The crack group on the record–guitarist Halvorson, bassist Michael Formanek, violinist Michael Feldman, and drummer Ryan Sawyer–ably negotiates her music’s sudden shifts in style, mood and structure. “R.U.R.” starts out with a zigzagging theme worthy of Anthony Braxton, then slingshots into a passage of fleet, swinging bebop. The title piece moves abruptly between a stately melody and passages of free-falling chaos. And “Northeast Rising Sun” transforms a phrase Alcorn learned from qawwali singing into a loping, country-tinged celebration. v
Like many Americans, I was awestruck by images of the historic Belarusian protests against President Alexander Lukashenko (“Europe’s last dictator”) that exploded after the country’s August elections. But reports of police brutality from Belarus–and the growing chorus of international academics and reporters warning that Americans could soon find themselves in a similar spot–added sinister, unsettling overtones to those inspiring photos of mass rallies standing against corruption. In late August, Minsk postpunk trio Molchat Doma joined 23 other artists from various countries on the compilation For Belarus, a Bandcamp-only benefit for the Belarus Solidarity Foundation, and on their new third album, Monument, they maintain their indefatigable spirit, threading together influences from Russian rock and Western groups such as Joy Division and Depeche Mode. Molchat Doma recall the tradition of 80s Iron Curtain rock bands, who united people across political and geographical lines by offering hope, escape, and a form of civil disobedience you could dance to (and who sometimes found ingenious ways to distribute their music). Molchat Doma’s Russian-language lyrics are rarely overtly political–they focus more on sadness, relationships, and observations of everyday life–but the band are nonetheless clearly subversive, if sometimes also fatalistic. On the relatively sunny “Discoteque,” which pays homage to Depeche Mode’s “I Just Can’t Get Enough,” vocalist Egor Shkutko sings, “I don’t give a damn about what will happen to me later / I dance like a god because tomorrow will not be the same.” Tracks such as “Obrechen” (“Doomed”) and “Udalil Tvoy Nomer” (“Deleted Your Number”) feel forlorn and despairing, but the uptempo “Zvezdy” (“Stars”) seems to twinkle like its namesake, and the guitar line that bounces through “Leningradsky Blues” even adds a hint of fun. Molchat Doma aren’t reinventing the wheel, but they’ve expanded their turf on Monument with fresh songwriting and sticky hooks. Belarus and the U.S. are hardly the only countries wrestling with cultural and political reckonings, so let’s hope that as Molchat Doma continue to build an audience around the world, their music powers dance parties–and revolutions–for years to come. v
I count my lucky stars to have been born with a catchy name. When I launched this blog, I toyed with non-catchy titles like “The Essayist” until my friend Marianne suggested I capitalize on my lifelong asset by dubbing my blog “Star Gazing.”
A group of new acquaintances can do no better team-building exercise than to tell the stories behind their names. Trust me: there’s always a story, and those listening will have a far better chance of remembering those names than if they stare at a hello-my-name-is tag for an hour.
The stories can be about first or last names or both. I’ll start with my first name since it comes, you know, first. I was named after my paternal grandmother, Leah, who died two years before I was born. Leah married my grandfather after his first wife died in the flu epidemic of 1918, leaving him bereft with two tween-agers to raise. Leah had lost her husband and six-year-old son in the same pandemic. My grandparents’ union after that terrible time brought my father into the world. But for that earlier pandemic, I wouldn’t be here.
I was named for Leah, but my parents tweaked the name to Leanne. That name sounded modern, forward-looking. In fact, it was so forward-looking that I didn’t meet another Leanne until college. Like me, that Leanne had been named after her grandmother, in this case, Leannabelle, who hailed from the south.
It wasn’t until the early 1980s that other Leannes came on the scene in quantity, and they were only babies then. The upshot was that by the time those Leannes — or Leanns and LeAnns — grew up and made their marks in the 2000s, I was a middle-aged woman with the name of someone dewier. Larry Doyle’s 1990 short story “Life Without Leann” features a femme fatale so bewitching that her exes form a support group.
That’s the story of my first name. If you want to annoy me, call me Luanne. Now for my last name. My paternal grandfather, Boris, emigrated from a shtetl in Ukraine to Chicago via Montreal. When he left the old country, his last name was Staroselsky. Like other new arrivals with foreign sounding names, he acquired something zippier in the new country, and a Star was born.
Thus my last name is an abbreviated construct that has nothing to do with my ancestors or with double-R Starrs, like Ringo or independent counsel Kenneth, who spearheaded the Whitewater investigation that led to Bill Clinton’s impeachment. (For the record, I would have been thrilled to have Ringo as a distant cousin.)
My family made hay with the last name of Star. Memorable and easy to spell — “like a star in the sky,” we’d say — Star made us feel, synonymously, like celebrities. I was a shy child, but I didn’t shy away from being called a star pupil, so much better than being labeled a nerd. When we weren’t fighting, my siblings and I united to play our favorite board game, Star Reporter.
The name Star with one R is uncommon, but it flourishes as a common noun, opening up the door to puns and misinterpretations. Rather than tell callers seeking trash pickup from Star Disposal Company that they had reached the wrong number, my father would say he’d send a truck right over. Plus, the name comes with major swag opportunities. I find it hard to resist jewelry or clothing with star motifs, and manufacturers oblige me by making plenty of it.
“What’s in a name?” Juliet asks in Act 2, suggesting that if Romeo weren’t a Montague, Act 5 would end differently. But names aren’t everything. My name is part of my identity, but only a part. If you want to know more about who I am, listen to the story of my name.
My first summer job was opening the mail for Ann Landers, and things only became weirder after that. I’ve worked as a college instructor and a writer, and my latest gig has been reviewing Chicago theater and dance. As a docent for the Chicago Architecture Center, I know the city’s ins and outs.
This Thanksgiving will definitely be different. The guest list will be shorter, the turkey smaller, the list of sides curtailed, and the inventory of leftovers larger. If “eternity” is two people and a ham, what is two people and a twenty-pound turkey? Of course, some people might ditch the traditional menu altogether, opting, instead, for a medley of favorites, some of them homemade and some of them purchased ready made.
The Hunter and Gatherer pizzas from Dimo’s
Let’s start with pizza. If pizza sounds good but ordering the usual sausage or mushroom/green pepper feels like heresy, Dimo’s Pizza in both Wrigleyville (3463 N. Clark Street, 773/525.4580) and Wicker Park (1515 N. Damen Ave. 773.525.4580) are doing a supplemental quartet of Thanksgiving themed pies.
The green bean casserole pizza at Dimo’s
The Green Bean Casserole pie is topped with plump green beans and French fried onions nestled atop a cream of mushroom base, while
The Hunter offers a medley of venison sausage, ricotta, kale, fennel, cranberries and rainbow carrots over a butternut squash puree finished with a rich mushroom and shallot sauce.
Topped with a medley of wild mushrooms, kale, ricotta, fennel, cranberries, and rainbow carrots perched on a puree of butternut squash, The Gatherer is finished with a French style pesto. The Vegan Gatherer includes the same toppings minus the ricotta.
And if you like everything about the traditional Thanksgiving dinner except the turkey, you can swap it for spinach lasagna at Bar Roma (5101 Clark St. 773.942.7572) in Andersonville.
At Blind Faith Cafe, a vegetarian restaurant in Evanston (525 Dempster St 847.328.6875), the holiday dinner package includes shiitake walnut loaf, mashed sweet potatoes, cranberry chutney and vegetable gravy. Yellow coconut curry and a vegetable gardein pot pie are also featured, along with sweets and breads like apple/peach cobbler, vegan pumpkin bread and corn bread muffins from the restaurant’s bakery.
The vegan pumpkin cheesecake
Planning ahead is always a good idea, and there’s no time like the present to get started. Thanksgiving is only two weeks away, and the pandemic isn’t showing any signs of disappearing before then.
Carole is an arts, entertainment and food journalist. She writes “Show Me Chicago” and “Chicago Eats” for ChicagoNow and covers Chicago places and events for Choose Chicago (City of Chicago) as well as freelancing for a variety of publications.
BARBARA REVSINE
I started writing when I was in grade school. And when I wasn’t writing or thinking about writing, I was reading what someone else had written. So it wasn’t a stretch for me to think about writing as a career. Neither was it a stretch to think about writing about food, a subject I’d always found interesting, more in terms of history, cooking, restaurants and culture than eating and critiquing. Decades after selling my first story, my interest in writing about food continues, and “A Bite of Chicago” gives me another opportunity to pursue my passion with people who share it.
