SIDEWALKS
BY RICK KOGAN
The next chapter
A NEW GENERATION SHOWS THEY CAN WRITE MORE THAN TEXT MESSAGES
The stands in the gymnasium at Glenbard South High School in Glen Ellyn were filled with smiling, excited faces. Looking at Osgood’s photo you might imagine the kids are watching the school’s basketball team, the Raiders, cruising to another victory.
But they were being thrilled by words. They–from eight high schools around the area–were part of the Western Sun Conference Literary Festival. All had submitted work (essays, short stories, plays, poetry) that was to be judged. Prizes were to be awarded. All would get certificates and a certain sense, as one 16-year-old told us, “that what we have to say is important.”
Talk to too many adults, read the papers, listen to the news and you’ll get the feeling that kids today are mostly interested in video games and that their writing is exclusively of the text-message type.
But over the last few months, as we have visited all sort of schools, we have been pleased, very pleased, to discover that the written word is still important to fresh faces and young minds.
“I type on a computer, what else?” said one sophomore at Maine East High School in Park Ridge. “But if I ever get to be a novel writer, I want the novels to be books . . . I mean paper books.”
Some of the kids at Maine East, under the inspiring influence of teachers Jason Marsicano and Jim Lonergan, had been working on a Chicago Wall of Fame, which involved each student picking a famous Chicagoan and researching and writing about the person. There were a lot of choices, from Saul Bellow to Jesse Jackson, and the kids liked Sally Rand, the famous fan dancer of the World’s Fair of 1933. But they were ravenous to hear about history and books and the craft of writing.
“I try to read a book every week, not a schoolbook,” said one 16-year-old at Maine East, a copy of “The Sun Also Rises” in his backpack. “All sorts of books, so that I can figure out why the good writers are good and follow that in what I write.”
We found the same sort of passion at Kennedy Junior High School in Lisle: 300 kids interested enough in hearing about and writing poetry to sit still through a series of lectures from adults.
If much of this is news to us, it is old if still very encouraging news to Kevin Coval. He is a teacher, poet and performer. He is the artistic director of Young Chicago Authors ( www.youngchicagoauthors.org) and the founder of Louder Than a Bomb: The Chicago Teen Poetry Festival.
In his new book, “The Spoken Word Revolution Redux,” written with poet/performer Marc Smith and edited by Mark Eleveld, Coval writes empoweringly, “We are the next articulation in American letters, the next wave in the long tradition of verse. We are here. You can get in the middle if you’re not ready. This is only the beginning, of a conversation, of our time, in our infancy. We are here. Word up.”
rkogan@tribune.com
– – –
iPod, uPod
Authorship: Jeff Lyon.
HAVING RECENTLY RETURNED from an international trip during which the other family members entertained themselves in transit by watching “South Park,” “CSI” and “The Office” reruns on their iPods, we came away newly impressed by the potential of these little MP3 players.
A further window into that potential is offered by the “Loop the Loop” iPod walking tours sponsored by the Chicago Loop Alliance, the successor to the old Greater State Street Council and Central Michigan Avenue Association. The Alliance, which hosted Looptopia, last weekend’s dusk-to-dawn celebration of the Loop, has cooked up three self-guided tours that can be downloaded to your iPod from its Web site, www.chicagoloopalliance.com. These audios include landmark, theater and art tours, and each track represents a distinct feature, so you can go at your own pace–stop for lunch, go shopping at Field’s, er, Macy’s, whatever. The landmark tour, for example, covers such often-overlooked treasures as the London Guarantee Building, the Palmer House and the starting point of Route 66, as well as familiar places like the Monadnock Building and the Art Institute. Expert commentary is provided by such mavens as Tim Samuelson, the city’s cultural historian.
It’s hard to escape the feeling that even with the ability to download recipes, audiobooks and such, we’ve barely scratched the surface of MP3 players.
– – –
social studies
CHOOSY, CHOOSY
At the opening for About Face Theater’s recent revival of Emily Mann’s political drama, “Execution of Justice,” the way to produce a heavy-duty play in Chicago became crystal-clear: Call Jan.
Surveying the crowd–eclectic, given the play’s theme about the 1978 assassination of San Francisco’s mayor, George Moscone, and its first elected gay official, Harvey Milk–board member Jim Andrews gloated: “What a mix. We needed an extra $120,000 to make this possible, so we called Jan.”
“Immediately,” added artistic director Eric Rosen. “I’m a creative beggar, but this was beyond our usual scope. I figured Jan knew flush people because of ‘The Color Purple.’ “
Rosen meant the Broadway production, which Jan–last name Kallish–helped bring to Chicago this month. And she did know whom to hit.
“I rarely give to theatrical productions, but I went to high school with Emily and appreciate her prophetic voice,” said Jim Grodzins.
–Reported by Lisa Skolnik
– – –
roamin’ numerals
Authorship: Jeff Lyon.
7 lbs., 12 oz.
SIZE OF THE LARGEST TOMATO EVER GROWN. IT WAS PLANTED IN 1986 BY HOUSEPAINTER GORDON GRAHAM, OF EDMOND, OKLA., WHO SAYS PLAYING A CB RADIO NEXT TO PLANTS AIDS GROWTH.
– – –
sunday 10:37 a.m.
BY CHARLES LEROUX
THAT’S EDWARD LIFSON and his old friend, mic. Lifson, host of Chicago Public Radio’s arts program, “Hello Beautiful!” (Sundays at 10 a.m.), has been broadcasting for NPR and CPR for 20 years. “I started out covering the arts,” native Chicagoan Lifson said. “Then it was urbanism, council meetings. Beginning in ’96, I spent five years in Berlin, covered Bosnia and Kosovo, and realized I was more about creativity, not killing.” He asks interview subjects to bring one piece of music to share with the audience. “An unusual one was [Music of the Baroque’s music director] Jane Glover. She brought Streisand.” Asked if it’s hard being restricted to only word pictures, he said, “I’m pretty good at describing. Yes, I can talk about dance and no, it’s not like kissing your sister.”
– – –
CULTURAL RIFFS
Authorship: Jeff Lyon.
PLAY YOUR FINGER CYMBALS and breathe deeply while we tell you that a new plan to end school violence has come from an unexpected source: film director David Lynch, the man behind such weird and often-violent works as “Blue Velvet,” “Eraserhead” and “Twin Peaks.” Lynch is a longtime devotee of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s technique of Transcendental Meditation and believes that teaching a million students to meditate “will transform schools from breeding grounds of stress and violence to centers of creativity and peace.” The David Lynch Foundation has already put up $5 million to support the idea and, believe it or not, the National Institutes of Health has spent $24 million on research that seems to show that TM relieves stress and promotes heart health. If you want to know more, attend the David Lynch Weekend May 25-27 at the Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa. On hand, besides Lynch, will be physicist John Hagelin and ’60s singer Donovan. Wild, eh? And hare krishna to you all.
– – –
SURFIN’ SAFARI
www.oedilf.com
Authorship: Jeff Lyon.
THIS SITE ASKS FOLKS TO PEN LIMERICKS BASED ON EVERY WORD IN THE DICTIONARY. 39,000 ENTRIES LATER, IT’S UP TO “C.” HERE’S “MRSREV” ON “CALISTHENICS”:
SIT-UPS DO NOT FEEL SO GREAT
ALTHOUGH THAT WOULD HELP ME LOSE WEIGHT
ALL THAT BENDING AND STRETCHING
JUST MAKES ME START RETCHING
CALISTHENICS ARE SOMETHING I HATE.
