I was a good girl and voted today. The judicial ballot was annoyingly long as usual, and I spent inordinate amounts of time on the web reading the various bar association and judicial commission reports trying to figure out who to vote for. The one race I chose not to vote in was for our Congressman. The incumbent is someone whose positions I ( Read more... )

Last night, I went to hear Chuck Thurow, one of the curators, talk about the Hyde Park Art Center exhibit, "Close Encounters", a collaborative project involving artists from the U.S. and New Zealand. I'd have likely gone anyway, but the fact that I've made Kiwi friends here and on BookCrossing gave the project an immediacy and interest for me that ( Read more... )

ARTIn January, 1904, the Chicago Public Library's first branch library opened. The T.B. Blackstone branch was built from funds donated by his widow for that purpose, and was designed by Solon Beman. (This was something of a family tradition, as Blackstone himself had had a library built in Branford, Connecticut, in his father's memory. In that ( Read more... )