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Audio/Visuals: Saving our parents

Between one and two million Americans over the age of 65 is injured or mistreated by someone they depend on for care. Actor Ed Asner, X'48, speaks out about elder abuse in the documentary Saving Our Parents.

July 2, 2009 at 10:50 AM | Comments (0)

Stuff We Like: Particles accelerated, organized donations, and more

PARTICLES ACCELERATED
"Grains of Sand Reveal Possible Fifth State of Matter" (Wired Science blog, Wired, Jun. 24, 2009)
“Physicists have a rich toolbox for dealing with solids, liquids, and gases," says physics professor Heinrich Jaeger. "We don’t have a manual for when the old categories don’t apply.”

ORGANIZED DONATIONS
"How To Get A Liver When You Need One" (Forbes, Jun. 30, 2009)
Chicago Booth's Gary Becker, AM'53, PhD'55, estimates that we could completely eliminate the shortage of donor kidneys by paying donors about $15,000.

COUNTERTERRORISM CASHOUT
"Compensation Nation" (Slate, Jun. 19, 2009)
"It's time to formally compensate the victims of overzealous counter-terrorism policies," writes Aziz Huq, who joins the Law School as an assistant professor this month.

MILESTONES

  • "Fifty Books for Our Times" (Newsweek, Jun. 27, 2009)
    Newsweek editors named professor Jerry Coyne's book Why Evolution Is True as their #39 what-to-read-now tome. "Even innocent bystanders in the culture wars," they write, "should understand the evidence that supports evolution."

July 2, 2009 at 10:29 AM | Comments (0)

Wingy city

Kim BerylKim Beryl sits on the closest thing to a throne the Taste of Chicago has to offer.

Perched on a red chair overseeing the action at the Harold’s Chicken #71 tent, Beryl is a 27-year veteran of the ten-day marathon of chicken-wing frying and hot-sauce drizzling. And there’s plenty of it in the Harold’s tent at Columbus and Congress: patrons squeeze their way to the water-coolers-turned-hot-sauce-containers and vendors ask loudly, "Who wants Harold’s?" The air is crowded with smells, with Oak Street Beach Café’s spicy wings just across the street.

“I love the Taste,” Beryl says. “The people, the energy it takes—it’s gruesome to the body, but it’s all worth it.”

The world’s largest food festival, now in its 29th year, kicked off Friday, and the city expects to attract more than 6 million people. Beryl, an assistant manager at Harold’s #71 at 2109 South Wabash Avenue, says this might be the slowest Taste she’s seen, but Harold’s and the 53 other food vendors still expect a lively crowd to brave the economic downturn, overcast weather, and hundreds of extra calories to enjoy the festivities.

At least it’s not 2004. That year, Beryl remembers, a rainstorm hit like no other the Taste had seen. But even nature’s best attempt to stop the festivities only added to them. “It almost washed us out,” she says with a laugh. “It rained so hard for so long that people were coming into the booth. With the electricity and the propane tanks it was kind of scary.”

Rain or shine, the Taste goes on, and it had better with all the chicken wings Harold’s has on hand. Beryl’s restaurant staff spent weeks preparing 300 cases of wings—200 wings per case—for the event. For the past 11 years she has organized the 25-member team that cooks up the stand’s wings, hush puppies, and okra. Most of the workers have returned from last year, Beryl said, and people as far as Ohio have come to work the Harold’s tent.

Harold’s typically isn’t at the top in terms of Taste sales—that honor usually goes to Robinson’s No. 1 Ribs—and the chicken wing is less iconic that the massive turkey leg that Manny’s Cafeteria has taken over this year. Still, Beryl is glad to be back for another year, watching over the greasy wings that have won the hearts of so many Hyde Parkers.

Jake Grubman, ‘11

July 2, 2009 at 6:22 AM | Comments (0)

True Maroons: Gabriel McElwain, Willie Davis, Edward Tenner, and more

SHARED SONG
"Inspiration Rules at Songwriting Workshop" (Southtown Star, Jun. 28, 2009)
Songwriting-workshop instructor Gabriel McElwain, AB'03, says he learns more about his craft when teaching it to teens than when doing it himself.

FINANCIAL FUMBLE
"Tough Losses: Recession Hurts Even the Savviest of Ex-Athletes" (USA Today, Jun. 28, 2009)
Former Green Bay Packer Willie Davis, MBA'68, has seen his investment portfolios dwindle during the recession: "It's gone, I realize that. I just try to move on."

JUST A NUMBER
"When Stats Bite Back" (Dispatches, Atlantic, Jun. 24, 2009)
Writing about using statistics to consider human worth, Edward Tenner, AM'67, PhD'72, quotes F. Scott Fitzgerald: "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function."

MILESTONES

  • "Local Geneticist, 84, to Get $500,000 Prize" (Chicago Tribune, Jul. 1, 2009)
    In October Janet Rowley, PhB'45, SB'46, MD'48, receives the 2009 Peter and Patricia Gruber Genetics Prize for her findings that establish cancer as a genetic disease.

  • "Hall Named Dean" (UA News, Jul. 1, 2009)
    James A. Hall, AM'75, has been named dean of the University of Alabama's School of Social Work.

  • "Hewitt Associates Appoints Green to Board" (Business Wire, Jul. 1, 2009)
    Judson Green, MBA'76, joins the board of directors for Hewitt Associates, a global human-resources consulting company.

July 1, 2009 at 4:14 PM | Comments (0)

The lost tale of the glass eye

Years ago, so long I can’t remember exactly when, I watched a TV documentary about the London Underground's lost and found. Umbrellas in every size and color, of course: but there was also a surprising number of improbable objects, such as artificial limbs. How does one manage to leave one’s leg on the Tube?

At the University of Chicago, where everyone is too preoccupied with intellectual matters to remember their scarves, there are ten lost and founds. The registrar's office is the keeper of the “official” one, but each library and a few other buildings have their own. This past spring I explored the lost things in the Reynolds Club basement.

Scarves, jackets, a gym bag or two, and of course, books. Someone had left behind Volume 8, Nineteenth-Century Europe, from the Readings in Western Civilization series; someone else had abandoned Volume 9. There were textbooks on micro- and macroeconomics; something in Greek that might have been the Iliad; a training manual for animal lab technicians; a printout of an original two-act play, Heat Wave, “a work of fiction based on the very real events of the summer of 1995.” Less expected was a book adaptation of the inspirational Lee Ann Womack song “I Hope You Dance,” CD single included—a jettisoned birthday present, perhaps.

The largest-ever object in the collection, says fourth-year Kathryn Fallon, Student Activities Center manager, was a nine-foot-long oar abandoned for most of last summer. The crew team had forgotten it after a recruiting event and somehow never missed it: “We had to e-mail the crew team to let them know,” says Fallon.

And then there’s the tale of the glass eye, a story I had heard from Jennifer Kennedy, assistant director of the Student Activities Center. As the story goes, last winter somebody sent a letter claiming that during a Halloween concert at Mandel Hall, he had lost a glass eye down a heating grate. “There was discussion about whether or not this was a hoax, because it was just too weird,” says Fallon. “The letter was from France, and postmarked a month afterward, which kind of compounded the weird factor.”

But sure enough, Bob James, manager of Mandel Hall, found an eye in Mandel Hall—“not the whole eye, but the front to the eye,” says Fallon. Still suspicious, they searched the Internet and discovered “the guy had been apparently planting the eyes.”

“Someone was definitely here and dropped off the eye—we don’t know if it was him or an accomplice in Chicago,” Fallon says. “So we mailed him a letter that said, ‘We found your eye!’ but apparently we weren’t either awkward or snarky enough to get on his Web site.”

I tried to find this alleged fake-glass-eye Web site. Usually Google is more than adequate for such junk-culture searches, but I found nothing. Was I using the wrong search terms?

I e-mailed Kennedy, who wrote back with the advice that I ask James, “the man who knows the full story of the eye and is currently its caretaker.” So I e-mailed him a couple of times—no response. I phoned him a couple of times and left messages—no response. I even dropped by the Reynolds Club, but our schedules were off, and I never managed to catch him.

I forgot about it for weeks, then months. I put my notes somewhere. I put my recorder somewhere else. Eventually I had to tear both my desk and my apartment apart to find it all.

I still don’t know what happened with the glass eye. I guess at this point, I never will. “Very little of what comes in is claimed,” Fallon had told me about the lost and found. “And of the people who come back looking for stuff, very few find what they’re looking for.”

Carrie Golus, AB'91, AM'93

June 30, 2009 at 11:02 PM | Comments (0)

Hot fun in the summertime

ORSCA summer 2009

Among the throng of sun-soaked students and hyperactive kids, a content father patiently waited. With a small child in one arm and another by his side, he was firmly entrenched in the long lunch line that snaked around the eastern half of Bartlett quad. Free food, free entertainment for him and his family, and a beautiful early summer day—he looked happy.

Then the child holding his hand suddenly broke free and dashed off, answering the siren call of a nearby water slide. He took a step out of line to chase her, but then changed his mind, making a half-hearted cry for his wife and resuming his place in line. Free ribs can do that to you.

Indeed, hundreds were drawn to the Bartlett quad to kick off summer with the Office of the Reynolds Club & Student Activities (ORCSA). The Friday afternoon event was catered by the Hyde Park Barbecue and Bakery, formerly known as Orly’s, and two large water slides, which offered some complications for ORCSA volunteers.

“The very first girl on the very first run of the day sort of went down the slide wrong,” said David Muff, ’10, as he manned his post by the large, inflatable blue slide, corralling kids’ excitement just enough to get them to form a line. “And as she got to the bottom, all the water at the base sort of came spilling out, and the thing partially collapsed. So I had to refill it. Off to a good start.”

The event otherwise went off without a hitch, as attendees sought shade after finally obtaining their plates stacked high with barbecued ribs, chicken kabobs, salad, and dessert. The man behind the pig-out was David Shopiro, U-High’69, who has run Orly’s in Hyde Park for nearly 30 years and recently changed the place’s name, interior, and offerings. Judging by the lines, the barbecue and baked desserts were a hit—Shopiro brought enough to feed 400 people, but 90 minutes in there wasn’t a clean plate left, and he was nearly out of the more than 500 ribs he had prepared. People lined up with tiny dessert plates too small to fit the massive ribs they had their stomachs set on.

The event also featured Willy Chyr, AB’09, a balloon artist known for his installation in the Biological Sciences Learning Center and his sprawling, colorful dresses modeled at May's Festival of the Arts fashion show. Chyr sculpted elaborate balloon animals and bright headdresses for the faculty and staff's children who scampered about during the event, sculpting one balloon every two minutes for two hours straight.

With his two soaking children in tow, balloons in hand, the no-longer-hungry father started to walk off. He looked a little tired, like he had gotten too much sun. But at least he got his ribs.

Luke Fiedler, ’10

Third-year students Lim En and Eileen Ting sample the good eats made by Hyde Park Barbecue and Bakery.

Photo by Lloyd DeGrane.

June 29, 2009 at 2:51 PM | Comments (0)

True Maroons: Andrea Walker, Grant McCracken, Anthony Grafton, and more

U OF C, SEEN & NOTED
"Chicago, Where Fun Comes To Die" (The Book Bench blog, New Yorker, Jun. 25, 2009)
Andrea Walker, AM'99, AM'02, shares thoughts about UChicago tees, Baffler's comeback, and Twitterature.

OLD REGIME & NEW REGIME BRANDS
"Futurist and Culture Guru Grant McCracken: Optimistic on Effects of Recession?" (Thom H.C. Anderson blog, Jun. 24, 2009)
"There will always be a Martha. She speaks to and for a certain constituency," says anthropologist Grant McCracken, AM'76, PhD'81. "But I think her cultural trend and theme is being supplanted by the Rachael Rays of the world."

DISHONEST QUESTIONS
"Deception as a Way of Knowing: A Conversation with Anthony Grafton" (Cabinet magazine, Spring 2009)
"Montaigne and other anti-absolutist philosophers with the tools of ancient skepticism at their disposal found ways to resist the world-view of the witch-finder," says historian Anthony Grafton, AB'71, AM'72, PhD'75.

AT HOME IN THE CAPITAL
"The Chicago Way" (Congress Daily blog, National Journal, Jun. 22, 2009)
Rep. Mike Quigley, AM'85, leads his "rag tag team" from his Capitol Hill office where he also sleeps on an air mattress.

ECONOMIC RX
"Medical Analysis by Milton Friedman" (Forbes, Jun. 19, 2009)
After researching the health-care industry in 2001, Milton Friedman, AM'33, concluded the current U.S. health-care system creates increased medical spending and rampant dissatisfaction: "Third-party payment has required the bureaucratization of medical care," he wrote. "The interest of the patient is often in direct conflict with the interest of the caregiver's ultimate employer."

MILESTONES

  • "ICFJ Set To Honor Hersh" (MediaBistro, Fishbowl NY blog, Jun. 24, 2009)
    Seymour Hersh, AB'58, will receive the Founders Award from the International Center for Journalists later this year.

  • "30 Under 30" (Windy City Times, Jun. 24, 2009)
    Ryan Kaminski, AB'08, made the Windy City Times editors' list of "30 Under 30" movers and shakers in Chicago's LGBT community.

  • "Another Chicagoan Joins the Obama Administration" (The Scoop from Washington blog, Chicago Sun-Times, Jun. 25, 2009)
    Bryan Samuels, AM'93, joins the Obama White House as the Commissioner of the Administration on Children, Youth and Families, Health and Human Services.

June 26, 2009 at 4:11 PM | Comments (0)

Audio/Visuals: Remembering John Callaway

John Callaway, founding director of the University of Chicago's William Benton Fellowship Program in Broadcast Journalism, died Tuesday. To honor his legacy, the Museum of Classic Chicago Television staff compiled this short collection of "outtakes and little pieces made just for fun."

June 26, 2009 at 1:41 PM | Comments (0)