Today In The Culture, June 28, 2022: Summers At Taliesin | Proposed Bike Lane Enforcement Ordinance | The Return of the Channel 2 Jumbotron

 Suzanne Rose’s self-portrait series, “Moments of Being,” runs through July 30 at Zolla/Lieberman. It’s described as a “series on the art of loss. In dialogue with Elizabeth Bishop’s poem, ‘One Art,’ this series examines beauty in life through a soft lens of memory. Found in everyday moments, these images contemplate underlying themes of love, longing, grief, and the desire to be truly seen.” More here.

DESIGN

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Granddaughter Remembers Summers At Taliesin

“For several years when Nora Natof was in her teens in the early 1950s, she was permitted to spend summers at Taliesin. She recalls her mother being concerned about her being the only teenage girl there among the architectural fellows studying, but says some of her male cousins were there at the same time,” writes the Oak Park Wednesday Journal. “Now eighty-seven, Natof says those summers ‘probably influenced me a lot.’ The community aspect of Taliesin is one she recalls in detail. At that point, she says, the home in Spring Green, Wisconsin was an ‘almost’ sustainable community with vegetable gardens and farm animals.”

Forty-Five Out Of Fifty Chicago Alders Sign On To Proposed Bike Lane Enforcement Ordinance

At last count, forty-five out of fifty Chicago alders have signed onto the proposed Bike Lane Enforcement Ordinance introduced by the fortieth ward’s Andre Vasquez, posts Streetsblog Chicago.

Tower Crane Erected For 920 North Wells

“The tower crane has now been installed for 920 North Wells,” reports YIMBY Chicago, “where Chicago-based developer JDL has planned an eighteen-story mixed-use building. This structure is the first stepping stone in a massive new development known as North Union, occupying 8.1 acres on property formerly owned by the Moody Bible Institute.”

DINING & DRINKING

House Of Wah Sun Will Relocate To Former Golden Nugget

“Last Saturday night at the House of Wah Sun in North Center, Mark Chiang lingered at the table of a few of the night’s last customers. His wife, Young Ja Kim, had already wheeled over the egg rolls, crab rangoon, and heaping platters of crispy chow fun, cumin lamb, and Sichuan green beans, but Chiang was preoccupied by the imminent relocation of his Cantonese-Mandarin restaurant to a recently shuttered Golden Nugget two miles to the west in Irving Park,” writes Mike Sula at the Reader. “If can I would stay here,” Chiang told Sula. “I don’t want to go but I take this opportunity. Twenty-one years I been here and it’s finally time.”

Chipotle United Notches First Union

“Workers at the Augusta Chipotle have organized a union,” Maine AFL-CIO announces. “These workers are demanding safe, adequate staffing at their store. They filed today for union recognition as Chipotle United, an independent union.”

Chicago Gig Drivers Look For Workarounds On Gas Prices

“Drivers can make the most of their gas tank by reducing their speed ten to fifteen miles per hour, slowing down the pace of acceleration and using cruise control… adding that taking part in loyalty programs at gas stations can also help lower prices,” reports the Sun-Times. “Companies that many gig workers use have tried to provide some relief for drivers. In March, Uber implemented a surcharge for consumers ranging from forty-five cents to fifty-five cents for each ride-hailing trip, and a surcharge ranging from thirty-five cents to forty-five cents for each Uber Eats delivery because of gas prices.”

FILM & TELEVISION

John Oliver On Supreme Court Decision: “This Is Some Absolute Bullshit”

HBO’s angry man weighs in on the end of Roe vs Wade: “It turns out Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton not only closed the office early on Friday to celebrate the SCOTUS decision, he announced that from now on every June 24 would be a holiday at the AG’s office,” writes Rolling Stone. “‘Nope, f— you,’ Oliver said. ‘First, June 24th is already a holiday, it’s Solange’s birthday, and she doesn’t deserve this on her day. Second, nobody wants to go to a sanctity-of-life anti-choice cookout—the potato salad is going to be trash. And finally, you don’t get a holiday to celebrate the loss of rights for millions of people when you already have one, and it’s called Columbus Day.'”

LIT

States Mandating What Books Can Be Held By Public Libraries

“At a time when public school libraries have increasingly become targets in the culture wars, some red states are going further, proposing legislation aimed at libraries serving the community as a whole. A few of the bills would open librarians up to legal liability over decisions they make,” reports NPR. “We’re seeing more indirect efforts to control what’s available to the community or to put in laws that would direct how the library staff collects books,” Deborah Caldwell Stone, director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, tells NPR.

MEDIA

Clarence Thomas Declares Need To Sue The Free Press

Clarence Thomas has “expressed a desire to revisit a landmark 1964 ruling that makes it relatively difficult to bring successful lawsuits against media outlets for defamation,” reports The Hill (via WGN-TV). Thomas dissented from the Supreme Court’s decision not to hear an appeal from a Christian nonprofit [ministry] which disputed its characterization by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The suit “had been dismissed by lower courts for failing to overcome the decades-old legal standard, established in the landmark 1964 New York Times v. Sullivan decision, that public figures who sue for defamation must not only prove defendants made defamatory statements, but that those statements were made with ‘actual malice.'”

According to CNN, Thomas wrote, “I would grant certiorari in this case to revisit the ‘actual malice’ standard. This case is one of many showing how New York Times and its progeny have allowed media organizations and interest groups ‘to cast false aspersions on public figures with near-impunity. SPLC’s ‘hate group’ designation lumped Coral Ridge’s Christian ministry with groups like the Ku Klux Klan and Neo-Nazis… [U]nable to satisfy the ‘almost impossible’ actual-malice standard this Court has imposed, Coral Ridge could not hold SPLC to account for what it maintains is a blatant falsehood.” (Neil Gorsuch concurred with Thomas that the standard should be revisited; the dissent is here.)

Lightfoot Curses Thomas

Gregory Pratt writes at the Trib about the mayor’s reaction to Friday’s Supreme Court decision. “Lightfoot has warned for months that the court may go after LGBTQ rights and was discussing Thomas’ dissent at a Pride event when someone in the audience shouted, ‘Fuck Clarence Thomas.’ ‘Fuck Clarence Thomas,’ Lightfoot responded, drawing cheers from the crowd, according to a video on social media.” (Pratt adds on Twitter that the video is being widely circulated on rightwing media.)

Channel 2 To Restore Jumbotron Overlooking Daley Plaza

“Construction is underway on a jumbotron monitor along the western exterior of the CBS Broadcast Center at 22 West Washington,” reports Robert Feder. “If all goes according to plan, we look for the sign to be fully operational by mid-to-late August,” Jennifer Lyons, president and general manager tells Feder. “Our 24/7 local news stream, CBS News Chicago, will be the content.”

Reader Nominated For Seven AAN Awards

The judges for the 2022 AAN Awards have honored ninety-five individual finalists from a field of over 560 entries submitted by AAN member publications across the U.S. and Canada, AAN relays. “Seven Days (Burlington, Vermont) led with thirteen awards for design and journalism. Chicago Reader, the host publication for the 2022 AAN convention, came in second with seven nominations.” The honorees include Irene Hsiao, Kerry Reid, Leor Galil, Philip Montoro, Katie Prout, Sujay Kumar, Mike Sula, Karen Hawkins, Kathleen Hinkel, Amber Huff and a nod to the publication’s fiftieth-anniversary issue.

Founder Of ProPublica Opines It’s Time For Media To Change Coverage Of Supreme Court

“News coverage of the Supreme Court has always been difficult, but at this point it needs to be fundamentally re-thought,” writes ProPublica’s former president Richard Tofel. “If the Court is determined to employ its political power to the utmost, as with other players in Washington, it becomes the role of the press to expose that power, to question how and to whose benefit it is being used, and to afford the Court the same standards of dignity and privacy afforded to others in politics—and certainly no more than the Court affords its fellow citizens.”

MUSIC

Muti Has Words Near End Of CSO Tenure

“In the twilight of his music directorship of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Riccardo Muti candidly outlined his legacy and implored musicians to remember his instruction on Giuseppe Verdi’s operas: use the nineteenth century scores without altered notes,” reports AP (via the Washington Post). “He urged them to reject modern directorial concepts seeking relevance. ‘In twenty to thirty years, when everything will collapse, you will say maybe Muti was right,’ the eighty-year-old Italian conductor told the orchestra.” Of contemporary directors, Muti tells AP, “Many of them—most of them don’t read music. Some are absolutely deaf… I’m sure that after a long experiment in this direction, that now has become old, too. There’s nothing new to have the opera transposed to today. At the end, when everybody will be tired, people will start to think—maybe two generations from now—why don’t we try to see and to experiment again what was that world?”

Concert Safety Reconsidered

“Do police and hired security have a place in live music? Or is the community of fans, artists, venues, and presenters better able to keep itself safe?” asks the Reader headline of Kira Leadholm’s investigation. “[W]hat might replace the imposing CPD tower at Lollapalooza or confrontational security guards at local venues[?] … The live-music industry supports and relies upon police and police-adjacent security in myriad ways, and severing its connection to policing is no small task. Music venues in gentrifying neighborhoods can contribute to the overpolicing of these communities. Retired and off-duty police officers often staff private security forces, and in Illinois, former and current officers don’t have to complete security firearm training… Law enforcement at concerts can seem like a necessary evil—bringing together a large number of people who are likely to be drinking or using drugs often leads to physical altercations and medical emergencies. But hired security and police are frequently ill-equipped to keep concertgoers safe in those situations. What viable alternatives exist to the status quo?”

Douglass Park Neighbors Rue Summer’s Three For-Profit Music Fests

“Summer Smash took over much of Douglass Park Juneteenth weekend and Heatwave Festival and Riot Fest are coming later this summer. It can take weeks to set up and tear down the fests each time,” reports Block Club Chicago. “With music fest season in full swing, North Lawndale and Little Village residents fear they may be fenced out of their neighborhoods’ main park for most of the summer.”

STAGE

How The World Outside Changes What’s Inside The Theater

“One of the uniquely compelling properties of theater is that while a production is essentially the same from one performance to the next, its meaning can change overnight. Events in a turbulent world have a way of doing that to a living, breathing art form,” writes theater critic Peter Marks at the Washington Post. “This idea was brought home to me once again this past week, as art and life intermingled in ways that freshly illuminated both. The convergence carried a stinging irony, because a time-honored work for the stage that had been radically transformed seemed suddenly in bitter conversation with the radical act of a time-honored institution…”

“American Buffalo” Only Broadway Show To Keep Mask Requirement

“Circle in the Square, with 751 seats as it is currently configured, is the only remaining Broadway theater that is not operated by a large company or a nonprofit organization, so its decisions are not tied to those of a bigger entity,” reports the New York Times. “The play, starring Sam Rockwell, Laurence Fishburne and Darren Criss, is being staged at Broadway’s only theater-in-the-round (it’s actually almost-in-the-round, because the seating doesn’t entirely encircle the stage), which means there are more patrons seated within spitting distance of actors… The vast majority [of productions] take place in theaters operated by a handful of big landlords who endorsed the mask-optional decision… And summer fare on Broadway is dominated by big musicals, where the audience tends to skew toward tourists, many of whom come from places where masks are long gone.”

ARTS & CULTURE

Big Tech Companies Reluctant To Guarantee Safety Of Health Data

“Motherboard asked some of the biggest tech companies on the planet if they’ll provide law enforcement with user data related to abortions. None of them answered the question,” reports Motherboard. “Motherboard contacted a slew of tech companies, social networks, and telecommunications giants. They included Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok, Google, Amazon, Discord, Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile. Motherboard also contacted multiple financially focused companies, including Binance, Kraken, CashApp, Coinbase, and Venmo. Motherboard also contacted Uber and Lyft.” The New York Times reports on China’s expansion of its already-vast surveillance apparatus: “Across China, the police are buying technology that harnesses vast surveillance data to predict crime and protest before they happen. The systems and software are targeting people whose behavior or characteristics are suspicious in the eyes of an algorithm and the Chinese authorities, even if they’ve done nothing wrong.”

U. S. Postal Service One Of Nation’s Main Abortion Providers

“A December 2021 decision from the FDA to allow mailing abortion pills and the fallout from the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on June 24 to overturn Roe vs Wade are making the USPS a battleground for abortion access,” reports Quartz. “More than half of all abortions in the U.S. are medication abortions—meaning they are induced by pill. Many of those pills are sent by mail following an online or telehealth consultation, making the USPS, a federal agency, among the main conduits for abortion access…Pills-by-mail will become a legal challenge as well as one of enforcement. While states can regulate access to health within their borders, they can’t regulate federal mail. And monitoring the contents of each of the millions of packages coursing through the national postal system is unrealistic in a post-pandemic world where healthcare has moved beyond brick-and-mortar clinics.” South Dakota governor and presumed vice-presidential aspirant Kristi Noem weighed in on a Sunday chat show tour, indicating “that she would put in place a plan approved by state lawmakers to restrict the pills… Noem said doctors, not their patients, would likely be prosecuted for knowing violations of what would be one of the strictest laws on abortion pills in the United States… ‘I don’t believe women should ever be prosecuted… I don’t believe there should be any punishment for women, ever, that are in a crisis situation or have an unplanned pregnancy.'”

Midwest Access Coalition On Sustaining A “Haven State”

“Founded in 2014, Chicago-based Midwest Access Coalition is one of the earliest and most active examples of a new type of abortion rights effort: the practical support organization,” writes Paula Kamen at Chicago magazine. “With a paid staff of four and more than 200 volunteer drivers and overnight hosts, MAC helps at least 120 women a month—mostly people of color, from as far away as Georgia—with the logistics and cost of traveling to Illinois for a safe, legal abortion.” Says executive director Diana Parker-Kafka, “The state Supreme Court is a just one-Democrat majority, and so that is an election that’s going to be really important for people to show up to. People call Illinois a safe state. I call it a destination state because we are not safe. Conservatives are not going to be happy just with Roe falling. They are going to go after everything. I used to tell funders I hope we are no longer needed and we can sunset this organization or switch missions, but that’s not going to happen in my lifetime.”

Evanston May See Topless Beaches

“A prohibition in the City of Evanston’s public nudity ordinance that disallows the exposure of female breasts maybe be dropped after discussions had during a recent meeting of the city’s Human Services Committee,” reports the Tribune. “I don’t think our current ordinance is narrowly tailored because what is so inherently sexualized about the female body that is not inherently sexualized about the male body,” council member Devon Reid tells the Trib. “I think we just really need to get clear on what this law is.”

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