By Nancy Simon

There’s a popular contemporary song by the musical artist Andra Day entitled “Rise Up,” in which Day sings “You’re broken down and tired of living life on a merry-go-round and you can’t find the fighter, but I see it in you so we gonna walk it out and move mountains . . . I’ll rise up, I’ll rise like the day, ooh, ooh, ooh.”
Those words help connote the sentiment behind a term that has taken center stage at a time when society has become tired of the status quo, frustrated with elected officials, angry at law enforcement officers, and anxious for change.
If you had to encapsulate in a singular word what the lyrics of “Rise Up” are trying to relay – that there is a fresh idea, a new movement, rapidly gaining momentum that offers promise and hope and the opportunity to move in a new direction away from all things Establishment – you are likely to hit upon the word groundswell.

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Posted on July 27, 2016

By James Cockayne/The Conversation

After a dramatic Republican National Convention in Cleveland which saw Donald Trump finally become the party’s official nominee, Hillary Clinton will this week accept the formal nomination of the Democratic Party.
U.S. national conventions have always been big business opportunities. As one long-time ally of the Bush family reportedly said, “For people who operate in and around government, you can’t not be here.”
Although some of the usual donors to the Republican National Convention, like Ford and UPS, stayed home this year, the host committee was able to raise nearly $60 million from American businesses.
Yet historically the “people who operate in and around government” are not only legitimate businesses but also, sometimes, less-than-legitimate ones.
Take the 1932 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

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Posted on July 25, 2016

Plus: Oak Park’s Little Free Library War

“Marvel, purveyor of superhero franchises, has given two vocal and constantly sparring online communities a new reason to wage battle this week by changing the gender, age and race of a canonical comic book character,” CBC News reports.
“Whether or not the fans were flamed on purpose is up for debate – but what’s certain is that Iron Man will soon be a 15-year-old black girl from Chicago.”

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Posted on July 8, 2016

BRGC zine #2
Bush
(the trade pub model)
Herzog

Posted on July 4, 2016

It’s Not All Backstairs Boogie

“The world of the Kamasutra is a fantasized world of sex that is in many ways the prototype for Hugh Hefner’s glossy Playboy empire,” writes University of Chicago history of religions professor Wendy Doniger in her new book, Redeeming the Kamasutra,” Kyle Smith notes for the New York Post.
“Nor, in its single-girl-about-town sections, would it be unfamiliar to Carrie Bradshaw of Sex and the City. Its seduction advice even anticipated the player’s handbook The Game – a guy is advised to have a wingman pretend to be a fortune teller and tell the target lady’s mom how blessed with auspicious signs the suitor is.”
Yuck.

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Posted on July 1, 2016