Plus: Michael Jordan’s Fucked-Up Family
“When Myra Greene asked her white friends to be a part of her photographic exploration of whiteness, their first question was usually, ‘Why?’ Their second: ‘What should I wear?'” Jordan Teicher writes for Slate.
“As Greene traveled the country making collaborative portraits for her book My White Friends, the answers were often ambiguous. But the conversations they spawned were fruitful, if slightly foreign, to her subjects. ‘Being asked to be in a photograph because of race has happened many times in my life,’ Greene said, who is African-American. ‘I don’t think a lot of white people have been asked to do something because of their racial identity. It changes the way they think of that experience of being photographed.’
“Greene, an associate professor of photography at Columbia College Chicago, has frequently used photography as a means to explore questions of race and its representation.”
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“Myra Greene was born in New York City and received her B.F.A. from Washington University in St. Louis and her M.F.A. in photography from the University of New Mexico.
“She currently resides in Chicago Il, where she is an Associate Professor of Photography at Columbia College Chicago.
“She received an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Photography (2009) and has completed residencies at Light Work in Syracuse New York (2004) and the Center for Photography at Woodstock (2004).”
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Photos via the PBS NewsHour.
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Additional slideshow with a public radio interview.
Michael Jordan’s $5 Million Gambling Spree
It happened one night, according to Roland Lazenby’s new biography.
But the real – if not entirely new – revelation, via Ed Sherman for the Tribune, is this:
“Lazenby’s portrayal of Jordan’s father James is highly unflattering. He includes charges by Jordan’s sister, Sis, that James Jordan sexually abused her, which she detailed in her own book. While Lazenby says it is impossible to verify what happened, he writes that the allegations'”would prove to be an unarticulated seed of division in the family.'”
Let’s go to the Daily Mail for more:
The marriage of Michael’s parents was fraught with violent battles with James allegedly delivering knockout punches at times. The family was never without ‘a lurking element of fear’, writes Lazenby, a basketball journalist who spent almost 30 years covering Jordan’s time in college and then the NBA and beyond.
According to Sis, when Deloris realized her daughter was sexually active, she called her a slut which prompted Sis to declare, ‘If I’m such a slut, why don’t you keep your husband out of my bed’?
James Jordan had been climbing into bed with the little girl for eight years starting when she was a preschooler, Sis claimed.
‘Her father first explained that he was teaching her to kiss like an adult,’ and the abuse escalated over time.
When forced to confront her father, he lunged at her and began choking her saying she misunderstood his affection. Michael was only 12 at the time in 1975 and never knew about the abuse until years later.
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Sports Illustrated interviews Lazenby.
Wayne’s World
“From his boyhood memories of the raid on a bookie joint under the Chicago apartment where he grew up, to the murder cases he worked on as an officer with the Chicago Police Department’s organized crime division, Harper College professor Wayne A. Johnson has been steeped in the violence of mobsters,” Burt Constable writes for the Daily Herald.
“Isolated murders, such as the infamous St. Valentine’s Day Massacre or the beating deaths of brothers Anthony ‘Tony the Ant’ and Michael Spilotro, have become scenes in mob movies.
“‘But nobody ever put it in one place before,’ says Johnson, who has done that with his new book, A History of Violence: An Encyclopedia of 1,400 Chicago Mob Murders.”
You may remember Johnson from his days at the Chicago Crime Commission. Now he’s an associate professor at Harper College.
I&M Canal Tell-All
“Organizers behind an illustrated history book about the Illinois & Michigan Canal hope to raise $12,500 over the next few weeks to make the project a reality,” Bill Wimbiscus reports for the Joliet Herald-News.
“Author/illustrator Tom Willcockson and the Canal Corridor Association plan to use Kickstarter.com funding to publish Passage to Chicago: Traveling the Illinois and Michigan Canal in 1860.
“The planned 80-page book, which will feature more than 100 illustrations, will depict a single mule-drawn cargo boat’s 100-mile journey from LaSalle to Chicago.”
Click through for more, including a sample illustration.
Modern Mob
“Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden is a professional wizard and private investigator in modern-day Chicago, where the criminal underworld isn’t just the mob, but also vampires and demons and their ilk,” Colton Geoffert writes for the Washburn Review, a student-run publication of Washburn University in Topeka.
“If I haven’t sold you on the concept of The Dresden Files with that concept alone, then feel free to move on.”
Otherwise, click through.
KISS Off
Paul Stanley of KISS is scheduled to hit Anderson’s Bookshop in Naperville on May 16 as part of his book tour behind Face The Music, in which, among other things, he alleges that Ace Frehley and Peter Criss are anti-Semites.
Just be aware: “He will pose for fan photos. However, please note: Stanley will not sign memorabilia of any kind.”
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Rolling Stone has an excerpt.
The Art Of Secrets
“The Art of Secrets is the young-adult story of an investigation centered on a suspected hate crime in Chicago. NPR’s Scott Simon speaks with the book’s author, high school librarian James Klise.”
Klise was born in Peoria and lives on the North Side. From his website:
“The truth is, I always thought of myself as a ‘real writer’ – but I pay my bills doing another job that I love: running a high school library in Chicago. I also supervise the school literary journal, the book club, and the Gay-Straight Alliance. (For info about finding a GSA where you live, please check out my links page.)
“The best part of my job is filling the shelves with GREAT books that I know my students will read for fun. I also enjoy helping students to revise and edit their own writing – making sure it’s the best work possible.”
StudsFest
“A full schedule is now available for Let’s Get Working, a new three-day festival honoring the life and work of Chicago legend Studs Terkel at the University of Chicago’s Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th Street, Chicago,” the university has announced.
“Let’s Get Working explores Terkel’s legacy while showcasing individuals and groups from Chicago and beyond who have been influenced and inspired by Terkel’s work as a broadcaster, historian, actor, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author. This event is free and open to the public.”
See also: studs.uchicago.edu.
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Comments welcome.
Posted on May 6, 2014