I need a haircut and when I need a haircut I go see Mr. Barber.
That is not his real name. His real name is Peter Vodovoz and he runs the Mr. Barber of Chicago shop at 200 E. Walton. His shop is no salon, it’s a barber shop; a fact punctuated by its straightforward slogan: We make you handsome.
Peter learned his craft in his native Russia, from which he emigrated in 1991.
We have never respected the river.It was a poor people’s neighborhood, starting in the 1840s, when the poorest huddled along its banks. The wealthy preferred the lakefront and not without reason.
After the stockyards opened in the 1860s, a portion of the river was called “Bubbly Creek” because it was filled with animal carcasses and waste that would bubble to the surface.
And still, during the Great Depression people moved into houseboats on the river. They had no money for rent.
Film and music have always been intrinsically linked. Even before the rise of talkies, movies were backed by live orchestras, underlining and magnifying the images and emotions on the screen. As the 48th Chicago International Film Festival kicks off, WBEZ music aficionados Tony Sarabia and Richard Steele are joined by Chicago musician Daniel Knox on Thursday's Morning Shift to talk about their favorite composers, and those indelible moments when music and film perfectly meld. Here are some of their picks:
Tony Sarabia:
"Sheeshy Ki Botal" - M. Ashraf
"O My Love" - M. Ashraf
"Ek Bottle Bagal Main" - RD Burman
Long before Al Gore invented the Internet or made us aware of An Inconvenient Truth, a book was published that altered our awareness of the natural world and arguably founded modern ecology. On September 27, 1962 Rachel Carson published Silent Spring. It became an immediate best seller and has sold over two million copies.
Carson’s essential message was elemental, shocking and very pessimistic. Using the effects of DDT as her primary example, she argued that chemical and pesticide over use was ruining the environment and threatening human health. Her bottom line arguments were two-fold.
1) The Earth/environment is a sponge not a filter. What goes in stays in.
2) For every action there is a reaction. Once DDT or other pesticides enter the biosphere, they not only kill bugs, but they also make their way up the food chain to alter and infect crops, birds, animals, fish populations and eventually effect and endanger the health and long term viability of human beings. Here the warning was clear: “If humankind poisoned nature, nature would in turn poison humankind.”
At the time and even now, some of her critics accuse her of being a Luddite.
