WBEZ 91.5 Chicago

I wanted to share this with you all. It's a super cool trailer for an interesting film that's about to come out. 

The synopsis sounds great:

"HAPPY combines cutting-edge science from the new field of “positive psychology” with real-life stories of people from around the world whose lives illustrate these findings. We see the story of a beautiful woman named Melissa Moody, a mother of three who had a “perfect life” until the day she was run over by a truck. Disabled for nine years and disfigured for life, amazingly she is happier now than before her accident. Manoj Singh, a rickshaw puller from the slums of Kolkata, India who lives in a hut made of plastic bags with his family, is found to be as happy as the average American. Through these and other stories HAPPY leads us toward a deeper understanding of how we can all live more fulfilling, healthy and happy lives."

Read more about the film on their website.

Thanks to Maria Popova at BrainPickings for the tip. 

yours,

amy

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Chicago's top headlines, piped straight to your earbuds.

In the fourth installment of “Under the Gun,” Rob Wildeboar hits the streets with some Toronto cops. Not just any cops though, the special anti-violence unit Toronto created following a year of 70-plus homicides in the country.

Kraft is splitting up. The Nortfield, Ill.-based company will have on division dedicated to grocery and another for snack foods. Oreo and Trident would be under snacks, while the cheese, beverages and convenient meals would be under the grocery division.

Gary, Ind. will be the site of a $165 million rail expansion from Canadian National. CN also announced it will relocate a locomotive repair shop from Homewood, Illinois, to Gary.

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After battling over the debt ceiling, Congress went on vacation, and left some work unsettled. Without an agreement on funding for the Federal Aviation Administration, the agency was forced to furlough more than 4,000 employees across the country.

As of last week, there were 145 furloughed FAA employees in Chicago. The furloughed workers are the airport planners and supervisors on projects. Projects like the radar installation in DuPage County for incoming traffic from the west for O’Hare International Airport.

The furlough also means there is no one to distribute the $3.6 million in grant money to O’Hare — or to continue planning the runway status lights at O’Hare. Or to answer back Midway about the request for an extension to be put on the list for privatization.

“The Chicago Department of Aviation does not anticipate any funding impact to the portion of O’Hare Modernization Program projects that are currently under construction,” Chicago Department of Aviation Commissioner Rosemarie S. Andolino said in a statement.

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1. Evanston's Next Theatre has announced that their new managing director will be Jon Arndt. Arndt comes from the Chicago Children's Theater, and is replacing Jim Davis, who had been the interim managing director, but is going back to production manager. 

2. Internship offer, for those who are younger readers, or older readers trying to relive their youth. Emerald City Theatre is looking for an education intern, who will assistant teach their Fall 2011 classes at their Theatre School, and also at After School programs throughout the city. It'll probably be throughout the fall, and you gotta like kids. 

3. Wonderbat, Old People, and Carl & the Passions are all at iO tonight at 8 pm.

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Notwithstanding the 20th Century development of "theater in the round"--which often is in the square or oval--Western culture abandoned the circle as a primary theatrical shape some 2200 years ago, when the rising Roman civilization co-opted  the waning Greeks. The most obvious feature of a Greek theater was the perfectly circular space at the very center of things, a space the Greeks called the orchestra, or "dancing place." It had nothing to do with a group of musicians playing instruments (although they were there, too), but with the chorus who sang, chanted and danced.

The Romans eliminated the chorus, and cut the orchestra in half, making it into a semi-circle of largely-decorative function. With the re-discovery of Roman architecture during the Renaissance, and the development of the first indoor theaters, Western Europe took the semi-circle--still called the orchestra--and elongated it into the horseshoe shape of classic theaters of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. Today, we use the word orchestra to mean a group of instrumentalists, not dancers.

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Things that are free: The Paper Machete. Things that are not free: Netflix. Brooke Breit explains what a "streamer" is and more about the Netflix price hike. John Paul Davis reads a poem about Amy Winehouse. The Paper Machete first-timer Scott Levy talks about Chicago's high gas prices. And on your way out,  listen to the sweet sounds of house musician Jonas Friddle.

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Our Flickr pool just keeps cranking out the hits.

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