Phone Messages

In the 1990s, the Daley administration ended a program that had successfully reduced gang violence in neighborhoods such as Pilsen and Little Village. Today, organizations like Enlace Chicago continue to struggle for the resources needed to address the problems produced by political neglect.

In the Spring of 1990 Andrew Apter and Moishe Postone were relatively new faculty at the University of Chicago. Both would go on to become highly regarded teachers and scholars.

Songs about intoxication have a long history, from NWA's Dope Man to Loretta Lynn's Honky Tonk Girl to Henry Purcell's The Macedon Youth.

The terrace at University of Wisconsin's Memorial Union is a spectacular place to study with a pitcher of beer or read a copy of The Onion.

In Providence, Rhode Island of the eighties one could buy a Coffee Cabinet before going to a hear music at Club Rocket, or take Amtrak south to see the same band at d.c. space in our nation's capital.

Little Italy's San Gennaro festival has been the backdrop of multiple movies, including Spike Lee's Jungle Fever, where an intern got to spin cotton candy.

A swindle involving American Express Travelers checks allows purchase of a portable stereo with double cassette tape player.

In 1975, President Ford signed a law allowing women to enter the service academies. Facing enormous hostility, almost half of the women who entered West Point in these early years, dropped out, but one woman who made it through was Sara Potecha.

Porky's drive in opened on St. Paul's university avenue in 1953 and closed in 2011. It's space age building and neon pig's head now reside at The Little Log House Pioneer Village in rural Hastings.

From 1983 to 1992, Medusa's nightclub just south of Wrigley Field welcomed kids of all kinds to celebrate their freakiness on the dance floor.

In the nineteenth century, phone companies began training operators to speak with a telephone voice. These vocal techniques soon became expected of all callers, but women especially were told to discipline their tendencies to be shrill.

In 1997, the Chicago City Council exonerated Catherine O'Leary for the Great Fire of 1871. For the fire's 150 year anniversary, the Chicago Historical Society has an exhibit that includes the model painting for a grand Cyclorama of the fire displayed in 1892.

Party lines, where more the one home shared the same phone line, required a certain telephone etiquette. Although they were phased out in cities like Chicago by the 1980s, as late at 2000, thousands in the U.S. still shared a line with their neighbor.

Democratic Socialism has become increasingly popular among young people, in part thanks to Bernie Sanders, whose activist career can be traced back to his time as an undergraduate at the University of Chicago.

Mervin G. O`Melia was the first director of the Illinois Local Governmental Law Officers Training Board. His driving skills were otherworldly.

The School of the Art Institute of Chicago produced great artists like Ray Yoshida, great rock bands like Shrimp Boat and an artist's colony on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan.

In the 1920s Major General George Owen Squier designed the technology for piping muzak into homes and businesses. Ray Conniff's orchestra perfected this easy listening sound.

College wrestling can be nasty. Only a few triumph, and even fewer go on to become head coaches at Division I schools.

In the 1990s Barack and Michelle Obama could often be found dining at a Hyde Park favorite, the Medici on 57th, whose owner Hans Morsbach was also a carpenter, tree farmer and author of a book on sustainable forestry.

Spring Break in Florida is not always hot young bodies partying on the beach.