The Pennsic festival/Photo: Ron Lutz

By Caylie Sadin

“I’m just checking Twitter for updates on the tournament,” a Medieval maiden says. This maiden is a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA), a group dedicated to researching and recreating the arts, skills and traditions of pre-seventeenth-century Europe “as it ought to have been.” In other words, they enjoy the luxuries of indoor plumbing and easy access to the Internet through smart phones hidden in corsets.

At their Twelfth Night event at the Irish American Heritage Center, Katherine Vonscholsserwald (Kateryn Westburg in real life) has a whole peasant’s house laid out in one of the rooms. She uses planks to delineate the animals’ sleeping area, the cooking fire, the eating area and the bed. She has bowls made of horn and wood, spoons made of ivory and the few metal belongings a peasant would have had—metal was very expensive. She has drawings of what those houses would look like in Yorkshire circa 1200. She even has leeches, which she is going to show to attendees later in the day at her medieval medicine talk. Read the rest of this entry »

By Rob Brezsny

ARIES (March 21-April 19): The coming week is likely to be abnormally free of worries and frustrations. I’m afraid that means you’re not going to have as much right to complain as you usually do. Can you handle that? Or will you feel bereft when faced with the prospect of having so little to grumble about? Just in case, I’ve compiled a list of fake annoyances for you to draw on. 1. “My iPhone won’t light my cigarette.” 2. “The next tissue in my tissue box doesn’t magically poke out when I take one.” 3. “I want some ice cream, but I overstuffed myself at dinner.” 4. “I ran out of bottled water and now I have to drink from the tap.” 5. “My cat’s Facebook profile gets more friend requests than me.” 6. “When people tell me I should feel grateful for all I have instead of complaining all the time, I feel guilty.” Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Dottie Brackett

By John Greenfield

Chicago is blessed with five nonprofit bicycle education centers where locals can learn to ride safely or turn a wrench, spread across the city from Lakeside Velo Works in the South Chicago neighborhood to the Recyclery in Rogers Park. These community bike shops strive to be inclusive, but when most of the other participants are guys, a female who’s new to cycling or mechanics might feel out of her element. Fortunately, West Town Bikes in Humboldt Park offers a couple of cool programs just for the ladies.

West Town is located between the giant flag arches on Division Street’s Paseo Boricua (Puerto Rican Way). Since 2004 the nonprofit has run bike safety and mechanics programs for thousands of underserved young people, mostly taught off-site at schools and community centers, plus maintenance and repair classes for adults. Ciclo Urbano (Urban Bike), a full-service shop at the front of the space, helps fund these endeavors through sales of refurbished rides and repair work. Read the rest of this entry »

By Rob Brezsny

ARIES (March 21-April 19): The Macy’s ad I saw in the newspaper had a blaring headline: “Find Your Magic 2.0.” The items that were being touted to help us discover our upgraded and more deluxe sense of magic were luxurious diamond rings. The cheapest was $2,150. I’m going to try to steer you in another direction in your quest to get in touch with Magic 2.0, Aries. I do believe you are in an excellent position to do just that, but only if you take a decidedly non-materialistic approach. What does your intuition tell you about how to hook up with a higher, wilder version of the primal mojo? Read the rest of this entry »

By Rob Brezsny

ARIES (March 21-April 19): The Sanskrit word tapasya is translated as “heat,” but in the yogic tradition it means “essential energy.” It refers to the practice of managing your life force so that it can be directed to the highest possible purposes, thereby furthering your evolution as a spiritual being. Do you have any techniques for accomplishing that—either through yoga or any other techniques? This would be a good year to redouble your commitment to that work. In the coming months, the world will just keep increasing its output of trivial, energy-wasting temptations. You’ll need to be pretty fierce if you want to continue the work of transforming yourself into the Aries you were born to be: focused, direct, energetic and full of initiative. Read the rest of this entry »

Illustration by Jeremy Sorese

Another year older? Check. Another year wiser? Hmmm.

We’re the last to say it’s a simple thing, navigating this precious cargo we call ourselves. But we do know that one of the best investments you’ll ever make—of money, of time—is in your own human capital. It’s not easy to chart a course, especially after a long run through college of courses basically charted for you. But we believe exploration is the essence of life, and we found stories for this issue to aid you in that process. We’re not going to tell you what to do or where to go—there are plenty of fine sources for that. But by sharing a few personal stories, by pointing out a few lesser-known opportunities we hope to help you find your way, whether straight and narrow or off the beaten path.

Let us know where you end up. Read the rest of this entry »

The author as a young poet in Iowa

By Dina Elenbogen

A place does not wait for the weary traveler to return. Life continues and it is the houses that alter from storms and the passage of time. I can’t remember which doors I walked through to get home, although the hills I climbed to get there have long ago toughened my legs. I can’t remember the number of my house on Summit Street, only which window my desk sat in front of, but I think the poems came from darker corners. And on Burlington, my first apartment in Iowa City, where did I place my typewriter? I remember the park bench on Governor that I collapsed on once, on my way home from class, and those who walked through my unmarked doors and loved me too much or not enough.

As if through a sieve, details of a life sift through and so much gets lost. This was a place I left when it was time to leave. I didn’t turn back much, at first. A semester ended, I received my degree, packed up a car and took off. I came back twice in the eighties: Once after I returned from Israel to see how my poems would play in Iowa and another time for the fiftieth reunion of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Now I’ve come back to give a reading from my first book of poems. Read the rest of this entry »

By Hugh Iglarsh

Let’s face it, philosophy is an odd beast: It is Reason contemplatively munching on its own tail. As a process, it dissolves innocent beliefs that had been minding their own business into a vertigo of nested questions and pregnant uncertainty. In our pragmatic society, philosophy is often seen as a respectable pastime for tenured navel-gazers, but about as relevant to virtual modern life as the Gnostic Gospels in the original Aramaic.

And yet… among the swarm of adult ed offerings that promise some combination of knowledge, power, success, libidinal satisfaction, affirmation and expertise to a paying clientele, there is one local enterprise that has somehow found a niche for itself selling only gnawing doubt. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Paul and Sarah Press/Photo: Drew Bly

By Caylie Sadin

When people think of learning, they usually think of a teacher and some students—maybe in a classroom, possibly in an art studio, a computer lab or the outdoors. And sadly, after primary education, people usually can’t also help thinking of those massive tuition checks—or student debt. But Sarah Press and Ben Paul, friends from grade-school and the co-founders of CommuniTeach don’t like that there is a price tag on learning.

Press and Paul founded CommuniTeach (CommuniTeach.com), a website for people who want to freely learn and teach those in their community. Founded in 2010, the website serves people in Pittsburgh, Chicago and Boston, but they want to expand. The company is built around their personal learning philosophy of peers sharing knowledge. “The world is better when people come together to freely share their skills together,” Press says. Read the rest of this entry »

I’d explored various academic paths as a college undergraduate, including English and film production, but I was continually frustrated by the lack of critical analysis of popular media; English tended toward more classic and literary novels, while film production focused on the methods of storytelling. But in cinema studies—especially of film and television centered around horror archetypes like vampires and zombies—I found the combination of critical theory and popular media for which I’d been searching.

I enrolled for a class at DePaul called “Monsters in Popular Culture.” Taught by assistant professor Paul Booth, the course used material ranging from short stories by Neil Gaiman to “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Friday the 13th.”

I’ve always refused to believe that the movies I grew up watching and the current fare that I count among my favorites are nothing more than pure entertainment. Luckily, I’m not the only one. Read the rest of this entry »