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Adapting her blog to full-fledged book, local author S.L. Wisenberg transforms her illness memoir into a fiercely engaging and often very, very funny account of her battle with breast cancer. The title, “The Adventures of Cancer Bitch,” should be the first clue that Wisenberg wasn’t prepared to linger in an overly sentimental region and play to readers’ fears and Lifetime-movie expectations. She claimed “Bitch,” she writes, because “Babe was too young and Vixen was already taken.” Presented in a diary format, the piece is, at its core, a 160-page staring match Wisenberg has with herself. Doctors, diagnosis, medication, chemo, surgery—sure, it’s in there. The most devastating offerings aren’t found in the cold facts that are beaten into our bodies by health magazines and prescription-pill commercials, but rather under blog entries with titles like “How Not To Tell Your Class About Your Breast Cancer.” (Wisenberg, Jewish, deftly adapts the wit of Woody Allen as well.) But, like the best of the savage memoirs, it’s doused in hope, and as readers, we share a most important reward in the end: life. (Tom Lynch)

S.L. Wisenberg discusses “Adventures of Cancer Bitch” May 6 at 57th Street Books, 1301 East 57th, (773)684-1300, at 6pm. Free.

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An epic novel that documents one family’s emigration from Ireland to the United States during the great potato famine—Chicago, in fact—Mary Pat Kelly’s enormous epic “Galway Bay” paints a picture of the nineteenth-century Irish-American experience with thrilling, if a little overwhelming, results. Let’s face it, though—there was no way this book could’ve been short. Gritty, though not as gritty as “Angela’s Ashes, ” and romantic, though not in an abysmal “Far and Away” way, Kelly weaves her plot with historical intricacies and brilliant observations that could only come from an authority on the subject. Spanning six generations, Kelly’s most impressive feat is her ability to naturally allow space for the passage of time. A former nun, Kelly’s an award-winning documentary filmmaker and former producer on “Good Morning America” and “Saturday Night Live,” plus has a PhD in Irish literature. “Galway Bay” is a meaty novel, rich with color and hope. (Tom Lynch)

Mary Pat Kelly discusses “Galway Bay” March 9 at 57^th Street Books, 1301 East 57^th, (773)684-1300, and March 11 at Women and Children First, 5233 North Clark, (773)769-9299, 7:30pm. Both events are free.

Since 1971, the Museum of Science and Industry has presented its “Black Creativity” celebration, a six-week program highlighting the achievements of African Americans. This year, in addition to an art exhibit and a series of guest lectures, the museum focuses on African American contributions to the green industry: the businessmen, artists, entrepreneurs and consultants working to save the world through conservation. The exhibit promotes ways to take the green revolution home, such as recycling and taking public transportation. It also provides interactive games for its younger visitors, among them a solar-powered car race and a hands-on earthworm demonstration. But the real draw of “Green Revolution” is the walls, decked with banners detailing the achievements of notable African Americans in the environmental fields. Among them are Mae Jemison, an astronaut and the first African-American woman to explore space, Will Allen, the CEO of Growing Power and a promoter of urban farming, and Bryant Terry, an eco-chef. These individuals serve a dual purpose: to exemplify the successes of African Americans, as well as to show the leaps being taken at this very moment to introduce environmental consciousness into the infrastructure of our society. (Laura Hawbaker)

The Museum of Science and Industry’s latest exhibit is a fully functioning three-story house, the “Smart Home,” an ecologically sound building built on the foundation of material, energy and water efficiency. This is green living gone haywire. Museum guests are ushered through a twenty-minute eye-opening (if somewhat rushed) tour of the house. Every aspect of the building is environmentally friendly, from the recycled construction material, to the organic food, to the to LED lights. An ethanol-burning fireplace. A “raw” wood kitchen table. And of course, in the garage, a hybrid car. The house is called “smart” for a reason. Even the houseplants are clever. When a plant needs watering, a call is placed to your phone. That’s right—your plant is calling to say it’s thirsty. A black obelisk with blinking blue lights (that calls to mind HAL from “2001: A Space Odyssey”) is the “brains and guts” of the “Smart Home”; it’s an automated system that controls the heating, cooling and lighting of the entire house. A module of the house’s network charts not only the amount of energy being used, but also the amount being produced. Guests are given a “Resource Guide” which, like a shopping catalogue, details each gadget and piece of furniture, and where everything can be purchased. We all might not be able to live in technologically advanced, self-sustainable houses, but we can live green by bringing aspects of the “Smart Home” into our own. (Laura Hawbaker)

“Smart Home: Green + Wired” runs at the Museum of Science and Industry, 57th Street and Lake Shore Drive, (773)684-1414, through January 4, 2009.

In 1969, Curt Standifer, a U.S. soldier stationed in Vietnam, wrote in his journal, “Why should I, a brother of soul, whose war is on the streets in the States, be here?” Standifer’s entry perfectly encapsulates the mission of the DuSable Museum’s latest exhibit, “Soul Soldiers: African Americans and the Vietnam Era.” Read the rest of this entry »

Vases edged in filigree, windows like Japanese shoji screens, vibrant sculpture pods… one wouldn’t expect an exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry to feature galleries flaunting Tiffany lamps, Frank Lloyd Wright windows and a Chihuly Macchia sculpture garden, but “The Glass Experience” does just that. The exhibit celebrates the collaboration between glassblowing and science, a relationship in which the artisans of Venice and Murano jumpstart technological leaps forward in LCD and fiber optics. The scientific specifics are only touched on in favor of a more all-inclusive look at the glass world. The exhibit opens with a dark “Industry & Invention” bunker, which offers a hodgepodge of glass facts: radioactive dishware, microscopes, windshields and witchglobes linked by one common thread—the material from which they’re made. The “Invention” room offers tidbits and the various galleries present pretty things to look at, but what really makes “The Glass Experience” an event worth the trip comes near its end. Pathways gradually wind into larger spaces that culminate in two immense workshops peopled by real, live glass workers. Visitors can watch stained-glass artisans from the Botti Studio restore the Chicago Cultural Center’s fragile, 120-year-old Tiffany Dome. Meanwhile, in-house master gaffers spinout glassblowing demonstrations during the Corning Hot Glass Show. The glassblowing show perfectly encapsulates the aim of “The Glass Experience”—a hypnotic merging of art and science. (Laura Hawbaker)

“The Glass Experience” runs at the Museum of Science and Industry, 57th and Lake Shore Drive, (773)684-1414, through September 1.

“Culture” was not in the quiver of NeoCon concepts launching Operation Iraqi Freedom. When insurgents started targeting occupiers, the Departments of State and of Defense asked cultural anthropologists: “Why do they hate us?” and “How can we target Iraqi hearts and minds?” Now, twenty-four anthropologists gather at the University of Chicago to ask what mission their discipline might accomplish.  Run on military time, the Anthropology and Global Counterinsurgency conference occurs in ivyed Haskell Hall. “Lux ex Oriente” (“Light from the East”) is chiseled in stone near the entrance. “All hail to the glorious and imperial future, rich with the increasing spoils of learning and the multiplied triumphs of faith,” declared a reverend professor in his July 1, 1895 corner-stone address for the Haskell Oriental Museum, now home to the Anthropology department.  Samuel Huntington’s best-selling battle cry “clash of civilizations” is tactically useless for thwarting improvised explosive devices. “Culture” is now deployed to pacify local populations. “Human Terrain” teams include civilian anthroplogists. Military planners “dream that culture can fix what thousands of tons of munitions broke,” argues Washington prof David Price. “We should use anthropology to keep us out of these invasion fiascos in the first place.”  Price researches the history of American anthropologists colluding with the American government. He notes one employed by the White House who scanned the Chicago Defender and other newspapers to pinpoint labor uprisings that might strike munitions plants during WWII.  A University of Chicago political scientist diagnoses our “clinically insane intervention” as an obsessive-compulsive disorder. The generals are trying to “get it right” in Iraq and Afghanistan, after screwing up Vietnam. Lending expertise to counter-insurgency was roundly condemned. “I think it’s a sin to help occupy another country,” shares one scholar. Yet another adopts military metaphors for his talk about working for the Air Force: “Teaching Anthropology to the Military Masses: Reflections of an Academic Insurgent.”

With the echoes of his words sweeping over the exhibit through speakers fixated in the ceiling, the “And Freedom for All” exhibit at DuSable Museum highlights Martin Luther King and the famous civil-rights march in Washington, D.C. on August 28, 1963. Containing fifty unpublished photographs taken by famed photojournalist Stanley Tretick, the exhibit is exceptionally powerful as it lets the photographs speak for themselves. Instead of the usual factoids that go hand in hand with an exhibit, “And Freedom For All” bucks the trend by merely offering quotes from leaders who in some way helped or participated in the march, such as A. Philip Randolph, Roy Wilkins and Martin Luther King himself, as supplemental anecdotes. The simple presentation forces visitors to take in nothing but the photos themselves and in some way feel as if they are a part of this great event in history. Located in the downstairs exhibit hall of the DuSable Museum, you are greeted with an oversized photo of Martin Luther King delivering a speech at Soldier Field in Chicago with an equally large plaque displaying the words to his famed “I Have a Dream” speech. These images juxtaposed to hearing his speech when walking up to the first photos create a chilling effect. While some may argue that it lacks any real substance beyond the photos that are on display, having the opportunity to see such well-done unpublished photographs is quite a treat—especially when they pack the narrative quality that Tretick’s photographs possesses. (Thomas Barbee)
“And Freedom for All” runs at DuSable Museum of African-American History, 740 East 56th Place, (773)947-0600, through June 1.

It’s supposedly twenty-eight degrees but it feels ten times more bitter when the crowd gathering around the Quadrangle at the University of Chicago spots the nudes, a flesh-colored train of runners furiously chugging along with no respect to frostbite or hypothermia. Hundreds of onlookers lining 58th Street collectively gasp as their eyes brace for impact. “Do you have a camera?” a spectator asks a friend. “If there’s no camera, then there’s no point.”
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By Sean Redmond

Entering Wicker Park by the Blue Line, you emerge into the intersection of Damen, North and Milwaukee to a long-familiar sight. There’s the Double Door across the street, Flash Taco and, until just recently, the façade of Filter, Wicker Park’s former hipster coffeehouse extraordinaire. These staples, like many along these primary roadways, fade into the background with repeated visits; yes, you know you can find Reckless Records and American Apparel and the venues and art galleries in the surrounding area, but getting where you want to go requires little thought once you’re situated enough to put your eyes to the sidewalk and your feet into autopilot. But then one day, you get off the train and, surprise, the boarded-up shell of Filter is replaced with an expansive Bank of America, and your mind jolts back into motion. Suddenly, a wave of thoughts bursts forth: “Man, there are a lot of banks in the area,”or “Wicker Park really is getting commercialized,” or  “Maybe I need to start spending more time in Logan Square.”
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