Chicago Writers Write

...and thanks to the Chicago Writers Association, they now have a deluxe new website focusing on the creativity, commerce, craft, and community of writing. (See my interview on Chicago publishing in this month's commerce section.)

American Memory - Chicago Edition

Thanks to Dave Brown, one of our longtime mail order customers, we've discovered an online cache of Chicago Daily News photographs, preserved by the Library of Congress's "American Memory" program: "This collection comprises over 55,000 images of urban life captured on glass plate negatives between 1902 and 1933 by photographers employed by the Chicago Daily News, then one of Chicago's leading newspapers. The photographs illustrate the enormous variety of topics and events covered in the newspaper, although only about twenty percent of the images in the collection were published in the newspaper. Most of the photographs were taken in Chicago, Illinois, or in nearby towns, parks, or athletic fields. In addition to many Chicagoans, the images include politicians, actors, and other prominent people who stopped in Chicago during their travels and individual athletes and sports teams who came to Chicago. Also included are photographs illustrating the operations of the Chicago Daily News itself and pictures taken on occasional out-of-town trips by the Daily News's photographers to important events, such as the inauguration of presidents in Washington, D.C."

Meanwhile, two local librarians, Nell Taylor and Emerson Dameron, are busy preserving a specialized cache of present-day Chicago material with their own mammoth undertaking, The Chicago Underground Library. "The Chicago Underground Library is a project that aims to create an archive of self- and small press-published works in Chicago. Through a searchable online archive and eventually a physical space, it will open new opportunities for research, inspiration, and collaboration among those in and outside of the publishing community. By putting fiction, critical journals, zines, poetry, comics, political pamphlets, and art books side by side, CUL hopes to bridge the gaps resultant from stratification along the lines of content, production value, and commercial viability."

Individuals, publications, and publishers that have so far donated or promised materials for the collection include ACM (Another Chicago Magazine), Bradley Adita, Arvo, Chicago Review Press, Vincent Chung, Featherproof, Fractal Edge Press, knouse papers, Lake Claremont Press, Fall of Autumn, Lumpen, Michael Marsh, Anne Elizabeth Moore and Punk Planet, Rhino Magazine, Randy Richardson, Grant Schreiber, Becca Taylor, Tense Forms, the2ndhand, Brandon Wetherbee.

What's Cooking in Chicago? Anything in the World!

The revised, completely updated second edition of A Cook's Guide to Chicago: Where to Find Everything You Need and Lots of Things You Didn't Know You Did is now available and chef/author Marilyn Pocius will be serving up her virtual culinary tour of Chicago's epicurean delights.

For practical advice on how to locate unusual ingredients and make use of the international pantry we have at our doorstops, pick up a copy of the book or check out Marilyn's upcoming World Pantry Talk and "Tour."

Chicago Foodways Roundtable and Culinary Historians of Chicago have invited Marilyn to give her presentation on Saturday, March 25, 2006 at 10 a.m. in Roosevelt University's Old Faculty Lounge (room 244). To attend the event, e-mail your name, telephone number, and the number of people in your party to chicago.foodways.roundtable@gmail.com.

Turn Here

Our author Dave Hoekstra, Ticket to Everywhere, just turned us on to one of the greatest websites ever for people who like places...an addictive collection of personality-filled videos on historic, cool, or quirky neighborhoods or patches of earth. It's Turn Here.com: "Short Films. Cool Places." A great soundtrack backs up Hoekstra & co.'s video, Bronzeville's New Song, which includes 3rd Ward Alderman Dorothy Tillman, Harold's Chicken, the Negro League Cafe, Pilgrim Baptist Church, the Harold Washington Cultural Center, and Otis Clay. Other Chicago based films at Turn Here cover Wicker Park, Pilsen, Rogers Park, and Lincoln Park.