Summer Footwork

One of the coolest city summer offerings is the 11-year-running SummerDance program, taking place evenings Thursdays through Sundays, at about 600 S. Michigan in Grant Park. After about one-hour of dance instructions, a live band plays for a couple more hours giving you the chance to practice your new moves and even meet new dance partners. During the first hour of my first SummerDance experience years ago (polka night!), I danced with an 80-year-old polka pro from Avondale, a steel worker from Gary, and a computer science student from Pilsen. This spirit of friendliness and pure happiness to be dancing has pervaded most SummerDance nights I've attended since. Unfortunately, it appears they've discontinued Wednesday DJ/House Music nights, which were wildly popular. All I can surmise is that they were becoming too wild and too popular...the facilities no longer seemed large enough to safely accomodate the crowds that were showing up. Instead, it looks like they've added these new elements: three Friday-night amateur dance contests in August (swing, ballroom, and Latin), and several SummerDance on the Move events in four different neighborhood parks (Athletic Field Park, west on Addison; Humboldt Park; Jackson Park; and Garfield Park, near the conservatory). And, for a Chicago dance phenomoneon, I'd never heard of before, check out this Tribune special on Footworkin'.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation: Bars Across America and Across Chicago

Native's Guide to Chicago contributor John Greenfield will be blogging on cycling, drinking, and watering holes at Bars Across America as he pedals cross country this summer. Closer to home, Sean Parnell's Chicago Bar Project has teamed up with the Chicago History Museum for history-laden pub crawls across Chicago. The summer line-up:

June 21: Ye Olde Libations: The Classic Bars of Old Town (walking tour)
July 19: Taverns & Tales: A Literary Pub Crawl (trolley tour)
August 16: Lincoln Park Ale Trail (walking tour)

More TV Classics on You Tube

Now that you've seen some of his favorite classic horror clips, Ted Okuda, co-author of the forthcoming Chicago TV Horror Movie Shows with Mark Yurkiw, has also posted some clips connected with his first Lake Claremont Press title, The Golden Age of Chicago Children's Television (co-written with classic kiddie TV host, Jack Mulqueen): There's the intro to Kiddie A-Go-Go with harlequin host, Pandora (Elaine Mulqueen, Jack's wife). Listen for Jack's voice as he provides a word from their sponsor, Mickelberry lunchmeats. The second clip is an early-60s installment of Elmer the Elephant in which Elmer helps host John Conrad post circus posters.

Next Editor Needed for Next American City

The Next American City, a quarterly journal of new and independent thoughts on the transformation and future of urban and suburban places, is looking for their next editor-in-chief:

POSITION: Editor in Chief for The Next American City magazine

Position Type: Full-time, permanent staff position
Position Location: Philadelphia, PA
Anticipated Start Date: August/September 2007

Position Summary: The Next American City is a non-profit magazine for and by the next generation of urban thinkers, leaders, and activists. We offer a fresh perspective on the people, projects and policies that are shaping the future of America's cities and suburbs. In five years, The Next American City has grown from a few urban professionals with an idea into a magazine with a national presence. The magazine and other related initiatives focus on socially and environmentally sustainable approaches to economic growth.

We are seeking an Editor in Chief with vision, enthusiasm, management abilities, and a grasp of urban affairs to grow our magazine.

The position demands strong leadership and excellent editing and interpersonal skills. The EIC will have an active role as the public face of the magazine and will be the sole full-time editorial staff. He/she will work closely with magazine staff to redevelop The Next American City's online presence, and to plan and produce online content. Where possible, the EIC will work with writers and volunteers, to develop, pitch and place op-eds based on magazine content in major newspapers and on radio.

Responsibilities:

• Develop and manage departmental budget, editorial calendar and long-term editorial plan.
• Manage paid and volunteer editorial staff, freelancers and interns to write, edit, fact check, coordinate and produce all magazine content.
• Provide overall editorial planning and execution ensuring accuracy and clarity of content.
• Solicit pitches and interact with writers to produce high-quality manuscripts to deadline and within a small editorial budget.
• Collaborate with Art Director in the development of content design to ensure consistency and appropriateness of magazine's design.
• Oversee house style guide and ensure adherence to house style by all freelancers.
• Work with business staff to provide input and support for The Next American City's related initiatives and projects and coordinate in-house content for magazine.
• Coordinate with business staff on marketing and promotion of magazine and Web site.

Required Experience:

• Professional print journalism experience.
• B.A. or greater in English or related field.
• Proven background in effective team leadership and management, budgeting, project management, multi-tasking, organization.
• Demonstrated track record in high-quality editing, rewriting, and writing for a broad, popular audience.
• Proficiency in Microsoft Word, Excel, and Adobe InDesign 2 is essential.
• Knowledge of urban issues, planning, and related fields necessary.

Compensation: Current position salary is in the mid-40s and we expect a similar salary range for the successful candidate. Comprehensive medical/dental/vision and holiday/vacation packages.

To Apply: Email a cover letter, resume, clips and salary requirements to jobs@americancity.org or to Michelle Kuly, Publisher, The Next American City, PO Box 42627, Philadelphia, PA 19101. No calls please. Interested candidates are encouraged to apply as soon as possible. Deadline for applications is Friday, June 30th.

Books at the New Maxwell Street Market?

Does anyone know if the new Maxwell Street Market has a book vendor? Thanks for any tips.

Why Can't This Be My Alderman??

Taste of Randolph Street is offering a first for their 10-year fest: Dunk the Alderman (Walter Burnett of the 27th Ward). It's this Saturday, June 16, at 4 p.m. at the Fulton Lounge booth. The West Loop Community Organization's email newsletter counsels: Be there at 4 p.m.--Bring your digital camera!

Fauxhemian Food

A friend who knows what a New York lover I am, sent me a terrific posting from one of his favorite blogs, 3 Quarks Daily, on the new Bowery Whole Foods, writer S. Asad Raza's main point being that the new brand-name grocery "represents a much poorer form of food diversity than what is already there." He goes on to dissect the symbiotic relationship of Whole Foods and the "fauxhemian pretensions" of the new downtown professionals. Alongside the cutting commentary though, he exhibits a staggering knowledge and appreciation of all the independent and ethnic food providers for blocks around. It gave me my NYC fix for a bit, but it also made me think, this guy could write A Cook's Guide to New York!

For anyone who needs A Cook's Guide fix, author Marilyn Pocius has a new, not-Chicago-specific website, acooksguide.com, devoted to helping turn your kitchen into a workshop of worldly cuisine.

If you liked Devil in the White City, you'll love...

If you're ready for another late-1800s gruesome Chicago crime story, Robert Loerzel's 2003 book Alchemy of Bones: Chicago's Luetgert Murder Case of 1897 (University of Illinois Press) is now out in paperback. From Amazon's description:

"On May 1, 1897, Louise Luetgert disappeared. Although no body was found, Chicago police arrested her husband Adolph, the owner of a large sausage factory, and charged him with her murder. The eyes of the world were still on Chicago following the success of the World's Columbian Exposition, and the Luetgert case, with its missing victim, once-prosperous suspect, and all manner of gruesome theories regarding the disposal of the corpse, turned into one of the first media-fueled celebrity trials in American history.

Newspapers fought one another for scoops, people across the country claimed to have seen the missing woman alive, and each new clue led to fresh rounds of speculation about the crime. Meanwhile, sausage sales plummeted nationwide as rumors circulated that Luetgert had destroyed his wife's body in one of his factory's meat grinders.

In this narrative history of the Luetgert case, Robert Loerzel brings 1890s Chicago vividly back to life. He examines not only the trial itself but also the police department and forensic specialists investigating the case, the reporters scrambling for details, and the wider society who followed their stories so voraciously.

Weaving in strange-but-true subplots involving hypnotists, palmreaders, English con-artists, bullied witnesses, and insane-asylum bodysnatchers, Alchemy of Bones is more than just a true crime narrative; it is a grand, sprawling portrait of a city-and a nation-getting an early taste of the dark, chaotic twentieth century."

And the ghostly side of things, from Ursula Bielski's More Chicago Haunts: Scenes from Myth and Memory:

"When, in 1897, Chicago sausage mogul Adolph Luetgert was convicted of murdering his wife, Louisa, and sentenced to life imprisonment at Joliet State Penitentiary, the word on the streets was that Louisa’s scheming husband had, according to an evil children’s rhyme, 'made sausage out of his wife.'

Adolph’s methods weren’t quite as extreme, however, as the city’s nose-diving sausage sales suggested. Louisa did enter her husband’s sausage factory in one piece on the night of May 1, 1897, never to be seen whole again. But the job Adolph did on his bride was a private affair, discovered by determined detectives—not unsuspecting diners.

That spring before Louisa’s disappearance, heated arguments had for months cut through the neighborhood surrounding the Luetgert house, near Hermitage and Diversey Avenues. Brash and unembarrassed, the words between the Luetgerts made clear the couple’s trouble: Louisa’s niece, Mary Siemering, had come to work for the Luetgerts as a housekeeper. Demure and darling, she had captured the fancy of the man of the house, and Louisa was on to their trysts. Friends and relatives of Louisa were alarmed then when one morning Louisa was simply gone. She had, without notice, decided to take a trip to visit an aunt in Kenosha. Or so Adolph explained.

Wasting little time, friends of the absentee housewife besieged police, laying their unease on the table, backing up their fear with frank tales of the Luetgerts’ marriage woes. Well aware of the couple’s instability, the law latched on.

Gaining access to Adolph’s sausage works, detectives soon discovered two gold rings in a 12-foot-long potash vat, one of them inscribed with the initials L.L. Fragments of a human skull were tediously removed from the smokestack, from which an anonymous witness had seen smoke pouring on the night of Louisa’s disappearance, even though the factory had been closed for some two months due to reorganization. Circumstantial evidence piled high enough to suffocate Adolph Luetgert, who was arrested within the week and taken to a holding cell in the east Chicago Avenue police station to await trial.

No witnesses testified to Luetgert’s guilt; still, the rings, the unidentified but obvious remains, and the ready tools of death in the shape of meat saws, furnaces, and boiling vats convinced all but one jury member of Adolph’s evil deed. The jury was dismissed and Luetgert was retried a second time. The has-been meatmaker was convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment, despite the fact that Louisa’s body had never been found.

Adolph Luetgart spent a scant two years in prison, but what years they were. From his cell far south of his old factory, he wailed through the days and nights, crying for release, claiming his innocence. Inmates believed in Luetgert’s guilt, convinced that Louisa’s spirit was incarcerated with him—taunting him, terrorizing him. Relatives and other visitors who witnessed Luetgert’s scenes became convinced of the truth of this tale—but not Adolph’s defense attorney, Lawrence Harmon. Harmon was determined to prove that Luetgert was innocent of his wife’s murder; to this end, he spent thousands of dollars of his own savings in his personal hunt for the “lost” Louisa. Ultimately, he entered an insane asylum. Luetgert himself died at the turn of the century, haunted to death, they say, by his vengeful wife.

After Adolph’s passing, rumors arose that Louisa’s ghost had returned to the couple’s home adjoining the sausage factory on Chicago’s North Side. There, the new owner would catch frequent glimpses of her standing by the mantel in the parlor. Legend says that he was so annoyed with this pesky boarder that he actually had the house removed from the site, relocating it to a lot on Marshfield Avenue. After the house was gone, Louisa began appearing to security guards in the old sausage factory next door, where she would wander between the basement incinerator and the vat where her rings had been found by police. When, in 1902, the factory burned down in a freak fire, Louisa actually moved again—this time back to her old house, now on Marshfield. Frustrated by the phantom’s return, the owner sought to placate Louisa by moving the building a second time, back near its original spot at Diversey and Hermitage, in order to give the ghost some peace and, hopefully, get rid of her for good.

She’s still there.

____________________________________________________________

The author was alerted to the Luetgert hauntings by Dylan Clearfield’s Chicagoland Ghosts. An engaging account of the murder itself can be found in Richard Lindberg’s Return to the Scene of the Crime."

Feds Drop A-Bomb on Chicago To Fend Off Giant Cicadas, er, Grasshoppers

See it on YouTube, from Beginning of the End (1957). In another ingenious promo move by one of our authors, Ted Okuda has begun posting his favorite clips from the monster movies appearing in his forthcoming LCP book Chicago TV Horror Movie Shows: From Shock Theatre to Svengoolie (July). The book plug appears in the description text for each trailer. Some others they've put up: Godzilla, Scared Stiff, and House of Frankenstein and House of Dracula. There are also videos of Jerry G. Bishop, the original Svengoolie, and Rich Koz, the enduring and current Svengoolie.

Bringing It Home

Rob Duffer recommends Lake Claremont Press (see "Bringing It Home") in his TimeOut Chicago piece this week on how to make the most of the Printers Row Fair: Word to the Wise.

Printers Row Author Lineup

Meet our authors at the Lake Claremont Press booth (DD1) at on Dearborn, just north of Polk, at this weekend's Printers Row Book Fair:

Saturday, June 9

10:00 a.m.–noon

Arnie Bernstein, author of three Lake Claremont titles: Hollywood on Lake Michigan: 100 Years of Chicago & the Movies; The Hoofs and Guns of the Storm: Chicago's Civil War Connections; and "The Movies Are": Carl Sandburg's Film Reviews & Essays, 1920–1928.

noon–2:00 p.m.

Ursula Bielski, author of Chicago Haunts, More Chicago Haunts, Creepy Chicago, and co-author of Graveyards of Chicago

2:00 p.m.–4:00 p.m.

Karen Hanson, author of our latest release, Today's Chicago Blues

4:00 p.m.–6:00 p.m.

Christopher Lynch, Chicago's Midway Airport: The First Seventy-Five Years

Sunday, June 10

10:00 a.m.–11:00 a.m.

Ted Okuda, co-author of The Golden Age of Chicago Children's Television and co-author of the forthcoming book Chicago TV Horror Movies Shows: From Shock Theatre to Svengoolie

11:00 a.m.–noon

Mark Yurkiw, co-author of the forthcoming Lake Claremont Press title Chicago TV Horror Movies Shows: From Shock Theatre to Svengoolie

noon–2:00 p.m.

Kathie Bergquist, co-author of A Field Guide to Gay & Lesbian Chicago

2:00 p.m.–4:00 p.m.

Joseph Schwieterman, The Politics of Place: A History of Zoning in Chicago

4:00 p.m.–6:00 p.m.

Jack Mulqueen, co-author of The Golden Age of Chicago Children's Television

And on the Good Eating Stage...

Sunday, June 10

3:00 p.m.

Marilyn Pocius, author of A Cook's Guide to Chicago, will appear on the Good Eating Stage to discuss "What Immigrants Bring to the Table" with other ethnic food experts.

#47!

New City's Annual Lit 50: Who Really Books in Chicago.

Strange Angles

A sneak preview from next year's Chicago Haunts 3: From the Secret Files of Chicago Hauntings, Inc. : Ursula Bielski's recent article for Ghost Village.com on Chicago's Strange Angles and Haunted Architecture. Ghost Village is an open community for everyone from enthusiasts to skeptics to discuss all things supernatural; they've recently hired Bielski to give webinars for their Ghostvillage U. Chicago Hauntings, Inc. is Ursula's tour business, known for its fun, in-depth tours; creative events; attention to historical, cultural, and parapsychological detail; and the inimitable "Ghost Bus" (scroll down for the pic).

Finding Your Irish

See newly-signed LCP author, Sharon Shea Bossard, this weekend on Avila Fine Arts Lovers' Chicago Access Network TV show (Channel 19), talking about her existing book, Finding My Irish, Saturday, June 9, at 10 p.m., and Sunday, June 10, at 11:30 a.m. By St. Patrick's Day, 2008, Bossard and Lake Claremont Press will help you find your Irish.

Google Books: My First 76,000 Impressions

At the end of 2006, we shipped off a single copy of most of our titles to Google Books. I hadn't thought much more about that until weekly email reports started showing up a couple weeks ago with some interesting numbers. Seems that in 2007, Lake Claremont Press books have had 76,838 unique page views already, with ad clicks earning us a whopping $26.45 (no pay off until that reaches $100). From the outside, this probably looks like a dismal failure, but scanning the data on specific books provided the answers to a few questions that have been floating around, particularly: Why have our Amazon sales been doubling in the past several months, especially for certain backlist titles with no new publicity? and How were so many random people finding our website and ordering from our new shopping cart--again, a wide range of backlist titles? The numbers from Google Books are the most likely explanation. Two things were immediately apparent. Books with more people, places, and titles specified on their pages (guidebooks, The Golden Age of Chicago Children's Television, and The Movies Are) were viewed the most, and had the most click-throughs to our website. This sort of thing makes Google-level technologies indispensable to small presses like ours. The stats for Finding Your Chicago Ancestors tell a different story: also useful, but more cautionary. It seems that a small number of visitors are returning again and again to this title for lots of free how-to information, with less evidence that repeat visits are leading to eventual sales. While we'll keep an eye on these books and pull any from the program if the sales aren't there to justify the freebies, what I'm really waiting for is the day soon coming when we, Amazon, Google, anyone will make it easy for folks that just want a page (or chapter) or two of information to buy just that.