South Shore works site developer vies for Obama library

McCaffery senior project manager Nasutsa Mabwa at the South Works site.

     It could almost be a lonely spot on the far Michigan shore, with the blue-gray lake and the brown grass, scattered copses, bare trees swaying in the steady breeze. The dunes maybe.

     But north, there’s the skyline of Chicago, looming like Oz, and west, a massive wall, 30 feet tall and 2,000 feet long, which held ore off-loaded from barges when this was U.S. Steel’s South Works. Once the vibrant heart of Midwest manufacturing, it is now, and for the past 20 years, both a white elephant and a tantalizing possibility.

     Nearly 600 acres — almost the size of New York’s Central Park — of prime lakefront, where East 86th Street approaches Lake Michigan. Or remote lakefront, depending on your view. For developer Dan McCaffery, this is where Chicago’s newest neighborhood is about to spring into being, anchored by Barack Obama’s presidential library.

     “It’s so beautiful,” said McCaffery, who has been working with U.S. Steel for the past decade getting the property ready for development — the South Lake Shore Drive extension that opened in October was a major step.

     The Obama library is a greased pig that many are scrambling for: the University of Chicago, in the lead, but also the University of Illinois at Chicago and, trailing behind, Chicago State. A committee of the Illinois House voted Thursday to put $100 million on the table to try to make sure the library doesn’t go to Hawaii, Obama’s home state.

     One benefit of the South Works site: There is nothing there. A velodrome — a banked bike track — somewhat improbably, and the wall, which would have to be blown up. That’s about it. The drawback: It isn’t on the city radar. Not yet.
“Imagine this,” McCaffery said."If you were getting 1.5 million visitors a year down there. Navy Pier is our number one tourist destination. . . . Put a hydrofoil [boat] station at Navy Pier, and a hydrofoil station right in front of the library, walk up these grand stairs."
     Which raises the question of how many visitors an Obama library would draw. The Lincoln library in Springfield, a Disney-esque attraction built around our most beloved president, pulls in 315,000 visitors a year. Reagan does a little better. But Nixon only draws 90,000. That isn't as many visitors as hit Wrigleyville on any summer weekend. I could see the library kick-starting a vibrant new neighborhood. Or I could see it perched by itself on a lonely, windblown promontory.
     This is an area where I'm a notoriously bad judge. I remember walking along Navy Pier, back when it was a debris-strewn ruin, and thinking, "What kind of idiots are wasting their money by trying to turn this remote stretch of nowhere into some kind of pleasure dome? Nobody is going to want to come out here."
     Most popular tourist attraction in the state — nearly 9 million visitors, about twice as many as second-place Millennium Park.
     McCaffery is pushing the site to "whoever will listen," and is placing a formal proposal when requests are due June 16.
     "It is an area of town that is 2 miles from Michelle's house, 4 miles from his current house," McCaffery said. "A mile from where he was a community organizer."
Fair enough. But what if history judges Obama as closer to Nixon than Lincoln?
     "His library, I'm quite confident, is going to be a longtime draw," he said. "It is no small thing that this is the first man of color to be the president of the United States."
He's a lot more than that. Between health care, eliminating Osama bin Laden and ending two wars, Obama's museum will have a lot of exciting stuff in it, and if every Chicago public school kid visits once a year, that's 400,000 visitors right there. You can almost squint and see the buses lining up.
     But is this the place? "Far" is relative. I kept thinking of the Wrigley Building. It isn't an accident that it is gleaming white, glazed terra cotta, lit at night with flood lamps. That was done because, when it was built in 1921, there were no office buildings north of the river. Michigan Avenue had recently been Pine Street, a seedy area of warehouses and factories.  The Wrigley Building was designed to catch people's attention, to lure them across the river.      It had a restaurant and a bank so tenants could have services nearby. It worked. The city grew around it. That could happen here too.
     "To me, this is more than a site," McCaffery said. "This is an opportunity for a new city, that espouses all of the things he has spoken about during his presidency."
A daring, future-oriented move that some would immediately condemn as folly. That hasn't stopped Obama in the past. I took a good look around and tried to imagine the library, the townhouses, the neighborhood. Stranger things have happened in Chicago.

Saturday fun: where IS this?

     Now this rock is something frightfully important, obviously. And as much as I'd like to tell you all about this very important object -- you can tell it's important because of the velvet ropes -- I don't want to give the game away.  Last week, I really thought I had you with the abandoned South Works. So mum, really. Except to say ... it's not located in some obscure place, but in a well-known place. You'd know the exterior on sight. You might just not know that this revered piece of stone is there, hiding.
     Since my stock of posters is dwindling — if you want one, buy one, because once they're gone, they're gone — I'll offer the winner a copy of my 2008 (!) memoir, Drunkard. It's a grim story, as I like to tell people, but it ends well. It must be on my mind because so many of my new readers in American's beautiful Southern states have been bringing up various aspects of the book over the past few days, as a result of a burst of momentary notoriety on various right wingnut websites that I've never heard of before and will never hear of again, if I'm lucky. It's a long story and not worth recounting. Good luck, post your guesses below. 

Location guessed! Very impressive — and I'm pleased it took until noon, which meant that it was challenging but not impossible. If you want the answer where this is, click here and you can read about it. Thanks to all. I'll try to find another mildly-tough one next week. 

If we can't fix the city we've got, we'll build a new one

The Tribune called this "a wondrous view of the Chicago skyline."

     Would you want to live here?
     I was reading the latest frisson of official excitement over the pending sale of the South Works site, nearly 500 acres of scrubland and abandoned industrial lakefront ruin. And journalists were doing what journalists do, echoing the lofty dreams of those with a financial stake in something farfetched working, channeling the enthusiasm of public officials with a vested interest: in this case, the mayor's office and two European firms buying 440-acres along the lakefront from 79th Street to the Calumet River. 
     They say they plan on building 20,000 homes. Plus, one hopes, streets and stores and sidewalks and fire hydrants and schools and a hospital and a train line and a bank and a few coffee shops because there's really nothing there. Bunches of scrub trees. A 2,000 foot concrete wall, 30 feet high, a monstrosity that used to contain ore off-loaded from barges, and now looks like some last ditch defense against alien attack, built 10,000 years ago and now crumbling in the Martian wind.
    The Tribune editorialized that the site has a "wondrous view of the Chicago skyline." With a telescope, maybe. You know where you can find better views? About 100 other places in Chicago.
     The mayor's office called the project "a major milestone." I guess if you can't fix the city you've got, you dream of building a new city from scratch. The murder rate here is certainly very low, there being no people. 
     I visited the site three years ago, when Dan McCaffery was pitching the area for the Obama Library. But the library said, in essence, "Yeah right, like we're going to settle there." 
     The Tribune story used the word "modular" for the homes, which I read as "pre-fab" and "cheap," and I suppose a builder could set up some kind of glorified trailer park and people who couldn't afford to live in desirable parts of the city might settle there. Homesteaders, on Chicago's version of the prairie. Though if you want that you can still move to Uptown. And nobody is so poor they want to live on a veldt. 
    McCaffrery spent a dozen years in partnership with U.S. Steel and ended up with nothing. He's quite a skilled businessman, and his failure to raise so much as a nail salon on the site should carry more weight in our assessment of the current effort. What's changed? People are leaving Chicago, remember? So it isn't as if we're in desperate need of land  to put the new residents who aren't coming here to live. 
     Maybe I don't have the vision: I also wondered who the heck would want to come to some pleasure dome on Navy Pier. But anyone who thinks the place has a future, I defy you to actually go there. I did. It's the moon. Bring a sack lunch, because there's nothing. Spend an hour. And if you aren't willing to do that—and I imagine you're not—how are 20,000 people going to move there? 

  

Works in progress: "Good for somethin': A Twitter Tale"

     Writing for publication is hard. I sometimes forget that, because writing for publication is about all I do. But this Saturday feature, Works in Progress reminds me. Even professional writers can have a tough time with it — I had a pal whom I asked to write a single sentence about a current project. Just one; I'd fill in the rest. The pal phoned me, genuinely panicked, stuck. Couldn't get a handle on it. I of course replied there was no need. But it was surprising. Then again, I've always had the gift of facileness. Or maybe the curse.

     So it didn't surprise me when the Saturday "Works in Progress" spot began to go unfilled. Until this week, when there were two offerings — it never rains, it pours. One, from a fiction writer, went into the weeds over a comment on the Tylenol killings column, and I decided the matter had been aired enough. 
     But this, by perennial reader Jakash, I'm happy to share. "Jakash" isn't his real name; he asked if I could preserve the fig leaf of anonymity. It IS daunting, to hang your identity out there — another reality that often flies past me. Sure, I said, why not? Take it away, Jakash:

     Almost exactly a year ago, my wife and I were taking a casual Saturday stroll through one of the non-descript parts of Lakeview in Chicago. As we walked south on Ravenswood, we noticed workers on scaffolding taking the siding off a building near Addison. Crossing to the south side of the street, by Dunkin Donuts, we turned back to see that an old advertisement was being revealed as the siding was pulled off: "Ward's Soft Bun Bread," certainly unfamiliar to us. My wife took a photo of the partially uncovered sign, and we figured we'd come back later to see more.
     Everybody knows that Twitter has its problems. More so since having been picked up at the bargain price of $44 billion by that emerald-encrusted champion of free speech, Elon Musk. (It was recently characterized by our genial host in the Sun-Times as "a toxic hellscape run poorly by a right-wing South African egomaniac..." Personally, I never signed up for it, since a) I realized that it would be a huge time sink and b) I'm not really what you'd call a joiner. 

     However, enough people I respect are on it that I've haphazardly sought out maybe a dozen  accounts. Looking at just those is also a time sink, of course, but not to the extent of becoming the time drain it could if I were actually participating.
     At any rate, many of the folks I follow are local history, architecture, infrastructure or nature-minded Tweeters who are frequently posting interesting ephemera or more significant news about under-reported goings-on in the city. I knew from them that the sign we'd seen was a ghost sign, i.e., a sign painted on a building that used to advertise something which has either been blocked from view by a newer building, or covered up by renovations. 

     "The ghost sign people are gonna love this!" I thought. 

      Since the corner of Addison and Ravenswood is not exactly in an uncharted wilderness, I figured I'd be seeing tweets about it soon. So, I waited, checking my usual suspects each day, pretty sure that if anybody posted photos of this sign, they would go viral, at least among the select group of like-minded Chicagoans. 

      We saw the workers on Saturday morning, July 9. By Tuesday evening, still nothing to indicate that the building had been discovered. I felt people were missing a treat, and figured I had 3 options: a) keep waiting. b) Join Twitter and post about the sign myself. Or c) pick somebody that I followed and hope that he'd visit the location and put it on his timeline, to then be seen by others. 

      I went with the third option. That night I decided to email Robert Loerzel, a journalist and photographer whom I consider the King of Local Twitter (editor's note: he is correct. Robert Loerzel is indeed the King of Local Twitter). He has over 20,000 followers and maintains a very robust and interesting timeline, thriving in the midst of the hellscape.

     I was pretty sure he'd be interested in this sign. Alas, for whatever reason, he didn't jump at the chance to visit the site and I went back to waiting for somebody else to stumble upon it.
     By the following Sunday, still nothing about this building. I couldn't believe it. Especially since we'd gone back and there were a number of other ghost signs now uncovered on the north side of the building. I knew from looking at his interesting Twitter account that Bill Savage, a professor at Northwestern and a lover of local historical minutiae (and literature) (and baseball) (and bicycling) (and...) (editor's note: and hot dogs, and editor of my Chicago memoir) sometimes rode his bike on Damen Ave., which is two blocks away from Ravenswood. I thought perhaps he might make a slight detour sometime if he was riding by to see the signs. So I emailed four photos to him, specifying the location. 

     That worked. Within hours, he had stopped by, taken several of his own photos (much better than ours) and posted the news of these ghost signs to Twitter.
     And from there, it was off to the races. They were quite popular, among the people who find something like that appealing. Bill's tweet went viral in a low-key, non-Obama version of viral. (No doubt assisted in this regard by being retweeted by Robert Loerzel...) The signs were reported about and photographed by Colin Boyle on the news website Block Club Chicago and even made the TV news. Many folks took their own pictures and posted them. We had thought the building would most likely be torn down within a week. But the signs stayed up for over a month. People who are interested in preserving such historic material got involved and proceeded to painstakingly remove them. "Local experts dated the ads to the late 1920s and early ’30s," Colin Boyle wrote on Block Club. "They were painted directly onto wood panels as opposed to the common practice of painting onto brick, adding to their rarity.
     The moral of this tale is that Twitter contains multitudes. It's not just a free-fire zone for anybody with a wacky conspiracy theory to promote. There are a lot of folks who use it as the most efficient way to broadly share information. Though currently I don't even look at it, because Elon Musk, flashing his galaxy-brained brilliance, has decided that you must sign up in order to browse tweets now. And pay, if you want to enjoy certain features of the site. He's talked in the past about his wish for it to be a virtual town square, but doesn't seem to recognize the disconnect when it comes to his desire that people should pay one of the richest men on Earth in order to step onto the village green.
     Anyway, it was quite enjoyable for my wife and me to see what happened once this discovery became better known, and the signs ended up in good hands. As for the "Wards Soft Bun Bread" sign that we originally glimpsed? It's now in the possession of the American Sign Museum in Cincinnati.

https://blockclubchicago.org/2022/07/19/rare-decades-old-ghost-signs-revealed-on-ravenswood-building-facing-demolition/
https://blockclubchicago.org/2022/08/12/rare-lakeview-ghost-signs-saved-just-days-before-demolition-thanks-to-donations/

Flashback 2013: "Shifting sands mark art’s moment in time"

     "I was here," I said, pausing, as my son and I walked north on Wabash Avenue last week, past the Soka Gakkai International-USA Buddhist Center. Years ago. But why? I remembered a room full of people, chanting sutras. And I remember the year and season, oddly enough. It was the summer of 2013, just before I began this blog. The column had been suspended, and I took to plunging out into the city, looking for things to write about, determined to keep my legs churning until my irked masters sorted out their emotions. The ... Second Presbyterian Church was nearby, and I was here because the organist ... was a reader? No, I found that out when I revived. The church was being refurbished. I learned about the organist when I got there. A joy and privilege, to sit in the empty sanctuary, while Bach thundered out. I'll have to dig out that column sometimes. So I must have popped into the Buddhist Center on my way there, to take a look.
     Did anything get into print? Not that I can tell. But looking for something, I found this.
   

Joe Mangrum    

     Art is work, if you’re lucky. Hard work, sometimes. Sweat drips off the nose of Joe Mangrum as he crawls on the floor to dip his fingers into a clear plastic bowl, draw out a fistful of brightly colored sand, then dribble out arcing lines of purple. He stands up, crouches down, kneels — cushioned by a pair of industrial kneepads — then is on his feet again. Over and over. For eight hours.

     Born in St. Louis, Mangrum came to Chicago to attend the School of the Art Institute. He graduated in 1991, lives in Brooklyn now, and has done nearly 600 of these sand paintings on the streets of New York, where oblivious striding businessmen, attention fixed on phones, and untethered toddlers often make abrupt alterations to his work.
     “You have to be aware,” he says. “You have to have eyes in the back of your head and your guard up to prevent that. Some days 30, 50 people walk into my work. It’s not something I can get upset about.”
     Not a worry on this day. His canvas is a 17-by-12-foot grid of tiled floor, safely set off the beaten path between a Gateway Newstand and one corner of the Alonti Market Cafe in 300 S. Riverside Plaza, a sprawling office building on the Chicago River, south of Union Station.
     Artists appreciate wealthy patrons — they did in Roman times and they do today — and while Mangrum sometimes works for donations from passersby in New York, he was brought to Chicago by the real estate firm that manages 300 S. Riverside, the idea being his work will interest building tenants. Mangrum drove here with his wife, Deborah, and Papillon pup Pancho, toting 500 pounds of Sandtastik play sand in all 35 colors the company makes, including “Ultra Violet” — his doing. “They were coming up with a new color and asked me to name it, because I was buying so much sand,” he says.
     (“He’s awesome,” Sandtastik general manager Bert Sabourin says, from its Ontario, Canada, headquarters, confirming the story. “If he needed a special color, we’d do it for him. The work he does is phenomenal. To put that much effort in and then sweep it up.”)
     Not that this painting meets that fate, not yet. Sand paintings are thought of — if they are thought of at all — as a Buddhist commentary on the transitory nature of life. Rather than attempt to preserve an oil painting through the centuries, under the illusion that it will remain “forever,” they create gorgeous sand mandalas, utter a prayer and sweep them away.
     That isn’t what Mangrum is doing with his work, which is set to remain in place through the summer.
     “I don’t call them ‘mandalas,’ simply because it’s a very culturally specific term,” he says. “What I’m doing is drawing from all these ancient templates but then mixing it up with my own contemporary work — I just call them sand paintings so that people from all over the world can relate and not put it in what I call the ‘Eastern Philosophy Box.’ ”
     As Buddhists do with mandalas though, he starts in the center — a single, dime-sized dollop of yellow, bright as an egg yolk. He builds out, ribbons of orange, of purple, paired with yellow. Mangrum has no set design, but builds from images in his head. “It’s all improvised,” he says. “I put down a couple dots and circles and start branching out.”
     There are no sketches, no preliminary design. All he knew beforehand is he’d create “some organic round shape that has a certain organic symmetry to it.” Everything from “op art, one of many influences ranging from ancient designs all the way to sci-fi, ‘Avatar,’ Dr. Seuss, quantum physics.”
     Even the most savvy artist can’t sell sand poured in the street, however, so Mangrum creates limited edition photographic prints of his work. He also has been commissioned to do his work all over the world, from Beijing to Copenhagen to San Francisco. Mangrum has appeared on “Sesame Street” and in the Corcoran Gallery Rotunda in Washington, D.C. He also does weddings.
     As with all artists, Mangrum’s journey has been serpentine. He waited tables, worked construction. “I’ve worn a dozen different hats,” he says. Initially, he created his images out of found objects — leaves and flower petals and seeds. He didn’t start working in sand until 2006, when he had a painting to make but no materials at hand. And while he distances himself from more spiritual sand paintings, he does see his work as, “a metaphor for life. We all pass away and regenerate, spring into fall, fall into winter, then spring anew again.”
     While here, he also created two works at 540 W. Madison. He will return to 300 S. Riverside Plaza to talk about his art and answer questions from 1 to 2 p.m. today.
     The building roped Mangrum’s art off with stanchions. The day after he created it, most people stream to work — 300 S. Riverside Plaza is home to JP Morgan Chase, AIG, National Futures Association, among others — and pass by without noticing. One in 10 turns a head or slows stride. And a few rare individuals actually stop, most taking photos with their phones — as if that were permanent.
     But Derick Evans, who works in the building’s messenger center, does stop, and stands there, beaming.
     “It’s magnificent,” he says. “How does he have it all in his head? It’s a gift, just a gift. I love it. Just goes to show what’s with this human being. This was not something you are taught. This is something you are born with.”

    —Originally published in the Sun-Times, June 13, 2013

Joe Mangrum still does his distinctive sand art. You can find his home page here.

Mikva could conjugate ‘democracy’

Abner Mikva, after having his South Side congressional district gerrymandered away, announced in 1973 he would run for Congress in the northern suburbs.

 (Sun-Times file photo)

     We’ve seen the damage one man can do. 

     To the national discourse. To our country’s health, institutions, honor. To the value of truth itself, and the freedom Americans enjoy, the latest threat being the installation on Monday of a rigid far-right fanatic onto the U.S. Supreme Court, who for a generation will steer the country in a direction most of its citizens do not wish to go.
     As the nation prepares to — maybe — spit out that one-man wrecking crew, Donald Trump, a timely reminder of the good one person can also do has its Chicago premiere on WTTW Thursday: “Mikva! Democracy is a Verb,” an hour-long documentary on the life of Abner Mikva.
     Mikva was the rare political figure to range across all three branches of government — legislative, judicial and executive. A liberal congressman from both the North and South sides. An appellate judge. And White House counsel for Bill Clinton.
     Mikva began his career as a lawyer, then cut his teeth for a decade in the Illinois House of Representatives, where he became expert at a quality that today has reached low ebb: the art of reaching across party lines to get things done.

     “People think, well, if you compromise, that means you don’t have any principles, you’re selling out,” Mikva explains in the film. “That’s not the way it works in a large society like ours. We ought to be able to find a way to compromise our differences, especially on the important issues.”

To continue reading, click here. 

Northshore Notes: I love you, Gene Hackman

     And if you suspect I was pleased to find a photo that includes both Gene Hackman AND luggage, well, you're right.

By Caren Jeskey

     “The Nanny costs $29.95 and is available at Chicago Trunk and Leather Works.” Somehow, this electronic babysitter that beeps when your child wanders too far never really took off, as far as I know. Luckily, Chicago Trunk and Leather Works at 12 South Wabash also sold Tumi suitcases and leased-out aluminum Halliburton briefcases. The shop opened back in the days when local phone numbers started alphabetically: 312-FR2-0845. By the time I found them in the late 80s, the store was owned and run by Ken and Ron Levine, whose grandfather created the business.
     Selling luggage and leather wallets in an old-school storefront on Wabash was the ultimate Chicago job as a teen. I felt urban and cool when the Red Line screeched towards downtown from my north side digs. “Watch the closing doors!” the ever cheerful conductor Michael Powell called out. (Yeah, so I was groped once in a CTA station, but I'd say just once counts as fortunate). Exiting somewhere on State, piss soaked tunnel air — tinny and cold in the winter and acrid in the summer — chased me from the platform all the way up the escalator. Mouth breathing was worse because then you could taste it. The reward came as olfactory senses yielded to the aroma of Garrett’s popcorn at street level. The fetching aroma of caramel and real cheddar cheese beckoned me into the shop to bag up and weigh out a portion. If I was sad, the bag was bigger. If I was happy, just a nibble would do. 

     The store hosted a gang of misfits, sitcom style. There was Betty, who seemed quite mature to me at all of 30. Her daily costume included perfectly coiffed finger waves, matte red lipstick, and a smart two piece suit à la Mad Men. There was Tom, who mostly stocked but would pitch in wherever needed. Tom and Betty (not their real names; I wouldn't want to injure somebody, even at this far remove) would fly apart from each other if I climbed the stairs to the storage loft too quickly and caught them in a tangle.
     Brad was the sweet, funny guy with smiling eyes. A member of the family. My kind boss Ken seemed to bring the best out in everyone. Ken and his wife Shelley took me under their wing and we became friends. When the store opened a second location, I happily took my station at 900 North Michigan in the new Bloomingdale’s Mall, as we called it. One day Ken, always looking out for others, pulled me aside. “Caren. We have a very special guest here. Gene Hackman. I want you to take care of him. Focus on what he wants, and don’t make too big a deal of it.” I did as I was told. Parents out there, I BET you wish your teens listened to you as willingly as I did to Ken.
     I helped the poised and respectful Mr. Hackman — who knew how to treat the help — pick out a wallet for his wife. As I handed the star his bag, I said “Mr. Hackman. My mother always tells my father that you are the only man she’d leave him for.” He laughed, of course, and offered “would you like me to write her a note?” We found him an 8x10 lined piece of notebook paper. He wrote “Dear Myra. I love you. Gene Hackman.” I wrapped it up and gave it to her as a gift for Christmas.

     "Dear Friends: As one who has experimented extensively with life in the home and community, using real people in true-life situations, I doubt that any playthings could prepare a child for one millionth of what is going to hit him in the teeth, ready or not." 

              —Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night

Fred Cohn: "He was the best. He was a star."

     For some reason obituaries have a bad reputation, as the lowest rung of the newsroom pecking order. I guess that's from the day when they were obligatory renditions of the good works of ladies in the sewing club. But obituaries are allowed to be interesting nowadays, and I love learning about the life of someone I either didn't know or was just vaguely familiar with. When I first looked into this, I had no idea who Fred Cohn was—my connection was I knew his son Yale. What I'm most proud of is that when I phoned Ed Genson, I didn't know that he knew Cohn—I just guessed he probably did, and was right. Ditto for Paul Biebel. This story was researched and written between 9 a.m. and 11:45 a.m. Friday, including two trips down to the clip file in the basement of the building, the second because I had the wrong key the first time. Let's see a computer aggregator do that.

     If Fred Cohn was defending you, you were in trouble.

Fred Cohn and his wife Mary on their wedding day.

     Not for any lack of skill on the part of the University of Chicago- trained criminal defense lawyer.

     “He was the best,” said Timothy Evans, chief judge of Cook County Circuit Court. “He was a star.”

     But Cohn represented some of the toughest cases, such as the 1969 robbery trial of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton. If you were facing the death penalty, if you were caught with the shotgun smoking in your hands, if you had killed a cop — or been beaten by one — you wanted Fred Cohn on your side.

     “A singularly outstanding lawyer, an excellent appellate lawyer,” said Judge Paul Biebel, presiding judge of the Criminal Division of the Cook County Circuit Court. “He had a great knowledge of criminal law, and was one of the last of the old breed who would take cases simply because they felt this person needed to be defended.”

     Cohn, 75, died April 30 at Evanston Hospital after a long struggle with cancer.

     He was born in Brooklyn, came to Chicago to attend the University of Chicago and then graduated from its law school in 1962. He went to work for the Cook County public defender’s office, leaving in the mid-1960s to work for flamboyant criminal defense lawyer Julius “Lucky” Echeles.

     “He was Julius’ guy,” said Ed Genson, a top Chicago criminal defense lawyer, who called Cohn “a lawyer’s lawyer” and a wonderful man with a gift for friendship.

     “We were sort of brothers,” Genson said.
      A big, round, affable man, Cohn approached his work as a vocation, and often tried to rehabilitate and reform his clients, helping them get jobs and turn their lives around.
     "He was such a good man," Genson said. "He felt sorry for everybody he represented. Everybody charged was a victim, every person he wanted to protect."
     After the murder of three civil rights workers in Mississippi in June 1964, Cohn went South and worked as a volunteer civil rights attorney for the summer.
     "He believed everyone had a right to vote," said his wife of 42 years, Mary Cohn. "He knew the situation in the South and felt he could contribute. He felt very strongly about civil rights his whole life."
     The two met in Evanston — Mary Derra was a nurse from Streater; he was running a legal aid office on the same floor as the visiting nurses association office where she worked. The nurses were always good for coffee and cigarettes, and Cohn would pop in for both, eventually taking his future wife to an open house at the Gateway Foundation rehab facility.
     "We knew zip about drug addicts," she said. Cohn was a fervent opponent of drug use who once threw a pair of drug dealers out of a party after he recognized them.
     Cohn was Hampton's attorney at the time he was killed, and represented other Black Panther Party members as well.
     He also taught criminal law and procedure at John Marshall Law School.
     "He was one of my instructors at John Marshall," Evans said. "He was committed to every avenue of justice you can imagine. He was a trial lawyer, primarily on the defense side, but was committed to fairness on all sides. He was my good friend for 40 years. He had a big heart. "
     Cohn lived in Edgewater and was involved in the community — he was chairman of the Edgewater-Uptown Building Task Force, trying to keep up housing standards. He was known to help neighbors with their legal problems for free, or in return for baked goods, home repair and stuffed peppers.
     Genson said that, during the unrest surrounding the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, he witnessed Cohn trying to calm the participants.
     "At one end of Grant Park, the policemen were on one side, the demonstrators on the other, and there was Fred in the middle, screaming that they should all sit down and negotiate," said Genson. "And then they charged. For the life of me, I can't understand why he didn't get hurt. He was trying to negotiate. That was Fred. He didn't want anybody to hurt each other."
     "In lieu of flowers, do a mitzvah," said his son Yale, using the Yiddish word for "good deed." "Take someone you love to movies and ice cream. That's what he would do."
     Survivors beside his wife, Mary, and son, Yale, include daughter Kate. The memorial service is private.

Flashback 2000: Prayer needs a 'private' sign

 

     The Uptown Poetry Slam returned to the Green Mill on Sunday after its long COVID hiatus. The most fun I've had in a while. The open-mike poets were funny and true and passionate and heartbreaking. The jazz was cool. And Marc Kelly Smith was the perfect MC, energetic and raw, reciting his own powerful poetry. There was tap dancing, and one poet proposed to his girlfriend from the stage. I was honored to be allowed to say a few words, and considered talking about Miss Eve, then didn't. I can't believe I haven't shared the following before, but here it is.

     The Green Mill is a wonderful old bar in Uptown. If you've never gone, you really should—dark, cozy, comfortable. I used to stop by whenever I could, back in the days when it had a regular pianist named Miss Eve.
     Miss Eve played at the Green Mill for nearly 50 years. She was a big, fleshy woman, and she would sit perched at the small piano behind the bar and sing, her voice rough and low. She took requests, and I'd try to stump her. My mother had been a singer in the USO, so I was familiar with a wide range of obscure old chestnuts. I'd request "Goody, Goody," and "Embraceable You" and "There's No Tomorrow."

Miss Eve

     "Do you know `Avalon' ?" I'd ask. "Do you know `Come Rain or Come Shine' ?" Invariably, she did. But I kept trying. One day she interrupted me in mid-question. "Honey," she rasped. "I know 'em all."
      A flash of insight swept over me. She knows them all. She is omnipotent. Divine. A god. Of course! God is a sweaty fat woman in a dark bar, playing out the tune of the world.
     Right, I know: drunk. But it seemed profound, then. I mention it to illustrate why I don't pray much. If you are the sort of person who can entertain a thought as blasphemous as "God is a sweaty fat woman . . ." then you lack the sincerity needed for prayer.
     While I don't pray much, I do appreciate prayer. It is an amazingly efficient endeavor. Prayer doesn't require batteries. You can do it aloud, but you don't have to. You can pray silently. Nobody will stop you. There is no need to clasp your hands in front of you or to kneel. You can choose to turn your eyes heavenward or not.
     This subtle, flexible quality of prayer comes to mind when I hear of people trying to make it into a public spectacle, either by forcing it into public schools or, as we keep hearing from the Southland, shouting it out at high school football games.
     Ever since the courts struck down leading prayers over the PA system as unconstitutional, rabid ministers have been encouraging their charges to stand up before games and pray.
     What is the purpose of this? Down South, they argue that they are merely continuing a tradition—God and football. The argument that a person should be able to attend a high school football game without being forced to choose whether to stand for a public display of adherence to Christianity never seems to affect anybody south of Missouri.
     What they don't realize is that this only works so long as most people think alike. As we learned this year in Palos Heights, the face of America is changing, and as our country becomes more diverse, the bullying represented by those football game prayers will become more intolerable. How would they react if, after the spontaneous Lord's Prayer died away, a smaller contingent stood up to recite the Hebrew schma as a third group went down to the field to unroll their prayer rugs facing Mecca.
     They wouldn't like it.
     You can pray all you want—in school, at football games, in a bar. You just shouldn't make a show of it. The reason is that if you recite the Lord's Prayer—your Lord's Prayer—then I should be able to shake a palm branch, and little Haji should get a chance to light incense to the six-armed elephant-head god.
     This is only fair. Yet so many people just can't get it. Maybe I should pray for them. Miss Eve, do you know "As Time Goes By"?
        —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Sept. 5, 2000.

Works in progress: Monica Eng

      Writing with a co-author is an entirely new gear for a writer. At least it was for me — whereas I usually write based on my own gut, now there was a second, exterior voice, one I was obligated to listen to, understand, respect. 

     Which wasn't a problem when I was writing "Out of the Wreck I Rise" with Sara Bader, who inevitably was right, or at least had a point, particularly when dialing back my more flowery prose. I remember her saying, "You're competing with the poetry."

     It was fun, educational, productive.

      So when I approached my former Sun-Times colleague, Monica Eng about her writing something here about her new book, "Made in Chicago: Stories Behind 30 Great Hometown Bites," I asked her to address how she came to collaborate with her co-author.

    The only thing better than eating great local food is reading about it, and this book seems a natural summer read for those of us bouncing around the suddenly-warm city, eating stuff. Monica and her co-author will be at the Highland Park Public Library Monday, talking about their book. Take it away, Monica:

     After years of reporting on Chicago-invented dishes, I was having lunch with a food historian friend who suggested I collect a bunch of their origin stories in a book. The University of Illinois Press was launching a 3 Fields imprint on Midwest culture and he thought it would be natural fit.
     I was barely keeping up as a mom, radio journalist and podcaster — much less a person who regularly washes her hair. So it seemed nuts to add a book deadline to the chaos. But at a book party in late 2018, I was talking to my pal and fellow food writer, David Hammond, about the difficulty of the project and he agreed to take on half the writing. We cooked up a book proposal and finally signed a contract right before the pandemic hit. I don’t think we saw each other’s faces in person for four years after that party.

     When it came to figuring out the 30 foods to feature we used these rules: All the dishes (or twists on them) had to be invented in Chicago, served in more than one place and tell an interesting story. To meet our 18 month deadline, I worked during vacations, on weekends and at night, mostly wishing I’d never agreed to do it. But like most of my big babies, this one has left me with nothing but pride as the memories of labor pain fade away. The book designers did a nice job of making this perfect for the your bike basket and glove compartment, so you can whip it out anywhere in the city to learn that a tasty bite and story are right around the corner.
      But more than just making an eating guide, I wanted to highlight these inventors, almost all of who were recent arrivals from other countries or the South. Our hot dog toppings tell the story of early 20th Century migration to Maxwell Street. The Pizza Puff comes from Assyrian immigrants from Iran crafted hot dog carts from baby buggies and manufactured corn roll tamales. Rib tips hit menus because Chicago barbecue masters from Mississippi didn’t want to waste a gnarly bit of the rib that many threw away. And the Akutagawa omelet represents Japanese-Americans in Wrigleyville who held onto small part of their culture even after the U.S. government told them to leave it behind.
    Beyond the happy stories, though, I found a bigger depressing story of persistent cultural segregation. Few South Siders have ever eaten the Akutagawa or gam pong gi, and fewer North Siders have tried Sweet Steaks, Jim Shoes or Pizza Puffs covered in mild sauce. My naïve hope, though, is that this book might change that a little — that these stories might intrigue readers to the point where they bust out of their own neighborhoods to try something new across town that gives them a little better understanding of the people who share their city.

Ravenswood Notes: Assuaging Fear

    So much is said about a city like Chicago, it's unusual to run into an entirely fresh take. But if anybody has ever postulated, as EGD Ravenswood Bureau Chief Caren Jeskey does today, the city as revered ancestor, I haven't encountered it. Her Saturday report:

     It’s 5 a.m. and I’m up writing from my Chicago apartment. The Brown Line and Metra rumble by repeatedly in the near distance, sounds that make me smile. I don't even mind the gentle shaking of the building. I am a die-hard Chicago fan who experiences this city as a living entity, a family member— perhaps one of my eldest ancestors. At once warm and fierce, she lays down the rules. Be strong. Don’t give up. Don’t complain, and if you do get over it soon. Be smart and savvy, and know your place. You might be privileged but don’t forget where you came from. Don’t look the other way when others need help. Stay on your toes, aware. Keep those car doors locked these days and stick to safe areas at safe times of day, but love and respect all of me. Do not live in fear. Be brave. Be tenacious.
     Since I am speaking of my particular family, Chicago has also guided us to grow things in her soil. Green beans under the skyway on the far south side. Roses wrapping around the Virgin Mary statuette in the Vet’s Park area of South Deering. Tomatoes and cucumbers, grown out of necessity by an immigrant railroad worker, to sustain the family, precariously (and often unsuccessfully) protected from rabbits, squirrels, and birds in the shadow of Senn High School. Eye popping, deep green leaves and happy, colorful flowers in a copious container garden on a back deck in Rogers Park. Rows of crops planted outside of the McCormick YMCA in Humboldt Park, where a Schwinn bike factory once stood. Palms rescued from the alley on a porch in Ravenswood. And always, always propagate.
     Avocado pits cracked open as roots break free, rambling vines spilling out onto window sills in glass jars filled with water. Jade and Tradescantia zebrina pups sprouting up from clippings that friends and neighbors shared. A baby rubber plant that’s at least 25 years old on an alley salvaged end table in a window on Wilson.
     I thought I’d be writing about fear today. Waking up at 4 a.m. after not enough sleep prompted me to take two hydroxyzine (not a regular habit since as an old school Polish/Irish/Lithuanian girl— who turned 52 this week— I am deathly afraid of prescribed medications even if they are needed). I have a feeling my Polish ancestors were the type who made tinctures from herbs and medicinal plants they grew themselves. While I am also drawn to natural remedies, I am out of practice and don’t have the intuitive sense of which plant medicine I need these days. Plus I don’t trust it enough not to die while forsaking pharmaceuticals like a Sri Lankan shaman tragically did this week. 
     In the past, I had tens of jars of dried flowers, roots, and leaves that I’d pull out in the wee hours when anxious thinking tried to take hold, preventing me from enjoying my zees. Chamomile and peppermint to relax, star anise to settle a tummy, sage for purifying and comfort, senna after eating too much cheese, St. John’s Wort to boost the mood.
     Today I reached for the prescribed meds and embarked upon a meditation. This combination usually works. Breathe deeply, choose a mantra. “Clear mind” on the inhale, “don’t know don’t know don’t know” on the exhale (as taught to me by Ana Forrest many moons ago), or simply “I am OK right now. It’s time to sleep.”
     But no. I’m wide awake and realized that fear woke me up in the first place. I’m having complications after round two of three of a dental procedure, and that scares me. Will my gums ever be the same? I’ve had a falling out with a childhood friend, which is unnerving even though our expiration date may have come. I’d like to be in a state of calm acceptance about this. I will get there, but have been ruminating about our last conversations and how angry I feel about being misunderstood. It will take some processing and active healing though, since one of the reasons I came back home was to reconnect with people. Since I got back in May, I’ve learned that I have some healthy friendships and familial ties, but I also have vestiges of a sometimes broken past to face.
     I could go on about what troubles me, but you get the drift. We all have things on our minds. I know that as I age, and those I love age, it behooves me to live a life that’s as present as possible, taking each challenge as it comes with as much grace and courage as I can muster. Good rest and healthy habits that contribute to the most balanced version of myself are the only recourse for the daunting task of being human.
     Off to water and prune. Wishing you a good day.

Northshore Notes: Better Late than Never

     Happy October! EGD Northshore correspondent Caren Jeskey and I are very different people, luckily for her. But we do keep discovering similarities in outlook, such as our sharing the Big Love for architect Jeanne Gang. When the University of Chicago Press asked me to write my upcoming book, a daily history of Chicago, my very first thought was: "I've got to get Jeanne Gang in there." And I did.

     Although today's post underscores a difference: just because I need a vacation doesn't mean our indefatigable Saturday essayist needs one too. Caren isn't about to neglect her duties just because the cat's away. So I'm pleased to pause my "Dozen Destinations" space filler to share her Saturday report. Another snippet of my 2009 travelogue returns Sunday. 

By Caren Jeskey

     Chicago continues to surprise and amaze me. A friend called to say she could not make it to my September birthday dinner, so she suggested a local kayak trip instead. We met at the WMS Boathouse last Saturday morning, which Jeanne Gang designed. As a Gang fan, I was delighted. The structure was completed back in 2013, yet it had not been on my radar. 

     One of the buildings houses rowing training equipment and an education center complete with padded benches nestled into the woodwork, and a library of books children can take home. The design is fresh and crisp with skylights, floor to ceiling windows, and light colored wood ceilings and staircases. Gang earned the U.S. Green Building Council’s silver LEED score for the sustainability factor of the building. 
     In Gang’s words, “Ecologically, the overall goal of a healthy river led the design team to focus on diverting stormwater from the city’s combined sewer system, one of the largest impediments to improved water quality. The boathouse’s roof drainage elements and site design together function as its stormwater management system, diverting 100 percent of runoff from the sewer. Green infrastructure—porous concrete and asphalt, native plantings, gravel beds, and bioswales (rain gardens)—is used to store and filter runoff before slowly releasing this filtered water back into the river. Existing habitats were maintained and strengthened with a mix of native grass, plants, and trees, and silt fabric prevented compaction and erosion during construction. These efforts serve as a model for softening the river’s edge, supporting its ongoing revitalization. With structural truss shapes alternating between an inverted 'V' and an 'M,' the roof achieves a rhythmic modulation that lets in southern light through the building’s upper clerestory. In summer, the clerestory lets in fresh air, while in winter, it allows sunlight to warm the floor slab, minimizing energy use throughout the year."
     Then it was time to get into the water ourselves. Boat stewards fitted us with life jackets and expertly placed our single person kayaks into the river. They gave us step by step guidance on how to get in and out of the boats. The last time I dismounted a kayak was back in Austin, which ended in an unplanned lake dip. Thankfully, I managed to avoid a dunk this time.
     We set off northbound from the dock between Belmont and Addison at a leisurely pace. Regal herons perched on concrete slabs and tree branches. One took flight right over us, showing us its 6’ wingspan and graceful ability to soar. It was a cloudy day, so turtles were not sunbathing along the shore, but a few peeked their heads out of the water to check us out as we floated along.
     Folks who are interested can take part in planning river development on October 1 and 6 for the South Branch and Bubbly Creek areas.
     After our relaxing water jaunt, we took a short walk past The Garden bike park. We watched cyclists young and old landscaping dirt mounds, and doing twisty turny things in the air from atop their bikes. We headed south and saw a father and son who’d set up a Pickleball net in an empty parking lot, which reminded us that we’ve been talking about visiting the court at the new Architectural Artifacts location. We followed the path to Belmont Avenue and found a sweet view of the city.
     When it was time to leave this burgeoning nature oasis in the city, we headed to Avondale Coffee Club with our laptops to get some work done. Turns out, the pair of friends who founded the shop were there to regale us with stories about their establishment. Jacqueline and Adam let us know that everyone who works there functions as equals, like a well-oiled family. They bought their first 150 pound bag of beans from a farmer in Guatemala via an Instagram post about seven years ago, and the rest is history. They source most of their coffee beans through Golden Mountain Coffee Growers whose mission is to "fight poverty through quality coffee." Jacqueline roasts the coffee at Reprise Roasters in Libertyville. She won a Gold Medal for her "Double Anaerobic Fermentation Category 3: Filter" last month at Golden Bean, the "world's largest coffee roasting competition," and is heading to the Word Championship in Hawaii later this year.
     We also met Kati, their business partner and Adam's life partner, as well as teammates Brian and Zach. They are celebrating three years at their Evanston location today and this evening, where they are offering a rare 20 percent discount on their beans from 5-8pm.
     Damn you, mortality. I wonder how many amazing finds Jeanne Gang, the gang at Reprise, and other talented locals have in store for us? If only we could live forever and find out.

"A feast of joy, love, harmony and grace"

Barbara Gaines

     "Ready?" says Barbara Gaines, to the singers, technicians and assistants scattered around the otherwise empty Civic Opera House theater one morning last week. "Let's do it."
     "Here we go," adds stage manager John Coleman. "Act 4. Quiet please."
South African soprano Hlengiwe Mkhwanazi climbs the stairs at stage right, glancing tentatively around at her feet, looking for something, lifting the curtain and peering underneath.
     "L'ho perduta, me meschina!" she sings, in Italian. "I've lost it; unhappy me!"
     A handful of notes of Mozart sung in her strong, achingly clear voice is enough to jolt me out of the up-to-that-moment ordinary day. It's like someone popping open my skull and laying cool wet cloths on my brain. Ahhh.
     But only for a moment.
     "Stop please," says Gaines, leaping up. "Okay, great. We're going to change something."
     It's the third day of stage rehearsals for "The Marriage of Figaro," the first production of the Lyric's 61st season, which opens Saturday night. Gaines, on of Chicago's top directors, who founded Chicago Shakespeare Theater and has directed some 30 plays there, is back at the Lyric, part of a savvy strategy to expand its reach beyond the circle of people who, like myself, just love opera, to lure those who might be drawn in by a star director.
     Gaines' job is to sweat the smallest detail, like when Mkhwanazi's character, Barbarina, lifts the curtain, looking for a lost pin.
     "I realized we revealed the set way too early," said Gaines, explaining why she wants to delay the moment. "It works better with the music."
     Gaines reflexively reassures as she instructs.
     "Barbarina, you were perfect, " she says to Mkhwanazi, who sang a show-stopping "Summertime" in "Porgy and Bess" last year.
     Gaines made her Lyric debut in 2010 with Verdi's far grimmer "Macbeth" and is excited to have been asked to take a crack at something lighter.
     "So much more fun, a lot more laughter," she says, during a break. "The joy of it. It's all about love, and passion. It's all of us, all of our stories. It's not about those dark productions where the count is a miserable bastard. He's a human being with empty spaces in his heart and tries to fill them, like all of us do."
     Gaines promises, if not quite Robert Falls-Grade shock, then plenty of surprises.
     "Some of the things on this stage has never been done before," she says.
     Such as?
     "At the very end of the overture—the best overture ever written," she says. "We have two singers and an actress doing a little improvisation that tells you the entire story. It's great fun.  What it says to the audience at the very beginning: 'You can laugh, you can enjoy yourself, this is going to be fun up to the end,' which is hilarious, but totally a surprise. I don't think it's been done in the history of 'Figaro.'''
     And she wasn't referring to the entire second act being performed in an enormous bed, 25 feet across.
     Directing the cast, Gaines is constantly in motion, watching the action from various perspectives.
     "I'll just stay here," she fibs, tucking herself into a seat for, perhaps five seconds, before she is up again, leaning over the pit, on her toes, then on stage, stopping action again, Daniel Ellis, her assistant director, following her like a pull toy duck.
     "When they do things, it gives you ideas, and you have to institute those ideas before you forget them," she explains.
      Gaines has said you can't hear the 4th act and not feel that you are in heaven, "a feast of joy, love, harmony and grace."
     Readers ask—and complain—more about my occasional opera column than any other topic. Gaines, talking about the differences between theater and opera, nails it so well, we'll give her the final word on the subject.
     "You know what it is?" she says. "I am not a religious person. I don't like people telling me what to do. But when they start singing, when the count asks the countess for pardon—perdono—there's this whole song about forgiving. Please forgive me. I think ... there must be a God, because the music is so beautiful. I think it is some of the most beautiful music that has ever been written, the finale of this opera. It goes from this beautiful moment of grace and forgiveness to let's celebrate, get drunk and have fun and live."

Culinary Artists Week #1: Cookin' at the Ritz

     I'm on vacation this week, kicking back around the house. So as not to leave you in the lurch, however, I've declared this Culinary Artists Week, and am featuring some of my favorite pieces about chefs and haute cuisine over the years, starting with this profile of Sarah Stegner from 1999, when she presided over the Ritz-Carlton dining room.  Lucky for me, in 2004 she started Prairie Grass Cafe in Northbrook with her husband, Rohit Nambiar and Ritz executive chef George Bumbaris—both of whom have cameos in this story—so I've been able to keep up with her progress as a top chef, not only from a gustatory perspective, but as she deepened her passion for local, ethical, sustainable food cultivation and mindful dining. While in the process eating many, many first rate meals prepared in her kitchen. This profile is long—over 2,100 words–but I guarantee at the end you'll wishing you knew more about her. Tomorrow's post is connected: a visit to Judith Schad at Capriole Farms, which I learned about through Sarah's commitment to high quality American cheeses.

Sarah Stegner in 1999 (Sun-Times)

      Sarah Stegner is a long way from the kitchen at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, where she is chef of the Dining Room.
     About 80 blocks south. Nearly 10 miles of distance, and a world away by culture, from the glitz of the Ritz, to the grit of East Englewood.
     The day is bright and crisp. Stegner gingerly steps through what, at a quick glance might look like a muddy, weedy, vacant lot. A closer look reveals a tiny garden with an ambitious name: "The 70th Street Farm." Nothing is ready for purchase, but the tomato plants are in, and Stegner wants to check their progress.
     "We might be able to bring back herbs," she says.
     The visit is as much to lock in a claim to the produce from the one-third-acre plot as it is to examine the plants. Fine restaurants are in keen competition for fine produce, and Stegner was floored by the tomatoes this lot produced last season.
     If possible, the Ritz will claim all the heirloom lettuce, beets, tomatoes, giant snow peas and broccoli. Let the other chefs drive to Wisconsin.
     She casts a covetous eye on young lettuce — perhaps she could take it back for tonight's salad? Neil Dunaetz, who runs the farm, rebuffs her: "It would be like robbing from a cradle."
     After 20 minutes, she leaves empty-handed, pressing home the point, one more time, that when things come out of the ground, he should call her.
     "Anything you have ready, we can put on the table," she says. "You have it, we'll use it."
     Back at the Ritz, the kitchen is gearing up for Friday night dinner, three hours away. Chefs and assorted staff stroll in like actors gathering at theater before a play. Everyone begins doing something: declawing crabs, boiling stock, making pasta.
     Stegner — one of the nation's top chefs, named "Best Midwest Chef" last year by the James Beard Foundation, winner of numerous accolades, including the Prix Culinaire International Pierre Taittinger — has her own priority.
     "I have to order cheese," she says, picking up a phone. "I need cheese for tonight. I'm not bad off, but I'm not sure I have enough."
     There are a thousand minor-but-important details to worry about, but cheese is special to Stegner. The Ritz menu introduces the $16 cheese course with a lengthy ode to cheese, beginning: "I have enjoyed the search and discovery of fine American cheeses. Acknowledgment needs to be given to the artisans for their work and determination to deliver consistent quality cheese . . ."
     Thus Stegner, and not a subordinate, labors over selecting that night's cheeses, appraising them like a choosy casting director. She unwraps Brillat Savarin, Hoch Ybrig, Lingot Dauphinois. Some make the cut for that evening's dinner; other cheeses are told to go home, marry the girl next door, give up this crazy dream.
     "It seems mundane," she says. "What I'm doing is checking quality. I like to do it. It needs a little bit of attention."
     A moist Roquefort, speckled with mold, blows its audition.
     "It can be riper," Stegner says. "It's still a little bit young."
     The cheeses are arranged from mild to strong. Asked if the average diner appreciates the pungent wallop of a very strong cheese, Stegner smiles.
     "They might," she says.
     Stegner is as economical with smiles as she is with fresh truffles. She'll serve one, but not without reason and certainly not lavishly, not in the wild excess of other chefs.
     "There are baseball cap chefs and toque chefs," said one of Stegner's acquaintances, referring to the tall, starched chef's hats. "She's a toque chef."
     Stegner cooks with concentration bordering on solemnity, like a cleric performing a rite. The kitchen is very quiet, except for the exhaust fans and an occasional clink of spoon on pot.
     "She's real intense," agrees friend Jimmy Bannos, the chef; owner of the two Heaven on Seven restaurants. "There's no BS when she's in the kitchen, no messing around. She's focused."
     That said, her intensity rarely explodes into anger. There is no screaming in Stegner's kitchen. Her longtime friend and mentor, Ritz executive chef George Bumbaris, says that now is common in commercial kitchens: "It doesn't work, anymore."
     Then again, few of the cliches of the star chef apply to Stegner. Despite her classical training, she avoids stuffy terms. Red rice is a "neat grain."
     She asks junior chefs if they would mind doing something, as if they might say no.
     "Would you do me a favor?" she says. "Will you make a mustard and red wine vinaigrette? Don't make a lot of it."
     When a fire flares up on the grill line, she reacts first, leading the assault to put it out. (The closest the Ritz ever came to not serving dinner in her nearly 15 years in the kitchen came when a pot of lobster bisque boiled over and set off the fire suppression system, dumping fire retardant over the grill and not only ruining everything already prepared, but forcing the entire line to be cleaned before preparations could begin anew.)
     "That was my worst nightmare," she says. "We opened, but we opened late."
     Perhaps the most unusual thing about Stegner, 35, is that in a business where chefs climb the ladder by hopping from restaurant to restaurant, she has been at the Ritz since she was 19, when she was hired on the spot to clean fish, 12 hours a day, for eight months.
     "It's physically hard work," she says. "You need a lot of knife skills. It challenges your dedication to the profession."
     Stegner met the challenge, and stayed on in the Ritz kitchen. She was, if possible, even more reserved at the beginning.
     "She started very shy," says Bumbaris. "She basically matured here, and has gotten a lot more sophisticated with the food."
     She came from food people. Her grandmother, Mary Boswell, had been a caterer in DuMont, N.J. She got into the business, the story goes, with parties raising money for a new church building.
     "I remember clam chowder — this was the East Coast," says Stegner. "They had a grill outside, and she would do venison roasts."
     Stegner grew up in Evanston, graduated from Evanston Township High School and went to Northwestern, studying classical guitar. But that route quickly soured.
     "There were nine classical guitarists when I was there," she says. "They were either really into classical music or wanted to be rock stars, and I didn't fit in with any of them."
     She left Northwestern after her freshman year and took refuge at the Cooking School Dumas Pere.
     "I wanted to work in a kitchen," she says. "I didn't know what that meant."
     She ended up a waitress at Bennison's Bakery in Wilmette, working the breakfast shift. That's when she got her first job at the Ritz.
     It took her just six years to move from cleaning fish to being named head of the Dining Room, and quickly the honors began rolling in. Like many successful chefs, as her fame grew, she responded by getting involved in the wide spectrum of charity work available to the culinary set.
     "When somebody calls you and says we need your help, it's pretty hard to say, 'Oh, I'm sorry, I have a date that night,' " she says. "If I can, I will."
     Four years ago she founded the Women Chefs of Chicago, a fund-raising group.
     Stegner checks to see if the morels have arrived. They have, and in fine form. She gives them an appreciative look, then sends them on their way to becoming a sauce for the ravioli.
     To take advantage of the freshest meat, fish and produce available, a new menu is composed each day, based on what comes in and what is good. Stegner is constantly improvising. Fifteen pounds of wonderful wild watercress have arrived, so potato and watercress soup goes on the menu for this night. There have been times when the menus were being printed while the first patrons were filing into the Dining Room.
     "Sometimes we push it to the last minute," she says. "Sometimes, right down to the wire."
     In a small, square room, with beautiful menus from special dinners framed in gold on the walls, Stegner sits with a china cup of cappuccino, intensely examining the latest draft of the menu. She takes a pen. The sheep's milk ricotta gnocchi with leeks is struck out. The julienne of prosciutto? Out. It is 3:20.
     "I want to show off the duck liver terrine," she says.
     The moment of peace ends quickly, replaced by a new mini-crisis. Little black beetles discovered in the watercress. The beetles are shown the door.
     As mealtime approaches, the entrees make their appearances. Long lines of thick pink veal chops. Deep red steaks. Stegner quizzes the other chefs.
     "Enough caviar for tonight?" she asks one.
     "What about the raviolis?" she asks another.
     "Twenty-six orders," the other chef, Chris Murphy, says.
     "I think you're going to be tight," she says.
     There are 37 radiologists at two special parties who could, in theory, order the raviolis. If the kitchen got 27 orders, they would have to prepare more dough, and that would throw a wrench in the works. On the other hand, the ravioli dough cannot be saved; if none of the radiologists orders ravioli, the 26 orders will be lost. Risk running out or risk wasting a lot of dough? Stegner tells Murphy to make more dough.
     It is the sort of spot decision, half culinary, half economic, that makes or breaks a chef and a restaurant. Stegner makes them all day long. Mistakes happen. Once she ordered 15 pounds of pea shoot tendrils, missing the fact that they cost $4 an ounce. She ended up with $ 1,000 worth of pea shoot tendrils.
     That wasn't worth it, but generally freshness is worth almost anything.
     She says that, while she was classically trained in the French tradition, she tries to retain the American focus on the product.
     "What we put in our mouths comes from the earth," she says. "People are beginning to understand that and go back to that. So if you get incredibly good arugula grown at a farm in Illinois, I'm not going to take that and twist it around and stack and hide it. I'm going to give you that arugula in its purest form, the way it tastes the best."
     Before the customers taste Stegner's food, the wait staff does. Just before 5 p.m., the waiters gather, examining the menu, and Stegner sweeps out with special items for that night, but not before touting a charity dinner.
     "Are we allowed to go to it?" a waiter asks.
     "You're allowed to work it," she says. Then she pops into the kitchen.
     "This is potato watercress soup," she says, returning with an elegant little bowl. "They're wild watercress. Yukon golden potatoes. A little bit of butter but no cream. In the bowl a little garnish, and shallots with mustard vinaigrette."
     The waiters taste and savor. Spoons click. The response is good. She hurries back to the kitchen.
     "This is the ravioli with morel mushroom cream sauce," she says, returning.
     "Where are the morels from?" someone asks.
     "Washington state."
     Back in the kitchen, Stegner, who takes great pain to credit those working under her, says she puts great emphasis on the daily pre-dinner ritual.
     "I have to make sure the wait staff understands why this is important to me, what this is about, make sure they taste it so they can go and convey this passion," she says. "They're really good at that."
     Quietly, one waiter suggests the ravioli might be saltier than ideal. Stegner herself thought they had nailed the saltiness perfectly, but she trusts her staff, and goes back to tell the chefs to keep a watch on the salt.
     "If they don't like it, I don't want to serve it," she says.
    Then the night really begins. Stegner stays until the last plate goes out.
     "I don't always stay for the kitchen breakdown," she says, almost guiltily.
     Underlying Stegner's modesty is a knowledge that all the accolades in the world mean nothing if the food isn't good, if the marinated grilled rack of Colorado lamb with Yukon golden potato and goat cheese puree, the black olive and oven-roasted-tomato lamb jus, and the slow roast salmon over braised lentils aren't well worth the price to the diner.
     "The thing about my profession is I'm only as good as the last meal that you ate," she says. "If every plate that I put out today isn't as good as yesterday, they're not going to say, 'Let's go back because last time it was great.' They're going to go, 'Oh, I'm not going back because it wasn't good this time.' It has to be good every time. That's my job: to make it good every time. That focus drives it. You have to focus. You can't let go. You can't step back and say, 'Today I don't feel like working.' "
     That sentiment defines Stegner as much as a thousand personal details — not that she is very forthcoming about those. She lives in Evanston. She has a dog, an American Eskimo miniature. She is married to Rohit Nambiar, an assistant manager at the Four Seasons. But she quickly draws the veil and refocuses on the food.
     "That's enough of that," she says. "I am private. I think the thing is, the minute you take your eye off of the passion of the food is when you end up in trouble. That's a principle I have. This is what I do. This is what I'm about. This is my gift to the public.
     "It's not me and my personality and what I think and what I believe. It's what you eat. The focus needs to be on the food. It's not me. It's the food that people come for."

     —Originally published in the Sun-Times, June 20, 1999