John Lillig

Episode 821 - Behind the Camera: Jun Fujita's Chicago with author Graham Harrison Lee is available wherever you enjoy podcasts.

Yes, I was there. It was great. I was unaware of Cut Worms beforehand and have been checking out his songs. Great echoes of Brian Wilson and the Beatles, among others.

When a Museum Devours its Own: The Mortal Threat to Adler & Sullivan's Stock Exchange Trading Room Eric Allix Rogers photo, courtesy Preservation Chicago Here's the thing.  Great art museums are both amazing treasures and amoral empires.  ...

MUST READ ARTICLE!

When a Museum Devours its Own: The Mortal Threat to Adler & Sullivan's Stock Exchange Trading Room

ArchitectureChicago PLUS blog by Lynn Becker

arcchicago.blogspot.com/2026/03/when...

Kyoto bids farewell to a storied poets’ cafe Opened by American poet Cid Corman in 1974, CC’s in Nakagyo Ward had served as an important gathering ground for the literary community.

Opened in 1974 by American poet Cid Corman, who died in 2004 and his wife Shizumi, the kissaten attracted writers from around the world. Cultural figures including Allen Ginsberg and Kenneth Rexroth were among those who stopped in during visits to Kyoto.

www.japantimes.co.jp/community/20...

Just the other day I was looking at the Martha M. Ruggles Elementary School at 7831 S. Prairie. It has a full park-like lawn in front of the school on 79th Street, closer to Lane or Steinmetz or Schurz than most elementary schools.

What is the story behind the tiny homes with big yards in Chatham? | Chicago Mysteries with Geoffrey Baer What is the story behind the tiny homes with big yards in Chatham?

The garlows! www.wttw.com/chicago-myst...

I loved that Argo Tea. It was a rare refuge and quiet space in the Loop. I'll have to check out this incarnation.

Mayor Mamdani and a child play with Legos while looking very serious and concentrated. The child is impossibly adorable and wearing tiny blue glasses.

No interruptions, please. We’re building universal child care.

Here's another one:

There are 4 of these within 7 lots on the east side of the 3200 block of N. Pulaski.

Great that it is the Tranfer Inn because of course you would have to transfer from the CG streetcar to the South Chicago streetcar (or the 71st) and while you were waiting you could pop in to the Transfer Inn.

Penelope! That's it. Thank you!

Google Streetview of the property with PIN10 1610416009: 4039 West Maypole Avenue

4039 West Maypole Avenue

Indeed. There is (was?) a bar, Leo's Den, at 71st and Woodlawn, just outside the walls of Oak Woods. Per Google Maps, it is "temporarily closed."

Chicago Poetry: Then and Now, Black, White, and Brown Chicago literature always grapples with two fundamental questions: What is this place, Chicago? And who are we, Chicagoans?

Y'all: Spaces are still available in my @newberrylibrary.bsky.social online seminar for this term! It's a discusson of Chicago poetry, from Sandburg and Brooks to our lucky city's contemporary poetry Renaissance: Coval, Olivarez, Marshall, and Ewing. Check it out: www.newberry.org/calendar/chi...

Algren also references a tavern "across the way":

"we’d just hang around the gate waiting for Nephew’s Uncle Johnson to break out of the saloon directly across the way."

This could be 7116, 7118, or 7122 South Chicago.

I kind of hope it is the Tabernacle of Love Deliverance at 7122.

". . . down Cottage Grove to the wrought-iron Oakwoods Cemetary gate. . . . past the long-moldering graves of Confederate prisoners who had died at Camp Douglas in some long-ago wrought-iron war."

- Nelson Algren: Chicago, City on the Make

Chicago: City on the Make “Once you’ve become a part of this particular patch, you’ll never love another. Like loving a woman with a broken nose, you may well find lovelier lovelies. But never a lovely so real.” Ernest Hemingw...

Don't know when it was closed, but I figured out that there once was a gate there from Nelson Algren's Chicago: City on the Make - specifically in Section 3, "The Silver-Colored Yesterday." (Notes by David Schmittgens and @rogersparkman.bsky.social)

Now I'm remembering a little more and I think the restaurant was fancy. I am thinking it was called Filomina.

Architect Dwight Perkins' buildings teach valuable lessons on school design, more than a century later Something to consider as a new academic year gets underway: Chicago Public Schools are among the city's most architecturally distinctive buildings. And the best of these are the 40 buildings designed ...

More on the Tilton School by @leebey1.bsky.social in the @chicago.suntimes.com:

The building at left is the George W. Tilton School (Dwight Perkins, 1908).

I think this was a florist in maybe the 1980's and then maybe a restaurant or coffee shop after that?

We're running a sale on the website through tomorrow night. Get 50% off the used books with promo code Tuesday at checkout. Pictured is some of the used classic lit we currently have in stock.
carpelibrumbaltimore.com/collections/...

Calumet Astronomical Society has gazed at the distant stars for more than half a century "Astronomy is one of the only sciences that can be done by normal laypeople," Calumet Astronomical Society President David Ryan said.

Northwest Indiana may be the only place in the country where the main observatory is named after a steelworker.
nwitimes.com/news/local/a...

New blog post: I put together a list of concerts that happened at the Uptown Theatre from 1975 to 1981 — along with a sample of what music critics wrote about the shows. www.robertloerzel.com/2026/03/02/u...

I think the frame building to the right might still be extant, covered by some kind of modern facade.

"Inspired by those volunteers seven decades ago, Wesleyan University and a network of hundreds of schools and allied organizations are uniting for Democracy Summer, a nationwide program to educate citizens and protect our elections in the coming year."

Rev. Jesse Jackson to be laid to rest at Oak Woods Cemetery, 'part of the city's unrivaled historic fabric' The 173-year-old cemetery — solemn, historic and picturesque — will be the final resting place of the Rev. Jesse Jackson this week.

Today's column looks at what will be the final resting place of the Rev. Jesse Jackson: 19th Century landscape designer Adolph Strauch's solemn and picturesque Oak Woods Cemetery on the city's South Side.