Events

Welcome to stop #25 on the Brews and Choos project. Brewery: Lunar Brewing Co., 54 E. St. Charles Rd., Villa ParkTrain line: Union Pacific West, Villa ParkTime from Chicago: 36 minutes (Zone D)Distance from station: 900 m Sometimes you find good beer in unexpected places. Lunar Brewing in Villa Park appears as any other dive bar off a suburban stroad, but they have brewed their own beer since 1996. I didn't have a lot of time so I tried only one of the six house beers on draft, the Scottish Ale: I liked...

That seems like a reasonable conclusion based on recent statements from conservative broadcasters: At the heart of their campaign is a skepticism over the advice offered by experts and a willingness to accept a certain number of deaths to incur fewer economic costs. Many also see in the mass shutdowns and shelter-in-place policies a plot to push the country to the left. [Glenn] Beck, for example, suggested Democrats were trying to “jam down the Green New Deal because we’re at home panicked.” Heather Mac...

Today is the 103rd birthday of Chicago's bus system: The City of Chicago had granted a transit franchise to the Chicago Surface Lines company.  But the boulevards and parks were controlled by another government entity, the Chicago Park District.  In 1916 the new Chicago Motor Bus Company was awarded a franchise by the Park District.  Now, on March 25, 1917, their new vehicles were ready to roll. Mayor William Hale Thompson and a collection of dignitaries boarded the bus at Sheridan and Devon.  The...

Jason Rezaian spent 544 days in solitary confinement inside an Iranian prison. He has some advice on how to survive social isolation: 1. Don’t spend all your time online. You thought you spent a lot of time on the Internet before? That was nothing. And if you’re active on social media, as many of us are, it’s going to be hard to step off that merry-go-round. 2. Read books After I was released from solitary confinement after 49 days, I was allowed some small privileges. The one that I quickly realized...

The governor ordered everyone to stay at home only a few days ago, and yet it seems like much longer. I started working from home three weeks ago, initially because my entire team were traveling, and then for safety. My company turned off all our badges yesterday so I couldn't go back even if I wanted to. And I find myself planning meals a week out because I find it nearly impossible to cook small amounts of food. (Sample entries: Monday dinner, shrimp in garlic, butter, and wine sauce with wild rice...

There's enough going on in COVID-19 news today that I will have a regular post on the subject later on. But why don't we start the day with yesterday's National Puppy Day photos in The Atlantic? Would that be good?

Just a few minutes ago, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced sweeping restrictions on assembly and movement similar to those currently in effect in Illinois and some other parts of the US: To put it simply, if too many people become seriously unwell at one time, the NHS will be unable to handle it – meaning more people are likely to die, not just from coronavirus but from other illnesses as well. So it’s vital to slow the spread of the disease. Because that is the way we reduce the number of people...

The New York Times' chief classical music critic, Anthony Tomassini, gives credit to the person who was Germany's greatest composer, until Bach: [B]orn in 1585, exactly 100 years before Bach, he is considered the greatest German composer of the 17th century. I hardly knew his music, however, and neither does much of the concert-going public today. One day, that professor put on a recording of Schütz’s “Die Sieben Worte Jesu am Kreuz,” a setting of Jesus’s final words from the cross, framed by two...

Welcome to stop #24 on the Brews and Choos project. Brewery: More Brewing, 126 S. Villa Ave., Villa ParkTrain line: Union Pacific West, Villa ParkTime from Chicago: 36 minutes (Zone D)Distance from station: 1.5 km In the suburbs, sometimes "concepts" take precedence over everything else. This bustling, family-friendly brewpub "concept" fits perfectly with the suburban ethos. They opened during peak brewpub in August 2017, and they seem to be doing well. Still, they brew their own beer, and they're...

The President's disdain for expertise and his malignant, narcissistic character cost us weeks—or months—when we could have prepared for the pandemic we now face. Michelle Goldberg summarizes the case for slapping his name on the resulting disaster: [W]hile the calamity we are experiencing is not Trump’s doing, his dishonesty and incompetence have exacerbated it, and continue to do so. To point this out is not to dwell on the past but to confront the scale of our present crisis. Trump has been giving...