I’m not, generally speaking, an adherent of depression. But on National Depression Day, I felt compelled to attend services. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Nonetheless, I tried to do my part. I dressed in black. In a foolproof scowl-inducing move I opened mail: not a single bill. I tore into an ominously officious envelope. It was the feds returning my promissory note–signed in girlish innocence 15 years ago–clearing me of all student debt....

“Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If perticuliar care and attention is not paid to the Laidies we are determined to foment a Rebelion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws laws in which we have no voice, or Representation,” wrote Abigail Adams in 1775, imploring the all-male Continental Congress to “Remember the ladies” in drafting the blueprint for a rebel nation. This cautionary letter–written to her husband John–argued for the inclusion of women’s rights in the Declaration of Independence....

Amnon Wolman disdains the religious reverence required of modern performances of classical music. It’s around midnight in an Evanston coffee shop, and the Northwestern University professor has just finished rehearsing his upcoming production of Don Giovanni (Revisited), an updating of the Mozart classic with a postmodern, pop-culture-laden spin. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Wolman’s take on Mozart’s dark and intensely psychological masterpiece–his first venture into directing–is likely to startle most opera lovers....

Jose Cobo: New Works at Lyons-Weir & Ginsberg, The two painted bronze figures standing side by side in Man and Woman in a Cabinet recall Renaissance paintings of Adam and Eve, but displayed behind the glass panels of a wooden cabinet, they’re also like knickknacks in a bourgeois home, decorative objects defused of any iconic power. Yet like the satyrs, the man and woman retain a certain odd edge: with their nude rough skin they have none of the empty prettiness of a commemorative plate....

Prop Theatre, at the Organic Theater Company Greenhouse, Lab Theater. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » As the patriotic optimism of the 80s unravels into the paranoid schisms of the 90s, a visit with ever-upbeat Ronald Reagan might seem a breath of fresh air–until you remember that his divisive, budget-busting economic policies and pandering to the extremist right have a lot to do with the mess we’re in now....

Splendors of Imperial China: Treasures From the National Palace Museum, Taipei Western art at its best proudly announces its presence, filling space with its forms and imposing itself on its environment. A Renaissance sculpture incises the space surrounding it; an illusionistic European painting cuts a virtual hole in the wall, creating a window onto another world. But the best works here are profoundly self-effacing. While Chinese artists often spoke of finding a personal style, they also spoke of losing themselves in their subject....

It was a year of many triumphs for young pilots. Twelve-year-old Vicki Van Meter of Meadville, Pennsylvania, became the youngest girl to fly across the Atlantic. Leyland “Lucky” Vittert, 11, of Saint Louis, became the youngest person of either gender to make the same trip. Nine-year-old Rachel Carter was the youngest to make a cross-country roundtrip. Little Frenchman Xavier Gouin, 12, was the youngest to fly across the English Channel. And Baltimore’s 16-year-old Jimmy Mathis, the only one of this group old enough to have a pilot’s license and fly without an instructor, became the youngest solo pilot to cross the U....

“Auto writers and readers alike have grown accustomed to road tests that fail to reflect the kind of driving that most automobiles endure regularly,” writes James Flammang in Tirekicking Today (July), a newsletter published on West Foster. “Let’s face it, the only person who might truly need blastoff acceleration from a standstill is the guy who’s trying to escape from the police. For everyone else, the only acceleration that counts is the kind needed when entering an expressway, or when trying to pass another vehicle on a two-lane road....

Coffee? Tea? Huitlacoche? It’s an Aztec name for the foul-looking black fungus that can appear on sweet corn–but according to U. of I. plant pathologist Jerald Pataky, who’s working with Mexican colleagues for improved growth of the nutritionally packed fungus, it’s high in carbohydrates and fiber, low in fat, higher in protein than the corn it feeds on, and can be used in soups, salads, crepes, puddings, and even ice cream....

Percentage of Chicago-area adults owning cellular phones, according to a Media Audit news release: 28. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “Domestic violence explains much about the difficulty of making the journey from welfare to work,” Jody Raphael, of the Taylor Institute on North Wolcott, writes in Poverty & Race (January/February): “The Chicago Commons West Humboldt Employment Training Center (ETC)…has discovered a strong connection between domestic violence and long-term welfare receipt…....

Gary, Indiana, has always epitomized some defining aspect of American life. A company town founded in 1906 by United States Steel and named for Elbert Gary, chairman of the board, it became synonymous with the brawny steel industry, its mills a magnet for the foreign-born. The city coffers are bare. The present city budget is $42 million, but “I don’t know if it’s ever been balanced,” says Barnes. “To clear things up we always have to make layoffs and have reductions in force....

Woloba at Arie Crown Theatre, through December 31 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Both are evening-length narrative ballets closely tied to their cultural origins; both are family shows. But there the resemblance ends. Woloba (“The Big Forest”), a dance-opera written, directed, and choreographed by Abdoulaye Camara with assistance from Muntu artistic director Amaniyea Payne, is based on a Senegalese folktale and performed in Mandingo....

Early in the second half of the Bulls’ season-opening game against the Charlotte Hornets last Friday, Dennis Rodman– vastly outsized by the man he was assigned to guard, seven-foot George Zidek–tried to give ground and draw an offensive foul. The bush-league scabs officiating the game in place of the striking National Basketball Association referees made no call, and Zidek scored. Rodman clearly understood this to mean he had carte blanche to stand his ground, and on the Hornets’ next possession he did just that....

THE NEXT GENERATION PROJECT In performance, especially, the “I could do that” approach overlooks the importance of personality in an artist’s work. Certain performers have an aura, a captivating presence, that no amount of technical expertise can duplicate. This ineffable quality can make a mundane activity thoroughly engrossing. John Sanchez, Lydia Charaf, and Vicki Walden, the performers presented in this Next Generation Project showcase, all demonstrate this kind of magnetism. Their self-deprecating humor, poker-faced deliveries, and general lack of pretense quickly make us comfortable....

Simon Boccanegra His early success had less to do with his music than with the patriotic, nationalistic sentiments he expressed: mournful dirges to oppressed homelands (disguised as Israel or Scotland) and stirring hymns to the patria. Early Verdi is easily eclipsed in sheer beauty of vocal line by Bellini and in orchestral grandeur by Wagner. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Like Verdi’s Macbeth, this is a great vehicle for a starring baritone like the late Tito Gobbi–and pretty much a waste of time without such a voice....

Wolf Records Festival Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » This lineup of blues artists who have new or recent CDs on the Austrian Wolf label is notable both for the quality of the principals and the stylistic breadth they represent. Billy Branch and John Primer cut their teeth alongside forward-looking traditionalists Willie Dixon, Muddy Waters, Sammy Lawhorn, and Magic Slim, and they’ve carried on in that vein....

Friday 16 Summer D-Tour ’93 is the WestSide Gallery District Association’s latest gallery walk. More than two dozen outfits that showcase the work of emerging artists in Bucktown and Wicker Park open their doors from noon to 8 today and tomorrow, from the Zeus Gallery (1820 W. Webster) on the north to Gallery 954 (954 W. Washington) on the south. Visit ten galleries and you can get a free drink at the closing party, 8:30 Sunday night at the Northside, 1635 N....

Reuniting after almost a year spent pursuing separate projects, Will Clinger and Jim FitzGerald are pairing up again for a new revue, The Tall and the Short of It, opening later this month at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater; to get in shape they’ve booked two evenings at the Improv Institute, whose almost-anything-goes ambience should suit the team to a tee. Clinger–he’s the tall of it–is the gangly guy who’s been cohosting channel 11’s Wild Chicago since last summer; his diminutive partner FitzGerald recently finished playing the fool–literally–in Shakespeare Repertory’s King Lear....

Before my children were born I thought I had a pretty good concept of normal birth. I’d seen it on TV plenty of times. I’d be chain-smoking Camels in a waiting room while a team of doctors were flinging instruments around an operating room. They’d see the head, and about five seconds later the baby would catapult straight into the hands of the surgeon, who would slap the kid around a bit and pass it off to the smiling mother....

Middle Fork Savanna is an image, a 550-acre miniature of northeastern Illinois as it looked in 1800. The image is blurred and distorted by alien plants and animals and by railroad embankments and drainage tiles, but we can still catch a glimpse of what Illinois was before the Potawatomi were thrown out. I’ve spent several mornings over the past two months wandering through the Middle Fork trying to put together an inclusive list of the nesting birds that live there....