“An Afternoon of Sacred Singing and Signing” by S.M. O’Connor

Frugal Muse Books, Music & Video in Darien, Illinois is presenting An Afternoon of Sacred Singing and Signing on Wednesday, July 26, 2017 from 5:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. Local composer and author Richard C. Jeffrey will conduct a choir with flute accompaniment. They will perform hymns from his book From Grace to Verse, From Verse to Song: The Hymns of Richard C. Jeffrey. The new book, published by Trafford on April 29, 2017, is a collection of 100 original hymns. Following the performance, Jeffrey will sign copies of his book. Free refreshments will be provided.

Today, Tuesday, July 18, 2017 and Sunday, July 23, 2017 are member-only sales at Frugal Muse Books. Members get a 15% off discount on second-hand (“gently used”) items. On these special sale days, they get an additional 10% off on gently used items, for a total of 25% off.

Frugal Muse Books is in the midst of a fundraising campaign through the crowd-funding Web site Go Fund Me. Donate $10 at the E.L. James level, and get three items from the bargain area; donate $20 at the Grisham level and get a Frugal Muse cup; donate $50 at the Bradbury level and get a Frugal Muse t-shirt and mug; donate $100 at the Austen level and get a Frugal Muse t-shirt, a Frugal Muse mug, and a $20 gift certificate; donate $200 at the Twain level and get a Frugal Muse t-shirt, a Frugal Muse mug, and a $30 gift certificate; donate at the $500 Shakespeare level and get a Frugal Muse t-shirt, a Frugal Muse mug, a $50 gift certificate and get 20% off all gently used items for one year. The goal is to raise $15,000.

The address is 7511 Lemont Road, Darien, Illinois 60561. The phone number is (630) 427-1140.

Frugal Muse Books is located in Chestnut Court, across the street from Hollywood Blvd Cinema in the Woodgrove Festival shopping mall. Chestnut Court is at the southeastern corner of 75^th Street and Lemont Road. Frugal Muse Books is open from 11:00 a.m. on Sundays and from 10:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. every other day of the week.

The Field Museum of Natural History in March, 2018

The Field Museum of Natural History’s entrance pavilions are at opposite ends of Stanley Field Hall, which has a north-south axis. The two porticos (porches) are each reached by two successive flights of stairs.

Both porticos of The Field Museum of Natural History are flanked by two small porches, which each have two caryatids (columns in the shape of maidens). On the facade, the wings are adorned with a colonnade of attached fluted Ionic columns. The building’s fluted Ionic columns have volutes (spiral-scroll-shaped crowns).

Each portico of The Field Museum is tetrastyle in antis with double-ranked fluted Ionic columns capped by volutes. An entablature crowned by a pediment rests atop the columns. The continuous frieze in each case is relatively plain. The wave-themed acroteria that crown the pediments are borrowed from the Palace of a Fine Arts, which housed The Field Museum until 1920 and now houses the Museum of Science and Industry.

The Field Museum of Natural History isn’t “just” a museum. Visitors can watch scientists at work through windows at the Daniel F. and Ada L. Rice DNA Discovery Center’s Pritzker Laboratory.

Mrs. Charles (Laura) Schweppe, a daughter and co-heiress of John Graves Shedd, the former partner of Marshall Field I who succeeded him as president of Marshall Field & Company, and who, under the guidance of Stanley Field founded the Shedd Aquarium, donated an exhibit of 100 bronze sculptures by Malvina Hoffman to The Field Museum. They represent every race, nation, and tribe in the human family (more or less). On January 9, 1933, the first group, Unity of Man, went on display.

In addition to the four figures Henry Hering (1874-1949) made for the corners of Stanley Field Hall, he also made the twelve plaster round lion head shield escutcheons that line it. These are replicas of the marble round lion head shield escutcheon he made for the pediment of the facade of The Field Museum of Natural History.

Christmas at Chicago’s Union Station

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is a POLAR EXPRESS display in the Great Hall of Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is a closeup of the THE POLAR EXPRESS steam locomotive mock-up in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is the headlamp of THE POLAR EXPRESS steam locomotive mock-up in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This Union Station Company rail car loaded with super-size gifts is part of THE POLAR EXPRESS mock-up in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is a Christmas tree in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This Christmas tree in the Great Hall of Union Station in downtown Chicago has emblems of Amtrak, Metra, and historic railroad companies whose routes they now operate like Burlington.

Cinemas sculptor Alfonso Iannelli (1888-1965) Helped Design

This is the Pickwick Theatre Building, an Art Deco movie palace and office building erected in downtown Park Ridge, Illinois in 1928.

The architects were Roscoe Harold Zook and William F. McCaughey. Sculptor Alfonso Iannelli, who also worked on the Adler Planetarium, contributed to this building.

In recent years, the Vlahakis family, who’ve owned the building for 50 years, have been able to turn the building into a multiplex by adding smaller theaters around the original auditorium. The latest one, with a screen four times the size of the one in the auditorium, will open in time to screen INFINITY WARS in May, if all goes well.

The Catlow Movie Theater is a cinema that opened in downtown Barrington, Illinois in 1927. The Tudor Revival style of architecture is not confined to the facade of the cinema. As with the Pickwick Theatre in Park Ridge, Illinois, sculptor Alfonso Iannelli (1888-1965) played a role in the design and decoration of The Catlow Movie Theater.