“Upcoming Author Talks in Arlington Heights” by S.M. O’Connor

There are two upcoming author talks in northwest suburban Arlington Heights, Illinois, one with a local poet and another with a scientist who became bestselling novelist. Artist and author Richard J. Cronberg will speak at The Merry Memory Company on Saturday, October 6, 2018. Dr. Lisa Genova will speak at Forest View Auditorium as part of the Arlington Heights Memorial Library’s 2018 One Book, One Village program on Thursday, October 18, 2018

R.J. Cronberg will read poems from his seventh book Thug Life: Strange Poems and Stories, published this year by Alien Buddha Press, and share his thoughts on publishing and what it is like to be a writer at The Merry Memory Company at 2:00 p.m. on Saturday, October 6, 2018. Mr. Cronberg is a former labor union worker, self-taught painter, husband, father, and grandfather who enjoys lifting weights. He grew up on the South Side of Chicago. The Merry Memory Company, which opened on Halloween in 2017, is a store that sells gifts and antiques. The address is 405 South Arlington Heights Road, Arlington Heights, Illinois 60005. This is in the two-story strip mall on Arlington Heights Road, at the southeast corner of Arlington Heights Road and Grove Street, a few blocks south of downtown Arlington Heights. To R.S.V.P., call (847) 749-0474 or e-mail merrymemoryco@gmail.com.

Figure 1 Credit: Courtesy of The Merry Memory Company. Caption: This is a photograph of the front cover of Thug Life: Strange Poems and Stories by Richard J. Cronberg.

Dr. Lisa Genova is an American nueroscientist and authoress of Italian descent. She will speak at Forest View Auditorium at 7:00 p.m. on Thursday, October 18, 2018. She will speak about her novel Every Note Played and answer questions from the audience. Copies of the book will be available for sale. Dr. Genova will sign copies after her presentation.

She graduated valedictorian, summa cum laude from Bates College with a degree in biopsychology and earned a Ph.D. in neuroscience from Harvard University. As a novelist, she writes about characters suffering from neurological disorders and the impact on their families. She self-published her debut novel Still Alice through iUniverse in 2007. Simon & Schuster acquired the publication rights and published it in 2009 under the imprint Pocket Books. There are approximately 2,600,000 copies in print. It was adapted into Still Alice (2014), which starred Julianne Moore, Alec Baldwin, Kristen Stewart, Kate Bosworth, and Hunter Parrish. Julianne Moore was the 2014 Best Actress Oscar® Winner for her performance as Professor Alice Howland, who suffers from early onset familia Alzheimer’s disease, from the American American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences at the 87^th Academy Awards ceremony on February 22, 2015. She also won the BAFTA Award, Golden Globe Award, Screen Actors Guild (S.A.G.) Award, and Critics’ Choice Movie Award.

Left Neglected, her second novel, published in 2011 dealt with a woman who suffered a traumatic brain injury as a result of which she suffered from left brain hemispherical neglect; Love Anthony, her third novel, published in 2012, dealt with a nonverbal boy with autism; Inside the O’Briens, her fourth novel, published in 2015, dealt with a family with several members who suffered from Huntington’s disease. Her latest book, Every Note Played, published this year, is about Richard, a noted pianist who suffers from A.L.S., and his ex-wife, Karina, who becomes his reluctant caretaker.

Dr. Genova has appeared on The Dr. Oz Show, The Today Show, C.N.N., and P.B.S. NewsHour, and heard on N.P.R. to speak about brain health and neurological diseases. Her TED talk, “What you can do to prevent Alzheimer’s” has been viewed over 2,000,000 times.

The Friends of the Library are sponsoring this event, which is scheduled to last from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. Arlington Heights Memorial Library cardholders have been able to register for this event since Saturday, September 1, 2018, but all members of the public have been able to register since Thursday, October 1, 2018 (as space allows). This event is now booked to capacity.

Forest View Auditorium is part of Forest View Education District, which belongs to Township High School District 214. It is home to the Arlington Heights outpost of Robert Morris University. The building is south of Golf Road, north of Algonquin Road, and east of Arlington Heights Road. The address is 2121 South Geobbert Road, Arlington Heights, Illinois 60005.

Figure 2 Credit: S.M. O’Connor caption: This display with two banners hangs in a window beside the main entrance of the Arlington Heights Memorial Library, as seen on Thursday, October 4, 2018.

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.