“Frugal Muse, Home Run Inn to Host Pizza Party & Book Signing for Hungry Hound” by S.M. O’Connor

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Frugal Muse Books, Music & Movies (also known as Frugal Muse Books Music & Video) is inviting bibliophiles, pizza-lovers, and Chicago foodies to a Pizza Party & Book Signing. Join thirteen-time James Beard Award-winning food reporter Steve Dolinsky (a.k.a. The Hungry Hound on A.B.C.-7 News) for a pizza party, discussion, and book-signing of his debut book, Pizza City, USA: 101 Reasons Why Chicago is America’s Greatest Pizza Town at the Home Run Inn Darien location on Thursday, December 6, 2018 from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. Northwestern University Press published the book with a release date of September 15, 2018. His Hungry Hound reports air on A.B.C.-7 during the 11:00 a.m. news broadcasts on Fridays and the 10:00 p.m. broadcasts on Saturdays. Mr. Dolinsky co-created The Feed Podcast with Rick Bayless, the Chef and Owner of Frontera Grill, Topolobampo, Xoco, and Leña Brava, as well as Host of Mexico: One Plate at a Time on P.B.S. Their podcast earned the James Beard Award in 2015 for best podcast. He also writes occasionally for the travel sections of the Chicago Tribune and The Globe and Mail national newspaper up in Canada.

Home Run Inn Pizza Darien is in Chestnut Court mall like Frugal Muse, at the southeast corner of 75^th Street and Lemont Road, in Darien at the border with Woodridge. Like the Chase Bank branch tower, Home Runn Inn is in an out lot of the mall, which is shaped like a backwards capital L, while Frugal Muse is in the wing that faces Lemont Road. [Woodgrove Festival mall, which is home to Hollywood Blvd. Cinema, is across the street.] The address of the Home Run Inn Darien is 7521 Lemont Road, Darien, Illinois 60561. The phone number is (630) 739-9696.

Tickets are $30 and cover a copy of the book, pizza, and soda. Stop in at Frugal Muse to purchase tickets or call them at (630) 427-1140 to purchase tickets over the phone. It is better to purchase tickets in advance because there may be very few or none available at the door. The address of Frugal Muse is also 7521 Lemont Road, Darien, Illinois 60561.

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.