CHICAGO — On another awesome fall day in our fair city, here's what we're reading:
Wide Awake: Katy Perry, Sting and Jerry Seinfeld head up a Nov. 4 fundraising concert in New York for the David Lynch Foundation. Lynch, a filmmaker whose work includes "Elephant Man" and "Twin Peaks," started the foundation ten years ago to boost Trancendental Meditation.
Broadwayworld.com notes that the Foundation is on a roll: earlier this year it won a $300,000 grant from a University of Chicago Crime Lab-led group to lead a program called "Quiet Time" in high-crime Chicago neighborhoods. That program uses meditation in Chicago schools to try to lower levels of stress and deal with the effects of trauma. DNAinfo has profiled a similar approach Lynch's group has used to try to ease Chicago mothers who have lost children in violent incidents.
Haunted by the violent death of a child, these Chicago mothers meet in Humboldt Park to try to rediscover an inner peace using a method of meditation championed by director David Lynch. [DNAinfo/Erin Meyer]
Is There More to Being German Than Oktoberfest? Other than the lederhosen-ed hordes that descend on Lincoln Square's Oktoberfest every year, German-Americans — the largest ethnic group in the U.S. — rarely put their pride in their heritage on display, particularly when compared with their Irish, Italian and Mexican counterparts. Why not? It's a question reporter Patty Wetli (three-fourths German, with a smattering of Swiss and Czech) has often pondered and one that author Erik Kirschbaum attempts to address in an op-ed for the New York Times. He points the finger at WWI, when German-Americans were accused of being spies and beaten by vigilante mobs. "Not surprisingly, those who could hid their Germanic roots," Kirschbaum writes. One hundred years later, German culture is only just beginning to make a comback in the States, though Kirschbaum wonders whether "an identity lost can never be regained."
Behind Ernest Hemingway: You can get a behind-the-scenes look into the life and work of Ernest Hemingway at a museum exhibit at New York's Morgan Library and Museum, previewed by The New York Times. The Times story doesn't just list what's going to be shown at the museum; it also provides snippets of Hemingway's edits, quotes letters (about editing) between he and Fitzgerald and profiles the author. It's a must-read if, like reporter Kelly Bauer, you won't be able to check out the actual exhibit.
WGN's Apology for Using Holocaust-Era Jewish Star: Reporter Alisa Hauser thought WGN-TV did a nice job with their apology after using an image of a yellow Star of David to explain the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur on Tuesday. Emblazoned with the German word for Jew, "Jude," the star was a Nazi symbol that German and eventually other European Jews in Belgium and France were forced to wear during World War II, the New York Daily News reports. "We are extremely embarrassed and we deeply apologize to our viewers and to the Jewish community for this mistake. Ignorance is not an excuse," WGN-TV said in a statement.
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