Peculiar polling places

While most people cast their ballots in a school, church or otherwise "public" place, some are assigned to vote in a more ... unusual setting. Pioneer Press set out April 17 to find the weirdest of the weird. Check out a multimedia slide show to see what we discovered. Multimedia Slideshow

Frame of Mind 4/18/07 Makeover

Jessie Greenwood hadn’t been to church for six weeks, she was so upset with what her cancer treatment had done to her.

“Since I’ve been going through this chemo, it really drags you out, makes you look tired and worn,” the Maywood resident said.

She’d lost 25 pounds through this round of chemotherapy, her third cancer treatment since 2002. Church had been there for her, helping her keep the faith.

“I’ve never felt bad about myself, except with how I look,” Greenwood said.

She was working on her look in the lobby of Gottlieb Memorial Hospital’s Marjorie G. Weinberg Cancer Care Center in Melrose Park. She’d been feeling better of late, she said, and decided to come to Gottlieb for a makeup lesson from the “Look Good … Feel Better” program.

“I’m going to do this,” she said. “Sunday morning, I’m going to get up and do this stuff. I know I look better, and I feel better.”

-Chris LaFortune

Frame of Mind 4/14/07 Clowning Around

The miniature bicycles, pies to the face and pratfalls under the lights of the main ring would come later.

Instead, the clowns for the Triton Troupers Circus focused on their faces, the perfect curvature of a colored pencil, developing their character from a photo or sketch before them.

The bright lights came from the globes around the mirror of the make-up table. Instead of the scent of popcorn and cotton candy, the make-up room contained the faint smell of clean powder, applied with care.

Some were frantic, applying final touches. Others were calm, stretching rainbow colored suspenders onto their shoulders, over-sized shoes on their feet.
“Blue?” Andrew Bedno asked, holding out a make-up pencil he was about to draw with around his lips.

“No, no, black,” replied Susan Hooper, a rainbow wig already on her head, and a purple, glittery star sticker attached to the tip of her nose. “Too much blue.”
Difficult work, this clowning.

Hooper, a Chicago resident, is a professional clown and performer. She was busy at the Triton show, acting as the clown Sweety, an extra in the wire act, and a performer walking on a globe and in the gym wheel.

Performing with Triton gives Hooper a chance to keep her skills sharp, she said. She likes the lights and enjoys being on stage.

But the clowning is not a full-time job. She’s a social worker, working in a nursing home, at hospitals and adult day-care centers in the area.
The clown work comes in handy, though.

“They kind of work hand in hand in terms of providing entertainment and therapy together with the work,” Hooper said. “I like to feel I’m able to develop a different rapport with my clients and the people I perform with.”

When the clowns needed advice, she was there to offer her help. “I want everyone to look good and have a good time,” Hooper said.

With the crowd arriving at Triton College, the clowns stood outside and in the lobby, working as they welcoming crew. Some mimed, some joked, all offered up a few yucks to warm the crowd.

“Hey, do I look a little pail?” yelled Mike Pepe, the circus clown Lumpy, as he stood atop stilts hidden by his ultra-long pants looming over the heads of the crowd. In one hand, he offered up a pail the size of a shot glass.

For Westmont’s Jamie Glassman, aka Spots, it was his first time as a clown.
Glassman decided to join the show on a spur of the moment, he said. He had talked to some other clowns, and they urged him to sign up.

“It’s just something I thought I’d do,” Glassman said. “I feel I owed it to these kids, to make some of the kids happy.”

At first, it was difficult acting the fool for circus peer reviews, but Glassman said it takes a lot for him to be embarrassed. Which no doubt helped explained the fire-engine red dyed hair on his head.

“I’ve never been pied yet,” he said. “Tonight, I will be for sure.”

-Chris LaFortune

Frame of Mind 4/04/07 Dressed to Impress

Abby Zupancic, dressed in a sweatshirt, short pants and sandals, stood in stark contrast to the pantsuits and casual business wear of the Dominican University women around her.

The Dominican fashion students were performing a skit for the women at Grace House, a home for female ex-convicts on Chicago’s West Side. The students discussed how to dress and act for a job interview.

Zupancic was an intentional failure, disorganized, talking too much about her family, knowing nothing about the company she was interviewing with. She was dismissed with a “great meeting you.”

“That’s when you know you’re not going to be hired,” one of the Grace residents said.
The session was the last of six run by the Dominican students at Grace. Students had talked about issues such as make-up, matching the right clothing with body type and exercise and nutrition in the previous five.

The session March 27 on interviews was fortuitous for Grace House resident Gail Williams, who had an interview scheduled the next day.

“The program ... it just taught me to be more motivated, no matter what,” Williams said.

Williams learned her strength can be her weakness. She likes to talk about her family and her children, she said. It’s something she’d have to stay away from in her interview.

The students also had tips on dress and how to answer typical interview questions.
“I was nervous,” she said. “I’m not nervous anymore.”

Grace House Program Director the Rev. Bernadine Dowdell said it was important for people in the community to work with the Grace women. The women at the home needed to see there were people who cared.

“The women here need this morale boost. They need this education,” Dowdell said. “They have so many obstacles to overcome.”

Denise Acevedo will face many obstacles herself. A Grace resident since February, Acevedo said she wants to get her high school diploma and to find a part-time job.
The Dominican students taught Acevedo to be creative, she said, to have a better outlook.

“They did a class on positive thinking, and coming from the addiction side, you have a negative outlook on life,” she said.

“They care about people. That means a lot to me,” she added. “It helps me grow period. I’m not by myself.”

-Chris LaFortune

Illinois Best of Photojournalism Awards

Some images from the IPPA iBOP awards announced last month.


Portrait 1st - "He's Leaving Home" Rob Hart, Pioneer Press


Sports Action Honorable Mention - "A Goal in Mind" Rob Hart, Pioneer Press


Feature Honorable Mention - "Kiss at the End of the Robot" Rob Hart, Pioneer Press


Nature/Environment Honorable Mention - "Fall Colors" Rob Hart, Pioneer Press


Nature/Environment Honorable Mention - "Dark Side of the Moon" Rob Hart, Pioneer Press


Illustration Honorable Mention - "Wright Angle" Rob Hart, Pioneer Press

Frame of Mind 3/28/07 Lent

The congregation at Grace Lutheran Church built a pyramid of cardboard
blocks, reading off statistics about children in poverty as they did.

Each cube represented an essential building block of life, the poverty
statistics printed on the side. The information was grim - every 43
seconds a child is born into poverty in the United States, more than
2,000 babies every year - the cubes stacked in a five level pyramid.

Take away one of the essentials, Pastor Joanne Fitzgerald asked, and
does the pyramid fall?

"If I take away clothing, how do children go to school? How do they
play with other children? How do they exist?" she asked

To illustrate her point, Fitzgerald inched a cube out from the pyramid
one at a time. On the third time, the pyramid collapsed.

The lesson completed, the congregation settled in to watch a video
about children and poverty. The lights turned off, the gray overcast
day filtering into the church basement through half-drawn blinds.
People fell silent, the only sounds coming from the movie and the tick
of rain against the windows.

-Chris LaFortune

Frame of Mind 3/07/07 Road to Recovery

Mary T. Small understands how important it is for cancer patients to get to their appointments on time.

Her husband faced cancer twice, first Hodgkin's disease while they were dating. He was a cancer survivor for 36 years. But he was a smoker and was later diagnosed with lung and brain cancer.

"Jerry never thought it would hit him again," Small said. "He was like, you're immune to it. But you're not."

Small's husband died 10 years ago.

"Yesterday would have been our 47th wedding anniversary," Small said.

Small spoke about her husband as she sat in the waiting room at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, a cup of water in her hand. She waited for Kalyani Koneru, an Oak Park resident and cancer survivor herself.

Diagnosed with an inflammatory carcinoma, Koneru has had a mastectomy. There's no sign of cancer left in her body, she said.

Small drove Koneru to see her doctor at Rush all last week. She's a volunteer with the American Cancer Society's Road to Recovery program.

For a while, Koneru said, her husband was driving her to the hospital for appointments at the Chicago medical center, bringing her home again to Oak Park and then heading to work back downtown. He'd miss a half day of work when he did, she said, but Koneru couldn't drive herself for treatment.

Then she heard about the Cancer Society's program.

"So here's my angel," Koneru said.

-Chris LaFortune

Frame of Mind 2/28/07 Matrimony

The three happy couples stood together, hand-in-hand, as the aptly named Judge Noreen Love led them through a renewal of their vows.

“Remember that a happy marriage means two souls, but with a single heart,” Love said. “Two hearts beat as one.”

The audience witnessing the renewal of vows sat at round tables at the Bellwood Senior Center, silent except for the occasional scraping of a chair against the tile floor.

One woman in the audience dabbed at her eyes with a tissue, tucking it into her sleeve. Among the couples renewing their vows Feb. 20 were Dolores and Jacob Jindela of Cicero. Married in 1965, they celebrated their 42nd wedding anniversary
Feb. 20.

Dolores saw the vow renewal advertised in the center’s bulletin, she said, and realized the ceremony was taking place on their anniversary. They decided to take part.

The couple met at St. Peter’s social club in Chicago.

“You thought I was cute at that time,” Dolores joshed her
husband.

Dolores didn’t know how to dance the cha-cha, Jacob said, so he took it upon himself to teach her.

“I wanted him to feel important, so I let him teach me the cha-cha because it was the one dance I didn’t know,” she said.

They met in April. Magic hit in May, Jacob said, while walking in Grant Park near Monroe Street. They were supposed to be making flowers for the social club. Instead, they spent the day walking in the park.

They were engaged in September.

“I told my wife, I know what your answer is going to be, but would you marry me,” Jacob said.

“That was pretty nervy,” his wife chimed in.

-Chris LaFortune

Frame of Mind 2/21/07 Golf Club

Chuck Hayes of Elmwood Park, at right, listens to instructions from his younger brother Bob while golfing Feb. 15 with seniors from Elmwood Park in the golf dome at White Pines Golf Club in
Bensenville. Bob Hayes brings tips he learns from watching the Golf Channel to help his game. “(I watch) from 10 in the morning ’til my wife comes home at 4, then I put on the cooking channel,”
Hayes said.

Frame of Mind 2/14/07 Cupid's Arrow

Cupids arrows fly, mysterious and unseen, bringing people like Calvin and Jane Netter together.

It was Aug. 15, 2006, and Calvin Netter had just moved into Holley Court Terrace in Oak Park. Calvin was upstairs, waiting to go to eat dinner.

“I saw this beautiful girl walking down the aisle and I asked her to join me for dinner,” he said.

Jane Hockstein thought that would be fine, though she was waiting for a friend.

“He thought it was a male friend,” she said. “It was really a girlfriend.”

And so, the three went to dinner together. After, Jane invited Calvin to watch the televisionnews at her place, since his television wasn’t hooked up yet. “We’ve been watching the news ever since,” she said.

Jane and Calvin married Jan. 13 at Holley Court Terrace where they met. Both are in their early 80s, both on their second marriage. And so far, life for the newlyweds has been wonderful, Calvin said.

“To have someone to help take care of each other,” he said. “That’s what’s important.”

-Chris LaFortune

Frame of Mind 2/7/07

With the reds, yellows and blues from the DJ’s lights rotating around the room, Melissa Broz danced as if she were in the spotlight.

Each song the DJ played, she seemed to know the words.

“Greased Lightning” pumped from the speakers, and Broz not only mouthed the words, but mimicked John Travolta’s dance routine. Travolta, Broz said, is the best. The dance scene, she had it memorized. Broz enjoys dancing, to say the least.

“Because it gets me moving,” the Franklin Park resident said.

-Chris LaFortune

Frame of Mind 8/16/06 Love. Blood. Kryptonite

The production crew for the movie "Love. Blood. Kryptonite" was trying to make some difficult wardrobe decisions.

"You need to figure out what you want her to be wearing when she's doing it with him," Gaby Arruda, responsible for wardrobe, told Co-Director Matt Mitchener.

She pointed to the couch where Alex Goode, playing the lead Jimmy, sat. The crew was talking about costume for an intimate scene between Goode and Allison Henry, who plays Brooklyn.

The costume conversation continued — school girl outfit, button-down dress or a slinky black dress — and just about everyone had an opinion, except for the actors. Goode headed to the make-up chair, and Henry tried on a few different outfits.

"Love. Blood. Kryptonite." was in its second day of shooting Wednesday. The film is written by Oak Park-River Forest High School senior Matthew Mitchener.

The story focuses on Jimmy, a teenager who drops out of school and sells drugs to support his mother, Mitchener said. The money he makes also goes to keeping his little sister in school.

"It's kind of his whole story of struggling to stay above water," Mitchener said.

Some of the movie's themes may be more adult, Producer and OPRF teacher John Condne said, but it is a movie. And most of the people working on the movie are already out of high school.

"If you think some of these things are not going on in teens' lives ... you'd be kidding yourself," he said.

-Chris LaFortune

Frame of Mind 8/9/06 Constant Gardener

Finding the head gardener in Cheney Mansion's acre and a half of land is easier than it sounds. Simply follow the garden hose.

Charlie Ruedebusch was at the end of one Wednesday, the hose trailing from the front of the mansion to the north side of the Cheney property. The head gardener was kneeling on the ground, watering the base of the zinnias in a potager garden.

He guided a gentle shower of water along the base of the plants, the dry dirt turned moist, small pools of water collecting before absorbing into the ground.

Moving his way around the garden, Ruedebusch stood, dirt on his knees, his once white sneakers dark with soil. He was dressed light in the already warm and muggy morning, a gray Park District of Oak Park T-shirt, dirty shorts, torn at the edges and a baseball cap atop his head.

From the zinnias, Ruedebusch moved on to his "world famous tomato patch," which this year includes eight varieties of tomatoes, down from last year's 22 varieties.

"People were sick of me when I'd come around in August and September because I'd have a bowl full of tomatoes," Ruedebusch said.

The head gardener is available in Cheney's gardens every Wednesday from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. to answer gardening questions. The gardens are open during daylight hours everyday for the public to tour.

"People sometimes bring in pieces of plants from their own garden and say, something is eating them, what is it?" Ruedebusch said. "I'll try to do a little CSI number on them and take a guess."

One person wanted to know how many kinds of poisonous plants there were. Ruedebusch was about to answer, he said, before wondering why the person wanted to know.

"So I said I couldn't remember," he said.

-Chris LaFortune

Frame of Mind 8/2/06 Kitten Kindergarten

Timmy was fast losing interest in the lessons at kitten kindergarten.

The eight-week-old kitten, sitting in the lap of owner Kathy Novy, looked up backward into her face and yawned. Then he looked back into the room, his eyes wide, his ears up.

Dr. Jennifer Malin ran the class in the reception area of The Cat Practice, 323 Chicago Ave., explaining to the three owners gathered together how to best handle their kittens and how to enrich their home environment.

"With cats early on, you want to expose them to as many situations as possible, including people who are not members of the family," Malin said.

At this point, Timmy's attention was drawn to the floor, where there were a variety of items a curious kitten could get himself interested in.

An unused box of litter was stationed in one corner, a tall scratching pole and cat scratchers, one inclined and one flat, in the middle of the room. There was an empty paper bag and a couple of pillows to lie on.

Timmy, stretching out one paw, began a tentative exploration of how to get down to the floor. Novy, not ready to let him go just yet, repositioned him on her lap. But it wasn't long before he was fidgeting again, and eventually, on the floor, sniffing first at the litter box and then around the rest of the room.

June 11 was the first kitten kindergarten class offered by Malin, three owners and four kittens on hand.

"I think, historically, people have always assumed that cats are going to do what they do regardless of anything that people might want them to do," Malin said.

"We sort of see that there's a great need for people to learn about cat behavior and what cats need in order to be kept healthy and properly socialized and to fit in with the family that happens to be caring for them."

Malin offered such lessons as how to trim cat toenails, how to place cats into carriers and how to properly handle kittens. The course lasts two weeks, but Malin plans on offering other classes to people once the first session finishes.

"We really are also teaching the owners just as much as we're trying to teach the cat," Malin said.

-Chris LaFortune

Frame of Mind 7/12/06 Gay Games

With "The Electric Horseman" echoing out over the ice, Oak Park resident Dana Ginsberg glided backward, preparing for a jump.

The figure skater was outfitted in black velvet butterfly print, her skirt fluttering in the breeze generated by her speed, flesh-tone tights on her legs. She jumped, two singles one after the other.

Ginsberg shared the Oakton Ice Arena in Park Ridge with 14 other people, figure skaters and coaches running through their routines. She glided around and past each during her long program practice, the one she plans to perform at Gay Games VII in Chicago this month.

The music wound up, and Ginsberg hopped forward, both skates off the ice, stepped twice and finished with her arms in the air, her head back. She slid on one knee to the arena blue line and bowed to the audience, though the arena was devoid of applause.

Coming off the ice, Ginsberg panted and grabbed a bottle of water from an athletic bag sitting on a bench alongside the ice.

"I messed up a couple of jumps, but otherwise it was good," she said, sitting down. "I like it a lot."

Swallowing some water and putting on a pair of blue gloves to warm her hands, Ginsberg headed back to the ice, practicing jumps and spins in preparation for another long program run.

Ginsberg began skating as a young girl on a frozen lake in Twin Lakes, Wis., where her family had a summer and winter home.

"It was on this frozen pond on the lake, and I started out in blue, plastic double-runner skates," she said. "I used to watch skating on TV as a kid, Peggy Fleming and Dorothy Hamill and all the spinning stuff they could do and the cute little skirts that they wore. I wanted to be like them."

Until she read the book "Little Girls in Pretty Boxes," and discovered what it took to become a figure skater.

"They have to starve themselves," Ginsberg said. "They have to have just the right image, just the right amount of luck. There are horror stories of pushy stage mothers behind them."

Ginsberg dropped skating in high school, picking it up again after college. She has skated for the last 13 years, entering various competitions.

A "straight but not narrow gay supporter," Ginsberg will skate in the Gay Games July 18 and 19 at McFetridge Park, 3843 N. California Ave. in Chicago.

"It really makes me angry when people talk about banning gay marriages in different states and think it's a good thing when we could be focusing on more important issues, like universal health care."

-Chris LaFortune

Frame of Mind 7/05/06 A Heartbeat, A History

Slapping clay onto tables, pushing and prodding it into shape, the artists formed the
pieces of their mural, completing the parts before they could construct the whole.

Flipping the clay over and over, Hannah Karcher and Keyone Sellers, stretched it into wide rectangles and squares at
one table.

“You stretch it out so it’s not so thick,” Karcher said. “It uses more clay instead of taking a whole chunk of it and trying to fit it.”

At another table, three others formed the clay into flowers petals, birds and leaves. “This is kind of a bird,” Oak Park resident Emily Whitehead said, shaping the clay with her thumb and first finger, a plastic cup of water before her. “The petals are turning into birds. So they’re semi-birds.”

The art is for a mural on the railroad embankment wall alongside the Oak Park-River
Forest High School south athletic fields. The project, titled “Off the Wall,” is a six-week teen summer employment program with the Oak Park Area Arts Council and Chicago Public Art Group. One of the lead artists, Carolyn Elaine, said the mural’s theme is movement.

“We’ll bring life to the wall,” Elaine said of the mural. “It has a heartbeat, a history. It tells a story.”

-Chris LaFortune

Frame of Mind 6/28/06 Fruitful Discussion

The light was soft, reflecting off the yellow ceiling, shining from small candles on four tables at The Oak Park Abbey as customers tasted wines from Spain, South Africa and South America.

Tasters chatted as they sampled the white, rosé and red wines, sipping from one of the four wine glasses on the table before them. Some drank the entire sample. Others sipped and discarded the rest into a wine bucket set in the middle of each table in the wine bar and restaurant.

Instructor and wine distributor Aldo Zaninotto presented the 19 wines, describing the areas they came from and the flavors people could expect. As Zaninotto talked, more wine was distributed, bottle clinking against glasses, wine gurgling into them.

Zaninotto described the flowery fragrance of one wine from Argentina, and the smell of flowers was evident as the liquid swirled in its glass. He pointed out the spicy flavor from another, and upon tasting, the spices tickled the tongue.

Wine classes are scheduled for every other Tuesday this summer at The Oak Park Abbey, 728 Lake St. Owner Ellen Bettenhausen invites her wine distributors to host classes.

Part of the Abbey's original concept was to educate people, Bettenhausen said.

"I wanted people to come in and really enjoy the experience of wine, to not feel afraid to try something new or afraid to ask a question about this, or afraid to try this food with this wine," she said.

Zaninotto, an Oak Park resident, works for Distinctive Wines and Spirits in Chicago. He travels the world sampling wines, he said, visiting wineries in California, Italy and France.

"I love the passion and the enjoyment, and the beauty about this is, I do sell a product that has life," he said. "It has a meaning. I'm not selling plastic containers, something like that."

-Chris LaFortune

Frame of Mind 6/21/06 Dan Ryan Blues

Some people, when they see a problem,just say something ought to be done. Lance Brown of the band Archtop Brownie writes a song.

There is, for instance, one of the band’s latest songs, “Dan Ryan Blues.”

Jumped in my car at a quarter of 8, Got an early start, didn’t want to be late. Drove up on the ramp and rolled to a stop, Found myself sitting in a parking lot.

“When something strikes me as interesting, something says in my head, I ought to write a song about this,” Brown said. “The song, as I played it to the band members, they said, ‘We’ve got to record this.’”

Archtop Brownie, these sages of traffic wisdom, practice twice weekly in the lunchroom at the Oak-Leyden Developmental Services on Chicago Avenue. Bassist Dan Lopata is maintenance supervisor at the developmental center and was able to arrange for the band to rehearse there.

To cover their rent, the four-man band performs monthly at center social gatherings,
Lopata, a Chicago resident, said.

“It’s a blast,” Lopata said. “The clients get a real kick out of it.”

-Chris LaFortune