So how about that MC Rota?

A Friday salute to my old friend MC Rota of the Nocturnals! More clips below…

Download “To Be Continued…” the second album from The Nocturnals

People with Passion: author and activist Don Gordon

PEOPLE WITH PASSION: Don Gordon

Interview September 13, 2010

Don Gordon, in yellow vest, speaking at a community meeting in October 2005.

Don Gordon, Rogers Park political activist.

We are seated in the Gordon family backyard in Rogers Park, the home where Don Gordon, and his family, has lived for 30 years. After spending the first 25 of those years as a community activist – among other projects, he was heavily involved in the fight against the expansion of the Evanston-Rogers Park lakefront – Gordon decided to oppose incumbent Joe Moore for Alderman of the 49th ward in the 2007 election. He lost a close race, distinguishing himself from his two fellow challengers and forcing a run-off with Moore.

People with Passion, PREVIEW: Don Gordon

People with Passion PREVIEW

Political activist Don Gordon

Interview September 13, 2010

Don Gordon, in yellow vest, speaking at a community meeting in October 2005.

Don Gordon, Rogers Park political activist.

We are seated in the Gordon family backyard in Rogers Park, the home where Don Gordon and his family have lived for 30 years. After spending the first 25 of those years as a community activist – among other projects, he was heavily involved in the fight against the expansion of the Evanston-Rogers Park lakefront – Gordon decided to oppose incumbent Joe Moore for Alderman of the 49th ward in the 2007 election. He lost a close race, distinguishing himself from his two fellow challengers and forcing a run-off with Moore.

He then took a job at Northwestern as a political science professor, where, in March, he took part in a professor-led panel discussion with former governor Rod Blagojevic. This month, he releases his first book, a guide to political engagement titled “Piss ‘Em All Off.”

In this excerpt of our People with Passion interview from September 13, Don discusses the leadership direction that he believes the city of Chicago will take following the departure of Mayor Richard M. Daley.

2. Are you a Christian? (Chicago: City On The Make…Nelson Algren, 1951)

Nelson Algren's "City on the Make"

Chicago: City On The Make

by Nelson Algren, 1951

transcribed by Jack M Silverstein

2. Are you a Christian?

      It’s still an outlaw’s capital—but of an outlawry whose colors, once crimson as the old Sauganash whiskey-dye, have been washed down, by many prairie rains, to the colorless grey of the self-made executive type playing the percentages from the inside. Under the pale fluorescent glow.

We’ve abandoned the neighborliness of the Middle Border while sharpening its competitiveness—to lend it a bloodier, more legal edge than the Middle Border ever knew.

For in the time that Dwight L. Moody went about these streets straight-arming strangers with the simple and terrible question, “Are you a Christian?” the answer was simpler and less terrible than now.

Bear Down and Get Some Runs, best-of: February 12, 2005

Cubs fan Richard Savage turned 100 in 2008.

February 12, 2005

After a few days of “betters” and and a few days of “worsts,” Monica Gordon passed away on February 9, 2005 at the age of 82. Meghan got a call Sunday night during the fourth quarter that Nana—“Nana” on her dad’s side, not to be confused with her mom’s mom, who is called “Nana,” or my Nana—had gone back into the hospital. We stayed with my brother for a few days, waiting to see what would happen rather than just getting back out on the road, and when Nana died we reserved a flight home for the next morning.