Thank you, Mike Isaacs, for your terrific and well-deserved tribute to longtime WGN broadcaster Vince Lloyd [“The Voice of Summer,” July 11]. By waxing poetic, you perfectly captured the significant effect he had on his listeners and the role he played in our lives. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Sadly, Lloyd’s death was reported with much less fanfare than any of his higher-profile colleagues and predecessors in passing–Harry Caray, Jack Brickhouse, and Lou Boudreau....

Mark Luce has a habit of being in foreign lands around the time of major civil upheavals. He graduated from high school in Tripoli in 1969, not long before Colonel Gadhafi overthrew Libya’s king. He fled Iran, where he was teaching English, during the 1979 Islamic revolution. Several leading sheikhs died during the time he was working in the United Arab Emirates, and in 1996 he left his post as director of a business school in Albania just before a nationwide pyramid scheme wiped out much of the population’s savings....

Police officer Rob Williams was ordered by his commander to cut off his braids. He didn’t, and so the highly decorated 29-year-old south-side patrolman was suspended. “I was aware that I ran the risk of being labeled a troublemaker,” he says. “But I didn’t think it would go this far.” Around that time Williams started to let his hair grow. “I wanted to have braids,” he says. “In the early stage of growing it I wore twists....

Suppose you wanted to put up a building that could serve for decades as a model for environmentally sound design and construction in Chicago. Wouldn’t you make it a point to install the very best energy-conserving windows? Seven years ago 445 N. Sacramento was an environmental mess. The previous owner, Sacramento Crushing, had a city permit to recycle construction and road-building debris. But according to Department of Environment officials, the company began taking in more material than it could process, including lower-quality material that’s difficult to recycle profitably....

These days jazz dance encompasses much more than the pelvic thrusts and come-hither looks Bob Fosse pioneered. From the kitschy, smooth-as-pistons partnering of sequined ballroom-champ locals Gregory Day and Tommye Giacchino to the retro classicism of Chicago’s Jump Rhythm Jazz Project, the vision of jazz choreography has expanded to include many tenuously related forms of popular dance. Next week the Jazz Dance World Congress, sponsored by Gus Giordano Jazz Dance Chicago and the city, returns to the area for the first time since 1994, featuring 17 companies or duos performing a wide variety of work....

In March the city sent its rock crushers to start demolishing the limestone blocks that line the stretch of lakeshore between Belmont and Diversey. These blocks, like those along other sections of the lakefront, are to be replaced with a seawall made of concrete. And that has upset people, particularly some Hyde Parkers, who don’t think concrete is the way to go here or on the south side. “We’re on our way to another Meigs Field,” says Hyde Park resident Jack Spicer, referring to Mayor Daley’s unilateral decision to close the lakefront airport....

Formed by conductor-guitarist Philip Simmons in 1990, the Lincolnwood Chamber Orchestra has done its hometown proud–it was dubbed Chamber Ensemble of 2000 by the Illinois Council of Orchestras. Its roster of 35 is drawn from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (including violinist Albert Igolnikov, the LCO’s concertmaster), the Indianapolis Symphony, and the area’s sizable corps of capable freelancers; its professionalism has attracted such top-notch soloists as violinist Rachel Barton and CSO clarinetist John Bruce Yeh....

The dispute between activists and the city over what happened at the antiwar demonstration on March 20 is about to move to a new and unlikely front–the City Council. Joe Moore, alderman of the 49th Ward, and Ricardo Munoz, of the 22nd, are threatening to hold hearings on why more than 700 antiwar protesters were arrested that night–even if the testimony proves embarrassing to the Daley administration. The massive protest on the day after the U....

In the liner notes to his excellent new album New School (Enja) bassist Mark Helias explains that “open loose” is “how I sometimes refer to sections of pieces that involve open form improvisation.” A veteran of bands led by Anthony Davis, Anthony Braxton, Ray Anderson, and Dewey Redman and the leader of several medium-size groups of his own over the past two decades, Helias has plenty of experience tethering such flights....

The monthly “Movieside” series–named for its original venue, the Fireside Bowl–celebrates its one-year anniversary with this three-day festival, which includes 42 short films and videos plus a feature by guest emcee John Waters. Screenings are at the Biograph and at Acme Art Works, 1741 N. Western. Unless otherwise noted, tickets are $10 at the door, $9 in advance. For more information call 773-856-5226. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 7 Best of Chicago voting is live now....

Whoever broke into Murder by Death’s van on October 25–a week after they released their second album, Who Will Survive and What Will Be Left of Them? (Eyeball)–and stole all their gear, including Sarah Balliet’s cello, had best watch their ass. It’d be a shame to spoil the plot of Who Will Survive, but suffice it to say the authors of this country-goth rock opera are very interested in revenge. And Satan....

Urgent E-mail fills my in box. Another message urges me to contact the White House. Phoning and faxing are most effective, it says, warning that “Muslims and jihad sympathizers” have outphoned and outfaxed Israel’s supporters more than two to one. Don’t E-mail the president, that’s ineffective: a computer program dumps these messages, there’s a kill file for anything with “Israel” in the subject line. Great. All us virtual Jews in a kill file for Israel....

ORION CHAMBER ENSEMBLE Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » All the members of the Orion Chamber Ensemble are women, a fact that would’ve raised eyebrows as recently as the 1970s and still distinguishes it from most other chamber groups. But the Orion’s real defining feature is the intellectual curiosity of its players, reflected in a large, eclectic repertoire; last year Chamber Music America recognized the group with an award for its commitment to programming music composed after 1975....

Phamily and Bad Advice, pH Productions, at Stage Left Theatre. In its latest improv experiment, pH Productions tosses dysfunctional family dynamics into a blender with generous helpings of madcap character work and anything-goes goofiness. Long-form improvisation at its most intelligent, pHamily is sufficiently rule bound to provide structure but democratic enough to accommodate equal input from its rotating eight-member cast. The troupe’s use of one-on-one interactions to drag the skeletons out of the family closet is refreshing in a form where the quest for an overarching theme often eclipses basic scene work....

Really Big Shaw Culture queen Lois Weisberg says she knew nothing about George Bernard Shaw in the spring of 1956, when she turned the first page of a biography of the Irish playwright, realized his 100th birthday was approaching in July of that year, and saw an opportunity. Her main responsibility at the time was taking care of her kids, but she pulled together a two-day symposium, bringing luminaries like author William Saroyan and actor Sir Cedric Hardwicke to Chicago to speak....

In the eyes of some, “west Pilsen” is defined less by what it is than by what it isn’t–east Pilsen, the increasingly gentrified area around Halsted and 18th Street that’s home to many galleries and artists’ studios. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » This year, a group of westerners struck back. The last weekend in October big black banners with painted white numbers hung outside houses, studios, and a few cafes announcing work on view by around 30 artists as part of the first Pilsen Open Studios....

The 11 abstract paintings, drawings, and prints by Wisconsin artist Robert Erickson at Gwenda Jay/Addington–part of a three-person exhibit titled “Earth & Sky”–are inspired by natural forms and have a mysterious presence. The drawing New Hope VIII looks a bit like a dark cliff or butte rising against a background suffused with horizontal lines, and the fuzzy gray areas at its edges create an aura that extends into the surrounding space....

ROD McGAHA Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I first encountered trumpeter Rod McGaha in Edward Wilkerson Jr.’s gargantuan Shadow Vignettes orchestra in the mid-80s–and I noticed him before he’d played a note. Tall and wiry, he towered above the brass section; from the back of the hall, where the acoustics muddled the group’s different voices, it was probably easier to see him than to hear what he was playing....

SIR DOBYNE Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Vocalist Sir Dobyne (formerly Robert Dobyne) isn’t well-known around town–he’s never released an album under his own name, and these days his regular gigs are mostly in the suburbs. But his career dates back to the early years of Chicago soul. In 1963, as lead voice with a doo-wop-influenced group called the Artistics, he sang behind Major Lance on his breakthrough album, The Monkey Time....

This month the Film Center is presenting a retrospective series on Canadian avant-gardist Joyce Wieland (1931-1998), whose best films are wonderfully loose and gently poetic in examining ordinary things–consistent with the way feminism celebrates daily life–but also tend to superimpose some conceptual element, creating a fascinating contradiction between lyrical and structural filmmaking. In Solidarity (1973) she records a strike at a biscuit factory through shots of workers’ feet; her loose handheld framing and precisely observed details of clothing and terrain make the images seem far more open than the narrow view might suggest, while the word SOLIDARITY printed over them reinforces the workers’ common goal....