Friday 11/2 – Thursday 11/8
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3 SATURDAY The term “affluenza” is defined by writer John de Graaf as “a painful, contagious, socially transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety, and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more.” In their new book, Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic, de Graaf and coauthors Thomas Naylor and David Wann estimate that the average American spends $21,000 a year on consumer goods and saves nothing. De Graaf will read from and discuss the book today at 2 in the Chicago Authors Room of the Harold Washington Library Center, 400 S. State (312-747-4600). It’s free.
The latest installment in the Block Museum’s “Sonic Visions” cinema series features two sets by the local “electro-acoustic blues” band Califone. For the first, the musicians will improvise accompaniment to images curated and mixed live by local filmmakers Carolyn Faber and Jeff Economy. For the second set, they’ll play along with Ladislaw Starewicz’s short 1933 puppet masterpiece The Mascot, about a dog who tries to bring an orange to his poor mistress and is thwarted by monsters. It’s tonight at 8 at Northwestern University’s Mary and Leigh Block Museum, 1967 South Campus Drive in Evanston (847-491-4000); tickets are $10.
7 WEDNESDAY The theme of this year’s Chicago Humanities Festival is “Words & Pictures,” and one of the more ambitious offerings is tonight’s panel, Words and Pictures That Harm. The dozen or so panelists, including ACLU president Nadine Strossen, former adult film star and High Society publisher Gloria Leonard, Chicago Public Library commissioner Mary Dempsey, and U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals judge Richard Posner, will debate a hypothetical free speech case tonight at 6 at the Harold Washington Library Center, 400 S. State. Tickets are $5; for more information call 312-494-9509 or log on to www.chfestival.org.
