Cookie Monster, meet brutal legend Eddie Riggs. Brutal legend, Cookie Monster. Money’s tight, but for now, the worlds of heavy metal and Sesame Street will not collide because under Double Fine’s Roof, everyone can still be different.

Tim Schafer is renowned for his creative video design. His video San Francisco-based company , Double Fine Productions, has a style that moves from a video game on heavy metal to a Tim Burton-esque story about kids at summer camp to. He serves on the advisory board for the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s upcoming exhibition, “The Art of Video Games.” But despite his popularity and cult following, Schafer said making payroll for his company is still very challenging.

“My goal has always been to bring things to games that are not typical to games because games have a very standard art style,” Schafer said, “like muscly, space marines, veins in their neck and you know, big guns.”

Double Fine Production’s concept art for “Stacking”. Image Courtesy of Double Fine.

“More inspiration is needed on the art side of video games,” Nathan Martz said, who was the project lead for Double Fine’s  “Sesame Street: Once Upon a Monster,” which was released last October. Most video games are very drab, Martz said. “They are realistic, but post-apocalyptic.”

Consumers in the U.S. reportedly spent an estimated $4.5 billion on video games in Q2 2011, according to market researcher NPD. The popular “post-apocalyptic” style described by both Schafer Double Team Technical Director Nathan Martz was not used in Ninetendo’s colorful New Super Mario Bros., the top selling video game of 2010. However, it was used in both the second (Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 by Activision) and third (Battlefield: Bad Company 2 by Electronic Arts) top selling games of that year.

Electronic Arts’ “Battlefield: Bad Company 2″ (left) and Activision’s “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2″ (right) were the second and third top-selling video games in 2010, respectively. 

In 2005, Double Fine’s “Psychonauts” received more than 15 awards. The majority falling into two honorable, but distinct categories: The “Best Game No one Played” or the “Overall Game of the Year”/”Editor’s Choice” award. The games are beautifully refreshing, but just not enough for what Schafer calls the “cash cows.”

The big question, Schafer said, is how to make a game that is both artistically different and profitable.

“We always think that if we make a game look beautiful and make it look interesting then a lot of people will come play it,” Schafer said. “But sometimes, it seems that games that just look like other games sell better.”

Martz said there is “constant pressure” for the company to sacrifice its artistic style.

“Sesame Street: Once Upon a Monster,” which was developed for adults to play with children and published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, did not need to be stylized to appease its ranging age groups because according to Martz, “real creative quality is often not age specific.”

Image courtesy of Warner Bros.

“Art is one of the most important tools for telling you how to feel,” Martz said. “Because it is such a powerful tool, we used it to set the emotional tone of the game.”

Double Fine’s Sesame Street video game is the company’s first product based on a licensed property. Schafer said they knew Sesame Street’s familiarity with people would help broaden the game’s audience.

“If you are going to do a license,” Schafer said, “you shouldn’t do something that is a cheap cash in. Sesame Street is something that has a higher purpose. They are there for the good of children and they really want to do good in the world, so I think they were a great partner for us to have.”

“We also have a very big soft spot for the cookie monster, so it just had an appeal to us,” said Schafer, who is the father of a 3-year-old girl.

Schafer said it can be really difficult to predict why or what people are going to like. “But for the most part, we are just trying to make games that look good and will appeal to people. We might not have the same taste that the vast majority of people have, but I think a lot of interesting stuff becomes a mass hit all of the time.

“Video games aren’t like movies where everyone goes to the movies, Schafer said. “There is a kind of movie for everybody: A romantic movie, a comedy, a movie your grandparents like, and a movie little kids like … games aren’t like that yet. Mostly, some are action games or some are puzzle games. They are limited in number for different types that people can go to.”

Schaffer admitted that this is changing, saying the invention of mobile apps and Facebook game’s is leading many people to try iPhone games or Facebook games who are not typically “hard-core gamers.”

“The video game industry is broadening out,” he said, “but I would like to see it broaden out in ways different than Farmville or Angry Birds, to just broaden out in terms of deeper narratives and characters, and fantasy worlds that are unique, fun to go to and interesting and thought provoking,” he said, all of those things that great books and movies are.”

The company is currently working to develop mobile games. Both Schafer and Martz would not discuss further details as to what games they are currently developing. Developing mobile games is “a strictly business move,” Schafer said. “To be honest, we are just trying to see if that’s an area where we can make money,” he said.

Schafer said the mobile games will encompass the narrative style typical to Double Fine games. “We just first want to see if we can sell any and if we can make money,” he said. “Of course, we don’t want to do anything that wouldn’t be in our our style so it would still have our sort of quirky art style and sense of humor.”

“But mostly,” Schafer said, “we are just an independent company that is trying to stay alive,” he said. “We try to stay true to the things we care about, but we are also trying to make payroll every week.”

“It’s funny to say that originality and creativity are at odds with commercialness,” Martz said. “That is often true, but if you look at any big break out- usually it is original. When enough people try out new ideas and they catch hold, they become what people copy. “We try to lead that by having ideas that are strong and worth making.”

“The hero ends so much more than it lasts a bore,”John Szwed, a professor of music and jazz studies at Columbia University while giving a lecture, “Miles Davis: The Jazz Musician as Dandy” at DePaul University on Oct. 17. He continued, “And nothing is more boring than a hero left over from an era that people want to forget.”

Twenty years after Miles Davis’ death and the world still turns. Iconic beauties are still bountiful, but few master the art form of becoming a legacy.

“This was a challenge that Miles would confront by changing his music and his clothes again and again,” Szwed said. Davis dressed both up and down, Szwed said, “and he would do this back and forth so at one point you would wear what looks like hip-hop clothes and the next time you see him he is wearing the most extreme Japanese fashion.”

To Davis, style was part of his art. It was just as much of an expression going into his music as it was coming out.

“Never for a second did [Davis] allow anyone to believe that he was just there to entertain,” Szwed said. “On one occasion he might come in with the auteur of royalty on another he might appear as the artist principal of violence.”

Miles Davis (left) and Andy Warhol (right) were the star models in a fashion show two days before Warhol's death.

Szwed recalled one of Davis’ most iconic moments- the night he was in a fashion show with Andy Warhol. Poking fun at Warhol’s runway walk, Davis said, “Why do models walk like models? I can walk better. Check this out.” Davis asked Warhol to carry the end of his cape like a train while he played his trumpet down the runway. With that, the two took off down the runway.

In the late nineties, Davis was featured in part of Apple’s “Think Differently” campaign. According to Szwed, Steve Jobs said he did not want sound to play during the musician’s TV ad. These icons  approached their work with a worldview encompassed by heightened senses and it was always hip.

One of the few to understand that style is not the makeup, but the flesh of a product was Steve Jobs.

Jobs attributed much of Apple’s beauty to a calligraphy class he sat in on after dropping out of college. The class did not have any practical application to my life, Jobs said in a 2005 Commencement address to Standford University. “But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me.”

Today’s apple products are beautiful. They are not just products that are hip and highly-coveted, but producers of making something even bigger hip: Technology.

After Jobs died on Oct. 5, newspapers, televisions, and the Internet were splashed with opinions over the loss of the “visionary”.

Miles Davis’ image is still with us,” Szwed said at the end of his lecture, “even among those who aren’t quite sure who he was, so I want to close with some of these current visions of Davis.”

Visions.

Icons come and go but a legacy lasts forever. While the next is unknown, Miles Davis’ and Steve Jobs’ visionary legacy lives on.

The El screeched to a stop, the iPod clicked off and the cellphone switched to silent. The doors opened and Minimalism passed over.

Simplistic new forms take shape with the old in “The Language of Less (Then and Now),” the new exhibit at The Museum of Contemporary Art.

The MCA translates minimalism from the old and new by dividing the exhibit into two parts, one devoted to classic Minimalist art from the 1960s and 1970s and the other featuring five contemporary artists working in the style of their forebears and in the mind of modern times.

Juxtaposed together, the exhibit’s two distinct parts suggests a nostalgia and struggle for simplicity in a world of digitized chaos.

“Then,” the exhibit’s first part, Minimalist art from artists such as Jo Baer, Robert Smithson, Robert Morris. shows a moment in time when simplicity was lucid. A film that lasts a lifetime is reflected in Tony Conrad’s “Yellow Movie 2/28/73” (1973), which blankets the wall with a black rectangle centered on a buttery white sheet.

Gordon Matta-Clark's 1974 "Untitled" 1974 hangs on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago's new exhibit, "The Language of Less (Then and Now). (Photo by Rachel Metea)

Gordon Matta-Clarks’s “Untitled” (1974) beautifully captures minimalistic eloquence in one of his “cut drawings,” a series Matta-Clark developed by cutting geometric shapes into boards, reminiscent of Constructivism.

Clarity only echoes from the first part of the exhibit when moving to “Now.” Objects and disorder transfix the artwork and the only minimal portion of the art its conceptual development. Jason Dodge’s “Sleeping in the order of the slowing of time” showcases a pillow only slept on by Botanist Dorit Vath.

“Now” is smudged with objects and unsubtle in their shape and form. Many glimpse at the minimalistic concepts of the forbearing Minimalism art, but seem too transfixed with chaos for physical clarity and feature or physical and electronic objects. Gravity is sought to be reminded of by Dodge with a tipped-over bathroom scale.

“Now” looses the simple beauty framed inside Fred Sandback’s 1974 “Helium,” a “Then” artwork with the words: “There exists a sculpture consisting of all infrared radiation present in my studio on 11th street in Brooklyn” typed in small grey letters on a sheet of paper.

Minimalistic design strikes the hardest, a concept that pushed the iPod’s success. Carefully-crafted complexity—the device’ programming—is packaged in a sleek design making it beautiful to the user. Only first exhibit captures this iPod trait and “Now” is bogged down by minds shaped by today’s digitized chaos, a less than minimal irony.

Photo by Rachel Metea

Sometimes, there is nothing more intricate than a simple man.

Willis Earl Beal, 27, is a musician without a Myspace and hard to find online. His music is beautiful.

Despite his online scarcity, Beal’s music is gaining traction.

I learned of Beal after I came across his novel, a stack of computer paper stapled together, at a bar. The words were simple, yet captivating. On the first page, Beal lists eight codes of conduct. The first one reads: “Sincerity: Never say or do anything contrary to your overall intentions.”

I share my experience with several people who were also left mysteriously intrigued after finding his chicken-scratch words. After Leor Galil came across a flyer Beal made, reading, “I want some friends & stuff,” Galil hunted Beal down for several months. In July, Galil wrote a cover piece for the Chicago Reader about Beal.

Beal’s ideals align with hipsters and hippies, ironically ordinary and seemingly shallow in depth. Beal hates anything mainstream and says Facebook makes existence all the more arbitrary, that it “represents an increasingly impersonal and cold society.”

With his music’s increasing online presence, Beal fears he will become like many other online musicians. “They mold their art just to make people happy,” he says, “I don’t want to become corrupt.”

At face value, Beal’s words make it seem like he is another pretentious indie musician. But something about Beal is genuine and captivating; something that is causing journalists again and again to stumble upon his work and hunt him down.

Before moving to Chicago, Beal recorded a 17-song album in Albuquerque.

“I recorded those songs in my apartment–a studio … really a whole in the wall,” he says. “I had like a karaoke box with two speakers, one of which didn’t work. I had a 25 dollar microphone from Radio Shack and a couple of boom boxes,” he said. “I had such a desire to express myself that I just used what I had and I did that until I got something that was moderately good.”

The 17 tracks Beal recorded in his apartment are now available online, which Beal says was out of his control. “But not without my consent. I realize that,” he says.

“Having my music on the Internet is alright,” Beal says, “but if I had any say in it people would only know about me through word of mouth.”

Beal called his new Internet presence a compromise. “But I feel like by not going to Facebook, that’s the way I don’t compromise,” he says, “but I guess I am entitled to my own delusions.”

When people listen to music online they expect it to be streamlined, Beal says. “When it’s not, they assume it sucks and it’s not with the modern age.”

Beal performed his first show at Town Hall Pub in Lakeview this past summer after Ryan Ehresman read the Chicago Reader’s article on Beal.

“I just called him and asked him if I could throw this show on for him,” Ehresman says.
Beal often sings in downtown subways, usually in the tunnel between the red and blue Jackson stops.

Beal says he never plans to play in the subway.

“I go when I need five bucks and a bus pass,” Beal says.

Singing in the subway cuts down your ego, “which is always necessary,” Beal says. “If the people give you money, that means they like you. If they don’t give you money, that means they either don’t like you or they aren’t interested.”

“I think that’s the ultimate proving ground,” he says, “and simultaneously a way to know where you stand as a singer and as an artist.”

“But it is more than just music,” Beal says. “When you go down there you are sort of baring your heart down. You give people your heart with your singing. It’s like some sort of sanctuary.”

However, Beal says he prefers to play in bars where he can be assured that his music is something people came out to hear.

“In the subway everything is more desolate,” he says. “You start to question yourself.”

“After you finish a song, everyone is walking in different directions and you are standing there in the tunnel staring at some Macy’s advertisement,” he says. “You think to yourself, ‘why am I standing here?’ There is something about that that makes you understand how small we are to the infinite nature of the universe.”

“I guess it’s gratifying but also unsettling,” he says.

“Hopefully very soon I won’t have to play in the subway,” Beal says. “I will never miss it. “I’m not even a veteran at doing it but I’ll always remember it.”

“I never want to have a Facebook page or anything like that,” Beal says.
Beal says he would rather people just call him.

However, Beal says having a website or band page would not bother him.

“I can’t avoid it,” he says. “You have to go with what is happening to a certain extent. I can’t be a complete recluse.”

Ehresman says Beal makes his own fliers. “He puts them on regular notebook paper and Xeroxes them, doesn’t use Photoshop,” Ehresman says. “You know, like they used to.”

“That is the point he is trying to make,” Ehresman says. “That’s what our shows are about. They aren’t about ‘hey, you should come see this show and see all the glitz surrounding it’,” he says.

“I don’t think he is a person who is interested in … he is a person that would be happy in a hole in the ground,” he says. “It’s more about performing the music.”

Beal says he used to have nothing valuable to say.

“I now know you have to know what you stand for and just have to reach for the stars,” he says. “You may not believe in yourself, but you have to do it because you love it. Everything else is pretty much irrelevant.”

Victor Valencia said he was overwhelmed with tears of happiness, anger and sadness on Friday, Sept. 17 when gang member Narcisco Gatica was found guilty for the murder of his brother, DePaul honors student Francisco “Frankie” Valencia.

Gatica, 21, was found guilty of first-degree murder and aggravated battery with a firearm.

When Gatica was convicted, Victor Valencia said he was “genuinely happy.”

“It was one of the first times I had been happy in a long time,” the 19-year-old brother said. “But at the same time, I was overwhelmed by depression and sadness, and even more so by anger,” he said. “Anger because reality sets in. Anger because of the fact that they gave no defense. Anger because it doesn’t make life any better … and it doesn’t make this any easier.”

“In some respects, I was relieved,” he added. I didn’t have this sitting on me anymore. The air felt thinner, it felt lighter. It felt like things weren’t so dark anymore because he was found guilty on all charges.”

Frankie Valencia was murdered at a Halloween party in 2009 after gang members were asked to leave the private party.Gatica, along with self-admitted Maniac Latin Disciple BerlyValladares, 23, left the party and returned with a TEC-9 semiautomatic handgun. According to Chicago police, Valladaresgave the gun to Gatica, who then open fired, shooting Frankie Valencia twice in the chest and once in the arm and wounding Daisy Camacho, a good friend of his.

Frankie Valencia was pronounced dead later that morning.

In a videotaped interview with police two days after the murder, Gatica changed his story several times, first denying being at the scene.

Gatica then confessed to being the gunman, claiming he thought he was shooting at rival gang members.

Gatica later plead not guilty.

“What really bothers my family and I is that we had to go through this trial a second time, essentially for no reason,” Victor Valencia said. “There was no defense and we had to relive that night and that day … we were going there for the entire week,” he said. “We saw pictures of the autopsy and watched videos, the security footage … of my brother getting shot.”

“We had to relive that night again and again and again … for no reason,” the 19-year-old brother said.

Assistant State’s Attorney Mark Shlifka told the jury in his closing arguments to focus on Gatica’s changing story in the video taped interviews saying it showed the “shifting sands of a guilty mind,” he said.

It did not matter whether Gatica was shooting gang members or someone like Frankie, Shlifka said. “When you perform this type of act, you know it is a deadly act to another person,” Shlifka said, “It doesn’t matter who he was shooting at.”

“The trial was very difficult to sit through,” Victor Valencia said. “Most of the time, my mother or I—or whoever had to get up and leave the courtroom because it was just so overwhelming to see the pictures and see the video,” he said adding, “All and all, we got through it together, got through it as a family. That is what is reallyimportant.”

Frankie Valencia, a political science student and RA at Clifton/Fullerton Hall, was an active member in the DePaul community. Frankie Valencia was chosen as a Lincoln Laureate, an annual award given to an outstanding student at each of the state’s four-year universities who shows excellence in curricular and extracurricular activities.

Assistant public defender Marijane Placek claimed the gang made Gatica the “fall guy” because they knew he was trying to leave the gang.

“We definitely plan to appeal,” Placek said. “My young man was trying to get out of the gang,” she said. “Now his child will grow up without a father in that exact same neighborhood.”

Gatica is the father of a 3-year-old son.

“A lot the times, what people don’t realize is when children grow up with a father in prison, the children grow up looking at authority figures as the enemy,” Placek said. “This is a victory for the gangs.”

Gatica faces a minimum of 45 years for murdering Frankie Valencia, plus an additional six for shooting Camacho. Last June,Valladares was sentenced to 70 years in prison for aiding in the murder.

“People always say justice isn’t served,” Victor Valencia said. “But there really is no justice in this. I don’t get my brother back and his family is loosing him. Where is the justice from this?”

Victor Valencia said he wants Gatica to have a strong sentence, “but that comes from an anger I have towards him because of what he did,” he said. “I don’t feel like it is going to make anything better. I don’t feel like a strong sentence is going to make me feel better.”

“I just want him to be able to feel a fraction of what I have felt this past two years for the rest of his life, ” the brother said. “I am carrying this with me for the rest of my life. It isn’t just going to go away one morning and I am going to wake up and everything is going to be better,” he said. “He doesn’t get that and he never will.”

“All I can do is hope that at some point, he feels some sort of remorse for this, because as far as I have seen, he has shown no remorse, nothing,” Victor Valencia said. “This is normal for him,” he said. “He doesn’t get it. He doesn’t understand the pain that has caused my family and I.”

Placek said, “If the appeal is unsuccessful, then Mr. Gatica won’t see the light of day until he is 65.”

“When this happened we almost expected the world to stop for us,” the 19-year-old brother said, “everyone was going to take a break, and hey, like everyone time out, we need some time to catch up, but it doesn’t. That doesn’t happen. The world keeps turning. People keep living their lives. Everyday for everyone else is normal. It is just us falling behind. We have to work extra hard just to keep up,” he said. “Oftentimes, it feels like the world is against us because a lot of people don’t understand.”

“Before Frankie’s death our family was very family-oriented, but after the murder that all changed,” Victor Valencia said.

“We have a broken family now,” Victor Valencia said, “I feel helpless.”

“Our family used to be really close, that used to be the most important thing to me and to brother, Frankie and my siblings. We were all about family,” Victor said. “But since this has happened my family is broken up, I don’t see my family very much at all.”

To Victor Valencia, Frankie Valencia’s death is now his everyday life, but to his cousins it is not, he says. “It is hard for them to be around me without seeing it and being reminded by it.”

Victor Valencia said that while his family is still invited to family parties and social events, “it is not the same atmosphere for us. We don’t feel as comfortable because we feel like there is something missing … and there is,” he said. “I am really good at putting up a front, getting ahead of my emotions and pretending everything is okay. When I am with my family, I shouldn’t feel like I have to do that, and when I do, it just shows it is false.”

“I have come to terms of the fact that is what reality is now,” Victor Valencia said.

Victor Valencia said in some respects Frankie’s death pulled his immediate family closer together. “Because it is the world against us, we are more united,” he said. “We have more patience for one another, more awareness and more space.”

After the trial, Victor Valencia said his family held a special event in honor of Frankie Valencia where they invited family, Shlifka along with two women from his office, and Frankie Valencia’s fraternity at DePaul. “We brought Bears balloons for my brother,” Victor Valencia said, “he was a huge Bears fan, huge,” he said. “You couldn’t pull him away from a Bears game if the house was on fire.”

Frankie Valencia was dressed as a Bears fan for Halloween on the night of his death.

Family, friends, and people from DePaul came to the trial, Victor Valencia said, “all people who were inspired by Frankie, all people who were moved by him, people he had touched in the short time he was here.”

Frankie Valencia volunteered on the South Side of Chicago for various communities and in Colombia helping abandoned children. After Frankie Valencia was killed, President Obama—whom Frankie tirelessly campaigned for—wrote a letter to Frankie’s family “detailing how he and Frankie were kindred spirits, how they shared similar values and ideas,” Victor Valencia said.

“To receive something from President Obama, to know that he knew who Frankie was, ” he said, “that was so amazing. That was powerful for us.”

“He always said he was born and raised in Chicago and was going to live and die in Chicago,” Victor Valencia said. “As sad as it is, it is true that that happened” he said, “He felt he could make the most change in Chicago. He felt he could have the biggest impact here.”

Frankie Valencia’s lived by his quote: “‘We are the future. How will you be remembered?’ and he held true to that,” Victor Valencia said. “The youth of Chicago, the youth of the world. We are the future, we are part of a legacy and we all want to be remembered by something, in some way, by someone,” he said.

“Frankie challenged us to do that,” he said. “He challenged us to be remembered and to make change in our own lives that could effect the world.”

Victor Valencia said he plans to give his victim impact statement on Oct. 21, when Gatica returns to court for sentencing.

In the lobby of the Timeline Theatre Company, there is a dark tunnel. Walk through it once, and you travel back in time. Walk through it to leave and discover an unanticipated blend of time.

The lobby is transformed into an elaborate mineshaft—a time machine that sets the stage for the performance to come. After traveling down a dark tunnel, the production begins and a moment in history begins to be told.

“Timeline’s mission is to do historical plays that connect to today’s social and political issues,” Lara Goetsch said, who helped organize the production’s exhibit. “To say, here is a play from these union workers in the 1930s and ‘40s who were inspired to make art and paint, wouldn’t it be interesting to find people who are doing art right now with similar—if not the same background as the miners, and show that to our audience?”

“The Pitmen Painters” tells the story of a group of artistically inclined miners and the birth of a working-class artist movement.

Inspired by a book by William Feaver, the production’s story stems from a group of miners in the 1930′s in Ashington, England. While the mining town of Ashington was far from sophisticated, the group volunteered for the Worker’s Educational Association (WEA), a program for adult education.

In 1934, master painter, Robert Lyon, headed an art appreciation class in Ashington as part of the WEA program. Enflamed with an enthusiasm to learn, the program quickly became an incubator for the miners to create and inspire each other as artists.

The Pitmen Painters brings to life the story of these miners.

The experience is as if the world, or at least the theatre, had traveled back in time. But during intermission, the theater doors open to a room with glimpses of the past and present in a combination the art of the Ashington miners with current Chicago workers.

Juxtaposed together, the gallery gives a historical perspective for the two groups, their artistic expression, and what it means to be an artist with a blue-collar lifestyle. The Chicago artists on display include teachers, a city worker, an actor and a plumber. These modern Pitmen provide a beautiful exhibit, worthy of the miners from Ashington.

Both sets of artists come from similar backgrounds, both of which have seen war and a country with a shaky economy. When the artists’ expression and emotion are thrown on canvas however, the two groups divide completely.

The Pitmans’ art is simple and defined. Robert Lyon’s 1938 drawing, “Oliver Kilbourn” features a man etched out with deep dark lines on white paper. The man’s head is cocked back with a relaxed smile while his thumbs tuck loosely in his pockets.

But for Pilsen resident Antonio Martinez, artistic expression is not so clear-cut. In the plumber’s painting, “Pipe Cutting Money” a large white hand descends onto golden figures, dominating the image. Martinez and his fellow union artists live similar lives to the Pitmans’, but their mode of thinking are expressed as much more abstract.

“It was really about expanding what we were doing on the stage,” Goetsch said. “For years we have been putting historical information in the lobby, but never anything this crazy.”

John Harris found himself in charge of O'Hare International Airport on 9/11.

This article was originally published on The Red Line Project.

John Harris was on his way to the airport when he learned a plane had hit one of the World Trade Center towers.

Harris did not turn around and he did not call his loved ones. Instead, he headed straight for O’Hare International Airport.

At the time of the Sept. 11 attacks, Harris, who later served as the chief of staff to former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and resigned with him in 2008, was Chicago’s first deputy aviation commissioner.

With many of the top airport executives stranded at a conference in Montreal that day, Harris was left to run one of the busiest airports in a country under attack by hijacked airliners.

“It was the first time in U.S. history that all airports closed,” Harris said. “Airports from time-to-time close for security reasons or for mechanical failure, but never had the whole system shut down.

“It was somewhat eerie to look up in the sky and not see any planes or any contrails in the air … very quiet. An eerie quiet.”

By the time Harris arrived at O’Hare 30 minutes after the first attack, a second plane had struck a second World Trade Center tower. Using a desktop application called Flight Tracker, Harris was able to monitor all of the flights inbound and outbound from Chicago airports.

“According to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), I was told there was one more hijacked plane unaccounted for,” he said.

By this time, a third plane – American Flight 77 out of Washington Dulles International Airport headed to Los Angeles– had crashed into the Pentagon. The fourth plane was United 93.

“United [93] was over Ohio and headed toward Chicago,” he said.

Harris was in touch with Mayor Daley’s office informing the staff that the plane was still headed toward Illinois. With the flight out of contact with the FAA, it was assumed to have been hijacked, he said. The Sears Tower and the central Loop business district were ordered to be evacuated.

Minutes later, the plane turned east and, after eventually falling off the radar, was presumed to be down.

After Harris was notified that the plane had crashed in rural Pennsylvania, Harris said he kept thinking about whether or not there was a continuing threat and if all of the hijacked planes had been accounted for. With many thousands of planes in the sky at any one time and dozens landing in any given minute … how do would officials know if one is missing?

“It was stressful,” Harris said. “But everyone performed in a calm and deliberate manner.”

All four hijackings occurred before 10 a.m., at the height of the morning arrival bank, which Harris descibed as ”the morning rush hour for airports.”

“It was an extraordinary situation,” he said. We were used to dealing with snowstorms or bomb threats, “but a hijacking had been very rare and within a couple hours we were aware of four.”

After the FAA ordered all planes to be grounded, the threat of an additional attack surfaced as one more issue in a sea of many. O’Hare is one of the largest airports in the nation, with long runways that can accommodate any jet aircraft at any time. Consequently, many of the international flights anywhere near Chicago – including Canada and the Midwest region, were diverted to O’Hare. 

At 9 a.m. on a Tuesday, O’Hare typically executes as a high-tempo operation, and on a few minutes notice, a large number of aircraft across a wide region suddenly banked and pointed their noses straight at it.

“We worked closely with the FAA to bring down as many planes as we could and get the people out of the airport as quickly as possible, not knowing whether more attacks were coming,” Harris said, “whether maybe by land, sea or air.”

According to Harris, there was “not much panic” among travelers.

“Most people weren’t fully aware of what was going on,” he said, “they were just told to leave the airport.”

Harris attributed this to the era’s now-archaic flow of communication.

“The Internet was not as widespread as it is today,” he said. “Media wasn’t as accessible. People were gathered around televisions in the terminals or in the hold rooms. People reacted rather calmly.

“Within a few hours, the airport was like a ghost town.”

If the attacks were to happen today, Harris said he believes it would be much more difficult to safely evacuate the terminals. With the spread of news through social media and other Web tools, Harris said, “I think there would be more panic.”

In the weeks following the attacks, a debate in Washington, D.C. led to the creation of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). Prior to 9/11, security passenger screening was done by the airlines. According to Harris, many people thought this led to a competing interest between security and efficiency.

“Some people question how effective minimum wage security screeners working for private contractors under contract with the airlines can be,” Harris said.

Consequently, TSA put this task in the hands of the federal workforce.

People were very willing to deal with the slower security screening, Harris said. He said he that witnessed that patience among passengers until he left the aviation industry in 2004.

“It was only after several years did people’s patience begin to wear,” he said. “As time passed, it’s natural that people demand faster, more efficient and less intrusive ways” when dealing with security.

“I think people say that after all these years, we should figure out a way to build a better mousetrap,”

There is a lot of debate about selective screening at airports, he said.

“Back then, everybody was willing to accept everybody being screened,” he said. “The more people learned about who carried out the attacks and what the motivation was, they naturally asked, ‘Why can’t we target the threat instead of screening everybody?’ ”

Harris said the threat isn’t “that easy to put a face on.” History has shown, he said, that terrorists “come in all shapes and colors.”

“The world changed that day and it’s never going back,” he said. “It’s a new reality, it’s here to stay and hopefully it won’t be tested again.”

HOLLIS — Portable classrooms could be the solution to Hollis/Brookline High School’s overcrowding problem, which has jeopardized the school’s accreditation.

School officials were charged with addressing the overcrowding in a warning given by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC). School officials met Wednesday night to hash out a plan with a timeline for how they will meet the space requirement, which calls for 160 square feet per student.

“I don’t feel like people truly understand what it is like to be a roaming teacher in that building … and what its like for students either,” Christina Brown, a Brookline resident and Hollis/Brookline High School math teacher told school board members.

“I am inefficient when it comes to working in someone else’s classroom,” she said. “Anything can happen. It slows me down and makes me inefficient to the students.”

Principal Cindy Matte acknowledged the current conditions are not ideal.

“It’s so hard to be the best we can be all around when we are under these circumstances,” Matte said.

A school committee, organized earlier this summer by Matte, presented three different options to the co-op School Board on Wednesday night.

Options A and C suggest adding portable classrooms, which are estimated to cost between $34,000 to $43,000 each. According to Matte, walkways are estimated to cost approximately $15,000.

Portables, which will “most likely” satisfy all NEASC requirements, would be leased over a five-year time period. These units provide additional space and alleviate teacher movement and planning space, which according to the committee’s recommendations is a “huge benefit.”

However, the committee says portables present several disadvantages such as their high cost to taxpayers, effect on limited water availability, and history of health concerns.

Option B presented a different solution. Without the use of portables, the committee recommends converting two computer rooms to classrooms, increasing class sizes, eliminating courses with low enrollments, using the auditorium for lecture classes, and using the cafeteria for large study halls. While the committee says this is the most cost effective option, they said it might have a negative impact on test scores, including the SAT, NECAP, AP and PSAT.

In addition, Option B reduces AP classes such as AP psychology, which would only be offered every other year.

“Reducing AP classes reduces the amount of students that could take them,” Matte said. “That would allow us to focus more on our core classes.”

Without these AP classes, Matte said the 20 kids that would have been in the class would be dispersed in different classrooms in the building which would “free a teacher up for that period.”

While Matte said not all members of the committee agree, she said she “truly believes” Option B would have a negative impact on the students’ education.

Associate Superintendent Betsey Cox-Buteau agreed.

“The choices are really very simple,” she said. “A and C are choices to add space and retain programs and quality. Option B is to reduce,” Cox-Buteau said. “Are you going to stand by what you have given students or are you going to reduce it?”

Several community members expressed concern over the rush to make a decision by the deadline.

Brookline resident Diane Power was a member of the NEASC committee and said none of the options were thoroughly analyzed,

Others agreed.

“We have insufficient information to choose between the three options and we have to provide a report within the next three weeks,” School Board member Fred Hubert, of Brookline, said

In an effort to buy time and make a more informed decision, the board plans to present all three options to NEASC, which must be given by Sept. 1.

“My concern is that we are putting a sense of urgency, rushing to try and come up with a decision,” said parent Debbie Pucci.

The committee voted to bring a warrant article to the March annual meeting to purchase new rectangular tables. By eliminating the current circle-shaped tables, the cafeteria will be able to seat more students.

More than 25 community members came to Wednesday’s meeting, an increase from the average 5 or so attendees.

“To have that many people in the room and caring about these issues,” Pucci said, “It’s exciting.”

Different versions of this article were originally published on Gapers Block and The DePaulia.

It is easy to overlook the origins of passion that unfolded onstage last Sunday in HOPERA: Unleashed. Composer and vocalist Adrian Dunn’s musical creativity and technical mastery enabled a seamless fusion of two genres not normally seen on the same side of town: hip-hop and opera. The blend was so seamless it became easy to forget that these two disparate art forms have camps that throw a cynical eye at each other, and music in general, with square-peg-round-hole attitudes. It doesn’t fit, so it doesn’t belong.

Dunn has transcended these rules by providing a vision that integrates music with words to demonstrate how things that don’t seem to fit can belong. He has integrated elements of hip-hop and opera to serve as a nearly subconscious and consonant musical foundation for the narrative, which he unfolds atop it.

The performance marks the return of the company’s 2009 performance, Hopera: A Fallen Hero and features a series of numbers from the first studio album of hip-hop opera company, HOPERAWorld, released earlier this month.

In this update to Shakespeare’s Othello, Obadiah King takes the stage as an African-American high school student in Chicago who dreams of becoming a New York Times best-selling writer. But amidst these dreams, struggles run wild.

Hopera Unleashed packages pain, sorrow, and love and presents it to the audience as a uniquely wrapped gift. Using a technique typically practiced only by jazz musicians, Dunn often turns his back to the audience, focusing attention and passion to his performers. Rather than excluding the audience however, the technique seems to amplify the emotion sweeping across the stage between the performers, producing a beautiful and visceral experience for all.

Hopera Unleashed’s message employs various musical constructs as the story unfolds. At the start of the performance, Dunn says, “Love has been replaced between the races. The time to stop is now.” As the hopera progresses, its harmony calls into question how different hip-hop and opera really are from one another. Violence and anguish fall from both sides of hip-hop and opera’s scaffolding, highlighting the universally darker areas of people’s personas.  The theme of integrating traditionally segregated ideas/music/people is at the root of Hopera Unleashed.

The combined forces of hip-hop and opera move one in a way that is not typically experienced in other genres. The voice of Othello’s mother (played by Amanda Davis) embraces you with powerful overtones and passionate wails. As Davis crescendos, the listener is mentally brought onto the stage. As the rapping beats of Dunn quickly merge with Davis’ vocals, the audience becomes synchronized with rhythms flowing from the stage.

“Wow,” said an audience member sitting behind me.

A common method to form new art is to blend existing genres; more than one soaring classical masterpiece was derived from simple folks songs enjoyed by we lesser-born. Oftentimes, these new genres encountered resistance from purists that might accept evolutionary modifications, but would not accept a revolutionary break from their comfort zone.

However, Hopera Unleashed cast members say they enjoy mixing the two genres because it delivers a positive message to today’s youth.

“Hip-hopera brings more life to classical music,” said Donald Manuel, who plays Obidiah King. “It is something different that a lot more young people can relate to.”

Amanda Davis, who play’s Othello’s mother, said their music helps expose children to classical music, while still being cool overall.

“Our ancestors cared about each other,” Davis said. “But now it seems to be about hate. We want to come together and utilize each other in our music because we are about the community.”

In short, the dichotomy expressed by two seemingly unrelated musical genres is reflected by the theme of Dunn’s message. He seems to be asking, if music as radically distinct as hip-hop and opera, music that has been separated by centuries of musical and cultural evolution, can flow as one, can harmonize, can enhance each other, can be combined to synergistically create something greater than its components … why can’t we?

Hopera: Unleashed says we can.

(MCT/Jim Hummel)

This article was written as a satire.

There was money, there was power, and there was sex.

It was brilliant.

Last month, the nation learned that former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger had not only cheated on his wife, but also fathered a child with a former member of his household staff.

His scandal did not stand alone.

The head of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, also known as DSK, allegedly raped a hotel maid.

Then there was former Senator and almost-VP John Edwards … well, you get the picture.

Men have cheated since the birth of Homo sapiens. For centuries, anthropologists, philosophers, and biologists have pondered over the sexual proclivities of men. Suddenly, when the sex scandals of prominent men emerged, journalists finally cracked the code.

Eureka! It was all so simple. These bad boys had power. Mystery solved, headlines across the country splashed with the breakthrough, “powerful men behaving badly.”

Americans were enlightened. Only men in positions of power rape people, and men without such authority do not. The conventional wisdom was established and the thought-provoking discussions began. Time magazine addressed the root of the problem in big, bold letters across its cover: “Sex, Lies, Arrogance. What Makes Powerful Men Act Like Pigs.”

We can draw such a conclusion because what DSK and Schwarzenegger did was essentially the same. One man engaged in simple adultery while the other in alleged rape. As many news organizations briefly noted, there is one slight difference between the two: One scenario is worse than the other, according to the media anyway.

Men rape women for the very same reason they engage in extramarital affairs. I’m sure it is safe to assume that there are no psychological differences for the propensity to rape a woman versus have an affair. After all, that’s what the media has implied, so it has to be valid, right?

The scandals evoked a crusade of intellectualism and maturity. In the successfully broad packaging of different scandals, moral sensitivity proved to be unnecessary. Had we not packaged the scandals together so broadly, we would have risked showing our sensitive side- a side that understands the psychological dimensions behind rape.

Strauss-Kahn’s sex scandal was covered more than any other news story during the week of May 19-22, according to the Pew Research Center. More than 80 percent of people said they knew of Schwarzenegger’s affair and love child. During this same time period, less than a quarter of the public had heard of the debate in Washington over whether to raise the federal debt limit.

The American people should be proud.

In an inevitable byproduct of brilliance, journalists on both sides of the Atlantic are starting to question themselves and their country’s journalistic standards.

For those of you hinting at regret—knock it off. The French elites are finally showing weakness. Some are even questioning their “journalistic integrity” for turning a blind eye to political sexcapades.

The French press may shift their anti-sex scandal model toward The Enlightenment, Part Deux, but it will not be to the full-tilt degree currently exuberated in the States.

Sex scandals are the root of democracy, for without democracy, extra-marital power-sex cannot be scandalous. As journalists living in a free speech nation, it is our job to report on anything and everything. It is our duty.

In France, politicians get away with marital murder. For many years Francois Mitterrand, the president of France from 1981 to 1995, had a secret mistress with whom he fathered an illegitimate daughter. Although the scandal was similar to Schwarzenegger’s, the French press was mute; they insisted on covering important issues.

Sex and politics! A middle-aged French president caught with his pants down! Mitterand’s scandal was a journalist’s pure glory. How could the press not cover such a philandering affair? How did life in France go on?

The French’s criticism of the U.S.’ sexy journalism is propelled by jealousy. French journalism is consistent with analysis of speeches and coverage of political issues — this is beyond regrettable. With such coverage, how can the public be anything but malnourished? Where’s the fat?

The U.S. has glamor. The U.S. has in-your-face-mosquito-buzzing-in-your-ear-that-won’t-go-away sex scandals. Sex is politics’ oxygen. Without it, nothing really matters. Our headlines splashed in scandal and sensation provide Americans with the news they need to know. Without it, America’s renowned intellect shunts to ground.

Five years ago a book titled “Sexus Politicus” was published with an entire chapter detailing Strauss-Kahn’s voracious sexual appetite. The authors, Christophe Dubois and Christophe Deloire, observed Strauss-Kahn to have a tendency towards “seduction to the point of obsession.”

Had Strauss-Kahn been American, this story never would have gone untold. The deficit would have gone unreported. The drug war: Unreported. World suffrage: Whatevs. It can wait. For now, dinner talk’s heart belongs to someone else; it belongs to politicians and their wieners.

As it turns out, character really does trump substance and job performance. All Bill Clinton critics know that Universal Truth. If it weren’t for the U.S. press, Strauss-Kahn would most likely be France’s new president next year. Your welcome, France.

But American brilliance can’t stop here. On both sides of the Atlantic, journalists are deeply soul-searching. They question why the public reacted negatively to the LA Times rather than Schwarzenegger when the paper printed (immediately before his first election) the detailed accusations of more than 15 women who said Schwarzenegger had improperly touched and groped them. Disregarding his confession of guilt, loyalists swept Arnold into office, and the LA Times’ was additionally punished when 10,000 people voted against the Times by dropping their subscriptions. As a Hollywood celebrity, the Terminator’s sexscapades were ho-hum expected. People did not want to see good ink wasted on bad trivia. But as Govinator … oh-my-god-yes-oh-yes-bring-the-dirt.

Let’s stop this self-doubt and get back to the issues that matter. Packaging DSK’s and Arnold’s sexual misconduct is a good start; it enables the media to paint a broad story of sex and power. We don’t have to risk being labeled “morally insensitive” for not recognizing the irrelevant differences between adultery and rape. But even so, there are other issues to tackle.

It is time to ask even more compelling questions and give greater scrutiny to the issues that matter, such as DSK’s $3,000 a night suite at the Sofitel and his first class flight on Air France. Come on my fellow journalists, we’ve got a job to do.