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Emma's News
Living in America
 After
9 years living stateside Mike and I now have Green Cards,
a house, a condo we rent out, an SUV (but needing a minivan), and three kids...
but no American accents. Think I'm gonna stop updating
this blog soon as I don't get time to do much any more: see
below!
E-Reviews of '05/'04>>
Friends & Family
  '11:
Félicitations
to Carrie & Brawley on their March nuptials in Paris.
 Congrats to Julia & Craig on the birth of second son
Aiden William on 1/1/11.
Looking forward to the arrival of
babies Bomer, Dunne and
Stafford... hopefully in that order.
'10/'09/'08/'07/'06/'05>>
Travel USA
'11: Hmmm, I need a holiday... NOW!
'10/'09/'08/'07/'06/'05/'04/'03/'02>>
Book Report
'11: Going to try and beat last year's record of one
book! I'm currently reading James Ellroy's
Blood on the Moon,
part of his LA Noir trilogy, as well as Rachel Zoe's
Style A to Zoe: The Art of Fashion, Beauty
& Everything Glamour.
Waiting on my shelf?
Well, there's a Peter Mayle, more James Ellroy, de
Beauvoir's love letters to Sartre, and some more books that I
received for my birthday.
'10/'09/'08/'07/'06/'05>>
Bands
 '11:
I gave up my ticket to Interpol for
want of a babysitter. Mike also got to see Raf's band
Otter Petter at their CD release
party.
'10/'09/'08/'07/'06/'05/'04/'03/'02>>
Cinema
 '11:
Very nearly went to see Black Swan on my birthday weekend, but
didn't.
'10/'09/'08/'07/'06/'05/'04/'03>>
More About Movies...
 '11:
Now Mike's back in a pool team I get to watch my choice of movie
on a Thursday: last night I enjoyed
The Young Victoria.
'10/'09/'08/'07/'06/'05>>
What's on Telly?
 Well,
currently there's the new Windy City-set
The Chicago Code,
Southland, House,
Desperate Housewives, Gossip Girl,
90210,
Project Runway,
America's Next Top Model,
Survivor, The Amazing Race,
Giuliana & Bill,
The Real Housewives of Miami, Orange
County and New York, and Bethenny
Ever After.
Sports
 Baseball/'11
Season: Should be starting soon.
'10/'09/'08/'07/'06/'05/'04/'03>>
 Basketball:
In March '04 Mike and I saw
Chicago
Bulls vs
Los
Angeles Lakers at the United Center. A far cry from
the six-time NBA Championship-winning team of the
'90s, these Bulls were bottom of
their division. However, they kept within a couple of hoops of their
high-profile Western Conference opponents throughout the game to
finish only seven points behind. Lakers guard
Kobe
Bryant dominated the scoring; the lengthy jail-term
hanging over his head didn't appear to hinder his game.
Three years later we went back to the West Loop venue for our second Bulls game
(and loss), this time against the
LA Clippers.
 Soccer:
In the US, where soccer is a minority sport, there are just ten Major League teams,
and in October '03 we went to Soldier Field to support the
Chicago Fire
against
the Colorado Rapids. The
following season Mike went with Mark and Ben to a couple more Fire
games, but I didn't return to the home of the Chicago Bears until
May '05 to cheer on my national team in a USA
vs England friendly. Then in
July Mike saw Owen,
Beckham, Figo,
Raul and Zidane play for
Real Madrid against
Chivas de Guadalajara.
Classical Chicago
 In October '03 my parents and I
went to a Chicago
Symphony Orchestra performance in
the beautiful Orchestra Hall as part of the Marshall Field's Day of
Music: the CSO's music director Daniel Barenboim (husband of the
late cellist Jacqueline du Pré) conducted the world-renowned
orchestra in three works by Strauss. For Dad's birthday
the following June, we went back to Symphony Center for the
CSO's
final performance of the season: an evening of music by Schubert,
Berg
- featuring soprano
Dorothea Röschmann -
and
Mozart.
In July '05 Mike and I attended a
Grant Park Orchestra
concert at the new open-air Jay Pritzker Pavilion: first works by
Copland
and
Arnold, then
Christian Tetzlaff
played
Brahms'
violin concerto. In September we returned to the Pritzker with friends for a
CSO
concert conducted by outgoing music director
Daniel Barenboim,
including works by
Ravel (we all thought Boléro the most stirring piece of
live music we had
heard) and a
Mozart piano concerto with Barenboim as
conductor/piano soloist. Early in summer '06 Mike and I went to the opening night of the
Grant Park Music Festival: a
Joffrey Ballet
performance of Nijinsky's Afternoon of a Faun to the
Debussy
score, plus other orchestral pieces by Shostakovich
and Tchaikovsky. In summer '07
we went twice to the Pritzker - sitting on the lawn with a picnic -
first for Poulenc's Gloria,
Debussy's La Damoiselle élue
and Ravel's Boléro, and then
for
Mahler's Fifth Symphony, all performed by
the
Grant Park Orchestra.
In August '08 we took Ella to Grant park for her first classical
concert: Mendelssohn's violin concerto and Kodaly's Suite
from Hary Janos.
The Stage
Our first Chicago theatre experience featured
new friend
Marco Verna
in romantic comedy
Blind Tasting (about
a wine connoisseur and a blind date)
at a small North Side theatre in July '03; afterwards we had drinks with
the
cast as it was Marco's last performance before moving to New York
City.
In September '04 I won tickets to the Goodman
Theatre's world premiere production of
Arthur Miller's Finishing the Picture,
based loosely on the end of his marriage to Marilyn Monroe;
the cast comprised
Frances Fisher,
Scott Glenn, Stacy Keach,
Stephen Lang, Linda Lavin,
Matthew Modine,
Heather Prete
and Harris Yulin.
The following month we saw Brad and
Elaine in Enter
Alice, a
burlesque adaptation of Lewis Carroll's Alice in
Wonderland. Then in May '05 Mike and I
went to a Steppenwolf Theatre original production called
Lost Land: set in a remote castle in the wine-growing
region of northern Hungary at the end of World War I, it featured
ensemble members
Martha Lavey,
Yasen Peyankov and the incomparable
John Malkovich. In July '06 we went
with Becky and Mark to the Strawdog Theatre Company's presentation
of Chekhov's
Three Sisters
at the Theater on the Lake. In June '07 I saw Tony
Award-winner
Frank Langella
and
Michael "Blair in
The
Queen "
Sheen in
Frost/Nixon
at the Jacob Theatre in New York (I also recognised Desmond's
girlfriend, Penelope, from Lost !), and later that year I
went back to Broadway for its
longest running show
Phantom of the Opera
at the Majestic Theatre.
Shopping on 'Boul Mich'
 "Where
does it come from, this delight in The Shops? Is it inherited? Is
there a shopping gene?", ponders India Knight in
The Shops: How, Why and Where To Shop. (Thanks,
Charlie!) My
favourite line is "I shop little and often, a method I strongly
recommend".
So it's lucky
I live in downtown Chicago where I can wander along the Magnificent
Mile, browse my neighbourhood stores or, for
a change of scene, explore the boutiques of Bucktown, Wicker Park, Old Town and Southport. No Windy City
shopping experience is complete without stopping by the
iconic Marshall Field's
store on State Street; a couple of years ago it became just another Macy's
in their bid to create a national department store, but the
building is still worth a visit for the historic clock and the world's largest
Tiffany glass dome. Another grande dame
of Chicago retail, Carson Pirie Scott, also closed its State
Street store, citing falling
sales and rising costs, and the Water Tower Place space vacated by Lord
& Taylor ("the Signature of American Style") has been filled by
retailers willing to pay higher rents, including
American Girl Place.
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