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Emma's News
Living in America
 After
eight years of living Stateside, Mike and I now have Green Cards,
a house,
an SUV, and three babies! Read on to find out what we've
been getting up to in the Midwest.
E-Reviews of '05/'04>>
Travel USA
 '09:
In March we went to Maui,
Hawaii to celebrate Mike's 40th
birthday; we flew into Kahului,
visited Lahaina
and stayed in Ka'anapali,
Hana and
Wailea.
In April Ella stayed with her grandparents while I accompanied Mike on a
five-day business trip to Paris,
France. In June we all went to
NYC where Mike attended a four-day
convention, and in July we headed out west to visit our
Californian cousins in LA.
'08/'07/'06/'05/'04/'03/'02>>
Book Report
 '09:
I took a break from spy novels at the start of the year and
enjoyed Peter Mayle's easygoing
Hotel Pastis
(1993), then it was back to Le Carré's Quest for Karla trilogy
which I completed with Smiley's People
(1979). Next I read Simone de Beauvoir's first
autobiography Memoirs of a Dutiful
Daughter (1959), followed by Barack
Obama's Dreams from My Father: A
Story of Race and Inheritance
(1995) and Jodi Picoult's Plain
Truth (1999).
Waiting on my shelf?
Well, there's another Mayle, plus several James Ellroy, de
Beauvoir's love letters to Sartre, and an Anita Shreve...
'08/'07/'06/'05>>
Bands
 '09:
Mike's been to see AC/DC tribute band
Black Angus on a couple of occasions this year. The
Rakes will be playing Chicago in a couple of months: Anyone offering to babysit
three little 'uns?
'08/'07/'06/'05/'04/'03/'02>>
What's on Telly?
 Our
new favourite show is the Travel Channel's
Man Vs Food
with Adam Richman - he's awesome! I've also
discovered
Mark & Olly: Living With the Machigenga
on the same channel. I'm still watching
Lost, 24,
House,
ER,
Desperate Housewives,
Numb3rs,
The Unit,
Ugly Betty, Gossip Girl and resurrected drama
90210 (and now they're bringing
Melrose Place back!) - but unfortunately SATC-ish
Lipstick Jungle has been cancelled:
boo hoo! My reality shows airing at the moment are
America's Next Top Model,
Make Me a Supermodel,
The City, The
Real Housewives of New York City, Survivor,
American Idol, The
Celebrity Apprentice and The Amazing Race.
Going to give two new dramas a try:
Southland and
Harper's Island.
Cinema
 '09:
In January we saw the darling of the Awards shows
Slumdog Millionaire.
Then....well, that's it actually.
'08/'07/'06/'05/'04/'03>>
More About Movies...
Video Watch
 '09:
We started the year with a few action movies to put our new
widescreen TV and Blu-ray Disc player to the test:
The Dark Knight
(2008) and
Iron Man
(2008). Clint Eastwood's Changeling (2008) and a first-time
writer/director's Frozen River
(2008), starring Oscar-nominated
Angelina Jolie and Melissa Leo respectively, were both
excellent. Recently we enjoyed Clint Eastwood's
Gran Torino
(2008). What's next? I'm on the waiting list
for the 1979 TV adaptation of John Le Carré's Tinker, Tailor,
Soldier, Spy with Alec Guinness as Smiley; for some reason
there's a 'Very Long Wait' - go figure!
'08/'07/'06/'05>>
Friends & Family
  '08:
Welcome
little Beatrix Dunne, born to
Noel & Samantha just in time for Christmas.
 Congrats
to the Staffords on the Thanksgiving Day birth of
Samuel George.
Little
Lucas Blunt, so cute, I'm sorry
your parents have moved to the suburbs.
Well done to Vanessa & Mark on the
birth of Gianni in August; and
a warm welcome to Diana's first grandchild, Max.
Congratulations to Justin
Hobday in Tokyo on the birth of Audrey; to Marc & Abbe in
Brooklyn on the
February birth of Scarlett Grace; and to Penny & Steve
in Devon who
welcomed Rosie Hope on Easter Monday.
'07/'06/'05>>
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.
Sports
 Baseball/'09
Season: I went to one game this season
with Mike, can't remember who the Cubs played but Chicago won
before the heavens opened and we sought shelter in a
Wrigleyville bar.
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.
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. This year, in June, 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, in December, the
longest running show on Broadway
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". Luckily
I live in Chicago where I can wander along the Magnificent
Mile whenever I choose, 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 used to be complete without stopping by the
iconic Marshall Field's
store on State Street, but a couple of years ago it became just another Macy's
in a bid to create a national department store;
however, the
building is still worth a visit for the historic clock and the world's largest
Tiffany glass dome. Update: Another grande dame
of Chicago retail, Carson Pirie Scott, closed its State
Street store in March of this year, citing falling
sales and rising costs, followed soon after by Lord & Taylor
("the Signature of American Style"), whose Water Tower Place space will be filled by
retailers willing to pay higher rents; a rumoured replacement is
American Girl Place.
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