Uptown Arts Featured in Danse Macabre...Summer Nights...

{ Sommernächte 夏の夜 Nuits D'été  לילות קיץ Noites de verão Летом Ночами Vara nopti ليالي الصيف Noches De verano Passi l'estate notti } danse macabre ~ issue xlvii ~ Jeffrey Littleton Uptown Whirl Truly, Jeff Littleton is a man of the visual - a photographer, a painter, and a sketch artist. He's also one of those citizens most every city hopes will fall from the trees (though not literally, unless they become insufferable to their alderman) - the urban maven, the neighborhood activist, the community advocate. Jeff labors unceasingly for the restoration and renewal of Chicago's Uptown, and his passion for this naturally informs his art. He shows his subjects great affection, yet his view is also tempered by a slightly flinty if not macabre inner frame that all Chicagoans appreciate. Jeff is family, of sorts. Not just because of his present domicile, but through his mom, writer and English professor Arlene Greene, who endured having to teach not one but both beginning writing sequences at Columbia College with a wildly distempered post-adolescent me enrolled. We both somehow survived the experience, though I'm sure neither of us foresaw I'd one day end up poeting, much less professoring (or, editing, for the matter of that). But, in Jeff's works, I felt the same sober, patient, caring hand I'd once known, and am proud to present some of his palette throughout this issue to our worldwide readership. AHC