Some highlights of the weekend’s festivities include:

Thursday, July 3, at 9:31 PM; City of Chicago, Grant Park
Friday, July 4, at 9:15 PM; Evanston, Clark Street Beach
Friday, July 4, at 9:30 PM; Naperville, Knoch Park
Friday, July 4 at dusk; Oak Park, Oak Park River Forest High School Stadium

Click here for a comprehensive list of fireworks displays in the Chicagoland area.

Have a great holiday weekend!

Among the many bicycling enthusiasts in Chicago are those who ride bikes as a method of transportation to work and others who work as a bike messengers, some who enjoy a leisurely ride down the lakefront path and others who are masters of the sometimes unnerving art of urban biking. Both nonprofit groups and the City of Chicago (Mayor Daley is a bicycling enthusiast) provide a variety of programming, resources, and events to promote cycling.

For an immediate introduction to these enthusiasts, join the herd on wheels at Daley Plaza (Dearborn & Washington) tomorrow (June 27, 2008) at 5:30 PM for Chicago’s Critical Mass, which convenes the last Friday of every month to celebrate riding bicycles.

The City of Chicago publishes a map of safe biking streets that is particular to the DePaul campus and its academic buildings. There’s also a general form to search a particular neighborhood.

The Chicagoland Bicycle Federation organizes annual rides and events that are staples in the bicycling community, including Bike the Drive and Bike to Work Week. Check out their web site for information on their outreach and advocacy programs, including how to sign up as a Bike Ambassador.

Don’t forget to wear your helmet!

Join bibliophiles, readers, writers, booksellers, publishers, musicians, artists, and outdoor festival enthusiasts this weekend at Dearborn and Polk, not far from DePaul’s loop campus, for the 2008 Printers Row Book Fair. There’s no fee for entry into this cultural festival that the Chicago Tribune calls "the Midwest’s largest literary event.”

Elizabeth Berg, Andre Dubus III, Robert Fulghum, Maxine Kumin, Audrey Niffenegger, Jeff Shaara, and Scott Turow are among the many novelists, poets, short story writers, and nonfiction writers scheduled to read. Don’t miss the American Heritage Dictionary Define-A-Thon on June 7 at 3:00 PM, the usage equivalent of a spelling bee.

Whether in the context of organic consumption, the slow food movement, simple living, the environment, or local business, community-supported agriculture cooperatives provide an avenue for conscious-minded individuals to consume with awareness. In this model of food production, individuals subscribe to a local farm before a growing season and become community “share-holders” in the harvest, receiving boxes of produce in season through the summer and fall. Chicago’s proximity to cornfields (and soy fields and vegetable patches) gives city and suburban residents a choice of CSAs.

A great place to find such organizations is at Local Harvest. Examples of CSAs with pick-ups in the Chicago area include Fresh Picks (Niles, IL), Angelic Organics (Caledonia, IL), and Homegrown Wisconsin (Madison, WI).

Among the questions to consider when reviewing organizations:

How frequently are produce boxes delivered and what is the cost?
What produce is available each week or month?
Should I share a subscription with friends or family?
Are there are any pick-up locations near me?

Don’t forget that the farmer’s market season is approaching! The Green City Market (1750 N. Clark and Stockton Drive) near DePaul’s Lincoln Park campus and the Federal Plaza farmer’s market (Adams & Dearborn) in the loop provide organic options for consumers with no commitment.

The Academy of American Poets (http://www.poets.org) cites compelling (and somewhat sobering) examples of April in verse:

April is the cruelest month

-- T.S. Eliot

Whan that April with his showres soote
The droughte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veine in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flowr

-- Geoffrey Chaucer,

To what purpose, April, do you return again?

-- Edna St. Vincent Millay

Overcome the year’s dreary passage to spring with the gripping images and enlightening reflections of poetry. Join the month’s celebration at DePaul by attending a reading by Dr. Bernardo Navia, assistant professor in Modern Languages. Stay tuned for details.

Among the authors visiting Chicago in April are poets, novelists, and essayists, as well as winners of the Pulitzer Prize, Chicago Heartland Prize, and National Book Award. Here are some of the month’s highlights:
 
Mary Oliver, who won the Pulitzer Prize for her poetry collection American Primitive (811.54 O48a), speaks at Rubloff Auditorium, 280 S. Columbus Dr., on Wednesday, April 2, at 6:30 pm. The Poetry Center sponsors this event, which is free for members and costs $10 for nonmembers and $8 for students. http://www.poetrycenter.org/reading/index.html 
 
The Chicago Public Library hosts essayist and novelist Pico Iyer, author of Sun after Dark: Flights into the Foreign (910.4 I97s2004) and Video Night in Kathmandu: And Other Reports from the Not-So-Far East (950.42 I97V) to discuss his new book The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama on Wednesday, April 16, at 6:00 pm at the Auditorium of the Harold Washington Library Center (400 S. State Street) in their free author series. http://www.chipublib.org/events/details/id/5035/

On Sunday, April 20, at noon, Elizabeth Strout, author of Amy and Isabelle (813.54 S925a1998), joins Victoria Lautman for WFMT’s Writers on the Record series at the Lookingglass Theatre. Tickets are free, but reservations are recommended. http://www.wfmt.com/main.taf?p=1,1,41,23