The Body of an American Paul Watson, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1993 for his photograph of Somalis dragging a dead American soldier through the streets, has witnessed innumerable atrocities while covering war zones around the globe; he’s left with a crippling case of PTSD. Dan O’Brien, who’s written some poems and plays you’ve never heard of, has a brother who, as a teen, jumped from a third-story window and landed safely in a snowbank; as a result, O’Brien’s still upset....

Reader staffers share stories that fascinate, alarm, amuse, or inspire us. Richard Ellis/Getty Images The Republican presidental candidates won’t address the Confederate flag issue. • That Saudi Arabia, the world’s sixth-largest consumer of oil, is making a move toward solar power? —Evin Billington • About the ethical, eco-friendly, and artistic revival of taxidermy? —Evin Billington

There are at least three editions of the album Blackboard Jungle Dub by reggae provocateur Lee “Scratch” Perry, each one with a different track listing (and sometimes a different title). It’s arguably the world’s first dub album, but whether that distinction is accurate or not, it does serve to delineate Perry’s exploration of a recording studio’s possibilities. Four years after the release of the album’s earliest incarnation, 1973’s Upsetters 14 Dub Black Board Jungle, the Jamaican producer scaled even greater technical heights when he helmed the sessions for the Congos’ Heart of the Congos, setting the vocal trio within a sonic context that reached well beyond reggae, dub, and R&B to approach some sort of billowing psychedelic apex....

It was about a year ago that master gardener and City Grange garden center founder LaManda Joy told me about the Great Grow Along, her plot to revive the Victory Garden movement, the worldwide World War II-era gardening campaign that provided food security for millions during disruptions to the supply chain. “Maybe this is the moment I was born for,” she told me. If that schedule looks like too much to keep up with, each session will be available online to registrants a week after the event....

The problem with celebrating Songkran, the Thai New Year, in Chicago is that it’s too cold for a water fight in mid-April. One of the popular features of Songkran in Bangkok originated as a ceremony offering blessings to your elders by anointing their hands with scented water, but the custom’s evolved into a friendly no-holds-barred mass water fight, a euphoric respite from the withering heat that essentially takes over the city this time of year....

When the COVID-19 lockdown first hit in March, a lot of companies whose mission focused on theater for young audiences found their digital shelves mostly bare. But they quickly ramped up their offerings with short films, workshops, and other activities designed to give kids and their families a break from the monotony of screen time routines. New stories, averaging 12 to 15 minutes in length, are added weekly every Sunday at 6 PM CST, and they can all be found on the YouTube channel for Northwestern’s Wirtz Center....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Monday, November 20, 2017. Analysis of Emanuel 2018 budget raises red flags Chicago’s financial crisis is far from over, and there’s still plenty of “heavy lifting” to do, according to a Civic Federation analysis of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s 2018 budget. The $8.6 billion budget includes new and higher taxes to generate revenue, but the city is still being crushed by debt and pension liabilities....

Englewood rapper Dre Izaya has recently emerged as part of a loose collective of pop, R&B, soul, and hip-hop artists associated with Loop Theory, a local indie artist-development and management company founded by producer Disrupt and rapper Navarro. (The agency also releases music by the artists on its roster.) Last year, Loop Theory put together a big rollout for the October debut of rapper Brittney Carter, As I Am, and with the arrival of Izaya’s new I Fall Apart When They Leave, the label is finishing a one-two punch....

Gneshnabem ne? Do you speak Bodewadmimwen? Last month the Citizen Potawatomi Nation’s language department released a pair of tools to help preserve its highly-endangered language: an online searchable dictionary and a series of free online, self-paced Bodewadmimwen language courses for both adults and children. The dictionary features more than 8,500 words, their definitions and pronunciations, as well as audio recordings so you can hear exactly how each word is pronounced by a native speaker and video clips that highlight their cultural significance....

On Sunday night at Constellation, celebrated New York-based new-music group Mivos Quartet will premiere Chain Reactions/Five Events by composer and electronic musician Sam Pluta, who moved to Chicago a little over a year ago to become an assistant professor of music at the University of Chicago. The concert doubles as a release event for Broken Symmetries (Carrier), Pluta’s second album devoted to his own compositions. You might expect Pluta to promote the show by foregrounding the significance of Chain Reactions, which brings together his practices as a composer, improviser, and performer—or to point out that it appears on Broken Symmetries, alongside three more electroacoustic works (performers on the album include Mivos, Wet Ink Ensemble, violinist Josh Modney, and flutist Anne La Berge)....

A parking lot lined with dirty snowbanks lit by fluorescent street lamps and populated by a minivan with its doors and roof removed takes up the entirety of Strawdog Theatre’s stage. The set looks tailor-made for a Hellcab update; what Bennett Fisher presents instead is a tortuous lecture about fanaticism and class and race relations in America. Hassan is a Somali-American airport shuttle driver so bad at his job that he’s forced to live in his van because he can no longer afford an apartment....

On July 12, 1979, a crateful of disco records was blown up in the middle of Comiskey Park, fans victoriously stormed the field, and the world was forever changed. Disco, an inescapable pop-music phenomenon, was finally quashed. Teenagers took back the sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll they cherished so dearly. And it was all thanks to the greatest promotional stunt in the history of FM radio. When he gets the chance, Hoekstra does try to make Disco Demolition a more rounded, less one-sided account....

As the keyboardist of Indiana roots-rock group Houndmouth, Katie Toupin was mostly in the background. But when she got a turn at singing, such as on the band’s 2012 single “Houston Train,” she was mesmerizing. Her voice is sharp, harsh, and perfect—think Iris Dement with more swagger. Listening to that track, you had to wonder why she wasn’t performing on her own. Sure enough, she left Houndmouth in 2016 and swapped her keys for a guitar as the leader of her own band....

Six years after she disappeared from her Detroit home, a girl called Sophie (Clara Byczkowksi) turns up at a homeless shelter in Canada. She’s 17. She doesn’t remember much about her past beyond her name. The little girl lost is now found, and her family rejoices. Barbara Lhota’s new play Girl Found begins with the happy ending, then explores its dark origins and aftermath. The troubles begin to reveal themselves from the moment Ellie (Katherine Swan) arrives at the shelter to retrieve Sophie: Ellie is Sophie’s aunt and legal guardian....

I discovered marijuana-infused bath products on a hazy trip to Portland in 2016. Taking advantage of my first visit to a state where recreational marijuana is legal, I greedily snapped up every THC-endowed product my arms could carry: Marijuana gummies! Pot tea! Cannabis cupcakes! Weed honey! At the (now closed) Pur Roots Dispensary in Northeast Portland, my eyes settled on the bath and beauty products enclosed in a glass case....

Hubbard Street Dance Chicago’s Summer Series performed at the Harris Theater June 6 through 9 was a sleek and futuristic vision: two recent ensemble pieces by Harris’s first choreographer in residence, Brian Brooks, and HSDC’s first and former resident choreographer Alejandro Cerrudo bookending two 2010 duets by Canadian phenom Crystal Pite. Costuming throughout was democratic, androgynous, and virtually anonymous: everyone wore pants, not a frill to be seen, and not much color either....

Last Thursday, the Music Box opened its latest 70-millimeter film series with Raoul Walsh’s The Big Trail, a 1930 Fox release made in the short-lived Grandeur process, an early iteration of 70-millimeter filmmaking. There are no surviving 70-millimeter prints of The Big Trail, so the Music Box screened it from 35-millimeter instead, but this more than sufficed in conveying the spectacle of Walsh’s production. The film’s high-definition imagery still impresses after 90 years; Walsh fills the widescreen frames brilliantly, often dividing one’s attention between highly populated backgrounds and naturalistic, low-stakes drama in the foreground....

If you went to an underground show in Chicago in the past ten years, you probably saw Ray Ellingsen. Any time a band played eccentric, noisy, outre rock in a basement, loft, apartment, or converted warehouse, more likely than not he’d be there: snapping photographs right up front, hovering over the merch table to check out cassettes and T-shirts, chatting with musicians between or even during their sets. He hummed with enthusiasm that seemed as tangible as the aura drawn around a comic-­book superhero....

The fish has rotted from the head all the way to the last scale on the tail. The rule of law feels like a joke. Cruelty is the point, as more than one observer has noted of the dominant ethos of the current administration. In light of that dark reality, how do we empathize and still keep ourselves safe? What does “safe” actually mean now? In How to Defend Yourself, a group of five young college women and two young men come together for self-defense classes after a sorority sister, Susannah, is sexually assaulted....

UPDATE Tuesday, March 17: this event has been suspended, though it may be remounted in the future. Refunds available at point of purchase. Normally, in a fantasy life, you obsess over your pets. Dog cloning figures largely in the mind anytime I think about how it would feel to be Barbra Streisand, personally. But there comes a point in any conversation with a decadent person—around hour two, perhaps—when you wonder if or when this fascinating individual will move on from dog talk and feed you dinner....