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  A Chorus for the Young at Heart

  February 14, 2020 at 5:31 pm / Blog

  Archival videos shine light on everyday human qualities. Here are two short ones from Media Burn that portray the kind of couples we all know—they’ve been together forever. They know the good things in life. The first is by Maxi Cohen in 1991 on the Jersey shore where her family lived. They appeared on Episode 304 of The 90’s. The second couple, the Falkenburgs, lived in a Chicago seniors’ apartment building a few blocks from Wrigley Field. Footage is taken … Continue reading →

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  Happy Birthday Bill Veeck, Renaissance Man

  February 9, 2020 at 4:56 pm / Blog

  This Sunday, February 9th, would be the 106th birthday of one of sports, Chicago’s and our personal heroes, Bill Veeck (1914-1986). The Media Burn Archive has close to 300 videos about and with the baseball Hall of Famer who owned baseball teams in Milwaukee, Cleveland, St. Louis and Chicago (twice).  But his life and wisdom went far beyond sports. He wrote five books, had his own radio and TV shows for 40 years and did thousands of speaking engagements. Like many … Continue reading →

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  Testimony to a Tradition

  January 29, 2020 at 3:28 pm / Blog

  42 years ago Marty and Frank Kapugi celebrated their 50th anniversary of playing tamburica music in the United States. This 25-minute documentary created by Mirko Popadic and Gordana Trbuhovich in 1979, highlights the two days of festivities with interviews, speeches and fantastic music.

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  Searching for the Mountaintop

  January 17, 2020 at 3:36 pm / Blog

  The power of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s life—his clarion oratory skill, his burning prophetic demand for racial and economic justice—tremors through the consciousness of our society today. Yet the urgency of his message and radical call to action, it could be said, proved not just from the transformative clarity of his vision but in the way this vision defied the proximity of death’s shadow. “Each morning as I brush my teeth and wash my face,” King would say, according … Continue reading →

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  Home for the holidays? Dig out those old tapes!

  December 30, 2019 at 10:33 am / Blog

  Hanging out at home for the holidays? Why not rummage around in the attic or basement to find your old video tapes and bring them to Home Video Day! Attendees are invited to bring a tape to be projected for the audience, or to simply show up and enjoy what’s on the screen. Videos will run the gamut from birthdays, parties, pageants, weddings, sports, movie re-enactments, to who knows what! We invite you to laugh and cry at the touching … Continue reading →

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  You are part of the Media Burn family

  December 27, 2019 at 9:38 am / Blog

  Dear friend, We’re writing to you from our fourth-floor office in River West, looking out over a mostly empty city on this dreary gray day. It’s quiet except for the occasional Metra commuter train zipping by, the bells of St. John Cantius, and the clicking of computer keys. That faint tapping is the only evidence of the work we do every day at Media Burn. This isn’t just a “job” to us. We’re part of a small family here at … Continue reading →

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  Republicans on Clinton impeachment: “A lie is a lie.”

  December 20, 2019 at 2:21 pm / Blog

  Tom DeLay (R-TX), 1998: “What the defenders want to do is lower the standards by which we hold this president, and lower the standards for our society by doing so.” On Wednesday, Donald Trump became the third president in history to be impeached by the United States Congress. We took the occasion to look for contemporary perspectives on the last time a president was impeached. In a collection from the late Rep. Dan Rostenkowski (D-IL, 1959-1995), we found a VHS … Continue reading →

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  December 4, 1969: Fred Hampton murdered in his bed by Chicago Police

  December 4, 2019 at 1:35 pm / Blog

  In the early morning hours of Dec. 4, 1969, a team of police officers organized by Cook County State’s Attorney Edward Hanrahan stormed an apartment ostensibly in search of illegal weapons. The apartment was the residence of Fred Hampton, chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party, and it served as the chapter’s headquarters. Nearly 100 shots were fired. When the haze of gun smoke cleared, Fred Hampton and another Panther, Mark Clark, lay dead. The raiding officers … Continue reading →