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Scroll down for the dramatist's name and a link to more UChicago clues that have appeared on Jeopardy! |
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| Whatever happened to Big Ed? |
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| During the years when UChicago played football in the Big Ten Conference, the pride of the marching band was Big Bertha, reportedly the world's largest drum. After President Robert M. Hutchins dropped football in 1939, the drum was sold to the University of Texas. |
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| Varsity football returned in 1969. UChicago needed the world's largest something--but what? |
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| At the first home game of the season, Paula Szewczyk-Ausick, AB'72, came up with the idea of a kazoo marching band. Dan "Skip" Landt, AM'62, then director of student activities, took this idea to its logical conclusion: a kazoo band featuring the world's largest kazoo. |
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| Big Ed (in foreground) with cheerleader and kazoo band marchers. |
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| "You can't imagine the joy of the buildings and grounds folks--specifically those who build ductwork--when I gave them a 3.5 inch kazoo and asked for a 12-16 foot version," Landt says. The resulting "instrument," named Big Ed after UChicago's then president Edward Levi, LAB'28, PhB'32, JD'35, required several people to carry it and made no sound. |
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| Landt needed a student to manage the kazoo. His advertisement inspired a single application, from Donald Bingle, AB'76, JD'79, who had founded a kazoo band at his Naperville, Illinois, high school. "I was not paid. I was a volunteer," Bingle recalls. "That's what makes the job application form, which was very detailed, so bizarre." |
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| During the 1970s, Big Ed was the star of UChicago halftime entertainment. It was written about in the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times, and even Sports Illustrated, which described the halftime shows as "wonderfully giddy affairs," open to anyone who wanted to march on the field while playing a standard-size kazoo. |
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| Alas, that freewheeling era came to an end. "The kazoo is no more," a Chicago Maroon article announced in 1980. "The giant kazoo which has graced the field of Homecoming games in recent years will spend tomorrow's game in storage, the victim of efforts by this year's Homecoming organizers to make the game's entertainment more conventional." |
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| Big Ed's final fate is unknown. "Lost more than a decade ago--no one seems sure when--the location of Big Ed remains shrouded in mystery," says Bingle, "or perhaps shrouded under a gray tarp in a University equipment garage." |
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| Landt, who teaches harmonica and autoharp at the Old Town School of Folk Music, has celebrated National Kazoo Week there--in January--for more than 15 years. |
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| "Of course I still have a kazoo," adds Bingle. "Doesn't everybody?" |
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| Design from a small space |
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“ |
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Working in textiles seemed like an easily contained process that required relatively little space, so my experiments with textiles and wool fiber began largely through convenience. |
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--New York designer Liam Lee, AB'15 |
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| Lee's inspirations for his felted wool throws include microscopy, cartography, botany, and ukiyo-e prints. See more of Lee's textiles in the Core, online in February. |
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| Margo Crane, or Once Upon a River |
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“The Stark River flowed around the oxbow at Murrayville the way blood flowed through Margo Crane’s heart. She rowed upstream to see wood ducks, canvasbacks, and ospreys and to search for tiger salamanders in the ferns. … Her feet were toughened against sharp stones and broken glass. When Margo swam, she swallowed minnows alive and felt the Stark River move inside her.”
--Opening lines of Once Upon a River (W. W. Norton, 2011) |
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| Bonnie Jo Campbell, AB'84, wanted to call her best-selling novel Margo Crane after its main character. "American books that are about mythic characters are called by the character’s name--Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer," she says. When her publisher pushed for a different title, "I was a little angry in my heart. I wanted Margo to have that mythic element." |
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| Last year Haroula Rose, AB'02, MAT'02, adapted the book into a film, also called Once Upon a River. The film has been screened at more than 30 festivals worldwide, including the Chicago International Film Festival in October. |
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| Read more about the book, the film, Campbell, and Rose in the University of Chicago Magazine, online in February. |
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| Who was … Thornton Wilder? |
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| Novelist and playwright Thornton Wilder served as a lecturer in comparative literature at the University of Chicago from 1930 to 1936. |
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| More trivial reading: Last year Regenstein user experience librarian Emma Boettcher made headlines when she beat James Holzhauer on Jeopardy!, ending his 32-game winning streak. She won $98,002 and a nickname from Alex Trebek: the "Giant Killer." |
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| Test your knowledge of UChicago clues that have appeared on the show over the years. Competing on Jeopardy! was a lifelong dream for Benjamin Recchie, AB'03; he walked away with five dollars. When Pub trivia contestants contest the moderators: "Sometimes you're confronted with somebody who's in the middle of writing their dissertation on that very thing, and you just have to say yes." |
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| The College Review, edited by Carrie Golus, AB'91, AM'93, is brought to you by Alumni Relations and Development and the College. Image credits: UChicago Photographic Archive, apf4-01777, University of Chicago Library; courtesy Ralph Davis, AB'71, MBA'72; courtesy Donald Bingle, AB'76, JD'79; courtesy Liam Lee, AB'15; courtesy Haroula Rose, AB'02, MAT'02; UChicago Photographic Archive, apf1-08757, University of Chicago Library. |
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