Evanston Salt Costs Climbing by Will Arbery
Featuring Jessica Denney, Angela Rathman, and LisAthas
New York-based playwright Will Arbery’s new play, Evanston Salt Costs Climbing, follows a pair of snow plow drivers, their boss, Jane Maiworm, and her daughter, Jane Jr., as they grapple with polar and personal vortices.
In the play, Jane Maiworm is haunted by premonitions of heated permeable paving systems. Permeable or porous paving can reduce flooding and nutrient runoff by allowing water to infiltrate into the ground below, where passage through the soil purifies it. As Maiworm explains, “heated permeable pavers are permeable pavers with heat things under them. So…during ice storms, the ice melts right away, and the water goes right down into the ground.” This is better for the environment since no plowing or salting is needed. As Assistant Public Works Director for Evanston, Maiworm can see the benefits of heated porous paving very plainly, but she worries about the job security of the plow drivers she employs.
Meanwhile, Maiworm’s daughter worries about Maiworm while also carrying on a kind of romance with Guadalupe X, a (perhaps imaginary) pop star. In the following excerpts from the larger play, Arbery deftly explores the interlocking logics of heated permeable paving and of love. The reading took place on April 8, 2016 at the Midwest Writing Center.
Sylvan Slough by Chuck Oestreich
Featuring Kate Kremer and Chuck Oestreich
Chuck Oestreich’s novel Sylvan Slough follows the influence of the Slough and the bike path that runs alongside it on the lives of five Quad Citizens: an ad executive and recreational bike rider, a successful young banker, an almost-retired freight dispatcher who made a tragic mistake early in life, a budding high school artist who is caught up in a youthful romance, and a homeless man grappling with lifelong guilt. Their seemingly disparate lives intersect as the past mixes with the present in the waters of Sylvan Slough and the pages of Oestreich’s novel.
Oestreich opens the book with an excerpt from Black Hawk’s autobiography in reference to Arsenal Island: “A good spirit had care of it, who lived in a cave in the rocks immediately under the place where the fort now stands. . .We were particular not to make much noise for fear of disturbing him. But the noise of the fort has since driven him away. . .” Oestreich observes, “the slough today is an apt metaphor for the changes that good spirit sensed. Our American quest took over a resplendent and uncompromised land. We turned a bucolic stream into an industrial backyard dumping ground and a mid-river island into an armored Defense installation. Each of the characters is haunted by this transformation of the sylvan place.”
Sylvan Slough is available for $10 plus shipping from Amazon, and for $5 as a download on Kindle. The following reading from the novel took place on April 8, 2016 at the Midwest Writing Center. A post-play discussion with Tim Chambers and novelist Chuck Oestreich about the Sylvan Slough, heated permeable pavers and other environmental issues and initiatives in the Quad Cities follows the reading.