Last night’s Midland Authors event, the annual awards dinner at the Chicago Athletic Assn. on Boul Mich, was a hit.  The dinner in the 8th-floor dining room overlooking Millennium Park was marvelous, but award presenters and award recipients sealed the deal.  It was an excellent demonstration for the most part of how smart, nice people can talk to each other. 

Highlights included the stunning appearance of Roger and Chaz Ebert, he joining her at the podium to receive an award, she doing the talking because he doesn’t do any these days (tracheostomy does it), and making quite a presence.  No surprise to many, I’m sure, but it was my first time seeing her.  She’s poised and genuine, and the two of them, one hand covering the other’s at the stand, just looked great as thoroughly believable loving couple.

The Fradins, another excellent couple, were awarded for their children’s book on Jane Addams.  They are Judy and Dennis.  Best line of evening was his noting that he rarely leaves his study, where he researches and writes, but did so for this event.  Their book, Jane Addams: Champion of Democracy (Clarion), has a painting by their daughter on its cover, one that the parents couldn’t afford to buy, Dennis noted.

As to his library and study concentration, I told him afterwards it was rather medieval of him, and he agreed.  A monk’s life, I said.  And in today’s limelight-seeking climate full of back-slapping, even of oneself sometimes, he was refreshing indeed.

It was fun meeting the adult fiction winner, Samrat Upadhyay, a young teacher at Indiana U.-Bloomington who hadn’t been informed even that his novel, Royal Ghosts (Mariner/Houghton Mifflin), had been submitted, much less that he’d won.  The committee tried to reach him but couldn’t until the day before the dinner. 

It was fun, I say, because he’s from Kathmandu, Nepal, where he was taught by Jesuits I know, including Rev. Charles Law, a physics teacher.  Samrat and I chatted about Charley, one of my best Jesuit friends, who died a few years ago in Nepal of natural causes.  “He loved Nepal,” Samrat told me with feeling.  He was very well liked by the students and loved them too.

Go here for the winners and runners-up.

Capping the evening was my chat on the return Green Line ride back to Oak Park with two long-time residents, who had got on the stop before me after hearing the Chicago Symphony perform.  We passed on our experiences.  Theirs was wonderful (Brahms) but also forgettable (some new German stuff interspersed with the Brahms) — somebody’s idea of bring along the Great Unwashed regular symphony-goers, apparently, giving them a dose of new good stuff.

There we were on a 20–minute ride.  They lived near the “L” stop, as do I.  Living in Oak Park, we hopped the train and returned same way, each heading for his cultural event of the evening.  Not bad.