Jamie Janosz

I am one of those people who likes, maybe even needs , to see everything clearly. I  like my future planned out neatly before me. When I was younger, I had my future planned out. I was going to be a writer. I was going to get married and have a child or two. Before I married, I wanted to have an apartment of my own in Chicago. I wanted to go to Europe, specifically Paris. I wanted to earn my graduate degree. And, I did most of those things. But, as I walk through middle age, things are not quite as clear as they once were. My eyesight, for one, is shot. Things began to appear significantly fuzzier in my early 40s. I remember eating out in a dimly-lit restaurant and not being able to read the menu. I fumbled for the tiny key-chain flashlight in my purse and muttered, “Why do they print things so tiny!?” When the flashlight didn’t appear, I held the candle inches from the print and squinted. My husband Milt remembers one night when, due to my failing eyesight,...

I had the privilege of meeting Johnny Cash many years ago. My dad had always been a big fan of the Man in Black. So, when I heard he was in Chicago, signing copies of his book Man in White at the downtown Kroch’s and Brentano’s, I stood in a long line to get his autograph. He seemed bigger and more weathered in person. Johnny was wearing his signature black and signing book after book. When my turn came, I mustered up my courage and asked if he could address it to my dad. “Could you write, ‘To Neil: Another great musician?’” Johnny looked up at me, and he grinned. The second time I saw Johnny was at a concert at Chicago’s Cubby Bear venue. The place was packed with an odd assortment of people: punks, little old ladies, hard-core motorcycle dudes, and assorted country people wearing cowboy hats. Standing room only. My dad pushed to the front of the stage to see the man he so admired. I stood a bit back with my mom where it was less claustrophobic. The crowd began t...

  I come from a long line of school teachers. My grandmother, Elsie Benson Storms, taught in a one-room country schoolhouse in Iowa. She continued teaching well into her late 30s, which delayed her marriage to my grandfather. In the early part of the 1900s teachers signed contracts that required them to abide by the following set of strict rules: You will not marry during the term of your contract. You are not to keep company with men. You must be home between the hours of 8 p.m. and 6 a.m. unless attending a school function. You may not loiter downtown in any ice cream stores. You may not travel beyond the city limits unless you have the permission of the chairman of the board. You may not smoke cigarettes. You may not under any circumstances dye your hair. You may not dress in bright colors. You may not ride in a carriage or automobile with any man unless he is your father or brother. You must wear at least two petticoats. Your dresses must not be any shorter...

I've been reading a great deal about women and clothing lately. First, I picked up the book Talking from 9 to 5: Women and Men at Work by Deborah Tannen. Years earlier, I had read Tannen's book You Just Don't Understand: Men, Women and Conversation and found the differences between the ways men and women communicate fascinating. In this later book, she shifts the discussion to gender differences in the workplace. She discusses the idea that women are always "marked" in the workplace by their clothing choices. In other words, there is no standard style to which women can conform - other than to adop the men's style. For some women, wearing a grey, navy, or black business suit allows them to fit in with the men at their office. They crop their hair or pull it back into a bun. They look: "professional." Other women wrestle each day with clothing choices. Is my skirt too short? Is my outfit too "sexy" or "dowdy" o...

Sigh... All that Heaven Allows is the kind of movie that makes you want to curl up on the sofa on a rainy day. Rock Hudson and Jane Wyman star in this 1955 love story in technicolor glory. She is a lonely widow surrounded by country club friends and their groping husbands. He is a hunky gardener, who is caring for the trees surrounding her suburban home. I heard about this movie in a book called Eternal on the Water by Joseph Monninger. In his lovely novel about love and loss, the main character has a favorite movie that shapes her life. You've got it: All that Heaven Allows . She talks about the movie so much, that I determined to find a copy and watch it for myself. I did not realize that this movie was the inspiration for one of my modern-day favorites Far From Heaven - which was filmed and directed to reflect the style of this genre with its rich, saturated colors and sweeping melodrama. Jane Wyman is a lovely, classy actress - and here she plays a misunderstood ...

    Lately, I've been living vicariously through one of my college students as she made a springtime trip to Paris. Ahhhhh....to be in Paris, again.   I love that city - I've been obsessed with it since high school French class. My friend, Cathy, and I were so Paris-crazed, that we talked her parents into inviting a foreign-exchange student to live with them. He was French, indeed, but did not live up to our teenage fantasies of the cute Parisian boy. He was averse to showers and a bit of a grouchy loner.   Just after I was married, I finally took a trip to Paris with my husband. We rode the Metro, visited the Notre Dame, and ate croissants in a cafe. Paris was everything I'd imagined and more. It was a bit gritty - a tad decadent - and so, so, so gloriously cool.   We loved the Rodin museum with its enormous front lawn and statue garden. We listened to jazz on a boat docked at the Seine. We ate anchovies on pizza in a dark alley-side cafe. W...

This week, I traveled to Madison, Wisconsin, to visit the Wisconsin Historical Archives collection on the McCormick family. Nettie McCormick, wife of the inventor of the reaper - Cyrus McCormick, is one of the eight women in my book. The building is being restored, but the interior is gorgeous. Filigreed windows, marble floors and a winding staircase. Fueled by Starbucks, I started up the grand steps. The Wisconsin Historical Society Archives were granted the McCormick collection in the 1950s. There is a massive amount of information, 12 million pages, kept in files about the family and their businesses.  Cyrus McCormick changed the landscape of farming worldwide with his invention of the reaper. The couple changed Chicago and the world by giving millions of dollars to religion and educational institutions. What struck me as I requested box after box, was how odd it would be to have your life documented in this way. There are files of interviews ...