#aimee levitt

By Aimee Levitt, Chicago Reader (March 26, 2014)

If it weren't the sort of cold, drizzly evening at the time of year when melting snow turns the entire world into a sea of mud that clings to dog paws and sometimes splashes up their legs and onto their bellies, and if he weren't a 110-pound cane corso, a breed that is capable of killing not only wild boar but also tame humans (at least according to urban legend), and if he weren't a prize show dog whose single drop of sperm is probably worth more than my entire monthly salary, Paradiso Błekitna Przystan—known to his loved ones as Ivo—and I would be off together having an adventure, maybe splashing in the surf at Montrose Beach or lazing on the deck of a fishing boat or frolicking in the snow in Cumberland Park. But instead, as darkness falls, here we are in the living room of his house in Franklin Park, which doubles as Fide Core Kennel. I am sitting on the couch drinking coffee, about which he is intensely curious. He is pacing the floor, showing off his toys and swallowing animal crackers, judiciously awarded when he sits like a good boy. The Avengers is on the TV, and Ivo's human parents, Marcin Proszek and Agata Buczak, Fide Core's owners, are trying to put into words what makes him so perfect.

The two humans have been friends a long time. They talk over each other, sometimes finishing each other's sentences. If they were dogs, Buczak would be a border collie and Proszek would be a cane corso. They talk about Ivo's proportions, his angulation, his character, his personality. They search for the right word, in English and then in Polish. Maybe it doesn't exist in either language.

"There's just something about him," Proszek says. "It's hard for us to explain."

It's not just his body, although it is splendid. He stands approximately 27 inches tall at the withers—Buczak and Proszek can't find a tape measure for a more precise number—and his chest and shoulders cannot be described without resorting to language right out of a romance novel ("broad," "muscular," "firm"). His fur is like black velvet, a little coarse, but still plush and shiny. His head is elegantly modeled; there are apparently statues that look just like him in medieval castles all over southern Italy, where cane corsos have been guard dogs since the 14th century.

And of course there are his eyes, large, brown, and limpid, with a slight bit of goo at the corners, the windows to his canine soul. At first he was suspicious of me, like a good guard dog should be, but when Buczak told him I'm OK, he gazed up at me like an enormous, innocent, trusting puppy. His eyes asked, "How can you not love a charming, magnificent creature such as myself?" (Then he plunged his nose into my crotch where, if I were a dog, I would have a gland that produces a distinctive smell so he could track me forever.)

He doesn't win dog shows just for these reasons, though. He wins because he conforms perfectly to the breed standards established by the American Kennel Club—which only began recognizing corsos in 2010—a bizarre document that says things like, "The circumference of the head measured at the cheekbones is more than twice the total length of the head," and because he moves gracefully in the ring to show off his perfect proportions and then holds still so the judges can lift his lips (only slightly pendulous, and never covered in slobber except when he's eating or drinking) to inspect his teeth and reach down for a quick squeeze to make sure he's fully equipped to father puppies. (The only thing that can destroy Ivo's magisterial calm is the nail clipper. It reduces him to a whimpering, cowering mess.)

By Aimee Levitt, Riverfront Times (July 11, 2013)

If death is the final, irrevocable cessation of life, the concept of life after death is a paradox and completely illogical. Once you stop believing in Santa Claus, it's only a short jump to stop believing in Heaven, too, at least the one where there are people in white robes and halos playing harps all day, and then to start scoffing at people who swear they were Catherine the Great or the Egyptian pharaoh Thutmose III in a past life. Why is it never acceptable to say you were once a cockroach?

Maybe your dog will die, or your grandpa, and you'll feel sad for a little while, maybe mess around with a Ouija board and light candles on Halloween and try to summon back their ghosts. At some point, ancient Greek philosophy may be thrust upon you, and, on long car rides late at night, you'll wonder about the notion of a soul and where all those souls go. But not (heaven forfend!) to Heaven. Maybe a soul is just confused with personality, a mess of protoplasm and electrical charges that, in the end, gets folded into a wooden box and dumped in the ground.

If you believe all that, you're a definite minority at the Afterlife Awareness Conference. There are 300 people in the main ballroom of the Sheraton Westport Plaza at the decidedly un-paradisical confluence of Interstate 270 and Page Avenue in Maryland Heights, most of whom paid several hundred dollars, not counting airfare and hotel, and gave up a perfectly fine weekend in June to be here. By the estimation of conference founder Terri Daniel, 30 percent are grieving, 20 percent are interested in finding scientific evidence of the afterlife and the abilities of mediums, and the remaining 50 percent are spiritual seekers. They are doctors and lawyers and hospice workers and filmmakers and storekeepers and cube farmers. The vast majority is of middle age or older, and a staggering number have parents or spouses or children who have died.

And yet...the keynote speaker, Raymond Moody, who has studied near-death experiences since 1965 and penned many a book on the subject with titles like Life After Life is the one who proposes to the crowd that the term "life after death" is an oxymoron. In fact, despite all his research, Moody claims, it was only recently that he began to believe that near-death experiences were real.

"I give up!" he tells the audience, throwing his hands up in exasperation. "When you try to come up with plausible accounts, you're trying to rationalize instead of facing straightforwardly what seems to be the case" — i.e., that the evidence points to some sort of afterlife.

And would that really be such a bad thing? The various lectures at the conference play on this notion, and play on it hard. Even if you've never had to live through a death that devastated the entire order of your daily existence, isn't there still a part of you that wants to sit down for a chat with your grandma or feel your cat's paws kneading your face? Don't you still miss them? Don't you wonder if there's something left of them besides a box in the ground or a pile of ashes?

Two weeks ago, Riverfront Times staff writer Aimee Levitt published a story about the 'discovery' of outsider artist Edward Deeds, a patient at Missouri State Hospital No. 3, a mental asylum in Nevada, Mo. Deeds made at least 283 detailed, extraordinary colored pencil drawings, works which are now finding their way into the outsider art market at $16,000 a pop. 

Don't miss Levitt's remarkable story -- you'll never think of outsider art again without thinking of the 'treatments' used at State Hospital No. 3 -- and the accompanying slide show. She also tells us about all of it on the second segment of this week's Modern Art Notes Podcast.

The lead guest on week's Modern Art Notes Podcast features Carrie Mae Weems. A new retrospective exhibition of Weems's work titled, "Carrie Mae Weems: Three Decades of Photography and Video," opened last week at Nashville's Frist Center for the Visual Arts.

Download the program to your PC/mobile device. Subscribe to The Modern Art Notes Podcast via iTunes or RSS. See more images of artworks discussed on the program.

This week's Modern Art Notes Podcast features Carrie Mae Weems. A new retrospective exhibition of Weems's work titled, "Carrie Mae Weems: Three Decades of Photography and Video," opened last week at Nashville's Frist Center for the Visual Arts.

This week the show is again collaborating with the must-follow Tumblr Cave to Canvas. To see lots more Weemses throughout the day, be sure to check out CtC!

On the second segment, I talk with Aimee Levitt, a staff writer at the Riverfront Times, an alt-weekly in St. Louis. A couple of weeks ago Levitt wrote this fantastic story about outsider artist Edward Deeds and how he and his work have been re-discovered. Click here for the RFT's terrific gallery of dozens of Deedses.

Download the program to your PC/mobile device. Subscribe to The Modern Art Notes Podcast via iTunes or RSS. See more images of artworks discussed on the program.

Like residents of every city, St. Louisans have their quirks that must be explained to outsiders: their fondness for Provel cheese, for one, or their use of the word “hoosier” to mean anybody with three teeth, a pickup and a mullet instead of a person from Indiana.

But the habit that seems to perplex newcomers the most is the eternal question, “So, where’d you go to high school?” Nobody’s entirely sure how the custom began, but it’s now a topic worthy of academic study: Sarah VanSlette, who once attended St. Joseph’s Academy but who is now a professor at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, has received a grant from the Institute for Urban Research to study the experiences of newcomers to St. Louis, including whether the high school question is giving the region a bad reputation.

A story that ran in the local daily last week about VanSlette and her research set loose a shitstorm of controversy. Defenders of The Question claimed that it’s just small talk and a way to identify common acquaintances, a useful tool in a town where everyone is separated by only one or two degrees.

Others, however, saw in the The Question more sinister intentions. It’s all stereotyping, they carped. It’s just another way for people to judge you (as if they’re not already checking out your shoes or the make of your car)! And worst of all, if you’re a transplant, it singles you out and makes you an ideal target for shunning.

Well, if that’s what you’re worried about, Riverfront Times is here to help! Just answer a few simple questions, and this handy-dandy flow chart will lead you to where you should’ve gone to high school if you didn’t, you know, go to high school somewhere else. We can’t promise you it’ll lead you to your own high school sweetheart or a group of friends that will be just as loyal as they would’ve been if you’d really known them since ninth grade, but hey — at least you’ll have a better idea of your people.

A disclaimer: This chart is, of course, based on gross stereotypes, but isn’t that part of what the high school question is about?

To see the flow chart and find out where you should’ve gone to high school, download the PDF here.