Chicago Tribune from Chicago, Illinois • 17

Ctiicago Tribune. Tuesday, June 24, 1 980 Section 2 Ex-farmer gets big satisfaction out of his little books 5 Continued from first Tempo page Tower Ticker By Aaron Gold -'X v'' i vaiiiiiiii IlllilllPlilllll cf pipEw ssL fill! la uJ lift i v-: VM. ,1 11 1 I Larry Hagman 'Stars. WKQX Radio is running a contest offering $10,000 for the most outrageous stunt. One listener "would sit on a block of ice on the corner of State and Washington in my bathing suit telling passersby I'm advertising a new cooling system for the summer." Thomas Hardyesque scene, especially like the early Hardy novels, the sun shining, people in white coats leaning over, the fence rails poking at animals with sticks, a lot of serious farming country talk.

It seemed very strange that night It was all silence, no sounds of snoring in the piggery." Now the sounds are those of 25 workers (the workroom nee chickenhouse has become Max's room where, Parker said, he never goes for fear of rock music) shaping domestic Indian buffalo calf into the miniature covers, applying the imitation gilt (since the price of the real thing went into orbit) to the miniature page edges. These are new editions, not merely existing volumes scaled down. Parker read all the works of all the poets. For the Wordsworth collection, for in- stance, he plowed through the multivolumned De Selincourt edition reading for three chose the best material, and added portraits of the poet, reproductions of title pages from early versions, and biographical "You have to get to know the poet," Parker said. "With someone as prolific as Wordsworth, you get to' bate his guts." THE BIGGEST rewards from little books come from times such as the one when Parker was taking the Cambridge-London train and was sitting across from an elderly woman who pulled his edition of Wordsworth from her purse.

She noticed his gaze and explained, "I had always dreamed of being able to carry a volume like this with me, Wordsworth is my favorite poet." 4 The books are' 254 or 384' pages with type a little smaller than that you are reading now. The hardcover bindings are $7.50. Leather bindings are $9.95. The whole little library, the six volumes of poetry and 12 of the Shakespeare plays leather bound and encased in a miniature'mahogany desk with a tiny lectern upon which to display or read an open TnOun photo by Bon Blay 'Geoffrey Parker and portion of lilliputian library which includes 12-volume set of Shakespeare's plays. volume is $342.

They are available in Chicago into the part of The Tribune newsroom where the through the Rizzoli bookstore and the museum shop 'writers sit in 6-by-6-foot cubicles, of the Art Institute. looked down a long row of cubicles. "Terrific 'After chatting about his books, Parker walked out to raise pigs," he said. IX YOU "DALLAS' fans can CM rest easy. You will learn who ifli 8hot becaus "7 Hagmaa has decided to return to the popular TV As a matter of fact, he reported for work Monday after tough contractual negotiations skyrocketed his weekly earnings to close to six figures.

If the producers" hadn't given in to Hagman's financial demands, J.R. would have been shot in the face, requiring extensive plastic surgery, and that's how they would have introduced a new actor. (Costars Linda Gray and Patrick Duffy also received hefty raises for the series' second season.) MAYOR BYRNE WAS chased down Drake Hotel corridor Monday morn-' ing by radio, TV, and newspaper report- ers, but she escaped into an elevator before they could ask her "the big question" how can she justify barring The tribune from City Hall? Byrne was at the Drake to cohost a press conference with Larry and Mark Levy to announce their new 5a-story Michi- 1 Avenue high-rise, One Magnificent Mile (and it She split Immediate- ly after making her statement. BECAUSE CHICAGO'S ordinances stricter than Lake Geneva's, the 2 male dancers from' the Sugar Shack won't be allowed to strip to their birth-Z 'day suits at the almost sold out June 30 Wisdom Bridge Theater fundraiser 1 1 at Zorine's. (So how can "Oh! Calcut- ta!" with its nudity play the Carnegie, you ask? It's a play and considered Theatuh, not titilation.) FEMINIST SINGER-Mngwriter Mar- gie Adams is going ahead with Fri- 'day's "On the Road" lor Women's Rights" Civic Theater concert even though ERA was defeated here last week.

Water Tower's Vie De. France Bakery is remaining open dur-Z'( Ing the next few weeks of remodeling to increase seating capacity from 24 to 21 80. The late Pablo Picasso's daughter, Paloma, is designing a line i of jewelry for Tiffany Co. that will 5 be unveiled here in the fall. Jazz guitarists Barney Kessel and Herb El-' lis open Tuesday at Rick's Cafe Amer-, ii icain.

THE U.N. LOUNGE has been nick-. named the beer hall of the world be-' cause 29 beers from different countries required in stock to keep all the diplomats happy. Polly Bergen will protect her manicure with surgical gloves when she puts her handprints in cement at 1 p.m. Tuesday for Marilyn Lewis' Hamburger Hamlet Sidewalk of Poplar Creek Theater is off to a good musical start ALL SHOULD be peaceful In the Fred Astaire household after he marries jockey Robyn Smith because they both love (in addition to each other) the same TV soap opera.

Whenever 81-year-old Astaire has to miss CBS' "As the World Turns," his housekeeper watches it for him and reports on what happened. Now 35-year-old Robyn, a "World" junkie herself, will provide follow-up reports. Even Ruth Page took the "Dance Express shuttle bus over the weekend to attend Cinema Chicago's Dance Film Festival (through Thursday) at the Davis Thea- ter. The bus starts at Water Tower Place and makes several stops en route to the theater at 4614 N. Lincoln Av.

THE CUBS' Bruce Sutter and Channel 7's Joel Daly will host Sunday's Verlon (Rube) Walker Leukemia Center's turnabout at the Chicago Marriott Hotel. Among the many auction items are autographed baseballs from each living member of the Baseball Hall of Fame, the opportunity to be the Cubs' batperson for a day, and an afternoon as Dave Kingman's guest on his boat. TICKER BITS: Ben Ezra, former maitre d' at Sage's East, is reopening the old Chef Alberto's restaurant at 3200 N. Lake Shore Dr. as Ben's Aug.

1. Karen Mason and Brian Lasser return home Tuesday for a one-week stand at George's. Tony Christopher begins a jazz show Monday on WXFM Radio. Congratulations to former Chicago actor Bobby Di Cicco and his wife-manager Margo (Malkin) on their first-born, Jessica Sonya. Birthday greetings to Jeff Beck, Pete Hamill, Rudy Orisek, Phil Harris.

Marge Hartigan, and TV producer Scott Craig And one City Hall worker, who prefers to remain anonymous, calls Jane Byrne "the Jack Call Me Tatum of Chicago politics!" cians who could meet their guest conductor's de- mands for a feverish kind of expressive intensity in the Mahler symphony without coarsening or cheapening the effect. Tennstedt directed as if plugged directly into the current of Mahler's neurotic Weltschmertz, as well as his most life-affirming impulses. He exposed the very nerve ends of this sprawling music, and found they led directly to the heart. His Fifth was frighten-' ing in its paroxysms of grief and despair, ineffably tender in its moments of quiet song, and rousingly 'brilliant in its final proclamation of triumph. It was strong, supple, searching, and satisfying: adjectives that could also describe the performance of Beethoven's "Coriolan" Overture, which began the program.

Badly botched was the presentation of the program book. It seems a goodly portion of the audience did not receive the insert that listed the name of the conductor and the pieces to be played, but even those who did receive it found no movement titles and not a word of information about the music or the composers. Under the circumstances, I could not really blame the crowd for clapping between By John Von Rhein Music critic POPLARTrEEK MUSIC TheaterTTheTJeder lander Organization's new $15-million am-' phitheater in Hoffman Estates, played host to its first serious musical event Monday night, a concert by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of guest conductor Klaus Tennstedt. While it's always risky to predict what will succeed or fail in the music business, the results suggested that once a few bugs were worked out in the promotion and packaging areas, the 212-acre park could begin to find an audience and a profit for itself within the crowded summer-music market of Greater Chicago. Certainly the booking of a major orchestra (and the Boston Symphony with Isaac Stern will follow here on July 27) is a smart way for a new festival to build a respectable image.

That way the customers are given a real choice. Ravinia, after all, is committed to employ the Chicago Symphony, and the Grant Park Symphony is in exclusive residence at the Petrillo music shelL Besides, the area has heard far too few top-caliber visiting orchestras in recent years. As it turned out, Monday's audience numbered just under 5,000. THE FIRST THING the outdoor music buff listens for at such an event are the acoustics, and in this respect Poplar Creek can be given a qualified seal of approval. I say "qualified" because I was not able, to sample the sound from anywhere but at the very front and to the left side of the theater.

Still, the hall seemed to be as kind to the shuddering fortissimos of Mahler's Fifth Symphony as it was to the more delicate nuances. Up close, the loudest, most thickly scored passages could turn harsh, but a good deal of that, I suspect, related more to the flat-out attack of the Philharmonic brasses and to Tenn-stedt's larger-than-life interpretation score than to the sonic properties. THAT MUCH SAID, it was good to welcome back the New Yorkers, who haven't performed in Chicago since 1969, and also Tennstedt, whose last CSO guest engagement was four years ago. The orchestra does not possess quite the satiny perfection of ensemble ours does, particularly in the strings, and its brass and wind chording is not always as well-tuned. It remains, however, a first-class body of musi High Productivity VosAGfeot Americon Tradition, NowThe Japanese SeemToHave Perfected It.

tit V. II I A IB A i- 000 i vW ym1 si. Hf 5f.V?r 3 jbT.W e' few 1 Cm After World War II Jopon loy i ruins. Now its productivity growing or on annual rare more than 10 percent. Ours 1 hovers near zero.

rVriFTSH Tonight, NDC News Correspondent Jyf h5 Uoyd Dobyns reports how and Jv I vvtiy me Japanese nave succeeoeo An NDC News White Paoer IT -r 1 Sponsored by The Weyerhaeuser Company iponsoreo oy me Weyerhaeuser jv it rfk NDC News. Journalism That Makes A Difference..