Welcome to 2022. We are entering our third year of adjustments and still mourning deaths due to COVID. We gained a new U.S. President and our first Black female Vice President. Most of us have seen plenty of the four walls of our homes, due to COVID lockdowns, and have gone through boxes of masks and included them in every trip to the laundry. To say we’re all hoping it’ll be long gone by this time next year is an understatement.
This January issue gives us an opportunity to bring our readers into the New Year toward a fit, healthy and beautiful way of living. It’s a guide to the good life, Chicago.
Our beautiful cover is the perfect introduction to the beauty that remains and is still accessible online with local dance organizations. The good thing about sheltering in during this Omicron phase of the pandemic is that without an audience we can dance along, stretch and keep moving. It’s essential to our mobility and truly essential for our mental health.
In this issue, nutritionist TS Douglas writes about how to become a brand new you in 2022, with tips about how to make good nutrition easy and delicious. Her Fresh Raw Natural product line and healthy “shots” manufactured in the Quarry kitchen here on the southside, are game-changers.
Staying healthy through nutrition is the way to go – staying healthy through activities and exercise is the other way to go. In this issue, you’ll read about dancing, skiing, and the Black cultural experiences and organizations doing both on a very high level and representing the southside in a way you may not have imagined.
You’ll absolutely appreciate that writer, jazz, and fishing enthusiast, Fred Dunham renews our publishing legacy with an absolutely enjoyable article highlighting the things rarely talked about to bond, calm, and fulfill. Like any good fisherman, Freddie has a way of telling a tale that will captivate you. In this article, he doesn’t disappoint. Come with Freddie as he takes you throughout the USA and beyond on his many fishing expeditions, with his rod and reel and many fishing buddies.
Then Donna Beasley talks about our favorite winter sport, skiing from the perspective and adventures of Black folk in Chicago. Did you know there are two famous Black ski clubs? No matter if you know this history or not you’ll appreciate how Donna, the skier who urged me and taught me to ski, tells the story of the two clubs: The Sno-Gophers Ski Club and The Gang.
When we talk about indoor sports, we have to talk about dancing – it’s a sport, it’s truly an art, and Black folk have been expressing themselves through dance since the beginning of time. Kay Humphries talks about Chicago’s love for and romance with the art of dancing, having grown up as the daughter of renowned Chicago dance instructor, Doris Humphries. While dances like Chicago Stepping are fun, dance troupes and companies like Deeply Rooted and Muntu take the art of dancing to a whole new cultural level, even footwork is a subject we’ll continue to write more extensively about in the future. Enjoying their performances, in person or online, is the gift they provide and to share their work with you is an absolute honor.
Join me in thanking our South Side Drive magazine, for working to guide you to the good life in Chicago. This issue thrills me and I trust you will have a moment while reading when you just sit back and think, “Wow!” Let’s take a moment to thank Pam Rice and Emma Young. It was a conversation with Pam that drove the direction for this issue and Pam’s incredible talent in providing a level of visual excellence in presenting it to you. Emma is our Associate Publisher and our rock. Her team of writers is as serious as I am about delighting you and inviting you to be clear. There is a good life in Chicago to be pursued.
