|
|
August 17, 2001/Av 28, 5761, Vol. 53, No.45
Chicago writer calls Valley home
JOSHUA ROSE
Special to Jewish News
Chicago Tribune columnist Cheryl Lavin Rapp poses with President Jimmy Carter in 1977.
Photo courtesy of Cheryl Lavin Rapp
|
If the hustle and bustle attitude in Chicago suddenly gets replaced by a laid back, 'no need to rush, tomorrow is just fine' viewpoint, the residents of the windy city can blame (or thank) Phoenix for its newfound Southwestern laissez-faire outlook.
Famed Chicago Tribune advice columnist Cheryl Lavin Rapp recently turned in her Midwestern wools for Southwestern cottons, and her change of scenery might equal a change in attitude in Chicago as well.
Previously the Diamondbacks were able to wrangle away former Chicago Cub Mark Grace, and now Phoenix has lured Lavin Rapp to the Valley.
Though Grace may have set the precedent for her Chicago exodus, Lavin Rapp's final decision to move to the Valley had more to do with another sports team: the Phoenix Coyotes.
"My husband is a huge sports fan and in February he traveled to Phoenix to see the Blackhawks play the Coyotes," says Lavin Rapp from her newly purchased home in North Scottsdale. "So he called me - asked what I was doing, which was bundling up and staying out of the snow - and he says it's 80 (degrees) here and I'm sitting outside. Maybe we should move there."
So, like many other Midwesterners disillusioned by the annual layer of frost, Lavin Rapp traveled with her husband to Scottsdale the following month, found a nice home in the desert with a great view of mountains and city lights and made the move permanent.
Lavin Rapp has been writing a column titled "Tales from the Front" three times a week for the past 15 years for the Chicago Tribune. The column, which predates current popular dating columns like those that inspired the hit HBO show "Sex and the City," is based on advice and vignettes from the single battlefields. Twice a week the column appears as individual stories based on letters or e-mails from Chicago and other cities where the column is syndicated. Once a week, Lavin Rapp becomes a "Dear Abby" of sorts and prints the letters and her responses to them in her column.
"My advice is usually along the lines of 'dump the jerk,' " says Lavin Rapp. "But maybe the move here will make me more tolerant of people. Everyone I've met in Arizona has been very nice, including the workmen, utility people, everyone who comes to the house. No one seems rushed or harried. So maybe we will just slow down and relax."
"Tales from the Front" began when Lavin Rapp noticed that whenever she and her girlfriends would get together, men were their favorite topic of conversation.
"I was single at the time and we all had good jobs, were interested in politics and those subjects, but the only thing we would talk about would be men," says Lavin Rapp. "No acid rain, no nuclear testing, nothing. Just men. And I thought, if we have this many stories, just imagine what's out there."
Thinking of the possibilities for the paper - Lavin was freelance writing at the time - she decided to invite her male and female friends over to her home one night, order pizza, drink wine and just listen to what people had to say.
"We talked about best dates, about worst dates, about what people look for in a mate and I got so much information. I wrote my first four or five columns from that meeting," says Lavin Rapp. "Since then, I rely on letters and e-mails, many from Chicago but now from across the United States."
A recent story involved a woman in her mid-40s who met a man from out-of-state at Wrigley Field during a Chicago Cubs game. The woman goes on to have a normal relationship with the man but has a hunch that he is hiding something. After putting his name through an Internet search engine, the woman is able to discover he is, indeed, married, and as Lavin Rapp writes, "If hunches come in bunches, expect a crash landing."
"The Internet is a huge issue in dating now," says Lavin Rapp. "I talk to people who meet partners on the Web, who have crushes on the Web; it's really a significant force in dating these days."
Before writing "Tales from the Front," Lavin Rapp concentrated on a column titled "Fast Track," which allowed her a chance to interview celebrities, politicians and sports figures, including a young Michael Jordan when he was on the verge of becoming the superstar he is today.
And, in 1983, after publishing a series of her columns in book form, Lavin Rapp says she was star-struck for the first time in her professional life.
"I was being interviewed at Doubleday about my book, and I was telling them how I have interviewed many celebrities and don't get excited about it anymore, and just at that exact moment I look out in the hall and Jackie Kennedy - who was an editor at Doubleday at the time - walked by," says Lavin Rapp. "I couldn't even speak really, but just got up and watched her as she passed by."
Lavin Rapp now says she finds the same sense of awe by sitting at home and enjoying the desert scenery.
"I love it here, absolutely, and hope that I never become blasˇ about it," says Lavin Rapp. "I love to just lay in bed, look and see the mountains, the lights down below and just gaze at the unbelievable sunsets. I'm really blown away by it all."
|
