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News Wed Feb 28 2007
Chicagoan? Or Chicagoish?
Can you be a Chicagoan if you spend your entire work week in the city but retire to the suburbs every night? What about those who leave the city and drive the 'burbs everday? Neil Steinberg ponders this in his Sun-Times column, citing authors Nelson Algren and Carl Sandburg as two Chicagoans whose ties to the city fall in that grey area -- Sandburg, after all, lived mostly in Elmhust while Algren left Chicago in 1974, never to return. Steinberg concludes that the city belongs to those who keep it in their hearts, but maybe we're just eager to claim those writers who have made the city memorable as part of ours.