Dante’s Lion connection dies.

I got an email from Dan Kelly this morning informing me that the owner of Animal Kingdom died. Animal Kingdom is where Keehan and Dwyer most likely bought the lion cub. Everyone remembers the lion fondly and notroriusly for pissing all over the Rush Street Dojo above Mr. Kelly’s Jazz club on Rush Street back in the days it was all mobbed up. Is it still????? Nooooooooooo!

Sources are passing away, I need to move fast. I was just toning up my approach to Iva Toguri D’Aquino, aka Tokyo Rose when she passed away. She was the Karate gi supplier for Keehan when she started out. Ms. Toguri is a story of her own I hope gets told one day. Master Mike Felkoff used to rent the space about her shop on Belmont Ave for his Karate School. Writer Bob Calhoun has pinted to me that the Japanese martial arts presence was so strong in Chicago because it was one of the few cities to have a resettlement program for Japanese-Americans who had been interred during WWII. Interesting. I will follow up on this trail of thought.

I met with Dan, author of the Reader article to go over some things he had that I did not and will come in handy in the course of graphics and images for the film. I will show some of that maybe online after I go over it.

More tomorrow, or not. 🙂

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