Neighborhood Watch

Getting Over

2012-01-31T12:18:00.001-08:00

I was bypassed for a MacArthur Genius grant again this year, but I’ve been placed in the pool of candidates for their little-known Anti-Genius grant, set aside for those lacking in perspective, acting impetuously, or failing to anticipate the consequences of even their best intentions.

See this little guy? He may remind you of someone you know . . . or knew. Gomez had a rough road to his 4th birthday: Found as a stray , starving, with that big sweet white head on top of a rib cage covered with skin. Covered in flecks of black tar. Being fed from time to time by a guy tossing him pans of unfinished burritos, but the rest of the time fending for himself.

At first I was taken with his story, and then of course with his appearance, so similar to Inez. I wanted to help. Ultimately I wanted to make him part of the family, so we took him in as a foster with the intention to adopt and began the process of falling in love with him.

In the three weeks we had him he went from a guy with his tail firmly between his legs to a guy who would wag furiously at the mere sight of us. From a guy who wouldn’t roll on his back to a guy who allowed us at least selective belly rubs. And from a guy who growled at the neighbors to one who at least tolerated the activity in the alley – the car repairs, the idling motorcycles – while he went about his inspections of the yard.

In those three weeks he also bit another dog, jumped the fence, bumped a burner and filled the house with gas, and ultimately sank his teeth into the sleeve of a teenage girl whose only sin was walking past us. And he did these things because he was a fragile and complicated beast, testing his boundaries, protecting the only territory he knew.

And as much as I understood all of that, pulling him off that teenage girl while he had his teeth clamped down on her sleeve, simply proved too much for me. What if he’d gotten her wrist (just millimeters from where he’d bitten down)? What if he’d drawn blood, or worse? What if it happened again? What if I failed the girl? What if I failed Gomez?

I tried to convince myself he was sending me warnings, like the haunted house an old boyfriend’s mother once told me about, where the family was eventually chased away by ghosts, only to have the house burn down a few weeks later. Had they stayed, they all would have perished.

But I guess I’m being romantic. In ways Gomez was sending me a warning – that it was too soon after losing Inez to take this on . . . that I wasn’t prepared to deal with surprises, especially those that brought risk along with them. Damn that Gomez, though, because he forgot to warn me about getting too attached.

So now we watch, in a world of Facebook, as he gets adjusted to his next home – thankfully a home he knew before, with a foster who loves him and feels more prepared now than before to consider adopting him. He’ll be undergoing a rigorous training program with an amazing woman, determined to make him a good canine citizen. And we watch this from the sidelines, so happy for him, but with the pain of that window between us – letting us see, but keeping us at a distance. It’s a distance I chose, but I wish I hadn’t had to.

That's me in the window . . .

2012-01-21T09:48:00.000-08:00

. . . eating dinner with John at our favorite restaurant during last night's snowstorm.

It's hard to believe sometimes that we've been in this neighborhood over 10 years, and that this particular eatery was largely the thing that got us here, after a memorable meal in 2001 that made us think, "This feels like home. Let's buy a house here."

In our subsequent decade of dinners, we've:

- Watched the restaurant expand to three times its original size
- Bought the painting that hung above us that very first meal
- Got initiated into local sourcing
- Witnessed two proposals
- Befriended our favorite server (whose wedding I would come to officiate)
- Eaten dinner there with the likes of Richard Russo, Eleanor Lipman, and Charles Baxter
- Enjoyed several complimentary gifts from the kitchen
- Learned to love cava
- Delighted in pairings like chocolate and sage
- Launched a friendship with one of John's rock & roll heroes and his stellar wife
- Spent far too much money (worth every dime)
- Grieved the loss of a talented barkeep
- Discovered the joys of counter seating
- Shared bites with strangers
- Talked politics, or music, or the events of the day, or not at all because we were taking things in

This place has a Proustian lock on my heart. And though you can't have dinner for two under $50 like you used to, and you no longer walk through the kitchen to get to the bathroom, this will still always be a come-as-you-are, neighborhood mainstay for us.

Given the humanely raised veal with black-eyed peas and cinnamon I had as course #3 last night, it looks they'll never lose their ability to knock my socks off with a hat trick.

Adios 2011

2011-12-27T09:42:00.001-08:00

I probably should have realized, when the year started with two months of debilitating back pain, that 2011 would be a rough one. Was this the body's way of preparing the mind for what was to come? Hospital visits. Crushing professional disappointments. The loss of our sweet, sweet Inez.

Relativity aside -- no, I'm not one of the Chilean miners or Japanese earthquake survivors. I'm not even one of the affordable-housing tenants in whose interest I spend my working hours -- this was the toughest year of my life. So I look ahead to 2012 with buoyancy and relief. Ready to say good-bye to a rotten year, light an unforgiving calendar on fire. Ready to breathe in the crisp January air, knowing it has put December, and the eleven months before it, to bed.

So . . . how to set the ship right for the coming year? How to lay the groundwork for happier times? Of course there are things I'll never control. There may be hurdles, disappointments, aches and pains I can't get out of the way of.

But there is also this: If there is nothing else I do well in the world (and recent history may bear this out; I'm starting to wonder if I'll ever be a competitive job candidate again, if maybe, after 20+ years of ennui and vain searching, I may have hit the apex of my career), it's to make something out of nearly nothing.

- Homemade soup
- Bread pudding
- A wardrobe from thrifted odds and ends
- Memorable weddings for friends and strangers
- A comfortable home of garage-sale finds
- Random detritus out of fabric scraps
- A puppy fit for adoption after a rough start in the world

Ok, it's a working list, so give me a break :-).

But this may be my year to stop being aspirational and learn to make the most of what I have. To start looking sideways instead of up. To see what windows might open in spaces of turbulence or vague dissatisfaction.

How might I focus on the rewards of my job, for example (flexible schedule, fair salary, voluminous time off) and not its many punishments? How to translate those perks into lucky charms to hang on the coming year? Where is my white space, and how best to fill it?

I've got some ideas percolating, and they require the cooperation of many floating bits of matter. Some is controllable, some not. So I need a good dose of karmic good luck (which means I need to start believing in karmic good luck -- not likely). But I could use a little boost, that's for sure. Not a winning lottery ticket, mind you. These aren't stretch goals. I'm specifically avoiding stretch goals this year. But I need a few pieces to fit together, so if 2012 were a simpler puzzle than its predecessor, I'd gladly be the first to open the box.

Don't touch the burner

2011-12-17T12:04:00.001-08:00

This is Milo the foster puppy. He was hours from euthanasia when a rescue group intervened, assessed his temperment, and decided he was worth saving. He'd arrived with a severely broken leg -- the likely result of being used as a bait dog -- and prognosis of imminent amputation. He just needed to clear up a nasty case of ringworm first.

We gave him a temporary home at my urging. They needed a pet-free home, and the sad circumstances of late September enabled us to oblige.

It's been a challenging few weeks. On top of realizing (in neon) that puppies are much tougher than older dogs, Milo has some issues that I'm struggling to get my head around. Sure, he does some puppy things that puppies will always do -- chews pillows, begs for food, whimpers in his crate -- but he's also got a nasty propensity toward biting that seems to go beyond playful antics. What's he thinking up there in his tiny, adorable puppy head? That he needs to defend himself, and if so, against what?

Is he angry? Befuddled? Borderline aggressive?

Am I food? A nemesis? A threat? A chew toy?

Our foster commitment comes to a close before Christmas, and I'm hopeful he'll find a home that can give him both boundaries and limitless love, and perhaps the answers to those questions. I know in my heart I'm not part of that equation, and I feel like a daily failure for it. Especially since so many friends predicted we'd keep him, as if it was inevitable we'd fall in love. How could you not? Look how adorable he is. But we haven't. I haven't.

There have been some good lessons in all of this, and it seems worth listing them here, as someday this period in our lives may be just a fuzzy blip in a long line of animals we ideally come to know, perhaps even make homes for.

1) The best intentions don't always produce the best results

2) It may have been too early for us to take this on

3) I don't have a handy arsenal of tools for conquering things I don't understand

4) Puppies can hurt your skin

5) Puppies can hurt your feelings

6) A lousy potential adopter can be a bang-up foster, and sometimes you need to flip this switch

7) I miss Inez

8) I really, really miss Inez

So there you have it. Another one of my bright ideas that will go unfinished -- one that's left me with a healthy dose of ambivalence and perhaps a dash of self-loathing. I hope we've at least given Milo some structure and stability, and though he won't remember us, I hope we've made it easier for those who might adopt him permanently. May they be patient, loving people. May they welcome a challenge on four clumsy legs. May they hold dear things like fragility, complexity, and unpredictability. May they have thick skin in body and mind. May they count themselves lucky for knowing him. May they make him better, and may they get the same in return.

Experts

2011-12-05T05:49:00.000-08:00

This piano may look austere now, but not yesterday afternoon, when John and I were treated to an impromptu performance by Mabel, a concert pianist and also our good neighbor. She'd asked us to come watch a practice session for an upcoming concert -- said it made her less nervous for the real deal.

Mabel's work tends toward contemporary avante-garde, and at times she throws her entire body into the piece, stretching her hands to the farthest reaches of the keyboard, plunking out multiple notes at once, arms spread like a bird alighting.

Watching Mabel work is not only awe-inspiring (even for a musical rube like myself). It also makes you realize there are those people who have their thing: Musical gifts, athletic ability, multilingualism, a knack for sewing, a knowledge of birds, or wine, or baking. And there are those, like myself, who very much want a thing but struggle to find it (sigh). I've tried knitting and photography and learning Spanish and writing fiction and even keeping a sourdough starter, but none of it stuck. I'm even a lousy Luddite.

Sure, I make soup. I perform weddings. Occasionally I keep track of local social policy, but I'll shift from education to employment to immigration on a whim. I guess I'm a consummate dabbler. So it's luminous to watch someone like Mabel strut her stuff. She's been at it 20 years or more, and her piano continues to challenge and excite her, as it does those lucky enough to disappear into those complex notes as they fill up the room around you, like reminders.

The Dozen Things I Carried

2011-11-12T09:32:00.000-08:00

These are not farm-fresh eggs.

They're citified backyard eggs, from our neighbors Tim and Conor, who have been raising chickens a block north of us for the last three years. (Not to be confused with the chickens being raised by our new neighbor a block east, recently celebrated in this blog, who modeled the rehab of his house after the aesthetics of his hand-constructed coop).

That parenthetical did not deceive you. We now have two sets of backyard chickens within a block of our house. The country usurps the city. The smog will not win.

I've learned that eggs straight from the chicken have a protetive coating, a "cuticle," that allows them to sit on the counter, unrefrigerated, for up to a month. But I'd like to reassure my mother and anyone else who eats eggs at our house, we're keeping them in the 40-degree safety of the Frigidaire middle shelf.

Scrambled or sunny-side up?

Mummy

2011-11-06T04:30:00.000-08:00

My neighbor Allison gave the block a present last week. She and her young daughters planted these flowers in our scrappy little corner garden.

Now when you approach the corner, you're met with vibrant color and a last brief glimpse of . . . well . . . life before winter settles in.

Sometimes you need to make deliberate choices when you live in a challenged neighborhood. Will you measure your days by broken bottles in the parkways? By boarded-up properties? By graffiti on buildings and the time it takes to have it removed? Or will you define it by the efforts to make things not just less ugly, but even, at times, acutely more beautiful.

At least for today, my community is yellow and purple mums and the giving hands that put them there.

To market, to market

2011-10-29T06:13:00.001-07:00

This the grocery store of my heart -- no doubt you've heard me sing its praises before. I have a nearly unnatural love for it, a kind of love that might be illegal in the South.

Sure, they run out of stock from time to time (no couscous today? fine, I'll use grits). And their freezer case has been known to leak. They break out rolls of cheap paper towel rolls and line them up along the bottom to keep the floors dry.

But they're a little-engine-that-could kind of supermarket. An earnest underdog. A beloved cousin with a club foot.

I was recently there for a midweek, early-morning stock-up, and the manager remarked that I wasn't buying so much today. I told him as long as it was still warm, I was getting most of my produce at the farmer's market. "I'll pretend I didn't hear that," he said, smiling."

It's an amazing thing to be in a supermarket where the manager is both the guy who both greets you at the door and the one who worries whether volume is moving. It's not some suit in a corporate office fretting over the bottom line, but an actual guy, who greets you at the door and pitches in to bag your groceries during a rush.

And of course there's my favorite Produce stocker, who always offers a warm smile and a hearty hello -- asks me how I've been, wants to know in broken English if I need any help. It doesn't matter if I'm having the worst day of my life (too frequent these days) or walk in a bedraggled stinking mess after a jog. He makes me feel like my visit to the store matters to him.

Yesterday, when I noticed they were out of the milk I usually buy, I asked him if he expected a delivery later today. Yes, he told me, maybe later in the afternoon. "Ok, I'll come back," I said.

"You better," he said. "It's always a treat to see you."

You too, produce guy. You have no idea.

If this is progress, take me to the wayback machine

2011-10-20T10:46:00.000-07:00

Despite a heroic community fight, this unassuming set of storefronts is slated to become an EZ Pawn in early 2012. I didn't agree with all the protesters. Some were in the mix because they don't like what a nearby pawn shop says about their neighborhood. Classic nimbyism. Classic shmucks.

But I did agree with the jewelry shop owner a couple doors down, worried that his business (already displaced once due to land grabs to the east) is now vulnerable. And I agreed that one key piece of the EZ Pawn model -- payday loans -- is a scourge in an area where unemployment and foreclosure are running amok.

But mostly I'm worried about what's happening to my local retail corridor. The longstanding funeral home has already closed. My favorite portrait studio is in the process. We've lost taquerias and Chinese restaurants, independent dollar stores and barber shops. I fear our beloved hardware store is next.

No, this area isn't ripe for the Gaps and Trader Joes of this world, but the T-Mobiles and the Wal-Marts may well be on their way. Before my favorite storefronts are papered over and sanitized, I thought it was worth displaying the good old days of anything goes.

Yeah!

2011-10-09T05:08:00.000-07:00

This is the Arts of Life band. It may be a little tough to tell from the photo, but half the members are developmentally disabled. When we went to see them play an outdoor show in the neighborhood some weeks back -- a period it's still tough for me to write about, because it was our earlier and better normal, when Inez was still there to greet us when we came home -- I admit to thinking, "Oh, this will be really sweet," or "Wow, that band leader is doing the work of kings."

On the first count, I was wrong. It was completely badass.

On the second count, also wrong. The guy who assembled this band, who also runs a small gallery one neighborhood over (the same neighborhood where I work, where this guy has taken no small amount of flack for being one of the bellwethers of gentrification) doesn't beam with pride over his singers and drummer. He doesn't slowly say, "1 . . . . . . . . 2 . . . . . . . . . 3 . . . . ." to make sure they're ready to start. He doesn't demand louder applause for his differently achieving musicians. These are simply his bandmates, and he responds to them as he would any bandmates. By playing the songs.

Those songs may be about a shark attack, a bear eating garbage, or a rap homage to one of the singer's home towns of Brookfield, Illinois. Here's a taste if you can handle the rock.

Inez was here

2011-10-02T05:01:00.001-07:00

On Friday we lost our best thing: Our beautiful sweet soul Inez, who showed up on our porch seven years ago and essentially made us a family.

The loss was sudden and unspeakably painful. We had her, and then we didn't. Her absence leaves a terrible emptiness in this house that we're not yet ready to fill with our memories. We know those memories will come. They come already, but they bring with them such piercing heartache that we push them away. Later. Later.

For now we stumble through the hours, challenged to tackle each of those first things: The first morning waking up with her gone, the first step into the kitchen where she took her breakfast, the first entry into the living room where she sneaked onto the sofa strictly forbidden to her. The first time sitting on the family-room couch -- her couch -- and the first time realizing it still smells of her body. The first time clearing away her food bowls and toys. The first sighting of a collection of her hair on the floor, or on a shirt from the last time she slept on our laps. The first time we let ourselves look at her photos. Say her name.

It's a little like stepping into a very cold ocean. You go in to your ankles -- so cold -- so you step back out again. Then you resolutely go back, stand in the icy undulating water for a few moments so your skin can get used to the temperature. When you're ready, you go to the knees, stand, and adapt. Then to the waist -- this may be the hardest stage, when you can start to feel that tingling on your back, and you resist, stretching taller and holding your elbows out, tempted to think this is all I can bear. But you wait, settling in as your skin gets adjusted. Ready to go a little further. Up to the middle back, the shoulders, the neck. And finally, boldly, you duck your head under the water until you're brave enough to open your eyes, then swim.

Right now we're in to our baby toes. Maybe today or tomorrow, we'll wade.

We miss you, little girl. Thank you for finding us.

Versed

2011-09-24T07:00:00.000-07:00

We popped into the new poetry space around the corner last week. The performances happen in the front room, essentially a dressed-down apartment living room, with exposed brick along an entire wall and some interesting original art displayed. In the back room (the kitchen), you could grab a Schlitz in a bottle for a $2 donation. Not a bad little operation, and the place was packed.

Packed mainly with 20-somethings smoking cigarettes, squeezing themselves thigh to thigh on small couches, flirting a little, drinking their beer down to just a small pool at the bottom of the bottle, then using that same bottle as an ashtray. They listened to not incompetent poetry delivered by not overly earnest poets. As scenes go, it was a reasonable one.

The evening filled me with some guarded nostalgia over a period of life when an average Wednesday night for me might feel much the same.

That said, despite my dents and dings and wear and tear, I'm very happy not to be a 20-something chainsmoker anymore, reciting poetry in non-ventilated rooms, hoping I might get a kiss by the end of the night.

O Wall, O sweet, O lovely Wall . . .

2011-09-12T05:56:00.001-07:00

What you may see here is a plain brick wall. Actually, given the light, you -- like me -- probably see much more, but I'll get to that in a minute.

This wall tells a story, but one without a real denouement. A blank brick canvas is a bit of a midsummer night's dream to gangs working to (re)establish their territory. In the days prior to this photo being taken, one of the largest tags I've ever seen broadcast itself prominently across the building. I actually went out that morning to photograph the tag, but I was relieved to see that our city Graffiti Blasters had beaten me to the punch.

Chicago is strapped for cash these days, and graffiti-removal efforts, like streetcleaning teams, have seen deep cuts. This results in tags lasting longer than they once did, which means the gangs in question get to claim that corner for longer than they used to. Even a few extra days can mean a lot, and trust me, as a neighbor, you feel it.

But the missing tag reminded me that down isn't out, and the city still responds to 311 requests, even if it takes a little longer. It's important, in these trying days, to remember that every problem has a solution, even if that solution requires some extra work on residents' parts.

And yet the ghost of the paint still lingers. You can see it in the proper light, and you know it's never really over. That phantom reminds us that it's a matter of a drug sale on the wrong corner, a girlfriend looked at the wrong way, an Explorer cruising with intent down the wrong block -- and on a larger scale, the job market failing to improve, public education remaining anemic, and cycles of poverty repeating themselves -- and the tag will be back, the tension right along with it.

It's hard to imagine those masons, laying every brick, applying every single layer of mortar, with any sense whatsoever that this would be the legacy of their work.

Rewriting the Story

2011-09-07T05:43:00.000-07:00

I sent a confrontational note to my alderman yesterday. This honestly isn't my style, but sometimes you have to say enough is enough. And between the gunfire the other night, a rash of new gang tags, the illegal tires continuing to pile up outside the auto-body shop down the block, and the pawn shop/payday loan operation being secreted through Zoning to open around the corner, I guess I've reached a tipping point.

My familiars seem better about letting this stuff roll off their backs than I am. I used to be better about it too. It's clear I need to detox. Not the blissful but temporary decompression that came with my trip to Maine last week, but something more longstanding. A giant intake of air that lasts a month or more would be nice.

But life doesn't show any sign of letting up, so I'm taking a DIY approach. Seeking out the small painkillers that present themselves from time to time in the neighborhood.

To that end, I'd like to send a thank-you note to this guy, who's rehabbing a house on one of the busiest, most treeless, perhaps least invested blocks in the neighborhood. More interesting to me than the actual house on the property, though, is this smaller blue dwelling, which already houses his flock of chickens.

To you, sir, I say Welcome to the neighborhood . . . homesteader, urban farmer, pedaler, inspired stranger, calmer of jittery hearts.

Sermon on the Sidewalk

2011-09-02T05:37:00.000-07:00

If I told you I was excited to see one of our nearby empty storefronts finally returned to productive use, I'd be lying. Not because I want to see these spaces stay vacant, but because when something opens near us, it tends to be one of three things: An Herbalife outpost, a tire shop, or -- like the building in question -- an evangelical storefront church.

These outfits tend to come and go in our neighborhood. For a while small pockets of people will drive up at odd hours -- maybe 10:30 on a Friday night, or 11am on a Tuesday -- and echoes of shouting and staticky music will be heard as far as the next block. Then, just as quick as they set up, they're gone, leaving a hollowed-out building and crooked sign in their wake.

I've never quite understood how these operations work. How do they establish their flocks? Why so peripatetic, and where do they go when they leave? What kinds of tax breaks do they get? Perhaps most importantly, do they follow much of the faith community in having a social mission? If so, what do they contribute to the neighborhood?

They never stick around long enough to guess.

Just a couple doors down from this church used to be a fantastic upholstery shop, and a number of yard-sale finds in our house carry their hallmark. I've always mourned the closure of the shop, which left another empty bay on the strip. So you can guess that when I walked by the other day, and saw yet another sign for yet another church, I got grumpy.

But wait, a closer look, and something didn't quite jive. Bad News Bible Church? West Side School for the Desperate? Either the evangelicals are getting cheeky, or this is something else altogether. Something new. Something that doesn't grow out of pyramid schemes or over-reliance on personal automobiles.

Sure enough, it's a small, culturally diverse, fringe literary group who is using the space for poetry slams, readings, variety shows, and any performance that folks from the community want to bring to their four unassuming walls. My heart may have audibly fluttered.

Ok, I get it: This could easily ring of gentrification, and if I were worth my salt as a lover of community, I'd embrace the evangelical church as heartily as the literary space. But I'm going to refuse that duality. Not everything associated with my cherished existing neighborhood is a good, and not everything sporadic newcomers bring with them is a bad. I like good poetry more than I like bad church. I think it's better for community. So there. I said it. Out loud.

If I'm proven wrong in time -- if the church sticks around, takes in homeless kids, helps women suffering abuse, or even cleans the litter from in front of their storefront . . . and if the literary troop stands out on the sidewalk, spewing treacly verse to unwitting passersby, demanding audience participation -- I'll humbly eat my words. Amen.

Canine Stretch Goal

2011-08-21T19:01:00.000-07:00

We chanced a trek today to a free outdoor concert on the Square, with dog-aggressive Inez in tow. She was skittish and overstimulated the first half hour, but then she calmed down, rolling over in the grass, snuffing out food scraps, and flirting with any pierced or
skinny-jeaned kid who glanced in her direction. What a thing it must be to have such blind faith in humanity.

Open Your Eyes and You May See it Too

2011-08-14T08:45:00.000-07:00

Back in 2003, I worked on a team with this guy to help re-vision a problematic traffic circle in the heart of our neighborhood. I realized then he wasn't your average bear.

John's role was designer, and he painstakingly moved from ink-on-paper sketches to AutoCAD renderings that removed or simplified every last conflict point for drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians. It would've cost about $10 million -- worth every dime -- but it was a tough sell for a cash-strapped ward. Fortunately my role was pest, and I was able to convince the alderman he owed it to the community to do at least a portion. We got our bump-outs at Wrightwood and Kedzie. Within the next two years, we may get the closure of the slip-lane that feeds Logan Boulevard into Milwaukee Avenue. That unsightly piece of asphalt would expand the green space for an apple orchard slated for the site.

In all the ensuing years since our planning, as I've been floundering around trying on new jobs for size, John's been incubating a vision: A zero-waste, fully energy-efficient vertical indoor farm in one of Chicago's own manufacturing districts. With the purchase of a former hog-processing plant about a year ago, he's already started to bring this vision to fruition.

As we speak, an aquaponics program uses fish waste to fertilize indoor organic greens. A craft brewery has taken up residence on the first floor, and discarded barley, hops, and yeast will be converted into energy to help heat and light the building. A timed lighting system for the indoor farm will allow wattage to be maximized at the cheapest hours of the day, and vegetables will adapt to a growth cycle accordingly. All usable materials from the former version of the building will be reused in some capacity for its next iteration. The acres and acres of outdoor land will become raised-bed gardens and hoophouses, farmed by the formerly homeless and incarcerated for a living-wage job-training program. Organic bakeries, chocolatiers, and cheesemakers are already lined up as tenants, and all their waste material will marry with other sustainable energy sources for the building in something called a "digester."

Zero waste. Fully sustainable. A closed loop.

On any given morning, I might pass John on his bike, saying goodbye to his affable wife and kids, as he rides the 10 miles from our neighborhood to his own personal Wonka to the south. He may be hauling drywall rescued from the alley, compost worms, or beer for his army of volunteers for the day.

Somebody get this guy a MacArthur Genius Grant, stat.

Open Books

2011-08-04T12:30:00.000-07:00

I've noticed that my blog entries have become a little more personal lately. I've let my guard down a bit, reached my arms out wider, then cursed myself for allowing too much exposure to the sun.

But I'm realizing this all probably means something, and I've been dully but tenaciously obsessed with those signifiers. Why such a short fuse these days for things that should only be mildly irritating? And why such indifference to the things that used to bring such joy: A clumsy but warm exchange with one of my Spanish-speaking neighbors; a piece of funky public art hung covertly in the alley; a poignant moment at the grocery store with the morning produce guy.

Meh.

In the midst all this ennui, I've rediscovered reading. Lorrie Moore. Miranda July. And people I'd never heard of before, like the incredible Samantha Hunt. Their characters are like friends who, for those generous moments we're together, demand nothing of me.

Maybe it's because I spend so much of my life these days facilitating meetings, delivering talking points, negotiating, fielding people's questions. My voice is in overdrive -- so ramped up in volume and frequency the words are like chewy, marble-sized bits of cartilage I have to break down, atom by atom, till I can swallow them down or spit them out.

So I've rediscovered the library. I've also renewed my verve for movies -- just sitting in an air-conditioned matinee, sometimes all by myself, letting the scenes and minutes wash over a rapt and passive me. Perfection. These days I want to watch, look, and listen. I want to respond privately, quietly, and keep myself from lapsing into the words, words, words that seem to be my habit lately.

It feels right somehow. Like this is what I'm supposed to be doing with my time. Now if I could just find someone to pay me a decent salary for peace and quiet, I might get my pluck back a little.

More Fun From the Portrait Studio

2011-07-31T09:26:00.000-07:00

I walked past my favorite shop window this morning and noticed that the proprietor, a portrait photographer, had changed his display. I can only imagine what he must have said to this poor couple -- lovely people who care for each other, no doubt -- to capture this particular moment in time, then tack it up proudly to attract new business.

"Saying 'cheese' is such a cliche. Say something more clever, like 'obituary' or 'bubonic plague' . . .

"Now, think of your last argument. That's good. Perfect. Imagine your partner has just eaten onions. Many many onions. Yes, just like that."

One of these days John and I are going to drag Inez over there and order up a family portrait package. I'm just telling you now, so you can leave space on your refrigerator for our holiday card.

This Is What My Midlife Crisis Looks Like

2011-07-22T16:14:00.000-07:00

I have a tidy, modest 1-bedroom apartment in Belfast, Maine that takes under an hour to clean. I wait tables in a nearby restaurant where I never have to carry more than two plates at a time. No one chides me about not having texting on my phone.

I foster broken dogs. There are fewer broken dogs.

Only my alarm clock or the sun wakes me up. Screeching tires don't wake me up. Boom boxes don't wake me up. Wailing car horns don't wake me up.

No one is afraid of tree roots messing with their foundations. Shade lines the streets.

I have a newly discovered talent such as calligraphy, perfumery, or needlework. I put this talent to use.

I have a better memory for world events, but I rarely talk about them.

Numb becomes sad. Sad becomes serene. Serene becomes a good night's sleep.

It's June, and you come to visit.

Sarajevo post script

2011-07-17T07:53:00.000-07:00

I hadn't written a poem in probably twenty years, and I was never much of a poet anyway, but I was sobered by our trip to Sarajevo and somehow found myself compelled. Especially when we ended up with two hours hours to kill at the bare-bones train station (the only real visual perk being this guy to the right), our train to Mostar delayed without explanation. As one of our innkeepers had noted, "This isn't Japan."

I guess I offer this as one last memory of our trip to the Balkans, and an important contrast to photos that may have made the region seem of sunny climate and disposition round the clock. It's very much that way, but there's weight there as well.

The Loneliness of the Sarajevo Natural History Museum

No one comes to the museum anymore.
Maybe a family on holiday from Frankfurt
A lone traveler from Kyoto
A handful of American tourists on their way to Prague,
who complain of the heat on the second floor
as they tire of the exhibits of woodpeckers, thrushes,
and so many swifts.
Ideally they’ve carried their own toilet tissue.

Paid staff outnumber customers by three lab coats to one
A woman behind a locked glass door prepares a sparrow for taxidermy,
emptying its insides,
placing it in a room full of predatory beetles
who will finish the job, tissue and all.
Then she’ll steady her needle and thread.

A man with a nametag follows visitors from room to room
as closing time approaches. He speaks quietly in Bosnian:
“Do not touch the cases,” perhaps.
His face has a mild disfigurement,
maybe from birth, maybe later.

And the handsome woman who tears tickets at the door,
who wears her hair tightly back in a bun,
professional,
efficient,
explaining which rooms are open
and which are off limits,
offers in a baritone,
“Enjoy your visit.”

But she says this only three, possibly four times a day
As cases full of mice, pumice, jackrabbits, scarabs, walking sticks, bears, travertine, moths, and mollusks
turn to paper, dust, and skeleton.

Reflections on a Balkan Vacation

2011-07-13T05:38:00.001-07:00

Some of you know that I just spent two weeks in Croatia, Bosnia, and Montenegro with my husband John and some of our closest friends here in Chicago. I've been fascinated with the region since teaching in Prague and Budapest with the Soros Foundation back in the mid to late 90s.

I failed to keep any kind of travel journal this trip. I left that documenting to John, who does it far better and makes of it a kind of ritual for us: He writes as I drift off to sleep, then he reads to me over morning coffee as we put our heads together to catalogue small moments he may have missed, but still hopes to capture for posterity.

With my own ailing memory, though, I try to write down at least a few details -- just some random memories I don't want to lose -- on the back of travel itineraries and boarding passes, stuffed into my bag for archiving later. I haven't tackled that assortment of pages yet, but I'm guessing they'll trigger things that have already faded as I immerse myself back into the tedium of work.

So, how to capture any of that here? I could retell some of my fondest moments -- the perfect cevapcici taken in the heart of Sarajevo's Old Town one morning before John had even woken up; watching a diver finally take a plunge from Mostar's Old Bridge, reconstructed after total destruction during the Balkan war; an impromptu evening with our Mostar innkeepers, who opened a bottle of housemade brandy to share with us while telling stories of Bosnian life during wartime; buying homemade wine from a front porch, packaged for us in a reused two-liter Coke bottle, in a tiny unnamed village in Croatia; hanging out with our friends in our flat in Split, musing over how we would have been different had we been born in this part of the world; climbing fortifications and bell towers for panoramic views of tile roofs and turquoise water; witnessing evening prayer services -- men on one side, women on the other -- at a Sarajevo mosque; wading shoulder deep into the Adriatic Sea as John dove from rocks and swam as far as the barricades would let him.

I'm not sure any of this really gets at what was so powerful about the visit, though. I said to John I've never visited a place with a more profound sense of its own living history. This was probably truer, at least in our perception and experience, in Bosnia than either of the two other countries. But even in Croatia and Montenegro, you can't help but feel you're in a place that has struggled, suffered, and lost -- then rebounded with a resiliency I'm not sure we Americans would harness as readily.

So we walked, we drove, we swam, we ate, we eavesdropped, we photographed, we toured, we climbed, we overheated, we imbibed, we paid admissions, we got lost, we bargained, and we lamented the deficiencies of our own historical knowledge, all with a humbling sense of our good fortune to be in a place that essentially came back from the dead, then reopened its doors to the world.

The Wobbly Throne

2011-06-23T05:52:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite neighbors, possibly of all time, is selling his building. You may have heard me talk of him before. John is a conservative judge with a great love of small industrial towns, historic preservation, gardening, wayward dogs, and salvage art.

But now his building is for sale and his realtor has clearly advised him to boring it up -- make it look like the house of an everyman, so others can envision themselves within it. Problem is, John is no everyman. He's a singular character, though you'd never know that now, looking at his house.

Gone is the low fence made of handpainted old ladders. Erased is the mismatched patio furniture, culled from years of dumpster browsing. Removed is the handcarved tribute to our former alderman, a wretched woman to whom John took a liking after she possibly removed a zoning restriction or turned the other way to his parkway wonderland.

One of his tenants, who had been his caretaker and essentially surrogate daughter, once described herself as the 'heir to the wobbly throne.' They had a falling out soon after and unfortunately she moved on. I like to think she would have carried on the wonderfully claptrap legacy of this house. But it's not to be.

Goodbye backyard opera singing. Farewell blue mirrored ball in the garden. Godspeed cantankerous John -- painter of houses, master of the 6am conversation, guardian to lost souls, carver of discarded wood, hoarder of bricks, adjudicator on the bench and beyond. You will be missed.

Produce

2011-06-14T06:56:00.000-07:00

The sweet little Hamlin Garden will produce its last harvest this year. This little lot -- borrowed three years ago by a young guy with a great idea: Why not turn this derelict patch into a community garden? -- has been sold to a developer.

The real rub? It sold for just $23,000, something the gardeners might have pooled their own resources to buy. Heck, at that price a single gardener might have been able to gift it to the neighborhood for a good long stretch. They say the market may not rebound for 10 years or more. That's a whole lot of eggplant and zucchini.

It's tough not to see the crooked little sign, tucked next to the garden's well-used rain barrel, as a prescient tombstone. It points to one of the real paradoxes of urban agriculture: It's tough to make the most sustainable ideas sustain in the most important way -- in perpetuity.

Someday soon there will be a building on this space. Its foundation will rest in nutrient-rich soil, unharvested seeds, and a city lot that once fed its people -- and I'm talking about dozens of people who came together to turn it green. The hope is that some of those gardeners stick around for a while, preserving the memory of their shared enterprise, even as new folks dig for their keys, open their front door, then shut it again to settle in for the evening.

Pop-Up Park

2011-06-05T12:35:00.000-07:00

Your eyes do not deceive you. That's a group of outlaw gardeners, laying sod over the asphalt to turn a side street into an instant park. Woebetide the cars that neglected last night's "No Parking" signs.

Wouldn't it be nice if there were enough sod to transform every under-utilized road into safe, lush, convivial green space? Imagine what might be possible if that were the city we lived in . . .

The More Things Change

2011-05-27T18:51:00.000-07:00

So, perhaps you remember the saga of the 5am horn honker. If not, let me refresh your memory.

Sigh. The car horn is back, this time at 4:15 in the morning. Not every morning, mind you, but frequent enough mornings that I'm starting to wake up startled even earlier than that, simply anticipating. Sometimes it comes, sometimes it doesn't, but it almost doesn't matter. I'm already awake, even if nothing has jolted me there but my own restlessness.

For what it's worth, I've already confronted the driver -- in the gentlest possible way -- and asked him please not to honk his horn so early. He was apologetic, but clearly mystified. Why wouldn't you take the quickest route toward your objective? And don't people just go back to sleep after 8 seconds of a horn anyway. Sheesh, it's only 8 seconds.

I know there aren't so many blog readers out there anymore, and those that hang on tend to lean on vehicles more artful, more economical, and more likely to involve meringue or porcini mushrooms. But if you're out there -- maybe even in the middle of the night, trying to find some solace in this crazy, nearly falling-apart world of ours -- I'm curious about your next course of action, if you were in my shoes.

Feel free to enter strategies, wisdom, empathic stories, hilarious jokes, warrented insults, therapeutic mantras, or new ways of looking at this particular conundrum here. First person who helps me sleep through the night wins.

Have you seen this cat?

2011-05-17T04:50:00.000-07:00

If you have, I'm secretly hoping you won't say a word.

He's now safely harbored with our next-door neighbors after living four straight days in the space between the roof of our addition and our second-floor deck. He wouldn't let anyone come near enough to rescue, at least until a thunderstorm that left him feeling terrified and more than a little damp. After the storm passed, I went upstairs, coaxed him onto our deck, let him rub up against my calf for a while, then picked him up and carried him inside as each of his front paws found one of my shoulders.

Within two minutes I'd broken out in hives.

Next-door neighbors to the rescue. They came equipped with a cat carrier, food, and a willingness to foster for as long as it took.

It took about an hour. After that point, they were in love. By the next morning, the cat was napping against the stomach of one of their young daughters. The day after that, they took him to the vet and discovered no disease, no microchip. By day three, he had a name -- Bird -- after the creature they assumed he'd chased up a tree to land on our roof in the first place.

So we'll all work collectively to do the right thing: Spreading the word on the block, alerting shelters, putting up fliers. But we'll also hope that no one answers the call -- that there's not a sweet little girl somewhere pining for her lost cat -- because Bird has found a home where he can sit in a front window, looking out on the world. It's the same home that will soon say good-bye to beloved Zelda the mutt, who is now rejecting food and having trouble walking. It's nice to think of new life filling the gap of that sweet, old, grumpus of a life, and that the girls might have an animal that lets them near him in the way Zelda never would.

So you know when I put up my fliers I'll be doing so sparingly, and it's really not my fault if the tape doesn't hold, because I don't control the humidity after all, and they just don't make tape the way they used to.

Eavesdropping on the World

2011-05-06T05:38:00.000-07:00

Last night we happened into one of those wonderful bits of kismet: An impromptu performance in a tiny municipal building, once a boarded-up haven for derelicts and taggers. It was formerly owned by the Department of Forestry and is now being renovated into possibly a gallery, possibly the headquarters for our local Chamber of Commerce . By now there may be other ideas. Things change pretty fast around here.

In the meantime, the building is being reclaimed by creative types who admire its acoustics or stripped-down aesthetics, or maybe just its queer location, between two patches of green space separated by four (unnecessary) lanes of traffic.

Because I didn't have a camera, I lifted these photos to give you a general idea of what the space looks like from the outside. The important thing, though, was what the world looked like from the inside.

For just over an hour we sat in that room looking out that picture window as one guy played an ambient laptop composition, and another offered an earnest acoustic set -- just a boy, his guitar, and an urgent, mellifluous voice that soared straight up to the rafters.

The music itself was certainly amazing, but more amazing still was the way the entire world was framed within that window. We literally watched it go by for a while. Not in the indifferent, even protective sense that we usually do: All that noise, all that traffic, bleeding together into one chaotic mass so we can contain and ideally ignore it. But in a way that froze every detail and made it count.

Look! There's a man with a blue umbrella.

Look! A city bus, with at least a dozen people inside, stone-faced and sad.

Look! A pick-up truck hauling an old striped couch.

Look! Lightening in the distance.

Bicycles, bicycles, bicycles.

A man doing push-ups in the park.

Not one, but two, fantastic malamutes.

A woman with a plastic grocery bag as a hat, rummaging through the contents of her handbag.

The whole experience made me realize how much better things would be if every tedious moment of our lives had a soundtrack. Maybe one a little bit like this, which was played with gusto after I vainly asked it to be.

Sign of the Times

2011-05-01T05:05:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you don't realize how much you take something for granted until it's about to leave you. Case in point? Our local dollar store. Unlike the wave of similar models opening shop around the neighborhood, this one was independently owned -- by a nice Middle Eastern guy who always offered a warm greeting and never tried to
up-sell.

We counted on them for staples like bungee cords, tissue paper, and shower-curtain liners. Every once in a while we'd come across a great pair of cheap sunglasses or set of Asian dishware. Now they're packing it in, liquidating the whole inventory for 30% off (they do the math in their heads at the register, and sometimes it's closer to 20%, but who can really quibble over a dime?)

I went in yesterday to stock up on a few things and express my sympathy to the owner.

"Yes, what can you do?" he said. "The neighborhood is changing. It's very hard."

He's right. The neighborhood is changing. Yesterday a hipster in a white jean jacket walked past me from west of where we live (I was comforted when he wasn't past checking out some furniture someone left in the alley for the trash man). A renovated sports bar has opened two doors down from the store. And probably most consequential, the national Family Dollar chain has a targeted expansion plan for neighborhoods like ours.

Still, business isn't coming in droves to this frenetic stretch of Fullerton. My best guess is the storefront will stay empty for a long time, probably replaced by a cell-phone shop. We have a situation that's too late for a dollar store and too early for a boutiquey cafe. It makes you wonder what this means for economic development, and what kind of forecasting (or audacious gambling) a business will have to do before it can take up residence there and be successful. If they're legit and independently owned, it's a fair guess we'll be supporting them.

Let the good deeds go unpunished

2011-04-24T13:25:00.000-07:00

This guy was talking just today about how damn lucky he feels in this life: He's travelled the world, plays in a band he loves, and has a great house in a neighborhood where both guitar repair and streetside cheese tamales are just a few paces away. He wondered out loud when his luck might run out, saying he was really in no position to complain if it did.

Sometime within the next hour, he lost his Blackberry.

Since that put a bit of a damper on the afternoon, I thought I'd note for the record that my good luck is simply in knowing him. (If you know him too, you surely feel the same). This week alone he took our dog to surgery, helped her up and down the steps at least 15 times, put antiobiotics and pain pills down her throat, stuck her haunches with a needle, lost sleep as she whimpered through the night, and still had enough will and stamina left to repair the trellis that broke in half during February's blizzard.

He gives money to drifters, mows the neighbor's lawn, tips his servers at least 25%, and installed a ramp for the dog next door when she became too arthritic to take the back stairs.

I've been known to complain about dirty dishes and unhung coats left about the house, but that's a ridiculously small tariff for a guy with power tools and an unspeakably generous spirit. He could lose a thousand Blackberries and a thousand hours looking for them, but he'll never lose the thing that makes him always just a little bit better than he needs to be.

When Things are Pretty for a Day

2011-04-17T14:25:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we woke to gloomy rain the very day we were scheduled for our block group's annual Clean & Green, in which we roll out of our houses in grubby clothes and together clear the debris that's taken up residence on our blocks. This is no easy task. For those of you who have visited, you know the litter has become something of a character in the drama of our lives here in the neighborhood, and not a very nice one at that.

By the 10am start of the clean-up, the skies had cleared a bit, and household by household, people started emerging to lend a hand. Not every household, mind you -- and some of the worst offenders were unsurprisingly not to be found -- but it was great to see kids, new neighbors, and people I've never met before pitching in to make this a place that looks like it's cared for rather than an urban dumping ground. It's really something to look down the expanse of our blocks and see one green front yard after the next, unpolluted by fast-food bags and discarded beer bottles -- just spring perennials in bloom, trees coming back to life, and lawn decorations of every stripe.

Part II of yesterday, after a hot shower and hearty lunch, found John and I taking a three-block walk to the festivities of Record Store Day. This is a national annual event, and we were happy to see our local record shop, despite being a scrappy newcomer to the scene, participating with zeal. John was there when the doors opened at 9am, and he was hardly the first in line. He bought a bunch of special releases, and we spent the afternoon watching seven different bands playing for free. We haven't seen the store as packed with devoted customers since their grand opening a year or so back.

We put the day to rest over a pot of homemade ginger lentil soup, the perfect thing since the cold rain had returned by early evening.

So here's the thing: Today is a windy day, and we know that within an hour or so, litter will be blown from Fullerton Avenue right down our blocks and into our yards. But we also know that people may be more likely to pick up that random detritus, at least for a little while. And we also know that our little corner garden, which now has native perennials transplanted from five different households, is blooming again -- those flowers resilient despite a brutal winter and all the exhaust and smog of the city. And that's one of the more hopeful signs I can think of for what may lie ahead.

Someone's in the Kitchen with Nitrous

2011-04-03T05:40:00.000-07:00

Calling all nonprofits or charitable organizations: Invite me to your silent auction! I admit it. I have a sickness. I've never met an auction I didn't like, and I've never stepped away without bidding on something. Sometimes it's very small: a gift certificate for a frame shop, or a bottle of wine. Sometimes it's quite large: 10 days of seaside lodging in Croatia, for example, or more recently, Chef for a Day at Moto restaurant.

If you don't know Moto, it's one part traditional kitchen, one part mad-scientists' lab. Their food is a mash-up of normal old grocery-store staples and unpredictable techniques employing food dehydrators, liquid nitrogen, nitrous oxide, edible paper, and machines invented expressly to unfoodify (yes, I've just made this up) the dishes. You get 10 or 20 small courses, depending on your level of extravagance and purchasing power. The result is at times extraordinary (a signature box that heats consommé so it steams a piece of fish inside, or a faux Cuban cigar wrapped in collard greens) and at times disappointing (edible packing peanuts seem to mock rather than play with their consumers). But it's always original. And I can say now from experience, the kitchen crew is having a blast preparing your meal.

I spent four hours in their stunning basement kitchen yesterday, listening to a soundtrack of 70s classics as I peeled carrots or sliced shallots through a laughably unstable mandoline, marveling at how these culinary experiments start with the most banal ingredients. This struck me as either a lighthearted extension of the restaurant's sense of humor, or a comforting sense that everything, and I mean everything, begins with the basics.

Ben, the pastry chef, who has gained fame through his appearances on Future Food, and also happens to live in my neighborhood (see how I did that? brought it back to the neighborhood? because otherwise, you're right, this doesn't fit the parameters I've set out for this blog at all. thank you, Ben), took me under his wing. He insisted that I taste everything, including his amazing housemade ice creams: Earl grey and sassafrass. He's enjoying sassafrass lately and also made it the esssence of his homemade marshmallow fluff. I tasted pineapple infused with vanilla, densely macerated banana puree, and a rich dark chocolate truffle into which is inserted a small marshmallow wick that is set on fire like a tiny bomb. When the flame goes out, you put the entire truffle in your mouth and it explodes with the taste of a campfire s'more. At one point, Ben put a pastry bag of his banana puree into an industrial vaccuum sealer.

"What's that doing?" I asked.

"Running the restaurant." He was smiling, but he wasn't kidding.

I joined the crew for "family meal" around 2:30, when everything breaks for some needed staff sustenance and revelry with the front-of-house folks. One of the chefs made a decidedly un-Moto like chicken marsala with truffled mashed potatoes and homemade pasta. I could've eaten that marsala for days.

I also got a window into their service strategies during the 4:15 staff meeting. They reviewed the reservations -- so many dietary restrictions! -- and decided on the fly how to substitute dishes to keep Table 4 gluten-free, make sure Table 11 had no dairy other than cheese, or avoid refined sugars for Table 8.

All in all, it was an unforgettable day. So different from being in my grandmother's restaurant as a kid, when my sister and I would flee to the walk-in when the French chefs would start screaming at each other. In fairness, they couldn't've been overjoyed to have two sticky rugrats in their kitchen stealing melba toasts from dry storage.

There's something kinetic about a restaurant kitchen. Especially so when you're sucking all the moisture out of a mushroom to turn it into a crunchy garnish for beef, or pouring a vat of liquid nitrogen into a bowl of who knows what, filling the room with smoke. Ultimately, though, it all comes down to that banana puree, and how they remind you of the ones your father used to mash for you as a toddler, when you weren't old enough to remember much, but this was one of the things that mattered.

Gustatory One-Act

2011-03-27T09:14:00.000-07:00

Overheard today at the winter farmer's market (the last of the year):

Man to bread vendor: Do you have any normal bread?

Vendor: What do you mean by normal bread? Do you mean white bread?

Man: You know. Something to make a sandwich with. White . . . rye.

Vendor: I have walnut, or whole wheat.

Man: No, no, no. None of that tricky stuff.

Of all the tiny telenovellas that have played themselves out at the market -- the sad-eyed alfajores baker aching to make a sale (delicious, but $4 apiece); the alfalfa sprout vendor from downstate, resiliently appearing after being implicated in the Jimmy John's salmonella scare; flirations between vendors and patrons; visitors who graze on free samples and never buy a thing -- this is undoubtedly my favorite.

Happy trails, winter market. You've served my pantry and my eavesdropping well.

Buy me a record

2011-03-14T05:37:00.000-07:00

Remember when I dreamed this record store into existence? That was a pretty good dream. It's been nice to have them around the corner, especially because almost every weekend features a free live performance by one musical act or another. Some are bands you've surely heard of. Most are unknown, like shiny wrapped presents.

Yesterday we saw Matthew Mullane, an acoustic guitarist who looks as young as my nephew but plays like a virtuoso.

Previously we've seen a rowdy blues band, an electronica DJ (with a film projected behind him onto a white bedsheet), a moody Califone, and a Southern-gothic punk outfit that would challenge you to a staring contest as soon as look at you.

We've missed Jon Langford, a handful of noise bands, two film premieres (shown on the same white bedsheet), three art openings, and a 17-member punk-rock glee club singing a cappella. No matter. There's always something new on the calendar.

Watching music this way corrects for all the things I've come to hate about the late-night rock club:

- Afternoon performances. You leave and it's still daylight outside

- Just one or two bands on the docket, with none of that endless set-up and breakdown in between

- Crowds you can breathe in, even if you're short

- No danger of getting knocked over by some liquored-up jerk trying to recreate the mosh pits of his youth

- Sometimes there's a dog in there

- Free show!

See? It's not that I don't love music anymore. Not at all. It's more that after 20+ years of heading out at 10pm, sitting through two different bands before hearing the one I came to see, and dodging the collective machismo of the room, I'm ready for a kinder, gentler delivery system. Now one has opened just around the corner, and I don't even care that my husband is single-handedly keeping them in business. Whatever it takes, I hope they stick around.

Someday I'll write a shorter post, but apparently not today

2011-03-05T07:05:00.001-08:00

Little in life makes me happier than a new thrift store. This one isn't so new, but it's a new discovery for me since I've started walking to work.

Cargo, as it's called, has been around for a year, and the cheerful Global Cafe next door is part of the same operation. Both businesses are connected to a detox center that's operated for years, modestly and even mysteriously, out of a pair of storefronts.

A year ago, they put in a community garden in the empty lot next door. They rehabbed what had been their meeting space -- a place where clients could get together behind closed curtains and have a cup of coffee and a chat -- to the public. Now the clients work in the thrift store or the cafe, earning a modest wage as they get back on their feet and build up their portfolios.

Does it surprise you to hear me say I adore this model? (I didn't think so).

I popped into the thrift shop yesterday and encountered who must be the founder of this eponymous facility. He was a lively character, definitely turning on the hard sell for a BCBG dress (I bought it) and some grandmotherly china (I passed). He talked about making a collage of Michael Jackson magazine photos for the wall, then trying to sell it for $25. He led a sweet, pregnant Spanish-speaking woman to a box of onesies, all on sale for $1. He pushed me to buy a $10 spider plant, which will help fund the insurance they need for their community garden, a bureaucratic formality that clearly disgusts him. The pregnant woman's 7-year-old son told him $10 was way too much money for a plant. I'll probably eventually buy the damn thing.

And then a curious thing happened. The guy held up something I've never seen before. It looked like an old pin, but was actually a clasp you attach to a scarf to keep it in place. Sweet, but superfluous, so I told him thanks, but not today.

And then he gave it to me.

"Please take it," he said. "This looks like you and you should have it."

"Thank you," I said. "That's incredibly kind, and I accept it."

Now I hesitate to tell the rest of the story, because it casts a bit of a pall on this moment, and I admit it made me wonder if this was truly a gift or a covenant he was enlisting.

But after talking of the good karma he thought this would bring him, he told me that everything he does is in service to the Creator, and isn't the Creator's will majestic?

You know me by now, so you know I had no answer for this question. I smiled, thanked him again, and headed out the door.

But the whole thing left me wondering. What does it mean to take my tea and gently-used dresses with a side of old-time religion? Will I continue to shop in the store, or will I avoid the place to avoid the conversation? Will I feel too disingenuous to wear my scarf clasp?

I navigate these questions frequently in my work, which revolves largely around faith-based institutions. But I've also started outing myself as a nonbeliever ('atheist' can come off as confrontational in my line of work), and the sky hasn't fallen yet.

I suppose I could handle myself with the same diplomacy with a guy like this. I might just have to buy the Michael Jackson collage to let him know I'm not the devil.

Swollen

2011-02-27T07:22:00.000-08:00

I'll always remember 2011 as the year my body and I stopped getting along. I've already written about the herniated disc in my neck, which has bulldozed me with pain and prevented any real exercise, including the physical therapy that might actually help resolve my symptoms. I'm getting soft around the middle and thick in the thighs.

Then there was last week's spill on my bike -- trying to ride in the ice after running late on election day. The plummy bruises on my knees are nothing. It's the extra twinges in my neck and left arm that worry me. Was this the over-reaching that will lead me to the surgeon's table?

Strangely enough, my mind and I seem to be friendlier than ever, as if we've reunited after a long hiatus only to realize we're still in love. Mind, you had me at 'hello.' You make me want to be a better person. And damnit, you complete me.

It's a funny thing that happens when you have to work around pain. It's a little like the series of steps that get people past grief or an alcohol habit.

At first, there's denial: I'm sure this is just a pulled muscle. It'll be gone in another day or two.

Then the bargaining: Let me get through the day. Just today. Tomorrow I'll stay home from work if I have to. I'll call the doctor. I'll even consider the surgery, if I can just make this deadline and find a comfortable chair for that two-hour meeting.

(And somehow I do make that deadline, and I do find that comfortable chair, and I'm stronger for having done so).

Finally there's the acceptance: This is my life now. The show must go on.

But above all, and this is where a pain condition starts to do its own thing, I have a very focused sense of empathy, not to mention the fact that tiny human scenes seem to play themselves around me on endless reels.

Take last Tuesday's bike crash.

There I was, in the middle of the street, unable to move my bike or even pick myself up to get to the sidewalk. A pick-up pulled up behind me. No one got out of the truck, and I could see traffic lining up behind him.

Then, a van, driving past the intersection and pulling over to the side of the road. A woman, more specifically a Muslim woman in full robes, got out of the van, rushed to my side, physically moved my bicycle out of the street, then held my arm as she escorted me to the sidewalk, dragging her long skirt through the slush.

The woman asked if I needed a ride. She said she'd put my bicycle in her van and drive me wherever I needed to go. I wasn't even a block from home, so I thanked her and headed back to the house.

I've been haunted by her kindness ever since. She didn't have to stop. She was a petite woman, but she lifted my bike like it was nothing at all. She didn't have to trust me enough to invite me into her car. Her hemline got dirty because of me. She didn't know where I worked -- it could have been miles away -- but still she offered to take me there. And it's not lost on me, and somehow not irrelevant, that this woman is a Muslim and I am not. She overcame our differences to offer help to a person in need. It's something that doesn't come easily these days in America, and I'm going to be honest: It's something that doesn't always come easily to me.

I've replayed that episode over and over, and the immensity of her gesture never gets old.

So in some ways, this experience of pain has amplified my experience of the world, both good and bad. I'm not a religious person, but I take that as a blessing. And I'm not a pedantic person, but I see it as a lesson.

When Dennis Throws a Party . . .

2011-02-21T09:10:00.000-08:00

There will be funny hats.

Tea will be served from elegant china found in a dumpster.

Canapes and sweets will be scattered about the house on servers fashioned from scrap metal and ax handles.

Random strangers will take over the small kitchen, stirring pots of homemade soup.

And Mabel will play John Cage's "Suite for a Toy Piano" to heartfelt applause.

Down with "Dibs"

2011-02-13T06:52:00.000-08:00

You can't make it through a winter in Chicago without encountering one of the ugliest customs of the season: Dibs. This is the process by which a car owner digs his or her car out of the snow, then claims that parking space on the street with broken chairs, paint buckets, or some other form of detritus from the basement. Moving someone else's objects to park in that spot is tantamount to theft -- snow turns public space into private, I guess -- and I've often been surprised that someone hasn't been killed over violating another person's dibs.

I realize that opening may lose me a few friends. Dibs are fighting words in Chicago, and they've divided more than a few neighbors, more than a few communities. I also know that our recent 2-foot snowfall has turned a few dibs detractors into reluctant embracers. It's a matter of necessity, they say. These are extraordinary circumstances. If you don't claim the spot, you have nowhere to put your car.

Nevertheless, I stand by my position. Dibs is bad policy, and yet another example of how vehicle ownership can breed the kind of thnking and action that separates folks from one another.

What's especially sticking in my craw about this debate is the assumption -- and many have said it out loud to me -- that since I don't own a car and don't have the challenge of parking it, I don't have a right to a position. Essentially I don't have a horse in this race.

Quite the contrary. First, I feel I have a right to be bothered by other people's garbage accumulating on my street and in my neighborhood. It's litter, plain and simple, and it's illegal . . . but worse yet, it's unneighborly.

Second, it's been interesting to see the link between chairs in the street and unshoveled sidewalks running parallel to those spaces. People will dig out their personal automobiles and lay claim to the space, but they often won't extend the same courtesy to their neighbors at large. They want their mode of transportation to be respected, but they're unwilling to respect other people's need to walk to the train, the grocery store, or the local elementary school.

And you know what? Lots of people can't ride their bikes through two feet of snow. They can't walk across an icy stretch of sidewalk, so they find a new means of getting to work. They take the el, or they find a new route. The need for adaptability is an occupational hazard of living in Chicago in winter. We all need a little ingenuity from time to time.

One of my new heroes is a guy who posted the following to our neighborhood list-serve, generally a hornet's nest for political infighting and ideological puffery, but now a home for this little gem:

I should give you fair warning. I shoveled off part of the monument [the famed statue in the center of the neighborhood] and it is now MINE. None of you are welcome on it or near it. If any of you question the veracity of this statement, as proof I left a Skittles wrapper there to hold my claim (shoveling is hard work and you burn a lot of calories). Also, if I find anyone's else's Skittles wrappers or other junk on my spot don't be surprised if they are set on fire.

And this spirit of levity leads me to share a fantasy of mine. There are some awfully nice chairs left in excavated, slushy parking spots. Witness Exhibits A, B, C, and D.

If I had more skill and more time, I'd be gathering up those chairs, then starting a business -- perhaps I'd call it Dibs -- of refinishing and reupholstering the discards, then selling them for cost into the living rooms where they belong. I figure I'd be cleaning up my neighborhood and turning this rotten practice into something good.

Guarding the Crosswalk

2011-02-10T05:58:00.000-08:00

I used to hear people talk about their back trouble and feel terrible, of course, but not have any of my own reference points. That was until a few months ago. After a prolonged spell of what I thought was a pulled muscle, I learned I actually have a pronounced herniation between two vertebrae in my neck. Since January 3 I've had constant shooting pains down my shoulder and arm and some nagging tingling in my left hand and index finger.

This creates some major quality-of-life adjustments, not to mention low-grade depression, but since a blog isn't a journal I'll spare you the weepy details.

What I can say is this: I haven't been able to ride my bike since January 3. I haven't been able to exercise, enjoy a dinner out, or sleep on my stomach or side. I go to sleep in pain. I wake up in pain. But I'm adjusting. One thing I've started doing is walking the 45 minutes to work -- a little exercise, a little scenery. Plus a daily visit with my favorite crossing guard, there at the corner of Albany and Fullerton in her yellow slicker, stopping 6 lanes of traffic so pedestrians can get across.

If she doesn't love her job, you could've fooled me. Every day she offers up a heavily accented "Good morning!" or "Be careful, sweetie." Then she'll point to the same slushy pile at the mouth of the sidewalk, as if to say, "Don't slip. Take it slow."

There are hazards aplenty at that corner. Six full lanes of traffic on a route designated for semi trucks. Snow piled up so it makes the crosswalk impassable. That same snow turning to sheets of ice as it's packed down.

But the crossing guard is always there, making sure we don't fall off those cliffs of rye. Every last one of us -- schoolchildren, seniors, dogwalkers, people in wheelchairs, and plain old grown-ups like me -- is safe on her watch. She wouldn't stand for less.

People in Chicago talk about legendary bus drivers or el operators, with their affirmational messages and charming quirks. But my kudos go to the protectors of those of us who rely on the sidewalk. Hardy though we may be, we are sometimes fragile creatures.

Snowpocalypse 2011

2011-02-02T11:21:00.001-08:00

People pitching in.

Kids reinventing space.

Sidewalks cleared for passersby.

Not a bad test of humanity. We passed.

Noodle Season

2011-01-29T05:29:00.000-08:00

With gentrification rising on the east side of the neighborhood, going out to dinner often feels like a visit to the daycare center. When I was young, my parents rarely went out for a meal with kids in tow. They called a local teenager to babysit. My sister and I fondly remember Melody, who taught us how to make rock candy and once took us to a high-school basketball game . . . and less-so Pam, our Pentecostal neighbor who warned us against the hidden messages in "Put the Lime in the Coconut".

Sitters? Not so much anymore. Families go out to dinner together. This can be a wonderful ritual: Children learning how to enjoy new foods and quietly integrate themselves into the fabric of public life. More often than not, though, at least among the families that have come to populate our neighborhood's east side, public space has become a kind of rugrat free-for-all. Recently, some tiny roving fingers ended up in my bone-marrow starter at a gastropub (I know, I know. I get what I deserve for ordering a bone-marrow starter at a gatropub). The parents apologized . . . sort of. But you could tell they also thought it was pretty adorable and were put off by the idea of someone who might disagree.

Now don't get my wrong. I have nothing against children. Some of my favorite people in the world were once children.

Heck, some of my favorite people in the world, even as they approach 40, are still having children, which is pretty darn cool. Still, I sometimes feel restaurants would do folks a favor by posting a "Children at Play" sign in their window. It would be easier to make an informed decision. Eat here or move on to a quieter place down the street.

Nowhere is this more true than our neighborhood Italian restaurant. Kids love pasta, after all. They love eating pasta and playing with their pasta. Sometimes they love playing with their neighbor's pasta. As a result, we don't go out for pasta so much anymore.

But from scarcity grows creativity, and one thing we've learned is that we also love eating pasta. And playing with pasta.

So we've started a new Sunday tradition: We make our own. There's been a learning curve, sure, and I've thrown away more than my fair share of failed gloppy dough. But when it works, move over Lydia Bastianich. (Just kidding, Lydia. I would never presume. You're welcome to my house for dinner anytime).

When we're eating a bowl of hand-cut fettucini, our clothes still dusted with flour, it's pretty easy to sacrifice white paper and crayons on the tables. The dog doesn't seem to mind the table-scraps either.

Tired

2011-01-22T05:16:00.000-08:00

This is a relatively new neighbor on the block. It's an offshoot of the original shop by the same name, which is in an old fire station around the corner. This second satellite space spills out onto our block, just a short distance from a line of two-flats and single-family homes.

Now, anyone who knows me could probably predict how I'd feel about an auto-oriented business moving onto the street. More car traffic, more fumes, more honking horns and pedestrian hazards -- not the loves of my life. But after the shop moved in, they planted some trees and generally spruced up the place. I made my peace.

That was before the cars started parking on the sidewalk overnight. Before a couple of fights broke out. Before the guy with a big sign around his torso reading "Rims!" started standing in the middle of busy Fullerton Avenue, making for challenging traffic patterns at the entrance to our street. Before the long hours of noisy repair work -- far longer than those posted on their signs -- and the piles and piles of stacked tires that became breeding grounds for rats and mosquitos.

I'd had enough, so I reached out to my block group to see if anyone had similar concerns. Lo and behold, over a dozen households wrote me back, and I realized we had critical mass for some collective action. I contact our alderman, and perhaps because it's election season, he responded pretty immediately. Police officers paid two separate visits within the next 24 hours demanding compliance.

A funny thing happened, though, on the way to civic engagement. My conscience started to bother me.

I saw those guys working long hours in the cold and realized how tough it is to find a decent job in this economy. I heard from a couple of neighbors who'd had good experiences with the shop, mentioning how nice it was to have a nearby go-to if they got up in the morning and their cars wouldn't start.

I know quality of life is quality of life, but I started to feel some nagging guilt as I saw those piles of tires disappear, the parked cars disappearing from the sidewalk, and the hours changed on their sign to better reflect when they were actually doing work.

So last weekend, with John at my side, and aided by some neighbors with impressive baking skills, I headed over to RV with a thank-you note and bag of sweets, just to acknowledge the steps they've taken to improve the place. There were only a couple of guys there and a bit of a language barrier, but when they realized those treats were a gift for the shop, one broke into a smile and issued a hearty "Happy new year!" as he took a bite of a toffee-chip cookie.

Maybe this is one of those rare stories with a happy ending and slew of winners: The neighbors, who have fewer public health and safety risks to contend with (not to mention less of an eyesore); the alderman, who clearly collected a few votes with his quick response and effective action; and the shop itself, who -- aside from having Allison's cookies or Melanie's cornmeal cheese muffins to snack on -- may actually see a spike in business from nearby neighbors, who now see the shop as an ally.

It's hard for me to know if taking steps to resolve problems like this -- when there are real human beings at the other end of those problems -- is time and effort well spent, or a little too Mrs. Kravitz-y for my conscience to withstand.

One thing I do know is rather than being smug when things go your way, it's best to take the few steps toward acknowleding the people who've met you in the middle. Nope, I don't have much in common with the guys at RV, but I feel like something deeply human has passed between us.

Making Hay

2011-01-11T11:55:00.000-08:00

You may have heard about one of our farmers market vendors in the media last week. They were implicated in the recent salmonella scare that was traced to the Jimmy Johns sandwich chain.

According to the news, the 50-odd people who got sick had all eaten at Jimmy Johns. And every one of those sandwiches had alfalfa sprouts sourced from an independent farm in Champaign, also a mainstay of our Sunday market.

Only problem is, it was a rush to judgment. There wasn't a single trace of evidence pointing to the farm or their sprouts as the culprits. I know that when it comes to public health, there's a need for explanations, and you're always better adding up 2 & 2. I certainly understand why the alerts were issued. But I figured this was the end of the little alfalfa sprout farm as we knew it. It seemed a catastrophic fate for an independent farm that seemed to have its heart and methods in the right place.

But what the? This Sunday was the first market since before the holidays, and there they were, the sprouts folks, selling radish sprouts and microgreens like nothing had happened in between. There was my friend Dana Joy working their booth, and I could barely even manage a hello for the brisk business they were doing.

I wanted to throw my support their way as well, so I bought a container of spring mix and had some on a sandwich at lunch and again on a salad at dinner.

And then, a revelation: I'd sure come a long way since my decade or so of hypochondria, when I was afraid of the world and all its hazards, especially those that might be lurking in my body. Back in those days, I never would've risked eating something on a watch list. And if I did by mistake, I'd be checking medical dictionaries and making doctor's appointments, positive my days were numbered. The very word "positive" struck terror in my heart. I couldn't even use it in a sentence.

I can't begin to tally my hours spent on medical hotlines. I could probably add up my MRIs -- it's in the double digits -- just to rule out my worst fears of MS or brain tumors, things I suppose could have been possible, in the same way it's possible a tree might fall on your house in a storm, or your hair might turn white overnight.

But along the way, something happened, and even as the world got scarier, I somehow got less scared of the world.

I'm glad to be a point in my life where the reasoned approach trumps the panicked approach. I'm glad I can eat alfalfa sprouts, take a sip from a friend's glass, have a lightheaded day, find a swollen gland, read about radon, order sushi on a Monday, kiss a colleague hello, clean a skinned knee, swim in a public pool, all without fear of dire consequences.

My immune system and temperament are both the better for it. So are my lunch hours.

These are the people in my neighborhood (Volume #1862)

2011-01-07T07:08:00.000-08:00

Long, long ago, I told you about one of the outstanding neighbors on my block -- a PhD in social science who now works crunching numbers and performing statistical analysis. Did I mention she's also a former jammer for one of the local roller derby teams? And a bang-up gardener and general neighborhood tidier?

She took it upon herself to spread some kindness this past Wednesday, January 5, which a popular women's magazine has dubbed the most stressful day of the year (being a woman and not entirely popular, I'd probably rank April 14 or December 23 a little ahead of it, but I can appreciate the sentiment). Basically, she planted little affirmational love notes randomly throughout the city. Read more here (scroll down to the entry for January 5). I envy the lucky souls who happened upon the right places at exactly the right moments and learned their shirts were fantastic.

Rather than make a list of new year's resolutions I'm sure to break, I just want to take a moment to appreciate all the amazing people I know within walking distance -- "intelligent, attractive beacons of light," one and all.

Folk Hero

2010-12-31T09:20:00.001-08:00

There's someone I'd like you to meet.

This is my friend and coworker Dan. He's a gifted architect who used to work with Alabama's acclaimed Rural Studio. He lives right here in the neighborhood, and you might see him singing at an open mike or biking back and forth to work, or the Y, or one of his favorite corner stores to pick up a jar of peanut butter.

About a year ago he got plunked down into my occasionally punishing workplace as a kind of birthday present. Not because we're so incredibly tight (we're not) or because I think I'll still know him in 10 years (I don't), but because he's the kind of guy who will quietly and without telling a soul step in to design and build 22 beds for a new men's interim-housing shelter.

And because two days after his beloved grandfather died on Christmas morning, he was rifling through his closet and was struck by the simple beauty of a vintage wooden coathanger, and decided to turn it into something more beautiful, which he turned into something even more beautiful:

We're about to turn to a new calendar page, and I resolve this year to be more like Dan. If I can also, every once in a while, applaud him after playing a song at a bar, or offer him some tea, or answer one of his tender requests for advice, well, that's no bad thing either.

Everyday Use

2010-12-27T05:58:00.000-08:00

The worst part of insomnia is that terrible, middle-of-the-night feeling that you're the only person awake in the world. There is nothing lonelier. This has been far more pronounced, for me, in small towns, where it seems like everyone responds to the calm by closing their blinds and shutting down, far more successfully than I, for the night.

Urban living has offered the salve that something seems to be happening all the time: Businesses open, trains running, even people grocery shopping or taking a jog. It's comforting to know that life doesn't assume a single collective rhythm, but instead has a pulse, even in the wee hours.

I guess my preferred version of the world is one where things are in motion when you need them.

So it's been something of a thrill for me to watch our local daycare center finally open its doors. You may remember this building (actually a set of three connected buildings) having several failed attempts at productivity: A pathetic excuse for a shish-kabob restaurant called "Skewers," the more passable Super Pollo taqueria, a mortgage company, a random clerical office. But mostly, just empty, idle space, waiting for its best iteration.

I'd like to think it's found its way with the daycare center. Sure, I was sad to see the state-of-the-art hooded range disappear, thinking, if we just have a little patience, a perfect little eatery or bakery will make its home there. But you can't argue with the local economy, which says that services, not goods, make sense for certain corridors.

These photos are from two days after Christmas. It's just after 6am and pitch-black outside, but the bright lights are on and daycare workers scurry inside for their early arrivals, readying the rooms for infants, toddlers, and older children. I can only imagine those kids looking forward to their drop-off, so they can play in that cheerful space and take instruction from the sweet bilingual staff on how to make snowflakes for the windows.

dogspeed

2010-12-19T08:38:00.000-08:00

Our next-door neighbors had to put down their beloved 15-year old gentle giant last week. It was a painful loss, especially this time of year.

We'd known Cosmo 10 of those 15 years, and he'd proven himself an exceptional neighbor. He was a reticent dog, but from time to time he'd leap up and rest his paws on the fence between our yards so we could give him a stroke on the muzzle.

John helped build a ramp when he got too infirm to walk down the steps, and we'd watch him periodically out the back window, clicking his paws down that slope like typewriter keys. We'd seen him dodge death a handful of times, including a prediction from his vet he wouldn't live to see the 4th of July . . . 2008.

We paid a visit to our neighbors yesterday, just to give them a squeeze and drop off a bottle of wine and some small gifts for their daughters. I supposed the house would feel empty and stark. But there was fullness there. Life. The tree they'd cut in rural Illinois was fragrant, dripping with handmade ornaments. The girls were almost giddy getting ready for a cookie baking party with friends. There was only one slip into sadness, when Mike came across Cosmo's collar in a pile of scarves. We all spilled over a little.

We invite these creatures into our lives knowing full well we're likely to outlive them. We befriend them and keep them safe and fed. They see us happy, devastated, naked, alive. In what turns out to be the best-case scenario, we decide their very last day, last meal, last moment on the planet. We're with them when they slip away. Aside from what we give to our very own children, there may be no more profound act of love.

Charity begins at home, or very nearby

2010-12-15T06:11:00.000-08:00

Tis the season of charitable giving, and ordinarily the Boy Scouts wouldn't rise to the top of the list. I've got issues, I tell you. Not just about their stance against gay Scouts and leaders, which is deplorable. It's also the uniforms, the discipline, and that clear segregation between boys and girls. It reminds me of movements I find unsettling, and well, there are just so many other good causes in the world.

But when a sweet neighbor boy in his uniform comes asking for nonperishable food, and when I realize that food will feed hungry people potentially very close to home, and when I remember the Scouts arguably saved the life of another neighbor kid -- now all grown up -- whose parents died in unspeakable tragedy when he was young, and when we're shyly left this thank-you note along with two decorated cupcakes for our efforts, well, it's not hard to make that compromise.

Life might be easier with more absolutes, but it would certainly be less interesting.

Jump Into the Shaker

2010-12-09T06:16:00.000-08:00

What do I want for Christmas, you ask?

Anything new.

New necklace. New socks. New haircut. New job. New way of dealing with my winter skin. New place to try for dinner. New toothpaste. New gloves that keep my fingers from going numb. New living-room rug. New ice cream flavors. Unpilled sweaters. A day between Sunday and Monday. A 14th way of looking at a blackbird. New exercise regimen. New route to work. New lipstick color -- one that doesn't make me look like I'm on my way to a Cabaret tryout.

Hey, brand new bar popping up around the corner. Welcome to the neighborhood. What'll I have? Just pour me something -- anything -- I haven't tried before.

This is unlike me.

I think I need a realignment.

This nearby demo site fills me not with sadness, but with a weird sense of promise. No, I don't miss you, crummy old Mexican restaurant with your day-glo margaritas and forever-chirping smoke detector. (Please, for the love of god, change the batteries!) To whit, I haven't mourned your passing for a second.

I heard that a new fire station might be planned for the lot. New fire stations in Chicago actually seem to have some architectural zip. So bring it on, I say. It's fire season, after all. I like the idea of the city's finest being not far away with their trucks and hoses.

Of course we'll have a very different conversation if it ends up an Auto Zone.

But I'll take the beautiful dream of a little something new next to Vinos y Liquores. And ok, Second-hand Santa, I realize I've just spit in your eye. But don't fret. I'm bound to rekindle my love for flannel pajamas, clodhopper shoes, the same old dishes and sheets and lamps and curtains I've been looking at for years, and even this lame but reliable hairstyle. One successful visit to the thrift-store, one happy rediscovery of something in the back of the closet, and this yen for shiny veneers will be behind me.

But for now, I'd love to know the blue-book value for this old routine, because a trade-in sounds mighty enticing.

Wonder-land

2010-11-30T06:15:00.000-08:00

Here's the very curious rabbit hole I fell down Thanksgiving weekend.

Past-land. Traveled to Columbus, Ohio, the city where I grew up but have few real connections anymore. Not to visit my own family -- who have since moved away -- but to reconnect with John's family (obviously now also my family), who adopted the city long after he'd left the nest. So I visited my one-time home, no longer my home, John's family's home, though not his home, so a kind of home/not-home/not-home/home, away from home.

Future-land. Driving back to Chicago through Benton County, Indiana, a landscape now dotted with hundreds of wind turbines visible from the highway that spin hypnotically in the breeze. Larger than life, and as John described them: bizarre and wonderful cartwheels.

Present-land. Stopping at the coffee shop because we were completely out of beans at home. Picking up a bag of dark roast, along with two baguettes from the new French bakery. Forsaking the ride home to walk seven blocks in unseasonable warmth. Passing a kid
pogo-sticking like a champ up and down the sidewalk in front of his house. Resurfacing.

Early merry tidings (on two wheels . . . without a seat)

2010-11-22T06:26:00.000-08:00

Ordinarily I don't cotton to premature Christmas decorations, but I gotta say: This one puts me in a holiday mood. It also sits well with my form-meets-function tendencies (yes, that's a plastic candy cane serving as the handlebars). The ride probably isn't too comfortable, but I do know the bike gets ridden. Sometimes it's there, locked against the fence; sometimes it's nowhere to be found.

I've never seen the owner but I've burned with curiosity. The other residents of this building drive all manner of power vehicles -- vans and SUVs, and in one case a sparkling new Cadillac with gleaming, expensive rims, which pulls into its parking space with graphic
hip-hop booming from the speakers. That guy doesn't want to be ignored.

But the owner of the little blue cruiser? Unassuming. Nearly invisible. With charming attention to detail. And probably very strong legs.

Big News!

2010-11-18T05:52:00.000-08:00

So . . . you wanna buy a house?

This sign greeted me this morning as the sun came up. It's positioned squarely in front of our next-door neighbor's house. The same neighbor whose mother owns the property but lives in California. The same neighbor whose pending divorce looked to convert the house into a rental. Absentee landlord, revolving door of tenants. Not a winning formula for a stable block.

In ways that quietly shame me, I've longed for something to happen with this house for years. You know that house on the block that's always overgrown with dandelions, always in need of a paint job? That's this house. Complicating matters is the tenants themselves, who had a quality that trumps all those annoyances: A steadfast respect for their neighbors. They were good people, and you couldn't have really asked for better than that. It certainly made it a whole lot easier not to stew all those times John had to mow their lawn, or I had to shovel their walk. Because these particular neighbors always had our backs. And that's worth more than the rest of it combined.

But now I'll admit. I'm fantasizing. Who might buy the place? More to the point, could *we* buy the place? What would it take to fix it up? How might it look with some perennials? The possibilites could drive a girl to distraction.

Regardless, it looks like some changes are afoot, mighty close to home. It's almost the holidays, and I like not knowing what's exactly in the box.

And all of this is to say, if you know someone in the market for a
fixer-upper, who wants to capitalize on the most buyer-friendly real estate market in decades, and will receive as part of the bargain some pretty top-drawer next-door neighbors, please send them my way. There's a nice welcome gift in it for them, and we've been known to loan a spare egg or cup of sugar by request.

For those keeping track

2010-11-15T06:10:00.001-08:00

You may have noticed a motif these last few posts. Green tomatoes here, ripening in a box. A melon there, hanging on for dear life. You haven't even seen my work in progress: A paean to my last batch of baba ganouj, made from my last tiny eggplant of the year. You'll probably never see that post, in fact, as I ate the evidence before I could snap a photo. You may sense I'm struggling to let go of garden season, to which I say, you read me like a book.

All that confessed, I promised a few posts ago to keep you up to date on the late melon that sprang forth, unexpectedly, one morning in October -- from a plant that had sprung forth, unexpectedly, from the vermicompost we'd combined with our soil back in early June.

I was trying to give this petite amor every fighting chance, but I eventually had to acknowledge: The nights were getting colder, the leaves were getting crisper, and growth seemed to have stopped at the size of a baseball (shown above, beside a set of keys for perspective). So this past Saturday, I reluctantly harvested. My heart broke to pieces as I plucked her from her viny stem, then pulled that stem from the roots and popped it into a yard-waste bag.

And now for the moment of truth:

There, in all their O'Keefish glory, are the inner chambers of our final melon of the season. Ripe! Ok, the seeds outpace the fruit by probably 3 to 1, but there's dessert in there somewhere: a theory I intend to test this afternoon at lunch.

Farewell, garden season of 2010. You exceeded, you nourished, and through it all, you surprised. Hard to ask more of a garden than that.

Can't quit you, tomatoes

2010-11-06T08:47:00.000-07:00

After last week's midterm-election 'shellacking' (Obama may not be perfect, but he's done some great things, not least of which is introducing gorgeous verbs back into the national vocabulary), I find myself retreating into the comforts of home. One of those is certainly home cooking, but also a waste-not want-not mentality that seems fitting for the winter chill ahead.

Like me, you may find yourself with an abundance of late-harvest tomatoes, fooled by the prolonged summer into ushering themselves into the world, only to encounter near freezing temps while they're still too young to ripen.

Don't despair.

My mother gave me a trick a few years ago, and I'm happy to say it works like a charm. Some of you are intrepid enough to make fried green tomatoes or green tomato jam, but my overextended life makes such magic nearly impossible. I need something simple, quick, and foolproof, and the following seems to be the ticket. So join me in faking out your tomatoes this year. They're not as good as picked right off the vine, but when it's February and you're eating a caprese sandwich straight (ok, nearly straight) from your garden, you won't be as wistful as you may think:

Step 1. Wrap each tomato individually in newspaper and place gently in a cardboard box.

Step 2. When the box is full, fold the top flaps in securely and place it in a dark spot of your basement.

Step 3. Check once a month or so for ripeness (my last attempt took over 3 months and just as I was about to give up, lo and behold, I had splendid red fruit in January).

It's a mystery to me why something that craves heat and light will also respond to its opposite. I know shamefully little about the vegetables I grow, so if you know why this works, I'd welcome the science lesson. For now, though, I'm excited to think about watching the transformation of these sweet heirlooms well into the bitter months of winter. It should make the legislative gridlock a little easier to swallow.

Art Party

2010-10-31T07:33:00.001-07:00

I went to a rally to restore sanity this past Saturday. My own sanity, that is.

This was actually a work event: A celebration of area murals, some restored, some new, all of them in places you might not expect -- on the side of concrete buildings, in doorways of affordable-housing complexes, across from an Auto Zone, under a viaduct. Even the event site was unlikely: the parking lot of a building that houses the mentally and physically disabled.

We had a dozen interactive art exhibits, including my shaker-making workshop. I brought all the stored jars and containers in our house; some dry beans, lentils, and rice; a box of ribbons, buttons, glue, and notions, then showed folks how to put it all together to make their own musical instruments. We eventually paraded down North Avenue, and adults and kids shook those rattles while a drum group played along and a couple of guys with Moroccan horns kept things interesting.

I wore a costume.

Now . . . I'm going to say something I never would have said, wouldn't have even whispered, as recently as two years ago. But there was something pretty liberating about being part of a work event that wasn't overtly ideological.

If you know anything about my job, you know that I spend a minimum of eight hours a day, every day, shoulder-deep in the throes of politics. I don't work for the government, but I work in a community (and am accountable to that community) that's in a political fight for its life. Its response to this fight has been a strident rise in nationalism. There are many who find themselves in a constant state of confrontation, and to give that up is to give up the ghost altogether. At times this response is downright inspirational, and I'm proud to work in a community that is unafraid to raise its voice and demand fairness, equity, and endurance.

At other times -- and in recognizing that I (or what I represent, or how some might interpret what I represent) am often the target of these confrontations -- it gets exhausting, depleting, and sometimes, for me, deeply deeply sad.

I don't want to wrestle these demons here. I've wrestled them internally for the last couple of years, and let me just say there's no easy answer to the questions.

I'll just say that it was refreshing, as a change of pace, to see black, brown, and white kids together -- making shakers, painting on canvas, assembling costumes from prop boxes, making god's eyes, sampling fresh-fruit smoothies and 'ants on a log,' then taking those healthy recipes home with them -- and not having to think or talk explicitly about what it means to have those black, brown, and white kids together, making art that might or might not be reflective of their heritage, and what this all means for their identity or the identity of the community as a whole.

For a few hours of a sunny Saturday morning, groups came together from every background and simply made art. They sang, they danced, they drew, they paraded. Together. No, of course it's not as simple as that -- the personal is the political, and there's no pure space outside of ideology. I believe those things fully in both my heart and mind, but let me tell you it's a heck of a lot easier to be a graduate student talking about those issues than a working person living under their weight, and within their inscription, 52 weeks a year.

Because in the end, simultaneous with those truths, there's also this kid, and this shaker she just made, and the light, thin air around her that filled up her lungs, and mine too.

Doing a lot with a little

2010-10-21T06:25:00.001-07:00

When many of your surroundings look like this, it's nice to see someone go the extra mile.

There's a little strip near us -- full of potential once the economy catches up with itself -- zoned commercial on the bottom, residential on the top. Only thing is, there's not a whole lot of commercial development of any stretch these days, at least not in our neck of the woods. Just ask the guys who stopped me yesterday while I walked to the mailbox. "Hey, is there anyplace to grab a cup of coffee and kill some time around here?"

Umm . . . head scratching, mind going blank, then directing them to the troubled Mexican restaurant down the street, which I'm not even sure is open anymore. Sorry, gents. I'm hopeless.

So my hat goes off to a handful of our neighbors, transforming their retail display space into at least a little something. In one case it's a law office under renovation. The owners put black curtains in the windows and oil paintings in front, creating a nifty exhibit for a local visual artist. You probably can't see her landscapes very well, but these are all scenes from the neighborhood, making this window gallery something of a comment on itself.

In another case, well, I don't know what that is. But trust me it's better than the previous exhibit: 'Exposed nails and cobwebs: A Retrospective.'

None of these displays are going to win any awards. And believe me, a Chamber of Commerce is a long way away. But it's a little something to look at while walking the dog. And when the daycare center finally opens in the former Super Pollo space, that stretch will be filled with color and noise and laughter and breathless running around: The stuff of any thriving corridor, bad economy be damned.

Melon Watch

2010-10-17T10:22:00.000-07:00

You may recall my giddiness earlier this summer, when the zucchini I thought would never bloom turned out to be rogue cantaloupe and butternut squash, sprung forth from the compost we'd added to our soil. For what it's worth, the zucchini never grew, but we ended up with two tasty cantaloupe -- harvested long ago -- and three chubby butternut squash, one of which is helping me fight a cold as we speak in the form of a fragrant soup.

We've had a nice, prolonged summer in Chicago, tricking our tomatoes into continued yields. Still, it's time to start thinking about putting the garden to bed.

But wait, not so fast! As I harvested a large bowl of cherry tomatoes yesterday, I nearly tripped over the little guy above, making a surprise appearance.

If his earlier bretheren are any indication, cantaloupe takes a loooong time to ripen. But the quickness of this cameo may hint at some rare will to live. Maybe he'll mature rapidly, racing the frost we're sure to see by the end of October.

I'll keep you posted on his development, of course, but in the meantime, I ask for your collective good will -- rooting for daily growth visible to the naked eye, for a breakneck transformation from fragile green skin to mottled brown husk. If this cantaloupe makes it, I promise to share.

On mourning an object I didn't know I loved

2010-10-06T06:03:00.001-07:00

I'm a bicycle widow. Last weekend I buried (in the back of the basement) the 21-speed silver hybrid I've had since just 2006. I remarried quickly -- too quickly, perhaps, for what's thought proper in civilized company. This was an arranged marriage, after learning the pain in my left shoulder wasn't a muscle knot at all, but a permanent "cervical disc group protrusion at C6 and C7."

I hate you, C6 and C7.

My newly betrothed -- mandated by my physical therapist -- is a pearly green 8-speed comfort model. Pretty as it may be, it's not the same, not by a long shot. And my reaction to the loss of the old bike? I think I'm actually grieving.

The first bicycle I owned as an adult was a snazzy turquoise number my parents gifted me for my 30th birthday, after I'd met a dreamy guy (whom I'd later marry) -- a former bike messenger and impassioned cycling enthusiast. I doted on that bike. I feminized her. I gave her a nickname (my "velocipede"), tore off all her branded decals, and decorated her frame with silk flowers. She was a tool, sure, but she was mostly an accessory.

When it came time to trade her in ten years later, I never looked back. I didn't mourn. I was excited to meet her new owner, a lanky Frenchwoman who looked far more quirky and exotic riding her than I could ever hope to. I breathlessly collected the credit toward my new bike: A workhorse (see above), the same bike I would ride through my early 40s, that would carry me through 50+-mile days in Maine a couple summers back, and that I moved into storage last week, because riding it exacerbates my symptoms and could aggravate my injury.

That second bike? Eh. It never aesthetically pleased me. It was no kind of showstopper. I never much thought about it to be honest. It ran seamlessly and needed little maintenance. I went through a stretch of flat tires last year, but that I blamed on all the broken glass on our lousy Chicago roads. Never on the bike. In truth, I sort of took that bike for granted. But isn't that, in a way, the best kind of bicycle to have? One that rarely crosses your mind? One that becomes such an extension of your body that riding it is second nature, maybe nature itself?

Day 1 on the new bike, Bike #3 for those keeping track, nearly broke me. I had trouble getting started from a stop position. Once I got rolling, I couldn't pick up any steam. I've never been a particularly fast rider but could generally hold my own. On the new bike, though, people on rickety three-speeds blew by me. Parents carrying their children in kid seats, a blur in front of me as I trundled along, trying to find the right gear with this damn internal gear shifter.

A friend of mine, far more wracked with injury than I am (but nothing that affects his riding; he's a demon on wheels) caught up with me on his way home from work.

"So that's the new bike? What do you think?"

"I feel like I'm riding a Rascal."

I didn't tell him I'd just been crying a little.

But a funny thing happened on Day 2 and 3. Day 2 I learned to get a running start, and hopping on was far less teetering than my inaugural ride. My pain and numbing were even subsiding a little. On Day 3, I actually started enjoying the pace and the upright posture, noticing things I wouldn't have otherwise with my body angled forward and my eyes on the prize: beating that yellow and getting through the light.

Then a bike-shop bad-ass told me a generous story. He's swapped out all his old road bikes for upright models. The reason? "It's the city," he said. "I want my head up and my eyes forward. Otherwise I get reckless. Mistakes get made."

It was the nicest thing a tough guy has ever done for me.

So I guess in a way I'm coming around, a little. Change is tough, and sometimes I want to shout from the rooftops: "I'm too young to be this old!" But of course these changes are part of the roadmap. You live, you experience, you age, you remember. You take what comes, and you make adjustments. And if you're smart and marginally graceful about it, you stay alert to the spoils of that bargain.

I may never ride as fast or as far as I could six months ago. But slow and steady, I continue to ride.

Ho Hum

2010-10-01T13:18:00.000-07:00

(during and after)

Dear Neighborhood,

The thrill is gone. Please find ways to delight me again.

- Your melancholy former fan

In fairness, it's not the neighborhood's fault. It's the same old burg it's always been. Sure, a heap more gentrification to the east, but some pleasant hold-steady closer to home. I guess it's hard not to compare it to where I've just been -- history, topography, majestic vistas, human kindness, street dogs and chickens roaming free.

We even came back to some little gifts from the City. Permit signs in the windows of derelict buildings. The new playlot, finally and gloriously installed at the local P.S. And what ho? The crumbling sidewalk adjacent to us, finally repaired after eight long years of griping about it. (Shall we say it together? 'Election year.' Whatever the reason, I'll take it).

It's been tough to be moved by any of it, though. Maybe it's the news we got: Two great sets of neighbors, moving away in quick succession. Or maybe the fact that my body's falling apart -- a grumpy knee, and now a disc-group herniation in my neck (a permanent condition that requires morning stretches, no heavy lifting, and the unplanned purchase of a pricey new bike). Maybe it's the casually discarded chicken bone that got lodged in Inez's throat this morning, causing gagging/choking/expelling that I thought might be the end of her. Maybe it's the end of harvest season, saying good-bye to our bounty of eggplant and tomatoes. Or some recent frustrations at work? -- Frictions I thought had long ago subsided seeming to rear their ugly heads again.

I guess I could point to a host of causes, but we all know these things are matters of perception. Right now, that repaired sidewalk seems like a dull gray slab of unforgiving concrete. But I remain committed, dear neighborhood, to watching it morph into some kind of tabula rasa, all the more amazing for having not a single flaw -- not a single carved name or set of pigeon prints (in our neighborhood?!) -- in its surface.

Of course it'll be the same old sidewalk. But when my view of it changes, I'm home.

High places

2010-09-21T05:57:00.000-07:00

As vacations go, this one was pretty revelatory. You can't help but see the world differently when you wake up to mountains every morning. Their faces change a thousand times over between sunrise and twilight, so your eyes do as well. As does your breathing, and mine came more easily those two weeks I spent in Peru.

Ok, that's a lie. At least partly. Something else those mountains bring is a quicker heart, shallower breaths, when you're actually up inside them -- navigating a two-foot wide path with steeper drops than you've seen from planes, only a rare barricade to fix you to the ground. I didn't just look at the mountains on this trip. I trekked my way through them. I'm a pedestrian by choice most of the time, but these were very different walks for me, and every day brought a new set of anxieties. Higher altitudes, narrower paths, steeper drops.
Oh my.

One thing I learned is that fear is an unpleasant place for me. Some people get exhilarated by standing on the edges of things. John's one of them. Not me. Not even a little bit. But I walked seven miles of the Inca Trail (by some accounts, the toughest seven miles of the trek) along the edge of the Andes mountains. I got up the next morning and took a white-knuckled bus-ride up and up and up, to look with amazement over Macchu Pichu at daybreak, then climb its rocky staircases, stand on its high terraces, and meander my way through masonry that's withstood hundreds of years of winds, mudslides, earthquakes, El Nino, snows, Spanish conquest, abandonment, excavation, and more recently tourism -- all a mile and a half up from sea level without a single drop of mortar to hold it together.

We didn't stop there. We trekked to the top of a mountain waterfall, stepping out of the way when a group of three enormous, untended bulls needed to pass in the opposite direction. We spent a day hiking the surviving structures of Pisac, and another -- this one so windy it tore pieces of the tile roof from our guesthouse -- at Ollantaytambo, a set of ruins designed in the shape of a llama, which you can see if you climb up the mountain across the way, which we naturally did, resulting in deep intakes of breath and not looking down (something I'd mastered by that point).

We took rides in cabs that passed on the wrong side of the road and invented lanes between lanes. We flew in a 60-seater through the Andes, which shook and tossed that little plane just enough for me to start thinking how lucky I was to have had this experience, just in case it was my last.

And of course, we rested. In the tiny town of Huaran, in what we both agreed was the most pristine and beautiful place we've ever stayed -- one that allowed enough time for profound reflection. Holy Pachacuti! I did that. Me -- a person who can barely breathe when the el train turns a corner too quickly, who can't live in the country because a frog or toad might cross my path.

Peruvians have no fear of heights. They grow up around those mountains. They walk them, farm them, and build their houses on their steep inclines. They tend their animals there, and their animals learn to run across those paths like they're a thousand feet wide. Peruvians, despite abject poverty for many and unforgiving weather for most -- lengthy stretches without rain, and then lengthy stretches with rain alone -- are also some of the kindest, most generous-of-heart people I've ever met. I have to believe it's got something to feeling so tiny in the world, compared to everything else around you.

Peru: Early impressions

2010-09-08T13:46:00.000-07:00

In some ways Peru has one of those other-side-of-the-world effects: Far, far from home, at least in a psychic sense . . . though it's closer than other countries I've visited, like Russia, which felt like something lodged in my memory even before I got there.

It's strange not to be able to drink the water. Or eat a salad. Or scale a short flight of stairs without feeling out of breath from the altitude. It's strange to look out the window and see not tall buildings, but mountains, the very things that surely inspired Chicago's skyscrapers, yet seem almost primordial compared to all that glass, steel, and limestone.

But these very challenges are the things that give this place its sense of place, which for me, is the singular litmus test for a corner of the world worth visiting.

Parades spring up like dandelions here. We followed one down the cobbled streets in front of Cusco's Plaza de Armas this morning -- women in ornate skirts and tiny bowler hats that rested impossibly on top of their heads, men in flashy yellow costumes with epaulets and sequins, still others inexplicably in gorilla suits, and a full brass marching band bringing up the rear. They nearly collided with a second parade that prompted us to shift in the opposite direction. This one was a protest march with dozens of children, parents, and teachers chanting in Spanish about the right to an education without violence. Amazing.

Fireworks and roosters wake us up every morning at 5. That and the sound of barking street dogs. They rove in packs, looking for discarded food and making us fantasize about ditching the contents of our luggage to tote a couple home, cure them of their worms, and give them the homes they surely deserve -- the same homes they'd hate for the forced confinement and order.

And of course there are the ruins. The pre-Columbian, mortar-free masonry that's endured for hundreds, sometimes thousands, of years. We've visited Lima's 4th-century Huaca Pucllana, with its vertical "bookshelf" brickwork, and Cusco's stunning Saqsaywaman (pronounced "sexy woman") at the highest point of what's purported to be the highest city of the world. Machu Picchu still remains a few days away. It'd be stupid for me to try to say something about these sites that hasn't been said before. Just trust me: Everything you've heard is true.

We've experienced the kindness of strangers on this trip. The wobble of mild altitude sickness, the vibrant color of uninhibited cities, the incessant solicitations of street vendors (who gently and kindly take no for an answer), the bumps and tugs of flying over the Andes, the pride of a Spanish word well-used, the fear of traffic with a different set of rules, the awe of other people's religion, the tummy trouble of an altered diet, and the tart pleasures of a Pisco sour.

We've also looked with surprise on the higher grade of American tourist this country seems to attract. Kind and reverent people. People with respect and curiosity. People who speak in a quiet voice. John said it best when he playfully cursed Peru for taking the best of us away from home, where we could collectively be doing some good.

As for us, we continue to amble along, eyes and ears wide open, awaiting the next adventure. This might take the form of a trek along the Inca Trail, or it might be as simple as understanding an overheard phrase in Spanish, or having my stomach steeled for alpaca. Regardless, it's an awfully nice way to celebrate ten years together. Happy anniversary, love. Thanks for seeing the world with me.

The Unluckiest Restaurant in the World

2010-09-02T06:18:00.000-07:00

My heart goes out to this earnest spot. My palate too: Their food is unequivocally lovely. A few years ago the owners bought and refurbished their brick building in the middle of a crummy block. Lots of empty storefronts, little foot traffic, frequent gang skirmishes in the area.

The foodie community embraced this little-restaurant-that-could (the photo above is from those early halcyon days). They hailed the fresh seafood and inventive moles. They honored them with awards and put them on the map. But it was a rocky map at best.

"Meet for dinner? Over there?"

Sure, we neighborhood folks embraced the place, but it couldn't sustain itself as a destination for visitors, and the prices were a little too high for this working-class area to keep them afloat. Last fall, the fate we'd both dreaded and expected came to pass: The owners locked the doors, turned their sign to Closed, and concentrated on their other spot in a north-side neighborhood with far more passersby, and a heap more purchasing power.

Then, surprising news. The place was reopening with a new concept. Inexpensive gourmet tacos with a slew of homemade salsas for customizing. I had the best bowl of pozole of my life there once, and it seemed like all was right in River City.

We did what we could to talk the place up. We got a few friends there, but in fairly short order, the quality declined, the salsas ran out, they pozole was 86'd, and paper was over the windows again.

Three days later, a favorable review ran in the Sun Times. Foodies sought the place out again, only to find it shuttered. Really?!

Just as we made our peace with them being gone for good, a shocking announcement: The place was reopening yet again, going back to their roots with bright, earthy moles and plates large and small. Oh, did I mention their reopening date was two short weeks after the grand opening of the new record store across the street? That weekend featured nonstop live music and hundreds of visitors to the area, many of whom were probably looking for something to eat. The taquerias got their business. The opportunity got missed.

Now, with a rehabbed menu and brave face, they manage to turtle along with maybe four or five tables on a good night. Almost everything I've ordered there has been delicious, though my last visit started having those markings of a restaurant in decline. My tamale was dry, and I'd brought a friend along with me, only to have her notice a rat scurry along the outdoor seating area. This is the city and these things can happen, but why do they always seem to happen to this place?

You have to wonder. Is this one of those right time, wrong place scenarios? A splendid concept with poor execution? Maybe a restaurant on autopilot, with nobody driving the train?

Or maybe it's like that really nice guy we all know: The one who seems like such a great catch but is always unlucky in love. The one we'd love to set up our little sister with, if our little sister were still single. But our little sister isn't single. She's already got a great guy. So we try to entice our single friends, but they're a little cannier than we are. Where we see heart, they see awkwardness. Where we see potential, they see unfinished business. Where we see fragility, they see impotence.

The best this place can probably hope for, I fear, is a few more months in remission. I block out what I imagine their staff meetings to be: Heavy sighs, staff reductions, hanging on for dear life -- maybe even saving up newspaper for the windows. I try to hope for the best, but I fear I should grab my huitlacoche while I can.

Street Envy

2010-08-26T12:30:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the Albany Home Zone. This block, maybe half a mile away, has transformed itself with curb extensions to calm traffic and expand play areas. The home-zone concept, which originated in the UK, appeals to the wonderfully vagabond sensibility of this block, which says streets should be for people first -- not cars.

Fifteen or twenty years ago, when this neighborhood was considered too dangerous to market, a group of socially-conscious friends -- many of them from the cycling community -- started buying property on the block. Those with multi-units drew kindred spirits, until what they'd created was a community within the community.

It was with that critical mass that the block was able to lobby funds for the home zone. I envy them that. I think of how difficult it's been to tackle similar problems on my own block. Even neighbors' petitions for something as simple as speed bumps have run into, well, speed bumps, from car lovers and Libertarians alike.

I've often wondered what we could accomplish with a group of friends together in a finite geography: My own dreams have veered more toward the driftless region of Wisconsin, or maybe metropolitan Detroit. It's easy enough to imagine: A happy enclave of like-minded people, creating a sense of home out of a shared will and vision.

And then I take the fantasy a little further: The potlucks and the barbecues. The coparenting and built-in dogsitting. The reading groups and swapped garden harvests. The knitting groups. The organized bike rides. The spontaneous conversations in the street. The ringing doorbells and telephones. Going gray together. Taking a morning jog and bumping into someone who might ask to join you. The concord and communion. And likely for me, and the challenge to carve out a moment alone.

As I try to catch my breath, I realize: I don't belong in an enclave.

I guess I like choosing between a quick wave and a longer conversation. I like the mirage of anonymity. I might gladly trade Libertarianism (and litterbugs) for speed bumps, but not for consensus, because even though others may stay sharp and curious regardless, I get lazy without something to bristle against.

I like our Sox fan neighbors, our churchgoing neighbors, our foul-mouthed neighbors, our opera-singing neighbors, even our hard-partying and persnickity neighbors. I don't see much potential for sustained collective involvement in projects together. But we sure throw a mean block party. And we managed to create a splendid corner garden, which I have to admit is prettier than speedbumps.

Everyone needs a hobby

2010-08-20T05:32:00.000-07:00

You never know what you're going to stumble across on your way to the local taqueria. These scenes grace the window of what I believe is a loan office on our busiest commercial corridor -- a strip designed more for cars than pedestrians. Then again, if not for taking bustling streets on foot now and then, you'd never come across the lost art of storefront taxidermy, which apparently entices some to take out a loan.

Because I appreciate the handiwork, I'm going to put my fingers in my ears and assume no creatures were harmed in "Raccoon Digs For Toy Surprise," "Squirrel Calls it Maize," or "Lounging Otter with . . . Test Tubes?"

Regardless, I have no room to judge when I'm on my way to a lunch of tacos al pastor.

Look at something pretty, play in the dirt

2010-08-14T07:34:00.001-07:00

We've been waiting years to see some improvement at our local elementary school. It's a beautiful old building named for James Monroe, which makes you think it might have a little more, I don't know, ambition. But for the last few years, the building and its grounds have stagnated. Indifferent principals and lacking resources have made for a lifeless site where there should be energy and vision. It's no wonder the kids sullenly walk into school and often stir up trouble when they leave.

Enter my friend Dawn Marie. She runs a local nonprofit arts agency for neighborhood kids. They teach everything from dance to painting to circus performance to spoken-word poetry. In partnership with a new, enthusiastic principal at the school, she was able to put together a program that would actually get the kids involved in transforming the vista of their school.

First step: A school garden. They built planting boxes out of recycled materials and are now seeing the fruits of their labor come to life. Tomatoes, corn, "the hottest pepper in the world" -- a garden that reflects the cultural heritage of the students. Our new neighbors, Conor and Tim, live across the street from the school and are raising backyard chickens. I was able to connect them to these efforts, and they've already arranged one visit by the kids to learn about chickens, eggs, and the importance of letting animals roam free.

Next step: A mural. I wish I'd taken a Before picture of this cement wall so you could see how desolate it made the playground (really a giant asphalt lot with some broken-down plastic equipment) feel. But refurbished, it's a focal point of the grounds.

Oh, about those grounds: A soft-surface playlot is in progress. They've already started drilling into the concrete to make room for construction. And in the grave left behind by the old playground equipment? An expanded garden!

I'm sympathetic to the hardships most Chicago Public Schools principals are facing. Mayor Daley's Renaissance 2010 program ties a school's survival to the students' performance on standardized tests. Many principals and teachers feel all they have time to do is teach to the test. It's a deplorable way to run public education.

This makes it all the more exciting to see a school -- set in its ways, and grateful for mere survival -- reinvigorated this way. I have to believe, if we're stuck with Renaissance 2010, that these students will fare better on tests because of the new vigor in the school. The improvements remind the kids that they should be defined by more than a gray slab of concrete or Scantron form.

If birds could talk . . .

2010-08-08T06:52:00.000-07:00

A friend walking his dog last week was surprised to stumble on this scene:

Yes, that's a chicken sitting on the sidewalk next to a metal trashcan. The poor girl barely stirred and appeared to be injured. My friend had no luck reaching Animal Control, so he came home and started sending out alerts: First to our mutual friend Noah, an urban gardening enthusiast who keeps a flock of backyard chickens. Concerned, but unavailable.

Second to me, so I sent a note to two newcomers to our block, who also keep a coop. They reached out to the Chicago Chicken Enthusiasts, a Google group well equipped to help with the situation. I was feeling a bit better, so I refocused on my work, assuming our feathered friend would be in good hands soon enough.

Later that afternoon, a second SOS from my friend. The chicken was still in the exact same spot, as was a police officer on his phone, trying to call the proper authorities, and an older Latina woman who claimed the chicken was sitting on a bed of pennies -- a bad omen, she said, and it was best not to touch her since she must be carrying a hex.

Ah, Santeria season. The time of year we often see signs of animal sacrifice throughout the neighborhood -- one of our neighbors once found a dead goat in the dumpster behind his house -- and I have to assume that our chicken may have been a lucky escapee from an impending ritual.

I learned later that she was eventually picked up by a decidedly nonsuperstitious bird rescue organization, who would assess her condition and nurse her back to health.

What a curious time and place we live in, I realized. The collision of dogwalker, police officer, religious observer, and wayward fowl. The idea that you might come across such a creature on a morning walk through the city, and that same city might provide various conduits to resolve this dilemma, as if the world was anticipating it all along.

Our Lady of the Jungle Gym

2010-08-01T06:54:00.001-07:00

Now this is a sign from above I can squarely get behind.

Yesterday, as I walked past this venerable corner church, two adorable kids with posterboards shouted, "Car Wash! Tacos! Car Wash! Tacos!"

"Are you raising money for the playlot?" I asked them.

"No, we're raising money for our church. We think it might close."

Even an athiest like myself took the news right to the breadbasket. This church is the closest thing we have to a community center. Their parishioners can still choose Mass in Spanish, and the priest rides a bicycle. I've voted there, met with my local police officers there, eaten arroz con gandules and potato salad with my neighbors there.

The paradox wasn't lost on me that the same lot they used for the
car wash is the one that promises a green playlot by fall. Their best source of fundraising may be given over to a sorely needed amenity on the block. May the church survive and the O. Henry story play on.

And now back to our regularly scheduled program . . .

2010-07-30T08:24:00.000-07:00

If you read this blog with any frequency, you know I took a break from neighborhood stuff to reflect on a recent trip to Russia. Much has happened in the meantime, and I'm feeling all Rip Van Winkly trying to catch up. It's tough to know where to start.

Here's as good a place as any. One of our most impassioned community activists set off a firestorm recently with this article.

His point was to interrogate our latest neighborhood festival, an arts fair that traverses a two-mile stretch of our main retail corridor, using existing businesses, vacant storefronts, and outdoor spaces to display visual art, music, dance, gardening projects, and various forms of spontanous expression and culture jamming.

Cool, right? Maybe too cool. At least that was the point of this particular activist, who felt the festival strip was being tidily and intentionally divided in half: White hipsters on the more developed end, ethnic others on the more modest end. He called it "artPartheid," and he called it out.

I actually have a lot of respect for this activist. For years he's opened his home to display his own artwork, long before the mods and rockers landed in the neighborhood, serving as a trailblazer for the arts in this community. He's taught art to low-income children in the area. He's always been a spokesperson for diversity, integration, and loving one's neighbor.

He also was on the planning committee for the inaugural version of this festival, which took place last year, turning a tiny art-in-the-park concept into a vast and winding experiment in public intervention.

Then, a fallout between the activist and one of his very good friends, who was the other festival organizer. Then, a literal explosion of gentrification on the east end of the neighborhood despite a crushing recession. Then, the festival being handed over to a marketing company instead of the independent minds who'd hatched the concept in the first place. You can see why the guy would have a beef.

But I found myself wondering, was this the right beef?

I spent a lot of time last weekend walking those two miles of festival. On the grittier north side, I saw Latino art, hip-hop bands, a community mural, and DJ sets. On the glitzier south side, I saw Latino art (including several pieces by the activist himself), hip-hop bands, a community mural, and DJ sets.

Oh, the grittier north side also had the hipster craft market, two full days of ballet performance, an outsider-art exhibit curated by a wealthy eccentric, an independent film festival, a mural created by a group of invite-only street artists, and a much higher density of gallery spaces. The glitzier south side had long stretches of no art space at all, plus a community mural where anyone -- and I mean anyone -- could pick up a paintbrush and add to the pallette.

I will admit: The glitzier south-side music stage had an abundance of indy rock bands, while the northern stage was mostly jazz, soul, and bomba. But both sets of audiences were mixed, and the low turnout at each stage hardly privileged one setting over the other. The third stage in the center was a combination of influences, and the only one that charged admission.

Feeling confused? I guess that's the point.

There's a lot to dispute in our neighborhood these days. Gentrification is coming in like a wave, and rather than creating interventions to help keep development balanced and eclectic, policy is being used as an instrument to boost its homogeneity. Public schools are suffering. People need jobs. Kids are still shooting each other.

I guess in the midst of all this, making an argument about coded spaces at an arts festival, particularly when the codes seem jumbled from the outset, strikes me as stirring the wrong pot. Don't get me wrong: If his observations rang true, and the division between the powerful and powerless held up, I would've have seen this fest as the slippery slope. But in interesting ways, it actually bristled against where the neighborhood seems to be going. It brought value to what the market has devalued (like long-empty storefronts and wasted fields and parking lots). It seemed to integrate where the neighborhood wants to separate.

I have to give credit to this activist for starting the conversation, though. It's a dialogue we sorely need to be having if we don't want to become the next Wicker Park. I appreciate that people are paying attention.

All that said, my favorite festival installation wasn't planned by the outside marketing company and wasn't in any brochure. It was a makeshift swing someone hung from a tall steel railroad platform. Children and adults of every stripe stumbled upon it and took a go, laughing and swinging as the elevated train roared by overhead.

It was a good reminder to us all: In a world where time is charging forward, there's still room for simple, poignant, and decidedly human interventions, so long as we create them.

One Final Postcard: From Peterhof

2010-07-25T04:52:00.001-07:00

Our final afternoon in St. Petersburg (which now seems like a million years ago, like I might as easily have danced through the Russian woods with bears) was one I probably wouldn't have picked for myself. Our hosts wanted to give us one last taste of something splendid, so after our brief tour of the Hermitage, we boarded a boat for Catherine the Great's summer palace, in what was once her summertime refuge in Peterhof.

Peterhof is about a 45-minute boat ride from the city center. Getting there is a study in Russian urban planning. The move toward suburbanization hasn't taken hold in Russia, so the farther you go from the city, the more derelict the landscape becomes. The grounds of Peterhof are the exception, and the sheer amount of wealth that once accumulated there -- and the fact that the royal family claimed every inch of it for a massive, ornamented palace and its rolling grounds -- tells the tale. As does the working-class town that has taken shape around it, and the high iron fence that separates the two.

You pay to ride the boat. You pay again to enter the grounds. You pay to eat, and to tour any of the interior spaces of the palace. And boy, do people pay. Thousands of tourists arrive everyday for the privilege of walking the grand staircase to the palace, snapping photos, and wandering the gardens and fountains of what is often referred to as the Russian Versailles.

An exhausted Lev was along for the ride (he'd partied till dawn the day before), as was sweet Svetya, and wonderfully awkward Pasha, who practiced his English by shouting staccato words and pointing, making sure we didn't miss things. "Duck . . . duck!" he said, pointing to some waterfowl in a fountain. "Train!" he said, to the passing choo-choo carrying children from one garden to the next. "Finland!" to the land mass across the horizon as we departed the boat.

If I had a do-over for that day, I might've opted for a simple boat ride along St. Petersburg's canals, finding a little slow quiet in an otherwise frenetic city. Maybe I would've broken off from the group, walking through Vasilievsky Island, which is rumored to be sleepier and more residential than the rest of St. Petersburg. But had I done that, I would have missed taking virtually every form of transportation known to man (all tolled, we'd ridden boat, taxi, city bus, commuter train, local metro, and of course our own two feet that day; 13 hours later, we'd be on a plane). And I would've missed key moments with arguably the most important part of this entire trip: the people.

With that, I want to give the final words of this trip log to one of my favorite people from this visit -- beautiful Nastya, who shared overnight train berths with us and prompted that memorable nightcap in Nizhny Novgorod. This is from a note I received just after leaving Russia:

During our meeting and later I was thinking about importance of human sympathy and minimal meaning of national mentality. Let philosophers and politicians think about our differences, but I am sure that it was my great pleasure to have conversation with you, to understand you even feeling a lack of words.

Indeed.

Postcard from St. Petersburg

2010-07-21T06:13:00.000-07:00

Of course Moscow is known to be a fascinating city, and Russia has a storied history in art, in battle, and in politics. But they always say, the true showpiece of the country is St. Petersburg.

I went into my trip with exactly these expectations. St. Petersburg would be the final leg of the visit, and I imagined it would put an exclamation point on all that had come before it. Russia yes, but more beautiful, more lively, more culturally rich. We were to be there during the "white nights," and with at most two hours of darkness per night, the city never went to sleep.

I don't mean to look a gift metropolis in the mouth, and by no means is St. Petersburg ho-hum. Quite the opposite, in fact. Maybe, for my taste, too much the opposite. Architecture so ornate it's like a cityscape of wedding cakes. Tour busses clogging the streets, transporting people to Peterhof, the Hermitage, the Mariinsky Theater, or the Palace District. Souvenir stands and sushi restaurants around every corner.

I guess, for me, the city is somewhat overdetermined. Everywhere you look and listen, there's something. Something gilded, something blatant. It was a space I felt a little challenged to occupy. White nights, but no white space.

It was the kind of city with asphalt parking lots in front of its most treasured buildings. The kind of city where virtually every menu is translated into English. The kind of city where you might bump into Adrien Brody looking at art, then get yelled at by his bodyguard for taking what you think are surreptitious pictures.

More a European than a Russian city, in ways, though I'd never want to efface the Russian tenor of the place. It just felt like a city I'd visited before. I guess this might have been a comfort at some point in my life. For this trip, though, it left me hungering for my earlier experiences, which had jumbled up my roster a bit. I've never been to Asia, to Africa, or to South America, so Russia was pretty far afield to me. I liked feeling like I was in a different corner of the world. I liked it less when tour busses and movie stars maneuvered right into the center of it.

So what did I do? Well, I can admit this to you, since we're friends . . . but I bought souvenirs, I ate sushi, and I went to see "Swan Lake." Oh, and did I mention those snapshots I took of Adrien Brody at the Hermitage? In the end, it'd be plain old pretext to see myself as anything other than a tourist in Russia.

And maybe being a tourist is no bad thing, unless you do bad things with it. I'd like to think we escaped being ugly Americans, but who can say? It's the locals who get to make that call. One thing's for sure. We were hardly the only tourists in St. Petersburg.

One last note, before I put this to bed: I think it's important to embrace our inner tourist now and then, maybe especially in the places we actually live. It's equally important to imagine, even in a starstruck way, how it must be to live in the places we're lucky enough to visit.

Postcard from Laguna South, Chkalovsk Region

2010-07-16T06:00:00.000-07:00

I know I've been fawning so far. The parks, the transport, the people of Russia! So lovely and pristine. So heartbreakingly perfect. Ok, CP, we get it: Everything's better in Russia. And true enough, I'd been gobstopped. But I hadn't yet been to "Laguna South."

We'd gone by taxi about a half hour from the hydrofoil landing strip. We were to stay that night in a new eco-lodge being developed by Maxim (the Ayn Rand enthusiast of the last post) as part of the tourism effort in the region.

I suppose it was a beautiful place. I'm no real fan of river environments -- have always prefered oceans and lakes -- but this was a placid setting dotted with high-end cabins and all the amenities: Fluffy down pillows, European baths, exposed wood, air conditioning, bike rentals, and an authentic Japanese spa on the premises.

You may remember that a storm had knocked out all the power in the area, the lodge no exception. We hauled our luggage up flights of stairs in the dark, then pulled back the curtains to let the last glimpses of natural light into our rooms. No air conditioning, naturally, so we opened all the windows, enough for swarms of hungry mosquitos to fly in through missing screens. Down went the windows.

Then, an unwelcome discovery: The plumbing was all electronically controlled, so we had neither running water nor flushing toilets. We bought the last of the bottled water from the front desk and used it sparingly to wipe the stickiness from our skin, hopeful for plumbing by morning.

The hotel managed to get the generator going for an hour and decided to open the spa. Guests headed in droves to our only source of light and water, stripping down to Turkish towels (we Americans), bikinis (Russian women), and postage-stamp Speedos (Russian men of various shapes and sizes). A former member of the British Parliament -- also a proud misogynist -- who'd tagged along with us all the way from Golitsyno decided to tag his way into the spa, fully clothed to our various states of undress, and carrying a half dozen warm beers, which he proceeded to drink on his own when he didn't find any takers. That was our cue to beat it out of there, and we fled to our rooms for a decent night's sleep.

In the morning, I took a jog in the murky air and bumped into Raul, a member of our American delegation, who pointed out a single ramshackle building on the outskirts of the grounds with a family still living there.

"Hotel workers?" I asked him.

"I was thinking last hold-outs," he said.

It was so plainly obvious I just hadn't seen it. Families had lived on this land before, of course. This entire settlement was the probable result of several brokered deals and one that apparently wouldn't be brokered. The goats and chickens weren't authentic additions; they were the remains of the day.

We were still without plumbing, so I dabbed my skin with last night's damp towel -- my bottled water was gone -- then headed down for the day's agenda. After a few hours of meetings in stifling rooms, it was, at last, time to leave Laguna South. Several of our Russian coutnerparts were staying behind, and they waited with us for our delayed taxis, courteous to the last.

Oh, with one exception . . .

A high-ranking member of the Higher School of Economics, who'd traveled with us to the lodge, had been drinking for the last several hours. He tripped over himself and slurred in broken English, then gyrated his hips, making suggestive comments to us, the American women, who struck him as easy prospects.

Our taxis pulled up just as a storm moved into the area. We spent the next 90 minutes in a series of small, outdated sedans, drivers chain smoking and passing cars on the wrong side of the road, nearly hydroplaning through sheets of water as cars sped toward us the opposite direction.

"I'm going to die here," I thought. Here in the middle of rural Russia, with my last memory being the stench of unflushed toilets and the pelvic thrusts of a soused director.

Suffice it to say we broke open more than a few Russian beers and celebratory chocolate bars in the berth of our overnight train. St. Petersburg was yet ahead of us, and a shiner on the eye of the trip was now mercifully in the past.

Postcard from the Weirdest Day of My Life

2010-07-11T06:26:00.000-07:00

First, you need to imagine 11 people, American and Russian both, with luggage, looking at one ramshackle minivan, trying to figure out how to puzzle themselves into that confined space for a two-hour ride into the hinterlands. Like most things in Russia, it simply gets figured out. Guided by our driver, we crammed ourselves in, Tetris style, luggage on our laps or piled so high that the person sitting nearest had to push the bags back periodically to avoid being buried alive.

Outside our windows, smokestacks gave way to green gardens and heavy patches of forest, punctuated by the occasional gas station or frenetic roadside marketplace. We were headed to the Chkalovsk region, named for its most famous inhabitant, Valery Chkalov, who piloted the first non-stop flight from Russia to North America in 1937.

This is Russia's equivalent of Kitty Hawk, and we were visiting to observe one of our Russian colleague's working projects: An effort to build tourism in the region around this story of its local hero and its setting on the banks of the Volga. This colleague, Maxim (who repeatedly mentioned his love of Ayn Rand), was hosting an annual competition for local children to pay homage to Chkalov's legacy. Last year it was a writing contest. This year it was visual art.

We arrived to learn that a thunderstorm had moved through a couple days earlier. The village was remote enough that they were still awaiting the return of electricity. No matter, though. This was Russia, and they figure things out. There was perfectly adequate daylight for our sessions. The rest we'd think about later.

We were greeted by a shy tour guide in a fantastic pink pantsuit. She gave us a guided tour of Chkalov's family home, a tiny cottage with many original features in tact.

Then it was on to the aviation museum next door for the arts award ceremony. And that's when things became wonderfully, deliciously strange.

Sure, this was a local celebration that would have happened with or without our attendance. But the arrival of Americans was clearly something of a novelty. We were given VIP seats in the front row. Children giggled as they looked in our direction. They referred to the day as an "international event." And then, a town official, in the shiniest suit I've ever seen, sang us a song of welcome.

These young women did a drill-team routine in white go-go boots and vintage stewardess uniforms.

These children in full make-up sang a song of tribute to Chkalov, complete with choreography of arms outstretched like the wings of a plane.

Awards were handed out to the winners, including a special recognition for a pre-teen who connected aviation technology to the rise of the sport of motocross, and entered as her submission a dirty jacket and helmet positioned on a chair. To truly understand the wonder of such a thing, you should know that all the other pieces were either drawings or paintings of planes. The grand-prize winner explored the same themes in quilting.

From there, it was on to a tour of the village's main economic-development engine: an embroidery factory, where every stitch had once been done by hand -- we got a fascinating demonstration of those original methods -- but now, with waning demand for this traditional art form, they've been forced to turn to machines. In the last 10 years, the factory has eliminated 90% of its staff.

Our final stop was what had been, during WWII, a top-secret manufacturing facility for military aircraft. Russia makes no secret of national pride for its war endeavors, and rather than let this one disappear, they've repurposed the building and readapted its technology. Half is now a museum for old jets; the other half currently manufactures what they hope will be the linchpin of their tourism industry . . . The hydrofoil.

Each of us got a 15-minute tour along the Volga in this bad boy, which skimmed the surface of the water at high speed -- a breathless and breathtaking ride that town officials will eventually charge about $35 for, but we happily received with their compliments.

Postcard from Nizhny Novgorod

2010-07-08T05:36:00.000-07:00

Russia's fourth largest city doesn't feel like a city at all. Nizhny Novgorod features cobblestoned streets, an active pedestrian corridor, and a three-story building profile at best. Oh, it also features children on sluggish ponies and a woman who carries an owl down the street. If not for all that open-air wildlife, it might feel more like Madison, or Galway -- certainly more like a small European town than a sizable Russian metropolis. We slowed our pace and breathed more easily. It was that kind of place.

We were there to meet with graduates of the State Higher School of Economics and learn about their development projects in the region. The city had certainly seen better days -- a struggling economy has hit Russia, as it has so many other places -- but I fell in love with Nizhny's shabby charms. I also fell in love with its microbrewery, where we were treated to lunch, and despite a full afternoon ahead of scheduled meetings, encouraged to enjoy a beer of our choice (I picked a rich, heady stout, which was served in a mug the size of a lunchbox).

That night, after a group dinner at a restaurant so uniquely appointed you're actually prohibited from taking pictures there, Nastya and Lev tried to rally folks for a digestive walk through town. One by one, early-bird Americans and convivial Russians alike, declined their invitation.

What the hell? I thought. When will I be in Russia again? When else will I receive such an earnest request? Off I went with two new friends and thick language barriers between us, just the evening air to glue us together.

The night was the perfect temperature, where you can feel the breeze on every hair of your skin but you don't quite need a sweater. The moon was clear over the steep hill we walked to reach the center of town, where women's heels clicked against stone pavers and people streamed in and out of restaurants and cafes. We ended up in a local tavern, and after the vodka we'd shared at dinner and a petite beer (I know my limits) at the bar, we loosened up and made our best attempts at communication. I have no idea if any of us truly understood the stories being told across that table, but we laughed deep, gutteral belly laughs, and we flirted a little, the way you do when you realize this is life, happening to me, this very second.

We left the bar after midnight, only to discover dark, deserted streets - it was Monday, and a work night for the area -- where we'd hoped to find a cab for the four miles back to the hotel. No luck.

With quick thinking and an uncharacteristic take-charge attitude, Lev flagged down the first car he saw, negotiated with the driver in Russian, and Nastya and I hopped in the back seat while Lev took the front. This will be a great story if I live to tell it, I thought. I'd basically just hitchhiked in Russia without speaking a word of the language except 'hello' and 'thank you,' which wouldn't have served me well in a worst-case scenario. I asked Nastya if this was common practice, and though I had to try out several different synonyms for 'common,' she finally replied, "Quite usual. Yes. Just not to do alone."

Sure enough, after a nice, smooth ride, we were safely back at the hotel. Lev handed the driver a few bills and exchanged pleasantries with him.

I realize I'm a person who needs to learn to say No. I tend to be overprogrammed, and I hate to let people down. But I'm also someone who needs an occasional Yes in my back pocket, especially to those things I tend to resist: spontaneity, late nights, situations beyond my control. My Yes served me well in Nizhny Novgorod.

Postcard from the Moscow Metro

2010-07-05T13:49:00.000-07:00

A Moscow thunderstorm helped me to indulge one of my great loves of travel: Other cities' public transportation systems. Understandably, a ride through the Metro wasn't the first priority of my traveling companions -- we take the train every day in Chicago, after all -- but it was raining and they took the suggestion with aplomb. Off we went to seek the closest station as our starting point.

Down, down, down we descended (if you're a Russian with vertigo, you take the bus). Portions of the Moscow Metro were built during the Cold-War. The deep tunnels were to have served as a shelter in case of nuclear detonation.

For the American equivalent of $1.20, we hopped on the train, then off again, traveling from station to station to see what treasures were in store for us. In the oldest stations, proudly and lovingly restored, you can't miss the twin themes of Russian nationalism and architectural extravagance. Mosaics, stained glass, bronze sculpture, terra-cotta ceiling detail, and portraits of Lenin decorate these underground troves of commuter activity. It's enough to mark a transit enthusiast for life.

It all reminded me of an incident from several years ago, long before my transit fixations took hold. I'd been asked to escort the writer Grace Paley on a visit to the University of Kansas. We were talking about New York City, her home base, and I told her that when I traveled there, I always avoided the subway because I wanted to stay above ground, among the life of the city.

"Oh, but Christy," she rightly corrected me. "The subway *is* the life of the city."

Gracy Paley would have been at home in Moscow.

Postcard from Moscow

2010-06-30T17:20:00.000-07:00

Imagine an archetypal day in Moscow. (Ok, those of you who have actually been to Moscow need to recuse yourselves).

At least in our American imaginations, it might look something like this: Gray and misty. Crowds of people pushed and prodded, worn down from years of toil, weather, and totalitarian rule. Tall, colorless Soviet-bloc architecture as far as the eye can see, old sheets and trousers swaying from laundry lines strung from all those identical windows.

Now. Turn those assumptions on their head. Sure, Moscow had its moments of gray. And true enough, the air can get a bit clogged with smoke and vehicle exhaust. Cars rule the streets here, and city officials are considering 10-lane roads to accommodate the traffic.

But turn off any of those thoroughfares and you'll find an instant refuge from the chaos. You're among the friendliest people, the greenest gardens, the most eclectic architecture, and the most spirited public art you've encountered in any city before.

From the flower beds and gold-domed cathedrals of the Kremlin, to the placid boulevards of Chistiye Prudi, to the commuter hum of the Moscow Metro, to the vast green spaces (dotted with old military tanks) of Victory Park, this place is "City" writ large. And we took in all of it we could on foot, which is the best way, to my thinking, to experience an urban polyglot like Moscow.

I left a piece of my heart in Moscow, mainly with the people we met who call it home. Shy, red-headed Natalia. Sweet, simple Lev. Agreeable Pasha, who smiled at the world. Beautiful Nastya, with her contagious laugh and knack for storytelling on overnight trains. Fetching Anna, in her crisp white shirts and impeccable English. And of course Natasha, who went beyond interpreter to become both tour guide and caretaker to four American shutterbugs, who occasionally had to pinch ourselves when we realized, Here we are.

Postcard from Borodino

2010-06-28T05:53:00.000-07:00

On our last day in Golitsyno, Natasha invited us to join her on a day trip to Borodino, the site where the Russian army halted Napoleon's forces in 1812. Russians take their monuments seriously, and like most things in the country, these are larger than life. Natasha told us they were destroyed twice before but being rebuilt again in the nineties. Though shiny and new, they're no less hallowed or historical than if they'd been around since the mid-19th century.

They're also a favorite for new brides and grooms, who will generally travel with their photographer and wedding party -- Russian weddings don't have the American equivalent of bridesmaids and groomsmen, just a best man and maid of honor, the latter of which wears a short, bright dress and a pageant-like banner around her torso -- and have photos taken in front of each memorial. We watched as one couple stood with arms outstretched, mimicking flight, as they posed before of an obelisk with a wingspread eagle on top. We hoped they might crawl down to the underground bunker or walk the top of the earthen barricade that gave the Russian soldiers a place to retreat between shootings. They refrained, but that didn't keep us from our own explorations. We regretted that we'd miss battle-reenactment season, which reportedly happens each fall.

Our final stop was the Saviour Borodino Monastery, where Orthodox nuns walked in hunched silence in black habits. It was the quietest place we encountered in Russia, a nice refuge from Borodino's entry point, where we bought matreoshka dolls and enjoyed a Russian ice cream novelty.

I'm not generally a fan of bombast, particularly of the military variety. But this one certainly came about honestly. So give me your vaunting monuments, Russia. You can count on my awe in return.

Postcard from Golitsyno

2010-06-24T18:12:00.000-07:00

Our first few days in Golitsyno -- we were there to attend a seminar sponsored by the Moscow School of Political Studies -- were marked by longing. Longing for the sluggish trains that made the one-hour trip multiple times a day into Moscow, where we imagined much more exotic things to occupy our time.

But we were there to be students. Learners. Observers of the community-development projects that program participants were bringing to life in their own regions. It may sound nice on paper, but after several hours listening to depleted translators in hot, overcrowded rooms, we felt worn down, ready to see the capital that buzzed with activity just an hour away, like a mirage. We figured that's where the action was, and we felt stuck: no common language, no familiar food, no real sense of active purpose.

Over the course of our five days in Golitsyno, though, we developed a gradual but profound affection for our humble dorm, tucked back in the remnants of the Russian woods. We attended lectures by regional experts on the current political dynamics in Russia. We met heads of state and independent journalists. We drank dark beer at the little canteen on campus, with its rustic interior and red tablecloths.

We took walks into the "town" of Golitsyno, really more a glorified tent city, a canopied swap-meet of synthetic clothes, kitchen goods, baskets, and shoes, plus an occasional produce vendor, sitting on a milkcrate, with homegrown radishes or scallions for sale. Our guide Natasha lamented the Baskin Robbins that had just moved into the area. We didn't dare tell her we popped in one afternoon and treated ourselves to pistachio cones to beat the heat.

Our last night on campus was spent in the seminar's closing ceremony, a protracted affair scheduled to last 45 minutes, but lingering on for over two hours (I never quite got used to Russia time). Afterward, we were treated to a lavish dinner in the institute's cafeteria, where Mikhail, our favorite interpreter indulged his second love: singing in the tradition of Edith Piaf. The bolder students danced and danced while vodka shots were passed around.

As the music faded, Lena, the school's founder -- an imposing woman in gigantic, blue-tinted glasses -- told us how proud she was of the school and how worried for its financial future. There are no easy funding sources in Russia, and maverick programs like hers have to patch together outside contributions to get by. Lena pointed to Olga, a young woman we developed a friendship with (she spoke English better than most, and we shamefully had no Russian at our disposal), and said, "You see Olga? I love her. She lives in Caucuses. Near Chechnya. Every day, she doesn't know what will come. Explosions. Terrorism. What about her husband and children? Anything can happen. But here she is. She shows up, she smiles, and she's alive."

With Olga at our side, we spent the final hours of our final night watching the World Cup match between the US and England with a group of young people representing Moscow, St. Petersburg, Ukraine, Croatia, the northern Caucuses, Bulgaria, the UK, and Azerbaijan. USA fans were clearly outnumbered -- I momentarily considered defecting myself -- but we watched in good humor, cheering on our respective teams, playfully mocking our adversaries (and them us), and swooning collectively over the quick camera shots of Beckham in a suit. We raised our glasses to every goal, and we traded barbs in our borrowed languages.

Our adventure had begun.

From Russia, with love

2010-06-22T17:18:00.000-07:00

About 15 years ago, I had a dream that I was walking along the campus I attended as a graduate student, and a friend approached me, completely out of breath, saying he had an airline ticket to Moscow and it was mine if I wanted it, but I needed to leave right then and there -- no time to notify my boss, my students, my family, or friends. I fretted for a few minutes -- how could I leave town so recklessly? -- but in the end I grabbed the ticket and hightailed it out of Dodge. The plane landed in the heart of Red Square, with a pristine, technicolor view of St. Basil's Cathedral.

I was a teaching assistant at the time, every bit my anxious father's daughter, and hardly the impetuous type. Clearly this dream was less about Moscow than about opening myself to a new way of being: freer, more spontaneous, less worried about the world and my tight swaddling within it.

Still, I've been haunted by the image of Moscow itself ever since. Russia: a mythic, yet totally modern place. Larger than life. The stuff of both storybooks and international incidents. An enemy. A changeling. A mother. A stratosphere unto itself.

It never occured to me I'd actually get there, but lo and behold, two weeks ago today, I stepped off a United Airlines Airbus into the outskirts of Moscow. It'd be another few days before I made it to Red Square, the stuff of my fantasies this last decade and a half.

Can I tell you a secret? I was horribly unmoved. The grounds leading up to St. Basil's are clogged with tourists and souvenir stands. You can bargain for matreoshka dolls and Russian faux fur hats. Actors dressed like Lenin and Stalin wander the grounds, offering to pose next to you in a picture for a handful of rubles. The cathedral facade was recently restored, so it almost seemed artificial, like something you'd be more likely to find in Las Vegas. A facsimile or sound stage.

It would take me a few days longer to realize that Russia can't be contained within that image of St. Basil's twisting rooftops. It bleeds far beyond the standard iconography. And it's that very beyond that I fell in love with.

With your permission, I plan to do some retrospective blogging these next few posts, trying to capture the experience of my 12 days in Russia, which brought me to metro centers, rural hinterlands, and so much in between. Given the jetlag and my return to workaday life, the experience is already starting to fade. I'd like to harness it here, and also let it chip away a little, the way I wish they'd let St. Basil's chip away, so it seemed to contain some history, some marks of its lengthy tenure on the map.

I didn't take this photo this morning, but I could have . . .

2010-06-06T06:10:00.000-07:00

. . . or at least one a lot like it. Ok, it's true, this image is from India (technicalities, technicalities), but that doesn't take away from the fact that I bumped into a bike rickshaw a lot like this one -- handmade and beautifully unbranded -- while I was walking Inez this morning around 6.

It was parked in front of a house I've always admired, with at least four jerry-rigged tall bikes locked up along the fence, and usually a bunch of pierced, gritty roughnecks sharing a smoke on the front porch. Sometimes you'll see one of the guys hop on his bike and ride away, towering over the ubiquitous vans and SUVs, hightailing it down the street, weaving through traffic, generally doing whatever navigation needs to be done, since by the way, the bike has no brakes.

That particular block is pretty ganged up. So I've always liked the fact that this group of guys found their way to that apartment, and they seem to be sticking around for a while. Between the nuns to the south and these tattooed badasses to the north, the gangbangers have their work cut out for them.

But back to the rickshaw. It's a kinder, gentler apparatus than you usually see at that house. Bright yellow. Handpainted. And when I went back to take a photo before 8am, it was already gone. Which means its driver is a morning person, probably on his way to work.

I leave for Russia on Tuesday, and in my ideal world, I skip the plane altogether, and that cheerful rickshaw spirits me toward the eastern seaboard, across the mighty Atlantic, over the northern portions of the European continent, across the former nations of the Soviet bloc, and directly into Red Square.

Surprise!

2010-06-01T06:11:00.001-07:00

How to pull off a secret wedding? Keep it in the neighborhood.

1) Hold it on your 40th birthday on the back patio of your favorite local watering hole. People will expect you to be dressed up fancy. They'll expect the free-flowing wine, bbq fare, and even the pretty flowers on the tables. They won't be expecting the nuptials. Zing!

2) Enlist people you know to take the photos, cook the vittles, and even officiate the ceremony.

3) Share the secret only on a need-to-know basis. The bar owner should know, as should his lovely wife, who may plant a few extra flowers in the back patio in advance. The officiant (yours truly) and photographer must know. The caterer, not so much. He's happy to cook up a storm thinking it's just your birthday.

4) Invite friends from far and wide, as well as just around the corner. The former wouldn't miss it since they've travelled so far. The latter will pop over since it's so close by. They might even bring homemade ice cream or strawberry rhubarb pie, it being your birthday and all.

5) Raise as many glasses as you like. It's walking distance home.

Congratulations, Tracy and Joe! This was one for the history books.

Yard Sale Study in Contrast

2010-05-29T13:03:00.000-07:00

Case I.

Funky sweater found folded on blanket on the ground. Buyer asks seller how much. "Umm, I don't know. $5?"

A little more than buyer wants to gamble. Buyer puts sweater carefully back on blanket.

"$3?" returns seller.

"Ok, sure. I could do $3."

Seller goes silent for a moment, then snaps, "It's from Anthropologie, you know."

Buyer almost puts sweater back on principle, thinking "No, not exactly. It's technically from your front yard, on top of a blanket." Buyer mulls, then hands seller $3, hoping the sweater fits. Buyer says thanks and good-bye. Seller says nothing.

***

Case II (just down the street from Case I).

Collection of random flatware in a cardboard box. Buyer finds four matching soup spoons. Buyer likes soup.

Buyer approaches seller, who turns out to be someone buyer vaguely knows, and also Time Out Chicago's 2010 Bartender of the Year. Buyer has consumed many of his delicious cocktails over the years. Buyer says hello to Bartender of the Year and asks how much. Bartender of the Year replies, apologetically, "I don't know. Maybe a dollor for the four?"

Buyer gleefully hands Bartender of the Year a crisp dollar bill. Buyer is happy. Seller is friendly. Seller volunteers no information as to the commercial source of the spoons. Buyer longs for soup season.

Both items are now safe and sound at home -- new aquisitions to spruce up the place and its owner. Buyer admittedly loves both, but will always love the soup spoons a little bit more.

Better than Birds

2010-05-28T06:21:00.001-07:00

Our next-door neighbors just installed a swingset in their side yard, so this morning, while hastily downing my coffee and cereal, I got an unexpected serenade through the open window: a medley of songs including "Chicago" and a couple others I didn't recognize, probably from the Montessori school the girls attend. They didn't know I could hear them, so they really belted it out there, swingset creaking with each rotation.

Can I just say there's nothing better, at the end of hard week, than two unfettered girls, swinging and singing to open the day . . .

What would Umberto Eco have to say?

2010-05-12T05:26:00.000-07:00

Here's a random sampling of signs on my block . . .

We recently learned that burglars tend to avoid blocks with signs like this in the windows. Then again, what does it say about a block with multiple signs like this in the windows? No matter. This is actually our front window, so we've made our peace with the implications. (Please ignore the peeling paint on the trim. It's not negligence. It's character) :-).

Probably the most common genre in the neighborhood. Sometimes it's there because it's true (I'm talking to you, Spot). Sometimes it's acting as a crime deterrent. And sometimes -- because of City ordinances that have been flirted with over pitbulls and other designated breeds -- it's to take preventative steps to avoid fines or harsher penalties.

This banner's been up since last summer. Either the supply of rental units far exceeds the local demand, or there's something terribly wrong with this place. Either way, after you get used to seeing something for this long, you almost stop noticing it, which makes me wonder if they've even had a call since last September.

This just appeared in the basement window three houses north of us. While I don't appreciate the commanding tone, I'm sort of charmed by the concept of Senor Jesus Christ, which makes him seem like a regular guy -- you know, the kind who mows his lawn from time to time, has a parakeet for a pet, and tips his hat when he passes.

This sign has clearly been here for longer than I have, but this morning was the first I'd ever noticed it. This particular building has been burglarized twice in the last month.

There are plenty of security-company signs on the block, but this is the sweetest and cleverest. To be honest, I don't know whether this is an actual security company or a variation on the Beware-of-Dog theme. But maybe that's the idea. Keep the thieves guessing, and they'll move on. For what it's worth, this house is directly next door to the building mentioned above.

A Mother's Day Salute to Someone Who's Earned It

2010-05-09T06:21:00.000-07:00

This is a day to honor our mothers, and while I celebrate my own mother and one living grandmother (who at 90 continues to cheer on the Mets and win big at bridge), my indefatigable sister Jennifer and sister-in-law Colin, my friends with children they've produced and children they've lovingly adopted, and those who may be childless but still unparalleled nurturers, I also want to make special mention of a woman from this block.

In 1971, Lillian Braun was the first woman hired to give drivers' tests for the State of Illinois. She retired last year at 85, and almost every morning, she walks down the 13 steps in front of the drab three-flat where she lives, gets in her car, and drives away. It's unclear where she goes, only that she goes -- undeterred by age, and always dressed pertly with her auburn hair done and make-up just so.

Now if you know me, you know I'm not much of a car person. And I'll admit the thought of an 86-year-old woman behind the wheel, particularly a woman I once saw take a spill on the sidewalk, doesn't fill me with rapture. But I also understand that for Lillian, the automobile is the ultimate sign of independence. It provided her a job and a livelihood, and now, in her ninth decade of life, it provides her continued mobility. After administering license tests for 38 years, she's earned the right to jangle those keys.

John and I walked by her house yesterday, and there she was in the doorway, smiling earnestly despite the rain. "Happy Mother's Day!" she shouted across the lawn. Happy Mother's Day to you, Lillian. I saw you driving off again this morning before the rest of the block was even awake. Hope you're headed someplace special, or at least enjoying the road.

Close Your Eyes

2010-05-07T09:32:00.000-07:00

Last night I dreamed that I was riding my bike due west of our house, on a block that in real life is pretty volatile. Gang activity, drug dealing, a handful of foreclosures. Not an easy place to be.

In my dream, the street was filled with fly-by-night businesses. A cell phone store here. A tire repair there. A liquor store, an electronics shop, a handful of t-shirt places, clearly fronts for something else. But as I turned the corner I caught a glimpse of something called the L*M*N Bakery.

Nah, I thought. Impossible. But it nagged at me. So I walked my bike back to the same little stretch. Along the way I passed a record store specializing in vinyl records, with a bunch of rare finds in the window. Well, well, well, I thought. Where did you come from?

Back on the original block, so bustling with business I was amazed to have missed it in the first place, was an open-air fish market. The proprieters wore chefs' hats and played it like barkers, calling to the crowd and proudly holding up whole salmon and flounder shiny with seawater.

"How long have you been open?" I asked. "Since about noon," one of them said. "No . . . I mean how long have you been here in this location?" "Going on about three months," he said, then turned his head to make another sale.

Behind the fish market was a maze of other stalls, a huge food market, stretching back as far as the alley, and who knows how far beyond that.

This is the kind of dream that's probably better to have than to wake up to, the kind that makes you want to slide back into sleep. Of course I've had this very dream about my house dozens of times: the extra room you didn't know was there, snaking back to reveal something miraculous, maybe a room full of books, a beautiful antique carpet, a wine cellar, a perfect reading room.

But to have this kind of dream about my neighborhood says a lot about my sense of situatedness here. Home writ large, for me, is the neighborhood. And though it's sad to wake up and realize that no such market exists, and the little bakery selling lemon cupcakes and cardamom cookies is the stuff of my subconscious . . .

. . . [I interrupt this entry with breaking news. As I was trying to figure out that last sentence, I took a breather to read some email. There in my inbox was a forward from John, reporting that a new independent record store will open May 29 just three blocks away, adjacent to the very street I dreamed about. I swear on my mother this is how it happened] . . .

I still love the tamale carts and straw brooms and Lucha Libre masks and chiles rellenos and Negro Modelo and pinatas and karate classes, and even the communion dresses and silk flowers and awkwardly posed family portraits available just a couple of blocks away. But I admit it'll be nice to have somewhere nearby to buy John a birthday present. And if a decent bowl of soup or macaroon weren't far behind, you wouldn't find me complaining.

Of course some would say this is the slippery slope. The good macaroon means the wrestling mask and pinata will disappear altogether, or at least migrate west to Hermosa. But I think of a neighborhood like Astoria, Queens, and I know it can be done. I like the odds of my neighborhood following that example.

Morning Serenade

2010-05-02T06:17:00.000-07:00

These little guys are nesting in our next-door neighbor's porch. They crooned at me for hours while I did some backyard gardening yesterday.

I imagine our neighbor won't be too thrilled to discover them there. Then again, he might take it as a sign. This is the same neighbor, after all, who thinks his father -- who lived in the house until he passed away ten years ago -- is haunting him through the weeds that have popped up since his death. He also believes his house was built in the 1700s (which predates the Chicago street grid by about 100 years).

He's a decent guy and an excellent neighbor. And it's no bad thing to have an occasional Paul Bunyan story migrate from his yard. I probably prefer this to the inherited weeds, which also aren't so bad. The roots come up easy and some of those stragglers sprout pretty purple flowers in July.

And if any of this leads to those pigeons sticking around for a while, well, then I think I just saw his father's spirit blowing a dandelion into the air.

Green Thumbs

2010-04-24T14:19:00.001-07:00

It may not have been the nicest day for a neighborhood clean-up, but that didn't deter the nicest people from coming out to lend a hand.

Here are several of us, tending our little corner garden, which now features transplanted perennials from five different backyards. It also showcases the handiwork of some pretty tiny hands, including those of two-year-old Cora (not pictured), who kept begging me, "Please find me a worm. I like to hold him."

Alas, there were no worms to be found today, at least in our little garden bed. But there were troops of good neighbors, all doing their part to pick up litter, dig out dandelions, spread mulch, prune hedges, and encourage their little ones to join the effort. We even got a visit from the alderman. And when our cantankerous neighbor Marcelino came out to join the action, then told me I had a certain "vintage homeless" look, well, that took me over the moon.

Why We Volunteer

2010-04-19T05:55:00.000-07:00

Some highlights from Sunday night's neighborhood potluck:

- Over 50 old friends and new neighbors, sharing a meal and conversation in the basement of our local Catholic school

- Kids doing gymnastics on the small stage in back of the room. Only one split lip, not a single tear

- Dave's cheesy grits!

- A karate demonstration by twenty young people who attend the storefront martial arts school on the corner

- Three adorable girls from the demo (including my favorite, far right with red belt) charitably complimenting my Spanish

- Learning that Tim and Conor, our sweet new neighbors up the street, will soon house backyard chickens

- The debut of babies Eli and Eddie

- At least 20 people, many of whom we met for the first time, staying late to help clean up

- The agreeable Irish nun who came to our rescue when the door didn't lock behind us (as we'd been promised) and fearing we'd have to camp out all night to ensure no one burglarized the building

- Laughter, connections made, and outpourings of gratitude from neighbors

I used to rail against volunteer work on principle. 'Labor should be compensated!' I'd say. And it continues to bother me beyond expression that social services have increasingly shifted to unpaid sectors of American culture. All that said, I have to declare with certainty: Sunday night's work was compensated labor.

Door to Door

2010-04-11T16:14:00.000-07:00

One night last week around dinner time, our doorbell rang. It was a sweet young guy in a button-down shirt and one of those messenger bags with a seatbelt around the shoulder. He was canvassing for the ASPCA.

"Did you know that every year [x] thousand dogs lose their lives to barbaric dogfighting rings?" he recited from his script. "Another [x] thousand face unspeakable abuses in puppy mills and illegal breeding facilities."

"Sorry," I said, pushing Inez back away from the doorway. "I should probably stop you right there. We support what you do, but we don't keep cash on hand, so if you could give me something we could read over, we'd certainly consider mailing in a donation."

"Um, we're actually working really hard to get donations tonight," he said. "This is the only night we're in your area, and anything you can give would make a difference." He explained that they took checks and credit cards and urged us to consider a contribution right then and there, because the money could be put to immediate use.

This was a method I remembered from my telemarketing days: Never take no for an answer; push and push until you either wear them down or they hang up on you. I used to long for folks to hang up on me.

I sensed he felt the same: Please, I heard him thinking. Give me a contribution or slam the door in my face. Just put me out of my misery.

This, I realized, is the story of our economy: A young, educated guy, a likely casualty of layoffs at his company, taking whatever he can get to get his rent paid. It forces you to recognize what's happening to those with more significant barriers to employment. They're stuck with what's leftover, which could easily mean a long stretch of nothing, or turning to the underground economy. It's a sad and unsustainable situation with costs that haven't even begun to be tallied.

What I said to our canvasser was, "I'm sorry. We're just not comfortable giving a check or credit card at the door. I promise we'll check the website and see how we can contribute."

What I wish I had said was this:

- People have been scammed on this block repeatedly the last few months. The probability of our neighbors giving money to a stranger are painfully low.

- Why did they send you here tonight? Do they know there have been shootings and robberies? Why didn't they send you out with a buddy? Why did they send you after dark?

- The folks on this block are struggling in ways you can't imagine. Wouldn't they want to send you to areas with deeper pockets, where people aren't straining to pay their own bills month to month?

- You seem like a really sweet kid. Hang in there. I have to believe you're going to land on your feet.

Just before I left, I told him I knew he probably had a quota to make for tonight, and I was honestly sorry I wouldn't be able to help him make a dent.

"It's true," he said, springing down the steps to the next household, undeterred. "I do have a quota. But I just want to say this is a cause I actually believe in, so I really appreciate your support."

And with that, I wish I'd opened my wallet and showered him with whatever I might have found there. My checkbook and credit cards. Keys and gumwrappers. Random business cards and found pennies. The scarce couple of bills in my wallet. All of it swirling around him like rain. Because as much as I occasionally complain about my job, I don't have it nearly as rough as this kid. And in the grand scheme of things, he's actually one of the lucky ones.

Spring

2010-04-05T07:11:00.000-07:00

I start off this morning, on this second day of my 44th year, marveling at my amazing good luck. The fog has burned off, the skies are blue, and the greenery is standing at attention after last night's thunderstorms. I had the good sense to ask for this day off a while back, hoping to book-end a birthday weekend I assumed would be spent with some quality hours with John, and maybe a little time on my bike. Happily, both were true.

What I didn't count on, though, was a surprise visit from a new pal bearing gifts, or a surprise dinner thrown by neighborhood friends to commemorate my 44th year. I didn't count on Diane's special "unbirthday" concept, where each person goes around the table saying something nice, or clever, or witty, or wacky about the person being celebrated. (I likened this experience to that fantasy we have of attending our own funerals, listening to all those kind words pile up. Let's just say you shouldn't have to wait till you die, and this is a tradition that should be passed on and paid forward).

I also didn't count on feeling honestly sort of moved by everyone in their Easter finery, walking to church or family brunches, then idling away the afternoon in cheerful conversation or backyard foot races. I didn't anticipate last night's lightening show, or the fact that for my birthday dinner, what I wanted most was a bowl of caldo de pollo from our neighborhood taqueria, which John happily and generously obliged me.

There are the ephemeral things in life, like pristine moments listening to friends compare you to the best parts of a stainless-steel nail or a forsythia bush. Or like the posies another set of friends brought me for my birthday. These are the things you try to harness in your memory, even as it dims with age.

And then there are the things that reliably come back, like birthdays themselves, or the myrtle blooming so proudly in our front yard. Or the friends who just might pop over for dinner, because they live within walking distance of the house. Or even taxes or work or the need to repaint the porch steps.

This morning, stepping feet first into middle age, I'm taking the time to appreciate both.

WWaGND?

2010-03-30T05:50:00.000-07:00

This morning as I walked the dog, I came across one of my neighbors, who's something of a wild card, emptying the garbage from her car right into the grassy parkway in front of her house. Her hotheaded son was yelling at her to stop, and she responded, "Why should I? Everybody else throws their trash in my yard."

Ummm . . . never mind.

It's worth noting that John spent a couple of hours picking up litter from the block on Sunday. Two weeks before that, our 9- and 7-year-old neighbors Rose and Celia did the honors. And the next big wind is guaranteed to transfer that trash straight into someone else's yard.

But what did I do, after all my vainglorious rants over litter? Absolutely nothing. My fear of being a bad neighbor to one person (ok, she *is* sort of a scary person) made me a lousy neighbor to the rest of the block.

So I appeal to you. Help me be armed for next time (there will undoubtedly be a next time). What would you have done in my shoes? A heads-up penny and discarded Cheeto's bag for your thoughts.

(In the role of the woman's car litter, which I was too skittish to photograph, is an understudy pile of trash, conveniently spied in our front yard this morning).

A new compass

2010-03-28T05:56:00.000-07:00

Last week put a bit of a quiver in my reality. We found out that the owners of the house where we pick up our summer CSA share are moving. To Portland!

And when the family goes, so goes our vegetable box. With a neighborhood as vast as ours, this could mean a pick-up site far, far away, certainly farther than I could manage on foot.

Box pick-up has become very ritualized for me. I build a slight detour into my Saturday morning jog so I can pop over, grab the box, exchange some niceties with other shareholders over zucchini or kale, and walk the three short blocks back home. This appeals to my sense of efficiency, as well as my commitment to using the car (which is actually John's company car, and not something I ever really think of as my own) only by necessity.

Of course there's a simple solution. We could offer to be the drop site ourselves. We'd save $100 on our annual subscription and end up with all the extra vegetables left behind from week to week.

Easy, right? Not so fast.

There are lots of reasons not to pull this particular trigger. The farm drops off the boxes at 4am, and I worry about my insomnia, knowing that truck's arrival is looming, bound to wake the neighbors. Then there's the security risk--having to leave our gate unlocked every Friday night. You never know who might roam through or what their intentions might be. And of course there's the dog. What if we let her out midday and she scares someone's kid? What if she leaves a parcel of her own near the boxes?

But can I tell you a secret? My biggest worry, woeful as I am to admit it, is other people judging the place we call home. There are a lot of folks who consider this the wrong side of the tracks. We're on the west side: More multicultural, more working class. The houses are more modest, the yards more wooly, and the litter more abundant. You're a lot more likely to come across a broken bottle or condom wrapper than you would a couple blocks east of here.

On hot days there's a rank odor from the underground sewer system. A rat's been known to scurry across our yard. Cars idle on our street, often blasting rap music that shakes the pots and pans in the cabinets.

And I realize that my house and block are like so many things in my life: flawed, imperfect, easily misunderstood. A lot like Inez, our beloved pitbull--gentlest creature in the world, but one who strikes fear at a superficial glance.

"She's a good girl!!" I want to yell as she lunges at an unexpected dog behind a fence. But it's of no consequence. There will be those who walk by with an understanding nod. There will be those who avoid looking at us.

John and I recently went to a training demo sponsored by the Humane Society. They're working to redirect the bad intentions of dog fighters, teaching them and their animals how to respect each other. We watched the session for over an hour, mesmerized as those dogs would sit on command, frozen in place with a meaty treat on the floor just two feet away. There was incredible pride and love in those guys as the dogs responded to their commands.

As we were leaving, I told the training director that I'd love to bring my own dog sometime, but she's just too aggressive.

The woman urged us to bring her along. "You should have seen these dogs when they came in. Every one of them wanted to kill another dog, and most of them probably had. Besides," she said, "sometimes it's nice to be around other people who understand."

Exactly, I thought.

Bring on the empathy and community. I'll take my chances on drop-site roulette. Heck, maybe this'll be the summer I finally outfit my bike with a trailer.

In the meantime, I'll consider how to climb up to my rooftop and yell out the world: "This is a good neighborhood!!" But I guess, in a way, I'm already doing it.

Good-bye to friends and strangers

2010-03-13T12:21:00.000-08:00

We've lost a number of good people recently in the neighborhood. Luminary Jan Metzger didn't call this place home, but she worked in a nearby community and made this neighborhood part of her living laboratory for alternative transportation. She inspired so many in her short sixty years, advocating for safe and welcoming environments for bicycles and pedestrians. It's great testimony to her character that she leaves so many behind to carry on her legacy. She made this city a more hospitable one, and she is deeply missed.

Tom Cunningham was a salty, opinionated, mensch of a guy with a striking likeness to Ernest Hemingway. He'd been born and raised in the neighborhood, in a house overlooking Kosciuszko Park -- Koz for short -- with its lovely if deteriorating fieldhouse still standing, and a line of seniors waiting in line every morning at 7 to claim a lane in the Olympic indoor swimming pool. It's because of Tom that Koz, once (and still occasionally) a haven for gangbangers and drug dealers, got a soft-surface playlot, native landscaping, and replacement tennis nets a few years back. He loved that park like it was one of his kids, and it's up to those of us remaining to use it, and use it well, in his memory.

Finally, my subway stop is a little quieter these days. For as long as I can remember (and we'll have been here nine years in August), the back vestibule of the station filled up with music. It didn't really matter day or night: There was Mick the busker, playing his pan flute for some pocket change or an occasional crumpled bill. Nicknamed the Pan Man by some, Mick looked pretty down on his luck -- stringy hair, dingy clothes, the kind of guy you guessed was probably living in a shelter somewhere, or harboring a Howard Hughes-like inheritance so he could just do his own thing for a while.

Funny thing was, I never much thought about Mick. He was always just there, and I'm guessing I'm not alone in having taken him for granted, or even being sporadically annoyed by the lilting constancy of those damn pan pipes. I never actually knew Mick's name until he died and people started filling in the gaps of his life. But now I feel his absence like a tiny hole in my throat. He leaves behind his silence. That silence has a shape.

What a difference a day makes . . .

2010-03-06T15:31:00.000-08:00

Today was one of those perfect glimpses of early spring: Bright sunshine, impossibly warm, everyone dressed in shirtsleeves and unseasonable cheer. Kids roller skating, adults cleaning debris from their yards, cyclists taking to the roads. There was even a Cubs game on tv.

In honor of this perfect day, I decided to reacquaint myself with an old crush: My neighborhood.

Sure, sure, I'm fond of the place. I guess that's no secret. But it's been a while since I've had that punch-drunk feeling of affection, and I'll admit to recent doubts here and there, wondering if the romance is dead. Maybe it's better for us to go our separate ways before the acrimony sets in. Could it be time for an amicable parting?

But today, a simple walk to the grocery store reminded me of the difference between love and infatuation: a difference you feel like a blow to the gut.

I want to thank my neighborhood for unfolding so generously on a simple two-block walk. Thanks to Erica for taking sweet pooch Isa on a roundabout route so we could chat for a few minutes. And to Willie for leaving the store just as I was arriving, risking melting ice cream and warming milk to properly catch up.

To Jeff, my friend from the fancy wine shop, for the unexpected bump-in near the meat aisle, where he confessed his shared love of my cherished Tony's Certisaver and bought a $3.50 shiraz after seeing three bottles in my cart.

To the guy in the middle of busy Fullerton Avenue, holding a sign pointing to the nearby tire shop that advertised "Rims . . . Cheap!" for saying "Isn't it a beautiful day?" seconds before I was about to curse him for blocking my path.

To Mildred, for remembering the last time we talked that John and I were headed to Wisconsin for New Year's, then telling me about recovering her old journals from decades of Scandinavian travel and reliving those vacations by reading them again.

To Ben and Perla, for buying the house nobody wanted, freeing a woman about to lose it to foreclosure, and hanging out on the front porch with their adorable toddlers just 3 weeks after a rash of shootings.

And finally to Zach, home on freshman-year spring break from St. John's, for telling me he hadn't been sure in the beginning, but he's decided to stick it out in New York, and actually hopes to do a study-abroad program to Rome, Madrid, and Paris junior year. I don't think I could've been prouder of this first-in-his-family-to-attend-college than if he'd been my very own kid.

Kudos to you, neighborhood, for setting my heart back on the right path. Now if you can just make it stick . . .

What I Do Instead of Church

2010-02-28T06:15:00.000-08:00

My average Sunday morning goes about like this:

- Wake up early and go for a jog

- Give Inez a slightly longer walk than usual around the neighborhood

- Nod to morning kindred spirits, also out and about while the world is still sleeping

- A leisurely breakfast of coffee and warm bread

- Bike to the indoor farmer's market, where I might buy farm eggs, local cheese, shitake mushrooms, hearth-baked bread, organic sprouts, and a little something sweet . . . and if I'm lucky, quirky John Greenfield will be playing his guitar and singing about Illinois, or beets, or the pleasures of walking, or some sundry topic he's worked into a song

- Pop over to our new grocery co-op to supplement my market haul

- Come home and consider what to cook up for dinner.

I dare the faithful to convince me that any sermon or hymn brings as much meaning to them as these Sunday rituals bring to me. I raise my coffee mug to Sunday, grateful for the hours and the myriad ways to fill them.

The Plowman Cometh

2010-02-21T05:37:00.001-08:00

As we face another round of significant snowfall, I tip my woolen hat to a stranger who's brought a very particular kindness to the neighborhood.

For a while, this mystery good samaritan was known only by what you see in the photo above. These are the tracks from his plow, which he's been taking out once or twice a day after accumulating snow to clear about 10 city blocks of city sidewalk.

The city of Chicago, like most municipalities, offers snow clearing from the roadways as part of your tax dollars. The sidewalks, though, are left to the residents. I'm not going to linger over this inequity, but it's always sort of stuck in my craw.

This is why the plowman's act is such an amazing gesture. The guy doesn't seem to want credit or even recognition, just to make things a little easier for his neighbors. And not just his immediate neighbors, mind you, but a fairly protracted radius around him.

For a long time I never saw the plowman himself, only the fruits of his labors. One night a few weeks ago, though, as I was settling into bed beneath my street-facing window, there he was. Low hum singing from his plow (which looks like a riding lawnmower), pleasant amber light revealing a path in front of him.

It was like spying a deer in the woods. Or a UFO. Or Santa Claus. Or Cher walking down the street (not the present-day botoxy Cher, but a circa-1972 Cher in a Bob Mackie costume). Or an arrowhead. Or a yeti. Or Boo Radley leaving a pocketwatch in a tree.

You get the idea.

In times marked more by fear and intimidation, where ugly intent seems more plentiful than its opposite, it's especially moving to see such acts of generosity hit so close to home. I've lifted more than a few snow shovels in recent years, so I feel this man's kindness in both heart and body.

Some neighbors have sleuthed out a few facts about our samaritan. He apparently lives a block west of us. He's a Vietnam vet who hangs an MIA/POW flag proudly in front of his house, which is little more than a shotgun shack. There's been a For Sale sign in front of it for at least four years. He's divorced. He drinks a bit. He's a vintage car enthusiast, and he often drives a restored 1908 Oldsmobile around the neighborhood in the summer.

In short, he's one of the growing cast of characters of this neighborhood, and arguably its latest folk hero.

Hard times

2010-02-14T07:01:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I've talked about living in a neighborhood in crisis, but since crisis seems to have found us again, it's probably fair to reflect a little . . . even on this crisp, quiet morning, with prisms of sun streaming in through our dining room window, with families walking to nearby churches through glittery snow, and it hardly seems possible anything terrible could happen here.

There have been two shootings on our block since February 3rd. These aren't shootings under cover of night, in houses where there might have been a dispute over money, or love. These are open-air shootings, one just before 7pm and one in broad daylight at 3:00, just as the nearby elementary school was letting out. Both cases involved groups of teenagers, mostly boys, but reports of a girl or two in the mix. In both cases a car had just gone by, and in both cases after shots were fired, the kids jogged -- not ran, sprinted, or jumped into a speeding car, but jogged -- up the street, guns visible at their sides. Fortunately, in both cases, no one was physically hurt.

These are brazen acts. They're acts of bravado by people with no fear of being caught. My work has put me in contact with a many people who work in street intervention, and the signs point to these kids probably living in the area, protecting new or reclaimed turf against rival gangs or drug dealers.

Jobs are disappearing all over, and it's no surprise people will turn to the underground economy. With that comes all the standard peripheral impacts: Strangers coming through the neighborhood to buy. Police stretched even thinner than before. Kids with guns, marking their territory. Couple that with the State budget crisis, which has defunded successful programs like Ceasefire, and you've got a volcano on your hands.

There's a part of me, in melancholy moments, that's started to wonder how long I can stay here. Can I continue to walk my dog, take my morning run, kiss my husband good-bye as he leaves for long trips or even just a bike ride out to see a friend? That same part of me is almost grateful for the crumbling real-estate market: Our house has lost over 25% of its value in the last two years, and that alone will keep many of us here who might have fantasies of simpler, more manageable places.

So we persevere. I take great comfort in seeing friends with kids, or our wonderful nonagenarian neighbor Mildred, sticking around. If they can do it, so can I. But here's the difference: When something similar happened a few years ago, we drew together to forge a solution. We put a block group in place. We went to our community policing meetings. We tended front-yard gardens and had neighborhood clean-ups and block parties and yard sales. But now we've done all those things, and the violence remains. It's worse, actually, because it's so bold and so present. It's the ghost you thought you extinguished, coming back to haunt you, stronger and harder to discern than before.

In my heart I believe things will get better around here. I also believe they may get worse before they do. If this is February, what's July going to feel like? I don't even have any pep talks for myself, because this increasingly seems a problem larger than all its possible solutions. And I worry about becoming someone I hate: Someone who retreats into the house rather than adding my eyes to the street; someone governed more by the heart than the head; someone who profiles.

I may have to make peace with those weaknesses (at least some of them). But I'm hopeful I won't lose my appetite for amazement.

Sweet neighborhood, I'm listening.

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph

2010-02-09T05:54:00.000-08:00

It's February 9. Do you know where your nativity scene is?

Those magi might want to think about bringing swimsuits and sunscreen, as this wistful family may still be enjoying the outdoors come June.

In the realm of things suffering from neglect in this neighborhood, this scene is pretty benign. It's a victimless crime after all, which is more than I can say for recent events within a two-block radius. (Though I'll admit I won't miss the display once it's gone).

I noted a few weeks ago, during a walk to work on a snowy morning, people's general unwillingness to put the holidays away. I understand how our current economy -- which, despite analysis to the contrary, shows no signs of rebound around here -- makes people want to blanket themselves in reassuring symbols. I've been eating more than my fair share of soup these days, for example.

But in some ways, especially with the turn of the calendar page to February, this makes me feel people have just given up. Surrendered themselves to stasis. Why make the effort when it's just as easy to leave all the decorations out till next year? December will be here soon enough, and it's such a trial to head to the basement and haul all that paraphernalia outside again.

My cherished neighbors, I know times are tough, but we need to rally. Let's stop those supermarket circulars from collecting in our front yards. Let's curb our dogs. And of course we weren't the ones to leave those Heineken bottles in the grass, but isn't it better to pick them up than risk a crew of teenagers throwing them at each other?

And for the love of pete, let's clear away the Christmas decorations and embrace the steady march of time. It can be a great healer.

Supertasters?

2010-02-01T05:55:00.000-08:00

Last night, a local gathering brought together a wine shop owner, pie baker, trained chef, cake designer, two food bloggers, one wine blogger, one aspiring oenophile . . . and me. Which one of these things doesn't belong?

We came together in a cozy apartment for the first of our monthly women's wine tastings. Our mission? To taste old world and new world reds and whites to start to understand how flavor profiles are products of their geography, climate, and terrain.

Please don't ask me how flavor profiles are products of their geography, climate, and terrain.

At least not yet.

I'm clearly the fledgling taster in this group. I know little of wine production methods, and I'm probably more likely to pick a wine by its label than by what its label may be telling me. Varietals? Vintages? Fuggedaboutit. It's no surprise that my bottle was the dud of the group. (Remember the old Mystery Date game? Door #4 was my bottle: Bow tie, crooked glasses, severely parted hair. Truth be told, I always had a soft spot for Door #4).

But I'm determined to hang on with this group. It was because of Tracy, the wine-shop owner who put this plan together, that I bypassed touristy Napa and Sonoma for quieter, cozier Mendocino in May. And it's because of that trip that John and I were able to recognize an Anderson Valley wine a couple of months later, just by the nose and the very first sip. I can't help but feel like swirling and tasting and spitting with this particular group -- funny and forgiving, expert but unintimidating -- will help me to raise my personal bar.

I think I can, I think I can . . . tell the difference between a pinot noir and a grenache, decipher what people mean by 'minerally,' astringent,' or 'medium-bodied,' come to recognize the specific grape by its cryptic regional reference on the front (damn you, French bottles!), but most importantly, know what I like and why I like it, and stop wasting money on wine-shop roulette.

One woman at the table, who also considers herself a novice, said a sommelier once said to her, "Forget the fancy vocabularies. If the wine smells to you like the inside of your grandmother's purse, then it smells like the inside of your grandmother's purse." She fell in love immediately.

Agreed.

RIP, fish tacos

2010-01-24T11:09:00.000-08:00

This week, one of our favorite local businesses called it a day. No ceremony, no announcements. Just paper plastered over the windows and the menus and reviews removed from the door.

It's one more reminder that times are tough, especially over here to the west. There's no meaningful foot traffic along that stretch, and the surrounding commercial district seems to be on life support. The place never really had a chance.

Still, we're grieving a little. In the beginning, the place held such promise. A new Mexican restaurant with stellar molés and a focus on seafood put our little neighborhood on the map. I remember one night waiting 90 minutes for a table. It was packed in there, and the staff was sorely unprepared to handle the crowd. We finally gave up and went to a taqueria down the street. But we cheered their success and looked forward to our next visit. And our next. And our next.

We came to know the staff by name, and they occasionally brought us a free appetizer or honey-soaked order of flan. In summers, we'd seek refuge on their back patio (they had a speedboat cut in half lengthwise and used it as a planter). We took our families there when they visited, met friends for margaritas, even did occasional community organizing over their renowned fish tacos and homemade salsas and tortillas. A local food forum hailed them a Great Neighborhood Restaurant, and the framed award hung on the wall amidst brightly painted canvases of grouper and red snapper.

Most importantly, they were good people. They knew who they were and where they were situated. Every staff member was a native Spanish speaker. They had many dishes on the menu affordable to working families. Their crowd was diverse and they worked to preserve that.

Their departure comes on the heels of a major economic-development boom 6 blocks to the east. January brought us a new gastropub. In February a microbrewery will open its doors. March brings the promise of Neapolitan pizza and by May a creperie & French bakery. These aren't unwelcome developments, to be truthful, but I can't help feeling like the line between the haves and have nots is getting starker in this neighborhood. You could draw it right down the map, right down Kimball Avenue or Central Park. The ink wouldn't fade for another ten years.

I fear more closures may be coming over here. Evidence seems to be pointing that way. So we brace ourselves for the ghost-town effect. Boarded-up buildings and weird, fly-by-night businesses that come and go every month. More opportunity for open-air drug dealing and other forms of troublemaking. Not enough watchful eyes to keep the bedlam tempered.

Meanwhile, six blocks to the east, people will wait in their finery for a table at one of these storied new places. The gastropub already clocks a two-hour wait. Their charcuterie is reportedly outstanding, and they'll be opening a boutique hotel on their second floor this spring. The new microbrewery was featured in an article on interior design, and they're not even open yet.

I suppose we'll continue to straddle these worlds: appreciators of a well-mixed cocktail one day, an oily bowl of pozole the next. But what we'll miss is a place that showed us something reassuring: that it was possible to bring these worlds together now and then.