The Problem With Communicating About Place

The problem about taking photos, blogging or using social media to highlight a place is that there is a great potential that reader will be compelled to visit it and experience it. My age group and younger live in a culture in which authenticity is highly sought after commodity and value. The overexposure and the mining of authentic places inevitably strips the place of authenticity. Our human nature is to share with others, as social beings, unfortunately it gets corrupted; do I call tourism a corruption?  I guess, but then I indict myself.So do we share the Macchu Pichu, do we share Feng Du, do we share Sokotra, do we share Petra, do we share the sewers of Paris, do we share the favelas of Rio, do we share the ruins of Detroit, do we share footsteps of the French Provencal village of Menerbes, do we share the Italian hillside villages of Tuscany, do we share the nooks and crannies of our forgotten neighborhood?

Why Do We Move and Why Do We Live Where We Live?

My old former neighbor came by last week and we got to talking about the old block and this block. I asked him how he perceived this place as he has spent the little time over here visiting me in the year I've lived here. He said, " Bill this place is a neighborhood where people move to get away from someplace."
    Research says Chicagoans move due to perceived disorder in their origin neighborhood, which leads to an outmigration to other neighborhoods or suburbs where they don't find symbols of disorder. Research Seems to indicate that you don't choose your neighborhood, your neighborhood chooses you.  Outmigrants tend towards homophily meaning they settle around others like them, others that do not want to be around disorder, which in my opinion, leads to tenuous communities with an underlying cancer festering. It doesn't lead to healthy relations between neighbors or a healthy situation when evidence of others shows up. It leads to places where people are on the defensive and barriers are put up in physical and emotional manefestations, how do we live in healthy communities in Chicago where we are not a lot of people that have moved from some place of perceived dysfunction? How do we get ourselves into a collective good place. How do we push against selfish neighborhoods, our fear of others, and our tendency towards homophily and move towards a zenophily? What would that neighborhood look like?

The Power Of Symbols

"Kate how am I supposed to take it that there is a used condom in the gutter by the curb?"  In our old neighborhood it meant that we had a problem with prostitution there,  it symbolized some kind of dysfunction in the community. So if I embed that sight of a used condom  with the idea of dysfunction, what logical or illogical conclusion do I make about my new community?
  A few months ago I was talking to my neighbor across the street, an African American woman in her 60's. I asked if her daughter's kid goes to the local school, two blocks to the east. She didnt seem  too enthralled at the concept of me thinking her grandchild going to Lovett School. She said her grandson goes to a very good Luthern school in Forest Park. The public schools around here elicit very strong opinions, if not spoken, they are implied. Sending your child to a local school is embedded with symbols, mostly negative. The conversation somehow veered into her saying that she was planning to move out of the neighborhood, after 22 years. Why i asked why,  she said, " cause used to be you didn't have no cars on the street, it was quiet, we had no problems." she nodded her head over to her neighbors next door to her. I didn't press her to stay or reconsider her opinion; I silently disagreed with her assessment of the block, for my assessment was that what she experiences as discomfort, pales with what I experienced on Keystone, but I get sentiment that when you move to a place where you want quiet, you want cleanliness, when you want peace to live your life with your family, without any challenges to that lifestyle, then perceptions of change or disorder take on a symbolic quality.
   This Tuesday, our community will have a meeting regarding a zoning change to allow a pawnshop called EZ Pawn to come into our community. I don't want to spend time elaborating on the symbols that surface from the prospect of another pawn shop, west of Narragansett, so I will allow you to make your own inferences based on these statements elaborated in the aforementioned book, " Recall my argument (in chapter 6) that shared perceptions of send a culturally meaningful signal about the reputation and confidence in a neighborhood. Recall also that perceptions of disorder were strongly influenced by prior racial/ethnic composition and furthermore that the collectively perceived disorder predicted individual-level perceptions many years later."
 How I navigate my thoughts related to the meanings and symbols I attach to the slippery, red, used condom by the curb and how we collectively navigate the meanings and symbols we attach to the pawnshop matter for the future of this community. Let's navigate better, let's navigate well.

What The Most Priveleged Parents Want For Thier Child's Education Should The Mimimum We Want For All Children

The day after the 2012 election: A letter from Bill Ayers. Not my favorite guy in the world, but I think he is succinct in the narrative he uses to explain educational reform, especially her in the Presidents hometown Chicago. Typically, it is hard for me to hear out liberals because they don't indict themselves or include themselves or those they associate with as part of the problem. What I particularly liked is that Bill Ayers advocates for public schools, he indicates that he, as well as Obama and Rah, sent their kids to the best private school in town; I love how he reconciles that problem or truth, he says, " In a vibrant democracy, whatever the most privileged parents want for their children must serve as a minimum standard for what we as a community want for all of our children."

Dear President Obama: Congratulations!

I’m sure this is a moment you want to savor, a time to take a deep breath, get some rest, hydrate, regain your balance, and take a long walk in the sunshine. It might be as well a good time to reflect, rethink, recharge, and perhaps reignite. I sincerely hope that it is, and I urge you to put education on your reflective agenda

The landscape of “educational reform” is currently littered with rubble and ruin and wreckage on all sides. Sadly, your administration has contributed significantly to the mounting catastrophe. You’re not alone: The toxic materials have been assembled as a bipartisan endeavor over many years, and the efforts of the last several administrations are now organized into a coherent push mobilized and led by a merry band of billionaires including Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, Sam Walton, and Eli Broad.

Whether inept or clueless or malevolent—who’s to say?—these titans have worked relentlessly to take up all the available space, preaching, persuading, promoting, and, when all else fails, spreading around massive amounts of cash to promote their particular brand of school change as common sense. You and Secretary Arne Duncan—endorsed in your efforts by Newt Gingrich, Paul Ryan, and a host of reactionary politicians and pundits—now bear a major responsibility for that agenda.

The three most trumpeted and simultaneously most destructive aspects of the united “school reform” agenda are these: turning over public assets and spaces to private management; dismantling and opposing any independent, collective voice of teachers; and reducing education to a single narrow metric that claims to recognize an educated person through a test score. While there’s absolutely no substantive proof that this approach improves schooling for children, it chugs along unfazed—fact-free, faith-based reform at its core, resting firmly on rank ideology rather than any evidence whatsoever.

The three pillars of this agenda are nested in a seductive but wholly inaccurate metaphor: Education is a commodity like any other—a car or a refrigerator, a box of bolts or a screwdriver—that is bought and sold in the marketplace. Within this controlling metaphor the schoolhouse is assumed to be a business run by a CEO, with teachers as workers and students as the raw material bumping along the assembly line while information is incrementally stuffed into their little up-turned heads.

It’s rather easy to begin to think that “downsizing” the least productive units, “outsourcing” and “privatizing” a space that was once public, is a natural event. Teaching toward a simple standardized measure and relentlessly applying state-administered (but privately developed and quite profitable) tests to determine the “outcomes” (winners and losers) becomes a rational proxy for learning; “zero tolerance” for student misbehavior turns out to be a stand-in for child development or justice; and a range of sanctions on students, teachers, and schools—but never on lawmakers, foundations, corporations, or high officials (they call it “accountability")—is logical and level-headed.

I urge you to resist these policies and reject the dominant metaphor as wrong in the sense of inaccurate as well as wrong in the sense of immoral.  

Education is a fundamental human right, not a product. In a free society education is based on a common faith in the incalculable value of every human being; it’s constructed on the principle that the fullest development of all is the condition for the full development of each, and, conversely, that the fullest development of each is the condition for the full development of all. Further, while schooling in every totalitarian society on earth foregrounds obedience and conformity, education in a democracy emphasizes initiative, courage, imagination, and entrepreneurship in order to encourage students to develop minds of their own. 

When the aim of education and the sole measure of success is competitive, learning becomes exclusively selfish, and there is no obvious social motive to pursue it. People are turned against one another as every difference becomes a potential deficit. Getting ahead is the primary goal in such places, and mutual assistance, which can be so natural in other human affairs, is severely restricted or banned. It’s no wonder that cheating scandals are rampant in our country and fraudulent claims are commonplace.

Race to the Top is but one example of incentivizing bad behavior and backward ideas about education as the Secretary of Education begins to look and act like a program officer for some charity rather than the leading educator for all children: It’s one state against another, this school against that one, and my second grade in fierce competition with the second grade across the hall.

You have opposed privatizing social security, pointing out the terrible risks the market would impose on seniors if the voucher plan were ever adopted. And yet you’ve supported—in effect—putting the most endangered young people at risk through a similar scheme. We need to expand, deepen, and fortify the public space, especially for the most vulnerable, not turn it over to privatemanagers. The current gold rush of for-profit colleges gobbling up student loans is but one cautionary tale.

You’ve said that you defend working people and their right to organize and yet you have publicly and noisily maligned teachers and their unions on several occasions. You need to consider that good working conditions are good teaching conditions, and that good teaching conditions are good learning conditions. We can’t have the best learning conditions if teachers are forced away from the table, or if the teaching corps is reduced to a team of short-termers and school tourists.

You have declared your support for a deep and rich curriculum for all students regardless of circumstance or background, and yet your policies rely on a relentless regimen of standardized testing, and test scores as the sole measure of progress.

You should certainly pause and reconsider. What’s done is done, but you can demonstrate wisdom and true leadership if you pull back now and correct these dreadful mistakes.

In a vibrant democracy, whatever the most privileged parents want for their children must serve as a minimum standard for what we as a community want for all of our children. Arne Duncan attended the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools (as did our three sons); you sent your kids to Lab, and so did your friend Rahm Emanuel. There students found small classes, abundant resources, and opportunities to experiment and explore, ask questions and pursue answers to the far limits, and a minimum of time-out for standardized testing. They found, as well, a respected and unionized teacher corps, people who were committed to a life-long career in teaching and who were encouraged to work cooperatively for their mutual benefit (and who never would settle for being judged, assessed, rewarded, or punished based on student test scores).

Good enough for you, good enough for the privileged, then it must be good enough for the kids in public schools everywhere—a standard to be aspired to and worked toward. Any other ideal for our schools, in the words of John Dewey who founded the school you chose for your daughters, “is narrow and unlovely; acted upon it destroys our democracy.”

Sincerely, 

William Ayers

Metamodernism

I was researching on the definitions of modernism and postmodernism, and I wondered about post-post-modernism and I found the term meta modernism, which I feel describes the epoch of my life and philosophy right now. Check this definition out:  metamodernism is a continuous oscillation, a constant repositioning between positions and mindsets that are evocative of the modern and of the postmodern but are ultimately suggestive of another sensibility that is neither of them: one that negotiates between a yearning for universal truths on the one hand and an (a)political relativism on the other, between hope and doubt, sincerity and irony, knowingness and naivety, construction and deconstruction.

I think it sounds like me, maybe not.

Radical Friendship

Can we renounce our privileges, our privacy, our biases, our prejudices, our fears, our lack of trust, our rights, to elect affinity with our neighbors.? Can we live in communities, in neighborhoods, outside of private and comfortable spaces, and renounce these things to elect affinity with "others"? In these things, can friendship move from a political move to something authentic and real?

Debt Burdened Homeowners Don't Strike

I have never seen this as an actual quote, from an actual policy maker, but I have read numerous authors use some form of this quote to explain why policy makers during the Roosevelt Administration allowed for the mortgage interest deduction. It seems right to me. I mean I went on strike for 7 days this fall, nievely thinking it wouldn't affect my finances so much, but it did. It still does. Was it worth it, yes. Did I think it would hurt so much, no. They were right in the fact that when the financial pain begins to sting, all of my grievances against the state or powers that be, will  be at least be put into question or dropped altogether. My bluff will be called.

I remember my boss saying, last year, that she wasn't going to challenge the status quo in the CPS,  because she wasn't willing to lose her mortgage., nor, as she threatened, would she let us, her workers, challenge her, lest we want to lose our mortgages. The will to fight or not fight real enemies or phantasm enemies is snuffed by the things that hold us down financially the things that we have been duped into taking on as responsibility because we want to live the American Dream, and be good citizens. If I want to challenge that, do I give up my house, my investment buildings, do I give away all my money, do I ruin my family for the sake of principle, for a deep sense that I am not being controlled or manipulated by real and super real people and systems? I don't have an answer. I think going into the strike nievely, thinking that it wouldn't have too big of a cost, was a blessing. Everyone is waiting for the Revolution, but I think we have opportunities to live in the little revelations/ revolutions daily. My revelation/revolution is the communion with those feeling the pain of living on the razors edge, living day to day, maybe unemployed, without any job prospects, the realization of the blessing and privilege I have to have faith, family, friends, and professional networks to bouy me if i went under, the blessing that I can restructure my life fairly easily, the knowledge that even though I am a multiple homeowner, that I can and will go on strike again.

Psalm 19:21

Many are the plans of my heart,
    but will the Lord's purpose prevail?

In all of the things, ideas,and dreams I have been chasing recently, I consistently fail to submit and try to line them up with God's purpose in my life. I'm just drifting along. 

Kafila

"Kafila – a Hindi word derived from Arabic, it means a caravan, a procession or a collectivity in travel. It could be a kafila of a nomadic group, a pack, a procession, a parade or simply the most pervasive yet unacknowledged figure of the modern world – the refugee/s in all its forms – including development refugees: people rendered homeless and placeless by capitalism and the relentless modern drive of mapping, accounting, categorizing and normalizing – in short, defining a place and a norm for every one and everything, which leaves most people without place."

Controlling a Narrative, Part 1

Often times, when I allow my students to research online, if I havent given them direct instruction on computer literacy and online research skils, then they tend to take the first thing that pops up in Google,nwhich is Wikipedia. I now see the power of the Internet for controlling  a message or narrative. If you want to get someone to believe something as true, post it or edit it on Wikipedia under a pseudonym and you have just created fact and reality. You dont even need to corroborate the truth with a annotation. Wikipedia is the lowest hanging fruit for research, where fiction becomes reality.

Creating God in My Image

God cares about the things I care about. Does he?
Jesus is a Republican. Jesus is a Democrat. Jesus is a Socialist. Jesus is an Anarchist. Is he?
Jesus wouldn't hang around gay people or pediphiles. Would he?
God loves hip-hop. Jesus is a metal head. Chamber music is a reflection the seriousness and holiness of God. Jesus just dwells in a place where people surrender themselves, raise their, and bow down at the alter. Does he?
Jesus is for the poor. God uses the rich. Is he, does he?
God wouldn't use that guy. Jesus is so proud of that guy, he is blessed.Would he, is he?
God hates abortion, even in cases of rape. God wouldn't want someone to suffer like that. He wouldn't allow someone to be in that position. Would he?
God is a man, God is a woman, God is a mirror that reflects us. Jesus is the way we picture him traditionally, Jesus is black. Is he?
 Jesus's birth is the story of an illegal immigrant, a single mother, and a homeless couple. Is it?
God cares about suffering, Jesus wants to relieve your suffering and bestow riches and blessings upon you. God doesnt care about me or anybody, there is so much suffering in this world. Does he?
God is cool, he knows our intentions, if we're sincere, and we re doing selfless things, we can choose any path, they all lead to him. Do they?
The idea of God, of follwing Jesus, is so narrow, so judgmental, so not inclusive, i just reject that belief or way of thinking. Is it, should we?

I tend to put God in my own image of what i think, why ive experienced, what i belive, my politics, my likes and dislikes, and I need to step back sometimes and reassess, recalibrate. How about you?

Creating Distinct Place Identity Is Tied to Consumerism

“Capitalism has gotten really good at picking up on these trends and using bohemias as a source of R&;D to develop new products and sponsor new trends,” says Anasi. “Ad agencies send their reps there to see what the kids are up to.” Christopher Mele, author of “Selling the Lower East Side,” says that bohemias aren’t fortified now as they once were. “Bohemian neighborhoods were once considered stubborn and resistant to gentrification, but that’s long gone,” he says. “Just as we are likely to have quick and easy access to niche or specialized markets for music, art, design and other cultural products, we have access to urban neighborhoods with distinct place identities.”

Crowdsourcing Real Estate

 How would you like to get in on a real estate deal which allows you to invest a small amount collectively with other neighborhood investors and be part of a local based development decision that you feel good about? Well, they are trying this out in D.C., Fundrise allows for crowd sourcing local investors to finance a neighborhood commercial development. Check it out at: http://www.theatlanticcities.com/neighborhoods/2012/11/real-estate-deal-could-change-future-everything/3897/

I like the potential for the democratization of finance, but also the potential for equity. As far as gentrification, yes I think we need to ask, who benefits, who is involved in the decision making, and for whom will this crowd sourced development be for? It's a start though and I think these guys who created this model are thinking outside the box and have some altruistic motives; but lets push the possibilities of the model further. Can a non-profit or a for-profit use this model in creating affordable housing? So many blocks on the west side and south side of this city have been ravaged by foreclosures, who better to invest in these homes and multi-units than community leaders and neighbors on the block. If the model truly believes longtime locals are best to make and partake contextual development decisions, then we need to bring this democratization down to the guy/gal who has $100 or even $10 to give towards getting homes and buildings livable again.

Curious City: How are Neighborhoods Formed?

Answer:  

 http://www.wbez.org/series/curious-city/question-answered-how-are-chicago-neighborhoods-formed-103831
 

Comment by BornAndRasied( Me)
Which Chicagoans are defining neighborhoods? Who gets to define where we live? How can one take into account the collective that live in the space we call a neighborhood? I don't think we care to figure that out, and if we do, then maybe we should take it a step further and ask why we have the need and desire to name where we live and cement that by putting in a map. Why? Who benefits and to what extent? I guess, as a  Chicagoan, born and raised, one who never defined my space by neighborhood,  and I have to say, this recent (past 30 years) phenomenon perpetuated by developers, and urbanists, who consume space in this city as they would any niche style of music, fashion, or craft beer, is bogus, any way you cut it.  I've seen too many poor neighborhoods and neighborhoods of color, that give little value to capitalizing on a neighborhood name, unless it's in response to gentrification and as a form of resistance, get steamrolled by urbanists that are altruistic in their impulses, yet the organizing and crowd sourcing that they use in order to justify a new neighborhood name ultimately leaves out many of the people that share their space and have been in there for generations. It's soft-core gentrification. Place matters for sure, but people are situated differently in place and when it comes to defining it, we need to be aware that neighborhood is defined differently depending where you're situated. Let's resist the need to create distinct neighborhood identities, it's just an extension of our ongoing, insatiable human need to find our unique, individual identity. Who benefits, just us and people like us.

Sounds of my Neighborhood

A coyote's howl interrupted by thump of hip hop from a car cruising down Bloomingdale. Where am I?

Transmitting Our Values

KT and I have been having great discussions about passing on our values and sharing our roots with our children. We know that we can't rely on them learning by osmosis, although at this point in their childhood we want them to have a childhood and not be burdened by the fact there is racism, rape, genocide, hatred, gun violence not far from their home, and that according to our beliefs that our Savior was betrayed, beaten with shards of glass and pottery and chunks of his flesh were ripped from him then he was nailed violently on a cross and left to die by gurgling and drowning in his phlegm, snot, and blood.So I guess a lot of what we transmit is muted or we hope is transferred by osmosis through living life with our family and giving them experiences that smack of the values we hold true at this point in our lives.
We are excited by the prospect and the possibilities of not leaving our children to make sense of this world on their own, we want, at an age appropriate time be able to transmit our values and an understanding directly, and be able to walk through hard questions with them, being able to have black and white answers on some and others, be willing to say I don't know. hopefully they'll have questions already and some later on like who do you love more, Liam or me, why do you focus more time online than with mom, why did we live at Keystone, why did we move, why am i part Puerto Rican or Irish and I don't eat that food or speak those languages, why do we live around lots of black people, but my other family members don't, why can't i pretend to shoot this gun in Ava's face, why do we have to go to church, why cant I sleep over at my friend Ella's house I'm 10 years old, why does my friend have two dads, I saw them kissing and called them gay, my friend cried, why should I read the Bible when u don't, why do my friends get to play Grand Theft Auto 6 or watch Paranormal Activity 8, what is sex,Jesus is cool, but my friends say he's lame, they say I'm lame, how do we know this is the only truth?
We want to be ready.

Piss and Vinegar

I am a pretty passive person, but sometimes I can be passionate. my mom passed down a legacy of tenacity and persistence. Lately, I have been fighting against the city and all powers of hell from cutting down a 40 year old tree in front of my apartment building, I have been fighting to keep Liam's educational rights, I've been fighting the future of my old neighborhood's business district, and fighting for the old block by working to get an abandoned, troubled home into the hands of the right people. I'm still full of piss n' vinegar after all.

I Thank God

I thank God that I never got one of those barbed wire tattoos. Thank you for God for granting me the wisdom to not look like Nick Lachey.

NATO in Chicago

 It's so hard living in a world where you surround yourself with those that think and believe the same things as you do. Whether you are protesting NATO downtown or sitting in front of your t.v. and complaining about them on FOX NEWS, how are you going to change anyone's mind, opinion, or beliefs by preaching to the choir. I think the greatest hope for peace is pursuing a relationship with those that you judge, hate, or want to break.


"Belief"

Is there anyone who
Ever remembers changing there mind from
The paint on a sign?
Is there anyone who really recalls
Ever breaking rank at all
For something someone yelled real loud one time.

                                          -JM

Need vs. Calling

Do you know the difference between the trying to solve the needs of this world and your calling? Many times I've got them mixed up.

The Black Middle Class

I called my old neighbor
from Keystone
to help my new neighbor
capture some animals
that had gotten into his roof

After I asked my old neighbor
what he thought of my new neighbor,
he said he was weird.

Weird, I asked,
How?
Remember when we
was talking?
Yeah?
Well, he called me over
while I was talking to you.
So?
I didn't like his, tone.
What do you mean,
was his tone, too wh...
No, just weird.

West of Humboldt Park

I never heard anyone who lived in West Humboldt Park actually say they lived in West Humboldt Park, never. It has to be something created by the real estate industry, or created by some community organization in an effort to describe their location, something to the effect of, "We serve an area west of Humboldt Park, south of Augusta, north of Chicago Avenue, and east of Pulaski." Somehow the name morphed into West Humboldt Park and that name got appropriated, and today that is what the area is called on the southwest border of the actual community of Humboldt Park, mostly to non-profits, City and Federal agencies, the media, and those not from the area. If you actually asked a resident, like some teenager hanging out on Chicago Avenue, what neighborhood he lives in, he may say, "I'm from Harding and Iowa" or some other cross street. It is just interesting, this fetish for neighborhood naming; the need to name a space, not only that, it's interesting to try and backtrack the history of neighborhood identity. Attaching a name to a space has all kinds of sociological, political, and economic meanings and implications. In the past the area was named for, among other things, the farmer that owned the land, then maybe the parish, then the cross streets, then maybe the gang territory, then maybe to sell houses, then maybe to organize a community, then maybe to give context to a crime on the evening news. As my church moves deeper west of Humboldt Park, the actual park, will the area around the church, which just bears the names of the cross streets, or unofficial names such as Grand City or Cameron City, the names given to the area by the gang bangers that inhabit the space; will the area be defined anew by us? And what sociological, political, economic, and moral implications will our definition of the space leave on the area we are being called to serve?

A Different World

It's warm out. Everyone is out along Chicago Avenue and it's side streets. I went into the meeting feeling I was a resident of the neighborhood, where my church will be moving. I left feeling like I was in a different world, just one mile south of where I use to live. I think what overwhelms me about the boundary of Chicago to Grand, Kedzie to Pulaski is the randomness of it all. There are so many people on the street, and so many random acts of movement and stimulation that it's hard to get an easy feeling. You don't know where to look, but everywhere. It's not fear, maybe confusion, then fear, of the unknown. You just don't know what is going on and why it's going on. My church will be moving shortly to the intersection of Grand and Division, the literal intersection intersection of "race and poverty", as my pastor puts it, between black and Latino. Straddling that line is going to be work for me, but it's where our church needs to engage and where I'm preparing to engage. We can't fall over too deep, one way or the other. Right now, I fall to the north of Grand. I much prefer the area north of Grand Avenue. At least it's randomness I can wrap my head around.

Love Thy Neighbor

Here are ways not to love your neighbor: call the cops on them, curse them out, beat them when they look at you hard, patronize them, gossip about them, take their snow shovels, salt thier lawn, assault their cat, stomp their garden, break a 40 oz. of Cobra Malt Liquor on their welcome mat, play loud, bass pumpin', house music until 4:37am., call gangbangers on them, say go to hell, mentor a local kid and then move away abruptly, volunteer at a local shelter then tell someone to get a job, open your home to neighbors and show them all of your nice stuff, litter, drive to the suburbs to shop, let your dog piss on their lawn, in the same spot, two times a day, send them stale cookies then, open your shades and laugh at them.

Oil Stains and How Not To Make Friends

When I first moved here one of the things that impressed me about the neighborhood was that there were no oil stains on the asphalt. You might think this is crazy, but I notice random things like that. Well, one day I had my car towed to a mechanic, the truck driver couldn't get it out because it was at a weird angle so he suggested using diesel to let it slip out. At first I was hesitant, I intended to ask if it would stain the asphalt, but I didn't say anything because diesel is gas, right. Well the next morning I realized I was wrong, the guy left a huge stain and streak in front of my neighbors home. I felt so guilty that had created this oil stain problem I decided to clean it up. I thought Kitty litter would work so I borrowed some of Charlie Cat's litter to lay on the stain, and while I was at it, on other little stains on the block. I left it there to soak up, but forgot to clean it up, then it snowed. As the snow melted a couple of days later, I realized I had created a disaster. I eventually cleaned up the sticky goo and cat litter stains when it got warmer, but I began noticing that oil stains started appearing all over the block, it annoyed me because I couldn't figure out which car had been making the multiple stains. I became obsessed with oil stains, noticing them in other neighborhoods, other blocks. I noticed how pretty the asphalt looked in Oak Park or in other suburbs and wished for my asphalt to look the same. I decided if I couldn't figure out which car was making the messes, I'd just clean up the messes. So I learned laundry detergent and a good scrub works, litter on fresh oil works, gasoline works. Just don't try cleaning up oil with you 5 year old, they step in the oil and you'll be obsessed about where they step after that. It came to a point where I lost all composure and was checking underneath cars I suspected as oil leakers and watched carefully for any drips. One night, I found a drip, a culprit, and doing what any sane person would do, I drafted a letter telling the car owner that they were leaking oil all over the block and need to get the problem fixed. I gave them my name and phone number I'd they wanted to discuss anything. This made Katie, Eric, and Emily upset and they felt embarrassed for me, how i sound elitist, and sad that crazy is how I want my new neighbors to perceive me. I told them of how proud I was for saying what needed to be said, how I was protecting the beauty of our block, and that it probably helped the individual whose car was leaking, that they were happy to know they had a problem they didn't know existed and now it would be fixed. Two months later while working low to the ground, I looked up and noticed the white car I put a note on, roll up to the curb. Out came my neighbor's wife, she barely acknowledged me. Then it clicked, now I know why my neighbor didn't let me use his edger hog.

Prone to Wander

Im sitting in the library, on my Ipod, reading some blogs, in the background is Liam and Ava's night night mix, im half listening, i pick up this part of a hymn's stanza,
"Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love."
And everyday, I stray and leave the God I need and love, for the shallow desires of my immediate wants. I'm glad that as the hymn say, " in kindness, oh how he pursues me.", and i can come back to him.

True, true

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How Deep Do/Will Your Roots Go?

"So my wife and I have been in Chicago for like five years, I'm in finance, we really like this school, we've checked maybe like five or six, but loved this one because it's just more diverse; you know because of all the Hispanics in the neighborhood, which we love, LOVE IT, we didn't want our kids to go to school or live with all white people, we love the connections the school has with the Joffrey and the Civic Opera, Miles has the option to learn Mandarin, Chinese, or Farsi. It's close to our favorite restaurants, cafes, and guerilla theaters. I can walk or bike here. I know we'll stay here through 8th, but that's probably it. No, I mean Chicago, I don't want to deal with the
hassle of navigating high school. I mean if he doesn't get into the selective enrollment..what other choice do we have, what, send him to Clemente, no, no, no, not going to do that.( chuckle) I think we will probably go back to Columbus, where my wife is from, but, but enough about me, what do you think?" he said. I replied, " Let me tell you a story...

Chicago was once full of swamps and prairie. The swamps were drained, now gone; today Chicago's native prairie is fraction of it's ground cover, closer to being choked out for good by the succession of non native species. Such species, like common grass and weeds, grow in the prairie's place; one would never know the prairie was once there. The roots that went down deep into to land, have been replaced by the shallow, adding little to the land except manicured lawns; easily uprooted when drought comes.

35 and here to stay!

I just turned 35. I think I just entered a new age demographic also. I believe I am now part of a "child-rearing group, ages 35-44". What is interesting about that demographic and what I believe to be true, based on what I am hearing from young urban professionals I hang with is this, this demographic is now struggling with which neighborhood to raise children in and which school to send their kid to. Really for many of this age group, in the middle class, when it comes to kids, Chicago has it's limits. The suburbs or one's hometown now has cache. Not me, the only thing I have to look back to for a reference is Chicago, I've been here forever, born and raised here for 35 years, before gentrification and globalization caused people to make false choices. My age demographic will not force me to leave this city I love.

Buzz Words

Proximity doesn't create community.
Diversity is nothing more than proximity if you aren't pursuing a relationship with those around you doifferent than you.