Tree Hugger

Everyday I drive down School Street on my way to my job at my old elementary school, past my my old block, and my old house on 3312 N. Keystone .In the spring and early summer and fall I get to experience a lovely canopy of mature urban trees until it clears onto a lifeless steppe right before Karlov Avenue. Call me a tree hugger if you want, but I've always have had a soft spot for those trees along School Street and on my block, so about a week and a half ago, I noticed an empty space where the tallest tree on Keystone once stood and I felt an emptiness in my heart. Whenever I visited my old block the space felt almost exactly as it felt how felt when I lived there almost twenty years ago. Now feeling has changed, I feel as if something was stripped from me, a reminder of my childhood. My memories can never come back to me as fresh as they once were.


If you ever read a book about trees, the best book to pick up is The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein. The tree gives its all to the boy/man and the man never truly appreciates it until it is gone, just a stump. Urban trees hardly ever get their due. If they make it, they take forty or fifty years to mature, and the ones that make it get cut down cuz they screw up your plumbing. If anything, I appeal to those that live in Chicago... appreciate our urban forest because trees bring life and a feeling of permanence and security to the space where you live. And if you can, this coming April 25, plant a tree in our great city and give a blessing to our future residents.

Hizzoner: Mayor Richard J. Daley

Check dis play out. Make sure you have someone to come with. This is a love letter about Chicago, it's history, and it's politics as seen through the almost 20 year administation of Daley. After, read the book American Pharoh to get more background information of the man that changed our city.

What is a bodega?

I usually get these google alerts for Humbodt park and West humboldt park and I keep getting blogs and internet articles about "Humboldt Park" the movie being fimed here. It's a movie " that follows a family reunion during the holidays in the Chicago neighborhood of Humboldt Park. John Leguizamo and Freddy Rodriguez have been cast as brothers in the clan. JayHernandez plays a friend of the family who works there. Melanie Diaz is a former lover of Rodriguez's character and friends with the clan's daughter. Mercedes Ruehl is the matriarch and Alfred Molina is the father who owns a bodega." Bodega? What is a bodega?

I thought maybe it was some kind of store and I was right. Apparently bodegas are what we in Chicago like to call, corner stores. See what happens when Nuyoricans write a script about True Chicago Puerto Ricans. Maybe Freddy Rodriguez, who grew up in a Puerto Rican niegborhood, in Chicago no less, should have read the script before it went into production.

Rick's Wake

Today, Rick was remebered lovingly by his extended family, most lovingly by his mom. She greeted Rhoda and me; knowing who Rhoda was, but not me. Rhoda introduced me as the "block captain". Rhoda and I visited for about an hour, staying quiet, giving our respects and soaking everything in.
From three poster boards, mounted with photos, I learned that Rick's family was originally from Tennessee. He grew up in Logan Square near Armitage and California and as the neighborhood changed in the 1960's and 70's , his family stayed. He graduated from Chase Elementary. I couldn't tell where he went to high school, but there were pictures of him with his date from the prom and of the day he graduated. Other photos documented his life with his wife and his child. They showed him feeding and playing with his baby. There were photos of him in front of his new car, in front of a house, in a subdivision, in a suburb of a city in California. His son was there to pay his respects, but no wife. Something happened between all the happiness documented in the photos and life Rick lived before he passed on Friday from complications from pneumonia.
Most of us on the block remember Rick as the crazy looking white dude, with no teeth who was dying of AIDS, that sold drugs to our neighbors, and hung out with the prostitutes. Although I never saw anything with my own eyes, he was the next problem that our Block Club was going to go after to clean up the block.
Its easy to forget that the "problem" on any block can be someones son, father, uncle, or friend. Those three poster boards gave us a fuller picture of who Rick was as a person, it humanized him. I prayed for Rick periodically. Everytime I talked to him on the sidewalk, he was always wearing a What Would Jesus Do? key chain around his neck and asking me about a good church to visit. I never followed up.
Rick's famous quote was " I did a lot of bad things in my life, but at least I did it my way." I hope that in his last days he was able to let go of that and make peace with God.

Our Family's 2007 Top Ten List

Today, I have a guest blogger, my wife Katie.

After we made our 2007 Top Ten List (as suggested by "The Love List" by Drs. Les and Leslie Parrot), Bill asked me to post it on his blog because I type faster than him- I refused. Then he said he wanted me to his guest blogger, which I thought was kind of cute, so I agreed. Here it is (in no particular order):

1. Exercise: Bill began running with Ryan Steingard in Humboldt Park and lost 20 lbs. and I began walking the neighborhood while pushing Liam's stroller and listening to podcasts.
2. Liam's many FIRSTS: crawling, walking, talking and our favorite- sleeping through the night (thanks to "The Sleep Easy Solution")
3. Block involvement (getting a mural painted on HOBO, consistent block club meetings with Bill as the president, deeper relationships with some neighbors and Bill's fight for the historic preservation of Ferndell's)
4. Nights away from home with and without Liam (hotel in Schaumburg, Galena)
5. Turning 30 (taking a skyline flight and having a celebrity surprise party for Bill and spending time at my Uncle Jim's cabin near Madison for mine)
6. Sharing parenting with the Runyans.
7. Going on dates- having babysitters!
8. The balance I have found between being a mom and having a life (and job) outside of the house.
9. Christmas with the Sullivan family- sharing our highs and lows from the year- healing.
10. Peace and calm in the Smiljanich family

True Value: People

Last month, I went to the True Value on Higgins and Nottingham. I went there as usual when I go to Higgins. I go there for lint traps, lawn care products, a window screen fixed, drop off the snowblower for repair, or for just a single screw. I never considered going to ACE or the Home Depot. They always had the little stuff I needed.

The same guys and gals have been working there for years. You always could tell they enjoyed what they were doing and they were always helpful. This was the type of place where you would always see regulars; they were the ones leaning on the merchandise, coffee in hand, and shooting the breeze with the employees about family, local politics, and the new Black and Decker leaf blowers. At Schultz True Value, customers didn't just come in to shop, they came back because of the relationships they had with the employees.

Today was different though, today was like the feeling of your girlfirend breaking up by having her friend tell you over the phone. Total surprise, no way to change what just happened, no way to appeal to the person you trusted and came to love. Today, the big purple and orange sign said it all, Total Liquidation.

I came in and most of the shelves were bare, all the employees were smiling, but you could tell there was something going on underneath it all. I asked one of the old guys behind the counter how he felt about the store closing. He said he had been told by a customer first that the store was closing. I said that I was sad to see the store go, that I could get everything I needed for Higgins just a hop, skip, and a jump away. I said I'd miss the store. He replied that he was really grateful for my words. And that was it.

The owners bought the store 3 years ago and decided they'd make more money by off property. Little did they know that by selling the property that relationships and livelihoods would be changed forever. RIP little hardware store, because you knew that making money was not as important as the true value of building relationships and a community of satisfied customers.


Check out these comments from other happy customers:

http://www.yelp.com/biz/schultz-true-value-chicago

Forclosures? Fo' sho'

Foreclosures have been hitting our community very hard lately. Recent statistics show that just for the 1st half of this year there were a 52.6 foreclosure starts per square mile in our nieghborhood. If you think that is bad, we're just suffering only half as much as residents in West Englewood where there were on average, 111 foreclosure starts per square mile the first half of this year. This has become the American Nightmare for residents in Chicago and across our nation.

http://savetheamericandream.wordpress.com/

http://www.ntic-us.org/documents/FirstHalf2007Report.pdf

Parking in Chicago

On Friday, Kate picked me up from school after driving 5 hours in her car. She was driving in to the city while everyone else was driving out of the city. We made our way downtown to Reza's for Persian food and then to AMC River East to see the movie Juno. The great thing about parking downtown on the Friday before Christmas is that everyone has left out of town so, parking close to your destination is easy and free.
A true Chicagoan never pays for parking. Even when its the holidays, no self respecting Chicagoan should have to pay for parking, on the street or in a parking garage, in their own city. Paying for parking is reserved for someone from Schuamburg or a tourist from Indiana.
Additonally, how do you tell a tourist from a Chicagoan? A tourist or a suburbanite for that matter, has a clean windshield. What, you say? A windshield with at least 4 years worth of city stickers on the right side is a tell tale sign of a True Chicagoan.

My Block

This is the street where I live. More pictures and descriptions to come. Thanks 

Chicagoisms

I thought I might highlight some true Chicagoisms for my first post.
Check dis out:
http://members.aol.com/mistamoose/vocab.html
http://www.gapersblock.com/fuel/archives/chicagoisms/
http://www.suntimes.com/chicago/chicagopedia/index.html