Dawn's Exhibtion

Well, after all the storm und drang, Dawn's exhibition went remarkably well yesterday. She held her poise, even when she couldn't find a document or when we pressed her about points of math she didn't know very well. She could just say, "I don't know," and move on. She also managed to talk about all the things she went through this quarter with the house and how that dampened her motivation to get through her school work. She said she is learning the difference between saying you're going to do something and really doing it.

She really knew her stuff in talking about colonization and why Europeans became the colonizers and what weapons they used, including germ warfare (smallpox), to kill off indigenous Americans. She also managed to translate almost her entire report on Madagascar, which she had prepared in English, into Spanish for the presentation. She was translating her power point text on the fly and doing a very good job of it, from what I could tell and from what the bilingual teacher roped into the panel said afterwards.

The only big bummer was she didn't invite her mom. I feel guilty because I knew the night before that she hadn't invited her. I encouraged her to reconsider and asked why she hadn't. She said she didn't invite her because she knew the exhibition wouldn't be as good as it should be and she didn't want her mom riding her back any more than she already it. (Dawn feels very put-upon these days. I'm not sure whether any of it has any legitimacy or if it's all teen angst.)

Anyway, I double-checked if she wanted me to come and she said yes. Then I said, "I really think you should ask your mom." But it didn't even occur to me that I could say something to her myself. The thing is, I do feel like it's Dawn's exhibiton and I wouldn't have the right to invite someone on her behalf. So I didn't. I just hoped that my speech to her about inviting her mom would take.

It didn't. I got there and her advisor told me she literally had just found out five minutes before that Dawn hadn't asked her. I said I knew she hadn't at 10:30 last night but I told her she should and then went to bed and went to work and hadn't followed through to see if she did. Well, her advisor didn't call then. I don't know if she should have or not.

Last night I went to the house--I thought Dawn might at least have said something to her mom about it, so I said, "Muy bien hecho" (Very good work) and pointed at Dawn as soon as I walked in the door. So, the cat was out of the bag. Dawn looked surprised but not too upset. Her mom called her dad at work and told him. I got parts of the conversation but not everything. We were watching a sad TV show about two pregnant women with cancer. Both survived, but one delivered a stillborn baby because they had to give the woman chemo to keep her alive. Anyway, I spotted tears running down Dawn's mom's face and I just didn't know if it was from the show or from finding out Dawn hadn't invited her. So I felt pretty crappy, and of course I don't even know if Dawn noticed. I guess I'll have to talk to her about it.

Library Trip Scores a Foul

The good news: Dawn came over today and we got her a book on Madagascar and a book on hurricanes, so she might be able to salvage her exhibition on Thursday.

The bad news: Dawn told her boss at her internship and told me where she was going, but she didn't tell her parents or her advisor. In a move worthy of Romeo & Juliet, I called her parents looking for her this morning, thinking she had her mom's cell phone, so her parents found out she hauled off to the library without telling them. Oops.

But not totally oops, either. I was expecting Dawn this afternoon, not this morning, and I didn't really think it was a great idea for her to blow off her internship to do this. She also missed one of the exhibitions she was supposed to attend in the process.

Here's what happened. Just as I was about to do my most important interview of the day, the phone rang. It was Dawn, saying she was on her way here to go to the library. I didn't expect to hear that but I didn't have time to argue, so I said OK, come here first and we'll go over and I hung up. Then I got on the phone with my interview subject. The phone rang, and the number calling in flashed but I didn't see it. I thought it was Dawn so after I finished interviewing, I called her mom's cell phone. Her dad answered the phone. I asked if he knew where Aurora was and we had a not very clear conversation in Spanish in which I said I understood she was coming here to get books and I thought she had permission from school, which I did think at that point.

Anyway, she arrived by about 11:30 or so. I told her what happened and she started crying. She said she hadn't told her parents because they were angry at her yesterday for staying at school until 5 p.m. and not telling them where she was. She figured they wouldn't believe her if she told them her plan and they wouldn't let her. I told her I really thought more communication, not less, was the answer in this situation. Then I found out she hadn't spoken with Carolina either. I asked if she wanted to call Carolina and she said, no, she's probably in an exhibition anwyay, which I thought was probably true. Plus, Dawn was going back to school to watch a 2 p.m. exhibition.

We called her mom and told her that Dawn had been here to get books and was going back to school for her 2 p.m. exhibition that ends at 3. I hope everything went OK from here. Whew!

As we were walking back to the office from the library, I said, "Well, if you're grounded for life, at least you can do your reports."

"Yeah," she said. "Now I have somthing to read." (She did have some stuff prior to this, but I think not enough to get a good grade.) Stay tuned. Her exhibition is Thursday afternoon.

Why I hate spring

More reasons to hate spring--there were two shootings in the neighborhood last week.

I heard this from the two neighborhood principals on Friday afternoon. One of them was feeling bad because he thought at least one of them might have been prevented with better adult presence in the vicinity, I gather.

And a last hated vestige of winter--if you live in Chicago you probably saw footage last week of the fire that killed four young kids. It happened at 54th and Honore, within a mile radius of my house. I woke up Wednesday morning and saw helicopters circling overhead. We were all wondering why they were there. I thought it was another big drug bust or something.

School News

My block of South Marshfield Avenue had a lot to brag about this morning at the Chavez LSC meeting. We can boast two Students of the Month--Junior was one of them!!--and a candidate in the hotly contested election for parents on the LSC. There are 15 candidates running for 6 spots, in a city where not every school has enough parents running to fill all the seats, let alone give people choices.

Our community race, by contrast, is lackluster--as comm rep Veronica Lopez put it this morning (via my attempt at translation), "If I vote, I win." She and Fr. Ed, the current reps, are the only folks on the community ballot. I'll go vote for them just to show that there are community people paying attention. (Even if I wanted to run, I can't due to conflicts of interest with my job.)

Anyway, School Lady from down the block is running. I was surprised to see this because she spends so much time over there I thought she was a paid employee. (School employees can't run for LSC at the school where they work, even if they have children enrolled there.) So perhaps she is a volunteer. Wow.

There are clearly some factions involved and I am trying to get a feel for the landscape as quickly as possible. I will be asking the comm reps and School Lady for their opinions as to who the best parent candidates are, even though I can't vote for them.

School Lady's youngest daughter also earned Student of the Month this month. Whoo-hoo! Meanwhile, her oldest daughter is making out OK at Richards, no bad news to report, she tells me. She also tells me there is a contested race for community rep at Richards, so I'll have to go find out who's running and find out who to vote for.

Whose Homework To Do?

I'm busted. My Spanish teacher gave me a ton of homework on Monday night and I have accomplished almost none of it. (I think I wrote no more than two sentences in one of the exercises he assigned to practice the subjunctive. Not too spectacular.) I called and excused myself from class today, pleading an event I "have to" cover tonight. I'll probably stop by, but I really need to go home and help Dawn with her homework.

Last night I got a message from Dawn's teacher at Big Picture saying she had tried to find out what Aurora has to do for her science project, but she hadn't gotten farther than hearing Dawn's friend Gladys did all the work, so Dawn's not getting any credit. Dawn also has a project to do on Madagascar.

Dawn's family moved over the weekend. Someone broke in their old place while they were moving. The thief or thieves got Joey's gold necklace, a couple of cameras, the little TV Julian watches in their van, other stuff like that. Ouch. Aurora says she doesn't feel safe in the new house now, either. I know what she means. Last night they were cleaning the old place and now they are really done being there. I can hardly believe it.

This morning I went to school with Dawn and talked with her advisor and her science teacher. Her advisor scheduled her exhibition for next Thursday so we have a week to get her caught up. Thank goodness! Her teacher was very stern with her: "I did that this time because I knew the circumstances, but next time you have to be prepared. I'm not going to do this again."

I met her science teacher and got a list of all her missing assigments. I think she has only turned in one assignment this quarter, and that is one more than Julian has managed to scrape in. Great.

The science teacher is OK with Dawn doing a project on hurricanes on her own, since Gladys already finished the one they were supposedly doing together. Since Dawn already learned something about hurricanes she doesn't want to start all over this late in the game. I can see we have our work cut out for us this weekend. My poor Spanish homework may or may not get done between taxes, Dawn's quarter of missing work and anything I can do to get Julian to pull it together. Whew.

How I learned to stop worrying and love the Machine

Late last week I called one of Esther's campaign people. "What's going on?" I asked. He assured me everything was OK. I asked which precincts hadn't come in yet, and he said they were in a friendly ward (I'm sorry to say I'm unclear whether they were 3rd or 11th ward precincts). But I got off the phone with the general impression that they were precincts that would put Esther over the top.

And with one precinct left to go, here's what the Board of Election Commissioners has to say:


DEM - Rep. In Gen. Assembly, 6th
113 of 114 precincts counted
99.12%
Samuel T. Bunville 1688 15.85%
Keith B. Kysel 760 7.13%
Esther Golar 4238 39.79%
Darryl Smith 3966 37.23%

Total 10652 100.00%

Spring, my lost love

No, I'm not going to quote Eliot's opening line to The Waste Land. It's not even April yet, for starters. Besides, this less-famous line hits the mark: "Winter kept us warm, covering/Earth in forgetful snow."

Now we have the gray chilling wetness of March air above the naked earth. The bare ground reveals all the trash that stayed planted under snow for the last three months, and the March wind blows it all over the streets, sidewalks and yards.

I bet I pick up more trash in March and April than any other time of the year. And it's all sodden, muddy and prone to fall apart into soggy shards at the first touch.

When I was a little girl in Wilmington, Delaware, there would always be a day in March that was warm and wet. You could smell the earth warming up and the promise of flowers, soon, soon. Back then, I loved spring. This weekend I remembered why. I went home to visit and there were five grape hyacinths and two daffodils in my mother's front yard.

This morning, the traffic circle at Marshfield and 50th has some bulbs peeping out of the ground, but it will be weeks before they flower. Even at 48 degrees there's no promise of spring in the air. Nothing but the gray chill that lasts until May.

It's the worst season of Chicago, bar none. And nothing makes an ugly Chicago neighborhood look uglier than spring.

One Big Win, One Still in Doubt

First, not on the electoral front--Dawn's dad got his job back! He went back to work yesterday. They also won back pay for the week they were suspended from their jobs. Whoo-hoo!

And, I'm sorry to say the jury is still out on whether my pal Esther Golar gets to keep her seat.

Here's what the Sun-Times had to say a few minutes ago:

District 6 Updated: 3:38 p.m.
78.9% of precincts reporting

Darryl Smith 3,245 38.6%
Esther Golar 3,240 38.6%
Samuel Bunville 1,332 15.9%
Keith Kysel 583 6.9%

So I take it that purchasing the services of Joe from Coleman's office was too expensive. And I take it I must have misheard his turnout for Pat Bailey. Maybe he said 4400. Maybe I was high from the glue on the envelopes.

Esther's campaign manager, a nice Irish guy, assured us last night that she had it in the bag when John Daley called to tell us the 11th ward results, where she picked up over 1000 votes and trounced the opposition. The CM opined that even if the other wards were close contests, this would be enough to take her over the top. Well, there's still about a quarter of the precincts yet to come in and the 11th has failed to keep her on top. Ouch. Stay tuned.

Primary Day

Well, when I went to Richards High to vote this morning, my friend the Democratic judge told me I was about the 10th person to vote. He said about 50 percent of the eligible voters turned out in the 04 general election (that's comparable to national, right??), but as usual with a primary they expect a low turnout today. Polls close in less than half an hour.

I've decided somewhat against my better judgment to go ahead and tell you all about my experiences with Esther Golar's run to get elected to her currently appointed seat as state representative in Illinois' 6th District. Esther has been active on the Neighborhood Housing Services board, which is how I know her. When our previous state rep. Patricia Bailey, was found not to be living in the district, she was forced out and Esther was appointed to replace her. That happened since the new year, I believe. So now Esther is running for the seat.

In a boring primary, her race has been pretty live. Originally there were seven candidates, but at least three dropped out. The only ones I've heard much about besides Esther are Darryl Smith and Sam Bunville. The buzz I heard (if I recall right, so this is rumor) is that Smith is allied with Englewood activist Hal Baskin, who has run for alderman unsuccessfully a couple of times. Rumor also has it that he has ties to some less than savory groups in the hood but I think everybody slings those allegations around at election time and I don't know the truth or falsity of it at all.

Esther is the only candidate I'm aware of who has personally made an appearance in our part of the neighborhood. This is something I'm pretty concerned about because I feel like our part of the world is neglected by most of the aldermen who have pieces of it, since their main bases are to the east in Englewood, Woodlawn, etc. Esther, who doesn't speak Spanish, put in time at two Spanish-language Masses this month to be introduced to congregations where we have no idea how many voters there are. (That's true in the black churches, too, but for different reasons.) Anyway, it was clear to me from the git-go that she was my candidate in this race.

So I've been doing some volunteer work for her in my spare time--mostly stuffing and addressing envelopes. I was in the office the weekend before last during an interesting strategy session with the get-out-the-vote guy from Alderman Shirley Coleman's office. He explained that he's interested in making sure there's as high a turnout as possible in this election, even though aldermen aren't in the race this year, because high turnout means a challenger would need more signatures to get on the ballot the next time she has to run. He apparently delivered over 44,000 votes for Bailey in the previous election and was confident he could pull off the same level of support for Esther.

"Let's see how much they charge us," said one of Esther's advisors after he left. I have no idea what the price tag was for that. Esther had some backing from other pols--from being around the office I know state Senator Rickey Hendon sent some cash her way from his war chest--and a friend who checked the campaign finance database informs me she had the big bucks in this race, which didn't surprise me. For once I'm not fighting the machine.

In fact, I'll be at the campaign office tonight to watch the returns. My buddy the Dem judge, who put in more time for Esther than I did, may not be there, though. He's been up since 3 a.m. and there were some snafus getting the new balloting system to work, so he's not sure how long he'll have to stay after the polls close. Gotta say I'm not too fond of the new ballots--no privacy since they are so big and the judge watches you scan it into the machine. I just hope it read properly.

Now that I live in a ward with low turnout, I wonder how closely the alderman's office looks at the returns. Will they be able to tell a north lakefront independent moved into the ward and didn't follow the alderman's sample ballot? Probably. I wonder if that will exacerbate the trouble with getting the streetlights, garbage,, etc. It's like living in a time warp down here. But at least I don't think anybody was voting often...

Slam Dancing for Jesus

That's what we were doing at Su Casa last night. Every Sunday around 8 p.m., workers and the occasional visitor (like yours truly) get together for prayer and reflection. Sometimes it's quiet and candle-y, but last night was basically a sing-a-long.

We sang a bunch of spirituals. Stephanie has a great voice for them. Mark knows quite a repertoire and had us all going. We did a few Taize chants because they're easy. One person was rather wedded to a hymnal and the rest of us were trying to pry us out of that into whatever common songs we all knew by heart or could pick up quickly.

I learned three new ways to sing "Amazing Grace," including to the tune of "Gilligan's Island." I dare you to try it yourself. I think it also works with that great 70s hit, "Peaceful Easy Feeling," which is truly hilarious!

Former St. Francis worker Mary Kay Brennan, who was visiting (yeah!) requested "Finlandia," highly appropriate the night after the peace march in Chicago.

And we wrapped up with the big finish of "Lord of the Dance" which got Mark on his feet doing something between Irish and Russian dancing, which rapidly evolved into Mark and Stephanie slamming with the occasional assist from me, despite the tendonitis in my left foot. Hey, you can always hop on the other one!

Dawn's Dad on TV

Well, given that Dawn's dad got interviewed on cable TV yesterday (Azteca, a Spanish-language cable channel), I guess I'll out him. Juan Garcia spoke on Azteca yesterday and had his mug splashed all over Univision and the front page of this morning's Hoy (the Tribune's Spanish-language daily paper). If you see Hoy today, he's the guy on the left in the back wearing a green t-shirt and jacket and helping to hold up the banner.

Juan and his coworkers have found themselves a kick-ass lawyer, Jose Oliva, from the Interfaith Workers' Rights Center, and they held a press conference yesterday. They have a meeting with company management today, who were quoted in this morning's Hoy saying this all came from "a misunderstaning between supervisors and employees" ('un malentiendo entre supervisores y empleados." They have a meeting with management right now (started at 12:30 p.m.). Let's hope this all gets settled and everybody goes back to work.

Last night I went by the Garcia's old place (the apartment) and sat down to watch the telenovela Alborada with the missis. Juan came in later with a 12-pack of Corona and two bags of Mexican baked goodies to celebrate. They had taped the Univision afternoon broadcast so I got to see him standing in the back.

We're having dinner at my house on Saturday night, featuring Mexican-Irish chili. That would be chili with green, red and orange peppers in it! Let's hope it's a "you got your job back" celebration. Stay tuned.

More March & Fallout

The good news about the march was that somewhere between 100,000 and 500,000 people showed up. That's the police and the organizers' estimates, respectively. Usually splitting it down the middle gives you something about right, so let's say 300,000 folks showed up.

Now here's the bad news. Dawn's dad may be getting fired over it. He and all the other folks working at the factory went Friday, despite being told Thursday night that anyone who went would get the axe. No one has received official termination letters yet. It sounds like the official company staff, including Dawn's dad, may be able to stay on, but the company wants to dump the day labor folks who were working there and chose to march. The company employees are saying they won't stay unless everyone gets their jobs back. I don't know how this will shake out, but it was pretty rough sitting with Dawn and her parents on folding chairs and large buckets in their new house, with dust all over the floor and white paint drying on the walls, wondering whether they're going to be able to make the mortgage payments.

I pitched the story to a reporter friend of mine (won't say which one yet) and am trying to get to a labor lawyer. I think if the company really wants to fire them they can, but I'm hopeful that a bilingual lawyer could put the fear of God in the management and shelve the whole dispute. If any of you readers have any leads on advocates who could help, please post. I've sent an email to a buddy at the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, but you can imagine they are swamped with organizing stuff now and who knows when I'll get a response. Thanks for any tips.

This is what democracy looks like! Esta marcha hoy!

March Update

The English language news media in Chicago is finally catching on that this will be a big deal. My colleage and I went to the gym this morning and she saw a spot on the local news showing the route--from Union Park at Ashland and Lake, down to Jackson, then across Jackson Boulevard eastbound to Federal Plaza.

Buses are coming in from all over the Midwest. Organizers have no idea how many people will show--estimates are ranging from 50,000 to 500,000. It's a warm, sunny day, so I'd bet high.

Rosa called this morning. They're going. Junior and his bro are calling in sick to school. I bet half the kids at Chavez call in sick today. Big Picture students are allowed to leave early to go if they have a note from their parents. Dawn is supposed to call me at the office when she gets to Federal Plaza. I may jump on the Green Line at lunchtime to ride past the park and get a look at the crowd from above.

Whee!!

Persuading the Man

I can't remember if I posted this to the blog before, but for a while I've been kind of wondering what I'm doing down here in Back of the Yards. I read about the young college kids who moved into Uptown back in the 60s to organize the poor white Appalachians there to fight The Man. On the one hand, I'm not so down with the "I'm here to organize you" mentality. On the other, they had a vision of where they were going, and sometimes that's a good thing. After months of stumbling around, I was feeling like I lacked purpose.

Well, thanks to Rep. Sensenbrenner and his heinous anti-immigration bill, I no longer lack purpose in my neighborhood. Dawn called me last night to ask if I would help her write a letter to the management at her dad's factory, asking to let the workers off on Friday afternoon to attend the pro-immigration march. So she came over and we worked out a first draft together. Her dad called in the middle of it saying that the floor manager had threatened to fire anybody who didn't show up for work on Friday. She told him the story I heard from Little Village, where a group of workers volunteered to come in Saturday at regular, not overtime pay, to make up the lost time. They may hold that idea in reserve as a Plan B strategy.

Anyway, Dawn and I wrote a very polite letter in which we pointed out the bill would increase penalties on employers who hire undocumented workers (i.e. possibly hit the employers in their wallet) and requested a chance for the workers to make their views known publicly. I don't know that it will have any effect but I'm really happy to be able to lend some of my talents to a project they organized, instead of trying to get them to do something that was on my agenda.

Projections for attendance at tomorrow's rally and march are up to 100,000. I think that would be the largest demonstration here in my 16 years of residence. Stay tuned.

Suspected Drug Drop

You know, I'm a real idiot when it comes to spotting drug activity. For all the years I have spent in rough neighborhoods, I'm really not too clued in to what the guys on the corner are actually doing. I remember I was out on the West Side one day a few years ago and a young man walked up to me and said, "Blow? Blow?"

"No thanks," i said, and kept walking. Honestly, I had not the faintest notion what he was asking me. I thought maybe he wanted a blow job and couldn't figure out for the life of me why he thought I might give him one.

It took a few days for the slang to register. "Oh, blow!" I thought to myself on the bus. "Powder cocaine!! I'm a white lady so I don't want rock. Perhaps I want blow."

I have very occasionally seen money change hands, but have never actually seen the stuff out on the street. Still haven't done that, but I lurched a few steps closer last night.

Ironically, I was on my way home from Chavez Elementary, where a yellow legal paper stuck to the fence proclaimed: "CAPS Meeting Canceled." As I walked down the block south of the viaduct, I saw a huge black pickup truck blocking the street. One African American man was bent down and sticking his hand up against the door of the house like he was putting something there. Another one was on his cell phone on the sidewalk. I nearly ran into him for staring across the street (smart...not!)

"Hello," he said. Quite politely. Not in the least intimidating.

I kept walking very fast, head fixed straight ahead. Yes, I did call 911 when I got inside. Probably should have called the district tactical officers. I may yet.

Alberto told me last night he's seen that black truck around, too.

La Lucha Continua

about immigration, that is. The Archdiocese has a big campaign on to encourage elected officials to find more just solutions than building a wall on the Mexican border. They are not explicitly supporting the Kennedy-McCain bill, but pro-immingration analysts pretty much agree that that is the best proposal out there right now, from what I hear. It creates a guest worker program and provides additional visas to reunite families separated by immigration status. Here's what Ted himself has to say about his bill:

http://www.tedkennedy.com/journal/724/fighting-for-real-immigration-reform

Anyway, yesterday there were big card campaigns going on at Holy Cross and St. Joe's. Unfortunately, they weren't the most highly organized. The college kids at Holy Cross are taking over this weekend to make sure people know who their US Congressman is, and not just to send them to Luis Gutierrez, who already is on their side of the issue. I think I'll have to do this for St. Joe's because more of us probably live in Dan Lipinski's district. Someone other than me had heard about Democrats voting for the nasty Sensenbrenner bill in the house, that would build a wall and criminalize anyone who helped an undocumented immigrant. The story was that some Dems who supported the bill (Lipinski and even Jan Schakowsky-ouch!!) did so knowing it would die in the Senate and getting some Republican votes on some project of theirs in return. The nuance I picked up last night was that this vote was supposed to insulate them from right-wing heat. Well, now they've pissed off at least some of their base instead. Oops!

There's a big march on Friday, which organizers hope will be at least as big as the one last summer (see July posts). So at least 40,000 or more.

Political Doings

It's primary season in Chicago and the 6th district state rep race (mine) is hotter than most this year. Our former state rep, Patricia Bailey was forced out of the seat when it was discovered she didn't live in the district. I think I mentioned before that the person appointed to take her place is someone I know from Neighborhood Housing Services.

So, State Representative Esther Golar (D-6) has at least three challengers, none of whom I'd ever heard of before. Her campaign office is around the corner from my house, so I've been in to address envelopes, etc. While I was there Saturday, Esther herself came by in the middle of the afternoon, after a morning of door knocking. Within five minutes, she was mopping the white-tiled office floor.

"We've got to keep this looking nice," she said.

I teased her. "Esther, how many state reps do you know who mop their own office floors?"

"Not many," she said with a smile.

The Return of Mr. Married

Yep, he's back. Now he's a couple of blocks north of the train tracks. I was walking up to Holy Cross Church on Saturday when he came out of his new front door.

"Hello," he said. He looks a lot older in just a few months. That tends to happen. When bad things happen to families around here and they get poorer, they tend to move east of Ashland or south of 51st. Mr. Married y familia did the latter. He works in construction, under the table, so sometimes he has a lot of work and sometimes he doesn't. Guess he does now. They just moved in their new place a week ago, he told me.

"Where are you going?" he asked me.

"To Holy Cross. There's a party," I said.

"See you."

I plumb forgot to try to show off the Spanish I have acquired since he left. Probably just as well. And definitely just as well he's a few blocks north.

Retro Ash Wednesday

Fr. Emil said Mass this morning at St. Joe's. He's the new priest from Poland who is Mr. Miracle in our parish since he actually speaks all three languages. He's Polish, learned English, and came here straight from six months of language study in Spain, if I recall correctly.

It was a larger crowd than usual this morning, with better representation from all language sectors, and a special guest appearance by two Catholic Workers, so I even had people to sit with. The only people I expected to see and didn't were the guys from Port Ministries. My buddy Joseph was there with his sons but I didn't get to go peace him because they kept the peace so short.

Peace was short because we had imposition of ashes in addition to Communion. Here's where the retro part comes in. As a post-Vatican II Catholic, I've always received ashes from a priest who dug his thumb in the ash and then marked the sign of the cross on my forehead. Today, Fr. Emil put little mounds of ashes right around everyone's hairline. I'd never seen it done that way before.

In the office ladies' room later this morning, one of my colleagues told me that in fact that is the very old-school way ashes were imposed pre-Vatican II. But that was usually for men, since women wore veils. Women got the thumbprint cross on the forehead, men got the pile of ashes in their hair (or on their bald spot, as happened to Joseph). Now that we don't have to wear veils, I guess in Poland everybody gets them the same way.

By the way, I also got to eat an awesome kolacky, probably homemeade, in the St. Joe's rectory after 9 a.m. Mass on Sunday. For those who don't know, kolacky is the name of a Polish Fat Tuesday treat. It's basically a doughnut dusted with powdered sugar and filled with jam, often raspberry. I'm often skeptical of raspberry jam-filled doughnuts, but this jam was not too sweet and tasted like some real fruit went into it way back in the beginning of the process. If I couldn't have a beignet, a kolacky was probably the next best thing!

Storm Tracker

Latest Alberto update: I got home in the wee hours of Sat night/Sun morning and went to the kitchen. The good news was Alberto had cleaned the stove and the kitchen floor. The bad news? I opened the freezer door to take out some chicken to thaw in the fridge, and discovered a bottle of lemon cleaner in there!!

Dude, what's up with that????? I did ask him this Sunday morning but frankly couldn't make a great deal of sense of the answer. (Not sure if this was because of a real language barrier or a convenient language barrier....hmmm...) I gathered from a mumbled answer that he was in a hurry and the floor was wet and he stuck it there for lack of a better idea and forgot about it. I suggested the utility closet, which is far from the kitchen and away from the wet floor, would be the best choice, and even the dining room table would be an improvement.

Meanwhile, poor Junior's mom was worried about me because she hadn't seen me in so long. She and the boys stopped by last night. Unfortunately I was actually on the phone with a work-related call and couldn't talk long, but it was nice to see them.

Gracias a Dios, Alberto had a workshop to go to overnight last night. I had a lovely evening at home by myself and got a decent night's sleep. I'm not sure if he's back tonight or Tuesday, but I'm pulling for a Tuesday arrival.

Fact or Fiction?

The doorbell rang at 5:30 this morning. At least three times, maybe four or five, while I was grabbing a bathrobe and debating whether to answer or not. Have to admit I was hoping Alberto might stick his head out the door. No such luck.

By the fourth or fifth ring I had decided to answer, with the phone in my bathrobe pocket to call 911 immediately if necessary. Guess who? Yup-yup, with a tale of two lovers, or a business transaction, unclear which.

"I saw a couple coming out of your back yard," he said excitedly. (He's almost always about that hyped-up. I assume it's crack.) "They were both black. I followed them." But he really had no further intelligence on them. Then he went on about how he was cold and he could really use a few bucks to get a spot in the house where the owner rents space by the night.

"If they're not burning down the house or trying to break in, wait until dawn to ring the bell," I suggested. But I paid him something, just to get him out of my hair. No, I didn't go back to sleep, but I kind of rested and didn't dwell too much on the whole thing until about 7, when I got up to take a shower.

I thought Alberto had left while I was showering, but he came downstairs while I was eating my oatmeal with pecans and blueberries. (It's only fair to have a special treat for breakfast after a rude awakening, right?) He hadn't heard anything, or maybe he had heard something but just assumed it was regular street noise. Yes, he's a heavy sleeper. I should have asked him about that before I let him move in. A heavy sleeper is useless as an additional night watch aide.

I even teased him about this. "I should have gotten a dog!" We both laughed at that.

Then I wasted some time speculating that Yup-yup had just made up the story to pick up a few bucks. If so, he certainly put some effort in it. I went out back on my way to the bus stop and found a used condom by the back stairs. More disturbingly, I also found a bunch of boards from the demolition going on next door, which made me nervous that someone might start a fire, on purpose or for additional warmth. So I did call the CAPS line and ask if they could send a squad car through the alley on late nights once in a while.

It's still entirely possible he made up the whole thing, or did his business himself back there and decided to tell me about in this fashion to pick up some cash. Great.

Haircut, etc.

Got home later than expected last night and decided to whip up some dinner. I could hear the whine of power tools from next door, so I called over to Julian, his dad and his uncle to see if they wanted something to eat. "Gracias," said Julian Sr.

So I made nachos for them and pasta for me (and Alberto, since it was still cooling on the counter when I left, I left a note saying "eat up if you're hungry.') I was late for my haircut appointment but Bella's niece was just leaving so I guess it all worked out OK.

Bella and I watched "Alborada," my favorite Mexican telenovela. Bella's husband Diego explained that the period is under Porfirio Diaz, so like 1915 or 1920. Diaz was a great admirer of France, which is why they are all running around in doublets and low-cut bodices. Diego thinks it's cheesy and "too emotional" but that's why Bella and Dawn and I like it!

After the show and the haircut I stayed around way too late watching television and chatting with them. There's another show, Ver para Creer, where they show all these believe it or not kind of things. Last night they showed a Peruvian girl who was born with both legs attached to each other, including the feet. She looked like she had a tail. Doctors were able to separate the legs up to above the knee, so she was able to walk. She's now 15 years old or something like that.

Diego told me a lot of the stereotypes about people from Monterrey, where my current Spanish teacher is from. They are supposedly very stingy. I'll have to tease him at class tonight. And I have to leave for class right now!!

p.s. the power of social networking--Bella and Diego say they know some friends who have 8th grade kids, so hopefully some application for the University of Chicago's new charter school will get into good hands.

Hope Under a Roof

The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof. --Barbara Kingsolver

Friday night Dawn and her family broke the big news. Dawn met me here at the office and told me she had a big surprise to tell me but she was saving it for the very end of the night. So I tried not to press too hard while we ate goat and chicken Puerto-Rican style at Casa Central and enjoyed a very funny play by Teatro Luna, an all-Latina ensemble, and even while we were freezing waiting for the train to get home. I only made a couple of guesses: you have a relative coming up from Mexico to live with you, did you buy a house??? She was very mysterious.

We were on the Ashland bus and I asked if she wanted to get off at 49th. "No, we can go to 50," she said. Hmmm... She got off and walked with me and we both took a left. I looked at the house next door to mine and all the lights were on.

"Did you guys buy...????"

They did. They bought the house for sale next door!! We went in and found them knocking down drywall and taking out walls to reconfigure the first floor. And yes, Dawn's mom is expecting. Wow, a house and a baby.

I drank a Bud with them to celebrate. "When you have a party, I'll call the cops," I teased.

"Then we won't invite you," her mom teased back.

"We're even!!"

They spent all day Sunday on demolition. Joey and his big brother came over covered in dust with some guy from down the street whose nephew was having an asthma attack. I got out a bag of ice and a friend who was over donated some Benadryl. As they were leaving Joey's brother said, "We're hungry."

So I made some more chicken (chicken breasts in lemon/brown sugar/rosemary sauce) and took over a big foil pan for them. "It's really good, Maritza," Dawn told me. I was teasing her and calling her an old lady since her hair was all grey with dust.

Yesterday you could hear them banging away. I've never been so happy to hear noise through the walls. This morning I found the Barbara Kingsolver quote among my emails and thought it was perfect.

Surprise Help

Last night I stopped at the Ashland Dominick's to pick up some groceries, got more than I had planned, and walked out with three bags hanging off each arm. While my half dozen blue Dominick's bags and I were waiting in the bus shelter south of Popeye's, a red minivan pulled up and a smiling young man inquired if I needed a ride.

"Hey, Sam!" I said. "How are you?" I met Sam a year ago in December at the Holy Cross rectory, at the inaugural meeting of the group for neighborhood college students. Sam hasn't been back to the meetings much, but I've run into him once or twice around the neighborhood. I remember best riding the Ashland bus with him early one morning (maybe 6:30 a.m.). He was surprised to see someone like me on the bus so early in the morning.

But now here he is in a shiny minivan, and I'm waiting for a bus that's not coming. I bundled up my bags and got in. Sam wanted to know how my writing was going, all about my latest stories, etc. I asked where he was coming from and he said Juarez High in Pilsen, where he had hoped to get in a swim, but they had a meet that night and the pool was closed. "Lucky for you," he said.

"Yeah."

Sam thought I lived at 55th, but I directed him to my place, which is a little north. "You have the nicest house on the block," he noted.

"Yeah, I do."

I asked him what he was up to. He just started his first job out of college, as a social worker helping people get public aid in Humboldt Park. He's only been at it about a month. "It's overwhelming, you know, and if you're a nice person, people will try to take advantage of you."

I asked what he really wants to do, and he said, "I want to write. Like you."

"Well, let's figure out how to get you some writing exposure," I said. I was going to talk with him a little more about this, but...

Yup-yup arrived on the scene, weaving down the street and rather jumpy, apparently high or hurting for a high, and certainly desperate for cash. "Oh, I can carry your groceries!" he offered/demanded.

Sam smiled. "OK,"I told Yup-yup. "Sam, I'll talk to you later." We agreed we'd connect through church.

Yup-yup got himself a couple of bucks and a bowl of Wolfgang Puck's chicken soup with wild rice for his trouble. His review of the soup: "Scrump-diddly-umptious!"

Current Weather

Thanks to everybody, especially roommates past, who has offered me an ear while I vent and reflect on having taken on a roommate. Alberto was the first one home last night, got his shower done at a reasonable hour and we were both in our respective bedrooms by 10:30 or so after chatting over a cup of hot chocolate. And I got a decent night's sleep, for perhaps the first time since he moved in. This is more like what I was hoping for. So, signs of progress.

One thing that I didn't fully realize when I decided to give this a try is that it's really different when someone rents a room in a home you own versus when you share the rent on an apartment. There's a disparity of investment and ultimately a power differential here that I didn't really consider and I think he didn't either, since both of us have shared rentals with other people before, but I haven't had a renter in a space I owned and set up, and he hasn't ever been the renter in that kind of situation either. As a former roommate of mine pointed out to me, it's hard when a new roommate arrives and established routines have been set by the old one. The new one can feel like, hey, I live here too, and I split rent, don't I get some say in how routines work? The old one feels like, hey, this is how it's done around here.

I'm sure I feel that even more strongly in this situation than in a roommate transition, since I set up the house by myself and have always been the only one living here. Plus, we're not splitting equal amounts of rent--he's putting in less than 20 percent of my mortgage. I still think I could be in this house for 30 years; he might be here anywhere from three months to three years max. It really creates a different mindset for me in terms of what say he gets about what the common areas look like, especially since I just spent $1000 decorating the first floor. I'm not at all used to this in myself, which probably doesn't make it easier for me to set ground rules and expectations.

To his credit, Alberto is really rolling with this, probably better than I would if I were in his shoes. Yesterday morning at 7 a.m. (about 20 minutes after he woke me up playing the downstairs radio--he didn't have it on that loud, I'm just a really light sleeper and the house carries sound), I informed him that the carpets he had put down last week to provide a runner all the way to the back door were ugly and would have to go as soon as I had time to get a runner that matches what I have already. Perhaps it was a moment when he didn't understand exactly what I said, but he got the point. I got home last night and the rugs had disappeared. During the day I had been thinking OK, they can stay there and wipe up snow until spring, but I felt so much better when I saw they were gone I've decided not to say anything but thank you for moving them.

Hurricane drops to tropical storm

The National Weather Service is pleased to report that Hurricane Alberto's rating has been reduced to Tropical Storm Alberto, now that his stuff has been somewhat contained.

What a sense of karmic revenge we have here. To all the people who have lived with me over the last 20 years or so, thanks for all your patience with my lack of spatial organization, awkwardness with mechanical objects and inability to control my stuff. It is so ironic to see all these traits in another human being and to be irritated by them even as I empathize and recognize them in myself. I never thought I'd be the Felix in the Odd Couple, but here's my big chance to be as anal-retentive as I want to be. Whoo-hoo!

So, my cortisol levels dropped Saturday night after Alberto and his former roommate got the godawful bookcase out of the front entry and upstairs into his room. Sunday afternoon, Alberto got almost everything that didn't belong in the kitchen and dining area into appropriate storage and, at my request, moved my baking ingredients out of one pair of cabinets and into an almost empty one, so he would have a place to store dry food, spices, etc. I had to reorganize my own stuff afterwards and just shook my head in amazement at how he couldn't get it all to fit--a few turns of the boxes would have solved most of the problem (thanks, Carol, for teaching me better spatial organization by example!), but it wasn't too hard to pick up the pieces. And I even cleaned the refrigerator, a chore I hadn't ever done in the year and a half I've lived in my house. (Truly, I am no saint as a housekeeper and there is a plus to having another human being around--it's a great prod to tackle those long-undone chores.)

As the chore-fest wound down and Alberto prepared to leave and take a few more excess items away to be donated, I said, more to myself than anything else, "Man, I just swept the floor and I'm still stepping on stuff! I guess next weekend's task will be mopping the kitchen floor." I went out later with a friend and got back around 11 p.m. When I walked in the house I smelled cleaner. "Did he clean the bathroom?" I wondered, and then went back to the kitchen. He had mopped the floor.

We still have to get his ugly carpets out of the dining room and a few other things like that, and I'm not sure he's totally clear that he doesn't get to put his stuff anywhere he thinks it should go, but we have made great strides. And he's on a month-to-month lease. I made it very clear that I'm not sure I'm ready for a roommate (sort of the "it's not you it's me speech" in roommate-speak) and that I'll be checking in with him at a couple of points to let him know whether it's working for me. So, God bless him, he's still trying to impress me, even if it means he mops the floor but fails to empty the compost bucket I told him we wouldn't be able to use until spring, when I get the lead out of the back yard.

As the Weather Channel says, stay tuned for more updates on Tropical Storm Alberto.

Hurricane Alberto hits my house

...OK, how did my house get hit by a hurricane in February? When it's a metaphorical hurricane, silly.

I just looked up the top 30 worst tropical storms of the last century to hit the United States. Hurricane Alberto was at or near the bottom of the list. Alberto struck in 1994.

"Alberto" is the code name I will use for my new roommate, who moved in Wednesday afternoon. He's a grad student at one of the innumerable seminaries sprinkled around Hyde Park, and he comes from one of those Latin American countries where political strife sent thousands fleeing some years ago. I was putting the word out at my holiday party that I needed a roommate, and he informed me he needed to get out of student housing. We originally met through Su Casa.

Well, he showed up a week earlier than expected--we said "the middle of February" and he was a week early. Plus, he has a *lot* more stuff than I expected. I discovered large chunks of it littering my first floor when I got home way too late on Wednesday night, and frankly was furious. I realize he's just moving in, but he does not get to invade my house with his crap! ;-)

Fortunately, I was staying overnight with a friend Thursday, so I left a note saying "you really need to get the stuff out of the living room and away from the front door before I get back Friday night." When I arrived last night, everything was gone except the bookcase right by the light switches at the front door, which was the thing I most wanted out of there. Alberto tells me he's going to move the bookcase today with a friend. Let's hope it's gone by the time I get home today, or there will be hell to pay.

Really, I'm much more mellow about this in person. It even made me laugh when he showed up at 11:30 p.m. carrying a couple of boxes of stuff on Wednesday night, except for the fact I had to get up at six the next morning for work. Tomorrow afternoon I'll have to lay down the law. I told someone yesterday I think this is going to be like dog training. There's a reason I don't have a dog.

Home Depot Outing

Sunday afternoon I arrived at Su Casa just as three of the workers were headed out to the Home Depot at 72nd and Cicero. So I jumped in the car and went out there with them. They had a gift certificate or something that was only good at that location, so we couldn't go to our local one at 47th and Western. I expect to be checking it out very soon.

Getting there was a bit of a challenge. We went out 71st but it dead-ends into an industrial park at Pulaski, so we turned around and went south to 76th, just south of Daley College. That takes you to the back of the Ford City Mall shopping superplex, which never fails to astonish me in its size and complexity. I used to teach out that way, and Ford City was just an ordinary sort of mall then. Nowadays it's expanded and other retail has grown up around it to the point where I see how easily you could get lost in the consumerist shuffle. We took a parking lot safari to get to Cicero Avenue. Fortunately we could see the Costco from the parking lot and even got a glimpse of that nasty orange logo before we had to decide which way to turn. So, we made it, despite our best efforts to get lost.

I got my window screen fixing materials and Aaron got light bulbs, a cool screwdriver, and some other household goodies. He says he will help me replace the wire netting in the screen. (Yes, I am totally incomptent in all matters mechanical.) I looked into window treatments for my upstairs front bedroom but they all seem quite expensive. We'll see.

Su Casa is tracking their mileage on the car. Aaron said he'd check into helping me with the four-hundred-dollar brake job. I was hoping it would only be half that much. Let's hope those brake hold up for a good long while. But they are all so happy to have a functioning car it's pretty well worth it. And it got me to do an errand I'd put off for more than three months. Victory all around.

Su Casa Gets a Car

Yesterday morning we got the Su Casa Car back from Castro and Sons auto repair. The brake job cost $400. This is why I don't want to own a car, but I said I'd pay for insurance and repairs on their Ford Escort in exchange for occasional use of it.

The Castro son who runs the place now is a good guy. He had surgery last week and was supposed to be at home, but he can't stand lying around the house so he went to work. He showed us the nasty worn-out brake pads they replaced. Whew! Now the pedal doesn't go all the way to the floor when you push on it. That made for an interesting trip getting it over there, the morning after our last snowfall. Well, nobody got killed or even scratched in the process.

I'll be taking the car to Home Depot on Sunday to get a screen to replace the one that got cut up in the burglary attempt. Now you all know I'm not quick on the draw when it comes to some aspects of house maintenance.

Learning Spanish

I haven't written much about this here, but most of you reading this have heard me discuss my efforts to learn Spanish over the past year and a half. They have certainly been interesting.

First, a little background. I took a few months of Italian in junior high, then two years of Latin, then a lot of German in high school and college, to the point where I was really starting to get it. I even took a literature class for a semester beyond the language requirement. But then I got busy and that was the end of that. No further language study until I ran off to France in 1994 (a long story best saved for another time), with virtually no French. In six months of living there and taking a community college class I went from nothing to an introvert at a dinner party. It was where I learned how to function when you don't have much command of the language, which is at least as important as learning the target language itself.

When I came back to the states I tried to hold on to my French and to be bolder about speaking the little Spanish I did know. The French faded fast but teaching in Humboldt Park helped me get a little braver about saying basic things in Spanish. Later I took a beginner class in hopes it would push me to learn, but still to no avail.

Part of the reason I moved to this neighborhood was that I've learned I won't internalize a language unless I'm forced to. I do feel more pressure to learn Spanish than I ever have, but it's still easy to wimp out and let the kids translate. I read a lot--the papers, the local literary journal (a bit--it's a little advanced in its language for my understanding)--but I'm still pretty shy about speaking.

From April through December I was getting lessons with a tutor, which helped a great deal, but that got very complicated and I decided it was time to take a real live class. So now I'm studying downtown after work, at the extension campus of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. They think I'm a genius because I can talk, however halfassedly. And they see I have a head for grammar. So they've put me in a class that is pretty advanced, and in the first two weeks I've been hit with two new verb tenses I'm having trouble assimilating. Whew!


Here's the university's web site. Its Spanish acronym is UNAM (Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico): http://www.cepechicago.unam.mx/information.html (in English, about their Chicago campus)

In Spanish--main site:
http://www.unam.mx/

More later...back to work...

Callate en la iglesia/shush in church

I went with Dawn, Joey, their big brother Julian and his friend, and Dawn's buddy Gloria to St. Joe's 5:30 Mass on Sunday. Fr. Ed was up there playing a kazoo during the homily, but that wasn't enough to keep Dawn and Gloria from yammering. Gloria is pretty loud, too.

Sunday's gospel was one of the ones where Jesus expels an "unclean spirit." In this particular story, the spirit taunts Jesus and he tells it to be quiet. In Spanish, the command to be quiet translates as "callate." (There should be an accent on the first a, but I still have to learn how to make all those interesting marks using my keypad, sorry.)

So when I got really exasperated with Gloria, I whispered urgently, "Callate!" and she got a laugh out of it. BUt she and I both laughed at the antics of various chiquitos (little ones) playing hide and seek in the pew or trying to put their little brothers in headlocks, etc.

Joey was so bored he actually tried to read the Spanish version of the Eucharistic prayer for a while. He wanted to know where we were in the book a couple of times, maybe just to see how much longer it would go on.

Julian and his pal were too cool to sit with us. They stood in the back.

One thing I love about St. Joe is if I show up broke (which is likely to happen on Sunday afternoon, post Saturday night), it's no shame to put change in the collection basket. "Is there such a thing as a spinster's mite?" I asked myself while dumping the remains of my change in the second collection.

I have finally memorized more than half of the Our Father in Spanish. For a while I couldn't get past the third line. Now I've got seven lines down, just two or three more to go. Don't even ask me to attempt the Hail Mary yet. Guess I'll have to go to a novena to Guadalupe next December. That ought to be enough to pound it in for good.

We thought Dawn's parents, or at least her mom, would show up to church late or be in the back when it was over, but they weren't there. Dawn and Joey got their catechism cards signed by their CCD teachers and then we went home for dinner. Gloria wanted me to call her mom and tell her it was my birthday so she would let Gloria come with us, but I said no.

Dawn's mom made enchiladas. Two kinds: chicken and cheese. The cheese ones had salsa verde and the chicken ones had a kind of creamy yellow sauce. Usually I think enchiladas are OK, not great, but these were possibly the best enchiladas I have ever eaten.

While we were waiting for dinner, I was talking with Dawn's dad. He was telling me he only went to school through third grade in Mexico, and then started learning various trades: carpentry, plumbing, metalworking. He likes metalworking, which is what he does now. I can't remember how he said it in Spanish but it came through as clearly as English in my ears, "In Mexico we couldn't stay in school, and now that these kids can, they don't want to study."

The Gunman on the Ashland Bus

About 9:45 a.m. I was reading Hoy on the Ashland bus, like I do many a morning. We were passing the Riverside Square shopping center, just south of Archer Avenue, when someone hollered and shook the back door to get off. I looked up at the noise, and there was a man at the back exit pointing a gun at the guy in the back corner of the bus!

The bus stopped and the gunman got off. The man in the back corner hollered, "I'm bleeding!" He went to the front of the bus, borrowed a cell phone and called the cops. "Yes, I was shot," he said into the phone. "I was shot. I'm bleeding." Apparently he'd been grazed in the head by the bullet.

The gunman must have been using a silencer because there was no noise. It was bizarre! I kept looking in the back for a bullet hole but couldn't see one.

"I wasn't even talking to him," the victim declared.

The bus driver, a middle aged black lady, handled the situation very professionally. She pulled over underneath the Stevenson, just before the Orange Line, and handed out cards so people could write up their eyewitness accounts. I had nothing to say--I couldn't even give a description of the shooter except maybe he had on a red and white jacket. I remember red and white, and a guy, and a gun. That's it.

"I don't know him, but I recognize him," the driver said. "He rides this bus all the time. Don't worry. He'll get caught."

Yeah, maybe, but I think I'll stay off the Ashland bus for a few days, anyway. Whew!

La Cantina

Sunday night I finally went to the cantina with three of the guys from Su Casa. I had heard about the cantina a couple of times before from the workers at Su Casa, but I hadn't had the chance to join an outing.

La cantina is on 47th, east of Ashland. It's one of those joints you don't know it's a bar unless you know somebody. It has a plain brick exterior, no neon beer lights or signage, and a door you have to be buzzed through. Inside there's a pool table, a bar and a couple of TVs hanging in the corners of the ceiling, plus an amazingly loud jukebox. There are some fun Mexican movie stills tacked up behind the bar, plus the usual cheesecake blondes advertising beer. Unsurprisingly, there probably weren't a dozen people in the joint around 10 on a Sunday night.

It was the first time I had set foot in a bar in the neighborhood, except for El Tio, which is really a restaurant that serves drinks. I've never gone to El Tio on a weekend night, when they have music for dancing or show fights or other sporting events on TV. This is the kind of thing where the language and cultural barriers look pretty intimidating, especially when considering going alone.

I recently picked up The People's Guide to Mexico, which informs me that in Mexico, women don't ever set foot in cantinas. If they do, either they are prostitutes or don't mind being mistaken for prostitutes. However, it's OK to work behind the bar if you're a woman, especially if you're in the family that owns the place. But it's not cool just to go for a drink.

However, the great fun of being a gringa in a Mexican neighborhood in the U.S. is you can set foot in a cantina, as long as you have lots of company, preferably male. Three guys was probably the fewest escorts I'd go with, and usually Su Casa shows up in greater force than that. Which the owner, Cesario, appreciates. He bought us a round (our second, we got our own first round.)

One of the guys in our group was chatting in Spanish with the guy at the end of the bar, who invited us to a strip club. Steve bowed out for himself but checked in with us pro forma just to get some backup on the refusal. The guy at the end of the bar had assured him the women at the club "were really fine." I wondered if he'd even noticed me--I was a couple of yards away and probably hidden by two of the guys.

Our bartender was female and bilingual. She asked for all our IDs and I told her I was old enough to be flattered she asked. She laughed. Later she started telling me all about how she's been going to biker bars since she was young, since her friend's brother had a bike and would take her sister and friends along. She's friends with the owner and was just helping out by tending bar for the weekend. She tells me they do tai chi in the park at 30th and Halsted in the mornings. I'll have to go by there sometime.

We ordered Tecates and a Corona (me), and looked down the bar at some point and saw all the regulars drinking Bud and Miller Lite. Very funny. The bartender says Corona doesn't taste the same up here as it does in Mexico. "That's like Guinness," I said, at which she smiled. She grew up in Bridgeport.

This week's roundup

Simply starts school: Word last night is that he didn't hit any snags at orientation and started classes yesterday. Still no word on his aid award, and he did get a bill for like eleven grand, but I told him to go see his financial aid counselor ASAP and explain that he hasn't seen his aid package yet. Apparently Loyola thinks it will be able to house him on campus after his parents sell their house in Chicago, and they will pro-rate the housing costs for this semester and not charge him until he starts living on campus. So far, so good.

Blockbuster Bust: The Blockbuster at 48th and Ashland closed its doors sometime between Christmas and New Year's. Since I don't even have a TV, I didn't notice until "the other white lady" made the point to me on the phone last night. She views this as a bad sign. I'm surprised they folded just as the condos across the street are actually selling.

City Services Blitz--There was a crew picking up trash not just along Ashland this morning, but along some of the adjacent blocks. I was taking this morning's accumulation of yard junk to the alley when one of the fluorescent-vested guys spotted me and said, "Keep that up and you can get a job with us!" He said they had started at 47th and were working their way "all the way down" Ashland. The street cleaner came by northbound while I was waiting for the bus. I don't think I've seen that much city effort on cleaning, ever.

Mexico meets Ireland

Last week I forgot to mention a particular favorite moment hanging with my little friends, because it happened post-pizza, pre-park. Somehow we got talking and they wanted to know what my grandmother looked like. I have photos of my mother's mother in the same album with my photos from Ireland in 2002, when I went to visit her sisters and other family for the first time ever. So I dragged out the album and showed them.

The album opens with a shot of the small house where my grandmother was born and where her sisters still live. You can see the roof used to be thatch--they updated to slate in the 1970s, I'm told. The house is at least 200 years old. My great aunts still use a turf fireplace as their main source of heat, supplemented these days with an electric space heater in the bedroom. It was chilly and damp there in May.

One of my great-aunts looks especially like Grandmom, and they saw a lot of pictures of her and her sister. We were at the lake, we were in the country hills, we were at the church at Knock Shrine, we were at the Famine Museum. Then they got to see my grandmother visiting her daughter's family in Delaware in the early 1970s, about the time they were taking the thatch off the roof back in Ireland and maybe before the space heater. We have pictures of Grandmom and Granddad with my mom, me and my sister and brother in the driveway with our two cars and our two-story suburban house, built @1965. The boys liked seeing the pictures of me as a little kid. They said I looked like some girl they saw in a movie but I don't know who they meant.

The last half of the album is pictures of the island of Inishmaan, the least touristed of the Aran Islands in Galway Bay. It's shockingly quiet there and the birds fly right at you, completely unafraid. The few hundred locals who live there mostly speak Irish as their first language.

The boys saw photos of potatoes growing and cows grazing and rocky cliffs and blue water. They liked the horses and ponies and dogs the best. They were telling me how their cousin sold her cows to raise the money to come to the U.S.

They were very enthusiastic about Ireland. "It's like Mexico!" said one.

"Yep," I agreed, "just colder and wetter."

Loyola Acceptance!

Simply, one of the basketball stars from last summer's face-off at St. Joe's, stopped by my house last night to inform me he was accepted to Loyola University two days ago!! Yahoo!!

However, it was quite a process getting him there. Last spring he intended to go to UIC but had a problem with financial aid and was unable to start in September. This fall he applied to Loyola, but it was quite a struggle to get the paperwork together, and the Loyola admissions office didn't come out sounding the most clueful about tracking information. Simply's test score sheet got lost in the office (he's dead certain it got into the sealed envelope before he went to the post office), so about two weeks after he submitted his application he got a note saying that information was missing. When he called, he told the secretary his test scores were on the second page of his transcript. She put him on hold to speak to a counselor, then came back and said she would call back in an hour or two.

Simply was in Indiana, sitting with his earpiece in his ear, his cellphone perched on the window (the only place in his parents' new house where he could get reception), for an hour before he decided to chance it and go eat a bowl of cereal. He was so stressed he thought he heard the phone ring, dropped his spoon and ran, but there was no call. After two and a half hours he called back to find out everything was OK. Sheesh.

He spoke with an admissions counselor two days ago. She told him, "You've been approved."

"Approved? Please say accepted."

"Accepted."

Now we just have to figure out whether they can house him on campus this semester and how much financial aid he's getting. Keep your fingers crossed. Simply had a 3.75 at Curie and wants to study psychology. He's too smart not to go to college.

Translation Exercise

Junior's mom called me last night. She came over with the boys and with two bottles of medicine for her ears. She got an antibiotic in eardrops from Cook County (where she waited like seven hours for it or something), and some over the counter earwax loosener. The directions on both were in English, so she needed a translator. I tried to explain them in Spanish on my own, complete with pantomime like tilting my head to the side to put the drops in. But it seemed to work better when I gave the instructions simply in English for Junior to translate. Oh, well. Maybe someday I will actually be able to speak intelligibly in this language.

They told me they pumped up the soccer ball. They want to play tonight. Maybe we will.

Saturday in the Park

Might as well keep up the string of bad song references, right? And hey, this one's even Chicago-related. ;-)

Saturday I had two of my little neighbor fellas over for a pizza party. This year's pizza was much more prefab than last year's. Since I knew these two guys had no interest in watching dough rise, I got pre-made pizza crusts at Dominick's, pre-shredded cheese and pre-cut pepperoni. Then I discovered I had to whip up tomato sauce, since all the sauce in my house was veggie-friendly and these guys aren't. I didn't think they were up for red pepper and pesto or spinach and cheese spaghetti sauce. I was out of sausage and mushroom or the burgundy/steak one. (Yes, I'm a yuppie, and proud of it!)

So I chopped an onion, opened a can of crushed tomatoes, and cooked up pizza sauce in 20 minutes. Then I called my fine young carnivore friends and we put the sauce on the pizza, laid the cheese on thick, and made smiley faces with the pepperoni slices.

Winter is hard. Their parents are broke. Christmas was "boring" this year, the older one told me. He got OK presents but not as good as last year. Their dad isn't working right now--he's seasonal--and their mom's boss is being mean and cheated her out of some money. She asked me for work. I hooked her up with a neighbor to clean the house. I'd have had her clean mine but somebody else asked me already.

The boys helped me take some old clothes to the Salvation Army around the corner, and then we went shopping. We found a glow-in-the-dark soccer ball for less than $2.50. I thought that was a worthy purchase, so we got it. After I paid, the littler one asked, "Are you mad at me?"

"No, why would I be mad at you?" I asked back.

"Cause it's 'spensive."

I told him it was OK and not to worry. We took the ball to Cornell Park and played on the tennis court, because the fields were too muddy. The ball needs air but we had fun kicking it around anyway, until the younger one tried to steal the ball from his brother. His foot slipped off the ball and he fell and banged his elbow.

"I didn't make him do it," big brother announced.

"I know."

We took him home and got some ice. His brother told me about the time he went swimming in the park pool and some of the black kids started messing with him and he got in a fight. Now he doesn't go to Cornell Park much.

Later that night, after those two went home, Peter Pan from down the block brought a slightly different crew of Lost Boys to play soccer out back, including two black guys. First integrated soccer game in my yard-whoo-hoo!! The boys asked me to play to keep the teams even, so I played goalie. The neighbors were very nice about letting us jump the fence or run around to get the ball. Our team lost the first game and won the second 15-14.

After game two, I threw them out with lots of high-fives for my teammates. They left still high from all the running. Their post-game trash talk wafted back as they disappeared down the sidewalk. Sad to report, I was sore the next day. At least the old grey mare can still block a shot once in a while.

Streetlights II

The streetlights came back on Friday night, a week after they went out. That seems long to me, even with New Year's in the way.

Streetlights, People??

Yes, I am referencing the Journey song "Don't Stop Believing," because I don't want to stop believing the city might fix the streetlights on Marshfield, which have been out since New Year's Eve.

I ran into my neighbor who used to fly the Irish flag out of his window. He was walking his dog to the corner store as I was coming home from Su Casa last night. I could see a bunch of shadowy figures at the corner and decided to hang out and watch his dog for him rather than get hit up for money by some of my lowlife pals (or not such pals--I couldn't tell for sure who was over there). Anyway, Mr. Irish Flag told me he'd been calling 311 since Saturday night and asked if I had called. Mea culpa, but I hadn't--between New Year's revelry and trying to clean my house, it totally slipped my mind.

I went in the house (after a hi from my pet pimp pal, who was on the corner--he was eating something so he had the grace not to ask me for food or cash in that moment), and called right away. We'll see how long it takes. At least I believe we had garbage pickup this morning--the city took off yesterday.

Holiday Party

Sorry, all, for the long delay in posting. Sunday December 18 was my holiday party. It turned out to be a much larger bash than expected. Seventy people showed up over the course of seven or eight hours! Whew!

The most shocking thing was that some of them arrived early. Gracias a dios, I had unexpected backup from two nice neighbor ladies--one from the CAPS triumvirate that staged the unsuccessful coup, the other is on the NHS board with me--who arrived early to see if I needed help. I did. I was up til about one in the morning making turkey chili and had cleaned the house in the morning, but hadn't made much dent in setting up the food table. So they got to work on that. Five minutes later, 45 minutes ahead of official start time, three families from Su Casa showed up. Holy cow! Latino people arriving early for a party!! We were all joking about this later.

Ms. Ribs came and she didn't have to do anything, although she was having a good time bossing me around for hostess slip-ups like having a bag of ice cubes frozen together. I took it outside and dropped in on the front steps to break it up. She came early (but not too early) and stayed until the Bears came on around 7 p.m.

My north side friends mixed in nicely with my south side friends. One of them was learning Christmas carols in Spanish from my Su Casa pals. I was really happy to see lots of interaction across age, language and culture. There were plenty of babies and little kids around, which is always a great icebreaker.

There's one particularly cute and cuddly little boy that all the guys had to sit on their laps. I told him he was the king of the uncles, el rey de los tios. He had his Tio Alejandro, Tio Kevin and Tio Jorge, among others.

We ran out of turkey chili around 6 and I had to whip up some more out of cans in a hurry. Ms. Ribs was kidding me about that and reminding me to hide the evidence.

Dawn's family came late and were the last to leave. They helped me clean up. We were all joking about El Diastro hitting my house--it was Katrina without the water. Dawn's dad found my CD of music from Michoacan and was teaching Dawn how to dance to it.

Lots of people raved afterwards about what a good time they had. Peace on earth, on the block, for a few hours anyway.

Moonlight Serenade, of sorts

Last night I was walking back from Dawn's house to my house, around 8 p.m., in a gentle snow. Two boys were on our favorite corner, then just one. That kid had a lot to say to me, which I pretended not to hear.

"Hey, hey, como estas? Hey gringa, what's up? You know, George Bush doesn't like black people," the strong implication of which was that I don't like black people either. I thought about hollering, "You know, I don't like George Bush," but decided against it.

Then he started singing "Gasolina" at me. He probably knows the words better than I do.

I just kept walking, though he was loud enough I'm sure the whole neighborhood heard it. I looked down the street and there was a shovel parked against my fence. It was Tony. He had his back to me. "Hey, Tony, is that you?" I asked, not loudly.

He jumped, startled, then turned around. "Don't do that to me!"

"I'm sorry," I said.

Young Punk on the corner continued his Gasolina serenade, then switched into some other tack that didn't sound any more pleasant. You couldn't quite make out the words from my house. I ignored it and started talking with Tony about snow, etc. Soon after, while Young Punk was still shouting, yet another lady who probably works the corner came by, trying to get 70 cents out of either Tony or me. I dug up some change. Like Tony and Young Punk, she too is black. The irony of my interactions with them while this young punk was hollering up and down the street about me did not escape me, shall we say. I would say, "yeah, i don't like black people, I don't like them so much I hire them to clear my snow and I give them money when they ask for it."

But Young Punk would see a different sort of irony--I suspect he would look at it as "that gringa chick is OK with black people as long as they work for her or beg from her." And he has no reason to think any different based on what he can see. I actually went to the next door neighbors' house and knocked on their door to invite them to my party, but they didn't answer, though there were lights on in the house and I saw someone inside. I don't blame them for not coming to the door. Probably I should just leave a note.

I'll have to get brave enough either to offer Young Punk a cookie or call him out for selling drugs to his own people. I'm frankly not sure I have the guts to do either, but I might be able to muster the courage to say, "I don't like guys who stand on the corner, whatever color they are."

Meanwhile, I think my suspicions of problems of another kind with Tony are probably correct. He did call me "sweetheart" to my face last night after clearing out the snow and ice, and he looked at me funny when I handed him a five-dollar bill.

"Everybody has to keep warm and dry," I said. He took it.

A Very Reggaton Christmas

Another big snow hit us Saturday night. Around six the snow was falling so hard cars were crawling. I thought I'd go home and have a quiet evening with a book, the radio and a cup of hot cocoa.

Well, the snow stopped, and I got the cocoa and the radio, but not a quiet evening. Dawn and Joey and their friends from down the block showed up asking if they could use my yard for a snowball fight. I said yes and called Junior and Oscar and Danny. They all came out. Tony was clearing my snow (since my shovel broke!) and I started making eight cups of cocoa out in the kitchen.

I need to get Swiss Miss or something easy--I have yuppie Droste cocoa which requires much more patience to make. The directions assume you are making one cup at a time and you have to get the cocoa and sugar just wet enough to make a paste, but not too wet or the paste won't work. With eight cups to practice on, I figured it out, but it was time-consuming.

Tony liked his cocoa. The little boys, most of the six of them, clamored for more, but I ran out of milk. Once they had their cocoa break, they asked if I would play. So I threw a few snowballs and let them knock me over in the snow once. I made a snow angel.

They ran loose in the street but there were so few cars I didn't really worry about it. The only bad thing that happened was Joey got knocked over hard and hit his leg. He was crying and I was trying to figure out if he broke anything. Of course he was fine five minutes later.

When Junior and Danny's moms came out looking for them, I sent everyone home except Dawn, Joey, and Dawn's friend, the big sister of most of the little scamps. We'll call her Carolina. Dawn and Carolina started stringing up the lights Junior's mom gave me (her cousins' old lights--some of them still work), while Joey played DJ. We had "Feliz Navidad" on for a little bit at Dawn's insistence, then switched over to reggaeton. Of course we heard Daddy Yankee and Joey cranked up the bass.

"I want to hear Daddy Yankee sing Christmas stuff," I kidded them. "Fe-liz Na-vi-dad," I said, grinding my hips slightly to a makeshift cumbia beat. The girls cracked up.

Yesterday I went out to the new Aldi's (yay-cheap stuff within walking distance!) and got a new shovel with a metal edge for seven bucks. I also got chocolate chips. We had another go at the snow with Peter Pan and the Lost Boys, but this time Joey got in a fight with Carolina's little brother, whom I'll call Peter (since he leads the pack, it seems like). I have thought Peter was kind of trouble because the other kids talk about him behind his back, but he definitely has a gift for leadership. Plus, he won my heart yesterday when he agreed to push the shovel over the backyard sidewalk.

He and his brothers saw me give Junior and Oscar pairs of gloves. Oscar got a red knit hat with a baseball cap-style bill. He liked it. "You're really nice!" he exclaimed. I was really surprised.

I'll probably have to get some gloves for Peter and his brothers, too. Ho, ho, ho, Daddy Yankee sings reggaeton Christmas and Ms. Claus brings gloves for children who throw snowballs in her yard. We tried making a snowman but the snow is too powdery. Maybe in a couple of days it will pack down.

Yup-yup Returns

He's back.

He appeared Monday night. I was racing home to get a pot of turkey chili to take to a potluck. I got off the bus and walked down 50th and there he was, cane, cast and all. (Did I mention he broke his leg a few weeks ago? So I lack the heart as well as the guts to fire him outright.)

Take the bull by the horns, I decided. "Hey, Yup-yup, where you been?" I hollered.

He hobbled across the street, shaking his head. "Hard times, hard times," he said, not saying anything else about his whereabouts.

I handed off the orange and the five-dollar bill, saying, "I've got some turkey chili for you, too."

"Turkey chili?!"

"I just have to heat it up. I'll be back out in a few."

What I didn't tell him was the rest of it was going to feed the CAPS potluck. How ironic.

Quest for the Historical Jesus

I just have to spend a few minutes talking about Phil and his quest for the historical Jesus. Phil is a freshman at Curie and he's buddies with Dawn's big brother. Phil read "The DaVinci Code" and got really interested in what we know about Jesus and whether Dan Brown was on to something or just making it all up.

I found this out one night on the front porch of Dawn's new apartment. Julian and Phil were hanging on the stoop and Julian wanted me to argue theology with Phil. Since I go to church regularly, Julian thought I would present a more conservative counterpoint to Phil's "God doesn't exist" and "Jesus was just a regular guy" perspective. Imagine his surprise when I started egging Phil on! How fun to out myself as not the religious nutcase for a change.

Anyway, Phil told me he wanted to read more about what experts say about Jesus's life and history, whether it agreed with Dan Brown or not. So I got on the Internet at work (how do I ever do my job???) and found an article debunking Brown written by a Presbyterian minister with a doctorate from Harvard Div and gave it to Phil a week later. Another week later, we were all hanging on the front porch and I asked Phil if he had read the article and how he liked it. "It was great," he said.

A couple of nights ago, an envelope arrived from a high school pal who also squeezes in his avocations during work time. It contained an essay from the December issue of Harpers Magazine, about Jefferson's redaction of the gospels and how similar his condensed version is to the noncanonical Gospel of Thomas. I can't wait to pass this one on to Phil, especially since he was at Dawn's house when she was polling people about why we study history. Way to combine two intellectual questions simultaneously.
Whoo-hoo!

I heard a lot about Phil from Dawn and her buddies last night. This is the same trio who used my kitchen to study in for their exhibitions a few weeks ago. Charlie's Angels showed up at my office at 5 p.m., despite the snowstorm, ready for their trip to the Harold Washington Library. We got Dawn some material on graffiti art for her research project. Gloria, the academic perfectionist, found three books but didn't check them out before closing, so she had to put them on hold. Guess who just went to pick them up? Two were for school--one on the Maya, another by or about Rigoberta Menchu--I'm not sure if it's the original Spanish version of "I, Rigoberta Menchu" or if it's a different bookd The third was a diet book in Spanish--at least it looks like it's a health plan not a fad diet, but my Spanish is probably not up to judging. Meanwhile, Angel number three, Janice, tried to find some books on Marilyn Manson, but they were all checked out.

Janice was surprised when I suggested she could look for some books on her musical idol. "How did you know I like Marilyn Manson?" she asked.

"Because I saw your exhibition project at my house, remember?" The light dawned on her face. Then I laughed and said, "No, really, Janice, I'm psychic."

Anyway, on the way home, while we were in the Orange Line station waiting for the bus, Phil and his book project came up as a topic of discussion. Dawn says Phil is writing a romance novel, I believe that is romance in the old sense, like wizards and witches and all that jazz. I'd copy-edit it for him if he wants. They were also interested in his personal style--he wears a long capelike, old-fashioned coat that rumor says cost three hundred bucks, and he's experimented with eyeliner.

Phil is thinking he would like to transfer from Curie to Big Picture. He says he is an average student at Curie (so, Cs) and is bored with his classes. He might be a good fit. I'm sure he'd be an asset to the school and I think the school would be an asset to him in ways Curie probably won't be about college, etc.

Georgina Gets a Scarf

While Tony the Car Wash King was being Tony of the Snows and shoveling my sidewalk, a new lady of the night stopped by. We'll call her Georgina. She's worried about what happened to Yup-yup, Priscilla's old boyfriend/pimp whom I hired as night watchman. I think I was so embarrassed about this I never wrote it up.

Here's the back story. Back when Priscilla was cleaning my windows, after the doorbell ringings at 3 a.m., I asked Priscilla what I should do. She said, "You could get Yup-Yup to watch your house." It must have been sleep deprivation that led me to believe this was a good idea, but somehow it made sense at the time. And really, I can still see it--he's out there all night, I get him on my side, he keeps the rest of the bad guys off my back, right?

So, I offered him five bucks a week, payable Tuesdays, in exchange for keeping an eye on the place. After about two or three weeks a new perspective emerged--I put myself in a protection racket!! What am I getting back from this guy? For whatever unknown reason the doorbell ringing did stop, but given the only "suspect" Yup-yup suggested was some guy he met in the alley who thought I was Latina, I'm not real sold on his detective/security capabailities. Plus, the gas charge this winter is outrageous.

So I went to Yup-yup before Thanksgiving and said, "I don't know how I'm going to pay my gas bill this winter. Can I pay you in food instead?" He agreed much more easily than I expected. Then my uncle died and I missed our Tuesday before Thanksgiving appointment. I saw him the Sunday I got back and made a deal that he would get his last five bucks plus some food the following Tuesday. Yup-yup vanished last Tuesday. I've been walking around with an orange and a fiver in my coat pocket for a week. No sign of him.

So last night Georgina confided she was worried about Yup-yup and she hadn't seen him since Tuesday night. (don't know how he missed me in the morning, but he did.)

"You think he's locked up?" That was my immediate assumption when I didn't see him Wednesday.

"No," she said. "I have a feeling he isn't locked up. I'm worried."

Why the heck she's worried about this guy is beyond me. Anyway, she hung out and chatted and told me she was cold, so I looked in my closet and found the nice Cashmink plaid scarf someone left at the last holiday bash I threw at my old North Side apartment and gave it to her. She tied it around her coat hood instead of putting her hood down and tying it around her neck. There's something else I really don't understand.

Junior tells me he heard Yup-yup has a gun. Joey tells me Yup-yup tried to help him find Baby Girl, the bunny that got away. Georgina tells me two of the boys who died in my house were Yup-Yup's nephews. He didn't tell me that, but he clearly cared about the young men who died here. Lots of mysteries to ponder...

Discernment

Hi everybody--

Thanks for your patience with me. My uncle died the weekend I was leaving town to attend a protest against a training academy sponsored by the U.S. Army. For more on that, see www.soawatch.org. This meant I was out of town the whole week before Thanksgiving and it has taken me a while to get back on the blogging bandwagon.

I also don't know why I can't put active links into this text, which sort of defeats the purpose of a blog, right?? anyway, apologies for all these things.

Some of you have been in touch with me to find out what I decided about opening my home to two women who want to help women in prostitution. The Friday after my initial conversation about doing this, I spent 17 hours on a bus to Ft. Benning, Georgia with a little grey-haired nun who was traveling with a bag smaller than my Sierra club bookbag, and who used to run a home for women recovering from drug addiction. (In social services jargon, that's second-stage housing, and yes most or all of them had been prostitutes while they were addicts.) So she knew the scene and she raised all the points that comments on this site already raised, plus the key--that she and her nun buddy were around 24/7 to supervise and work their "nunja" on the residents and their associated guests. So I decided she was the voice of God telling me to give myself a break, and I listened. I am still working on finding a place for those women to do their thing--if anyone has suggestions, please pass them on.

Last night I got home for the first time in two days. There was about an inch of snow all over the place. I felt too lazy to deal with it, locked the front gate and went inside. Five minutes later, the doorbell rang. It was Tony the Car Washer (as opposed to Tony Lawn Care of Logan Square, whose been stealing Jesse's yard maintenance gig at my place). Tony wheedled three bucks out of me when the cold snap first hit, and asked what I needed doing. Since at that point there was no snow and Tony Lawn Care had just been by, I told him to watch for trash in the traffic circle.

"Nobody ever did nothing like that before you came here," he observed.

Anyway, last night Tony the Car Wash King hopped my fence and rang my bell to ask whether I wanted my snow removed. Of course I said OK. He shoveled and salted. He was surprised when I paid him an extra four bucks but it was cold and that is work, even when it's not that much snow.

I'm a little nervous and yet a little pleased that I thought I heard him call out, "Bye, sweetie" when he left. Did I hear right? Should I be nervous? Am I happy I have a friend? Is that all he thinks it is?? It better be...he was fool enough to tell me about his six kids and how after "a little trouble between me and my lady" she got an order of protection on him.

I had another visitor last night. She's probably worth her own entry, so I'll stop here.

Major Discernment

What have I let myself in for?

I had a chance meeting two weekends ago, at Call to Action http://www.cta-usa.org/.
A woman named Brenda Myers-Powell--this is her real name because I bet she wants the publicity--is looking for space in which to help women in prostitution find their way out. Given the situation with Priscilla and my feeling that sooner or later she'll be back, I thought we should talk.

Brenda and her friend and business partner, Stephanie, met with me on Sunday. The house was still under construction in the interior design project, so we went around the corner to El Tio and sat down over a meal. We were discussing the possibility of using my house as a place to do this work.

At first we talked about doing something residential. "How do you feel about deadbolts on your bedroom door?" Stephanie asked me. Not good.

The conversation quickly shifted to a drop-in kind of setting. We talked about 12 hours a week, always two people in charge on the premises from a pool of Brenda, Stephanie and their husbands. "We will treat your home like it was our home, and we will treat you like our sister because you are our sister in Christ," they pledged.

But I'm still scared. I called my craziest friend, who told me about the knife fights she used to break up when her drop in center for young people, including gang bangers, was located next to Sarah's Circle, a drop-in center for homeless women, including women in prostitution. "Their pimps will be watching 24/7," she pointed out. I already have that problem thanks to Yup-yup, Priscilla's (I hope) former pimp. I'm very afraid of it getting worse.

I'm taking this week to discern the idea. Not just consider its wisdom but whether it's the kind of folly God calls you to or just straight-out folly, period.

One point that came to me quickly is that my house is my home, not a program. I think Brenda and Stephanie and I have yet to see whether a Catholic Workerish vision of hospitality and a model of a social-service style program are compatible. A friend has already pointed out to me that I've got some good things going with the neighbors already and maybe it's worth it to let them grow. (I'll just add that I'm well aware this idea won't be a big hit with the neighbors and could strain relations with people I want as allies.)

Another feeler that may yet be explored is whether the space at Su Casa vacated by Genesis House might be a possibility. Right now Brenda and Stephanie can't afford rent, but Genesis House wasn't paying the rent they were supposed to be paying, so what if we all went in with expectations that the new occupants wouldn't pay rent now but might in the future? Or that the new program would repair and maintain the space that Genesis House trashed?

I have yet to put out a feeler to Su Casa about this because they were burned badly by Genesis House and likely don't want to even think about anything with any connection to them. (Brenda and Stephanie want to do something independent of Genesis House but the mere fact they "graduated" from the program back in the day might be a source of tension with Su Casa right now, I don't know.)

Anyway, for you friends and readers who might have responses to this or want to offer your thoughts as I take my week of discernment about what's next, I welcome your comments. Thanks.

Shooting at St. Joe's

Apparently a young man who lives above the bar near St. Joseph Church was shot twice in the stomach on Sunday night around 11 p.m. The shooting took place right in front of the church. He was taken to Cook County Hospital and she hears he's doing better than he was when he got there. The shooter was arrested, she told me.

My source for this news flash is one of the women who led the failed coup attempt at the CAPS meeting last spring. I ran into her this morning on the Ashland bus. She's probably in her 20s, tall and heavy-set, with a friendly, open face. She was taking her four-year-old daughter to the UIC clinic. She sat with me in the seats right in front of the door and kept an eye on her little girl, who sat up front by the driver. "She doesn't want to sit with me," Coup Leader said placidly. When I got off at the Orange Line, she moved back up to the front.

Starbucks Sighting

This morning a crushed Starbucks coffee cup appeared on the sidewalk in front of my house. It didn't come from me. I never buy Starbucks. As far as I know, the nearest one is at 63rd and Kedzie. Hardly creeping gentrification, but it was a surprise.

I scooped it up and dropped it in the stolen dumpster in front of the boarded-up house down the block. The dumpster's address, painted in white, came from 53rd and Morgan, about half a mile east and a little south.

Academic Victories!

Dawn did her exhibition on Wednesday morning. I went to Big Picture and found my way upstairs to her advisor's room. Dawn was there in cream-colored pants and a short grey jacket (sort of bolero-style), with her hair pulled back, nervously chewing gum and talking with a couple of classmates, fussing a little with her materials, joking around a little to ease the stress.

Both her parents came. Yeah! They were a little late, and then we had to wait for the principal to bring them some evaluation forms in Spanish. He was teasing one of the guys in Aurora's class who had done a less-than-stellar exhibition the day before. "I'm surprised you can sit down today," he said. The boy's friends giggled. Apparently the kid's mom was on a tear after his.

Not so with our gal Dawn! She was a little nervous at first, but eased in and grew confident as time went on. She gave different parts of her talk in Spanish and in English (though she occasionally had trouble finding the right word and had to switch mid-sentence, which her advisor and the principal want her to eliminate from her next exhibition). I even asked her a question in Spanish! She was talking about something (now I forget what) and she paused like she was done, and I said, "Por ejemplo?" and she gave a couple of examples. At the time I knew what was going on but now I've completely forgotten.

Her stuff on E. coli was pretty good and she wants to continue learning more about bacteria and viruses next quarter.

She talked for a solid 45 minutes and didn't get rattled when we asked her questions. Her dad asked a number of questions when she was explaining what she's learning in music class.

At the end, all the spectators shared one positive thing and one critical piece of feedback based on what we saw. Afterwards Dawn, her parents, her teacher, the principal and I sat down and talked about what her learning goals will be for next quarter. She's going to start some computer course in math. I'll be interested to see what it has to offer.

Afterwards, her parents gave me a ride to work. I asked how Joey's presentation on the knee and the MRI went. It sounds like it went fine--the part I understood most clearly was when his mom told me the teacher said something like, "Wow, that was really good. Did your parents help you with that?" Apparently Joey said, "My parents don't speak English. My friend helped me." We were all laughing about that. I want to hear about it from Joey himself.