Fighting Crummy Developers, Onion-Style

Someone tried to comment on my post from last Wednesday by offering an article from the Onion. I try to keep the rough language down here, so I'll skip the headline, but if you'd like to see what the Onion makes of efforts to fight developers, look here.

I won't spend too much time on this, either--it's probably bad for my blood pressure, but the Tribune editorial about fighting gangs made me more angry at the arrogance of the Trib than inspired to fight gang violence. The part that made me the most angry was after setting up the scene of the mayor talking to residents, the Trib had the nerve to say the mayor was "standing alone" in his comments. On a second read, I think they were trying to take a swipe at police brutality activists, but on my first read it came off as if the mayor was on the street by himself, which he was not, and the neighborhood was not taking a stand against violence, which was the whole point of the day.

And I'd like to see how the Trib editorialists would feel if they spent even a week living on a block. Then they, and the mayor, might be a little more thoughtful before making comments like, "Look in the mirror and say, 'I can do better.'" If you can do so much better, come on out here for more than a photo-op or a one-shot editorial.

On a happier note, I'm glad someone else, commenter Laura, found it inspiring enough to take the next step and start a block club. Laura, what neighborhood are you in, if you don't mind telling us?

Meanwhile, I heard at church yesterday that a guy on 49th Street is trying to get neighbors together to strategize about what to do there. That's where the shooting was a few weeks ago, and my neighbor tells me those guys don't even live on the block. I'm not surprised.

Today's March Against Violence

Between 100 and 200 people came out tonight for the Peace and Education Coalition's peace march in the wake of Leticia Barrera's death on Halloween. This Tribune story lays out what happened and the neighborhood reaction pretty well.

Lots of politicians turned out tonight, including Mayor Daley, Aldermen Cardenas (I think), Cochran, Dowell and Thompson, State Representatives Esther Golar, Susana Mendoza, and Tony Munoz, and Sen. Mattie Hunter and maybe a second one--sorry if I forgot who. CPD Interim Superintendent Dana Starks and 9th District Commander Eugene Roy also came out. Our local leading lights included the pastors of St. Michael's, Holy Cross/IHM and St. Joseph, Paul Lopez from Park Federal Savings, Emilio Carrasquillo from Neighborhood Housing Services, Alfredo Nambo from Big Picture HS, the principal of San Miguel School, Oscar Contreras of Catholic Charities Street Intervention and many more.

I was happy to see Brother Jim from the prayer walk in the crowd. He told me he had been walking over on Seeley and in the neighborhood this morning. I hope I can go out with him again sometime.

Taking a guess as to where the regular folks who came were coming from: people from San Miguel School were there, parishioners from St. Michael's, at least a dozen folks from Su Casa Catholic Worker, at least a few I knew from Holy Cross. The Peace and Education Coalition gave themselves a week to organize the march, which was good. It showed in the politicians, press and equipment (signs, people to direct traffic), and in the end of the march being at the San Miguel gym with hot chocolate for everyone.

Before the group began walking, Mayor Daley spoke. I'm not sure I can quote him--I wasn't taking notes--but he was impassioned to the point of near anger in his insistence that the community not let the gangbangers get away with this one. "I don't care if they're Two-Sixers or Latin Kings or Black P Stones or Disciples, or who--you have to tell us what you know."

Comments like that and 'don't let yourselves be afraid of a 14-year-old' (I think that was pretty accurate) are fine as far as they go, but I don't think they really help when people are still reeling from a shooting in the street. I know I was scared when the shots went off over here a couple of weeks ago, and I'm still scared when some of the squatters have tried to stare me down once or twice as I'm coming out of the house.

Fr. Bruce seemed to get it. He translated Daley's comments in a very interesting way, at least as I understood what he was saying. Basically, his translation came down to, we are one family, we have to have courage, as a family we need to tell the truth about what happened. An excellent spin, I would say.

Anyway, lots of politicians talked, we went up the street and prayed in front of the Barrera's house, then we walked over to the San Miguel gym for some more speeches and hot chocolate. A lot of business seemed to be getting done on the walk--I know Ald. Thompson got an earful about the rate of foreclosures in the 16th ward and the number of adjustable-rate mortgages with rates poised to go up.

The Coalition is sponsoring a fund for the Barrera children. Donations can be made in Leticia Barrera's name and sent to Park Federal Savings Bank, 2740 W. 55th St. Chicago, IL 60632.

Peace March Wednesday

After the horrific Halloween murder of the pregnant woman out trick-or-treating with three children, (news link here), the Peace and Education Coalition is sponsoring a peace march on Wednesday at 6 p.m. The march will start at 48th and Seeley, where she was shot.

The Fox Special Report

Here's the link to the Fox 32 segment that aired a couple of weeks ago about the Dream Act. I just looked at it myself. Though I spoke to one of the students, who thought Fox did a pretty good job of conveying their point of view, at the end the host says the only comments his blog has received are from people saying "illegals go home."

I wonder what would happen if we started calling everybody who ever got a parking ticket an "illegal"? Or everybody who forgot to get their city sticker renewed? I'm trying to think of other paperwork hassles, since so often the fine line between illegal and legal is a matter of paperwork.

Tony's Bump

I got home around 6 tonight and Tony was waiting by the front gate. He was kind of hunched over. He's let his beard grow.

I asked how he was and he said, "Not good."

"That makes two of us. What's wrong?"

"I came to see if you had any pain pills or something," he said. He came inside the gate and pulled up his shirt. A little southwest of his navel there was a lump or a bump sticking out. The bump was not open or or oozing, just a lump under the skin, but it was pretty big, maybe an inch horizontal and almost as long vertical. It was somewhere between round and rectangular. "It just showed up yesterday," he said. "It hurts. I didn't get out of bed today until now."

"You need to go to County. Now," I said at once. "Here is two dollars, for bus fare to Cook County Hospital, only."


He made like he was going to take my bike up the front steps. "Nuh-uh! You can hold the door for me if you want, but you are not carrying anything with that going on."

So he held the door for me while I got my bike in the front foyer. I invited him in for a minute and asked if he'd eaten anything today. He said he had and it had stayed down.

I went looking to see if I had any Tylenol, but I don't. Dr. Maritza needs to beef up her first aid supplies: the Band-Aids are getting used up and we're out of painkillers. I did have a bottle of water and a two-pack of granola bars. "This is for your trip. I know it's a long wait at County. You're going, right?"

He said yes. I walked back out to the front gate with him and told him to come see me when he knows what it is.

Then I walked in the house and opened the newsletter from Partners In Health to read Paul Farmer saying, "All enduring good work is done by teams (no doctor can be effective alone)." Dr. Maritza is feeling like her bench, like her medicine cabinet, is not that deep.

On Hospitality

I found this paragraph about hospitality on the Lydia Home Association web site. Over the weekend people were asking me about why I chose to do what I do here and I didn't feel like I was able to answer them very well. This paragraph says it better than I could myself:

Biblical hospitality involves taking chances and serving others in ways in which we might feel uncomfortable. It is deliberate. Biblical hospitality goes against our nature. It is not something we are naturally drawn to do. We have to be deliberate in our actions to engage in this type of hospitality. It is demanding. If comfort and predictability are important to you, than biblical hospitality is not what you are looking for. Biblical hospitality forces us to get involved in the lives of others, forcing us to be more dependent on God in order to fulfill our commitment to others.

Last week was hard. I don't know whether one of the guys on the block here made it to his appointment with a lawyer. I don't know how Deborah is doing. On Thursday I drove her up to the North Side to a shelter-she wanted to get out of here. I haven't seen her yet, so I'm really hoping she's still up on the North Side.

This morning, Yup-yup already asked me if she's got mail at my house. She doesn't.

Day of the Dead

I'd like to take a moment today to remember some of the young people of Back of the Yards who have died in the past year.

Chris Pineda, Whitney Young senior

Esmeralda, 15-year-old parishioner at Holy Cross, who died recently of a seizure. The other day I was on Paulina and saw "RIP Esme" graffiti-ed on a window. You can read about her and her family at the Holy Cross/IHM website, in back issues of the bulletin.

Dorothy's son, although I don't know his age.

The son of the woman who was walking up and down the street on North Marshfield late last winter soliciting donations for his funeral expenses.

Fabio Laic, 19, shot in the alley near 49th and Hoyne in late September.

IF you are reading this and know of others you'd like to remember, please comment and add their names. Rest in peace to them, and my prayers go out to all their families today.

Halloween in the Hood

Well, so far Halloween has not been too crazy. I still have a bag of Reese's Stix left for any late night trick-or-treaters. We had clowns and witches and devils and dancers and superheroes and face-painted cats and plenty of kids with no costume, just a bag and the cry of "Trick or Treat!"

Angel tried a Reese's Stix, or at least a piece of one.

Even Yup-yup came by for a trick or treat. Whatever.

"Pookie OK?" he asked me, meaning Dorothy.

She didn't call last night like she was supposed to, after all our drama. "I guess," I said doubtfully. Full of doubt I am, both of the answer and of the questioner.

One of the older Brady Bunchers didn't go out trick-or-treating. She stopped by just to hang out. Her younger siblings were driving her crazy, she said.

She was looking at Earth From Above, a big coffee table book full of aerial photos from all over the world. Then we messed around with some computer stuff and genealogy stuff, and finally we had a Colombian snack. I bought a tin of wafers that came with a container of arequipe (caramel, like dulce de leche) and a plastic spreader. You spread the arequipe on one wafer, then put another on top of it and eat it like a sandwich. The wafers were very thin but big rounds, like three inches in diameter. I broke mine in half to make a sandwich.

The closest to anything bad I have actually seen today was one little boy who had hidden an egg in a face mask he wasn't even wearing. It fell out and cracked on my front step. However, I hear a lot of helicopter noise and a lot of sirens outside.

More Trouble

Mr. House Arrest needs a lawyer. He's facing four felonies the first time he was charged with anything (not the first time he's been arrested, maybe the first time he's been arrested and charged as an adult). His buddy who got busted with him has a lawyer and says he'll take House Arrest's case at a discount. I think I can get him a lawyer for cheap or maybe even free. Guess we'll find out tomorrow if I'm right. House Arrest's dad refuses to pay for a lawyer, saying a) he doesn't have the money (which is probably true) and b) House Arrest made his bed; he should lie in it. While there is some truth to the second point, I suspect if we all lived in Evanston House Arrest would be facing one or more misdemeanors and not four felonies for breaking into some garages.

Dorothy needs to get out of here now. Yup-yup hit her twice today, I gather. It was hard to tell. She was red eyed and mumbling. She only smelled of cigarette smoke.

"Did you use today?" I asked her pointedly.

"No, I didn't. I had one beer and some cigarettes," she said, quite clearly. She's lucid enough to figure out if she keeps staying there he will work her into debt she can't get out of. She spent all day selling drugs for him apparently because she "owes him rent" or some such baloney. It's not like he owns that house.

However, getting her out of here doesn't look like such an easy proposition at the moment. Our two best leads aren't panning out. Hmmm.....

Meanwhile the teen who ran away with a younger sibling in the car is back, I gather. Haven't laid my own eyes on that person yet. We'll see.

And tomorrow is Halloween, a day notorious for trouble. Kids start off throwing eggs and it escalates into worse. Years ago I knew a young guy who landed in the hospital with a gunshot wound from an escapade that started as egg-throwing.

Late this afternoon, I was on the Ashland bus at 49th and a gaggle of eight or ten little boys went by, including a couple of the Brady Bunch kids. It was warm this afternoon and they were mostly in short sleeves. When the light changed they crossed the intersection in a big herd, then broke out running down the sidewalk and around the corner into the alley. Half of me thought: "how fun!" and the other half thought: "what are they doing in that alley? are they safe? are they all going to grow up and become gangbangers?"

In happier news, I believe they did finally paint over the graffiti by the viaduct at 49th and Marshfield.

Trouble

Recently, there's a lot of trouble on this block and the next block up. I went out Saturday night and smelled marijuana coming out of a car up the street. I knew the kids inside and didn't want to call the cops on them. I just asked them to keep an eye out for me about someone coming to pick up some stuff. I also smelled weed from a neighbor's house, but that's a pretty regular occurrence. Some of the people who live there are OK, but others aren't. In deference to the OK people and the notion of staying safe, I didn't call on them either.

As for the local teens, one got out of a mental hospital recently, another is on house arrest and a third ran away from home after leaving a very young sibling unattended in a car at midnight or so.

The last time one of the Bradys wanted help with homework was last week, and I had to say no because I was working. That happened today with somebody else.

The Souls have large graffiti all over the railroad viaduct at Marshfield and 49th. I called about it twice last week to no avail. Will have to get on the horn again tomorrow. It's not far north of where three guys were shot last week. You would think the city could make a special effort to get rid of that stuff in the wake of a shooting, but apparently that's not their priority.

Three Shot Today

...on the 4900 block of South Marshfield, less than an hour ago. Not our block, thank God, but close enough for us to hear the police helicopters, etc. Lots of people went to look. The cops cordoned off the south end of the block. I personally did not see anything--I thought I heard two shots, but then when I went out people were saying three people had been hurt and were being taken to Holy Cross Hospital. As far as I know no one is dead.

From what some of the young guys were saying, this may be the latest in the current gang wars. I think that means the LaRazas came across Ashland, but the thing I don't get is that last week's shooting was about Saints vs. LaRaza and Saints territory ends at 47th. South of 47th it's Latin Souls, and I don't know what is going on between them and LaRaza. I will have to see if any of my younger friends are willing to explain this to me.

Two young men I didn't know came walking from the east, saw the police cars everywhere and started hollering, "I just want to get high! I just want to get high!" I was standing with some other teenagers on the sidewalk and we all kind of smiled at each other, sort of a signal that those guys are crazy to be saying that stuff so close to a bunch of cops.

Sandy and Ms. Ribs took the opportunity to complain about the privacy fence and how difficult it is to see anything around it. We were also talking about the graffiti on it last week. "He's lucky they didn't burn it down," Ms. Ribs noted.

A couple of officers known in the community arrived later and one came over to talk with the young people I was with, so I got out of the way and went back in the house. I can still hear plenty of people on the street.

Big Picture Students on Fox Friday

Last Friday, Fox 32 came out to Big Picture to interview two students about the DREAM Act. Their interviews are supposed to air this Friday night at 9 p.m. I wasn't there, but I heard afterwards that it went well.

Last week, senators Dick Durbin (D-IL), Chuck Hagel (R-NE) and Richard Lugar (R-IN) reintroduced the DREAM Act as SB 2205. The bill is expected to go to a cloture vote tomorrow (that means the Senate is deciding whether to act on it this session), so today would be a really good day to call your Senator and tell him to support the DREAM Act, or, if you're from Illinois, to thank Durbin for reintroducing the measure and thank Obama for continuing to support it.

Capitol switchboard is 202-224-3121. Or you can send emails through the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights web site.

Cleaning up

Two quick items on cleaning up, so to speak.

Yesterday morning I woke up and spotted huge gang graffiti written on a large wooden fence at the north end of the block. I am pleasantly surprised to report that I called Graffiti Blasters at 9 a.m. and the truck was there to get rid of it a little after 1 p.m. Sadly, the overpass at 49th is also re-covered in graffiti and I haven't called it in yet. I hope someone else has.

Guest blogger 49th remains concerned about larger issues of environmental damage and passed on this story from CNN about pollution in Houston. "Hopefully the problem [here] is not as far-fetched as in the story. But if we don't do something, it might happen in our own backyard!" he warns.

Yup-yup and Dorothy On My Stoop

Dorothy got a letter from DHS on Friday. I was out of town last weekend and didn't see her before I left. Since Monday I've been keeping an eye out, hoping she would come by to pick it up.

This morning the doorbell rang. "Maybe that's Dorothy," I thought. Honestly, this was the first time in a long time I was happy at the idea Dorothy might be at the door. And it was. She looked good.

"I have a letter for you," I said.

"I thought you did," she replied.

"Let me go get it."

When I came back, Yup-yup was across the street. He looked over and saw us and started coming our way. Oh, Lord, not two handouts at once, I thought to myself. Dorothy was about to ask me for bus fare, but I nodded over at Yup-yup and said quietly, "Not right now." She got it.

Yup-yup came over and started pretending like he'd been cleaning the traffic circle. "The only thing I couldn't do was pick up that sign," he said. Someone hit one of the reflecting signs and knocked it down. I couldn't believe he was trying to tell me he'd cleaned up the circle when I could look down the street in broad daylight and see the trash in there, but I didn't say anything.

"I need to call 311 about the sign," was my only response. "Maybe in a couple days things will be better," I added, obliquely referring to the state of my wallet. He got that hint.

Dorothy went down the steps and started reading her letter out on the sidewalk. Yup-yup walked right over and put his hands on her shoulders, looking over her to see what the letter said. I thought she might jump on him for touching her, but she was too intent on reading the letter. I stood at the door, watching. The last time I saw them on the block at the same time they got into a shouting match.

When her head came up, I decide to butt in, gently but proactively. "Hey, Wesley," I called out. "Could you shut my gate?"

He left her and went to pull the gate shut. She walked across the street. A gray car pulled up by the traffic circle, and Yup-yup went to talk to the driver. Meanwhile, Dorothy picked up three trash bags full of stuff (her things? not sure) and started walking toward Ashland.

I have no idea what any of that means. Did Dorothy get kicked out of her housing? [I'm not sure, but I thought she was staying with her sister.] Have she and Yup-yup made up? That might spell bad news for her efforts at recovery. Are they just on polite terms? Hard to say.

Peace March Tomorrow

At today's Peace and Education Coalition meeting Oscar Contreras announced a peace march will be held tomorrow at 4:45 p.m. at the shopping mall where Monday night's shooting occurred. The shopping mall is on the 1400 block of West 47th Street, corner of 47th and Loomis.

Today the owner of the Farmers' Best Market grocery store came to the meeting and appealed to those in attendance to shop at the store and encourage others in the community to shop there, too. After the meeting I went to check out the store. It is very nice and clean and the produce is fresh. I'm told his prices beat Food 4 Less but I didn't compare closely.

Monday's CAPS Meeting

Last night about 50 people attended the CAPS meeting for beat 931, about twice the usual turnout. The additional people were mostly from the 4700 and 4800 blocks of South Marshfield Avenue. Apparently there's been an effort to organize neighbors to get new sidewalks, street resurfacing and some action to clean up the parking lot at 48th and Marshfield. One of the families on 4800 got in touch with an organizer for the Illinois Hunger Coalition, and together they got about two dozen additional people to turn out as part of their effort around street improvements.

Alderman Willie Cochran, the new alderman in the 20th Ward, was there as well. The people from 4800 told me they had been calling all last week to get him to come. At first they were told he would be there, then at the last minute a staffer said he wouldn't make it, so they didn't press everybody to come. Then he made it after all, and they were sad they hadn't shown their full muscle. If that's what the did without really trying, I'm still impressed.

I got there late so I'm unclear what action if any will be taken about the parking lot, which is full of empty beer bottles, condoms, etc. Cochran did not make any specific promises about their block, just said there will be work done but some of it may have to wait until spring. As for the sidewalks, any sidewalks that are cracked and uneven by more than two inches are supposed to be fixed by the Department of Transportation, not the alderman's office. He told them to call 311 and his office and his people would bug Transportation for them, too.

There was also much talk about the shooting on Saturday night. A man was shot and killed at 48th and Marshfield. The shots came from the railroad viaduct. Someone at the meeting was a witness-she was a friend of the victim and had been standing with him when he was killed. She asked whether the city could put lights up on the railroad tracks to make it easier to see what's going on up there. Ald. Cochran told her that because the railroad owns the land they would have to decide to put up lights. That viaduct has been a problem for years--people go up there with guns and use it as a sniper's perch.

First Guest Post

Wow, I'm impressed by the quick response. Here's our first guest post, from 49th Street:

Regarding the blessing of the animals last Thursday, it was quite astounding to me at the presence of all the people (especially in our community) that showed up with their beautiful pets. I saw a turtle, small rooster, four parrots, about 4 kittens and about 12 dogs. Father Ed also looked intrigued since I am sure that he was not expecting all these people to show up!

One thing that I have to say regarding the BOY is that it has definitely transformed from what it was back in 1991, when i was about 13 years old and had just moved from the Little Village area. I was young and though I knew my surroundings I was taken aback at the atrocities being committed day in and day out. The only reason that my parents had picked to move to this area was because it was the only area affordable enough for my dad to purchase a not so dilapidated home; and even to this day our home is one of the ones that stands out in our block of 49th and Hermitage. Anyway, those were the days that most of our blocks were packed with various gang members representing every other block. As a youngster, although I was never initiated into a gang, I know some gang members from every other block, plus it did help not to get beat up or pressured to join one from the other. Although I knew that being part of a gang was not the right thing to do I knew not to be initiated into one because I did have my father who looked out for me too. Most of the individuals that were part of gangs back in the day did not have father figures or quite simply didn't care for their lives and other people's lives either.

Before I forget, this past Saturday from what I heard from around the neighborhood, they shot the owner of the building that sits right off 49th and Paulina, who or why nobody knows!

Guest Bloggers Wanted

This morning someone from 47th Street commented that what they read here doesn't seem like the heart of the community they know from growing up here. See our comments exchange under "Cranium on the Stoop" for more.

This got me thinking that maybe the best way to address this problem is to open up the blog to guest bloggers who've been living here longer than I have. So, if you've got something to say about Back of the Yards, email me at marshfieldtattler@hotmail.com and I'll be happy to publish your thoughts as a guest blog.

Some things I'd like to hear about from longtime residents:
what was it like growing up here and what's the same or different now?
is gentrification coming to Back of the Yards? what do you think?
how can we make BOY safer and better for families without gentrifying?
what activities would you like to see in the parks here?
what are you hoping the new high school will be like?
anything else that's on your mind

By the way, to 49th, I missed the blessing of the animals at St. Joe's last week, but if you'd like to tell us more about it, email it to marshfieldtattler@hotmail and I'll put it up so it gets more visibility than the comments. Thanks!

Cranium on the Stoop

Last night, the Brady Bunch and some of their pals wanted to learn how to play Cranium. "We have it, but we don't know how to play," one of the boys told me. I have it, too. So I pulled it off the shelf and brought it out on the front stoop.

I believe we had 10 kids playing, from age three to about age 11 or 12. I have the original Cranium, which is a pretty hard game for kids. The rules are kind of complicated--I frankly don't really understand how you're supposed to start the game, so I made up a variation and just got us going. There are four categories of questions: data head (facts and numbers); word worm (spelling and defining words); creative cat (drawing and sculpting words for others to guess); and star performer (singing and acting to convey a famous song or performer).

Unlike when I played with Danny and Junior and Oscar, two kids in this group knew who Tina Turner was. "She's the lady who sings on TV," one of the Bradys said. Their friend Brian knew who she was but couldn't think of her name. This time one of the younger boys and I sang "Proud Mary" together--he caught on fast. We shook our heads a lot to make our hair fly around.

For one 'Star Performer' question, they all had to hum "This Land Is Your Land." None of them knew the song. They learned the tune but not the words. I'll have to teach them the lyrics some other time. I was trying to post the Bruce Springsteen video on You Tube to this blog, but some glitch happened. Another day.

They liked drawing and even spelling. Our littlest team member did a pretty good job of guessing how to spell "hippopotamus" backwards. "S,U,M,P,O,P,I,H," I think she came up with. Pretty darn good for a three-year-old. Everybody learned two new vocabulary words: manicure and oxbow. "What's the new word for polishing your nails?" I asked. "Everybody say it together--one, two three!"

"Manicure!" they all yelled.

I need to start looking around for more age-appropriate games for them. I'd like to get Pictionary, Jenga and Connect Four for starters. I do see that Cranium has some new games out that might have clues that would be more relevant to them.

More on Health and Pollution

For today's poster, who also expressed interest in what's spewing out of the stacks in the stockyards, here's a group that might be able to help us do research:
the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization.

I met one of their organizers last winter when a group of maybe 50 people were outside EPA's local headquarters protesting.

Health Report

So, a week ago today I biked over to the post office near 43rd and Halsted to pick up a package. On the way home, I decided to bike through the Union Stockyards, once the core of this neighborhood. It's now an industrial park that employs a fair number of neighborhood folks--you can see them in the Dunkin Donuts at 45th and Ashland picking up coffee at 6:45, before their 7 a.m. shifts start. But the industrial park is far from the employment colossus that the stockyards once were.

When I first moved here, I biked through the stockyards quite often to get to work downtown. Riding at off-shift hours, I usually didn't hit much traffic and it was pleasant to bike through so much open space in the middle of the city. But when I mysteriously found myself saddled with three sinus infections that year, I decided I wasn't going to take a chance on biking through an industrial park any more.

If you drive along 47th Street at night between Ashland and Racine, you'll see a gigantic factory spewing white smoke into the sky. It's very Simpsons-esque. I don't know what's in that smoke but it certainly has made me wonder. I've had allergies and sinus trouble my whole life, but they have reached a new level of difficulty at times down here.

Anyway, here it is, a week after that bike ride, and last night through today I have had godawful allergies, congestion, sinus headache, etc. etc. It could be the time of year, it could be built up congestion--I had a bad headache one day in Colombia that could have been congestion-related--but somehow my gut says I really must not bike through the stockyards any more.

Anybody know anything about the pollutants factories there emit? Or how to find out that kind of thing?

"When we see a star in the sky, we will remember them."

This is the artists' statement that Dawn wrote (with some help from her art teacher) regarding the Big Picture ofrenda now at the National Museum of Mexican Art in Pilsen:

This ofrenda is dedicated to the memory of the 32 Chicago Public School students who died during the 2006-2007 school year. We want to honor their presence with us, even as time passes. As students, this crisis of violence against youth makes us upset. It’s terrible having this violence around our community. At Big Picture H.S. in Back of the Yards, most students have experienced a violent death of a brother, sister, father, neighbor, or friend. The deaths of the CPS students affect their family deeply and also other students because violence happens to the people we know. The losses of these students change our school environment because it makes us scared and insecure. There should be no reason to be scared to go to school, to take public transportation, or to be out in our community. It bothers us to have so many young students die. These students, no matter what their situations were, should have been future doctors, lawyers, social justice leaders, and had the chance to change our community for the better. Today we honor and remember the 32 students who passed away during the last school year, and their continued presence in our lives as students. In our offering, we created an empty classroom with a symbolic seat for each of the departed students. This represents the absence other students will feel when they are not with us this year. We included school supplies that are essential for daily learning and other things they enjoyed during their lives. We created papel picado with a gold foil star that has a silhouette of a girl or boy representing each student. When we see a star in the sky, we will remember them. We wanted to capture the feeling of sadness and emptiness that their absence has created, and to remember what their lives meant to us while they were among us. Sharing our sadness is part of the process of healing, and we hope that visitors will be inspired to take action the end the violence against youth that continues in Chicago.

Block Book Fair

This afternoon I went to the 57th Street Children's Book Fair in Hyde Park. Someone I know told me that in the last hour you can get heavily discounted children's books. While the books were not as heavily discounted as I had been led to believe--I didn't go home with a bag full of books for a quarter--I did get 20 books for a dollar apiece, and more for about half price. And yes, I fell for the three for the price of two on Roald Dahl books offered by 57th Street Books, and picked up others from them as well. In total, I spent $120 on about 40 books, so the average price was three dollars each. Not too bad, especially since I did find some Spanish-language books at the dollar price, too.

My new tenant/roommate (who is so easy to live with he doesn't even rate tropical storm status, so I haven't given him a pseudonym yet), loaned me his car to help me get the books home. As it turned out, I probably could have managed my small boxful on the bus, but it was nice to step out of the car after parking near the Brady Bunch house and hear all the children on the porch holler, "Maritza! Hi, Maritza!"

"Guess what I have," I called back as I made my way to their porch with the box in my arms. When I got there, I showed them the books. "I got a lot of books cheap this afternoon," I explained to their parents in Spanish. "They can come over and choose which ones they want."

"It's like a book fair," said one of the younger ones. She and two other of the littlest ones came right away, eager to check out what was on hand.

They loved "There Were Ten in the Bed" by Annie Kubler, who created a book with a little wheel on the side so you can make the children disappear as the song progresses. (You can look it up on Amazon if you are interested--it's ten bucks. I got mine today for about five.) The song is:

There were ten in the bed,
Ten, ten,
And the little one said,
"Roll over! Roll over!"
So they all rolled over and one fell out.

It goes to nine, eight, seven, etc. When none are left, the little one says, "Good night." We kept forgetting that part when we sang, which made us all laugh.

We all sang the song innumerable times, and the youngest had a lot of fun spinning the wheel and making the children disappear one by one. The two older girls had the song memorized by about the fourth try. The younger one, who is still obviously learning English, was singing the way I do at Spanish Mass--faking it except for the word or couple of words she knew really well. I smiled at her and she got embarrassed, but I kept smiling until she smiled back and sang louder. Next time I'll have to tell her that's exactly how I sing in church.

So we took that book and a bunch of others to their house, and then the older kids had to have a chance to choose. All in all, about three waves of kids came over to see what the pickings were. By the end they were pretty slim.

To call this endeavor the Block Book Fair is an exaggeration. Although I saved a few books for some of our friends--Danny, Daya, Dawn and the other kids at Big Picture--the Brady Bunch down the block walked away with more than three-quarters of what I brought home. I only have eight books left on the kitchen table. Whew!

It is an especially good time to be handing out books since Chavez Elementary is on intersession in October, which means the kids are out of school for two or even three weeks. The teachers usually assign them a book to read or some other long project, but I'm glad to be contributing to 16 kids' intellectual stimulation while they're on vacation.

When we got back to Brady Bunch Central, one of their moms was pretty excited to see the Spanish-language books in the stack. That was very gratifying. Dawn's mom has occasionally picked up the couple of Spanish-language baby books I got for Angelito in Oaxaca last year, and Daya's mom reads to her sometimes, but neither of them has ever examined a book with as much interest as this mom did. Hurray!

Shout-outs of thanks and action

First a big thank you to Alexander Russo at District 299 for picking up my blurb about the Day of the Dead show tonight at the National Museum of Mexican Art. His current lead post is about our neighbor to the south, Englewood, and efforts to partner with Teach for America to create a principal pipeline for schools there.

Now, a big no thanks to Senate Republicans, who backed off the DREAM Act under pressure from a flood of negative calls. I called my senators to support it and I hope lots of other people reading this did, too. Harry Reid and other Senate Dems decided it wouldn't get 60 votes any more, so they pulled it off the defense appropriations bill. Reid has vowed to introduce it on its own by November 16.

I just met another young woman on the block here last night who might benefit from the DREAM Act. She's the oldest sister of my new young friends who come over for homework help. She's a sophomore at Rauner College Prep, one of the Noble Network Charter Schools on the Northwest Side. She travels two hours a day to attend the school, and gets up at 5:30 a.m. so she can arrive early enough to do their morning exercise program. She's also getting involved in fundraising for books for a school in Nicaragua. "Because of my status, I probably can't go down there, but I wanted to help out," she told me. That was the tipoff that college will be an issue, too. Given all her siblings and cousins, I now have about 16 new friends who could benefit from the DREAM Act.

I'm just going to say it one more time: these kids are here, this is the only country they've ever really known, and we're shooting our neighborhoods and our society in the foot if we don't give them a real chance at a college education. That's what the DREAM Act is designed to do.

If you'd like to balance the flood of negative calls and tell your senators to support the DREAM Act, you can call them through the Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121 or find them online here.

Day of the Dead Show Opens Friday

This photo is a little sample of the ofrenda (altar) created by Big Picture Back of the Yards for the National Museum of Mexican Art's 21st annual Day of the Dead exhibition. According to the art teacher who worked with the students, Dawn was her "lead, lead artist!" and worked really hard on the project. Dawn also wrote the artists' statement that appears next to the ofrenda, explaining that it was created to remember all the Chicago Public Schools students who were killed violently last school year.

The opening is this Friday night at 6 p.m. For directions to the museum, click here. For more info about the Day of the Dead show, click here.

Dorothy gets Mail

I bet you're asking: who's Dorothy? Dorothy is the name I'll use in the future for the woman I've been calling "my friend the prostitute." For the purposes of this blog, she's now named after Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker, who staked her life on the observation that "The gospel takes away our right forever, to discriminate between the deserving and the undeserving poor."

Anyway, while I was in Colombia, some mail for Dorothy arrived at my house. I think it's from the Department of Human Services, probably paperwork related to applying for SSI (Supplemental Security Income).

Dorothy is in her mid-fifties, homeless, crack-addicted, has mental health issues and is HIV positive. She's been on the streets a long time and it seems like she's finally starting to get ready to get off them, I hope for good. Although the government has strictly narrowed the eligibility criteria over the last decade or so, if she doesn't qualify I'll be fighting mad.

This afternoon, she was coming down the street just as I was walking out the door to get my bike and ride to the post office for a package. "Wait, I have some mail for you!" I said, going back in the house for the three big manila envelopes.

"I was waiting for you to get back," she told me. "I didn't want to come up and check in your mailbox."

"You look good," I told her. "Healthy." She was eating a banana and drinking juice. She does look better. She's not rail-thin any more and her skin is brighter.

"Thanks," she said. "I'm going to a meeting tonight. You know, those people I used to hang around with--they're just depressed all the time. They argue."

"What you're doing is hard work," I said. "I'm praying for you."

"Keep on praying," she said. If anyone reading this post wants to join in, you'd be very welcome. Just pray for Maritza's friend Dorothy. I'm betting God will know who you're talking about.

Sunday in Soacha, Bogota

Quedate Senor, quedate Senor, Quedate Senor
aqui, aqui, aqui

Stay Lord, stay Lord, stay Lord
here, here, here

That was the chorus of the communion song at an outdoor Mass on Sunday in Soacha, a community of poor people and civil war refugees who live in the hills above southern Bogota. It was the same song Fr. Ed sang at my housewarming party almost three years ago.

About 50 people attended the Mass, held on a flat patch of dust above the local brick factory. More than half of the people who came were children under 10. Mass was celebrated by six German priests plus the U.S. Jesuit in our delegation. Radical Catholic readers will appreciate the following details. During the homily, members of the congregation were invited to speak, and the whole congregation said the consecration together. Given that the word I heard is most of the Colombian church wouldn't do that, it was an extra treat to be there.

I put Soacha in Google and the first thing in English that came up was an EU-funded project to improve education and prevent forced recruiting of youth into the armed groups. Here's the story.

The story mentions an educational method from Brazil that helps children make up for lost time in school. Someone from the program says it has helped students make three years of academic progress in one school year. CPS, are you listening? Maybe that's something worth researching.

saludos desde colombia/greetings from colombia

well, marshfield tattler hits the road again. some of you may remember my trip to colombia last summer. i am back, visiting some of the same people i met last time and meeting many new people. today i got very sunburned while going to Mass on top of a hill outside bogota. six german priests and an american jesuit presided. we worshipped with a community of people displaced from their homes by the civil war here. we also had an opportunity to see people working on a community home-building project. i bought a baseball hat at the community store but it was too late to keep me from getting burned.

this afternoon we visited the gold musuem in downtown bogota. The museum was full of amazing precolumbian gold artifacts. wow!

Yup-yup Returns

I heard his rooster cry this morning. I saw him tonight when I got off the Ashland bus.
I was carrying a load of dry cleaning and walking slowly to stay within range of an older woman and a young boy as long as we were all walking in the same direction.

"Yup-yuup," he called softly. "I'm back. I'm rested and refreshed. How are you?"

"I'm busy, stressed and broke," I said with a mix of bravado and brusqueness. I was expecting to get hit up for money. I was wrong.

"Busy is good and stressed you can fix," he advised. Not bad advice, really.

Yup-yup was drunk, I think, not high, because he waxed philosophical. (I tried really hard not to get close enough to smell the alcohol, so I can't say for sure.) What is it about booze that brings out the armchair philosopher, especially in middle-aged men? It took a few minutes of him chatting at me for me to realize he was behaving like some other middle-aged drunks of my acquaintance, including my own father back in the day. He ranged from the bush in the traffic circle to reconnecting with family in Mississippi to roots and place.

"How can a person live in a place where he has no roots?" Yup-yup inquired. I thought I was supposed to take that personally and started to feel defensive, but as he kept going I decided I didn't have to. "My mother's spirit rests in that house," he said, pointing down the block. "My nephew's is in your house. My sister killed him."

"I know," I said. But I didn't know until that moment that it was Yup-yup's sister and not his sister-in-law who set the fire that killed her son.

I had just heard a couple days ago that he was in Mississippi, hiding out from the law over "something bad," sources said. I must say I was hoping he would stay down there longer. I had just started to enjoy the quiet.

He alluded to the "something bad" very obliquely. "This neighborhood is changing. People be taking down license plates and stuff. How can you live in a place where you have no roots?" he asked again.

But he didn't want an answer, and I didn't try to provide one. Another guy went by in the street, pushing a cart. "Tony, is that you?" I called out, hoping.

"No," Cart Guy said. But he hung around.

Yup-yup broke off talking with me and started asking Cart Guy for a sandwich. I tried to slip off unnoticed, but he looked back as I was locking my gate and said, "You keep that gate locked, Miss Maritza." He's been saying that to me since the not nice new kids on the block arrived, even though I think he squats with them at least some of the time.

"Yes, sir," I said.

New Kids on the Block--Very Nice!

I haven't had a chance to write about the new family down the street. There are two brothers who bought a house together a few houses south of here. Both brothers have big families; I think each has eight kids. Maybe we'll call them the Brady Bunch on Steroids for purposes of this blog.

Some of the girls over there like to rollerblade on the sidewalk. We had races and I pulled two or three of them down the street in a line. The other night I went out and read them some Shel Silverstein on the sidewalk. They liked that so much I loaned them the book a few days later, in care of the oldest girl I've met, an 8th-grader.

A couple of afternoons this past week I was lucky enough to be home at homework time. Eight of them piled in my house to do work and take care of their youngest brother, who is not even a year old yet. Little Eddie takes a nap around 4, so it was just a matter of getting him down. His six-year-old sister gave him a bottle, and his 11-year-old brother took him home when he fell asleep. Their mom/aunt works at home in the afternoons putting boxes together, and she has trained them all to do their homework very quietly. I was amazed at how little noise they all made while they were working. The first day, I even got some writing done!

Later, one of the younger ones, who is obviously in the early stages of learning English, came and told me she had to read a book in English to somebody for her homework. It was a beautifully illustrated book called Half-Chicken/Mediopollito, bilingual in facing pages. She started reading it to me in English, but one of her older sisters suggested that I read the Spanish on each page before she started reading the English, "so she'll understand." I jumped on this immediately because I wanted the practice and the help with Spanish pronunciation. So I read the Spanish and occasionally asked for help pronouncing unfamiliar words. Then Alma read the English. When she clearly had no idea how to pronounce some of the words, I would re-read the sentence in English to her and then invite her to try it again. One of her brothers liked the story so much he hung around listening through the whole process.

The second day, it became more apparent which of them are struggling. Everybody seems to be doing pretty well in math but a couple of them are struggling with the transition from Spanish to English. One of the older boys is in 6th grade and was struggling with some hard words the first day. I loaned him my copy of "My Side of the Mountain" (in English) to see if he liked it and if he could understand it. He had some trouble with that book, too. I think maybe we should read it aloud and have him draw some of the descriptions if I can get enough time to do that with him.

There's a second-grade girl who is still a little weak on the alphabet, and her spelling reflects that. It's invented and looks more like first-grade spelling to me. I suggested to her big sister that they try getting some alphabet flash cards from the dollar store and singing the ABC song with her once or twice a day.

"Like before bed?" When you pray?" kidded the older sister.

I grinned. "Well, probably before praying," I suggested.

One of the younger girls had a Spanish vocabulary assignment, including the word unidad. The English word given to define it was "together," but the kids and I all thought that was weird. "Juntos" means together. I got out my Spanish-English dictionary and as I suspected, "unity" is a better definition, but she didn't quite get the concept. That's probably why the teacher gave the word together, but it didn't satisfy us. Her older brother was able to help her get unidad from communidad (unity from community) and we put our heads together and came up with this sentence:

The family that has unity is going to have a lot of success/La familia que tiene unidad va a tener mucho exito.

That would be their family, for sure!

Mentors Are Good

Today I was riding my bike up by Soldier Field, in Burnham Harbor. Today was about as spectacular as it gets in Chicago, clear blue sky and water to match, light breeze, sunny. Great biking weather--so great it surprised me not to encounter too many cyclists.

But one did notice me. A skinny bearded white guy rode past me and said, "Yay! Mentors are good!" It took a split second to realize he was referring to my Big Picture t-shirt. On the back it says, "I am a mentor."

We smiled and laughed together. Before I could thank him, he was gone.

Guess Who Got the Microwave!

Yesterday afternoon, I ran into Jesse on the street. I hadn't seen him for a while. Junior's whole family came and cut the grass last weekend because it was a foot high and breeding all kinds of bugs. I wanted Jesse to do it but he was nowhere in sight. So now he's around and the grass is short. However, Junior's family didn't cut back the baby trees in the fence that keep overgrowing the sidewalk. So I still had a job for Jesse, and he agreed to come over this afternoon and take care of it.

Once the branches were all cut back, I came out in the yard to pay him and he asked me, "Do you sew?"

I do not, but I would almost consider starting in light of his latest alley find. He picked up an almost-brand-new Singer sewing machine with patterns to boot! I'm sure he'll find a taker for it--somebody around here does alterations (maybe she threw it out? who knows?). Anyway, once he had thoroughly dissected all the good points of that find, he said, "You put that microwave out, didn't you?"

"You picked it up, then?"

He nodded. "I'm using it now."

"You cleaned it, right?" I asked. "And it still works?" I went into some detail about my efforts to clean it with the garden hose, etc.

"I left it out in the rain," he said. "I plugged it in and it still works fine." He assured me he had cleaned it out thoroughly and the flies were out of the door's window.

Well, I'm glad it went to a good home. And I'm double glad my new tenant/roommate has a microwave, so I don't miss the old one!

News from the Hood

This is the third night in a row I've called 311 to get the streetlights back on. They are out from Ashland to Paulina, and 51st to the viaduct at 48th.

My friend the prostitute stopped by yesterday afternoon. I am very much afraid she is relapsing.

In happier news, at Holy Cross today Fr. Bruce announced the Board of Education has promised our new high school in Back of the Yards will be built by 2010. There was a board report over the summer making it official that the site will be near 47th and Hoyne, if I remember correctly. I'll post a link soon.

Also, it sounds like the idea of putting a Chicago Public Library branch in the Goldblatt's building at Ashland and 47th is not dead yet. Stay tuned....

Breaking News--A Happy Midnight Visitor

You may recall that Yup-yup's girlfriend stopped by in August and I gave her a referral because she wanted to get treatment. Well, she's going for it. She came by a few minutes ago with a paper which I now forget where it was from--not Thresholds (where I referred her) but maybe public health? She looked clean and seemed calm and explained she is out through the weekend but they are trying to get her into an in-patient drug treatment program. She needed a contact number and address--her social worker wants to talk to someone who knows her out in her real life--so I gave it to her. A little scary.

It was easier with Priscilla, who just disappeared once she was up and ready for treatment.

She says she is going to stay with her sister until she can get into an inpatient program. I hope so. I hope she wasn't bullshitting me and about to relapse.

As she was leaving she said, "I'm sorry I came through the neighbors' yard, but I thought you'd want to know about this."

"You were right," I told her.

Prayer Walk

This morning I went on the weekly prayer walk sponsored by the Port Ministries. The walk was started by Deacon Coleman, a longtime employee at the Port and a neighborhood legend. I hear he's now working in Roseland but still living in Back of the Yards and hopes to make it back for some prayer walks when he gets settled in his new job.

Brother Jim, a Franciscan who lives in Berwyn but comes to walk every Wednesday, is now the linchpin of the walk. He wears a habit he sewed together from old blue jeans about 20 years ago. He's a six-foot-plus white guy walking around in a denim habit in 90-degree weather. Our third walker, Walter from St. Joe's, observed that we got a few more stares with me along today than Brother Jim was racking up. (All it takes is two X chromosomes, I gather.)

Brother Jim has been going out walking and praying in all kinds of places for a long, long time. He used to work at St. Malachy's Parish in the Henry Horner projects. He's still walking through Dearborn Homes regularly--everybody knows him over there. I gather he's pretty new to our neighborhood--it's the first time in his ministry that a lack of Spanish has been a burden to him--but he has great presence and connection.

We stopped to pray in front of a couple of houses on my block. One where the shots were fired recently, the other the house where there are squatters. It was 10 a.m. and the block was very quiet. Only one young guy was out on a bike while we were making our way down the block. I prayed at the house where the shooting happened in thanksgiving for the safety of everyone who lives there, especially for the little girl, and for peace within and outside the house.

What interested me was that later, we were over by Sherman Park, and we ran into Mr. Worrisome, who lives in the house where I prayed that morning. Regular readers will remember Mr. Worrisome as the guy who was always bothering me with marriage proposals and such when I first got here. Now that I'm friends with his sister, his niece and his nephew, he's calmed down a little bit. Maybe he's also calmed down because he has a girlfriend....

We came upon Mr. Worrisome and his lady friend sitting in the shade along the edge of Sherman Park. Mr. Worrisome recognized me first. "Hey, I know where you stay? What you doin over here?"

I knew who it was from the voice and crossed the street. Brother Jim and Walter came along and we all introduced ourselves. We got to talking with them and Lady Friend said she could use some prayers for her health. Brother Jim was all over this and asked Mr. Worrisome what he'd like to pray for.

Among his prayers, he offered, "That she'll marry me." At least this time he meant Lady Friend, not me. Thank God for that!

So we all joined hands and prayed, and Brother Jim gracefully managed to keep marriage out of it but pray for both of them and their needs. He did a good job.

"You really touched me today," said Mr. Worrisome. Despite the liquor on his breath, I think he was pretty much for real about it. Lady Friend appreciated it 100 percent.
And it's the nicest I've felt about Mr. Worrisome since I met him.

Sometimes in these situations, prayer can be used as a confrontational tactic. Big groups praying out in front of a drug house send a pretty clear message--shape up or ship out. This prayer walk isn't really like that, and that's part of why I decided it was time for me to go. Because I don't know the New Kids on the Block here, I'm just mad at them for messing things up. They're not like Yup-yup to me, who's a pain in the ass but he's my pain in the ass in some kind of weird way. I struggle to believe in their humanity. That's why I wanted to go pray in front of their house.

Brother Jim and Walter helped me to remember they are just people after all, even though we didn't see them or talk to them this morning.

After we got done with Marshfield Avenue and Sherman Park, we walked pretty far east, to 52nd and May, where Jim and Walter had heard there was a shooting last night. Four young men were hurt badly and had to go to the hospital. I haven't found a thing about it on the news, which doesn't surprise me.

It turns out we picked the right spot on the corner, according to two church ladies who walked up and joined us in prayer. I'll call one Ella because she used to lead her old church choir. She wore an SEIU t-shirt and sang "Precious Lord" in a key (or keys) I couldn't follow in the slightest, so I didn't try to sing along. Her companion told me she has two sons who are Catholic--one is in the service and the other just got out of jail. I'll be praying for Roy and Beau tonight.

We walked down the street a bit and there were a few people sitting on their front stoop. They wanted to know when the Bread Truck was coming back. They take a vacation in September because they work extra hard feeding kids during the summer, when many aren't getting free lunch. Even though the city provides meals, they're at summer programs or in places the poorest kids may not be in, so the Bread Truck hits the streets.

"They be all over the place," one stoop-sitter commented, "47th and Racine to 55th and Ashland." My friend by 63rd and Kedzie knows the Bread Truck.

The folks on the stoop talked a lot about the shooting. Not super-great information, but more than the none they would have given the police, I imagine. It was a testament to the trust the Port and its Bread Truck inspire.

The lady on the stoop asked if we would come inside and pray with her mother, who is homebound and on oxygen. So we went in. She was reading the Bible, book of Revelations, chapter six, verses one and two, where the lamb is breaking the seven seals:

"Then I watched while the Lamb broke open the first of the seven seals, and I heard one of the four living creatures cry out like thunder, 'Come forward.' I looked, and there was a white horse, and its rider had a bow. He was given a crown..."

Oxygen Lady asked Brother Jim what the verse meant. He took a minute of verbal tap-dancing, and then asked what it meant to her.

She thought for a minute and said, "If I do what the Lord tells me I will get a crown."

Jim went with it. We prayed for her that she would know God's presence near her whenever she was afraid. I think she let a tear or two fall near the end of Jim's prayer. They looked like good tears. Ella had followed us down--she knew her neighbors--and she prayed the Our Father for Oxygen Lady with us as her backup pray-ers. Then she sang a little more.

I should go out with those guys more often.

Five moms!

Whoo-hoo--I got five moms to show up for coffee and doughnuts and to talk about stuff on the block. My friend Mike, who is fully bilingual and used to be president of his block club in Chicago Lawn, came over and helped translate and told us about some things his block has done to try to help keep his block nice and encourage neighbors to get involved. One of them says she will go to our next CAPS meeting, which is good because I can't make it. We hope to make it two or more by talking to some other folks who couldn't make it tonight.

All Politics Is Local

I've been out a few times in the last couple of weeks trying to round up signatures for a nominating petition. In the past I've signed a few but never circulated one. It's tricky to do around here--there aren't that many registered voters to begin with. Then there's the language barrier, then just shyness. And until yesterday I wasn't totally sure of the boundaries for this office, so I think I got a few out-of-bounds signers. I've even encountered two Republicans!

And I'll be hosting our latest attempt at some kind of block meeting tomorrow night. Yesterday afternoon I ran into our precinct captain, who tells me she was going to start a block club with just the homeowners but she never got around to the paperwork. I don't know what we're calling tomorrow night but I intend to invite long-term renters, too. We need to get everyone who's willing to keep an eye out together. I have to make and pass out flyers and clean up the house. I feel very under-energized about this, but I made a promise, so here we go. At least maybe I'll find someone else to go to the CAPS meeting on Sept. 17 since I can't make it.

Gunshots Last Night

The problem block of 5000 S. Marshfield exploded in gunfire last night. Four shots rang out at the north end of the block a little after 10:30 p.m. A two-year-old girl was outside in the line of fire at the time; fortunately, she was not hit. As far as I know, no one was hit by the shots.

Neighbors say the police response was quick and massive, but it is not clear whether any arrests have been made.

I was in my house at the time and heard the shots but could not tell where they were coming from. The little I know is from what neighbors on that block told me this morning.

Isabel's birthday

I ran into Isabel's husband at St. Joseph's this afternoon. Today is their annual kermes, or parish festival. I went to Mass outside, in front of the church, and then was hanging around. Her husband told me it was her birthday and suggested I go over, so I did.

I arrived just as three other women from St. Joe's, one quite elderly, were at the front step. Isabel's oldest daughter was letting them in the back, so I tagged along. Everyone in the back was very polite--buenas noches, pasale. There was no music playing, which seemed a little unusual. We went up the back stairs and into the kitchen. Everybody gave Isabel and hug and a kiss and then we all sat down. Isabel tried to feed us, but we all resisted since we had just come from the St. Joe's festival.

Isabel was making gorditas. She has a really cool tortilla press. It's wooden and it essentially folds twice. The invention of plastic wrap has made tortilla (and gordita) making much easier. She laid a round ball of masa on the plastic wrap, which was big enough to cover both the base and the initial lid of the press. Then she folded the first lid, then she could fold the second lid on top to squeeze it down. Since she was making gorditas, she pressed the second time very gently. One of the other guests took over on the press and didn't bother to use the second lid at all. They came out perfectly every time. My friend Katie has a metal press that seems to be more difficult to work with. Although I didn't actually use this one--I might have had just as much trouble, being an inexperienced tortilla-maker.

After the masa is pressed into a flat circle, you put it on the comal (griddle) and heat it up. Isabel must have asbestos fingers--she would check them for doneness with her bare hands, then flip them over, take them off and stuff them, all with her fingers. To stuff the gordita, you slit the side of it part way round with a knife and then put in the filling. I don't know for sure if that was carne al pastor (pig on a spit), but it was definitely shredded pork, and very juicy. I thought it was plenty spicy on its own, but Isabel persuaded me to add a little salsa. Muy sabroso.
The other women wanted to know if it was too spicy for me, but we got it right, so I wasn't dying.

This was probably the first group of mostly new-to-me Mexican women in a kitchen where I didn't feel grossly out of place. Maybe because Isabel's youngest daughter hugged me like she hugged all her mother's friends coming in. Maybe because the conversation was usually pretty easy to understand. I mean, it's a birthday. They were all talking about how old they were when they got married, but mostly everybody was interested to see I could follow the conversation. Maybe it was because nobody noticed when I stopped paying attention because the conversation got too hard to follow. Maybe because we were all full, so for the first time ever I managed to keep Isabel from feeding me for at least half an hour. But after sitting around making and watching and schlepping gorditas downstairs (that part I could do), we all caved and ate some with Isabel. Oh, my God--"I should have eaten less at church," I said to the group. They all laughed.

Right now I feel like Templeton, the rat from Charlotte's Web, after the state fair. I ate two steak tacos and five tamales at St. Joe's, followed by three of Isabel's pork-stuffed gorditas. I'll have to go back to church and dance to work them off.

If you want to see what gorditas look like, look here. They have different fillings, but they're about the same size as Isabel's.

Lord of the Flies

...well, lady, that is. That's me.

The barbecue back in July was a great success, but there were surprising, long-lasting negative side effects thanks to my astounding ability not to notice important details in my environment.

About 70 people came by the barbecue, the kids had a water fight out front--an older woman got hit by accident and her daughter got mad, but I think we are all over it now--the grownups ate and chatted out back. Three little girls played Ring Around the Rosy. We sang happy birthday to everybody who had birthdays in July and August. The cake I got from Bom Bon was gone in about five minutes. (I got the cake from the 18th Street location.) Then we had a pinata.

The bad part was at some point I forgot I had been defrosting frozen hamburgers in the microwave. We ran out of burgers and I knew there were more but they weren't in the refrigerator or by the grill, and I kept getting distracted by other things and completely forgot about the stack in the microwave. And I kept forgetting about them through the next couple of days. Then I left for a week of vacation.

When I got home there was a bad smell. I couldn't figure out its source. After a few minutes of sniffing around, I called Dawn and asked her to come over and help me find the source of the smell. She thought it was coming out of the air duct behind the garbage can. We thought maybe a mouse had got in and died in there. I had been wanting to have my air ducts cleaned since I first moved in--I knew they were full of sawdust from construction and I have allergies--but I kept putting it off because of the expense. Well, this was it. Time to get air duct cleaning.

So the bad smell continued until the following Friday (now a little over a week ago), when the air duct guy arrived. Not only did he clean my air ducts, he figured out the source of the smell.

"Have you looked in your microwave?" he asked me.

I went over and looked inside. It was swarming with flies and maggots. "Oh, God," I said. "The hamburger."

The air duct guy very graciously helped me carry the microwave, unopened, out to the back yard. I got rubber gloves, Clorox and a toilet brush. Fortunately, the hamburgers were still in their plastic bad, so although gross, it wasn't that hard to take it out and put it in a garbage bag. However, the fauna inside were much more of a challenge. There were maggots and fly eggs everywhere. I finally took the garden hose to it just to knock them out.

That was the moment Dawn's mom showed up out back with one of her friends. "I don't think you want to do that," she said. I may well have shorted the thing out with all that water, but I couldn't really see an alternative.

Finally, after all the nasty critters were out of the main chamber, I came to a sad realization--there were some big flies trapped in the window of the microwave door and I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to clean out in there. The air duct guy had been making gentle hints all along that perhaps it was time for this machine to join its brothers in the great microwave cooking ground in the sky, so to speak. However, since in my neighborhood the alley is not a true burial ground--everything gets reincarnated--I felt obligated to put signs on it in English and Spanish saying, "Clean well before using -- there are flies inside." I put it out on top of my dumpster and it was gone in less than two hours.

Alas, that wasn't the end of the story. I've still got too many damn flies in the house. Back on Tuesday I was having breakfast and almost a dozen decided to join me. Yuck. On Friday I got some Raid and sprayed the back of the kitchen. That seemed to help some. (I hate Raid and I hate breathing in the fumes, but this called for strong measures.)

But Friday night became a Hitchcockian nightmare in my bathroom. I went to take a bath and there were two flies in there and the Raid was downstairs. Armed with a copy of Chicago magazine, I took them on. One went down quickly (do you realize flies have red blood? Uggh....). The other was more stubborn (maybe that one hadn't set foot in the Raid-sprayed area), and actually flew into me once during the chase. I felt like I was in "The Birds." But eventually the second one got whacked, too.

Right now, in the living room window, there are two dead flies on the sill and one live one climbing around on the screen. There's is almost no food in my house and it may be a while yet before I start cooking again. When I got back from Ireland, I saw Angela and Shaun from up by the corner. Angela told me it was her birthday and I promised I'd make her some cookies. I've had to put her off twice now due to the fly infestation. "My kitchen is so nasty right now I can't cook anything," I told her a couple of days ago. "As soon as I get it cleaned up, I will make you some cookies."

At this rate, it'll be Labor Day. Sheesh.

Marshfield Tattler on the Air

If you haven't checked out Vocalo, the new public radio station making waves on the Internet, now's a good time to give it a listen.

Earlier this week, host/producer Dan Weissmann featured the entry "New Kids on the Block: Not Nice" on his show. Someone else read it and did a very good job.

CAPS Meeting and After

Tonight's CAPS meeting was OK. No big revelations. The police said they had arrested "the old guy" at the problem house down the block. If they meant Yup-yup, he wasn't in very long--I didn't even notice. A lady came and said a week ago some older boys had tried to coerce one of her sons into taking drugs to school to sell. This turned into a long and involved conversation in Spanish, the essential point being she should call 911 right away in that kind of situation.

Afterwards, as I was going home Shaun and his big brother caught up to me. "When are you bringing us cookies?" Shaun asked.

"Later this week," I said. "My kitchen has been so nasty I couldn't cook anything. When I finish cleaning it up, I will bake cookies."

"Can we help you clean up?" he asked.

"No, honey," I said. "It's too nasty." (Stay tuned for the next post about what happened.)

They came down the block with me to go visit James. He didn't come out, but his aunt did. I asked if she wanted to sign a nominating petition for Esther Golar and she agreed. Then she offered to take it into her house and get her family's signatures. There are quite a few registered voters in there. That was a nice break. I thanked her profusely.

When she came back out, she double-checked to make sure Esther wasn't the lady who called herself our precinct captain under the former alderman.

"No, that's not her," I said, with a look to say, "You think I would circulate petitions for that woman?"

"Why aren't you are precinct captain?" James' aunt asked me.

"It's a lot of work," I said. "I'm not sure I want to take it on."

"People listen to you," she said.

"Well, one thing I have been talking about is starting a block club," I told her. I've been talking about that with Ms. Ribs ever since we got a new alderman. Before Labor Day, I will go to the new church at the end of our block and ask them if we can use their space to hold meetings. We'll take it from there.

James' aunt liked this idea. She was the one who raised the issue of the nasty new people on the block. "We need to get rid of them," she said. "My brother is 45 years old. He doesn't gangbang. We been here 30 years. How are these people gonna come threaten him when he's standing on the sidewalk?"

While the auntie was inside getting petition signatures, I caught up with Dawn, whom I hadn't seen for a week. She heard about the Latinos Progresando event coming up with Dick Durbin -- August 28-- and she wants to go. He will be talking about the DREAM Act. Since Elvira Arellano's arrest, Dawn is energized and wants to see whether other people are more energized or more afraid to speak out. She has a meeting at school tomorrow and is going to see who else wants to go on the 28th. She gave me a flyer about the event. What a budding organizer!

On top of all this, our new friends who just arrived from Pilsen were out on their roller skates. Alma, Irma and Maritza got in a line and grabbed my shirt, and I dragged all of them on their skates by running up and down the block. It was great exercise for working off all the Connie's pizza I ate at the CAPS meeting. Their mom came out and gave them popsicles. She asked if I wanted one but I was too full from the pizza.

Later I took some tomatoes from the garden over to their house. I rang the second floor--I think I got their uncle. Hopefully a dozen is enough for everybody to get a taste. Welcome to the block.

Oh, an interesting aside about schools--Shaun and his siblings can't start at Chavez until after Labor Day, even though Chavez started already, because their old school is on the regular calendar and no one is there to send their records over. Shouldn't there be some way to deal with that?

Dawn's Birthday Bike Ride

On Monday Dawn and I rode to 31st Street Beach. I'd been wanting to do that for months. It was her birthday. I still need to get her a bike helmet. (Should this be in The Dangerous Book for Girls? Will all my biking friends kill me for letting her ride around with me helmet-free?). There's no nearby place to buy one that I know of, and I want her with me when I buy it to get the right size. Finding time and a store has been difficult. Maybe we should just go to Swap-O-Rama together this weekend.

Dawn borrowed her dad's bike, and the back tire needed air, so we stopped at the gas station on 45th on the way out to the beach. At first the machine wouldn't work, but the air started flowing on the second try.

We took Ashland (mostly on the sidewalk) to 35th, then 35th to Halsted, then the bike lane to 31st, then 31st to the beach. For much of 31st I had Dawn take the sidewalk while I rode in the street.

We got to the beach a little before sunset. The water has finally warmed up. Dawn had sweat pants on, so she hiked them up a little and went in. She got wet. I went in, but not as far. As it was getting dark, we walked over to the pier and went all the way out, enjoying the view of the skyline and saying hello to the people fishing.

Dawn wanted to know about the breakwater rocks and the light at the end of the pier. It has a big cage around it--I guess so someone can stand there while changing the light bulb.

She also told me a story from her camping trip this summer. I think it was while they were doing the rafting part of the trip that she and another camper got stuck in quicksand and had to figure out how to get out. It was a little scary, she said--she was in nearly up to her hip and her first escape attempts were pushing her down, not up. But one of the trip leaders was nearby, offering advice, and Dawn got it--the trick she used was to kneel (that got her higher up), then walk in a sort of sideways manner, sort of like climbing steps with your feet askew, to get out.

Once she and the other camper were free, they started pushing each other to try to force the other person back in the mud. "It was funny then," she told me, "but before, it was scary."

We had to hurry home because she was getting up at 4:30 the next morning to go to work. She's doing temp work between the end of summer school and the beginning of the new year. (Joey's already back in school because Chavez is on the year-round calendar, so they started August 6.)

Where there's smoke...

there may or may not be fire, but something's up.

Fire seems to be a theme this week. I got home late on Wednesday night. It was dark and steaming hot. You could almost see the humidity in the air. But there was more than steamy heat hanging in the air on this block of Marshfield Avenue. Down in the middle of the block, smoke was pouring out of the house that's been trouble since June.

Yup-yup spotted me as I got off my bike in the yard. "Miss Maritza!" he called.

"What IS that down there?" I inquired.

"That's not smoke," he assured me. "That's just steam."

Sure it is. I'll believe that when your eyes are not wide and red and you're not twitching.

After Yup-yup departed, I started walking down the block to see what was going on. Julian and a friend of his were biking up the block, so I walked back to my house before getting a real sense of anything.

As I was getting the mail out of the mailbox, Julian came alongside my front steps and said quietly, "That smoke stinks. Do you think they are making drugs in there?"

"I don't know, but they might be," I said in a low voice. "I'll go in the house and call 911."

They sent three fire trucks and a police car. I don't know if they arrested anyone or what happened. But it was gratifying to have a quick response to a call, for once.

The Dangerous Book for Boys

...is not a book we really need here on Marshfield Avenue. There's plenty of danger to go around. And I'm not talking about gangbanging today. Just the usual boy fascination with stuff like bicycles and fire.

Last night Joey and three of his buddies were out in his backyard trying to fix somebody's flat tire. "Do you have some matches?" his big friend Eric asked me.

"What for?"

"It dries the glue," he explained. It seemed like they put on glue, lit up the tire like you would flaming cheese, then put on the patch. I didn't really get this, but as long as I was watching I was OK with them having a tire flambe out back.

"OK," I said, went in the kitchen and came back with a pack of matches. I handed it to Eric through the fence and watched them while I was picking tomatoes.

"Not so close to my finger!" Eric warned one of the smaller guys, who was about to light up the tire. "My finger has glue on it," he explained for my benefit.

They were holding the tire over the back porch steps. "Maybe you don't want to do that on top of wood," I suggested. "How about you do that on the concrete?" They moved over to the walkway.

Then it was somebody else's turn to hold the tire. Eric is kind of bossy. "Don't be scared to hold the tire," he urged. "You're scared."

"No, I'm not," muttered the little guy. He was. I didn't blame him, either. That glue sent up some pretty big flames.

Somehow they managed to fix the tire. Nobody burned any fingers, and the back porch also survived unscathed. After the flames subsided, I went in the house for a minute. When I returned to my backyard, I could hear them up front, talking about getting the tire back on the bike.

I joined them up front. "Could I have the matches back, please?"

"Oh, yeah," they said, remembering. Eric produced the pack. There were three left. Amusing.

At some point while all this was going on, Joey pulled me aside for a chat through the fence. "I'm doing real good in school so far," he informed me solemnly. "Much better than last year."

"That's good," I told him. "Maybe I'll come see your teacher next week."

"OK," he said.

His birthday is coming up. I asked him if he'd like to go to the Museum of Science and Industry to see CSI: The Experience. He said yes. Dawn wants to go, too. This could be their joint birthday present--they both have birthdays this month.

By the way, even though The Dangerous Book for Boys is perhaps unnecessary here, the trailer for it on You Tube is pretty cute. This is the trailer for Dangerous Book for Boys Part Deux. You can see some of the chapters. Maybe the chapter on building a go-cart would be fun to have on hand. I'm not sure bows and arrows are a great idea around here, but they're better than guns. And the rules for soccer are completely unnecessary.

The other thing about the trailer is it is all about father-son bonding. There's nothing about boys playing with other boys. This is one thing I love about this neighborhood--kids play with their friends and hang out while their dads work on cars or house projects. Both things are good--I wish Our Entire Culture could find better ways of balancing both kid-on-kid play and fun with parents.

"Don't you believe in us?"

Yup-yup asked me this question the other night. He was roaming around high as a kite and hoping to guilt some cash out of me. Dawn's mom and her baby brother were over. With help from mama, Angelito was practicing walking up and down the front steps.

"This is not a good time," I told him calmly. He went away.

I have not seen his sometime girlfriend/ho for a few days. Let's hope that Thresholds South is coming through for her one way or another.

Night Job

Apparently my night job as social worker, or at least information and referral specialist, to the 5000 block of South Marshfield is really booming business. Yup-yup's sometime girlfriend/prostitute stopped by a few minutes ago to tell me her mother died in July and the funeral was today. She lost a son within the last year, too. She is still interested in drug treatment--she mentioned this a couple of weeks ago. Yay! A social worker friend of mine recommended Thresholds treatment program near 63rd and Kedzie.

I explained Thresholds and the program to her--Thresholds works with people who are homeless and have problems with mental illness and/or drug addiction. "That's me," she said, "I've got all three." Hope that means she can get in.

But wait, there's more.
School Lady down the block called while I was on vacation last week. I thought this was going to be about more trouble on the block, but when I stopped by her house tonight on the way home from work, she asked me for help about her oldest daughter, who apparently is running wild in various ways. A while ago I met a social worker down here who would be perfect for this situation but have lost her info and had to email someone else to get it. Hope I remember right how I met her and the info comes through.

This all happened within two hours of my second night home from vacation. Plus, a neighbor up the street is looking for a good lawyer to sue the hell out of contractor for a crappy job they did on some house project. The fun never ends around here.

New Kids on the Block: Not Nice

I have called 911 at least three times this week, twice today. There was a dispute this morning, then Yup-yup was running around all high, and a few minutes ago there was some domestic disagreement a couple of houses away. I thought it was at the corner but it was actually closer.

About six weeks ago a bunch of new people moved in a house at the south-central part of the block and it's been downhill ever since. They hang out yelling and cursing til all hours, my neighbors to the south say there are problems with drug dealing, robbery and prostitution.

Tonight my new next door neighbor on the other side--a nice guy with a family who bought the house next door and redid the back yard beautifully--came by to tell me people are cutting through my yard in the daytime when I'm not home. They're not kids either--they're adults. I will have to figure out how to lock my front gate and still get my mail. I've been thinking about getting a PO Box downtown for business reasons anyway. Jeez.

It's amazing how quickly a block can backslide. And it's easy to see how hard it may be to bring it back.

Julian Stops to Chat

I heard some noise out back this evening and went to see what it was. (Since last Monday afternoon, when I found someone I didn't know washing his hands in my yard, with my garden hose, I've been more jumpy about noises outside.) However, this was just Julian fooling around in his backyard next door.

I came out and he said hi right away. We had the longest conversation we've had in quite some time. He's been thinking about quitting school to get a job in a meatpacking plant up Ashland, north of Pershing. We had a long talk about how much more money you can make over the course of your life with a diploma than without one and how much easier it is to get your diploma by staying in school than if you drop out and try to go back or get a GED. By the end he seemed pretty convinced it was worth staying in school at least for the upcoming year, but who knows how long that will last.

He said a couple of very mature things in the course of our conversation. He says he is trying to straighten up and stay out of trouble. He's been bike riding out of the neighborhood, like biking to 31st Street beach, to be able to be outside without getting in trouble. (Maybe a month ago we had a conversation about the best way to ride to the beach from here. We agreed 35th is a nicer ride than Pershing.) Then he was saying he was having a hard time talking with his dad. "I can't talk to him the way we're talking now," he said.

"It's a lot easier to talk sometimes when you're not talking to your parents," I observed.

He grinned in recognition. Then he said, "I think I just have to chill and wait this out. Later on we will get along better."

Ad of the Day

There's a Bud Light billboard in Spanish above the railroad bridge facing Ashland Avenue just south of Pershing Road. My rough translation of it would say, "As good as finding mole like Grandma's."

Gotta say I think it would be a pretty big dis on your average abuelita to compare her mole with Bud Light!

Soccer Showdown

Shaun showed up at my door this evening. "Are you going to clean up again?" he asked me.

"I need to, don't I?" There was a styrofoam sandwich container sitting out front on the sidewalk, a couple of chip bags, some copies of Hoy's weekend edition in the street, etc.

"I'll help you," he offered.

"Let me get some bags." While I was back in the kitchen, James from two houses up came over and joined him. "Are you going to help clean up?"

"Sure."

"Let's all have blueberries when we get done," I suggested.

"I like blueberries!" James said. "I had them at camp." We cleaned up from my house to the traffic circle. First James held the bag and I picked up, then we switched. "Are you cleaning up for your barbecue?" he asked me.

"Kind of," I said.

"It's gonna get messy again."

"Yeah, but if we do this again Friday before the barbecue, they'll be less to do."

"Yeah," he agreed. Meanwhile, Shaun was jumping all over the traffic circle, digging under weeds to pull out trash.

"When you gonna clean my side?" asked Ms. Ribs, watching us from across the street.

"Maybe Friday, before the barbecue," I told her.

We went back to my house. The boys washed their hands in the bathroom. I washed mine in the kitchen and washed off the blueberries.

James found the mango on the counter and asked if he could have some. They took the blueberries out while I was still cutting up the mango.

When I came out, Shaun was done but James was still eating. He had some mango and then they started playing soccer. My new neighbors on the south side watched their one-on-one with interest. I kept score. They played to 21, then 32. No defense, but plenty of kicking--high shots, wide shots, lots of goals. Neither James nor Shaun speaks Spanish, but they know how to say "Gol" just like the Mexican kids. We were all hollering "gooooooool!!" and having a fine time.

My first crop of boys (Junior, Danny and Joey) are getting too old to play soccer in my yard, so it's nice to have some new sprouts coming along.

Making Dirt

Well, it only took me three years to get a composter, but there is finally an Earth Machine sitting at the bottom of the back stairs. It's about three feet high and two feet in diameter, made of black plastic.

"What's that for?" Joey asked me.

"It's for making dirt."

"What kind of dirt?"

"The kind like in my boxes, for growing stuff you can eat."

"Oh," he said, and went off to play.

Dawn's mother wanted to know if it would attract flies. It's not supposed to, if you do it right. Hope I get it right. There are enough flies in the backyard already.

But it's great to have a way to keep the good stuff from the many tomato branches I've pruned in the last week or so. I must have two hundred tomatoes growing from six plants. Way to go, Seeds of Hope Farm! Also, I think it's the alfalfa or sprouts or whatever my friend Chuck was growing in his dirt before I got his dirt and garden boxes for my yard.

CAPS Meeting Last Night

The best news from last night's CAPS meeting at Chavez was that someone was arrested on Monday in connection with the car break-ins that have been taking place near 50th and Wood.

Sadly, the great sergeant who came last time has been replaced. The new sergeant did not seem to have any grasp of what had gone on at the previous meeting and was much less cheerful and welcoming to the community. He didn't even introduce himself or the other officers before starting the meeting. I hope I have time to call the district and complain this week. It was pretty frustrating.

The 5000 block of Marshfield is having problems with fights, drug sales and prostitution. Two or three families who don't come regularly made a point to come last night and ask for help. It was decided this is the top priority from now until next meeting. Other hotspots are on Hermitage and up along 48th between Paulina and Hermitage.

Ald. Cochran's representative was there again. Ald. Thompson has yet to send a representative. I heard that Ald. Thompson will be at Holy Cross for a meeting at 7 p.m. this Thursday night. If you live in the ward and can attend, please do. I'll be working, unfortunately.

Next meeting for Beat 931 is Monday August 20th, 6 p.m. at Chavez. City services will be discussed at 6, and Emilio Carrasquillo from NHS will be speaking on home ownership. The police will arrive at 6:30 p.m.

CAPS meeting tomorrow

Beat 931 will hold its monthly CAPS meeting tomorrow at 6:30 p.m. at Chavez Elementary School. Sure hope the person posting about car break-ins can make it!

Big Picture in the Reader

In the last week of June, a group of students from Big Picture attended "One Week, One Neighborhood," sponsored by DePaul Universitiy's Chaddick Institute. They learned about neighborhood planning by taking a close look at Back of the Yards. If you haven't seen Ben Joravsky's piece this week about what they learned, check it out here.

There's a suggestion in the piece that the city use some Loop TIF money to pay to buy the Goldblatt's building at Ashland and 47th and turn it into a community center. I believe I wrote a year or two ago about an effort to get the Chicago Public Library to buy it and use it as a branch. (That didn't get far, obviously.) I thought I heard a rumor that some big chain was going to move in there, but I haven't seen any evidence of that. Also, on the TIF point--Back of the Yards does have its own TIF. From what I've heard, there's not much money in it (surprise, surprise), but I just wanted to observe that it does exist. Some day I could write a long post on TIFs and how they've been abused, but Ben does that so much better than I do, I'll leave it to him. I would guess that a Back of the Yards TIF could be one of the better examples left in the city of what a TIF was supposed to be: a pot of money pulled from the general tax pool to help revive a struggling neighborhood. I don't know which alderman or aldermen control this TIF, either, which would be good to know.

Postcard from Oregon

For readers who've been looking for new posts, my apologies. I'm on vacation in Oregon and took a real vacation from everything, including this blog. But now it's time for a couple of comments:

First, to respond to the neighbor who commented back in June about car break-ins, thanks for your comment and for alerting others to the severity of the problem. The next CAPS meeting is Monday July 16, 6:30 p.m. at Chavez Elementary. I hope you can make it and talk with the officers about your experience. Right now there is a new sergeant, Sgt. Whitney (I think), and he took careful note of problems raised at the last meeting and promised he would report on what the police did in response at the next meeting. I believe that is standards CAPS practice and I've seen meetings in another beat (in Woodlawn) where they really did it that way, but this is the first time I've seen it in our beat.

Second, in honor of Independence Day, I just wanted to reflect briefly on a conversation I overheard in the Holy Cross parking lot before I left town. After Mass, two young men were talking about the USA/Mexico Gold Cup championship game and who to root for. One was for the US, the other for Mexico. Just a couple of quotes:

Mr. USA: "Don't we owe everything to this country? If our parents had stayed in Mexico, we would never have had all these opportunties."

Sr. Mexico: "Yeah, but don't we owe something to where we came from? Especially when this country has done so much to weaken Mexico?"

Here in Oregon, we toasted over dinner on July 4 to "the United States, still the best country in the world to live in despite everything." I've been reading a book out here about immigrants to the US, in which someone said, "America is everyone's second country." With the recent immigration debate, it seems like many people want to blow out the lamp lifted by the door at the same time we've made it even harder for people to live peacefully in their own home countries. It just seems to me we can't have it both ways--strong-arming countries to do our economic and political bidding, then complaining when their people leave for economic and even political reasons of our making and come here looking for a better life. Ironically, if the US were a more responsible world citizen, we'd have many fewer people sneaking over fences and overstaying visas to live here. Happy belated Fourth of July!