Camp Marshfield, Of Sorts

Well, shockingly, there may be something of a Camp Marshfield getting off the ground after all. My other Big Picture buddy, whom we'll call Gladys here, is taking a Spanish class for heritage speakers at National-Louis and doing some work with the Mikva Challenge, but she has time to help out. She also has to watch her nine-year-old sister, who is just the right age to hang out with the Brady Girls and their buddies.

Gladys and Little Sister came over to the block tonight, after we made a run to the north side to pick up my computer from the repair shop. (Yep, more tech trouble, but we've survived.) We also squeezed in a trip to Women and Children First--they each picked a book--and a pit stop at Foster Beach because I wanted to stick my feet in the water for the first time this year.

Gladys found a book by Rosario Sanmiguel that she and I are both going to read: Under the Bridge: Stories from the Border/Bajo el Puente: Relatos desde la frontera. The first half of the book is the English version; the second half is the Spanish.

"You should read the Spanish part, too," Gladys advised. [She knows I'm trying to improve my Spanish. We spoke some in the car on the way home, too. She's a good practice partner--she's patient and she corrects me. We may have to do that some more.] Apparently Gladys is extra right about reading the Spanish--the review to which I linked above, by someone from Berwyn, says the English translation does not live up to the original Spanish, which includes a lot of slang and geographic description that the English translator didn't do justice to. Hopefully Gladys can help me catch that stuff, too.

Her little sister picked a "very funny" book called Ducks Don't Wear Socks. It is pretty hilarious. When we got back, one of the Brady Girls tried reading it on her own. She is not as strong a reader as my next door neighbor of the same age. Maybe if they read together over the summer, the stronger one will rub off on the weaker one. Keep your fingers crossed.

When we got back here, there were a half dozen girls on my front steps and a couple of boys riding bikes out in front of the house. Perfect. I introduced Gladys and she introduced her sister, and within minutes all the girls were happily stringing beads on thread. They need more needles, preferably with bigger eyes. Gladys knows a thing that you can use to string beads that is easier than a needle, but she doesn't know where to find it. If anyone knows what you call that gizmo, tell me, or tell me if you know where to get them in Chicago (preferably cheap). I read a couple of poems from Meet Danitra Brown in between helping thread needles. We had a nice chat about the one that explains why she wears purple all the time.

It is possible that Gladys's sister and one of the Bradys might be in the same class next year. That would be nice, since Little Sister is transferring from Hamline to Chavez. Spending some time on our block this summer might help her make friends.

After Gladys and her sister left, we played the ever-popular Memory Game. At some point, I remembered I had three bananas on the kitchen counter, nice today but overripe tomorrow. "Who's hungry?" I asked.

"Me," said Jay-Z, who is a 12-year-old boy, and thus always hungry. He and my next door neighbor and I ate most of the bananas, cut up with a little honey drizzled over them.

"I have a watermelon in my tummy," Next Door Neighbor said.

One of the other girls took her literally. "I think she means she's really full," I said.

"Yeah," she agreed. Then we talked about what else could be filling her tummy. A watermelon. A car. The ice-cream truck. Two cars. Three cars. A stretch limo. Two stretch limos. A Hummer. A tank.

She lost it laughing. "I'm a gigglebox," she told me. We had to stop and pay attention to the Memory game to calm down.

On one of my many trips in and out of the house-- for food, drinks, paper towels, only once for a Band-Aid--they started one of those chants you do when you're a little kid:
Who farted?
You farted!
then something that gets you pointing at people around the circle
Y-O-U
Ex
Cla
Ma
Tion
Point! wherever the finger lands, you're it.

The littlest girl picked up the "Who farted?" chant right away, and her mother will probably not be too happy, if she understands English. I will have to come up with some camp songs that don't involve passing gas. Unfortunately I could only remember part of "God Bless My Underwear," which is not a big improvement.

We have had more book requests from the kids: books on cats--they are making friends with a neighbor cat--and The Magic Tree House book series, which apparently is up to 40 books right now, so that could keep them busy all summer. I think the middle school girls will be reading The House on Mango Street. They haven't read it before, but Gladys and I have.

It's now time to order from Amazon with the gift certificates a good friend of mine from California donated to me. Plus, the dollar store at 50th and Ashland is going out of business, at least temporarily. I stopped by today for the closeout sale and the owners told me if I get stuff for the kids in bulk they will give me an extra discount. So for sure I'll go back and clean them out of construction paper, glue sticks, scissors, flash cards, that kind of stuff.

We may also be able to recruit a second camp counselor. Meg is still working on getting into Lozano--she turned in her application (I think) and has to go back and take a test--then she'll be in the lottery for a spot in September. If she doesn't get picked for September she can start in January. She's also got a job lead. But she says she has time now, so I hope that means she and Gladys can go with me and whoever wants to go on Camp Marshfield's first field trip tomorrow late afternoon, to the farmers market at 58th and Wood. Stay tuned.

Peace & Education Scholarship Winners

Yesterday at the Holy Cross 10 a.m. Mass, students received scholarships from the Peace & Education Coalition. In all, $70,000 will be awarded this year.

This year I was able to help interview scholarship applicants. The seven young people I spoke with were all juggling school, work and volunteering. One is an architecture major at Illinois Institute of Technology, commuting from far away, holding down a job and teaching catechism on Saturdays. Another is graduating from Kelly High School after having gotten pretty close to the gang life. This person is now going on to college and mentoring other young people to help them make better choices for themselves. A third will go to UIC as a music major, and turned down opportunities to leave Chicago in part to stay connected to Back of the Yards.

Congratulations to everyone!

Big Picture Graduation 2008

Big Picture graduated its class of 08 last Friday night. Here's just one photo of some happy grads and friends after the ceremony. I like the way Big Picture graduations give every student a few moments to speak, not only one or two students. Many gave thanks for their parents, principal and teachers, who never gave up on them, even when they were not doing their best. Some talked about how the school supported them when family members wouldn't or couldn't be there for them.

I still really hope Dawn will be on that stage next year. Stay tuned.

Chavez Class of 2008

So here are just a few photos from today's 8th grade graduation at Chavez. After the ceremony, Junior's parents invited me out for dinner with them and with their neighbors and their graduating son. We went to the new China Buffet in the 47th & Damen shopping center and ran into lots of other graduates and their families. Quite a chunk of our block was celebrating at the buffet.

Junior was really sweet--after we got back home I shook his hand one more time and he said, "Thank you for all the support. I was going to call your name out when I got up there for my diploma today to say thank you, but they didn't let us."

I talked to two or three of the girl grads briefly after the ceremony about doing a book club, and they seem game.

Two of the younger Bradys rang my doorbell after I got home from the post-grad buffet. They said, "We want to talk about the camping thing." They meant Camp Marshfield, as I am referring to my half-baked attempt to provide some things to do on the block this summer. We talked about books--they haven't read The House on Mango Street and they thought it looked interesting--and they already know how to swim, so we could go up to Davis Square. They want to do some arts and crafts, too. We didn't have time to look at all the books I got over the weekend, so we'll do that sometime soon.

Dawn Update

I called Dawn last night while waiting for the Ashland bus at the Orange Line station. I was worried that she might be mad at me for calling her out about her exhibition last week, but when she answered she said, "Hi, Maritza" and I could feel the happy vibe coming through the phone.

Dawn went to school yesterday. Big Picture took all the juniors out to lunch at Maggiano's on Taylor. She said it was nice.

We didn't talk about anything much--just the fiesta last weekend, the weather, the lunch today, how her new advisory went these last few weeks--but I think she got the underlying message I was trying to send: I'm not giving up on you.

When school is out she will change her work schedule to 9 to 6, which means she and I could go to events like Proyecto Latina in the evenings once in a while this summer. And my summer resolution is to quit nagging her about school and just spend time with her as best we can manage with everything else going on.

One Found, One Lost

Well, Dawn and Joey's mom was out in the yard when I opened the front door last night, shortly after the worried post below. I asked if Joey was in the house and she said yes. That's all I had the energy for then. At least they found each other.

On Saturday she told me she did go over to the Perspectives Math & Science Academy event, but it was all in English and her youngest was making a lot of noise, so she didn't get a whole lot out of it. She got to talk to Daisy and got her some of the documents they need, so that's progress, and he hasn't lost his seat. Joey refused to go with her to the event. Great.

Now Dorothy's lost again, sort of. I told her to come over this morning to call about the study, but she hasn't shown up. I'm kind of relieved--I got some work done this morning without interruption, but the found are lost and the lost are found. Those two categories bounce around quite a bit.

The other big mystery is whether Dawn went to school today. It's an easy day--they were all going out for a nice lunch. Dawn's advisor told me she didn't come to school on Friday. I called her yesterday and she didn't call me back. Both of those things are not good signs.

One Lost, One Found

The found is Dorothy. I ran into her yesterday afternoon. She was pushing a grocery cart into the alley north of 48th St between Marshfield and Paulina. She looks terrible--she's getting skeletal and hollow-eyed, so I think she must be using again. I told her the sheriffs were out looking for her and she said she would call her PO on Monday. She also told me Yup-yup had given her her mail--I saw him the day before and gave him the mail to give her because I hadn't seen her in so long. I was afraid it might not make it to her, but it had.

The one lost is Joey and Dawn's mother. This is the third time now I have been aware she's been out late at night and left Joey to his own devices. Twice Dawn was around and didn't know where she was. It is now after 11 and Joey was here 15 minutes ago looking for her. I should have stopped him but I was tired and not thinking too clearly. I'll have to go look out and see if they are all back. And I'll have to have a talk with his mom.

Fiesta Back of the Yards 2008

It was a true summer carnival, complete with an early afternoon thunderstorm followed by more sweltering heat, cold brews and pops, crazy heavy food--think funnel cake and tacos--and plenty of carnival rides and games for the kids. In addition to the usual skeet shooting and so forth, I think the rock climbing wall was new this year.




Here's the action at the No-Manches booth at the fiesta on 47th street this afternoon. These two are wearing one of my favorite t-shirt designs of theirs, "Elemento Frijol". The green shirt between them reads "Juan Deere", which you can't see, under the logo, which you can see. Later today, I saw a little boy walking home with another one, "The Paisa Is Right."

I'll post some more photos later on.

One Up, One Down

Down first. That's Dawn. I went to her exhibition today. She scraped it together at the last minute and it was terrible. There were some good parts--I really liked the photos she took at her job and she did a pretty good job of explaining what she is doing there.

Unfortunately, she did not even integrate her classwork on propaganda into her job doing banners for advertising, which was in her research proposal from back in April. She remembered some of what had happened in class and made some effort to connect it, but it wasn't very thoughtful. She had no learning goals document for people and no clear idea of how to connect the skills she wanted to work on with the work she is doing.

Back in April I knew I would have to call her a lot if her project was going to happen. I called some, but we didn't connect much, and she didn't call me. And I was busy, and sick this last do-or-die week. Last night, after the scary incident, I was still awake at midnight and there was noise on the street. I called 911 and the dispatcher, surprised, said that cars had already been sent this way. Then I called Dawn. She was not at home and told me flat out she wasn't coming home. The night before her exhibition. I begged her to contact her mother to ensure the gate was locked, and explained why. She was afraid for me and said she'd try to reach her mother, though her mom's cell phone isn't working well.

Her new advisor tried to be very generous about her presentation, pointing out the good parts and looking for ways to connect what she was doing to her goals. Alfredo was more critical but pretty quiet and not too hard. It was my turn to be the hardass. "You were doing better exhibitions your freshman year," I told her. Then I started crying and said, "I'm going to say this in front of everyone. I called you last night at midnight and you were out somewhere. You're not doing what you need to do to stay in school. Do you want to come back next year? If you don't, I won't push you to come back any more."

Dawn started crying. Alfredo took it from there and told her if she wants to come back next year, they will be happy to have her. But it is on her to decide what she wants to do and to put forth a serious level of effort.

Dawn says she wants to come back in the fall.

We talked afterwards and I asked her to do two things--talk to her counselor about her credits and figure out a recovery plan, and make one commitment to doing something for her mind this summer on top of working her full-time job. "Read one book," I said. "That's enough."

I left and walked around two or three blocks before coming home, partly because I saw some guys I didn't recognize across the street in front of my house and I was afraid they might be the same guys as yesterday, partly because I was upset and just wanted to walk it out.

Finally I walked up from the southern end of my block and saw Meg on her front stoop, playing with her next-door neighbor's toddler. I said hi and she gave me a big smile.

"I have good news," she told me.

"Are you in at Lozano?"

Almost, is the answer. She called them, found out what she needed, went to Richards and got her transcript. She needs one thing from Chavez or from a teacher there--not sure exactly--and she'll get it tomorrow and go on Monday to register. She gave me a big smile and we shook hands.

I asked to see her Richards transcript and she let me. She only failed two classes. Her GPA was about a 2.2 and she was in the top 20 percent of her class when she quit school. "My teacher [from Chavez] said I wasn't doing too bad," she said.

"You weren't," I agreed. "That's actually pretty good."

The Ironic Punchline

Warning: for the best effect, you should scroll down and read "Good Cop Bad Cop & Burning Down the House" before reading the post here. This is the ironic punchline to the earlier post.

So by the way, in between the 911 phone call and the sheriff's cop on my doorstep, Jay-Z and Joey walked up the street toward where the fireworks were going off. They had some, too, and they were looking for a place to shoot them off.

They saw me on the sidewalk and came to say hi. When I realized what was up, I said, "You don't want to go over there. I just called the police on those guys."

They asked why and I said because they were throwing the firecrackers toward where people were standing, which isn't safe.

"Can we light them in your backyard?" Jay-Z asked me.

"Why don't you light them in the alley behind my house?" I suggested. "I'll come out on the back porch and watch." (Truthfully, with the police report, I never got there. I opened the back door but I didn't see them.)

Good Cop, Bad Cop & Burning Down the House?

I was on my way home tonight a little before 9 p.m., riding my bike the wrong way down Marshfield toward my house. I got to the intersection where my block starts and a lit firework landed on the corner about 10 feet in front of me. It was one of those popper things that mostly makes a loud noise but has a bit of a flame, too. There was a little girl in a green t-shirt on the sidewalk, about 5 feet from the firecracker. More were being thrown from the alley, in the direction of people walking by and up really close to one of the houses on the opposite corner from where the little girl was.

People to the west were yelling "stop that!" and so forth. Some woman said she was pregnant and they were going to give her a heart attack. The little girl in the green shirt looked scared.

So I did something I have never done and swore I would not do--jumped off my bike and publicly called 911. In the middle of the intersection, in front of maybe five or six people watching. I did that because I wanted them to quit and I figured it would get them to stop and the police probably wouldn't ever show up, certainly not in time to catch them.

When I finished the call I walked my bike to the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street. Meanwhile the guys doing it came out of the alley and started walking east, toward the corner about 20 feet north of where I was standing.

"Did you call the police?" one of them yelled at me.

"I sure did."

"Everybody lets off fireworks!"

"Yeah, but not at people! That's dangerous."

"You live here? Mind your business."

"Yeah, I live here. Do you?"

"Yeah I live here. How long you live here?"

"I lived here four years."

They shake their heads. "We been here years and years."

"I don't care how long you've been here, don't do stuff like that. Keep it in the alley."

"Mind your business."

"I'll mind my business when you mind yours," I yelled, just as I heard one of them say,

"We'll burn down your house."

They walked away, toward Ashland. I know they don't live on this block, and I don't think they live on the next block north.

Then I looked over at my doorstep, and there was a gray-haired white man at the door. I don't think I realized he was a police officer until after he said, "I'm looking for [Dorothy]."

"She doesn't live here," I said. "She just gets mail at this address."

I was coming to the front steps just as the door opened and Medicine Man looked out.

"Does [Dorothy] live here?" the officer asked.

"Sir, he doesn't know her," I said with some irritation in my voice. (Yes, I was stressed out from what happened three seconds earlier. "I am the owner of this house and you should be talking to me." I may have cut him off as he was continuing to ask Medicine Man another question.

His partner, an African-American woman about my age and height, got offended. He probably did, too, but she was the one who made a big deal. She got out of her car, walked up behind me and started lecturing me about how nobody speaks to her partner that way, blah blah blah. I shut up and took it.

When she was about out of steam, I said very quietly and very politely, "Ma'am, may I say something?" She nodded.

I explained what had just happed half a block away and tried to explain that I had not intended any disrespect, I was just upset from what had taken place seconds earlier.

"Well, you didn't intend disrespect, but that's what you gave, so that's what you got," she said. Then she inquired what happened. I explained, trying to emphasize that I would never call about firecrackers except that these looked like they were going to hit people.

She wasn't listening. "This is Chicago. Everybody lets off firecrackers," she explained as if I were two years old or fresh from the suburbs (which maybe she thought I was by now). It wasn't worth trying to respond. They left. I'm guessing they weren't district cops--they had on black uniforms, and I just assumed they were from the sheriff and there's a warrant out on Dorothy, whom I still haven't seen since the last time I said I haven't seen her.

I went in the house shaking. Medicine Man tried to distract me with some conversation about Fr. Mike Pfleger and the reaction in Auburn Gresham to the whole flap this weekend, but I couldn't get into it. I started crying and told him for once the house extrovert needed a few minutes to herself.

I decided to call a friend from church and the local CAPS meeting who has had plenty of experience with the police. I figured she would understand and I'd feel better if I talked to her. So I called and she was home and she listened to me very well and told me a story or two of similar experiences she'd had. (If you're reading--and I know you do--thanks. You know who you are.)

I wanted to ask her advice about how seriously to take the "we'll burn your house down" threat. I was pretty sure it was just some offhanded thing they said to be annoying, but when you're one of two white people on the block, everybody knows where you live, your house was burnt to a crisp before you owned it and your neighbors can't be bothered to lock their gate or rebuild the fence between your yard and theirs, there's a reason to be scared. So I am.

My friend advised me that yes, it's probably nothing and more than likely nothing will happen, but she suggested it would be a good idea to make a police report anyway, just in case something actually did happen.

Talking to my friend calmed me down enough that I called the 9th district number, and they told me to call 311 because they don't take police reports over the phone. So I called 311, but by then I was upset again. A woman officer answered and my voice started breaking as soon as I started talking.

Fortunately, she was very nice and patient. She explained that normally the police don't take reports of threats against property. While a threat against a person warrants a police report of assault, they don't have a way to track a threat against your car or your house, not you. I told her I hadn't planned on making a report until a neighbor advised me it would be a good idea. I also played the race card and explained that I'm one of two white people on the block which makes me stick out a little. She said she would speak to her sergeant and see whether they could take it.

She put me on hold. That helped me calm down a lot. By the time she came back, I was fine. She said her sergeant had said yes, she could take the report. So she asked me a bunch of questions, which I answered very calmly. I suck at physical description so probably that was pretty worthless, but I tried to work as best I could with the fleeting picture in my head of what they looked like. She gave me the number of the report and said it'll come in the mail in a few days. I will probably mention it at the next CAPS meeting and go to Home Depot tomorrow or Friday to get those fire safety ladders I've been meaning to get for years. As long as the only fire that results from this is the one now under my butt to get those ladders, we're fine.

Immigrants, Aliens, Dreams

First, I want to apologize for the long delay between posts. I wasn't feeling well last week and then went out of town over the weekend. I'm still not really 100 percent, so I'll let Greg Michie do the heavy lifting today.

About a month ago, Greg posted a reflection on the Teaching Excellence Network website about the DREAM Act and how badly we need it to help undocumented youth have a reason to pursue academic excellence. Greg used to teach here in Back of the Yards. Here's a little of what he had to say about their chances of going to college:

I tried to help my students see college as a real possibility down the road. And I tried to impress upon them that, clichéd or not, working hard and doing well academically would give them more options after high school.

Turns out that I lied.

You see, most of my former students are from Mexican immigrant families, and some—more than I realized at the time—are undocumented. So even if they remain focused, stay out of trouble, study, and graduate from high school with exceptional grades, going to college is still a long shot at best. For many, it’s simply not possible.

Along with Greg, Senator Dick Durbin and many others, I've said it before and I'll say it again: children who were brought to this country by adults should not be penalized for decisions over which they had no control. The United States should not waste the talent, intelligence and energy of these young people by preventing them from going to college and building a life in the only country many of them have ever really known. Local communities like Back of the Yards are held back when our youth are told they can't pursue their dreams to the fullest. The DREAM Act would fix this by giving young people who arrived here before age 16, have lived here for five years, stayed out of trouble and completed high school conditional legal status while pursuing college or the military. Whatever else you think about broader issues of immigration, this looks to me like a winner for everyone.

It also took me until just now to post a comment that came in about Brady Girl's Radio Arte essays. Here's what Andrea had to say:

She is describing illegal aliens, not immigrants. What honestly amazes me is that (1) she doesn’t seem to be aware of the difference and (2) you don’t point that out in this post.


It pains me to state the obvious, but even though I wasn’t “born here” I “have health insurance”, “get paid like actual citizens” and was “able to get a visa to go and visit family”.


Defenders of illegal immigration, who can’t or won’t see the difference between having “papers” and not having them, put off people (like me) who do and end up hurting their own cause.

I responded to Andrea back at the Brady Girl 2 post--feel free to check back. My basic point was that I've personally known way too many people who have fallen in and out of legal immigration status for various bureaucratic reasons, to the point where I don't personally see the line as starkly as Andrea does. People who come to one country from another are immigrants; sometimes they are in the country legally, sometimes not. I myself came pretty close to being an illegal alien in France--I had to leave briefly in the middle of my stay and come back on a new 3-month tourist visa in order to reside there legally.

By the way, the immigration committee at Holy Cross/IHM appears to be gearing up for some new activity. Stay tuned.

Polish Tradition in Back of the Yards

I don't remember seeing this before today, but apparently it's a Polish tradition to process around the neighborhood on Corpus Christi Sunday (today). I went to Mass at Holy Cross, but walked home down Hermitage past St. Joseph's and found two women who are mainstays at daily Mass putting together a beautiful red-draped altar in front of the rectory. A house across the street had its front porch draped in red banners and posters of Pope John Paul II.

Then I continued down Hermitage to 49th and turned east just as the procession was turning west from Paulina. They led with the image of Our Lady of Czechostowa (also known as "the black Madonna," followed by a huge golden monstrance sheltered by a white silk canopy. They were singing a Polish hymn. Much of the crowd was dressed in traditional costume with bright colors and lots of embroidery. Fr. Ed was in the back of the crowd. The lady who always says hi to me whenever I make it to a weekday morning Mass at St. Joe (rarely of late) saw me and we flashed smiles at each other. She's the reason I learned to say dzien dobry (good day, pronounced jen dough-bray).

This site has pictures of the procession at St. Helen's in another part of Chicago from the late 1990s, plus some illustrations of a traditional procession in Poland and the classic Polish Corpus Christi hymn "Thine Is All Glory" in Polish and English. (I guess that's what they were singing when I met them, but I don't speak Polish so I don't know for sure).

Though surely such processions were much larger back in Upton Sinclair's day, even having one to two hundred people in the street today was a nice reminder of this neighborhood's heritage.

Boxing Fever Lingers

I haven't been able to drive the guys to boxing for quite some time. Jay-Z is the only one of the four who is still bugging me about it. I was walking home from church this morning and he saw me in the street. "When are we going boxing again?" he asked.

The short-term answer is I'll have to talk to Medicine Man. The longer-term answer is more complicated, since Medicine Man is moving out in July and with him goes the current Marshfield-mobile.

Meg Looks for a School

Meg stopped by tonight to talk about getting back in school, so this is a good opportunity to tell the story I glossed over in the Mother's Day Post.

Like Dawn, Meg is a bright young woman whose teen rebellion hit some pretty low lows. Unfortunately, Meg's gone two places Dawn hasn't (at least not yet, and I hope never): all the way out of school--she was dropped from Richards--and to Hartgrove Hospital. I still don't know what was up with that whole Hartgrove experience.

While we were making cake, Meg started talking openly, too openly for in front of the younger girls, about how she was supposed to go someplace that Monday morning but she didn't make it because she was too hung over.

"Let's talk more about this later, just you and me," I said.

Later, when the cake was in the oven and the younger girls were looking at Martha Stewart cake designs or playing outside, we talked for real.

"Meg, those girls look up to you," I said. "Think about what you are saying in front of them."

She got it. Her eyes widened and she hung her head.

Then we talked for real about what is going on with her and her family. She quit school to work more hours to help her mom support the family, but she hasn't gotten the extra hours she was expecting. Plus, she's feeling bad about not finishing high school. She has been thinking about doing Lincoln's Challenge, a five-month program in Rantoul sponsored by the National Guard. She was thinking that getting out of the neighborhood and strict discipline would be good for her. She also thought going into the Guard afterwards in exchange for money for college sounded good.

"Will you have to serve in Iraq if you do that?" I asked her. She didn't know. I urged her to find out. She said one of her former teachers at Chavez had expressed the same concern.

This afternoon I saw her on the street and she asked when we could talk. I had errands to run so I promised to call when I got home. About an hour ago we caught up. She has decided she wants to stay here because she wants to be there for her mom through some family problems going on now. She has said she doesn't want to go to Second Chance "because it's full of gangbangers, right?"

"So was Richards, wasn't it?" I asked.

"Well, yeah, that's true."

However, if she doesn't feel comfortable going to Second Chance because the gang situation is too close to home, I can understand that. So I suggested two alternative high schools in Little Village: Rudy Lozano Leadership Academy and Latino Youth. She took the numbers. She says she is going to Richards tomorrow to find out how long she has been dropped and how many credits she has. She thinks she has 16.5. As far as I know, it's still 24 credits to graduate, so if that's right, she's not too far behind.

We'll see what happens. I hope she goes back.

Brady Girl, Take Two

So, my Brady buddy came over this afternoon and filled out the application for Radio Arte's Salud program. This is the one that pays.

Here's my favorites from her answers:

Q. What would you say are some of the health issues facing immigrants today?

A. Immigrants are facing less chances in life. They don't have health insurance. This affects them because if they get sick or need to go the hospital real bad they will be the ones who have to pay the bill. They have less chances in other ways, too, because they will have to pay more than other students who go to college and have papers. If you were not born here then no good jobs are being put in your position, you must have papers to get paid like actual citizens. If immigrants want to go and visit their family they will not be able to get a visa for the simple reason that they were not born here. Just for being immigrants they have less chances in life. They get paid less, but have to pay more.

Q. You will be asked to be creative, write and even perform a script. Please use this section to tell us about any writing acting or theater experience you have had.

A. In my school my teacher gave every student a journal to write in, at least 5 entries and 10 sentences about anything we wanted. Every two weeks she collected it to read it and gave us a grade for it. We also had the opportunity to decorate it and add anything in it. I took at least 1 or 2 hours every night to add pictures or write about my day. I loved it so much (still do). But one day she collected it and it disappeared. Some one took it and I miss it so much, but it's gone. My teacher has told me several times that thanks to that journal I have improved my writing, that I have improved the most from all the 8th graders. I feel like I have improved. Now when I get an essay or any writing homework my imagination grows. I have so many things and ideas and details to add to my piece of writing. I have never acted before in my life but one thing I adore to do is watch novelas and see how awesome they act. I've tried to do how they do with more drama and it is better than the real actors on television. Actually one of my dreams in the future is being an actriz for a novela, it seems so nice to be on television.

Mother's Day Cake

Sorry I'm a little behind on this. Here's the cake we baked and frosted in my kitchen on Thursday May 8. The oldest Brady girl, a 7th-grader (of the family with no kids in high school yet--there are two Brady families) was the driving force behind this project. She is very interested in learning how to do decorative icing. We did this one the easy way, with Wilton frosting tubes with the plastic screw-on tips. We got them via a couple of trips to Freehling Pot & Pan in Hyde Park, with side detours to Nichols Park. They really liked the playground equipment there.

The day of cake baking, Brady Mom loaned us a big foil pan because I don't have cake pans--I may remedy that at Freehling one of these days. Unfortunately we ended up breaking one of the beaters on my stand mixer while making the last of the cake batter. Despite these challenges--and one minor injury--the dozen or so girls and one boy who got in on the fun had a good time practicing decorating with frosting, and produced a pretty tasty cake. They were coached by School Lady's oldest daughter--we'll call her Meg--who was in the culinary program at Richards for a while. (More on that another day.) Mom Brady stopped by to check out the proceedings. I had cake batter all over the floor, but it was worth it.

Next time the girls want to try working with frosting the professional way--with pastry bags, couplers and metal tips. We got that stuff at Freehling, too, and supposedly we're going to try that this weekend, but that means making icing and now that I'm down one beater, whipping egg whites into stiff peaks becomes more of a challenge. We'll see whether I have the energy for this and whether I can rustle up the equipment.

Gardening & Gossip

I spent most of this afternoon digging the weeds out of the traffic circle at the end of the block. Three people actually came over and helped: Jay-Z, Junior's little brother, and a woman I didn't know before. "My parents grew up in the South, Arkansas," she told me. "They had the prettiest garden on the block."

"So you came by it honestly," I said. She picked up my shovel and went to work on the dandelions.

Earlier, a guy I know from a little west of here was out walking his dogs. Mr. Dog Fancier is my top source for political news. He went to Ald. Thompson's ward meeting at Kennedy-King College yesterday afternoon. He told me about 100 people showed up. She basically gave a State of the Ward speech. She's planning to build an SRO somewhere southeast of here, and she talked about the senior project down by 59th and Ashland. Apparently she did not take questions from the audience. Mr. Dog Fancier came away unimpressed and rather put off by her "arrogant" attitude.

Apparently Action Now has been meeting at the Sherman Park Library. Perhaps they will take some steps to hold her accountable to her constituents.

We also talked a bit about the aftermath of Jason Gill's death for the blocks around here. It does seem like there's some effort to redraw the local gang lines at the moment. Not fun.

My gardening buddy noticed this, too. A group of young men walked by and yelled something offensive our way. She said she'd been hassled by them yesterday, too.

Most disturbing of all, at a point when I was by myself in the circle, Yup-yup staggered over with a swollen face and a couple of bad cuts. He'd been beaten pretty badly. Apparently he owes people money. I asked if he wanted to go to a doctor and he said no. I think I should have called for an ambulance, but I didn't.

In significantly better news, late in the day Junior's brother told me his dad was out on the block trying to fix his wife's car radio. I went over and talked to him about the traffic circle and explained I would like to pay him to help me with this as if he were doing my lawn this summer. That seemed to pique his interest. He's going to look for some black plastic to put down to keep the weeds from growing back while I call the city and find out how soon we can get new plants and mulch.

P.S. After I was done and relaxing on my back porch, Dorothy showed up in the alley at my back gate. She told me she had called the Probation Department today, but whoever answered said she'll have to call back tomorrow and speak directly with her P.O.

Tribute to Jason Gill

I still can't really bring myself to get organized to write about the funeral today, especially since Dorothy stopped by tonight and we spent some time talking about her circumstances. (She still needs to contact her PO.)

In the mean time I want to share this tribute to Jason written by Gabrielle Lyon, founder of Project Exploration, which brings science, especially paleontology, to girls and youth of color who might not otherwise get an opportunity to discover hands-on science.

Friends,

If you read the Chicago Tribune last week you may have come across the following headline followed by a few paragraphs: Chicago man shot to death while standing on his front porch. Jason Gill was murdered. He was 26 years old.

I am writing to you tonight to honor Jason Gill, who was my godson and, more importantly, helped to inspire the creation of Project Exploration.

In a room of 6th graders at Fiske Elementary school, where I first began teaching, Jason was the one student whose spark of curiosity was so strong it carried him out of his seat to get a closer look, to try something himself, to get hands on with the subject matter, to ask questions fearlessly and sincerely…As his interest in art grew he found satisfaction in a passionate pursuit and found confidence and a new voice in drawing and art; as he grew older the voice went verbal and he began to rap…

Jason was one of four students I brought to Big Bend , Texas , in 1997, along with a college class from the University of Chicago . The wonder he and the other students experienced during that trip in no uncertain terms inspired the creation of Project Exploration – a science organization that reaches out specifically to students who aren’t academically successful but who are curious and open-minded…We created an entire organization dedicated to making room for kids like Jason, who get left out, or looked over because they don’t really excel at school, they don’t find success easily but when they do they embrace it and shine…

I brought Jason to Perspectives Charter School for high school because I believed he would thrive in a small environment that focused on knowing its students well. He found success there, though not easily, and he changed all of us in the process. Jason challenged us as caring educators to be our best selves as people; he helped everyone to grow, a little bit, and encouraged us to be curious, and open minded even when the struggles seemed overwhelming.

Jason was complicated, promising, artistic, frustrating, funny, challenging, curious – and shot dead standing on his porch, waiting for a family friend to bring back pizza. There were so many things about Jason’s life beyond his control but in spite of it all Jason inspired people to laugh and love and be their best selves.

I wish he wasn’t dead…

Thanks to Mike Klonsky at Small Talk for the original post.

Marshfield Clean & Green

Today's was the City's annual volunteer Clean and Green Day. On the 5000 block of South Marshfield, Officer Tony Mejia and former Chavez principal Sandy Traback teamed up to lead the effort. I believe they worked with State Rep. Esther Golar to get rakes and brooms for the work and hot dogs to grill afterwards as a thank-you to the volunteers.

Ironically, I had to go to a meeting this morning about litter in another part of the city and couldn't participate. Afterwards, I attended Jason Gill's funeral in Woodlawn--I'll post about it tomorrow.

When I got back, around 2 p.m., all was quiet on Marshfield, but the block was noticeably cleaner. A couple of little boys saw me and yelled, "We cleaned today!"

It sounds like this may become a monthly event. I hope so.

News Flash: Dorothy's Back

So, no, she's not dead. But she did pass out right here on the block and some kids went in the house and called 911. She's been in St. Bernard's Hospital in Englewood. She just got out.

I ran into Yup-yup earlier today. "You are a godsend!" he exclaimed at the sight of me.

"Maybe not," I said. "Don't get too excited."

He asked me for three dollars and I told him I was going to the store to get money and to look for me tomorrow. It's been so nice not having him around the last couple of weeks. I asked if he'd seen Dorothy and he said not for a week and a half.

"If you see her, tell her she's got to call her P.O." I said. "Somebody came by my house last night looking for her. If she doesn't call soon, they're going to put a warrant out on her."

He said he would tell her.

Just a few minutes ago, she showed up at my back gate. I was sitting on my back porch with a glass of wine, having just finished a phone conversation with a buddy who lives out of town.

"Hey!" she called.

"Hey!" I said. "How are you? Where you been?"

"I've been ringing your bell out front like five times," she said. Shoot. Poor Medicine Man just got back from some conference in Springfield and collapsed into bed. I know he's really tired of all these characters ringing my bell at weird hours--at least 9:15 wasn't so weird usually, but when you're trying to sleep it's a pain in the butt.

Anyway, she told me she'd been in the hospital. I told her that when the Probation Department showed up, I was afraid she was dead. "I'm glad you're not dead," I said, and reached my hand up over the fence between us. She took it and we squeezed hands for a minute.

(I don't have the key to open the back gate--I lost my old set of keys. I should get the spare from Medicine Man and make a new one.)

I told her she needs to call her P.O. right away. She said she'd call tomorrow and asked when he came by. "Last night, I think," I said. It was actually the night before.

"How much you need for a place to sleep tonight?" I asked. "Five bucks?" That's what Pamela used to pay somebody around here for space on the floor.

She did the classic shifty-eye, then said, "Ten."

"Let me see if I have it," I said, and went in the house for my wallet. The inevitable internal debate ensued--what if I gave her just five dollars? Would she get a bed and not drink or use? Does she have to pay off Yup-yup about something? Do I care what she spends the money on? In the end, I decided, what the hell, she's been in the hospital for almost two weeks, I'm not going to trouble my head about what the other five bucks is for.

Then we had a quick discussion of what happened with treatment. She says the staff told her they were going to give her outpatient, and she left. "They told me you were in residential but you left against staff advice," I told her.

Yes, she had been in residential, she said, but then said they weren't going to keep her. It sounds like she got mad and left before they could give her an outpatient plan. "I'm going to get it fixed," she said.

You do that, I thought. I sure hope she calls her P.O. If I thought she would get real services in jail, I would hope there is a warrant out on her already. But I'm afraid jail would just screw up her meds for HIV and not get her into a residential drug treatment program.

Next time I'll have to tell her the new University of Illinois Mile Square Health Center is open on 47th. She can get prescriptions very cheap there.

Fast Times Around Richards High

About 12:35 or so today, I was walking past Richards High School and saw three kids hanging out the first floor windows south of the main entrance. I believe it was two girls and a boy, looking down and talking to three or four young people (all male?) on the street below.

I clearly heard the name of the gang that controls that area mentioned in their conversation. No security was around, and if a teacher was in the room where kids were hanging out the windows, you certainly couldn't tell.

I called Oscar Contreras who said he would call his contacts at the school.

About an hour later, I passed by again. All was quiet out front. However, it's a nice spring Friday afternoon, which is the ideal time for stuff to break out after school. There were some older guys hanging in the alley across the street and a little south of the school when I went by. The other sight that just left me sad and mad was a boy who seemed barely in puberty driving by with his bass cranked up. You could barely see his head over the steering wheel. Unfortunately, I didn't get a license plate number or I would have called 911.

They dismiss in less than half an hour.

Dorothy Alert

Dorothy has been missing for two weeks. Late last week (I think) Yup-yup asked if I had seen her. I said no. I was hoping this was good news--that she had gotten into residential treatment.

Well, she had. But she didn't stay there. Tonight the doorbell rang while Brady Girl was working on her Radio Arte application. I sent her to the door because I was proofreading her answers (believe it or not--I know I missed some things) and I assumed one of her sisters had come to fetch her.

Wrong. There was a big African-American guy from the Probation Department at the door, asking whether Dorothy lived at this address. I jumped up and went to explain. He told me that Dorothy had been in residential treatment, that she had chosen to leave against the advice of the program staff, and that she hasn't reported to her PO for nearly two weeks. If she doesn't report soon, a warrant will be issued for her arrest. He asked me to let her know if she turns up.

I said I would. "I'll pray for her," I added. I'm less concerned about the warrant and much more concerned that she might be dead.

Yup-yup has been gone for some time, too--I haven't heard him yelling. Joey even commented on this. He likes it now that it's quieter.

If Dorothy and Yup-yup are both gone, I don't know whether to be more or less worried for her safety. If she's alive and not in treatment I'm sure she'll be back on my doorstep eventually.

Brady Girl Goes for Summer Gig

So one of the Brady girls down the block asked me about 10 days ago if I knew anything about summer jobs. She said she filled out an application for the city summer jobs program in April but she hasn't heard anything yet.

I told her I thought she might still hear back from the city, but I'd look for other things she could apply to. Radio Arte has a summer training program and I think it comes with a stipend. So tonight--now that my computer is back--she filled out the application on line.

I copied some of her answers before she submitted because I thought what she had to say was worth bringing to the Tattler. Here goes.

Q. Please tell us why you are interested in being part of the Radio Arte training program, and what interests you about being a journalist or radio producer.

Brady Girl: Well, the reason why I am interested is because every summer of my life has ended up being bad and I don't do anything interesting. Since I asked my friend to help me find a job she found out this program was taking place and I thought, "THIS SUMMER CAN BE UNFORGETTABLE!" Also my dad works and it's hard on him to be paying all the bills without any help. So if I do something to help him out I know he would be real happy with me. In fact it too expensive because I always ask him for a lot of stuff, and I would like to know how hard it is to get money. Maybe I can learn how hard it is to make money, and how hard life is. I would like to be a journalist or a radio producer because that way I can learn more about other people's lives and about their communities. That way I will learn how to help other people in my community, and tell them about somebody else's life.

Q. Tell us some challenges that are being faced by people or groups of people that surround you--for example in your school, neighborhood or family.

Brady Girl: Well, I live on the South Side. As we all know it is a bad neighborhood. There are a lot of bad influences. There are a lot of shootings, a lot of people end up being real hurt and some pass away. A lot of my friends have lost brothers, cousins, friends, and it's not that easy knowing the one you love is gone forever. I in particular have not, and hopefully won't, lose any of my loved ones. There are a lot of people who think it is easy to steal from somebody. They just go for it and steal precious things that they have no clue how much they meant to those people. My mom has faced those times several times. One time they tried to steal her gold necklace that my father had bought her with his hard work, and with lots of love. The thief most likely saw it and liked it but never imagined how precious it was to my mother. He pulled it so hard that she fell on her knees and luckily my oldest sister was there. I cannot imagine what could have happened without her being there. She ran after this man and caught up with him. She said so many bad words that it was worth it, this man understood he was not going to get away with it. He just turned, said sorry and left. My sister saved the one gift that my dad worked so hard to get. Hopefully this neighborhood will get better in some years, Hopefully these people could learn that stealing is taking someone's life away. They can be taken to jail for a life time. We need somebody to create a program where people would join to help all people, good or bad.


Q. In your opinion, what role can community media play in advancing social justice?

Brady Girl: Community media will help the people who live in the hood to know what is going on around them. what they can do to improve, what they can do to prevent injustice. This can also inform the bad people that the good people are aware of what's going on around them.

Q. Please tell us anything else about you that may be relevant to the application process (experience with sound equipment, digital production or website design; if you're involved with school or community campaigns; other skills or hobbies).

Brady Girl: Well I have never had experience working with sound equipment or digital production, because I have never heard of a program that will help me learn these kinds of equipment until now. It seems pretty interesting to learn how to do it, to have experience and help people who some day might need your help. One thing that I really like to do is help younger kids with their homework or with anything they want to do, or just take care of them. I also think it is important to help out your community because its the place where you live and a place where younger kids will one day live in. I really like to help my school because it is somewhere where you go every day to learn something.

Of course, after we submitted her application I figured out that this training program offers service learning hours, not a stipend. Fortunately the one with the stipend has a later deadline: May 30. So we can do that one over the weekend.

Violence Intervention

Catholic Charities, like CeaseFire, is facing budget cuts, and one program that may get the axe is their Street Intervention Program here in Back of the Yards.

I can say from personal experience that when I don't know who to talk with about problems of violence and safety here on Marshfield Aveune, Oscar Contreras is someone who could at least listen, and often provide real help. I don't think we can afford to lose him.

Joey's mom found his new knife in the house last week. At least he hadn't taken it to school. She took it away and he got mad and cried. I talked to him later and he told me he is still afraid. We even made a map of who controls which blocks around ours and he explained where he feels safe and where he doesn't. He continues to insist he does not want to join a gang and that he did not take the knife to school. He is willing to take a self-defense class with me; now I have to find a good one.

Also last week, CeaseFire received a positive evaluation at the same moment Springfield continues to wrangle about funding it. The House has proposed not only restoring but doubling state money to CeaseFire, but the measure is stalled and Blagojevich continues to tout his shiny new plan, despite its lack of a real funding source or a track record. You can here all about it on this clip from WBEZ's 848 show, broadcast May 9.

And of course, while all this hooh-hah goes on in Springfield, young men die on Marshfield Avenue and their families are left to grieve. Jason Gill's funeral will be held this coming Saturday in Woodlawn.

One-Minute Political Rant

OK, can I just say that Rod Blagojevich has done it again? Two days ago he announced
a $150 million anti-violence initiative including summer jobs and after-school activities for young people. Sounds great, right?

As usual with the governor's bright ideas, everything about it is great except how we're going to pay for it. State Rep. Suzana Mendoza is quoted in this Sun-Times story calling the plan "a pipe dream." So far the $150 mil is supposed to come from selling the lottery and "a state capital deal." How capital money fits into this is way beyond me.

Apparently today Mayor Daley is asking the same question. I won't go into the bad blood between him and Rod, but the question is very legitimate.

And it drives me crazy the same man who cut money for street intervention workers thinks he can come out now with a half-baked plan and look like a hero. Dream on, Rod, but could someone else please wake up and solve this mess?

Sorry about Google Ad

If you're seeing a Google Ad for "Your Pretty Mexican Bride," I apologize. That's not what this site is about. As soon as I can I'll get it pulled--this is extra hard with limited computer time.

Tattler Tech Trouble

Last Friday sparks started shooting out of the back of my laptop. The computer shop guys called last night to say the motherboard is toast.

This post is getting written on Medicine Man's machine (thanks again, Medicine Man), but posting may be sporadic until my computer situation is resolved. Thanks for your patience.

Despite a rumor I heard that revenge was being plotted in Jason Gill's death, as far as I know all has been quiet on this stretch of Marshfield Avenue. Please comment if you know something I don't.

Moms on the March

On Saturday morning, the Peace and Education Coalition of Back of the Yards held a peace march from 48th and Seeley, the block where Leticia Barrera was killed last Halloween, to Seward Elementary at 46th between Hermitage and Wood. About 125 people turned out. As usual, political representation was strong: Mayor Daley, Police Supt. Jody Weis, State Rep. Esther Golar, other state reps and senators, and Ald. George Cardenas.

Most importantly, Families for the Community came out to let those politicos know what it is like to be the parent of a child in our neighborhood. Many of these parents are single mothers working two jobs to support their families. They try hard to raise their kids right, but too often they are left alone to do the job by themselves. "We're not crackhead alcoholics," said Bridgeport mother Lisa Rivera, in a front-page Sun-Times story that ran last Friday.

Oscar Contreras of Catholic Charities Street Intervention wrote a reflection about these mothers' experience which Bridgeport mom Lisa Rivera read at the march. Here is an excerpt:

Yes we know what our sons and daughters have become but a mother will always love her child. Even when society says I've done a bad job and the time comes when, God forbid, they are taken from us whether by a judge or by their own bad choices, we will be the ones left to visit jail and graves. There isn't anything we wouldn't do to change what they have become but no matter what, we will never give up, just as God has never given up on us. His love and mercy are unconditional even though time after time we continue to disappoint him.

I have written before and will write again here about two-parent families who struggle to raise their children to be good people, only to see them slide down the slippery slope into gangs, drugs, jail and death. We talk a lot about how it takes a village to raise a child, but too often here I see the most successful families adopting a turtle-like strategy: keep your kids in the house, send them out of the neighborhood for school, keep your own nose clean and don't get involved. The problem is, that works.

Those who want to build a village have their work cut out for them. I wish

Death Comes to Marshfield Avenue

It is with great sorrow that I report the death of 26-year-old Jason Gill, who was shot on his front porch around 11:30 p.m. on Saturday night. For the basics, here is a link to the Chicago Sun-Times story. Here's the Tribune story.

Here's what the articles won't tell you. Jason was the kind of young man who would wish you a blessed day. He was a short guy with a sparkly stud in each ear and the big smile he inherited from his mother. In a neighborhood where most kids don't make it through high school, he had graduated from Perspectives Charter Schools South Loop campus. The last I heard he was working for UPS.

Just last week I was bragging about him to somebody in a fancy downtown restaurant. His little sister was just admitted to the new Perspectives Math & Science Academy.

Yes, his family isn't perfect. I've seen some other young man on that porch with a can of malt liquor mighty early in the morning. I'm told one of his nephews got into a scrap last week with the young man who came back with a gun Saturday night.

Tio Hardiman from CeaseFire has it right: it's the small arguments that escalate and turn deadly, especially when young men have access to guns.

I'll post again to talk about a new effort in the neighborhood to promote peace.

Today's March

Just a quick vignette from today's march for immigrant and worker rights:

As we were all walking down Jackson Boulevard, somewhere between Wacker and LaSalle, an older, bearded white guy on the sidewalk began taunting the marchers, who were cheering "Si se puede" (yes, we can) by cheering "USA! USA!"

A man and two women in front of me, all of whom appeared to be Latina/o and were wearing United Food and Commercial Workers t-shirts, smiled brightly at him and chanted back cheerfully, "USA! USA!"

For a brief instant, they all chanted "USA!" together.

Then the man, realizing his taunt had been defeated, switched to "Go home now!"

The three union workers smiled and walked on, cheering a few more "USA!USA!" chants. After all, that's the point, right?

School Spin on Community Violence

I'm taking a little time out today to give props to fellow blogger Alexander Russo
over at District 299, the blog about Chicago Public Schools. Alexander picked up an excellent point made by one of the many CPS insiders who comment on his blog, that the recent media coverage of youth violence has focused on the young people as Chicago Public Schools students even when the violent incidents did not happen on or near school grounds.

In an effort to support gun control, Mayor Daley and the Chicago Public Schools appear to have at least passively accepted, and possibly actively encouraged the media angle that links shootings and Chicago Public Schools together. Yet the gun control bills aren't going anywhere, and Alexander argues that the public image damage to the schools done by this association is much more long-lasting. Worth thinking about.

Scroll down the home page and check out the post "Why Is the Mayor of Chicago Destroying His Own School System? Why is the Press Letting Him?"

But I can't help throwing in a little local good news: looks like I have a second 8th-grader on her way to a high school other than Richards. She's got two options, Kennedy and the Perspectives Math & Science Academy. It'll be interesting to see which she chooses. She announced this over burgers at the Medici on 57th Street Saturday. Check back later this week for more, including our trip to the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago.

Dorothy Returns

Time did not permit me to fulfill my non-promise to Dorothy about getting diapers or a 7-day el pass. I stayed at home today and worked until 3 p.m., then jumped on my bike and went to an event at Marquette Park, also for work.

By the time I got home it was nearly 8 p.m. From the earlier rains, my bike seat was wet and so was my butt. I sure wasn't going to the store now, but neither that nor the drizzle was going to stop Dorothy from coming back.

Maybe she won't ring if there are no lights on, I thought. So I ate my take-out falafel sandwich in the dark.

It was no good. Despite the pitch-black first floor, the doorbell still rang. I looked through the peephole. Yep, it was Dorothy. Go away, go away. a little voice in my head chanted. She rang the bell again.

Oh, hell. I dug my wallet out of my raincoat. I had broken a ten for the sandwich, so I gave her the five. "I didn't go to the store today, I was working. But at least you can get to your meeting tomorrow," I told her.

She asked me if I had stashed any diapers for her from before. I hadn't. Then she told me she soiled her pants this morning on her way somewhere.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I wish I had some to give you. This is a hard month for me."
I already forgot what she said as she was leaving. But I'm sure she'll be back again, well before any new income makes its way to my wallet.

Dorothy's Drop: It's Clean

The doorbell rang a few minutes ago. Thinking it was Dawn, I stashed my college beer mug full of freshly-poured Corona in the fridge and went to the door. It was Dorothy.

She didn't wait for me to get the outer door unlocked. "I went to my meeting. They dropped me today," she said proudly.

"Hunh?" It took me a minute, but then I realized what she meant. At first I thought she got thrown out or something, but she was saying she took a urine test. "And you came up clean?"

"Yeah." She smiled, face shining.

"Good job! That's great," I said, coming out the front door. "How do you feel?"

"I feel good."

She has to go back again on Friday. I think they'll test her again next week? Every four days? Something like that. The only thing she doesn't feel good about right now is her lack of reliable diapers/underwear. And she really needs a 7-day el pass to get around.

"You know that was my last five dollars, right?" I was lying. I cashed a check at the grocery store today and got some money, but this month is closer to more month than money than I have seen in quite a while, and I'm trying to hold the line somewhere. "Remember I said I was broke until May? I know my broke is not as broke as your broke," -she looked at me knowingly- "but it's trouble for me."

She took this pretty well, actually. Less crabby than yesterday, I think because she realized I wasn't thinking she was lying to me about how she was going to spend any money I gave her. The news of the clean drop did help my confidence about that.

By the end of our chat, I told her to stop by tomorrow night. If time and money permit, maybe I will get her a 7-day pass. "It's nicer now, I can ride my bike," I told her. But I didn't promise.

"You're doing great. Keep strong," I said as she was closing my gate.

"Thanks to you."

She left before I could say, "Nuh-uh, it's all you," but I thought it. If all it's taking for her to get clean is this half-assed kind of help, it really is all her.

Warm Welcome Home

When I stepped out of the cab in front of my house last night, it was too hot for the jacket I was wearing. Everybody was out on the sidewalk enjoying the mild air. Seems like all the buds on the trees appeared last week, as did the white tulips in Dawn's yard next door.

"Maritza! Hi, Maritza!" the Bradys shouted from the other end of the block. Big Brady Girl came up to inquire about when we will be decorating cakes.

"Let me go put my suitcase down and I'll come back out in a minute," I said. Medicine Man was inside having dinner and reading the paper. I plopped my bags on the sofa, took off the too-warm jacket, and went back out.

I didn't spend time with that sofa again for about four hours.

First it was time to play volleyball with the Brady girls, get an update on the car wash (still in progress), look at report cards and decide when we are cake decorating. Saturday May 17 is cake decorating day.

Then Junior came out with a big folder of information from Golder College Prep. Most of it was in both languages but some things were only in English. We divided them up into things his parents could read and do on their own, which went in the right pocket of the folder, and things that were only in English or they might have questions about, which went in the left pocket. He has to go take a placement test on Saturday May 31.

"How do I get there?" he asked.

"Before then, maybe I can ride up there with your folks so you can all see where it is. Then you'll know the way."

Next, Angelito from next door paid a visit. We walked around the back yard. He liked circling one of the trucks on the parking pad. After a little while, his mom appeared in her back yard next door, unwrapped a lollipop and held it out to him over the fence. "Angel, ven!" she called.

He toddled over and took the lollipop. "If it falls out of his mouth, don't let him have it back," his mom advised me. Perhaps all my warnings about our lead-infused dirt have made a dent.

Then his mom asked if I would watch him for 15 minutes while she took a bath.

Sure, I agreed, knowing well it would be a lot longer than 15 minutes before I'd see her again.

We went back out front and Dorothy was there looking for five bucks for a one-day el pass so she could go to her meeting. "I've been sick. I missed the last four days," she told me.

"I'm almost out of money myself," I told her. (Although my kind of out of money is not like her kind, I'm closer to that kind of broke than usual.) We talked some more. I got cross. So did she.

It's warm now, I thought. I can actually get my bike out of the cellar and ride it places, so maybe I don't need that last five bucks for the bus after all.

"OK," I said. "Here's my last five bucks. Get an el pass."

She broke into a smile.

I looked around and Angel was gone. "Where did he go?" I asked Dorothy.

"Out back."

"Damn!" I said, running off. Angel was in the back yard wandering around again.

Later, when it was getting dark, Dawn and her boyfriend and School Lady's oldest daughter came back from checking out an early 90s Buick on sale for $300. I have finally come up with names for School Lady's girls--since there are four, they get the Little Women names. So Meg and I started chasing Angel around.

Then the ice-cream truck showed up and we went to check it out. Meg bought Angel an icie on a stick and offered to get me something, too. I took her up on it and had a small coffee ice cream cone. She got a red water ice in a paper cone.

Meg and I had a long chat about Lincoln's Challenge, a National-Guard-sponsored program that helps high school dropouts get a GED and a shot at college. It turns out Meg quit school a few months ago to work and help her mother. But she's not getting as many hours as she thought she would at her job--she's only working two to three days a week. Someone she knows from Chavez recommended she try Lincoln's Challenge, since you get done in five months and you can join the Guard afterwards to help pay for school.

This is all great except for two things: first, there's a war on and Guard units are getting called to Iraq; second, I've met quite a few kids who've tried Lincoln's Challenge but none who actually finished it. She says she did their taste-of experience with a lot of exercises and officers yelling, and it was OK with her. She promised she would ask a lot of questions about Guard service afterwards and how likely it would be that her unit would get called up. "I wasn't planning on that," she said of serving in Iraq.

Finally, after Dawn's boyfriend left, she and I had some time to talk. It turned out she missed school on Monday and was late to work on Tuesday. She didn't go to school Tuesday because she figured she would just get yelled at, so what was the point? She also sounded pretty discouraged and seemed to think she couldn't make up her work. We talked about her credits--she never did talk to her counselor at school--but she cheered up when I said her counselor told me she was in better shape on credits than some of their seniors.

Her mom was out at the grocery store, so we talked about a lot of things. It was almost 10:30 when she got home. Dawn and I were both beginning to worry. I had called her about 10 minutes earlier. When she came in she was laden with bags and said she couldn't get to the phone because she had too many things in her hands. I think her Mother's Day gift will be a grocery cart. Maybe we can share it--I don't know where mine is and I need one sometimes, too.

I got a text message from Dawn's principal this morning saying she had made it to school today. It's the ACT part of the Prairie State exams, so it was an important day to be there. Whew.

Tattler Takes a Vacation

Marshfield Tattler is on vacation until April 23. See below for the 400th post.

Home Away from Home

Saludos from sunny Davis, California, where we have had no earthquakes, unlike Marshfield Avenue and the rest of Chicago.

Medicine Man sent me an email about it and I thought he was kidding.

However, thanks to the blessing and curse of the cell phone, the Marshfield Avenue advice hotline is still in service.

Junior called me up a few minutes ago, while I was browsing for a birthday card for my sister.

"Hey, Maritza, I got a letter from the school, but it says college," he said. "I'm going to high school, right?"

The name Golder College Prep had confused him, especially since we first talked to UIC College Prep. Then he wanted to know where it was. I remembered the address was 14-something West Superior, and with that hint, he found it on the letter.

I had a similar problem making sense of things yesterday. While riding the Capitol Corridor train to Davis and enjoying watching cattle drink from the marsh and even a pelican taking off, Joey's mother called.

It was loud on the train and she was speaking Spanish rapidly. "I can't hear because I am on the train," I said in Spanish. "Por favor, can you speak really slowly?"

She did. One word at a time. And I got it. She was telling me Joey's dad could take him to Marwen so Medicine Man didn't have to. Message received.

With that, Marshfield Tattler is on vacation until Wednesday April 23. Happy spring!

Birthday Party

One of School Lady's daughters had a birthday today. Her big sister caught me just as we started the bike pump episode (see post below) to invite me over. "In about an hour and a half," she said. "We just put the meat on the grill."

The bikes got pumped, I did my shopping up by Roosevelt and Canal and the taxi driver didn't kill me on the Ryan coming back. (I'm in a hurry today so the taxi was worth it to get home that much sooner and go to School Lady's house.) Before shopping I thought I would stop at Barbara's Bookstore and find a book for her, but since I don't really know what she'd like, I decided to make a birthday card instead. When I got home, I made a birthday card by just drawing some colored balloons on a piece of white paper. Inside I wrote up my own gift certificate for one free book, which she gets to pick on a shopping expedition with me.

Over at the house, it looked like the gate to the back yard was locked, so I rang the front door. School Lady's youngest daughter answered and led me down the back stairs. That was the first time I'd been in past the living room. The room arrangement is a bit odd--living room, kids' bedroom, kitchen, back stairs. The parents' bedroom is to the right of the living room. The basement is rented out now; I don't know about the second floor.

When Iris read the card, she said, "Cool!" to the idea of going book shopping.
School Lady was out getting ears of corn at the store to put on the grill, but Mr. School Lady was grilling tortillas and the last bit of carne asada. There was a piece of meat left for me, with the last cebollita (little knob onion). There was even a teeny bit of spicy guacamole left and some rice. The oldest girl was with her mother at the store; the three younger ones, including the birthday girl, were playing soccer in the alley with their cousin. I talked a little with Mr. School Lady. He was surprised Dawn's mom hadn't come. (Later, School Lady confirmed she was meeting with people somewhere else. She has a lot of places to be these days.)

Quite frankly, most of the time I think Mr. School Lady is a shiftless bum. He had on a full set of clothes today--usually I go over and he's hanging around the house in a t-shirt. But maybe there's more to the story than I know. I think I heard he is on disability; if that's even true, what the disability is for I don't know.

To his credit, he said something today that I agreed with. His point, if I understood rightly, was that too many people around here spend all their time mired in their sad stories. Sometimes it's OK just to have some fun.

After I ate and watched Mr. School Lady feed the dogs tortillas, I went out to the alley and ended up playing goalie with the girls and their cousin for a little while. I think having me on goal partially evened out the unfair advantage the youngest had playing on the team with their cousin--a guy in his 20s or 30s, I'd guess. I blocked a few shots, anyway, and I think the birthday girl herself scored once while I had her back on goal. We rolled out some garbage cans to mark the goals, and when cars came we would just roll the cans back to the side to let the cars pass. It was getting too dark to see when we quit.

I never did get to eat the corn, but I did make it through half a large pickled jalapeno pepper. Thank goodness for tortillas with spicy food!

'Wasting' Time

Here's to Zhou B. Cafe, where I spent much of the day getting work done. I can't work in the house in the afternoons because it would be much more fun to hang out with the kids on the sidewalk.

I got home around 5 today, and the first ice cream truck of the year was belting 'Turkey in the Straw' into the sunshine and still-chilly air. My next door neighbor to the south and one of her younger daughters were walking toward me when I got off the bus.

"It's too early for ice cream, isn't it?" I tried to say in Spanish, but I think I said the wrong word. I meant helado but I said hielo.

It didn't matter. She got the idea. "Yes, it's cold," she said. I had run into her late Friday night on the Ashland bus when she was getting off work and I was coming back from the North Side. She is still looking for college scholarships for her older daughter, who graduated with honors from Juarez but is a freshman at Harold Washington. (She applied for a UIC scholarship but didn't get it.)Anyway, when I saw her on the street I was reminded I had promised her contact info for Latinos Progresando, which has a group for students interested in college. I told her I would put it in one of the mailboxes on the gate in front of her house.

As I hurried home to take care of this errand on top of many others on my after-work list, I heard a voice behind me say, "Hey, can I use your air pump?" It was the kid from the block north of mine, the one who got in trouble when he came with us to the Museum of Science and Industry. We'll call him Tone-Loc, since he can get a little crazy.

"Ok," I said, inwardly sighing, "but I have to go to my house and go right back out again to the store, so it needs to be quick." Tone-Loc was pushing two bikes, one little green one and the other bigger with a giant stuffed teddy bear sitting on the seat. Somehow I ended up pushing the bigger one and the teddy fell off. A guy on the corner got us to look back. Tone-Loc got it.

I went in the house and got the pump. Tone-Loc's sister-we'll call her Alicia for no particular reason except it's not her real name--came over on her bike and started teasing her brother about the stuffed bear. Apparently he got it for some girl he likes but who won't go out with him.

"You can't just buy girls stuff," Alicia advised. "You have to spend time with them. He spends all his time with his boy friends."

"I do," Tone-Loc said. "Being cool." The two of them got into an argument and he told his sister to leave. Alicia went back to bike riding.

"Well, if you want this girl to like you, it probably is a good idea to spend some time with her," I said. "But you probably don't want your sister telling you how to do anything, right?"

"Right," he said, with a big grin.

I watched him carefully as he worked the air pump. He'd just done it the other day but I needed a review. I'm an idiot with mechanical objects and hadn't even tried to use the pump since a friend got it for me for my birthday. I held the wheel while he got the cap off one of the tires. Later I kept track of the caps while he pumped the tires full of air. We talked a little, but mostly I just watched and ran in and out of the house, getting the Latinos Progresando info from my computer and putting a card in my neighbor's mail box.

Maybe around three-quarters through the job, I was sitting on the step watching Tone-Loc when he said out of the blue, "Am I wasting your time?"

Ouch. Busted, I thought. How to save this one? "No, honey, you are not wasting my time," I said. "I'm watching you and learning how to use the air pump. Thank you for teaching me."

Hope I remember how that pump works. It will be time to take my bike out of the basement soon.

Violence Prevention, Large and Small Scale

Obviously there's been a lot of buzz in Chicago lately about youth and gang-related violence. It's ironic to me that all these people, including the Mayor, are crying about what to do, when they know something about what to do and its funding was cut.

I refer to Project CeaseFire, a public health initiative out of the University of Illinois Chicago that has been working since 1995 to reduce street shootings. On the web site, the history runs through 2006, when CeaseFire was established or getting started in 15 Chicago neighborhoods, plus other sites around Illinois.

What the site doesn't mention is that CeaseFire itself became a victim of the budget shootout in Springfield last summer. The agency lost $6 million in state money, which cut 140 violence prevention workers. This ABC story gives details. Although some alternate monies were found and some of those people even kept on working for free (I heard), getting the work done became a lot harder.

CeaseFire's executive director, Tio Hardiman, hit the crux of the problem on the head in an MSNBC story about the current wave of shootings and efforts to stop the violence. To stop shootings, he said, petty arguments have to be resolved quickly and peacefully. "There's really a dire need for more conflict resolution training."

That's the big scale. On the small scale, Thursday afternoon I happened to be inside the Chavez Upper Grade Center right around dismissal, at 1:45 p.m. One of Joey's teachers had offered to give him a ride to his first class of the new session at Marwen, so I went to confirm arrangements. After we were done, I came outside and found one of the girls from the next block up from my house waiting around for her brother. We agreed to walk home together.

Her brother came out with a big gaggle of other boys. His sister and I talked about school--she's learning about Native Americans and she and her classmates are rehearsing for a performance of Native American stories. We got about half a block ahead of the guys. I, being a clueless adult, was pretty focused on our conversation. She, being a smart kid, kept slowing down and making sure we weren't too far ahead of her brother and the boys I took to be his friends.

When we got south of the viaduct on Hermitage, their noise reached a new height and intensity. We stopped and turned around to find them forming the classic fight circle and saw her brother putting his books down and handing off his jacket.

She and I took off running. I was still in a skirt and heeled boots from being downtown that morning, so I must have looked pretty funny galumphing toward them and hollering, "Hey! What are you doing? Cut that out!" The northern half of the ring turned and ran back past the viaduct, disappearing from sight.

Fortunately, we got there before anybody took a swing. Her brother told me those boys had been bothering him all day long in school and everybody had been waiting to get out of there so they could settle it on the street. I tried to ask him if he thought it was over or if the problem would be back tomorrow, but it started to rain harder and he ran for his house's front door.

"Thanks for walking with us," his sister said.

I think about this and I think about a question I asked the Marshfield Avenue boxers one day as we were walking to Medicine Man's car. Peter Pan was bragging to me and the two or three other guys present about how the oldest Brady boy had just won a fight. I asked all of them, including Big Brady, if they knew other ways to settle an argument besides fighting. They all said no.

"Would you like to learn some?" I asked. Peter Pan looked at me with the classic "how sissy is that!?" kind of expression. Joey didn't say anything. Big Brady Boy actually said yes.

If anybody knows of some big tough guys who teach conflict resolution skills to preteen boys, send them my way, would you? Or maybe we just need to get back to boxing. I trust those guys to teach my neighbors how to save their punches for the ring.

Professional Development Day

Today is a professional development day in the Chicago Public Schools, so all the students have a day off. By about 10 this morning I could hear Peter Pan and some of the Brady Boys playing soccer. At about noon I took a lunch break and as a result, my neighbor Daniel got a little pre-high school professional development, too.

It was beautiful outside--a little breezy, noticeably warmer and sunnier, with bright blue patches of sky showing between shining clouds. The boys were playing soccer in the street, most of them in t-shirts. Joey had even rolled up his jeans into shorts.

Some Brady girls and the youngest Brady boys were on the sidewalk, and their mom, Peter Pan's mom and Joey's mom were out watching the scene. Mom Brady was with her kids; Peter Pan's and Joey's moms were chatting in front of Peter's house. Danny was talking with his dad in front of their house. His dad waved to me as he left, and I went across the street for a chat.

Danny went to Curie recently to register and begin the orientation process. This summer, all freshmen in CPS will spend four weeks at their new high schools, getting to know their teachers and classmates and doing a mix of teambuilding exercises and academic work. I asked Danny what he thought of the idea, expecting "yuck, summer school," but he surprised me. He said he was glad to get the chance to learn the building and get to know people before school started. "Otherwise, I might get lost," he said.

In a less happy surprise, Danny also 'fessed up today that his grades went down this quarter to all Cs. Since he got into Curie, he's been slacking off. He thinks he's in regular English for next year and I know he is smart enough to be in honors, even if his grades right now don't show it. I told him he needs to pull up his grades fourth quarter so he can make a case to Curie to put him in honors next year, especially in English. We strategized about how he could talk with his homeroom/English teacher about what happened in there. He thought he was getting a B. I told him when I taught high school, kids would come up to me and say, "Why didn't I get a B?" in a whiny tone and it got on my nerves. But when a kid said to me, "I don't understand what happened, and I want to do better next quarter," I would bust my butt to explain why they got the grade they did and talk about how to improve next time.

Danny wants to know what high school is like. We talked about honors and how it leads to AP classes and how AP classes can save you time and money in college. We also talked about Marwen, since Danny is a pretty accomplished graffiti artist. His ears perked up when he heard they help you think about colleges with arts programs and careers in art. I don't know whether their summer offering will conflict with the new CPS high school orientation--they probably will--but in the fall he'll be old enough to get around by himself so maybe that would be the time to get him signed up for an after-school class.

Then I asked him if he was reading anything for fun on his own, and he said no. "It's a really good idea to read on your own if you want to go to college," I told him. Then I went in the house and looked to see whether I had any good books. I had two contenders--one young adult novel written by a guy and left over from the book giveaway, the other Frank McCourt's Teacher Man. Danny wants to know what high school is like, and McCourt captures the feel of a high school classroom from the teacher's point of view better than just about anyone I know. So I brought it out.

Danny looked at the young adult novel first, read the jacket and handed it back. I wasn't surprised--it's kind of a white kid slacker-novel and I didn't like the writing style much either. While he looked that book over, I searched for a good scene in Teacher Man. I found the one where McCourt talks with Nancy, a Chinese student, about learning English, then segues into a scene when he worked in a restaurant kitchen and his fellow kitchen staff pressed him into teaching English. Danny thought that scene was pretty funny and guessed it must have taken place in the 50s based on how much money they were making. He was in the ballpark on that, for sure.

Then I let him in on a big secret. "You know, when you read a book for fun, you don't have to read it from the beginning to the end."

"You don't?"

"No. You can just skip around and look for things that seem interesting and skip the boring parts." He agreed to take Teacher Man back to his house and poke around in it for a week while I'm out of town. We'll talk about what he finds when I get back.

Dorothy's Got Mail

Something from DHS and something that looked kind of personal. At least the outside was handwritten.

Of course, she's not staying on the block now, and I've been out of town, downtown, uptown, all over town. Anywhere but here. I may have to try to chase her down on 49th and whatever before I hit the road again next week.

Too bad she doesn't have Internet.

Dorothy and Yup-yup have moved

They are not in the same place, I gather. Dorothy does not like where she landed and is trying to find someplace else.

It looks to me like Yup-yup is trying to break back into the empty house for the third or fourth time. He moved elsewhere about a week ago, but he was back on the block Friday walking toward his old digs with purpose.

Dawn is NOT pregnant

There was a scare, but it was only a scare, thank goodness.
'Nuff said for now.

It's Raining Rats and Dogs

Around 4:30 today I heard skates on the sidewalk and decided to take a break. Two Brady girls and a little Brady brother were out there. The girls had roller blades and the little boy had a Big Wheel-style trike.

Despite the slight drizzle, I was ready for some exercise. They wanted to play tag. We played something sort of between tag and cops and robbers. When you got tagged, you had to go to jail. Little Brady Boy grabbed my arm tight and kept a strong hold on it while pedaling his Big Wheel up to my house, which had been declared the jail. Once whoever was It had captured the other three of us, we were all released and the first one captured took over as It.

Eventually older Brady girl wore out. "I'm tired," she said. (Yay, I thought. I had been checking my watch. I don't run much any more.) We pooped out on my front steps, then I realized I probably had a tennis ball left in the closet with which to play two-square. So I went in the house and dug the last tennis ball out of the can in the bottom of the utility closet.

When I came back out, nobody was there. "Oh, where did everybody go?" I yelled, playing along. I went out back and Little Brady's trike was there. At first I thought maybe they had faked me out and gone down the block, but of course they were all crouched under the stairs, against the basement door.

So then we went back out front and played two-square. Brady Boy found a stick and wanted to try to hit the ball, so we switched over to baseball. I thought that would be a better game to play in the vacant lot at the south end of the block, so we all went down there. Now I know who fixed up the lot, thanks to older Brady girl--her family, Peter Pan's family and a third family down there went in and cleaned it up. They put some old carpets down to make goals for soccer. People still keep dumping trash in there, though. There's a little cluster of dumpsters up by the sidewalk, and further back somebody left their Christmas tree on the ground. But there was plenty of unobstructed room for batting practice.

We all batted and pitched. Little Brady Boy was the best batter. I was the best pitcher. Some of the pitches were pretty wild. Younger Brady girl almost hit me in the head! It landed on my shoulder instead.

Suddenly the rain started coming more heavily. "Let's get you guys under your porch," I suggested. We were about to cross the street and go back to their house when older Brady girl spotted a dead rat in the gutter. "Eeeuw!"

Of course her little brother went right for it with his stick. "No, let's not do that," I said, laughing.

He laughed, too, and stopped. Whew.

"You know when it's raining really hard, my teacher told us they say it's raining cats and dogs," his sister commented.

"I guess it's raining rats and dogs now."

LiveBlogging: Medicine Man Helps with Homework

Thank God for Medicine Man! Junior has to do some science homework about the periodic table and atomic numbers. I have a deadline and I don't remember a thing about this stuff, so Medicine Mas has stepped up to the plate.


MM:What is that one?

J: 17

What's the name?

J:Curine?

MM: Chlorine.

[Another one.]

Oscar: Chromium?

MM: Chromium. It's a heavy metal.

MM: What would the next one be?

Oscar: Cu?

Yeah, copper.

[later]
MM: Chemical symbol is just another way to say abbreviation.

MM: What if I told you alumnium is a metal? [He picks up a Coke can.] It's made of a very very light metal.

All these boxes, all these elements can be found in nature every day. We're made of elements.

Oscar: You said that's made of metal. Gold..that's kind of hard to squish. How come this is easier.

MM: Not all metals are hard. Some metals are harder than others. If this were made out of steel, it would be hard to crush. Aluminum is a softer, more pliable metal.

OK, now I have to get to work. Big props and a big shout out to Medicine Man!

Seen from the Ashland Bus

On Ashland Avenue just south of 57th, there's a billboard marking the spot where a development of senior housing will be going up eventually. The billboard features a photo of Ald. JoAnn Thompson and some happy phrase about partnering with the Mayor, if memory serves.

What struck me was the big yellow "Uncle Tom" spray painted over her face.

When she won, she was the opposition. My question is: Who's the opposition now?