Not the tide. But lost in a fog. There's a city in here, somewhere....
More later, I hope.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Lost in the Fog
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
The Tide of Life
I spent the summer after I dropped out of college living in the Indiana Dunes. I was house sitting for an anthropology professor who's course I had never taken. A friend of mine from the Steelworkers union put us together, and he was happy to have someone he felt he could trust stay in his home for three months while he wrote a book in Poland.
I remember one evening, in the middle of June. My friends and I had gotten in the habit of gathering driftwood and building a fire on the beach (a short two block walk from the house) and talking about the things that seem big and important when you are twenty, usually over a bottle of something or another. That evening I got to thinking about tides. I hadn't been to the ocean yet, and therefore hadn't seen the tide. But as we sat there under the stars, I looked up at the full moon and started wondering about the lunar effect of gravity on the lake. It occurred to me that if there could be a tide in the ocean, there must be a tide in other bodies of liquid as well. Glasses of water, brain fluid, bathtubs, even the bottle of wine we were almost finished with.
Out of this revelation my young adult mind had conjured, I began to think about the effects of gravity on other forces in my universe (small now, but smaller then). Could the cycle of the universe, the cycle of our solar system, our earth, our lives correspond to the natural cycles in motion in this impossibly huge gyroscope that God has set in motion impact our tiny lives as well? That summer I started paying attention to the ebb and flow of my life, and the lives around me. People come and people go. Relationships, friendships, loves and passions all ebb and flow. There are times when my life is so full, so balanced that I simply get up in the morning and move, drifting through my life without thought or concern. Other times it's hard: I get up in the morning and fight my way through a difficult slog of a day, looking forward to bed, knowing that I have only another tough day to wake up to.
I was thinking about that moment the other night. In the grand scheme of things, my life had been spinning along quite well. The tide was in. As of late, however, I've felt the tide flowing out. Another cycle of my life, (and perhaps the lives of those around me) flowing out into the sea of human experience. As I stepped off the bus and into the rainy fall Chicago night, I stopped for a moment, and looked up into the soupy sky. Is the tide going out again? I suppose only time will tell.
Image via AerocK
Monday, October 15, 2007
Pinback
I was walking to Metro with a friend Sunday night, talking about how enjoyable it is to have my weekends free. We were going to see Pinback, who are touring to support their new album. As I've mentioned before, not working on weekends is something that I still enjoy, a perk, rather than an entitlement.
I was talking about how much I enjoy going to see Sunday night shows. After spending a pretty crappy afternoon working on my take-home midterm, it was nice to get some fresh air and be around other, actual human beings.
Not surprisingly, we walked a few blocks to get to Metro - parking in Lakeview is so much worse than I remember. But it was a nice night, so I didn't mind.
"If I were still waiting tables, we'd just be heading out now. I would have made my money for the weekend, $160 in my pocket maybe? I'd have gotten home, taken a shower and changed. This would be the first time out for the weekend."
"A waiter's Friday night?" she asked.
"Yeah. I'd be doing laundry tomorrow, some homework. Maybe go dick around in a coffee shop or a bar later in the afternoon."
"That doesn't sound like too much fun."
"It wasn't," I said, chuckling at the memory of how much I hated it.
I've never seen Pinback live before, but I'm pretty familiar with their music - I have three or four of their albums. We got to the balcony of Metro just in time to get a couple of beers as they took the stage. Laid back indie rock on a Sunday night never sounded so good.
Friday, October 12, 2007
Living on the Edge
Most mornings I walk into work without giving my surroundings a second thought. Probably not a good quality for someone in commercial property management, but then I was never much of an over-achiever.
This week, though, I noticed something different. On Tuesday there was a white plastic lump propped up against the windows of the lobby of the Chicago Federal Center. Now, I'm used to seeing people out on the plaza - public buildings inevitably attract protesters and demonstrations. Redress of grievances and all that. Friday mornings AmeriCorps does calisthenics, neat rows of khaki and red doing push ups on granite in front of the Post Office that Mies van Der Rohe built. But this white lump was neither a newly minted undergraduate nor a Palestinian sympathizer. It was a person, a homeless woman specifically. I see far fewer homeless than you would expect in a city the magnitude of Chicago. I've seen many more in New York and Mexico City, and homelessness in Los Angeles is so pervasive it's practically an ethnicity.
The image of this person stayed in the back of my head for the rest of the day, and when I left for the evening, I looked over across the plaza and saw her still there. Every evening this week she was there, same place, folded over on one of the granite benches. So on Thursday when I ran into one of the guards, taking a smoke break in front of the building, I mentioned the visitor. "Have you noticed that woman out there?"
"Oh yeah, sure. We pay attention to what goes on around the building. Actually, a federal police officer went out there to talk to her, try and get her to move."
"Oh yeah?" I asked, curious. "What happened?"
"Nothing. I guess there's nothing we can do to get her out of here." That last statement broke my heart a little bit. I don't know why I would expect a guard in the federal building to have any compassion for a homeless woman, but I guess somewhere inside of my jaded heart I do.
"She says she's there to protest. They came and took her house. It's tied up in court, and she has lawyers fighting them. But she won't live in a regular house until she gets a ruling. It's her way of protesting, I guess."
I don't know how true any of that really is. The brief and confusing conversation I had with this woman made little sense, but based on what I know about the root causes of homelessness, I'd wager that she's living on the plaza in front of the federal building not to protest some perceived injustice, but because she lacks access to the resources that could take her off the street. With over 20 federal agencies located in the Chicago Federal Center, including Health and Human Services, Social Security and Housing and Urban Development, you would think that some middle manager somewhere would have realized that an opportunity to do community outreach was right in front of them. I realize that at the federal level these agencies don't do much front-line service provision. I guess I just wish that there was some way for a homeless woman, an American citizen, to get something more than a hassle from her government.
Image via miniwheatz007
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
The Death of a Reformer
I saw the obituary of David Schulz in the Tribune today. Mayor Harold Washington's first budget director, Shulz left Chicago after just eight months with the Washington administration, losing a power struggle with Washington's then Chief of Staff, William Ware. The Tribune obituary cites Shulz work on Washington's first budget, working with the former mayor to reign in a record $150 million deficit. A Tribune editorial in 1983 called him a financial whiz, who "seemed to know where every dime was going and why."
To get a sense of how much money that was in 1983, I turned to the Consumer Price Index for answers, it comes to $313,500,000 in 2007 dollars. Washington's budget balancing act was far more contentious than anything Daley has seen recently - he cut his own pay by 20 percent and laid off 700 city employees. Stymied and fought at every turn by an angry and bitter voting block in the City Council, Chicago inched forward in those years, and Washington oversaw change in the city, putting more of a focus on neighborhoods and the people that live there.
I was pretty young when Washington became mayor, and I don't remember much of those years; they were divisive, but aside from a few family members talking about supporting Washington and the emotions that support elicited in their neighborhood, I was far removed from the racism and pain of those years. As I watch the city struggle to balance a budget that is hovering around a $300 million deficit, however, I'm reminded of the kind of mayor Washington was.
Which takes me back to David Schulz. After leaving Chicago, Schulz went on to work in Milwaukee, a city with a long history of progressive politics. He taught at Northwestern University, and published academic research. He was a specialist in transit issues, commenting on the CTA, in good times and bad. Politically astute, surely, but we versed in the language of management science.
And as I sit here writing this, listing to This American Life's story of Washington 15 years after his death, I'm stunned, again, at the lack of foresight, wisdom and planning of the mayor and his administration in city hall today.
Thursday, October 4, 2007
The Mysterious Workings of Faith
I've always been interested in faith. Not just as a spiritual force, but as a cultural and ethnic influence as well. I went to a Catholic high school, and even though I was raised Protestant, I felt a sense of connection with the Catholic community there. Later, in college I spent some time trying to decide if I was Buddhist, Baha'i, or Muslim. When I moved back to Chicago in my mid-twenties, I decided I was Methodist. Although I was confirmed Lutheran at twelve, I'm not sure that's a decision you can make when you are that young. At the time I thought that I understood what I was committing to. Looking back, of course I didn't.
So when I opened the newspaper last Sunday, the first article I read was about the Mexican skeletal icon Santa Muerte. The Roman Catholic Church doesn't recognize the icon, and regards her as "satanic". For Mexicans that are connected to the spiritual movement behind Santa Muerte, however, she has emerged as a representation of a darker path that ultimately leads back to God.
This has become problematic to the church.
"I'm concerned about it because it's an aberration. It's a misunderstanding of faith. It's taking a Catholic concept of the holy death of Christ and personifying it with this skeletal figure," Rev. Esequiel Sanchez, pastor of Mary, Queen of Heaven in Cicero told the Tribune. "At the same time, I can understand why it's growing. Many people, especially Mexican immigrants, are feeling that institutions are abandoning them and are grasping for spiritual help wherever they can. When they come to me with Santa Muerte, I'm not interested in why they worship her. I'm more interested in how they got to that point."
Mexican novelist and poet Homero Aridjis, who wrote a book about the movement, and counts narcotraffickers, corrupt cops and politicians among Santa Muerte’s followers, traces the devotion to Santa Muerte to pre-Hispanic indigenous cultures. The Aztecs had a death goddess named Mictlantecuhtli, for example, and there is some speculation among historians that the Virgin of Guadalupe is a syncretic representation of both the Christian Virgin Mary and the indigenous Mexican goddess Tonantzin. A merger of the Christian death of Christ and indigenous polytheistic gods isn't that far-fetched, then.
In the US it seems that Santa Muerte came to cities like Chicago with immigration, crossing borders with laborers seeking another life. With that migration, churches in Chicago have had to confront devotion to the icon, and what she represents.
While Santa Muerte may be difficult for the Church to reconcile, it isn't difficult on the streets of Chicago. At the Botanica de Michoacan on Milwaukee, the owner of the shop has made his peace with Santa Muerte. "I don't worship her," he tells me. "I just sell her." In a city full of people that probably feel alone and disconnected from the culture, tradition and history of their land, such familiar icons bring comfort, even if there is a spiritual price to pay. And I think Father Sanchez gets that, too.
Image via hey_mando
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
The Price of Patronage
Six years of patronage hiring hit home Friday, as 1,451 people filed claims alleging they were denied city jobs or passed over for promotions because they lacked clout. The claims are part of a settlement between the city and attorney Michael Shakman to end the nearly 40 year old Shakman decree. That agreement, which also created a federal hiring monitor, established a $12 million fund to pay up to $100,000 each in lost earnings to victims of patronage. The Shakman Decree prevents the city from hiring or promoting most people based on political factors.
Taking the time to sort through all of the claims (which only apply to allegations between 2000 and May 2007) won't be easy - or quick. Noelle Brennan, the federal hiring monitor appointed by U.S. District Judge Wayne Andersen, said Monday that she will need more time to investigate the claims and determine how much - if any - each claimant is owed. Brennan, who oversaw the sexual harassment settlement at Mitsubishi Motors in 1998, said she didn't know what the final total for claim awards would be, but that they probably exceed the $12 million in the fund. Her work has already cost the city over $1.65 million. With the feds looking at the Hispanic Democratic Organization, former Streets and Sanitation Commissioner and HDO leader Al Sanchez is still awaiting trial with four others, and more than a year left until the city will have the chance to get out of the Shakman Decree, it seems likely that Chicago will continue to pay the price for years of patronage.
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
A Quick Trip Through the Loop
It's been a little over a year since I started a 9-to-5 job. In fact, prior to taking my current position, I'd always worked unconventional jobs. You know, the kind where you live out of a suitcase, or get paid in cash, or work all weekend for the bulk of your income. So, most of my experiences taking the L downtown occur before nine am - packed train, morning hustle, silent, groggy chaos.
On Monday, though, I got to take the train through the Loop in the late afternoon. I took the day off work to study for my mid-term, and I was riding the Blue line south toward UIC. If you've ever spent an entire weekend and a whole workday at home with your nose in a graduate-level textbook, you know how weird it makes you. You look up at the clock and realize that two hours have gone by. Your coffee is cold and your cigarette has burned out. Your living room doesn't look like it should. And talking to people? Forget about it. After expending all that brain power on abstract concepts, you're pretty much socially retarded.
As I stood on the platform waiting for the train, the still-high autumn sun beaming down on Chicago, I got a good look at the people I used to see everyday when I headed off to wait tables. Pregnant Latinas, grocery clerks, college students and everyone else that lives too far north. Further down the line, the train pulled into the Clark street stop and I watched from my seat as the car exhaled a flurry of people, only to inhale still more. Peppered with people, the Blue line rolled through the Loop in quiet reflection, just another ride, just another day.
By the time the train was headed West out of the Loop, a different set of people had taken the car: professionals leaving early, students living on the edge of the downtown, West side workers heading home after a day spent taking out the garbage in gleaming office towers. And me, the erstwhile grad student.
Image via RieBo
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