from Chicago

We covered a lot of ground today. Greek, Italian, then Pilsen, which was once Czech and now has become vividly and colorfully Mexican – we were there. Why? Because it is disappearing so fast. Ten years and it will be lost to a strip mall or a high rise. So take this walk: roll out a map and follow the streets -- deserted at times, crowded elsewhere. There’s a lot of Chicago on the near southwest. Makes me regret (only a little) that I did not stick it out and do the ethnographic stuff that I set out to do here thirty years ago.

On the other hand, it’s nice to just visit now.

I wonder if some decades into the future any of this will look anything close to what it looks like today.



Purchase photo 1979





Purchase photo 1978





Purchase photo 1977




















Purchase photo 1976

from Chicago

I’m off for the week-end! I toss this out to the condo concierge, feeling very New York about both the idea of the weekend starting on a Wednesday and that I have a concierge who'll pretend to care as I make my way out. An aura of urban-cool is precisely what Ed dislikes about the condo. Me, I like having someone (the "concierge") sign for deliveries. Besides, our man in the lobby (the "concierge") does not open doors. You’re on your own with that one.

And now, I am scaling down on the goodlife and taking the common form of public transportation to Chicago – the bus. I sit up front, near the driver, so that I can keep an eye on him and give advice, should he ask for it.

He doesn’t seek driving input, but he is a friendly fellow and as we make our way out of the city, he remarks – yep, it’s going to be an early and long winter.
Why? I ask, genuinely curious.
My dog’s coat is already growing extra thick. The farmers are also noting signs of an early cold spell.
I mull this one over. It seems so preordained. And how is it that a dog’s fur is privy to something I do not know? How fair is that?
It must be hard on you, driving as you do no matter what the weather.
Oh, these buses run easy. We know where the road is supposed to be even if we don’t see it.
Another comment that makes me worry that everyone else has powers that have passed me by.
Anyway, it’s always great once you hit Illinois. They lay an inch of salt before there’s even a half inch of snow. And they plow with three trucks, side by side.
Don’t we do a good job in Wisconsin?
He laughs. In Beloit, they wont bother until the last flake is down. In Janesville, they keep saying it’s a federal problem and in Madison they wait to do what is environmentally correct, which usually means letting the sun melt it all. When they do go out, they plow one lane, wait for an hour and go after the other. Meaning, they sort of push the snow around from one side to the next.

Sounds dismal. I distract myself from the sad denouncement of my state’s plowing habits with a book. About New York, to get in the urban mood.

Later:

I’m on the blue line from O’Hare. Nice. Back when I lived in Chicago, the train didn’t make it all the way out here. Chug chug chug, I zip along in the direction of the Loop. Did I say zip? Is this the only subway in the world that moves more slowly than the congested Kennedy Expressway?

Later:

The final leg, this one on the city bus. Not too many people with issues on board. One who talks loudly about her dating situation, but so what. She’s bullish and brassy and interesting. Oh, there is the other one. The Asian woman clutching an old doll whose clothes and hair are beyond disgusting. People move away, just to keep their distance. From the doll.

We stop and a disabled person attempts to board on the drawn down platform. The platform gets stuck. The disabled elderly passanger wants somehow to climb over the ramp. The driver will have none of it. She tells us all that the damn bus is broken. Platform and all. We all get off. She stands there, surveying the bus, as if a good staring session will cure it of its malfunctioning.





A new bus comes. We all climb on board. The disabled man finds a spot on the new bus, but not a secure spot, because as the bus lurches, he falls down. The bus stops. An accident report must be filed. We all get off. The old bus, now cured of its malfunctioning picks us up. Except for the diabled guy. But he is so traumatized that nothing makes much of an impression on him by now.


Later:

My daughters and I take a long walk, all the way down to the Ukrainian neighborhood. We walk past meatpacking plants, across bridges where few ever choose to walk.



Purchase photo 1975


Ukrainian Chicago. Or, is it a partly Polish neighborhood?










Is every neighborhood here partly Polish? Is Chicago the one city on the planet where I do not want to admit to being Polish? Oh, Chicago. You're a handful.

UPDATE:

For superdad (in comments), more from the "Ukrainian village:" (Keeping in mind that neighborhoods are intractable these days. Though I did indeed hear Russian tossed around in a back yard. And Polish.)



Purchase photo 1974





Purchase photo 1973

being ready

You can’t be ready. You cannot prevent injury, you cannot anticipate punches. Basically, life is about walking the fine line with the gut exposed. A sigh of relief if it remains intact at the end of the day. You never know.

That’s a very Polish attitude. I know that. Still, I embrace it full force. Today it’s this and tomorrow it’s something else.

I went to Jason’s this afernoon The color guy. I want to break with the color addiction, but I believe in a slow release and so I trudged over, ever so meekly, and asked for a dose that would hold me over for a while.

I mention this because typically, a trip to Jason’s is total relaxation. Not today. No one’s life is easy, even if you are the best color person this side of the Mississippi. We felt our issues in half finished sentences and periods of silence. My thoughts are with a friend who died last week. Jason has his own world of loss to consider.


On the way back from Jason’s, I stopped at a tiny beach – a place where I sometimes went with daughters when they were very very young. I expected it to be empty. Lake Mendota sucks right now. All that algae. I was surprised to see a life guard. She was SO ready.






I asked her if it was safe to swim. Today? Yes, she said. Indeed, there was one swimmer. And she was ready for him. The wheelbarrows of algae could wait. She was ready.



Purchase photo 1972


Wouldn’t it be grand if there was a ready life-saving person to help us through the rough spots all the time?

In the evening, I finished several projects that had been waiting for my attention. It's good to throw yourself into the pleasantly mundane every once in a while. Life's kind of short. Can't waste it on the sadness.

afternoon walk

Summer is the big indulgence. You want warm? Here, we’ll lay it on until you’re sick of it. Except that I never do get sick of it. So warm outside! So beastly, beautifully warm!

Still, I recognize the signs: curled petals, tired trees, wistful conversations. I saw them today. There’s a whole month of summer left on the calendar. So what. Summer’s stumbling to an end. It’s a good thing that I don’t mind Fall.








Purchase photo 1971

in and out of Cambridge

Suddenly, the house is empty. Just for a small while, but still, soulless. As if all energy has been sucked out and tossed over the balcony rail.

I bike to Ed’s, losing myself in the curvy bike lane and the tall flowers of August.



Purchase photo 1970


I shed one bike and hop on the other, the motor driven one. We roar east to Cambridge. Wisconsin’s Cambridge. I haven’t been through this small town in maybe fifteen years. Has it changed? No.



Purchase photo 1969


Oh, fine. The ancient cars are just passing through. Still, people-wise, it’s an empty town. Stores say “open,” but for some, that’s just plain wrong. And, as in so many small town main streets around here, there are very very few people out and about. This may well be the bulk of the downtown crowd:








Purchase photo 1968


We go to Ripley Park, at the edge of Cambridge. The lake side is crowded. It’s very late in the afternoon, but you'd hardly know it. People are drawn to water. Even in its murky state.





Okay, at some point, you have to head home.





And we do. Past cornfields, soy fields and tobacco fields. Past silos, farmhouses and tobacco barns.



Purchase photo 1967





Purchase photo 1966



One more hill climb, one more bridge crossing a river and we're back on the main road, heading home. Sleepy quiet home.



Purchase photo 1965





Purchase photo 1964

repeat performance

Another Shakespeare play in the woods, west of Madison, another night of stars and wisps of mist hugging the prairie fields.

Another downtown market. Yaaaaawn, boring, same old same old… Right?



Purchase photo 1963


Wrong.

Another bouquet of flowers. Colors of fire, scent of spice. A child, burying her nose in their yellow dust, eyes closed, searching for that sweetness that is summer.





Another iced tea on State Street. So warm today! That sun that plays the devil in winter – in, out, in, out – so warm now, sweaty warm, wonderful sweaty warm, August warm.

Wheat beer with lemon – that’s not me, but it is tonight. Another evening of dinner out on the Dane Pub terrace and I give in to the Madison brews, the Madison dusk, the August balloons that take you away, or take others away, only to return, someday, for good.



Purchase photo 1962

storage

My daughter and I went through the cardboard boxes I piled into storage two years ago. We were searching for old maps (not to be found), but of course, when you look through dust-covered, cobwebbed stacks, you find other things as well.

For instance, among old college journals, I found a handful of photos that I had taken back in New York, some 35 years ago. I'm posting one, with apologies for quality issues (no time to properly scan it into the blog). It struck me that what I photograph today is pretty much the same as back then -- street scenes, people going about doing their stuff, children playing in the playground.

These children are not children now. Are they still as intense and as serious as in the moment where I noticed them in the park?



Purchase photo 1961

misty ride

The last of the summer early morning rides to class. The mist is there again. And it’s quiet. Summer quiet.



Purchase photo 1960





Purchase photo 1959


And now I am so attached to my path that I stay with it on the ride back. No mist then. The light isn’t there either. So no photos. But oh, the warmth! Splendid, after the hours of an air conditioned classroom.

Good bye summer semester.

detritus

I am near the end of the semester. What more can be said about the lake path, about the regularity of working late and early and many hours in between?

I bike along the lake. I take a minute to watch the boat take in the junk that’s making our lakes so miserably green instead of blue.



Purchase photo 1958


On the way back home, I grab just the very last minutes of the other other market. So that I can collect flowers for my condo.





Nothing pushes me out of the routine. Is that a good thing?

what I learned about myself from hanging around daughters, and no, I would not rather be fishing

I have spatial-sequence (or "number form") synesthesia, my daughter tells me. I look up. Is it serious? She describes it to me (hint: it has to do with the brain). Oh! I guess I gave it to you! I have the same thing. Only I never knew it had a name.

I thought, mistakenly, that everyone’s brain functioned this way: when I think of numbers, I instantly imagine them strutting around in a pictorial sequence. For me, at 10, the sequence bends: the teens stay in darkness, to the right of 10, then majestically climb out at 20, progressing upwards and rightwards thereafter. Until 100, when they start shooting up due north, only to turn left again after 1000. Months are arranged in a circle. December is top right. Autumn drags on the bottom. They spin counterclockwise. Days of the week, on the other hand, are a disc. I bet you could hop across the surface from Tuesday to Saturday if you tried.

It turns out that synesthesia (as described above) is very rare. And so I have to ask, what do people see in their mind’s eye when they think of numbers? I mean, do their minds grow blank?

Weird.

I thought about this biking to work and then to get coffee before an afternoon of meetings. I also noted three different fishing situations and I’m including them here for you. Three. From left to right, springing out from under five: one, two, three.



Purchase photo 1957





Purchase photo 1956





Purchase photo 1955

spinning

I know that this is a term reserved for group stationary bike pedaling done at health clubs. In the alternative, people talk of their thoughts running amuck, pounding an idea to death or working themselves into a tizzy over one thing or another. In the dictionary, the primary entry for spinning is about a method of fishing. Funny, I thought it would be about yarn and wheels.

For me, the association is a pleasant one right now. Spinning through old routines, one following another, in a seamless progression of hours.

As it happens, many of those hours were spent on the seat of a bike on Sunday, as we made our way around our favorite bike loops on the most brilliantly sunny day of the year. The breeze was cool, so that the feeling was almost of being on a lake. Except that the views along the bike path (unlike from the middle of a lake) were ever changing as we flew, spinning down hills of prairie, past fields of gold.



Purchase photo 1954





Purchase photo 1953





Purchase photo 1952





Purchase photo 1951

say it with

…flowers. So hard to fill vases in the winter, so easy now.

We circled (squared?) the downtown market. It takes time, but time is expandable on a day like this. And besides, there are the rewards. So obvious...




Purchase photo 1950






Purchase photo 1949



At the close of the market, the flowers dwindle. But it's not too late. Even at the close of the market, when vendors are ready to call it a day, you can fined armloads of these to take home.

preparation

For my late mother-in-law, everything circled around the annual visit of her son (and by default, me). She painted walls, purchased new furniture, and sought out fun things for us to do in and around Pittsburgh where she and my ex’s dad lived.

Charming, I thought. In a quaint sort of way. I mean, would it matter in the slightest if I found her old couch or a new one on my next visit? Did I even appreciate the annuals carefully planted along the front path, tended so that they would be at their peak during our visit?


My daughters came just before midnight on Friday. I spent the day cleaning madly (as if the place hadn’t been cleaned well just before), rearranging the pots on the balcony, scrubbing down bins in the refrigerator, shopping for favorite snacks, straightening, rearranging again.

Daughters. For you – the world.


In the evening, before their arrival, I paused for dinner. Ed’s friend said those magic words – pick a place, any place and so we ended up at El Dorado, an old favorite in the interesting Willie Street neighborhood, where the scenery can be dramatic in an industrial sort of way and patrons wear black t-shirts with slogans that only my daughters could understand.








Purchase photo 1948


On our way back, we paused at the most glorious summertime Union terrace. The boats barely bobbed in the calm waters and the crowds and lights blurred in a sea of gaiety. Magic.



Purchase photo 1947





Purchase photo 1946


We biked along the lakeshore path in the dark (home) and before long, it was time to head to the airport.

Welcome home, daughters.