a city day

It is again near midnight and I am riding the El from Addison up north, to Clark and Lake – the stop for my hotel. I am reminded of the tail end of my college years, when I rode the midnight subway in New York after closing down the bookstore where I worked the late retail shift. The noise of the train, harsh during daylight hours, isn’t grating now. At nighttime, nothing matters except getting home to bed. I close my eyes and think of myself moving closer to the many pillows and the cool, cotton white sheet. Mmmm…

Summer in the city. If you live there, you want to get out. Paris in August empties so quickly that it sometimes feels like someone took an eraser to the city and wiped the residents out. Stores are closed, cafes shuttered. New York on a summer week-end is the same. Walking down an avenue, you can hear your cell phone ring, it’s that quiet.

Chicago is different. Oh, I know, it’s not the week-end now. The Loop, that rectangle of office space and lunchtime retail trade will look less vibrant if I wait until tomorrow. But I’m not waiting until tomorrow. And I’ll bet anything that the places we walked through yesterday and today, will feel equally delicious tomorrow. Full of people looking to unwind in the heat of a summer day in the city.

This is what I find most thrilling about Chicago: in the last ten years, it has thrown a lot of resources into creating wonderful public spaces. For this alone it deserves the 2016 Olympics. Not convinced? Read on. And tell me if any other urban center on either side of the ocean has done anywhere near as much to change and improve the nature of communal outdoor life.


I’m waiting for my wee family to join me downtown. They’re poky and so I meander through the Loop in search of a good cappuccino. That part is easy. But what do I eat with it?

On the Daley Plaza, I happen to find the Thursday Farmers Market. It’s different than our downtwon Madison market: fewer vendors, larger quantities in each stall – that’s predictable. What’s funny to me is to watch the buyers. I'm in a city. Yes I am.















There's a Picasso at the plaza. The Picasso. It’s so fitting: a gift of steel (that would be Gary, Indiana steel which in itself is fitting). Looks like… it’s not clear what. No one seems to know. The artist’s wife? His Afghan dog? Today, it serves another purpose.





And in front, the Chicago Park District has set up a boxing ring. Welcome all, we want to present the young boxers of Chicago! The 70 pound class! The future champions of the 2016 Chicago Olympics!





I eat my oat and peanut butter baked bar (like in Madison, bakers are popular at the market) and sip my coffee and watch.


The sky is a deep blue. One isn’t accustomed to seeing a clear sky like this in a city, but Chicago rarely gets the hazy pallor of a New York summer sky. The air is dry and warm and I’m ready for a brisk walk.





I’ve not done the River Walk before. I haven’t much time now, just enough to take it toward the lake and back.

I pass by the love it or hate it Trump tower…





… and, further down, I stroll by cafés and strips of green grass where office workers take their noon break. At the “river’s” edge, the Park District has set up a fishing tent. Come learn about the fish in our waters. We'll lend you a rod. You’ll catch something for sure.





Kids sit in life vests, dangling bait in the aqua waters of the canal. Surely this is a catch and release thing? Or do they take it home? Guess what I picked up downtown!


It’s my lunchtime now and I meet my family at Pastoral – a place where sandwiches and salads to go are as good as in a Provencal café in southern France. We pick up a bag of food and take it to the Millennium Park.

The Millennium is the most glorious contemporary public space of all time! When I lived in Chicago some thirty years ago, the area was a wasteland of old rail tracks and concrete blight. The 24 acre park that grew out of it is a jewel of art, concert space, gardens, fountains – all inviting, telling you to shake off your mad rush to nowhere and exhale.

And splash in the Crown Fountain reflecting pool, in front of digital images of Chicagoans.
















And see yourself reflected in a different way in the Cloud Gate (or “the Bean,” the Kapoor sculpture inspired by a drop of mercury, but made to loom large, so much so that it is one of the biggest sculptures, anywhere, ever).





Each time I am here, something else about it strikes me as remarkable. Today, I take a photo from the “mouth” of the Bean, looking out, so that my horizon meets the Bean’s upside down image of it.





You know, I could do pages on the Park. But, Ocean is just a snapshot on a mood, so I have to move beyond it, past the Buckingham Fountain…





...past the Field Museum, where I deposit daughters for a short while. I’m not ready to give up on the late afternoon summer sky. I walk along toward the Shed Aquarium and the Adler Planetarium – places visited by us many times as daughters moved from young toddlerhood to childhood to teenhood. Now that they’re adults, there is nothing to explain, to clarify. No cautionary scold out here by the water either – be careful! Don’t get too close to the edge! Other parents can now take up these words (and they do!). Me, I’m focused on the fantastic skyline. Or, I'm staring at the sails out on the gently breezy waters.










And now we turn around and head back toward the Loop.





Whereas evening comes slowly back in Madison, so that you hardly notice when it stopped being daytime, in the city, it is an obvious and quick change. Shadows take over the narrow strips of sidewalk. The rush hour comes earlier here than on the east coast so that by 6, the crowds start to thin.





My daughters suggest the rooftop bar in my hotel for an evening drink. The rooftop here is, they tell me, a hot pick for young professionals. Indeed, there is a line that weaves around the block just to get in. As a hotel guest, I am allowed to go straight to the top.

This is a new world for me. I explain to them that I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I have been to a cool city bar. And I don’t need all my fingers for the count. This, in spite of the fact that I lived in cities for many many years. By the time I joined the ranks of the professional world, I was no longer young and I had two kids waiting for me at home. The drinks I learned to mix had things like fruit and honey and yogurt in them.

Being on the young side of motherhood (at least as measured by the demographics of the urban professional set), I get to now savor the Rooftop with daughters at the helm. And they tell me what to order and how to regard the social dynamics that unfold before us.





Some readers here may counter that a glass of rosé at a café on the other side of the ocean (which I have savored more times than can be counted on the fingers of many hands) counts as bar hopping (especially since my daughters are now are asking the bartender for a glass of rosé), but I think that at café-bars, the people watching is of the world outside, where as here, I get the sense that people watching is within.

They tell me that, as measured against similar venues out east, this is a friendly, nonthreatening place. (Meaning, I think, that the patrons don’t cut each other up visually) I am mesmerized. Aided by the delicious lime-cucumber-ginger something or other. Oh, and toasts with eggs and just a hint of truffle.





Feeling utterly urban and very professional, I linger and listen and occasionally take a photo, so that the bartender asks if I am with the press. No, just with fantastic daughters and my little Ocean somewhere out there.

Dusk is now quickly merging into an evening darkness that makes the city looks extra wonderful.





We walk back to the El and head north to meet up with their dad for a late dinner at a superb neighborhood Italian place (Terragusto). The crowd is boisterous and the food is so fresh and honest it hurts to finish it. Swiss chard in custard with a mushroom ragu, inky black pasta with shrimp, mascarpone cheesecake with summer fruits.





A day in the city. Nothing more than that. But could it be more perfect?

tall order

Like so many who moved back and forth between small places and big New York City type places, I have had a wildly fluctuating attitude toward skyscrapers.

Think of it: I moved from a village in Poland to Warsaw, where in the 1950s the highest building was 34 stories high and it towered over the rest of the capital. Then on to Manhattan, where everything was beautifully, monstrously tall. And back to Warsaw, where I retreated from loving the tall stuff to enjoying wide avenues and quiet parks.

Along comes New York again and once more I am in love with it all – from the top of the 666’s where I have my first grown-up coctail, to Rockefeller Tower, from which I can see that other perfect pencil of a building, the Empire State. I live on the eight floor, then the eighteenth floor and it all seems cool and very very adult.

After, I’m in Chicago, where, of course, I come face to face with the newest tallest giant – the Sears tower. (Though personally, I prefer the Hancock. Something about that curve that appeals to me.) Moving to Madison to raise a family feels very anticlimactic.

But then comes September 11 and, of course, my love of tall buildings is shaken to the core. Madison, with its skyline of pea-sized structures suddenly feels gentle and soothing.

Still, while I am plowing through Wisconsin winters and pedaling along its country lanes in less harsh seasons, the city just to the south of me buffs and polishes the steel and glass structures of its downtown, throws in some splendid new ones and comes out looking quite nice, in a Chicago sort of way.





I’m here for just two nights and this time I am staying downtown. My daughters, ever savvy in the ways of the urban world, point me to the Wit (see photos above) – a wonderful hotel with the sound of birds in hallways and the El just outside, and with tall windowed walls in all rooms, looking out over the city beyond and below.










And I have to say, I am taken in by it all – as if the city, which has held for a while now sentimentally bittersweet memories, is coming back in another shape and form – the place where I can come back and watch my daughters perform their adult lives (one held a summer job here and the other is a frequent visitor, for work and family reasons).


Last night, we ate in the west of the Loop neighborhood, in a wonderful new place that is as steely glassy as the best of them (Province) and again I feel the pang of cool city life, as I stare at my terrific softshell crab and wonder why Madison’s restaurant foods have to be so repetitive (the menus in my sweet home town rarely change and hardly ever innovate).





After the early meal, we do what we have so often done in the past – go to hear the talent of Second City. A dozen years back, my daughters would be the youngest in the audience. Now, I feel like tapping them for an explanation of that line or the next one. They are suddenly the ones who are in command, tuned in to the nuance of the wit, while I trail behind, laughing with just a touch of delay.





The show ends at a decent hour and even though Chicago is the Midwest, it is the new urban Midwest, so that walking back alone at midnight seems hardly different than if it were four hours earlier. I remembered the night smell of a city, and on this warm summer walk, when the moon is as beautiful as it so often is back home, I remember how once, the city mesmerized me thoroughly and I swore I’d never move away from its squalor and magnificence.






This morning, I look out my 20th story windows and watch the sunlight do its weird city thing of moving into the narrow tunnel between tall buildings, only to disappear and show up elsewhere.





For the first time in a long long time, I like this place. I forgive it its grit and grimy past. I’m remembering that a huge part of me was fed round the clock city air. The taste for it has come back now. In small amounts, but it’s there. Like the candy bar that you go back to after a prolonged stray toward better foods.

midnight

Technically, I did not fit the post into the hours that, when piled together in a 24 unit heap, constitute Wednesday. I know that. As I made the call to walk from a late night stand-up comedy show to the downtown Chicago hotel where I'm staying, I knew I'd lose a "day" of posting. And I knew that Ocean readers are accustomed to this: I have been late in my posts before.

But I'll add this further injustice: I wont put up my story for the day until tomorrow. I owe you a better text than one I can compose now, in the wee hours of the night.

In the meantime, I'll put up just one photo -- something that I snapped with my little camera as I finally crossed the river - during the last quarter mile on my long walk home to the hotel.





It all seems so darn twinkly and bright and this just really goes to show that, in a city, the texture and feel to a set of blocks can change very very quickly.

tight knit

Small town folks often think that they form a tightly knit community. But I wonder: what does that even mean? That they track each others comings and goings? I believe that.

I think of Warsaw as a tightly knit community. And I think of Madison as not especially tight, though it is a very generous and forgiving (for the most part) community. At the very least, we tend to smile at each other's eccentricities. For instance, this morning, at our local grocery store, a customer brought in her dog, just to show it off. Now, it’s probably in violation of the health code to walk in with a dog (we’re not French after all), but this woman carried her little pooch in and we all admired the dog properly, so that she could walk away with pride.





Elsewhere, she may have been called names. Or politely escorted to the door. Or to a waiting van. Here, we smiled.


At the shop on the corner, I did my share of smiling at people. But, that's work. One smiles at customers. America expects it. By contrast, you should not look for the vendor to smile, say, in Poland. The market economy has not made a significant dent in the demeanor of the sales clerk yet. She or he appear forever to be at odds with the world, or at least their position in it.


If I had to apply the word "tight" to any one set of people, I'd say it describes well my wee family. Very tight. [But not exclusive. There's a difference.]

Tonight, after another late night at the shop, my daughters, Ed and I ate at one the family favorites: Sardine.





And tomorrow, as each summer, I am following daughters to Chicago, where, for at least a day or two, we'll romp and play. In a very tight-knit way.

Communities are formed by grouping people together, right? We were once grouped under a roof and now here we are, still banding together at every opportunity. Amazing (and lovely) how that works.

missing cyber calm

Once you move past middle age (don’t ask me to define it – you’ll know when you’re there), if you’re like so many of us, you suddenly have an opportunity to sit back and chill out.

If you’ve been reading your own internal meter well, you understand that you are neither as smart as you once thought you were, not as stupid as you once feared you could become. You know which words provoke and which words help to calm things down. You know what not to say even though sometimes you’re tempted to blurt it all out.

You are at a point where life (baring tragedy) can be very smooth and you have the power to make it even smoother.

So you wake up in the morning, and if the Times is right, you (like me) turn on your laptop and you check things out: email, facebook, blogs – your favorites, to jumpstart your day.

And aren’t you just shocked at how agitated and blood-thirsty the world of cyberspace postings has become? It’s harder and harder to find the careful writers who worry about getting their story and their words out in the best possible way. Mostly, the concerns seem to be with getting every last angry syllable out before someone beats you to it.


Ah well. It could be that I am regretting too much the hour spent this morning on Net readings. By the time I pushed my sweet Mac Book aside, I was drowning from an overload of others’ bad vibes.

And after? The day simply disappeared. My watch tells me I am just about into the next day now. Sure, that makes sense. I finished my moonlighting stint just a few hours ago. Daughters and Ed pulled me out for a late meal at the Old Fashioned, where even after 10, it was loud enough that you could bring a howling dog and no one would notice.

We ate sandwiches and salads and I could feel the tension dribble out of me so that when we left, I was again drifting in mellow straights.

I leave you with a photo of an amused, but less chilled Ed. I would guess that for him, segueing from a quiet shed with two cats to a loud dining hall with three happily animated women is as tough a transition as the one I face each morning now as I turn on my computer.






But I'll say this: loud good cheer at the Old Fashioned is far calmer than quiet ill-temper of a cyber fight over one issue or another. Truly, I wish the Net was a sweeter place. In the alternative, I'll settle for a Door cherry salad with blue cheese and salmon anytime.

small talk

(My occasional traveling companion, Ed, returns unexpectedly early from canoeing up north on the Boundary Waters.)
Was it beautiful?
Sure, in an unchanging sort of way. Lots of conifers.
I’m glad you found the peace and quiet that you love… wild camping…
Well, actually, the campsites are quite frequently used. Not too many breaks in the forest.
But no people out on the waters?
Not too many… Saw some groups, one was a whole pack of canoeing women… Paddling together and singing "Kumbaya."
There! Soulmates! Wilderness loving women like yourself!
(eye roll)
How old? -- my daughter asks.
Actually they were kid type people with a few counselors thrown in...

(Earlier, at the Farmers Market, from the flower vendor.)
Are you still with that guy?
(I want to ask her to narrow that down a little, but I quickly remind myself that only Ed has consistently made the rounds with me at the market.)
Yes, he’s up north canoeing this week.
You don’t like canoeing?
I don’t like canoeing for several weeks in a row. Without access to the outside world.
(I buy the flowers and leave, but then come back to take a photo. The vendor, not seeing me, explains to the other seller – it’s sort of remarkable. He’s this crotchety guy and they… I back away. It’s good not to hear things by accident. Even as I know that Ed is not crotchety. But, Ed is Ed.)

(Taking out my iPhone with great joy, I show off to Ed its many many delightful applications.)
Can you use it in Europe?
I don’t know, I think so.
But you have to unlock it (this from a daughter, who knows such stuff) and if you do that, you lose Apple’s protection.
When are we going to Europe? I ask. But I know the answer for me. Not this year.


The sky outside is yellow gray. Stormy. As if a slow motion flash was ripping through the dark day. Breakfast is late, as daughters on vacation tend not to rush the beginning of the day (we rarely stray from the habit of having the first and last meals of the day together). Lunch follows quickly after, dinner will have to be exceptionally early. I’ll grill trout outside and then rush down the hill. My evening is given over to the shop where we are to do inventory until every midnight.

On the horizon, there is a break. Not from work, not immediately, but from the storm.

in the heat of the day

It’s hard to believe that five months from now I’ll long for this:





…but I will.

Because the rain came down hard on the poor vendors at the Madison farmers markets, we, the tardy market shoppers, had the full array of produce to pick from when we finally crawled out of our lairs (who wants to leave home when it's pouring rain?) and made our way to the food stalls.















The photos aren’t from my wonderful Westside Community Farmers Market across the street. The irony is that my local market is too convenient for a Saturday visit when my daughters are in town. They like the longer, more convoluted journey down to the Capitol Square, the slow amble among dozens and dozens of stalls, the buying of the baked goods at the place where I used to roll croissant dough for market day (l’Etoile) – all that is, for them, part of the joy of being back home.


With a wee bit of guilt, but with the inevitable pleasure of being downtown yet again, we make our way around the Square. And because it is raining (you did bring an umbrella, didn’t you? No, did you? No, not me either…), the crowds are less dense and the walk is more leisurely and really, who would even care about the wetness: it is as if someone poured a bucket of water on the produce to rinse it a little. Making it shiny. Fresh and honest.










Because it’s summer and because weather system number one came and went and we’re onto weather system number two, the rains are long gone by evening and hot air has (finally) blanketed our state. A Florida moment, you might say: humid and clammy.

As I said, five months from now I’ll be wishing it was August 7th.

blogging on a rainy day

I’ve been blogging long enough (daily, for 5.5 years) that I have given some thought, at various points, to what I am doing and why I’m doing it. I started carelessly, in imitation of bogs that I liked, but I hope that over the years I have been more deliberate, less rash, less audience driven.

The Internet has no editors or censors. Bloggers develop their own parameters of what’s right, what’s appropriate. When you first post, it’s like having your youthful alcoholic beverage – you don’t know the limits. Smart bloggers learn quickly enough where not to go.



It’s a rainy day. I don’t have evening work hours at the shop to overwhelm my schedule. It’s also the opening night of Julie and Julia, the movie about the blogger and the cook.

Well of course I would be looking forward to it! We buy three tickets to the very first show. So early that we take coffee rather than popcorn into the theater.





Did I like the movie? Yes, of course. Quite a lot, in fact. But what stuck in my head afterward was the little vignette introduced toward the end of the film, when it becomes evident that Julia Child was not keen on endorsing Julie Powell's blog. (In case you haven’t followed the trailers, the premise of the story is this: Julie writes a daily blog about a year of cooking from Julia Child’s fantastically wonderful book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking.)

My initial reaction to this little piece of the story was sadness. I admire Julia Child tremendously. I have her books, I’ve read her biography, I’ve laughed at her audaciousness. I don’t want to think of her as dismissive toward a plucky, insignificant blogger.

But when you think of it, is it wrong to be cautious about endorsing a puny, inconsequential (at least before Nora Ephron got her hands on it) blog like Julie's? Especially if, like Julia Child, you possess a superb talent and you have devoted years of effort to the presentation of your cooking ideas, for others to enjoy?



It’s still raining outside. Late in the evening, I’m cooking again. For daughters. It’s not a big production, but it’s some of our favorites – rosti (a potato dish of Swiss origin), beef in mustard sauce, spicy corn. I’m not an especially creative cook, but I’m plenty competent, in the way that people who have cooked daily dinners from fresh ingredients for some thirty-five years are bound to be competent enough.

Then I blog. Competently, in the way that people who have blogged daily from fresh ingredients for some five plus years are bound to be competent enough. Think of a theme, type, edit and post. How hard is that...

Sometimes, like cooking from scratch, it’s very, very hard. And sometimes, like a souffle, a post can flop. And you can kick it under the table and hope that tomorrow you'll be sharper and just that much more insightful. Like trying for a better souffle. Only you don't have fifteen years to improve it. Just a day. Never more than a day.

to be (at the) fair

I’ve only been to the Wisconsin State Fair once before. Nine years ago, my daughters had some commitment there and I tagged along. I was overwhelmed. Thinking that fairs were, well, small things – with maybe a few prize pies and pen of fat pigs – I wasn’t prepared for any of it.

But I have learned. Based on that one experience, I can say this much: fairs are really a composite of three things: animals, carnival rides and fried foods.

My daughters love all three.

(For latecomers to Ocean, my daughters are 28 and 24 years old. They're home for a vacation break.)

Animals, rides, food: I can deal with it. I can photograph animals, nibble on foods and say no thanks to every ride. If they beg, I'll cave on the Ferris Wheel. I can handle a slow descent.

We set out for the State Fair on this warm and partly sunny afternoon (the fair is in Milwaukee). Yes, yes, it is the opening day. We’re enthusiastic. We’re also swayed by such draws as discounted admission on the first day for those who bring food for pantries, collected by the Hunger Task Force.

I wont write more. It's past midnight and I am absolutely fried. Let me run you through our State Fair pictorially. Remember, you're here to see animals, rides, and (fried) foods. Blissfully consumed by two young women (with a supporting cast of other Fair attendees) who love all this stuff with a passion.



fried jalapeno cheddar





the Fair's signature dish: cream puffs





the finishing touches





let me tell you something: people are odd





the youngest Fair attendee?





waiting for the race of the pigs





shaving the goat legs





the ribbon for the "most attractive swine"





a break from the animal world





mama goat, nuzzling





one incarnation of a potato dish





another incarnation of a potato dish





State Fair means corn (I demonstrate the art of eating it)





daughters demonstrate the art of wolfing down deep friend mac and cheese





others show off a common State Fair dessert





fried dough tootsies are supremely popular





from each county: prize winning cows





and hens. and roosters.





don't forget about the rides: daughter in yellow dress laughs loudly





ultimately, though, the Wisconsin State Fair is about the cream puff.

cash

Last night I soloed. Not in an airplane, no not that. In something far more daring: I kept the shop running alone all evening and, at the end, I closed it up.

There are 68 steps to follow in the shutting of the store for the night (I kid you not), but they are written by a person with a degree in retail and so you can assume that they make sense. After a couple of nights watching others do it, I was ready.

Except on step number 45, I stalled. The cash did not add up. I counted again. Same totals, same problem. I could, I thought, document the discrepancy and move to step number 46. But once large amounts are missing (it was nobody's fault - a system malfunction), the remaining 23 steps are affected (well, not the last: I can still do step number 68 – turn on the alarm and scoot off). I stumbled along, compounding the errors I’m sure, while daughters waited patiently outside.

We ate dinner closer to midnight than the preferred earlier hour.


This morning, I went to the market and I looked on with envy as vendors conducted their business. The beauty is in the simplicity of it all: they set out their flowers, their produce…










They take in the money, placing it in an apron pocket or a cash box…










And at the end of the day they either grin at their good fortunes or sigh with disappointment, but from my point of view, their two steps to the sale (take in money and count it) make theirs a far more pleasurable marketplace. (I’m not even going to mention what must be the joy of selling something that a customer can’t return for a store credit. One that two minutes later they turn around and use on you. With the balance going to a credit card. Or cash. Or both. Unless they decide it’s all too much and so they have you start all over again. Have a wonderful evening! You too!)


Tonight I am to work at the shop again and I now regard it in the way that the woman attacked by a distempered raccoon regards the woods: a once gentle place suddenly appears hostile and threatening, full of wild beasts ready to pounce. Except my raccoons are sitting somewhere in a corporate office far away, outlining my steps and putting together a track of music that I have to listen to. Over and over. Wondering what surprise attack the cash box holds for me at the end of the long day.

Ah well. Work is work. Even if conducted in a pretty environment, one with the soft colors and scents of summer.