from Ghana

(Sunday) the heavens let loose

A hazy morning sun. Big lizards on a wall, basking in the heat.





For breakfast, you pick up -- whatever. Cornflakes for me. And mmmmm mango.

The woman who helps at the home base comes and goes. I’m thinking maybe visiting a church would be a good thing to do here on a Sunday morning. (I know, surprising, coming from me.) Everything is closed now, the day is warm. Last night, I had asked at the Internet café if they open on Sundays. After church, he tells me. When will that be? Twelve maybe? Or two? They hate to be tied down by a clock here.

She’s happy to escort us to her own church – the Revival Assemblies of God in Hoho. She’s used to it. Herding volunteers. There goes Ata with yevu yevu.

At her church she tells us to sit with the English school group. There is a lesson before service and today the discussion is about this “Central Truth:” That God has the final say in choosing those who should work for him. And it’s a back and forth, and the very small group (the other dialects command larger crowds) tosses ideas about what God would like to see in a leader. Some people offer ideas, some take notes.

The service follows. It is... lively. It’s in Ewe, with an English translation. And sometimes it’s in English, with an Ewe translation. All of it is filled with music and movement. They sing, they dance, they pray, hands raised, they sway to the music, rhythmically, emotionally.


 


When the dancing snakes to the front, our hostess (who is so good at telling us when to take photos and when to hold still) asks us to move with the rest. The white people are dancing. Halleluja.

I ask the volunteer program director later – so what do they think of Americans here? You have to wonder. The only white people I see are the volunteers. Our director deftly answers – in Accra, they would recognize the idea of you being “American.” But not here. In the villages, you are simply white people.

So what do they think of white people here? 

They are curious.

Fact is, Ghana is a friendly country. It’s how they describe themselves – the social means more than the commercial. If you set out somewhere, set aside time to talk, because rushing a spontaneous verbal exchange is rude.

We walk back from church in the heat of noon. There is no shade in Hohoe.





Children. Let me tell you about the little ones here. What stands out – and everyone who comes here will say this – is how happy they are. They play, yes, simple things: poke at a pile of earth. Watch the people go by. Chase each other. And the little ones always beg for a picture. Photo! Photo! -- they beg, and if you show them the result, they burst into spasms of laughter.





This little guy was the shy one. His mother urged him to come up and ask for it, urged him so strongly, helping him inch forward, but in the end he couldn't. I see him and take the photo and show him the result, and he smiles, but in the end he is more fascinated by the entire event of having an exchange of this sort with yevu – white person.





Lunch. We eat outside, because it’s cooler in the shade than in the house. Good foods. Rice, chicken, beans, mango. Mmmmmm mango.





In the afternoon, we have the long long informational meeting. There is a lot to consider. When we begin our review of our placements, I have a lot of questions to ask. One reason I was so keen on coming here is because I teach Comparative Family Law back home and I talk about the interplay of culture, religion and the imported laws in certain African and Asian countries where that relationship is very complicated. And I teach too about another set of complicated issues – international adoption, from both the perspective of the sending nations (Ghana is one) and the receiving ones (the US, for example).

And it surprised me how quickly this subject threw itself in my lap on this trip: I had been standing in line to board at JFK and behind me, a white woman was explaining to someone next to her that she was going to see the sister of her daughter ("the daughter" is a girl she had adopted from Ghana a few years back). The sister still lives in Ghana with the mother. “The mother means well. She is not like the mothers in the States who abuse or neglect their children. She just cannot provide.” Uff... I’ll not comment. Let me just tell the story as it presented itself to me. And it continued. Are you going to adopt the sister? – the other person asked. “I don’t know. Maybe. God will show me the way.”

At the home base, Maskafui, our director, confirms that many women here do not fully understand what it means when a foreigner comes to adopt. They don’t get the loss of control, the severance of ties. And the orphanages are a mixed bag too. They’re fairly recent and some are good and they work with extended families and some are not so good and they children come and go and it is suggested that in places, there may be an exchange of money involved.

But we’re interrupted. Distant thunder turns into torrential rains. With balls of hale. The heavens release cool, refreshing buckets of rain. The locals will be happy. The volunteers rejoice.





The dry dirt roads are quickly flooded.





Evening. Dinner of noodles and a very delicious, spicy spinach, yams -- very white, very large, very stachy. And mango.





And yes, finally, after dinner I hurry to the Internet café, making my way between puddles on the dirt road.










And the connection is slow, but I am able to upload some and download some and after an hour, I feel once again, in this meager way, connected to home.

I walk back in the dark, flashlight illuminating the ditches and puddles. Makafui warns us: flash those lights! We have snakes, we have scorpions. All the snakes here are dangerous. Don’t step on one!

from Ghana

(Saturday) Arriving in Hohoe

Hey, that was no small feat! Running to catch various flight connections, then sitting for hours on the Ghana bound plane when it became clear that a passenger needed urgent medical attention, and then of course waiting for a few more hours as the airline tried to locate the proper suitcases that had to be removed with him. Then came the ten hours of bouncing around in the air, and finally we land in Accra. There is only one other commercial airplane here, a Virgin Atlantic, standing off to the side.

We crowd into the small airport, go through one set of formalities, then another, and yet another, and now we’re done and ready to go.

There’s a handful of us traveling to Hohoe to take part in the volunteer efforts here (as I said, nearly all much younger than me) and we are picked up by a van, driven by a local man who lives in the village next to ours.

There are several notable things about the drive from Accra to Hohoe. Three immediately stand out: first, at any point along the road where the driver is forced to slow down (say because we’re passing through a village, or because there are random bumps, or there is a police blockade), a swarm of sellers congregates at our side, hoping to entice with anything from grilled foods to shoes, socks and toilet paper.

Our driver cannot resist a stick of grilled...something.





These mobile venders are there, in addition to the village stands, so often selling mangoes, pineapple and banana, but really almost anything you could think of. One boy is trying to sell a dead animal which he dangles by the tail – looks like a rat, but I think there is another name for it here and yes, apparently some like it for dinner. There isn’t much traffic once you are out of Accra, and there isn’t a lot of buying either. But there is a lot of selling.


And as perhaps you would have guessed, most transport of goods -- purchased or sold – is not by cart, car nor bike – it’s on foot, carried on the head.





So far, I’m only snapping photos from the veering, rocking, bumping van, so please forgive the limited nature of what I have to offer.


 


It was a fascinating ride! And – my second point – it was a long ride. Some four hours. On – my third point – a pavement that is so potholed that really you must understand exactly how to weave around them or you risk losing some portion of your car to the road irregularities.





And finally I’m in Hohoe – our home base. In the Upper Volta region of Ghana. They say in this region you’ll find the highest concentration of Peace Corps volunteers, but we are not that, we’re here for short spells, filling in a need here, providing a small service there, teaching and learning, too, about a culture that is as foreign to us as ours is to them. It's not much, but you get the feeling that here, not much is very much indeed.

Home base: we sleep in rooms with bunk beds and mosquito netting. And fans, when the electricity is working. And sometimes there’s a trickle of cold running water and sometimes there is not.

Did I mention how hot it is? Temperature-wise, we’re only in the low nineties, but it is beastly humid. And so the first thing we do is strip down to acceptable levels of disattire. And within a short time, I set out for the village center, in search of an Internet café.

(Saturday) First evening in Hohoe

Well, the search for Internet fails. I have a few hours before the 6 o’clock dinner, and I do try, even though in the surrounding hills there is the rumble of thunder and they say surely it will rain. I set out on my own, computer in sack, taking my fist poke around the village.










But the thunder in the hills means that the electricity in the township is taking a pause (surely that is to be expected?). And even though I find a little hut with four computers in it and the shopkeeper is thrilled to have me sit down and try to hook up, he admits that he now has power, but the Internet is down. How long? Shrug.

Dinner at the home base. There are two cooks from the village who take turns preparing meals for the volunteers. They are careful about matters of hygiene, which is good because no one wants to get sick, and especially not right away, And the food is delicious! Pan fried potatoes, beans, lettuce and tomatoes and pieces of chicken. And the ubiquitous here, the hands down most delicious you have ever tasted mango. (Step aside pineapple, the mango wins!) We have a large supply of bottled water and some people throw sweetened flavors into it, but for me, this is just so perfect with the sweetness of mango still in my mouth, that I am completely satisfied with the first solid meal here.

I tell my fellow volunteers that I would like to try the Internet café again. One volunteer who has worked here for a week already, tells us there is actually a second place as well, on the other side of town and even though it’s dark and we are all so tired after the night and day of travel, we set out, flashlights pointing to the ruts and ditches, until we are on the main road again and we can see by the lights coming from the huts and passing cars.

The village road is not at all empty. And there are children everywhere! Young infants wrapped around a mother’s back, toddlers trailing after an older brother or sister. Children who look at us and smile and shout to their grownups in Ewe – yevu! Yevu! white person! White person! And they run up and touch me, take my hand for a second and smile and smile. Yevu! Yevu! The grownups smile and greet too, but they are more worldly than their babies. They have seen, thorough travels to Accra and yes, television, far beyond the village of Hohoe.

It’s a long walk and we do reach both shops with the computers, but the Internet (dialup, I am told) remains unavailable.

It’s 8:30 when we come back the home base again. I try to run some water in the tub, but it is a mere trickle now. Still, I am so sticky from the heat and the bug creams and days of travel, that I persevere. I fill a small bucket with the trickle and when I finally get enough to allow for a good rinse, I let the cool water run down my face and then down my scalp and back and you’d be surprised how much cleaning even a small amount of water will accomplish.

And now I really have to sleep. The young volunteers all slept far better than I did on the plane and I am so tired that I wonder if this itself will keep me from sleeping well.

It does. I’m under the nets and there is a fan blowing straight at the bunk bed so that I can feel the movement of air. I doze off for an hour and wake up confused and hot. I will myself to continue, knowing that it is going to be a project. Another hour of drifting through the surreal land of half sleep and now I am really awake and I wonder if it’s because there is enough air moving beneath those nets. Of course, there is plenty of air, but the minute you wonder, you soon conclude that there is not. I think – is it possible that I will be here a week and not sleep at all? Or only in spurts, when I drift off, only to waken again?

I am not a person who hates hot still air and here I have a fan not too far, and still, the net is the final clamp against the free circulation of oxygen that one takes for granted on the hottest days back home.

But I think about the street village walk and I think about the beautiful fabrics that women here use for dresses – long dresses wrapped around their proud and tall bodies (straight from years of carrying things on their heads) and those thoughts about the dresses and fabrics make me forget about the nets and thick hot air and I’m off to sleep. A good and fitful sleep at last.

off to Hohoe

And so I head out to Ghana. There are, to my knowledge, only two direct flights from the United States to Accra, Ghana’s capital, and one of them leaves from New York. I’m aiming to be on that flight, along with two others who are also heading for Hohoe – the village (township?) where we pick up our assignments.

My job will be at a school and orphanage. I’m to help the teachers at the local Happy Kids Foundation. Though Ghana is English speaking, in Hohoe, the people are most comfortable with Ewe. I’m to make English more accessible and to make them comfortable (or at least curious) about a different culture (the goals, as stated by the Happy Kids staff).

All that in a week. In the meantime, I surely will be happy if all my flights connect on time. Skies are blue, things look promising.

risk

There isn’t much risk to most of my travels. Oh, people always say “safe travels!” when they learn I’m venturing forward, but truly, going out on a winter drive along a Wisconsin highway is more risky than my more distant journeys.

But looking ahead to Ghana (next week) has been different. I am very much made aware of the risks.


After classes, I walk over to the lake. My last glance in the winter season. I didn’t think the ice was so solid anymore, but others obviously would disagree. Or, they’re merely more comfortable with risk.





The more cautious travelers to west Africa take precautions. They spray their clothes, they take anti-malaria medication, they eat no food from road vendors. I’m like that.

And so today, after work, I get the clothes ready, I pack them into a small carry on and then concentrate on getting the condo shiny and bright for showings while I’m gone

I’m too tired to say more.

Just one more detail: I leave tomorrow, with tight connections. Once in Ghana, I am relying on the word-of-mouth news that there is an accessible Internet café in the township (in the Volta Region – some four hours north of Ghana's capital) where I’ll be. All this sounds rather iffy and uncertain.

Please be patient. Sometimes one has to go places and do things even if they create an interruption in blogging.

I’ll do my best.

waking up to snow

What? Where did this come from??



(outside my bedroom window)


Oh, it’s pretty alright. The kind of scene which, in early December, would be dubbed – winter wonderland. No one’s using those words now.


We’re up and about early. I have classes, but I have one last coat of varnish to smear on three frames at the farmhouse.

We stop by Home Depot (opens at 6!) and Ed picks up yet another batch of electrical boxes and switches – for the rooms that haven’t the grounded outlets (they need GFC interrupters). He tells me the national standards are clearly spelled out – on 7000 pages. But, with Google, you can zero in on what you need to do in your particular space. I’m not fooled. He can. He has buried wires, built sheep sheds and designed machines. I can’t. There are many things you can easily pick up at the age of 57.85. Wiring an old house is probably not one of them.

The drive to the farmhouse is stunning. A near-spring wonderland!





Inside, the farmhouse looks fantastic! I can see through the rips and tears. I note the new steps emerging, and walls receiving their final patching and, upstairs, stretches of sheetrock.





It’s hard to tear myself away. Especially since I wont be returning here for at least ten days – I have heavy teaching on both ends of a week away.

One last glance, toward the sheep shed...





...at the farmhouse...





...and I’m off to campus. The snow is wet, too heavy to cling to wispy branches for long. Last big snow of the season. Maybe.

smell of spring and color of ballet

How do you want the door to open in the bathroom?

Say what?

From the left, or from the right? Andy wants to know.

I’m not fussy about door directions.

In the new bathroom configuration, opening it to the right makes it awkward to enter.

Well then, it’s easy: to the left!

The light switch is on the other side.

So the light switch will have to be shifted. I hate creating this extra work for Ed, but to opt for the easier path is really to let go of this one opportunity to set the house in order.

I make decisions sometimes over the phone, sometimes quickly, sometimes not so quickly at all. Take the color of paint: bleached linen or ballet white? I can’t help but think that bleached linen sounds just so right! Farmhouse-like. Who wants to paint the walls a color called “ballet”? And yet, when I pull out the samples, tough guys like Andy and Ed, and more gentle types like my daughter point to “ballet white.”

So, ballet it is.

In the meantime, there is a flurry of activity in the condo selling department. And there is a packed week of teaching. And there is Spring Break, which plucks me out of Wisconsin, beginning Friday.

Things are rather hectic.

I take a stroll between classes for my usual espresso. I know daylight savings time is coming around this week-end. Surely the lake is nearly at the melting point?





No, not yet. But there is a bounce in the air. A spring smell perhaps. Lovely.

Ed, it’s International Women's Day today.

You’re kidding, right?

No, really. In Poland, men give their female occasional traveling companions flowers and gifts.

Is there an International Men’s Day?

I don’t think so...

Let me check: here it is! November 19th.

That's bogus. But if you want, I’ll give you flowers and chocolates on November 19th.

Don’t you dare.

Oh well. I didn’t really expect flowers or chocolates today.

code

If you were to peg me as someone who approves or disapproves of regulations, I'd say hands down, I'm one who thinks the world needs oversight. We're too hell bent on doing right by ourselves to be trusted with looking out for the greater good of those around us. We need someone to remind us that the world may implode if we think only of our own purse strings.

But I do recognize that regulations can take you by surprise.  Take, for example, the rebuilding of a farmhouse. Ed is attending to the electrical issues. All the while, Andy is there to whisper the threatening word over his shoulder: code.

Consider the kitchen. We have talked about needed outlets. Ed will be wiring them. We've planned their placement. Very handy. Visually pleasing.  Andy tells him -- you wont survive the inspector. Thirty-nine inches here. The code says thirty-six. And you need an outlet at the side of the island.

Ed asks -- you mean I have to run a wire inside the cabinet and install and ugly useless outlet at the side? 

Yep. Code. 

It's not an island! It's a peninsula. 

Code.

I ask Ed for the logic behind the thirty-six inch rule and I'll admit it, it makes good sense: keep your appliance cords short, improve the value of housing, build to a standard. We've been too lax in paying attention to the greater good. Oops.

And then we come to the big one: Ed has finished the necessary fixes to the bathroom wiring. The overhead  light is repaired and adjusted, everything else is quite satisfactory from my point of view. Andy looks up with a knowing glance at the ceiling.  
Code, he says.
What did I do wrong?? Ed asks.

Where is the fan? 

We don't want a fan.
The code wants you to have a fan.

The kind with a vent. With a hole in the wall. It used to be that if you had a window in the bathroom, you were spared, but things have changed.


Me, I just do my small number on the window trim. Andy surveys the weekend staining job and sympathizes with my struggles with pine. Can it pass as kind of a rough country look maybe? I ask with the hope of gaining his approval.


Before class, I slab on a coat of polyurethane on the last three windows. I tell Andy I'm in my crossover clothing: from construction work to classroom.





If there is a code for dressing to teach, I have to admit, for the most part,  I've ignored it. Neat, comfortable and warm. My guiding principles. The rules are so much more complicated when you're rebuilding an old house.

wndow on the world

What time does Home Depot open today? Eight? Good. Let’s go. I need more paint brushes.


By nine I’m at the farmhouse...


 


...applying polyurethane to yesterday’s windows and conditioner to the next batch – the downstairs lot.

I’m wearing a mega mask. The fumes are getting otherwordly and (therefore) dangerous.

We both work tirelessly on our various projects for the day .

And we have visitors! Two sets! Curious friends and a sundry daughter, all wanting to see where this is heading. And I think to myself – that’s right. It’s Sunday and it’s wonderful that on Sunday someone should pause here merely to chat and inquire about how the season is unfolding. Someday, I'll be able to offer them bread and cheese and maybe lemonade or rosé, depending on their inclination.

Except that, of course, I have nothing to offer today. Just the stench of polyurethane and dust covered chairs.

In the early afternoon Ed and I take a break. We hop into the truck and chase down an armoire in Sun Prairies (some half hour drive). The farmhouse has nothing by way of shelves or cupboards and so one must supplement. It’s a small piece, with a missing backboard, but it’ll keep my summer tshirts and winter turtlenecks in their neatly stacked piles. $80 okay? Yep.

I tell Ed we must hurry back. We’re already at that time of day when the grays seem especially gray (as gray as the sandhill crane in a March field)...





I have more windows to stain, some to seal and I have so few hours in the days before me.

I work into the late evening. It's very very dark when we finally pick up a pizza and head home. Condo home. It's good to leave it all behind and retreat to a well ordered world at the end of the day.

window work

The post is going to be about the farmhouse. So scurry off if you’ve had it with the reconstruction theme.

The morning rounds: Menards, Home Depot, farmhouse. Light fixtures. More light fixtures. Change of heart on the kitchen track. Dimmers. Ed is willing to install dinners. But dimmers don’t necessarily work with CF lights.It's all beginning to spin.

Noon. Finally. At the farmhouse. I start my work. Sand, clean, condition, stain. (Polyurethane tomorrow.)





The stain is blotchy. The conditioner was to keep it even, but it isn’t even. Sigh...


One window frame at a time. No pause, no interruptions. It takes more than an hour for each.

Five windows done. Should I stop? The sun is setting now. I can see it through the plastic coated (still from the lumbermill) glass.





I persevere. I can’t really see what I’m doing anymore. I walk away from a window only to retrace my steps. Did I really do the sill? It seems oddly pale. Let me redo it.

And now it’s dark. Ed has soldered basement posts and reconfigured two air vents. He retreats to his shed, but I’m still at it. The second bedroom has a single bulb in the ceiling and I work to its light. I’m not even sure if I’m thorough or precise, I just want to finish staining the upstairs frames.

I’m done.

There are a million stars out tonight. It’s cold again, yes, there’s that, but it is a bright and beautiful night.

We get in Ed’s little Geo and head out to Braserrie V for moulles frites.

putty

Early in the day, a dove sat down on my outdoor flowerpot and twiddled and fidgeted while another, her partner perhaps, watched from above.





Spring?

But why such a string of gray days?! With a haze at dusk, I’m reminded of a coastal climate. Have we run through our allotment of gentian blue winter skies?





After work, I head for the farmhouse.

Progress!





It’s time that I get started on the windows. There are only nine new ones, but there’s a lot of pine there to prep, stain and seal.

The light is fading. I’m fading too. My entire work effort this evening consists of filling nail holes with putty.

Ed, in the meantime, is running wires behind walls. This way, down here, across that way. We work in our beloved silence. And it is quiet at the farmhouse. The creak of a floor board, nothing more.

huts

The day is gray, work starts early and ends very late, the mind is reeling, the body feels stiff. I read that mice appreciate exercise, well, I appreciate exercise too. I just do not have much time for it.

I do break for a midday coffee. I walk down the hill, hoping for the exhilarating feeling of spring, but it is not spring, and does not feel like spring, and so I may as well put the camera away and get my espresso and hurry back up Bascom Hill.

Though I do notice two huts on Library Mall. Food huts are a sign of better times. They tell me that very soon, this campus, this city will look much much better than they look today.

stain

I do not know why I imagined that having an hour or so in the morning would allow me to make inroads into the staining/sealing of farmhouse window trim and frames project.

It doesn’t. Ed and I spend the better part of that hour at Home Depot studying the choices. If you use this conditioning product, you must use that stain. And with that stain, only this polyurethane is appropriate. And by the way, for this polyurethane you need a mask, or bare the risk brain damage. Ed has a mask. But the filter is getting raunchy. Home Depot doesn’t stock the right filter.

The easiest part was selecting color. Cherry. Why not.

Still, we make progress. We now have cans of product and sandpaper and tape and sponges.

At the farmhouse I put forth one last effort at soliciting help (Andy? Grandson of Andy? Ed? Ed???) but they all tip-toe out of earshot. Because, I’m finding out, it sucks to stain window trim and frames.

I linger long enough to admire the demolition and now, finally, the baby steps toward construction. The ceiling in the kitchen is basically in shreds...





...but the door frames upstairs are going up and the floor boards are being replaced in places where they are basically worthless. Or nonexistent.





It is a cold day and all that had melted outside is now frozen and hard to walk across. But, the sun is out and the skies are blue and the men work and the woman dallies over her window trim, then goes off to teach her classes.

a new month

Welcome to March. The good month. The underappreciated month. Criticized up north, where it seems to portend not of spring, but of feisty, gusty torrents of rain. Or snow.

Oh, but today was a beautiful day! On Bascom Hill, the snow is trickling down in a wet stream. Imagine: in a month (or two), there will be students lounging on the grassy incline.





Such lovely thoughts. I take my coffee break down the hill and I detour to take a look at the nearly thawed lake.





Okay, it’s not nearly thawed, but certainly it is almost nearly thawed. We are days from the spring season!


I like to keep my spirits up on days when the teaching load is big.

In the meantime, Ed, Andy and Andy’s grandson are mending a broken house. It’s impossible for me to make it over there today, but I hope to scoot down tomorrow to admire their progress. I hear stories of broken plaster from past bathroom leaks, of toppled ceilings. Of boulders being moved up and floorboards being nailed down to fill gaping holes.

My own contributions are to start late tomorrow as I attempt to sand, prep, stain and seal the window frames. Am I worried? Nahhh. No one expects me to do a good job. I go at it with very few building skills.

I’ll keep you informed.

public transportation

So another week begins. A little unusual for me: I wake up in Chicago and I hurry to the El so that I can catch the early bus to Madison.

I’m going against the traffic. The people on the other side are heading downtown. My bus leaves from the airport.





I think how luxurious it is to be so completely relying on public transportation. On the El, I close my eyes and let myself go limp as the train sways one way then the other. Then, on the bus to Madison, I open up my breakfast (granola bar, banana, coffee) and take out my computer and get to work. The sun, streaming to my right, is pale, in the way that morning suns are, but so very lovely. It’s doing its job well – much of the snow in southern Wisconsin is melting.

Monday is a long day for me. I don’t end classes until most everyone in the building has left for the day. But it’s not dark outside when I leave the law school. On the busride home I close my eyes again and exhale. Everyone should be so lucky as to have a bus pick them up and carry them home. Almost to the doorstep.

Lovely rides. Someone drives, I review the day and think about the next hour. I’m almost sorry when my stop is the next one and I have to make my way to the exit.

watching

Late Friday. We continue to eat our way through the evening...





...and we catch up.

But it becomes late for me, even as it is still so very early for her. On week-ends, the overlap in the waking hours of my daughters and myself is actually quite limited.

Indeed, I wake up Sunday morning at my usual six, force myself to stay sleepy until seven and then settle in to do work after that. By ten, I think surely my family will want to get going. No, not yet. And so I set out for a long walk alone.

I take the El downtown and I do what I most love to do Sundays – I go to a public park.





In these morning hours, the sky is brilliant (it does not last)! Truly stunning.

I walk over to the Art Institute, toy with the idea of paying their hefty entrance fee, and decide against it today. I just want to walk. The city is spinning a little in my head. It’s reminding me of years when I lived here.





Across the river, down Michigan Avenue, but then I hesitate. I don’t need to go to Chicago's retail heart. Let me head back to my daughter’s neighborhood. I cut across one street, then another and as I back away from the downtown, I crisscross blocks and communities that seem almost forgotten.





When I moved to this city in the early seventies, I thought the place was ... difficult. Now, I’m a tad more optimistic. Much has changed. To a degree.





I keep walking. Up Grand, north on Milwaukee.

I pass the Polish Museum. I’d spend some time there thirty-five years ago, when I thought I’d be writing a dissertation on the transformations within the Polish community. Today the place looks sadly neglected. Not surprised. The Polish community is dispersed. Even as, within minutes, I hear Polish from the one passerby who is, as I am, walking the streets of West Chicago.

There isn’t a concentration of Poles here anymore. The one sign of a Polish presence is probably imported from elsewhere in Chicago. Funny to see a Polish film festival here on this day of America's big movie awards.






Evening comes. Oscar night. We open boxes of Thai take-out and settle in for the show.

red shirts and huts of Wisconsin, white flakes of Chicago

As I make my way from the local bus to the Library Mall (where I hope to catch the Chicago-bound bus), I come across two dogs that support Wisconsin.





I’m not sure if there is one special aspect of Wisconsin that they especially want to stand behind since the t-shirts proclaiming their loyalty appear a tad bunched on their backs and so I can't read everything on them, but these dogs are so lovely to behold, all in scrunched-up red, that they are almost as popular among the crowd as the main speaker.

Almost but not quite. The speaker is our Congresswoman, Tammy Baldwin, and she is addressing a crowd of members and backers of Fair Wisconsin (the advocacy organization that stands behind LGBT rights – a word of fair disclosure: I have contributed money to this group).





Fair Wisconsin is about to lead a march down State Street to the Capitol, to express solidarity with the unions under attack here, and probably with unions in general. I listen for a while and would have listened longer (again, fair disclosure: I voted For Tammy Baldwin and I like to hear what my representatives have to say on any number of issues, and I, too, support unions), but I do have a bus to catch and so I leave the group and head toward the stop.

The bus stops at Memorial Union, which, most of you will know, is by Lake Mendota. If ever spring felt distant, it is in that one long glance over the frozen waters of the lake. I see that the ice fishermen are still sitting in their red Wisconsin huts. Fair disclosure: I’m hoping that their season of ice fishing will end very quickly and that with one big heave, the ice will soon melt and we’ll be done with this nasty stretch of cold weather.





But, I know better. It’s my 32nd winter in this state. March does not necessarily bring with it real spring.

So, down to Chicago I go, to visit my younger daughter. The excuse is to watch the Oscars together tomorrow. The real purpose is to be in her sweet, gentle company for a day or two.



I get off the El. There is an ever so light snow falling over Chicago.





My girl and I sit down for a late lunch. It's so much better to talk across the table than by phone!





The room empties. The place is ready to close. We walk home, dusting off white flakes off our coats.

loaded down

If you’re going to do farmhouse restoration, expect to do a lot of lifting and carrying. Heavy things. Boulders in basements, beams, old tubs come down, pails of dirt go out. Bricks. Lots of old chipped bricks. Floor boards, cement bags.

Ed’s done the bulk of it. At sixty, he can still lift things that three of me could not lift.





It’s hard work. Soon to be replaced with dull work as we take on the electrical switches. But, it’s good to see the house propped up and nailed back together. And we have a good team with a hefty amount of experience. Andy and his grandson have done construction work all their adult lives. They know their nails.





(How is it that Ed’s the worst dressed of the lot? He tells me that the jeans are only now coming into their own.)

And speaking of nails, I admired a set. In rows. For a nail gun I’m told. Here, next to the bronze statue.





Ed’s mother was an artist and her art – paintings and sculptures – at the moment is propped up in various rooms of the farmhouse. Bare rooms, unfinished rooms. Now with construction tools and figures made of bronze.

Having never gutted a building this old (okay, having never gutted any building), I didn’t realize that it is much like going for your medical checkup when you haven’t seen a doctor for decades. One thing leads to another and before you know it, you need tests, surgery and two limbs removed, or at least replaced in parts. At the farmhouse, the chimney’s out. This reveals the inadequate support that has always characterized the building. As walls come down and warped door frames are removed, a rotting floorboard comes out of hiding. And so on.

You cannot be in a hurry. The house wont let you rush through the job.

But, the day is delightfully buoyant. That late February light is playing across the fields and you can’t help but be thrilled at the sight of this older farmstead, there, in the grove of fruit trees and weeping willows, with a tall silo, plainly visible through the bare branches.





They say the sap will start running in about two weeks. And soon after, surely a few crocuses will sprout. Thrilling thoughts. Energizing. For all those hauls with heavy loads.

switches and such

We are in that period of farmhouse renovation when things look a lot worse, so that, if all goes well, things will eventually be better.

Classes ended for the week and I hurried – literally ran – to get home so that I could make the drive to the farmette before Andy quit for the day. I missed him by 5 minutes. And maybe that’s a good thing. Ed tells me that Andy is limping badly. I think he’s working too hard. At the same time that I’m thrilled that he’s putting this much effort into the project.

Since Andy was gone for the day, I walked through the house slowly, quietly, taking in the progress of the past two days.

The floors have all received additional support, which means that with the hoisting of the house, the walls have all cracked substantially. Which is a good thing, in the long run.

Upstairs, the wall surrounding the former chimney is so brittle and thin that you can take your pinky and bounce it around some.





Hey, at least the outdoor birds are crazily chirpy... A nice momentary distraction from the work at hand.





I take out my pad and Ed and I walk through all the rooms and take note of electrical outlets. They need to be changed. Eliminate this switch. Replace that one. Definitely change that one. And so on. Such a small farmhouse, and yet there are 19 switches (some double, some single), and 29 outlets, most of them it seems to me, concentrated in one room, unfortunately not the bedroom.

Okay, enough. Who would possibly care... except we care. Deeply. Why else go through all this? A pause at the sheepshed for a cat greeting...




...and onto Menards, where we try to pick the right switches and plates for all outlets and it is a damn complicated task and I’m sure we got it all wrong and half the stuff will have to be returned. So be it.

I had wanted to cook up a storm for dinner tonight, but I have no energy left. Chipotle burritos it is, yet again.