As Long As It’s Talking to You, Talk of the Weather Will Do…

To say that weather makes people do crazy things might be a bit of an understatement. Unfortunately, when the unpredictability of weather mixes with the paranoid insanity of Chicagoans-At-Large, trouble usually starts a-brewin. Take tonight, for example. We have a family of neighbors just next door to us who take to a winter wonderland celebration of reserving their freshly shoveled parking spaces with large orange cones. Throughout the day as they drive their minivan and suburban-with-the-charming-bullet-hole-stickers back and forth throughout the city, nobody quite knows where they head off to. And yet the cones remain, holding their spots, preserving their shovel-laden craftsmanship.

Until tonight.

It seems that a rather inventive and ambitious group of people decided to forego the “cones = a saved spot” arrangement held by these neighbors and not only took the spot, but also took the cones with them to their destination down the block. The paranoid insanity reared its head in the form of these neighbors promptly running outside and taking turns pouring snow all over the surface of the said car – up into the cavities of the tires, over the surface of each window, on every crevice. Truly detailed work. Practiced, even. And following about 35 minutes of standing in pajama pants, taking turns with the shovel, even after cops were called and numerous people walked outside to complain, their defiant “f**k off these people deserve it, keep on movin, seeya later suckers!” mantra wore thin (when presented repeatedly to each of their neighbors) and they walked inside, though only at the humble request of the police – on their third trip around the block.

Its at this point that the hopelessness of the city took hold of me and the realization surfaced that people like this actually do exist, albeit in some de-evolved state, with nothing better to do than ruin someone else’s night, or morning, over a parking spot. The fact that basic decency, whether it be from some place within themselves, or in the nudgings of a few concerned onlookers, doesn’t seem to exist in people such as these – well, it leads to a place that holds too many weird and unfortunate possibilities.

I tried going to bed and tossed and turned for a bit.

That is, until just a few minutes later when the sound of shoveling once again crossed the silence of our apartment. We looked out the window, once again, to see a single man working quickly with a shovel to clean off the surface of the car. He deflected angry yells from the neighbors, warming in their front room on permanent lookout for these “horrible people that took their spot”, while meticulously scraping the snow out from around the tires, off the hood and even out from under the doorhandles. I watched for a few minutes before going out and asking if he needed some help. He wished me a good night, but said he had it covered. I told him that he was a good man.

It’s at this point that, while walking back into our apartment, hope returned. And my numb, desperate prayer from this morning – the first in many, many weeks, was answered: “somehow, help me see the Kingdom today.”

The irony of this whole weather aspect, is that I can look out my window at just this moment and see the beginnings of a 12 hour weather storm that will dump up to a half a foot of snow across Chicago tonight. While the neighbors may have tried hard to set this car apart in a pile of snow, it seems that the weather itself may have its own similar wrath across every other car on our street. Their handiwork won’t have shown too clearly come morning. I’m just happy to have seen the bright side, before the sun comes up.

Filed under: Culture, Reflections, chicago storm, devolving?, hope, humanity, insanity, parking cones, snow, the kingdom, weather

Some News and Thoughts

I’ve finally finished this semester’s cluster of courses. While I was able to take two of them online, I still had a full plate with 12 credit hours. So I’m glad to have a break. I’ve got about a Spring and half-a-Summer semester left to finish up my general education requirements. From there, I’m still deciding whether to pursue a computer science degree at Northeastern Illinois, or Interactive Arts and Media at Columbia in Chicago. The pros and cons are there for each, but Northeastern is much cheaper upfront (no loans!) and is almost in our backyard. Columbia is a hatful of cash and an hour commute to the loop each way. But the program looks really great, so we’ll see what happens.

I’ve finished reading a book called “The Gum Thief” by Douglas Coupland and am midway through a collection of short stories called “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor. Each of these stories, including those in “The Gum Thief” seem to have a few themes in common.  They all deal with the world sort of closing in on either the assumptions that the characters have, or the “secure” possessions or people in life that they cling to. It’s been interesting to read these themes as discussed in the deep south of the 50′s and in the big box office supply stores of today (as in the Gum Thief). Plus I love Flannery O’Connors injection of religious spirituality into her stories as it reflects the tension between God and the Modern Age of the South, but becomes a universal foreshadowing of post-modernity, and that of the subjective morality that her characters encounter. I told Andrea that on this break from school I’m putting myself through an “O’Connor 101″ course, where I hope to read all of her writings.

Christmas is on the horizon and the kids are excited. We’ve been following an advent calendar with a series of small stockings hung across one of our bookshelfs and each drawing a family, Christmas-themed activity from it every night. We also had the kids put out shoes on the 6th for St. Nicholas to come and fill with goodies. We don’t really celebrate Santa Claus, but agreed that sharing the story of St. Nicholas was a good compromise. We’ll probably end up in Michigan for most of the week following Christmas, seeing grandparents on both sides and keeping clear of this unpredictable Chicago winter for a time.

Filed under: Family, Life, Writing, christmas vacation, college plans, family update, o'connor 101, ten gallon cowboy hats, the gum thief

History in the Making

It was always fun to think "oh, this will never happen again."

When I was growing up, it was always interesting to see people depicted throughout major events in history. Social studies textbooks captioned pictures of people standing in breadlines as representative of the Great Depression. US Government textbooks showed pictures of past Presidents during times of war, negotiating with world leaders, signing what looked to be important documents. Famous photos of world events tend to stick in our heads as iconic images of times that changed history.

What’s interesting is to be living in those times and not really know what to make of it. When great-great-grandchildren look at digitized textbooks on individual hand held education devices 100 years in the future (what, me, cynical?), will they see pictures of the Republic Windows & Doors sit-in? Or Obama’s youtube press releases? Or droves of people exiting their workplace, pink slips in hand? What images will be representative of these times? Or of the past 8 years? Which countries will have taken the place of the US as imperial world powers? What will have happened in the next few days, weeks, years to destroy what is now here, or be put in place to help stop the bleeding?

It’s hard to think of the day to day events that occurred to lead into the depression, or major world wars. Moreso, it’s eerie to think of the calm before those storms. The normal, average thoughts that people had the day before tsunamis, hurricanes, bombings, building collapses, layoffs, homelessness.

When history is being made all around us in monumental ways, what do we make of that?

Filed under: Culture, Reflections, future, layoffs, obama, recession, republic windows & doors, uncertainty

Lights That Turn On By Themselves

We’re back from holiday at my parent’s house in Grand Rapids, having been delayed one extra day due to not wanting to travel through the Sunday night snow storm. It was a really nice visit – full of turkey, insane amounts of pumpkin spice coffee and Lego Star Wars. Since they moved to Michigan last June, our kids have loved hanging out at their house – the spaciousness of it just begs for their favorite games, often with descriptive names like “chase” or “comeandgetme!”. As is necessary of any grandparent’s house, it’s a place that they love to be.

We caught some good movies while we were there – 3:10 to Yuma, We Own the Night and No Country For Old Men, which we’d seen before, but not the super big screen blu ray edition which is pretty sweet until you get to the Scene Where The Bone Is Sticking Out In High Definition, Yikes.

Bones aside, it’s nice to be back for the final stretch before Christmas vacation. Finals for this semester’s classes are slowly clouding my schedule, but I’ll try to keep writing. Until next time!

Filed under: Family, Life, blu ray, Family, lego star wars, movies, thanksgiving, too much coffee