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

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

On What Is Normal

He'll Find the Descriptive Placard Eventually

Last night a friend of ours came over and we got on a discussion of culture shock. Specifically, how shocking some of the things that we encounter in American culture really are, or maybe should be. Diamond ring ads plastered all over the insides of public rail cars. Pop stars with manufactured images, music, personalities. Mass media outlets with bias towards ad revenue and political clout. Disconnection from each other as fellow humans in favor of individualized electronics. Lack of awareness as to where any of our food, clothing, etc actually comes from. There are tons more examples. They inform our choices and our values and they’re considered norms. If you sit back and think about it, aren’t they absolutely shocking?

In talking through some of these oddities (I won’t call them norms anymore), we’ve realized that it’s probably a good thing for ourselves and our kids to be experiencing culture shock on a regular basis. Be it in our neighborhoods, when walking into a store, in the rare occasions that a TV is playing somewhere – it’s undoubtedly healthier to take those things with a bit of shock rather than acceptance or assimilation.

I just can’t imagine thinking it’s OK to equate happiness with products, or a healthy family with wealth and stainless steel appliances. Or that it’s normal for people to pull out their hair in a frantic rush to purchase Christmas presents while being encouraged by the distorted image of a humble saint (nicholas).

Just throwing this out there, but I wonder if this notion of culture shock may come a bit closer to the Christian idea of being in the world but not “of” it than is normally perceived. It is common to view those words as a challenge to externally divide oneself from “bad” culture – don’t swear, don’t look “weird”, don’t drink, etc. But I wonder if it could have more to do with detaching from the system as a whole – relying less on material goods, earthly stability or social status in an effort to recapture the wonder and beauty of living simply, in community and in reliance on each other.

Just sayin. I’m not there, we’re not there – there’s a long way to go. But I think the first step in considering change at all in the world around us is to examine and reflect on what is now in place, why it’s in place, and what the consequences of the current systems are.

Filed under: Culture, Reflections, assimilation, christianity, corporate sponsored sports replays, creepy hannah montana pr photos, cultural norms, how i spent my break at work today, saint nicholas, spirituality

The Perpetual Machine

Buy Nothing Day 2008

I first saw the movie “What Would Jesus Buy?” at Cornerstone Festival in 2007. Inside of porta-potties that shamelessly dotted the midwestern farm, I saw posters advertising the film screening later in the week. They were complete with a preacher of some sort in fist-raised-mid-damnation-proclamation stance, sporting a rockabilly hairdo and a line of white-robed devotees kneeling in front of a huge wal-mart sign in either a show of adoration or a plea for mercy. “What Would Jesus Buy?” was scrawled across the top of it. As you can obviously tell, it was inevitable, I had to check it out. In the movie barn, with the fans humming in the background, I watched the journey of Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping as they traveled from store to store preaching of the “shopocalypse”. They challenged people to re-evaluate the store-crazed Christmas traditions by walking through mega-malls in robes, holding impromptu choir concerts and invading starbucks stores in an attempt to give Rev. Billy audience for fervently preaching of the ills of consumerism. He stood on street corners, surrounded by his church, asking people to evaluate the products they purchase in light of the world around them – the environment, the social welfare of 3rd world workers, the effects of equating happiness with stuff in the minds of their children.

It was an impactful movie. It was moving to see such a huge group of people (his Church of Stop Shopping) banding together in the face of opposition – publicly questioning a cultural norm which has successfully begun crawling over the edge of an economic cliff.

This Christmas we’re making more of an effort to be creative with our money. Andrea and I are buying each other classes – wheel building for me, home birthing for her – rather than the usual gifts from the store.  The kids are primarily receiving hand made things and we’ve rid ourselves of a TV which would try to portray the norm as something different – something we won’t have, and won’t buy into this year. We’ve still got amazon lists, still have a couple of things we’d each like to have, but this year we’re trying to make a conscious effort to step back from the frenzy of stuff and focus on what’s around us – each other, our family and our friends. The amazon list will always be there (cue: internet recession?), but there are only so many days available to make connections with those we love.

…And it also beats standing in line at 3:00am this Friday morning.

Filed under: Culture, Family, Reflections, black friday, buy nothing day, classes for christmas, consumerism, cornerstone, croched star wars toys, Culture, shopocalypse, what would jesus buy