Hurricane saga continues

Darrell and Matthew are back!

Matthew is looking a lot better. He got a job cleaning at Bank of America! He stopped by last week while I was out, and Patrick said it was actually nice to see him; I understood what he meant when the pair called on us this evening. Darrell is staying with a lady friend, I guess, but Matthew seems like he's made some real steps toward sustainability. He's got a hot plate, so he can do at least nominal cooking; he has a relatively dependable job (he showed me a copy of his job description and a map of the areas he has to clean, floors 32-35); and he has a place to stay.

That's not to say that this visit didn't involve some of the same things that the others have. It turns out that the landlord who was letting him stay at his vacant building in exchange for some work on the building upped and sold the whole thing and moved to Alabama. The new landlord is insisting that Matthew pay rent now; he can't wait until Nov 1, when Matthew gets paid. So Matthew wanted to know where he could get some help. He went to a couple of churches; he showed me their letters and their recommendations (they referred him to Cabrini Green legal assistance). I pulled a couple of other potential resources off the internet for him, including the U of C Law School clinic and another legal foundation that does pro-bono work, including landlord/tenant disputes.

And I gave him $40 toward his rent fund. He made vague references to paying it back, but I'm not really expecting him to. I would consider it a huge bonus, icing on the cake, extra credit if he did.

I don't know how much we've given to these guys, and I don't really want to know. There are so many places I don't even want to go as far as thinking about what's going on (e.g., the possibility that most of what I know about Matthew and Darrell isn't true, and whether it is appropriate to feel proud of the progress Matthew is making, and whether there isn't something totally blind or patronizing or both in my attitudes about the situation). I would like to just let it be what it seems to be, and be happy that people can and do go out of their way to do nice things to take care of each other.

Mom's visit

Mom came to town for the weekend. (Yay!) We went to Rockefeller Chapel, the Garfield Park Conservatory, and Shedd Aquarium. I did worry about being ready for school, but I made it through today, at least.

I was really impressed with the conservatory. Free every day, with nice outreach programs for families and stuff. Here's a photo of the Fern Room, a reconstruction of Chicago in the age of dinosaurs. There were some people getting married there. Not a bad idea, I think, if you have a small wedding. Pretty. The Palm Room was great, too: seven dozen varieties of palm, including the double coconut with its eight-foot fan-shaped fronds.

Um ... Rockefeller was gorgeous. And very effective at making people in it feel tiny and awed. The glass was unusual; all of the huge leaded windows around the nave (the long part) were ornate but in muted colors, mostly a greyish glass. Then at the head of the chapel, a star bursts with flames, rosying the arch around it. The attention to detail in the masonry was amazing, too.

Not sure what else to say. Honestly, I'm kind of brain dead, and tired of school right now. I'm impressed by Jalisa, though. She and Brie are heading up the double dutch team, which I am sponsoring, and she just said some remarkable things today about the unity of a team (if someone makes a mistake, it's as though all of them made it, and there's no "You screwed up" or "It's your fault") and being responsible for their image by doing stuff like picking up their trash after practice.

I guess I can start on this book, The Search for God. (It's from one of my students; she's a Jehovah's witness, trying to convert yours truly.)

Baseball

Go White Sox!

It's pretty exciting to come to a city with such a winning team. We thought about trying to get tickets to the World Series, but that thought died quickly. Even if it hadn't, I don't think we would've been able to get tickets. When they went on sale at noon last Tuesday, another teacher at my school took his homeroom to the computer lab, promising a Borders gift card to anyone who could get in to the Ticketmaster website where the elite few are randomly selected out of the waiting pool for the special opportunity to buy tickets. And even with all those people trying for him, he didn't get any.

Unfortunately, our TV doesn't get FOX. I don't know if the rabbit ears are broken or what. So anyway we've been listening to the games on the radio, and I'm getting tired of the dumb commercials, but my question for all of you is: in the Miller Lite commercial, where various guys give their testimonials in their various languages and the emcee of the commercial responds with a "Great job" or whatever in the same language, why do they match the Cantonese testimonial with a Mandarin response??

Starved Rock

The city has been beautiful. Crisp, autumn weather is setting in. We've been continuing to see lots of birds, though fewer species. Lots of Canada geese. The little green monk parakeets are still around, too; looks like they'll be wintering here. We've been taking walks to our local park (Jackson Park, home to a Japanese garden on an artificial island), just behind the Museum of Science and Industry (the side of which is shown at left). It's amazing to have this kind of resource just a few blocks from our apartment. Lake Michigan is five blocks away, too, with a totally different feeling. I love our location.

Nonetheless, we've both been itching to get out of the city, so we took off on Saturday for Starved Rock, a state park about an hour and a half outside of Chicago. It was a gorgeous day, and there were lots and lots of dogs at the park (with their people, on leashes of course). The leaves have just started turning color, so the fall foliage wasn't spectacular, but it was quite lovely anyway. The park is on the Illinois River, so besides the trees, there was water, too. It was full of geese and pelicans.

My favorite parts were the waterfall basins. The falls themselves are dry now, but they've carved out these bowls that are beautiful to climb into. It's amazing how huge they are. The picture makes it look like a cave or a tunnel, but it's not really like either. It's ... looking at it from the front, it seems like it's a vertical wall, and it's not until you reach the back of the bowl that you realize how far the top edge hangs overhead. In winter, the falls freeze. I'm looking forward to visiting some of these places when they're all snowy.

Apparently, no one buys snow tires here. You just don't need them. That's a comforting sort of thing to know.

All for now, folks.

Winged Bull-man

Na'amah has been flying all over the world. She inspires me to take flight myself, both figuratively and literally. I'm already thinking about when I might be able to go visit her in Tel Aviv.

Most recently, she stopped in Chicago for a day and night on her way home (to her parents' in Philadelphia) from the Bay Area. It was a wonderful, wonderful visit. We walked to the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, where they have a new exhibit on Mesopotamia (ancient Iraq). It was hard to look at (a bit cluttered) but there was some amazing stuff. A good mix of little things: receipts written in cuneiform (I can't believe the little triangles mean anything!), clay record tablets with matching clay envelopes, standard weights in standard shapes and sizes (cylinders, ducks), fish and woman figurines. Also some bigger things, like an ancient replica of the Code of Hammurabi, which was really cool to see; it turns out not to be a legal code per se, but more of a series of stories about cases Hammurabi heard and the decisions he made. There were lots of carved stone wall panels, too, which were so big and really neat to walk around and through, imagining what it would be like to live amongst them. And then there were the HUGE things, like this guy. Sixteen feet high, 40 tons. They found him in pieces somewhere and put him back together for the museum. Standing next to him and looking up was like being in a fantasy land. There was a bull's head that was even bigger.

We did some other stuff too, like go to yet another Chicago restaurant with tasty food and horrible service (and smokers! so alien to my San Franciscan ways). Anyway it is fantastic to see faces that I've known for more than two months. Can't wait for my mom's visit next weekend.

time for a new post

The weather here is nutty. I keep putting away the summer blankets, shoes, etc. only to have to pull them out again. Yesterday it was in the high 80s. Today the high is 61.

Anyway, just wanted make a quick update. Spent last weekend in Kenosha, WI, where all of Patrick's mom's siblings (12, including Mary) convened to celebrate Grandma Hammond's 80th birthday. It was great to talk with everyone; they were all really friendly, and interesting, and interested, and just good people in general. We played a silly game somewhere between field hockey and soccer (it's called 'field crumpets') and ate dinner. All in all, it was more relaxed than a typical Louie gathering. I guess because the youngest generation in the Hammond family is mostly in college or recently graduated. Not so many young kids (though there are a couple of babies). I was really sad to leave. It reminded me of how much I miss being so close to family.

School is going all right. Trying to figure out where the line is between emphasizing conceptual understanding and just needing students to practice so they can do things (like find the area of a rectangle) mindlessly.

All for now.