My President, My Friend

Dear Mr. President,

First off, I think you're doing a great job, and please take everything I'm about to say with a big grain of Kosher rock salt.

Stop having so much fun.

I'm serious.

This is the worst American economy in over seven decades, in other words a crisis, and you are taking your daughters not just to work, but on a European vacation. From there, you are making it 'a birthday week,' with a weekend celebration on Martha's Vineyard, followed by a surprise visit to bring birthday cupcakes to a reporter of all people, granted she deserved the cupcakes, and you happen to share the same birthday, but was that feel good moment for you, or for the cameras that would undoubtedly be snapped?

And, those frothy beers with Cornell West, and that policeman who's name isn't worth remembering, what was that all about, and was it necessary?

Ah, yes, I almost forgot. It's great that you, and Michelle go on dates. But, quite frankly, that matters as much to me as the blow job Monica gave Bill.

Can we get on with it?

What's in a Day? Who's There?

This graph, featured in Sunday's NYT, illustrates how unemployed people, and employed people spend their days. , and I think it's astonishingly accurate, at least in my experiences. If production in the home got the same pay as production in the workplace, I think we'd be a much healthier, and happier nation.

Okay, back to sending out resumes... I kind of want to write about a woman whom I gave $10 to at Dunkin Donuts last night, though, which was a pretty stupid thing to do in retrospect given my own situation. It wasn't until she gathered her bags to leave that I noticed her hospital bracelet looked very old, like she'd been wearing it for longer than a few days, and perhaps she didn't just get out of the ER like she told me that she did, trying to get enough el, and Metra fare to get back to suburban Addison.

It wasn't until I took a closer look at her that I realized maybe she is 30 pounds underweight from drug abuse, and not from the stresses of living with an alcoholic like said she did. She seemed so relieved when I gave her the $10, and then went on to say that she had approached many other people while trying to get fare to get back home, and that they all had barely looked at her, saying, "I have no money!" and walking past.

"One guy wagged his finger," she said. "I hate it when people wag their fingers. You wag a finger to a child, not to an adult."

She had seemed indignant, insulted by the finger wagging. She told me she has a job, at a pasta place in Addison. I couldn't imagine her serving food, being so much in resemblance to a walking skeleton, the veins in her neck visible, her bright blue eyes somehow sunken in, yet bulging, too. I kept on reading the Sunday newspaper, which I seem to read on Tuesdays these days now that I write a weekly Monday newsletter, and she kept on interrupting. She asked me if I had any ideas for gaining weight. "Peanut butter?" I wondered. She lamented the weight loss, and said that she used to feel like putting on make up, and getting dressed up made a difference, but now, she said, it doesn't make any difference in her appearance.

She also lamented the fact that her hair is so thin that it takes at least three wraps of a hair bands to hold a ponytail, whereas her hair was once thick enough for one wrap, something I could relate to as well, along with her well articulated frustration with herself.

Part of the reason I also kind of believed her, that she wasn't high on coke, or meth, was that she was scarfing down a large amount of food, in a styrofoam carry out container like the kind at restaurants. She was eating quickly, and scooping up the rice into the little plastic spoon as fast as she could, hunched over, her lips close to the container as to not lose any grains. "Where did you get that?" I asked her. "A woman gave it to me," she replied. "I was starving."

She told me that she was in the neighborhood because someone from the hospital drove her here, and she was hoping to visit Mike, a friend of hers that lives near Dunkin Donuts. "The lady next store said he moved three weeks ago, I just missed him," she said. I asked her what she was doing here in Chicago prior to the asthma attack, which she said caused her to go to the hospital in an ambulance.

"A....a meeting," she replied, offering no elaboration.

"Look, I can take your name, your address, send you a money order for ten bucks," she said, kind of with a snort, like why go through the trouble for ten bucks.

"No, no, that's okay," I said. "I hope you get back home. Be sure to get change, because if you put all of that on an el card, you can't use it for the Metra, too."

Uh huh, she said, right. By then my money was in her emaciated hand, and I wasn't really believing her, as she had gone from sincere, to impatient, and I wondered if she was thinking about where, and how to get her next fix, what kind of high ten bucks would buy.

A high. A moment. Like the one we just shared, but much different.

What's in a day? Who is in a day? How does a day get spent? How many times can you fly, and handle the crash back down?

Ice cold, ice cold

A few days ago it was a street preacher at the corner, and today it's a man with a cooler like the kind you take on a family picnic, and it's full of bottles of water that he's selling for $1 each.

I don't know much about sound except that it travels. And, like the street preacher, the constant refrain of ice cold, ice cold is touching a nerve, and I'm feeling the man's urgency while at the same time wishing he weren't there.

We pioneer our own destinies, and what I fear most-- screaming ice cold, ice cold, myself-- has probably already happened. In fact, I'm pretty sure of it.

An understandable understanding

I am dating a man that doesn't understand blogging, which is understandable.

If I understood it, I probably wouldn't be doing it, either.

So, shoot me if I like expressing myself. Call me a narcissist, though keep in mind this is a far less obtrusive-- and much easier way-- to get the word out than trolling around open mics. Nothing against the spoken world culture, I just like to hide behind my keyboard, and count writing as an antisocial indulgence.

The newsletter forces me to be social enough, and that's where most of my energies formerly reserved for blogging have been lately, and frankly it's nice to focus on other people minutia for a change, while keeping active, and connected to the neighborhood. I've never been one to idolize celebrities, or figures out of reach, however, small business owners that go against the odds, and offer something different than everyone else rank pretty high in my book.

The Other Americans

Psst, you know the ones I'm talking about, not the ones that have paychecks, and direct deposit, but the ones that are wondering what tomorrow will bring, and not in a philosophical way, but actually.

The ones that were unfortunate enough to have worked in dying industries, and whom have exhausted their unemployment benefits. The ones that lost a home, or are in the long, drawn out process of losing it. The ones that are trying to make a dollar out of 35 cents, but are quickly realizing they've got a quarter if they're lucky. The ones that are looking at the care, and feeding of pets as burdens rather than joys. The ones that are thinning out their infant's formula, or potty training earlier to avoid the cost of pull-ups. The ones that have savings, and are charting the amount it dips each month, and when it will completely disappear if nothing is done. The ones that have jobs, but a cut in salary, an increase in workloads, and are the envy of no longer coworkers that were let go. The ones that can barely afford their mortgages, and will have to hold Mary Kay parties to pay the assessments. The ones that own small businesses, and wonder how much longer to keep the doors open, how may more dips they can take. The ones that aren't sure if they can keep up with the game face, the illusion that it's all going to be A- O.K.

A-OK traces its origin to journalism, or presidential elections, depending on which etymology one subscribes to, but it's a good term for this nation. Is America all correct? Is everything all systems go? Ask the other Americans. I don't seem to hear from them much. Misery has a way of not broadcasting itself, but it's felt, like an undercurrent, a chill.

Message, received

Are you a pastor?, I asked.

He paused, mindful no doubt of his response.

"No, I am an evangelist," he replied, a bit defensively.

Clearly, I thought. An evangelist with a boom box grade sound system that was entertaining drivers, and pedestrians, good for a smirk, or two, or an eye roll, but annoying neighbors, neighbors like me that don't have jobs to be at, or work from home, and are forced to listen to a man talking all afternoon about his savior at the top of his God giving lungs.

"Shut your window, then!" he told me, as if it was my fault that I am upset by him, as if he has a dozen satisfied parishioners up the street at the bus stop cheering him on, which he didn't, only exasperated stares, a few snickers, indie hipster kids taking pictures.

I don't know why, but being told to shut my window was the part in the conversation where I lost it. Doesn't evangelist James Brandy (his real last name, "spelled just like the stuff I don't drink anymore," he told me) know that it's finally cool enough to not have the window AC on, and that I was enjoying the breeze?

He didn't seem to have an objection to my wanting to enjoy the breeze, in fact, he seemed a bit taken aback by this detail, perhaps something small that he could relate to, and so the rest of the conversation was rather peaceful, and two way.

I discovered he is part of a street missionary ream, and covering five street corners over the summer. His home base is the Crusader Church, at 75th and Ashland. His assignment? Preach for two hours five days a week on various corners.

Do you have an email? I asked him, wondering if I could take his picture, and add him to a weekly newsletter that I work on, as technically he's been a part of the neighborhood this summer, albeit a transient one.

"I don't have email, but you can take my picture," he said. "Be sure to get my church in there."

By the time I got back upstairs, he was packing up his portable sound system.

Maybe James Brandy the Streetside Evangelist was done with his shift, or maybe he just wanted to be acknowledged by someone. Either way, the open air preaching was finally over, and I went back to the fiction book I am reading to distract from the future, full of equal parts possibility, and uncertainty, maybe a lot like Mr. Brandy's, too.

The day in pictures

Rather than shoot myself in the foot using words, I'll stick to images, as I'm less likely to delete photos than words.





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