Loopy-Loopy card

Found: an old birthday card I gave Loopy some years ago.

Picture on the front: Olivia Newton-John & John Travolta at the end of Grease where ONJ is all made up and hot looking.

Words on front: "We go together like ramma lamma lamma ding gading ga dong"

What I wrote inside:

Happy birthday baby
You'll always be ultra-cool
(unless you become a scientologist)
but no matter what I'll always love you
and pay for your deprogramming
xoxox me

P.S. sorry ... I used up all the mush on my blog

my own chicago tour

So... I chose some high schools that were spread around the near-south, southwest and west sides, and had google make me an itinerary to drive by all of them.

Took me close to three hours... went down to the grand old campuses of Dunbar and DuSable, which have graduated all sorts of famous people since the mid-19th century and are now being re-envisioned as "small schools" within one building... drove across to the Latino neighborhood out by Cermak & Cicero... then up and under the Ike to another Black neighborhood just this side of Oak Park (that was freaky, when I took a wrong turn and tumbled out of the projects & churches into mansions and lawns like Alice tumbling out of the rabbit-hole)... and then on back home.

Wow.

First of all, there are a lot of poor people in Chicago, and it isn't a pretty sight. Faces and bodies beaten and battered, lined with care, jumping at noises or slumping in corners. I have spent a good bit of time in poor neighborhoods in the U.S., but not recently... I guess I'd forgotten.

Of course there were families hanging on stoops and children playing in fire hydrants, but also blocks & blocks of dead factories and boarded up shops, only the liquor stores open for business.

The Latino neighborhoods were much less depressing - plenty of beauty shops and taquerias, small neighborhood enterprises and larger shopping centers too. I asked R why it's like that and she said it's pure racism - people won't make loans to would-be Black small business owners, and don't open stores in those neighborhoods.

Anyway.

I had two reactions... well I had a lot of reactions but I'll discuss two. First, it was hard to tell what I was actually seeing and what was just my own projections. I tried to make myself look for the little details that convey genuine information - flowers in window-boxes and lawn ornaments or plantings in the front yard mean the neighborhood isn't really that bad; bars on the windows, stripped cars on the streets, garbage everywhere mean it is. (I didn't see many blocks that were that bad - and heck, I lived on blocks like that in NYC!)

Second, driving that vast area - according to Google I drove forty miles - made it really clear what my place is in the scheme of it all - specifically - very small. The people on the stoops and corners, in the taquerias and auto body shops, they aren't waiting for me to come and save them. Their lives will go on much the same whether I teach in their neighborhood or not.

I've talked w my therapist (aka OLIF) about how to have good boundaries with my work, not try to save the world at the cost of my health and sanity, etc. This little drive actually really helped with that. It was clear that I should choose a job based on what will be fulfilling for me.

I love to teach students who struggle with different kinds of obstacles or challenges, but I will choose a job with those students because I love it, not because I harbor delusions of being some kind of savior or messiah. There are miles and miles and miles of those students and I will not make a dent in the big picture (if I do it will be through activism in some other realm).

But hopefully I will have a fulfilling and interesting job for the rest of my life, and hopefully there will be some whose lives will be better because of me, and that's good enough.

Still processing all this...

Loopy Loopy dialogue... (or, You know you've been married 14 years when...)

Me: So, I figured out why the dishwasher wasn't working.

Loopy: Oh?

Me: (Some explanation, concluding with...) So, the water only comes out of the hot tap, so when, uh, you know, the thing, then there's not enough, you know, thing for the thing, and the thing doesn't turn.

Loopy: Oh, that makes sense.

(It does?)

getting used to Chicago

I called a restaurant to ask how far north they deliver.

"To Addison," they say.

"Great!" I say. "We'll call right back."

As I flip through the menu, I contemplate that in New York, they would have said, "to 45th Street," or something, and for the first time, it seems dull to me that the streets in NYC just have numbers instead of names.

(Up to now it has seemed incredibly irritating that Chicago streets have all these names instead of simple, easy-to-understand numbers).

Wow. Maybe I could really get used to this. :-)

what's new

Sooo, I started a trip blog called
Journey Beyond Persepolis. I've also been posting my pix on my Flickr account so check em out.

Speaking of Iran, did you hear about the terrible cyclone that's hitting Oman? They were afraid it was gonna get Iran too but it seems to be mellowing out a bit (that's a technical term, "mellowing out"). Apparently cyclones are totally new to the region. I guess when certain of my friends and family were worried about me in Iran, they never even thought of the only thing that even came close to actually affecting my visit!

So anyway, yes, photos, blogging.....I've only finished Day One on the blog and Day Three on Flickr. Sigh... What's been interfering with my blogging and photo-posting is that thing called real life, in the form of (1) packing and (2) job search.

Yesterday I came down to Chicago to go on this bus tour (went today) sponsored by Chicago Public Schools... as I suspected, basically the purpose is to take white kids to the South Side and say, "see, you won't immediately be gunned down in gang warfare as soon as you cross Monroe St." (One girl on the bus, who I think was actually from Chicago, said, "wow, I don't think I've ever been down here," when we were still in the South Loop! My first visit to Chicago I stayed on the South Side...)

But despite that aspect, it was interesting and useful. I met a very cool principal I'd love to work for; also learned more about the application process... it's, as Bush would say, "hard work." You basically have to go to every school where you might want to teach and drop off a resume and ask to see the principal... there are 600 schools in Chicago... and don't forget to follow up and be persistent! aaaaaaaaa...

I still have my usual problems, though I'm fighting them. I've written, um, 12 letters to principals and not printed / mailed any of them. Dunno what that's about.

Oh, and did I tell you, dear blog-friends, that we sold our house? Yes I think I did - but did I tell you we can't get financing to buy a place in Chicago until I get a job? No pressure or nothin'! Arg!

So I'm a bit deer-in-the-headlights this evening between the job stuff, and, well, the job stuff, there's a lot of it. I should follow up with the cool principal, on whom I think I made a good impression.........

Shout out to Ang, who's been gone too long! Can't wait to see you girlie!!!!

And, a shout out to Amy, whose birthday is coming up... will this be the year I remember to actually call you on your actual birthday??? The conclusion to this cliff-hanger is only days away.... ;-)

And if there's anyone else reading, a shout-out to alla yous... thanks for carin'. :-) :-)