Chicago

This is a different childhood

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Evie has been doing a lot of writing lately. They say a writer writes what they know…

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I’m Poor. Please Help. 2 Dollars Every Day.

I think a lot about the kids growing up in Chicago, and what a different life they’re going to have. We see a lot of “picnickers” (as we like to call them) in our neighborhood. Homeless people and panhandlers are just part of Evie’s surroundings. Normal.

On the way to Evie’s school, we go under a highway overpass. Beyond the fence is what can only be described as a homeless shanty town. There are mattresses and semi-permanent structures, even a grill. In the limited time that we spend at that intersection a few times a week, we’ve seen a lot of activity. Homeless people climbing in and out through gaps in the fence. The one homeless guy who sits on the corner every morning and takes in tons of cash, food, and cigarettes. Seriously, we sit at that light for a few minutes, max, and in that time he probably takes in at least $20, every day. When he gets food he puts it in a community pile for other homeless guys to pick through. One time we even saw the members of the community furiously shoving mattresses out under the fence on one side as the police were coming in on a raid from the other side.

Evie hasn’t asked me many questions about all this, considering. However, I know it weighs heavily on her mind. Obviously, given the picture. I don’t really know what I’d say to her. “Be compassionate about your fellow man, but ignore these ones and don’t make eye contact.” How do you explain that? I’m not even sure how I feel about it myself.

So, long story short, if you see Evie panhandling on the street, please help her out. No reason we can’t put her learned skills to good use.

February Food Swap

/ Shane / 2 Comments

Time again for a Chicago Food Swap wrap up! (You can see previous food swap posts here.)

In exchange for:

We received:

  • 2 Blue Moon Cupcakes
  • Cranberry Pepper Jelly
  • Cinnamon Pecan Butter
  • Salsa Verde
  • Blood Orange Marmalade
  • Macadamia Nut Caramel Corn
  • Meyer Lemon Marmalade
  • Cranberry Curd
  • Homemade Granola
  • Cherry Pie Filling
  • Pumpkin Butter

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This month’s swap was at Katherine Anne Confections, so in addition to the above, we also tried 3 delicious varieties of fancy-schmancy caramels : rosemary sea-salt, chocolate walnut, and vanilla. Believe me, they didn’t last long. I was very suspicious about the rosemary sea-salt, because sweet and salty is *not* my thing. But actually, it wasn’t bad. I would probably choose one of the other ones personally, but after trying it I can definitely say I would choose eating a rosemary sea-salt caramel over not eating caramel any day of the week.

This time around, Sara went in targeting marmalade, and ended up with not one, but two of them! I call that success We haven’t tried any yet. Sara said the salsa verde was the best thing she tried at the swap, but I haven’t tried that yet either (Soon, my sweet salsa verde. Soon.)

There were a lot of baked goods this time, which isn’t bad, but it’s not really what we’re in the market for. We make lots of baked goods at home, so they’re just not as exciting. Canned jams, however, seems to be what we are in the market for. Right now we have something like 8 different open jars of spreads in the fridge, with a dozen or so more in the pantry. And they are all wonderful.

I should also mention that both of our jams were delicious and interesting too. I almost didn’t want Sara to trade them! Sara bought the Chinese 5 spice powder from the last food swap, and I hadn’t been super fond of it. It’s very anise-y, and it kind of takes over whatever it is in. But something about this jam really was the perfect use for it. The flavor combination was awesome. The mimosa jelly is really good too, although I’m not sure the champagne really made much of a difference (other than being able to say it’s mimosa jelly instead of just regular old “orange”, which is non-trivial).

Sara reports that after her 3rd swap, she’s starting to recognize people and just generally feel like she’s not the new kid on the block anymore, (Look, it was a phrase before the band came around, that’s why they used that as their name! No judging.) but more like she’s one of the grizzled veterans.

The kids and I are definitely still excited about getting all of the delicious food, that’s for sure!

Let’s talk about the weather

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Today is January 29th, and it is 60 degrees. In Chicago. So far this winter, we have had a total of one “snowstorm” resulting in a grand total of 1.1 inches so far for the year. That was a record setting 335 days without snow. Just to put that into perspective, Chicago normally averages 36.7 inches of snow per year.

If I had never heard of global warming, I might just chalk that up to, “huh, unusually warm winter this year.” I have heard of global warming, but I’m trying keep that in perspective and fight my natural impulse to say, “ZOMG IT’S THE END OF DAYZZZZZ!”

The thing is, we’re not talking a “unusually warm winter” here. This is not the first 60 degree day this winter, and, for all intents and purposes, we’ve had no snow whatsoever this year. And this is on top of last winter, which was also “unusually warm”. They kids are wondering why we haven’t been able to go sledding, or build snowmen, or make snow angels.

I’m no expert on global warming, but even an idiot like me has to wonder what’s going on. Is this just a two-year fluke, or a sign of some larger trend? I’m reminded of when I attended The Great Climate Debate, all the way back in 2008. The thing that struck me then, and strikes me now, was that the experts on both sides of the debate agreed global warming exists, and their argument was not the same as what the general public believes the issues to be.

But even this guy, who had incredible credentials, is at the forefront of this movement, and who is rabid in his belief, agrees global warming exists and we are causing at least part of it.

I know anecdotal evidence is not evidence, but 60 degrees in January is at least remarkable. I don’t know if there are still people who think global warming isn’t real, or not. But my opinion on it remains unchanged from 3 years ago:

Whether our pollution is causing global warming or not, I think we all know we shouldn’t be polluting.  So we should stop polluting based on its own merits whether it causes global warming or not.  It kind of reminds me back when people used to argue about whether smoking causes cancer or not.  Who cares?  It does a lot of other bad things and you know you shouldn’t be smoking!  So if there is even a chance global warming is caused by us, that is just one more reason on top of all the other reasons to stop polluting.  And if that is the final straw that makes someone stop doing it, then great!

Book of Mormon

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Sara and I recently found some time to go see The Book of Mormon.

I love musicals, but it’s much harder to get to them now that we have kids. I realized the last time we saw a show was The Addams Family, which was almost exactly 3 years ago. I liked Book of Mormon much more than Addams Family.

I would recommend it to anybody who doesn’t mind a little profanity. It starts slow, but by the 4th song or so (Specifically “Hasa Diga Eebowai”), there’s no question this is a show by Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the guys from South Park (actually, this made me think more of Team America: World Police). Blasphemy is probably too light of a word for it. Considering musicals are generally thought to be family friendly, just be prepared for it and you’ll have a good time.

I don’t think Stone and Parker ever get enough credit for being clever. Yes, they try to intentionally shock you, but that’s not all they are. If it was, South Park wouldn’t be going into its 15th season. Book of Mormon is exactly the same way: there are cheap laughs because they are shocking (AIDS jokes, baby rape jokes, frog rape jokes, dysentery jokes, etc.), but there’s also a larger picture behind it all (tolerance, learning to be yourself, hard work pays off, religion can be silly but we love it anyway, etc.). That’s the part that makes this all work. In fact, if you take away a few small parts, Book of Mormon works surprisingly well as a traditional musical.

Knowing who made this show, I was wondering how badly Mormons would take this show. So I was pretty surprised to find 3 full page ads in the program for the LDS Church. And actually, having seen it, I have to say it’s a lot harsher on Ugandans than it is on Mormons. Sure they tweak their nose a little bit over some of the stranger beliefs, but at the end of the day the Mormons come out looking pretty good. Quite frankly, if you look very hard into any religion, you can pull out all kinds of weird stuff and make it sound ridiculous. I hear worse about Catholicism every day. If the worse you can say about a religion is, “They’re overly nice people who help the world, but have you seen their silly underwear? And, come on, they can’t drink coffee??” then I guess that’s not so bad. (Note: Uh, yeah, there’s worse things they say about the religion, especially in relationship to repressing gays and people of color, but I’m making a point here.)

In summary, the show was really good. It was blatantly offensive at times, witty at others, laugh-out-loud funny, and had catchy songs. What more could you ask for from a musical? (Okay, I guess you could ask it to be a little more politically correct, but if you’re asking that, then this is probably not for you.)

Things That Annoy Me

/ Shane / 1 Comment
  • There is a couple of Dr. Pepper billboards that I see on my way to work. Basically, they show the torso of a man wearing a generic Dr. Pepper-colored tee-shirt and holding a can of Dr. Pepper. Over the tee-shirt they wrote (in a completely different font), “I’m a Bears fan” and then put a little Bears logo in the corner. Who do you think you’re fooling? Aside from the fact that Dr. Pepper thinks I’m dumb enough to go, “Oh, they say they’re connected to the sports team I like, I guess I’ll start buying that now!” the very nature of the generic, slap-dash, non-specific billboard only serves to highlight the fact that Dr. Pepper is a ruthless, bloodsucking corporation who cares not a whit about me and my fan loyalties. This is practically the photo negative of the feeling they’re trying to engender. At least spend the time, jeez.
  • Honking. No joke, someone honks at me every single day driving around Chicago. Usually it’s when I’m waiting to turn on green and someone behind me honks to encourage me to go. I cannot stress how rude this is. Usually when they honk I can’t actually go. It’s one thing if I’m not paying attention or something and you draw my attention to the road. But if I’m obviously paying attention (I’m creeping my car forward), then you are saying, “I know you don’t want to go, but I’m smarter than you and I know better than you do.” For example, the other day there was a long line of people who got off the train crossing the street, and someone several cars back started honking. From where they were, they probably couldn’t see the people crossing the street, so they didn’t know that if I went I’d be plowing through a solid wall of bodies. And that is precisely my point: from four cars back you have no idea what is going on up by me and why I’m not going. So now you’re actually enticing me to commit a crime, possibly murder. Let’s all settle down a little bit, shall we?
  • Speaking of honking, I can’t stand people honking to get someone to come out to the car. In this day and age, when everybody has a cell phone, there’s really just no excuse for this. The 50 condos worth of people on our street would appreciate it if you would give your party a call and keep it between the two of you, instead of including us. And if they don’t come out after the 10th honk, your honks are obviously not hurrying them. I think we can say pretty conclusively that they know you’re out there. (I certainly know you’re out there, and I’m not even expecting you.) Maybe, just maybe, they’ve got something going on that’s more important than you. You’re going to feel pretty dumb when you find out they were lying there dying, but you couldn’t bother to get out of your car. Or maybe your honking is causing them to go slower just to spite you. That’s what I’d do if I knew anybody rude enough to do this to me.
  • The weather report. I used to never check the weather, but now that I check it every day, I know less about the weather. Seriously, I gain more information by just peeking out the window. The official report always puts at least 10% chance of rain, just to hedge their bets. 100% chance of rain? How can you ever be 100% sure of anything, especially given your record weather reporting website? Well, guess what? IT DIDN’T RAIN. So thanks for nothing.
  • Those super loud “vortex” hand dryers. Yeah, maybe my hands might be one molecule more dry than with the old fashioned hand dryers, but guess what? I value my hearing more than semi-dry hands.