Memoirous

My neighbor down the street is a hooker. She even has business cards she hands out. Happy Hooker. She crochets beanies and caps. My neighbor down the street is homeless. She sleeps in a tent under the viaduct and people drive by and leave food for her on the sidewalk. Late at night creeps honk as they speed by, the loud horn echoing off the peeling cement walls. She rarely gets a good night’s rest. Yet every day she is up and knitting, sitting in the coffee shop or else in a lawn chair in the park, waiting for customers. She customizes her orders—though she reserves the right to refuse service. Let me know if you’d like Linda to make you something. http://oddlovescompany.com/about/     photo by Stacy Rupolo, http://chicagoreporter.com/a-community-out-in-the-cold/

Palm Sunday signals in the liturgical calendar the tumultuous week called Holy. I say tumultuous because nothing says crazy more than a triumphal entry followed by a crucifixion. Holy Week reveals the cracks in humanity, man’s capability of othering. It is a time of turning inward and outward with terrible results. Which leads me into a review for the documentary The Overnighters . Jesse Moss and his film crew followed a local pastor around as he searched for ways to accommodate the overwhelming tide of workers flooding a small North Dakotan town during the onslaught of the oil and gas boom. One minute you are hailed as a hero for showing compassion and the next you are the sacrificial goat left out to draw flies. The congregation knows all about the Golden Rule to do unto others, but certainly not for this long or not when the sanctuary carpet is getting ruined. My favorite line was when the pastor’s wife casually comments: I can’t wait for things to go back to how they we...

I subscribe to a number of blogs, one of which is Setting Prisoners Free by Jeremy Nicholls where he writes and photojournals about the homeless in Chicago. Check it out! I will frequently re-post or share snippets from his blog. Jeremy is a case manager with Cornerstone Community Outreach ( CCO ) here in Uptown, Chicago. CCO recently has had a number of successful housing victories. The social work field is very statistic oriented. Numbers play a large part in who gets money—and outcomes—that's the lingo for what we sometimes refer to as miracles. Men and women who have been chronically without an address, living on the streets, homeless. Jeremy has tried to breakdown what’s behind this phenomena of housing some of the hardest of the hard-to-place. Though there are a number of factors he has cited one thing in particular: iPads. This from his post “Making Housing Happen” : I believe 2 tools have helped create many stories of successful movement. Firstly, carry...

What we talk about when we talk about The Walking Dead. Are we talking about life without coffee? Tea-colored skies, choked with smoke and ash and residue. Or are we talking about sleepless nights, sleepless days, hell no sleep at all? Because there are no days, only nights, and we’re tired to death. Tired of government big, small, not at all. Tired of media, talk radio, Obamacare, who cares? What we talk about When we talk about zombies, or the “other,” the enemy, the devil, the felon, the ex-con, homeless, tramp, hobo, homo, Roma, trans, the teacher, the cop, the man at the top,   the Mexican, migrant immigrant, ignorant, illegal, alien, Martian, cosmonaut. When we talk about The Walking Dead we’re usually talking about Them. You. Me. Us.

Yesterday there was a march in support of the homeless and the agencies that work among marginalized populations in Uptown (Chicago). The march was called as a result of some political missteps from the ward alderman who has tried to shut down various services in the area. All in the name of “public safety.” Of course this is a euphemism for NOT IN MY BACKYARD. For those of my readers who might feel I’ve taken up too much of my memoirous blog writing about James Cappleman and the plight of ethnic/cultural diversity in Uptown—sorry. At some point art and action need to intersect. I’m passionate about many things—writing and story amongst them, and I volunteer time at a homeless shelter working with the residents on memoir, being able to tell their story. Putting all this together—I am concerned about the recent actions of the alderman that are targeting “the least of these”—remember the golden rule?—to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Since takin...

Where is He Going To Put These People? http://www.suntimes.com/news/brown/18522480-452/aldermans-reason-for-shuttering-cubicle-hotel-cock-and-bull.html A series of articles in the Chicago Sun-Times by Mark Brown So today I sat down and worked on a timeline pieced together from newspaper articles on-line mostly from last year and early this year. Cappleman Promises: a timeline 1/31/2007 before coming into office campaigned that he would fight to preserve and maintain existing “affordable” housing in the 46 th ward. 1/2012 after elected alderman, Cappleman came into office and established a “Problem Building List” targeting several SROs, a type of housing often the last stop before homelessness and shelters http://james46.org/problem-building-list/ 2/27/2013 From article by Mark Brown: I asked Cappleman if he’d worked to build any new single-room occupancy housing in his ward since taking office two years ago. The answer was no. The Chateau, 3820-3838 N...

Things I miss seeing in Uptown: Rows of posters for upcoming concerts plastered along gray, grimy walls Patients from Wilson Care spilling out in the morning in their pajamas to buy cigarettes The lady in leotards standing at the corner with her boom box, jiggling defiantly The escapee from Weiss Hospital with IV tubing poking out of his hand, his blue gown open in the back for all to see Now add to that list: The Wilson Men's Club The last of the old pay-by the night/week hotels that cater to the down-and-outers. This type of facility is by no stretch of the imagination a hotel or even a club, but offered a bed. I’ve never been inside the Wilson Men’s Club but I heard that men sleep in cages made of chicken wire. That is before there were improvements. Now I’ve heard there are walls—they just don’t go all the way down to the floor. Cubicles. I suppose it’s strange to miss seeing these things. I mean shouldn’t I be glad it’s cleaner, safer (comparably...