Chicago Botanic Garden in the Fall

We visited the Chicago Botanic Garden last Saturday when it was 70 degrees...what an awesome day! It is in the suburbs, but accessible by public transport and my new favorite place. One of them, anyway.

Something Beautiful

Need to Breathe concert last week. My previous exposure to the band had been limited to the radio, but they are amazing and put on an awesome show. This was the very last song when they left the stage and went up on the balcony to do a song without the sound system. Everyone in the audience was shushing each other so we could hear. It was a great song and a great moment.

The First Two Weeks

So after two weeks on the job I can happily report a favorable impression. There is soooo much to learn, and I think it will definitely be many months before I can honestly say I know what I'm doing. However, I feel good about how it's going so far. I have transitioned very quickly into doing things independently, and although I do have to stop and ask questions ever five minutes or so I'm glad to be able to be actually doing my job instead of just shadowing. I'm not sure how much to say about the job itself at this point, but essentially I spend a lot of time reviewing the situations of immigrants who are currently detained in ICE (immigration and customs enforcement) custody to try to determine if they have any legal recourse, and if so, if we can take their case. We also provide tons of printed information to detainees to education them about the laws and their rights. It does lead me across some pretty sad situations, and unfortunately I have to give a lot of bad news. However, for the people we can help it's super gratifying.

Chicago is fun so far. It's great to be reunited with some awesome friends, mostly from college. The girls I'm staying with have been particularly helpful and supportive, which I'm super grateful for. I am on the search for my own place, and I know I'll feel more comfortable and settled once that is taken care of, so we'll see how that all falls into place.

Short post for now, more to come!

A Place at the Table

And Knowing That I Could Not Take Them Both...

Oh friends. Today is the one year anniversary of me getting on a plane somewhere in south Texas with two overstuffed suitcases and a one way ticket. For as uneventful as it has seemed to me most of the time, this year has been quite a journey. Now that I am moving on to something that seems like the "next step" I was expecting to take when I left Texas, I have to acknowledge that this past year has been a step in itself.

I still feel somewhat perplexed looking over the past year and considering all the different things I thought I might want. Moving to Chicago was often present to me, but so was the idea of travel or moving abroad. The only constant was not being sure. Yet it was the kind of not being sure that doesn't get resolved in the head, through thinking and reasoning. It was more the kind of thing that gets resolved by waiting for a door to open and going through it.

Now that the door has opened and I am on my way through I am pondering what all the rest of it meant. I reflect on this post and wonder if I'm somehow making a "safe" choice and/or settling in some way. It doesn't feel that way to me. I think this move will definitely be an adventure in its own way, and it will have plenty to teach me about who I am and who I want to be. Plus I think the great thing about living in a big city is that pretty much any part of my life that I want to develop (spirituality, writing, art, travel, etc.), there will be opportunities to do so. Although I will be rooted in one place for a while, I don't see it as a situation of compromising.

I find my plans to travel and/or live abroad are still with me, but I am also okay with it not happening right now. I think I fall into a trap of thinking that things have to happen quickly, like before I'm 30, say, because I'm going to run out of time somehow. However, if I make the choice I know I can always do those things in a year or two (hopefully at least two - I'm sick of moving every single year), and having a decent job for a while will probably get me in a better position to do it, anyway. Plus there will be opportunities for travel in the meantime, even if it's not in high quantities. Also, while it's not as glamorous as schlepping around South America, living in Chicago is something I've wanted to do for a long time, and I might as well cross it off the bucket list as anything else.

All else aside, I guess the important thing is that I'm doing the right thing for me insofar as I can understand it. Maybe what I need is just to start trying to put it into the context of my larger journey. Of course I won't really know how it fits into that journey until I start living it, but as all things I'll take it poco a poco.

I did not spend much time in the nature sanctuary this summer. For one thing, this is because there were almost always people there. Some of that I was okay with, but there seemed to be a lot of young men who wanted to use it as a dirt bike course of some manner. You don't know how many times I repressed a cry of, "Didn't you see the 'no bikes' sign you....jerks!" And as a result of that, or for some other reason entirely, there never seemed to be much "nature" around. Maybe it was just because there are more suitable places for birds and animals to hang out in the summer. Even the ducks I watched raising their family in the late spring and early summer were only spotted once after my visit to Texas. However now that the seasons are changing it's becoming my favorite quiet place again...and beginning to look about like it did when I first discovered the place about a year ago. We're back where we started, and I guess I'm back where I started the year...transitioning. The proverbial roads diverge in the proverbial yellow wood...

Going Live...

By now everyone has heard that Chicago is not getting the 2016 olympics.

Consolation prize?

Me!

That's right, friends, I am moving to Chicago. I got a new job.

I should probably say a new new job since I started a new job (my old new job) about eight weeks ago. Yes, for eight weeks I have been a teacher's assistant in a bilingual preK classroom. And honestly? I've really enjoyed it. But. The new new job came along, and it is not the kind of thing you pass up. I have been offered a job working as a paralegal with a non-profit that provides legal services for immigrants and refugees, and for so many reasons it's a great opportunity that I'm really excited about. Plus I'm excited to move to the city, even if it is happening fast and things will be crazy for a while.

How fast? Oh um, next weekend. I start the new new job October 19. Don't blink your eyes or you'll miss people!

War

*EDIT - stupid blogger template! Click on the comic to read the whole thing.


Tomorrow is the 8th anniversary of the war in Afghanistan. That is a long time - too long. Pray for peace, hope for peace, work for peace, and spread the word.

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Things I'm Pretty Glad About

Land 'O Lincoln

When I was living in Texas I bought a National Parks Passport. It includes space to collect stamps from over 300 National Park Service sites, including national monuments, national historic sites, national lakeshores, and the list goes on. Not included are national forests, which are not administered by the National Park Service, but, I assume, the National Forest Service.

I collected two stamps while in Texas, and since then have from time to time taken to studying my passport and planning out ways to maximize the number of stamps collected in a lifetime. Routes are traced, trips planned.

Sadly for me I am currently living in a state that is home to only one National Park Service site, the Lincoln Home in Springfield Illinois. Despite all my planning and scheming, it has taken me a ridiculously long time to get around to actually going to it, but last week I finally added another stamp to my passport.

Lincoln lived in Springfield for twenty-five years while working as an attorney and in his early political life. It was there that he met his wife and got married, where his children were born, and where he was living when he was elected president. He lived in the same home for much of this period and he added on to it substantially. The home has been preserved and open to the public since the nineteenth century.


Lincoln's writing desk - the original

Personally I enjoy historical homes, and I think it's fascinating to be able to see a snapshot of the life of such a great man and to walk where he walked. Sadly the tour of the house is very short and rushed – 20 minutes, tops. I felt like we were moved along so quickly that I barely had time to look at things. I understand that they do this in order to allow more people to take the tour in the course of the day, but personally I felt that the rushing diminished the experience. I wish I could have had more time to just take it all in and contemplate the experience. Maybe I will just have to go back - it's free after all.

Anyway, being a textile enthusiast I spent most of my spare moments photographing the carpeting.



The site also includes several other houses original to the neighborhood, with information about who owned them and their relationship to the Lincolns. I don't know if any of the rest of them were restored, but some are set up with museum exhibits. It definitely gave me a better understanding of the Lincolns' life in Springfield and the build up to his presidency.


Campaign wagon

I'm considering coming up with a review system for the National Park Service Sites I visit - if I do so I'll let you know what rating I give to the Lincoln home. In a word, I thought it was "cool".

Since we were in Springfield anyway we had to stop by the new Lincoln Presidential Museum, which I really enjoyed. Besides the crazy realistic hologram movie there were two main exhibits that walked you through Lincoln's life - one pre-White House and the other post. There were lots of dioramas and interactive aspects that drew you into his life rather than just telling you about it. So much so that I cried in Ford's Theatre. True story. There was also an exhibit of artifacts from the life of Lincoln, such as one of the three surviving stovepipe hats. I think some people feel this museum is too entertaining (I've heard the word "Disney-fied") and not dignified enough, but personally I think it makes the material very accessible to a wider audience. God forbid. If you get the chance to go the Lincoln Museum, check it out.

Ahem - and I leave you with this:


Lincoln pop machine, Springfield Illinois

Trains

Oh yeah, one more thing about Texas. Probably the last thing for now. I wanted to add that I accomplished everything on my "wish list" except for the day trip to J-town and the train watching. The night we tried to go to Music Under the Stars it was rained out, but I'm counting it anyway. I skipped the trip to J-town mainly because, um, it was hot. Ridiculous, I know, but every time I go I end up feeling like I've spent hours on my feet in the sun, and I just couldn't face it.

I also never went train watching. Train watching started with my fellow volunteer Chas, and it's funny because I talked to him on the phone while I was down there and apparently he is more or less over the whole train thing now. He lives too close to the tracks and the noise is bothersome. However, when he was a volunteer he liked to watch trains, and train watching kind of became a thing for a while among a few volunteers.

Trains do come to capture a part of your imagination when you're living on the border and working with immigrants. Most of the Central American immigrants who arrived at our house arrived there after weeks traveling through Mexico clinging to the sides of freight trains. Many other guests, regardless of how they arrived, left via train. They would ask for dark clothes and a backpack from the clothing bank and steal out right before bed check. Where they go from there I don't exactly know, except that it involves the risky proposition of running really fast and somehow jumping onto a moving freight train.

I did not develop the same fascination with trains and train hopping that Chas had, and I'm sure I don't fully understand where he was coming from. Nonetheless there is something about train watching as a forlorn, solitary, esoteric activity that appealed to me. Somehow there is something romantic about the idea of jumping trains, riding the rails. Obviously it would be dirty and uncomfortable, and hobos aren't exactly the romantic heros of American folklore. Somehow, though, the idea represents a certain freedom. It is the abandonment of the work-a-day and the conventional in order to live as one pleases, going where one chooses.

Train hopping for immigrants represents a different reality. For them train hopping is not a lifestyle, but something they do for a lack of other options. It is a free way to travel, and a way to hopefully make it past the Border Patrol checkpoints outside the city to a place where you can make a decent wage. Dangerous? Absolutely. Any time a guest would leave to train hop I would get a horrible feeling in my stomach. Yes, most of the people who try it are young, strong, physically fit, and capable of "making it" safely. I guess the majority do. If anyone has problems usually it's the women or the older men, but in my imagination, at least, anyone could slip, could misstep and face the consequences. Some die. More wind up in the hospital having lost limbs or severely broken bones. They receive emergency treatment and occasionally follow up care such as physical therapy. Usually they are referred back to the shelter, which in some cases is where they already came from.

I'm told that, although the trains move slower in Mexico and for that reason are easier to climb up on, the obvious tragedies still sometimes occur. For one thing, migrants cling to those trains for longer periods of time, which increases their risk of getting tired or falling asleep. If that should happen they will most likely fall off and that fall will probably be disastrous. Besides the dangers posed by the trains themselves, money is not safe while train hopping - if you have it someone will almost certainly relieve you of it. That journey that leaves you constantly exposed to the elements and the world around you is especially dangerous for women, who are raped nearly 100% of the time.

You think about all this when you're train watching, and it becomes more interesting than you would think it would be. There were a few spots where we watched trains. There was Chas' favorite spot on the other side of downtown, and some "secret" spot of Heidi and Mike's that was never revealed to me. At some point I realized that you could walk two or three blocks north of the shelter and get to the massive conglomeration of train tracks that run through downtown. There was no fence, either; I'm pretty sure you could walk right up to the tracks. This is, of course, how I ran afoul of the railroad rent-a-cop.

One evening Heidi and I wanted to go for a walk, so I suggested that we start by walking the few blocks to this spot to see if there were any trains going by. There weren't, but we decided to wait a while to see if one came. As we waited we were talking, and as we talked at some point we sat down on the ground, and as we sat we decided to lay on our backs and look at the stars.

Suddenly there was a car behind us, closer then I would have thought it could get without me hearing it sooner. We scrambled to our feet, eyes wide, as a man in a security uniform got out of the SUV. He asked us what we were doing and I'm not even really sure what our response was. He pointed out that we had passed the no trespassing signs and were on private property. I actually felt the need to argue with him about this because we had specifically made a point of reading all the signs in the vicinity to be sure that we weren't on the "wrong side" of any of them. He shined his flashlight on a sign and said, "It's right there," but the sign actually said something else entirely. "Er...well...the next one. Down there." He shined his flashlight into the darkness. He wrote our names and the address of the shelter down in a little notebook from his pocket and told us, "You get one warning." Heidi and I and everyone we told the story to wanted to know what happens after the first warning, but we did not stay around to ask or find out. We rushed back the the shelter giggling, and decided to forgo the rest of our walk.