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Saturdays with Seniors: Nancy O’Shea’s ABCs

June 13, 202014 CommentsPosted in guest blog, memoir writing, teaching memoir, writing prompts

I am pleased to introduce Nancy O’Shea as our featured “Saturdays with Seniors” blogger today. The former Public Relations Director for Chicago’s Field Museum, Nancy also edited the museum’s membership magazine. Now retired, she enjoys taking classes in memoir writing. Lucky for us: we all enjoy hearing her read her essays out loud in class, too!

This week is the last meeting of our six-week experiment in Zoom memoir classes, and to mark its success I came up with an assignment I hoped writers might find challenging — and fun. “Write an essay that is 26 sentences long about any topic you choose,” I told them. “Have the first sentence begin with any letter of the alphabet, and have each sentence after that begin with the subsequent letter of the alphabet.” To help explain, I came up with an example off the top of my head. “You mean it? Zany assignment. A challenge for sure. But I’ll give it a try…”.

Writers rose to the occasion, returning the next week with essays about gardening, trips to Japan, work conflicts, mountain biking, a beloved dog, you name it. Nancy took the opportunity to write this poignant piece about her mother, starting with the letter “I.” Read closely and you’ll see how she took the alphabet full-circle: her last sentence starts with “H.”

There Will be Hugs

Nancy and her mother back when they could be together.

by Nancy O’Shea

I should be writing to my mother. Just thinking of her makes me sad. Knitting together memories, I reflect on her and the life she used to have.

Living — if you can call it that — in a senior facility during this pandemic, it’s like she’s on a desert island. Meals and mail deliveries are measurements of time. Nothing else changes for her. Oh, how good it will be when we can get together again!

Pre-coronavirus, we took our visits for granted. Quiz shows we watched, sitting in her apartment — Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy! — are cherished memories now. Really, the mundane has been elevated. Simple things — embracing, sharing coffee and cookies — have taken on new meaning.

The pandemic has shown us what’s essential in life. Unless this illness had descended upon us, would we have known? Very likely we would have continued day in, day out, unaware of our need for human contact.

We have improvised, using technology as a map that guides us to each other. X marks the spot. Yet technology has its limits. Zoom meetings are a fragile lifeline.

A history of this time will call it a crisis. But I think there will be an upside. Clouds will part. Driving once again on society’s open highway, I hope we will have learned to appreciate the journey as much as the destination.

Everyone will have a different take on what this time meant to them. For some, it will represent hardship, even death. Gosh, I’m so fortunate in that regard!

Hugs may be delayed, but there will be hugs, and they will be long and tight.

Mondays with Mike: I had lobster ravioli

June 8, 20207 CommentsPosted in Mike Knezovich, Mondays with Mike, politics

Hello everybody. Hope you are well.

Last Wednesday was our first date night in a loooonnnng time.

Let’s get the citizen business out of the way first.

Here’s a reading assignment.

It includes practical steps toward making things better.

My finding this article was sparked by a conversation I had last night with two friends. Both are highly accomplished professionals working for publicly traded corporations. Both are Black. One is a woman, with whom I had a long discussion long ago about the talk she had to have with her son as he came of age. About how to act and not to act, in great specificity, in any encounter with law enforcement. I don’t remember having such a talk with my parents.

She and I and mutual friends have had difficult discussions about our different experiences more than once in the past. We’ve touched nerves. And wondered whether we’d crossed lines. But as she pointed out, we somehow always worked through them. I’ve learned a lot. I cherish our friendship.

That’s Kasey’s tavern across the street. It’s boarded up windows were transformed into the City of Chicago flag by muralists.

She said that a lot of white colleagues at work have reached out to her since this all started. In her view, some have really wanted to learn something, but others just want to tell her they feel guilty and be done with it. She and I have a lot in common, including the concern that once the protests ebb, nothing will change. We’ve both seen this before. Her number one recommendation about action to take? Vote. Get skin—black or white or brown—in the game. And keep voting. And act locally. Go to dreary public meetings. Pressure your city council, state representatives, and mayors. It’s a slog. But as she put it, “We have to do this from the ground up.”

The other friend leans libertarian. He’s a bigshot corporate lawyer. He wouldn’t like me saying that, but I’m not lying. He’s suspicious of government. He’s nothing if not practical. And his recommendation: Get rid of qualified immunity for police. Of course, it takes a lawyer to make a recommendation like that. He patiently explained the term. Wanna know what qualified immunity is? Do the reading assignment above. (Shorthand: It’s a bad thing, and it dates back to really ugly stuff). I’ve learned a lot from my lawyer friend. I cherish our friendship.

Thanks to neighborhood activists, what was once a parking lot, which was going to be a high rise, is now our little park.

We had this discussion last night. In the park next to our building. Socially distanced. With libations. It was great.

Lots of businesses, and our condo building, are still boarded up. But the boards look better. Muralists have seen to that. Two of our favorite businesses, Sandmeyer’s Bookstore and The Grail Café, were somehow, miraculously, untouched by looters. (BTW, looters and protesters here in Chicago, by what I have been able to judge, are mutually exclusive groups.)

Last week Beth and I had dinner at Sofi, an exquisite Italian restaurant in the first floor of our building. I put on my fancy sport jacket. Beth put on her elegant red dress. Friends saw us and said, “Schnazzy!”

It was the first day of Chicago’s phase III of opening. Sofi started serving at their sidewalk patio by reservation. There are specified seating times. Between them staff wipes down everything.

The waiters were masked, and place settings included packets of hand sanitizer.

It was kind of weird.

It was the best dinner out I’ve ever had.

Saturdays with Seniors: Bobbie Turner’s West Side Story

June 6, 202015 CommentsPosted in guest blog, memoir writing, politics

I am pleased to introduce Bobbie Turner as our featured “Saturdays with Seniors” blogger today. A self-taught artist and award-winning educator, Bobbie grew up on Chicago’s West Side, and after graduating with both a BA and an MA from Roosevelt University she taught children in the creative arts in Chicago’s Rockwell-Maplewood area.

Bobbie was just a teenager when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.was assassinated, and she generously agreed to let us publish a recollection of the looting that erupted in her neighborhood back in 1968.

Compassion in a Box

by Bobbie Turner

People were crying, standing around in disbelief and sorrow as we stood there looking at all the destruction in our close-knit neighborhood. Smoke filled the air. Glass everywhere, fires burning on blocks that once housed shops.

The occasion marked more than the death of a christened leader, but the death of family universal. No trust, betrayal, slaughter, disrespect, visions of slavery, Jim Crow, assassination, starvation, no resources. Ravaged hearts ripped as the bullets all but ripped off the head of a leader, the Drum Major of Peace.

A clip from MLK's last speech.

A clip from MLK’s last speech.

“Mr. Louie” as we called Mr. Leonard, the store owner of the only full market facility in our neighborhood, was stunned by the damage. Color was washed from his face, ghostly white. His eyes filled with something, but I didn’t know what it was. Pale purple rose like a fountain; first his hands, then wrist, and after a few moments, his face and head.

“Oh, Mr. Louie, we are so sorry… We tried to stop them…They weren’t from around here… We begged them to stop…Then somebody threw something through the window, and that was it.”

Mr. Louie, a short slightly stocky Jewish man, was one of the kindest persons in our neighborhood. His small grocery store was an oasis, a jewel, our beacon of hope. In short, he fed the people in the area. There was no A & P….no National Foods in our area, just Louie’s, and boy, were we thankful.

I often wondered how Mr. Louie stayed in business; he extended credit to just about everyone. When I made grocery runs for some of my neighbors, they would tell me to tell Mr. Louie to put “it on credit” or give me a balled-up note with a message to pass to him. He would look at the note and start filling the order. Usually, it was a request for sandwich meat and bread.

I marveled as I watched Mr. Louie take out a tin box. This is where he kept his files, credit files on note cards. He would write down the amount that was owed on that person’s card. It was understood that payment would have to be made before the debt was over-extended. Sometimes Mr. Louie would tell them what was owed. The way he told them was with kindness, understanding, and respect. Everybody owed him. Many loved him.

Mr. Louie helped save lives with a tin box full of compassion. On this dreadful night, our neighborhood died along with Mr. Louie’s grocery store. Louie decided not to return.

Life has never been the same.

Can Luna Find Your Door With It All Boarded Up?

June 4, 202010 CommentsPosted in blindness, guide dogs, Seeing Eye dogs

A photo on Mike’s Monday’s with Mike post this week left friends asking me whether or not Seeing Eye dog Luna has a hard time finding the front door to our apartment building now. Glass doors and windows have been boarded up ever since looters broke into two businesses on the first floor Saturday night.

Our front door is being held open in this shot, but it, too, is covered by wood.

Luna has had a lot to deal with since coming home to Chicago with me from the Seeing Eye school at the end of January, 2020. My broken wrist, sheltering in place, Mike hospitalized with COVID 19, social distancing, us wearing masks, and now…the lootings. She’s been riding the storms magnificently, though; she hasn’t forgotten her lefts and rights, still stops at corners during walks and guides us safely around physical obstacles in our way. And now, with so many neighborhood buildings boarded up and storefronts all looking alike, can she find our door?

Yes.

Luna and I take two long walks a day around the neighborhood, I always wear a mask, and she always guides me right to our boarded-up front door when our walks are over. I’m not so sure she detects it visually, though. My guess is she does it by smell. An article in Wired last year about how difficult its been to come up with a robot with olfactory skills points out how many years ”humans have prized dogs for their tracking abilities” and how “police and armed forces have long used them to sniff out bombs, drugs, and bodies.” Humans rely on vision to navigate the world, the article says, but a dog is motivated by scent. More from the article:

All this adds up to a revelation not just about dogs but about the physical world itself. Smell, it appears, is sometimes the best way of detecting and discriminating between otherwise hidden things out in the world

So while I can’t see the door, and I can’t differentiate one boarded-up building from another by my sense of touch, Luna sniffs it out and leads me to the right door handle every time.

And once we get home, thanks to the bravery and hard work of our condo staff and our terrific condo board president throughout these trials, she and I and Mike can feel safe and sound.

PS: Guide dogs are not trained to stay six feet away from others, and the Seeing Eye has developed anew infogram with suggestions on how to help us social distance and stay safe. Check it out and feel free to share with others — thanks.

Mondays with Mike: Mayhem and kindness

June 1, 20208 CommentsPosted in Mike Knezovich, Mondays with Mike, politics

Early last week I had a great experience involving, of all things, my broken upright bass. It was ripe to write about, and I thought I had today’s post in the bag.

Oh well. I was just feeling like we might be starting to get a handle on the covid thing, and then all hell broke loose.

Well, it didn’t break loose. It came out.

The two best things I’ve read so far about the riots is this piece by Steve Chapman.

And this by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Sunday (yesterday) morning, after a night of helicopters and sirens and weird sounds and marauders, Beth woke up before I did. She was going to take her Seeing Eye Dog out for Luna’s morning constitutional but was smart to first text our friend Sheila, who always takes an early morning walk, about neighborhood conditions. Sheila warned against the walk—the debris was still a problem when she was out.

So, Beth waited, and together we took a short walk to let Luna do what she does. We returned Luna to the apartment then, and Beth and I set off to explore.

Oy. It was bewildering, heartbreaking, infuriating and completely logical at the same time. It’s like your brain is one of those old newspaper comics that you put silly putty on and then stretch in different directions.

Several businesses on our little block had been hit hard. SRO (Standing Room Only), the sandwich shop on the first floor of our building, was one of them. Its cash register was found, destroyed, in our little park. SRO continually plays a satellite jazz station and pipes it to the sidewalk. Beth uses the music as a homing device. It is staffed largely by hardworking and courteous people who happen to be Hispanic. It’s not just a business. It’s part of the fabric of our block. The 711 on the first floor of our building was pretty much cleaned out. Kasey’s, the bar across the street that’s been closed by covid, had been busted open and looted. Beth and I visited Kasey’s back in 2002 when we were scouting Chicago neighborhoods to live in. Bar Louie, a chain joint, and, of all places, a knitting-focused shop called Yarnify, also had been busted open. Go figure.

It was the same for the Ace Hardware a block away. The Ace saves our neighborhood from the horrors of big-boxes like Home Depot. The damage went on for blocks and blocks. Our friends reported that they watched from their apartment windows as vans pulled up outside of the Ace and one of the independent stores called South Loop Market on State Street to load up.

During my walk with Beth yesterday we headed down Dearborn two short blocks to Floradora, a local store located in the historic Monadnock Building north of our apartment. We have (well, mostly Beth has) struck up a friendship of sorts with Floradora’s owner. Looting was the last thing on our minds Saturday morning when we headed to the store looking for a gift for a friend—Beth called in advance, described what we were looking for, and the owner readied a set of choices before we got there. We did a curbside selection and pickup of sorts and walked back to Printers Row to deliver the gift.

Floradora was a lovely store in a lovely space. This is what it looked like the day after our visit.

It was a staggering, sobering experience. Which is maybe the point.

During our walk we also gained an inspiring sense of community. By the time we hit the street yesterday, say 10:30, to take Luna out, there was no glass on our block. I learned later from our condominium board president that he and a slew of folks from the neighborhood had decided on their own to show up with masks, brooms, dustbins and bags at 6:00 a.m., when the overnight curfew expired.

By the time we got outside, the sidewalks were clean. But the Sweeper Corps kept going to adjacent blocks, doing their sweeping all day.

Last night, most of our block was boarded up—some to cover broken windows, others,  to avoid them. Happily, we had a quiet night.

Before.

After.

Meantime, about my upright bass. About a year ago, after years of not plucking it, I decided to give it a spin. I started tuning it…and that simple act had broken the scroll/pegbox.

When my stimulus money arrived, I decided, finally, to use it to get my bass repaired. I did some research and the first to reply to my online request was Chicago Bass Works. Andrew and I had a back and forth email exchange, and he guessed he could fix it for $200 or $300. We sort of hit it off virtually, and along the way, I told him we didn’t own a car, and I told him about my covid experience.

“I’ll come and get it,” he said. “I gotta get out of the house, anyway.” When he arrived, I wrestled the bass (I’m out of practice) to the sidewalk outside our building lobby.

Andrew, wearing a mask, met me. “You doing OK carrying that thing?” I suspect he didn’t really need to ask, given my panting. I asked, “Where are you parked?” He said he would take it from there.

Two days later he emailed to say he thought this bass could be saved. He’d repaired it, tuned it, and it was holding. He would return it the next week.

On the day he was to return it, I got a voice mail. “Call me,” was all it said. I did. Bad news: The repair let go. Fixing the bass now would cost more than it cost in the first place. He was sorry. He was on the way to deliver it back to me.

After a quick talk with Beth, I called Andrew back to let him know he could keep it if he could find some use for it. He was still en route and he said he really didn’t have any use for it. We hung up.

He arrived minutes later, got out of the car and handed me a check for the full amount I’d paid in advance.

“I’d like to pay you something,” I said. “No, keep it,” he insisted. “When you can, use it to go out and hear live music.”

“And I was thinking about it—I do some work for schools maintaining instruments. I might be able to use it for parts. No need for you to lug it back to your apartment, I’ll hang on to it.”

I asked him about his Chevy Volt, we had a nice conversation, and I said “Goodbye Andrew.”

“Take care of yourself,” he said.