The U of C

Revisiting Chicago after so many years away was like visiting it anew.  When we were young, we lived on the south side of the city, with no money or car and in college.  Our summer 2013 visit saw us in much different circumstances, as working adults with enough money to stay downtown (with the help of hotwire, of course) and eat out without checking our bank balance.  My feelings about Chicago were very much the result of my experiences there as a young adult (I was dreading it and worried about the weather, people and general hardship of being there).  Our visit, however, was very comfortable and exciting!  We had a rental car and stayed in two different nice downtown hotels.  We walked to Millennium Park and the museums and drove whenever we left the downtown area.    We didn’t have to get into the grime, heat and hardship of the poor living in the city.  This dichotomy was on my mind (us in 1999 vs. us in 2013) though, because I’d just been reading about the great migration and urban life, and I know that the south side is currently in the midst of a years-long gang war that leaves people dead every day. 

We took note of the beefed up presence of the university police around the streets of Hyde Park, yet we could no longer relate to life there.  We don’t face that kind of urban life anymore, and it feels good (I wish no one had to face it).  I think this might be at the root of some of the big problems in our country—it’s so easy to forget what life on the other side is like if you’ve seen it (and then left) and most people just haven’t seen poverty and despair.  I don’t think living in Hyde Park necessarily gives you that experience, but the simple act of taking the El from north to south can be illuminating. At any rate, the U of C was the first place we went when we got into town.  We walked around campus and were struck by how awesome it is (though, like most experiences that involve my past, I did do a little on-campus crying and life-choice questioning).  

The U of C is an intense place, and it’s hard to explain the experience to outsiders (think about going to college exclusively with the smartest, most intense and competitive kids in your high school and then ratchet up the intensity by a factor of 10 (?)--that’s probably about right).  It is very weird to be a simple school teacher who came out of a prestigious college filled with *very*important*people*.  A surreal fact: when we got home from our summer away, I was leafing through my college alumni magazine and in the SAME issue there was an alumni note congratulating Nate Silver on some award he won, and a letter to the editor from Philip Roth, protesting something Saul Bellow’s son had said about him in a previous issue of magazine.  I mean, come on!  Should I be doing more with my life?  (answer: no, it is AWESOME.  I spend my mental capacities on other, equally important things, like creating student scavenger hunts with funny chemistry jokes in them, making felt toys and coming up with awesome inventions that stay mostly in my head (Example: climate change shirt: a shirt with a thin layer that has air circulating through it (the fan that circulates the air will be powered by a solar cell)!  This shirt is for people in tropical parts of the world (which are predicted to become unworkable in the next 80 years))).

BACK TO PICTURES!  I could not get enough of the Gothic architecture and lush ivy.  Being on campus was like being in a magical garden.

Let's begin at the Reynold's Club, home of many co-curricular activities, such as the University Theater and WHPK.  That tower is where the radio station lived (I did a classical music show all four years.  The first year, I was alone and then I partnered up with my friend Madeline, which made it more fun).

Inside is the dreaded seal, which if stepped on will delay graduation (of course I jumped on it many a time with no ill effects).

That door leads to hutch commons, which is where there are portraits of all the university presidents.  (also the inspiration for my award-winning* peeps diorama)

Outside of the Reynold's Club is the courtyard, complete with a fountain (not on in this photo).

Ivy covers everything (did they start some new growth or something?  I don't remember this much ivy everywhere).

 Different view from the courtyard.

 Safety precautions.

 Gargoyles up top! 

 

 Botany pond was so much better than I remember.

Natan and Theo on the main quad, heading to Cobb Hall.  I walked down that path so many times!  Now I have a baby!  (Weird)

Cobb Hall!  My first work-study job was here, in the film studies center.  All the good classes were held here (humanities, english)!  Coffee shop in the basement!

 The doors to Cobb.  Again, I do not remember so much ivy.

 Looking towards classics, from Cobb.

 There are so many little spaces of beauty on campus that I never took advantage of.

 Harper (home of the most beautiful library in the world, which was closed for the summer).  DANG.

 Just strolling in the gargoyles and ivy.

 Now we're getting somewhere!

This is where I took logic!  It seemed so much smaller than I remember.  This was one of the few large classes I had (50 students or so).  Most classes were tiny.

The Oriental Institute has an awesome free museum right on campus, which I am embarrassed to admit that I visited not even once in 6 years (too concerned with other trivial things.  College is wasted on the young.)  The OI is where Indiana Jones worked. 

 Waiting to go into the museum.

Natan REALLY wanted to have a picture of himself and Theo in front of this winged bull (with human head).  It is kind of incredible in size and detail.  It was transported from Iraq in the 1930's.

We also visited the Robie House (Frank Lloyd Wright), which was being renovated when we were students.

Rockefeller Chapel, where we assembled our first day on campus and heard a talk on Plato's Apology. 

 The baby doesn't read Plato, he tears up pop-up books!

 View from the library to the main campus

I got an alumni pass to the library (sweet!), and went and visited my old "sleeping chairs".  When it was unbearably hot in the summer, I would sometimes hang out here and take naps!  (again, youth = wasted on the young).  I also worked in the maps department of this library.  We didn't stay long because Theo has no concept of an "inside voice".

Reyerson = math building.  Is there any other university in this country that makes calculus a requirement for graduation? (no, but it probably should be, right?  I mean training your brain to work in that way must be good for something).

 My baby in a high chair at the Med (Hyde Park institution), where we ate twice.

born and bred in the red (state)

As we drove northward, we stopped in the northern most part of the natural delta, which is where I was born and raised (until the age of 13).  It was even more redneck than I remember!  We went to the town where my paternal grandmother lived (pop. 600) and visited the lot where her house used to be.   My dad planted a tree there when I was born that is still thriving!  Natan kept talking about how amazing it was to see a 40-year-old tree (I guess we round ages to the tens now)!  We took some pictures and visited some graves, where I actually saw little sprouts of prickly pear cactus!  What does this mean?  Is it climate change?  

The "40-year-old tree" (also known as the 36-year-old tree)

 Family in front of ancient tree.

 There is nothing there, except sky and red votes.

 

 No businesses exist, except for a strange auction warehouse.

 Churches on every corner (this one's Baptist).

Then we went to ground zero, the town where I was born and spent my upper elementary/middle school years.  There’s a tourist trap restaurant in town where the wait staff throw rolls at you and come around with big vats of foods like fried okra and macaroni and cheese (they also wear suspenders, like on Hee Haw).  This restaurant had several license plates on their walls that had some variation of “Pro-NRA”.  I wanted to take a picture of that abomination SO BAD, but was too self-conscious to do it.  Do you know what they do to liberals down there?  

I didn’t get many pictures of the town--I mostly just drove around remembering things and marveling at how different I was from the people in that place.  Sadly, I could not find the local Piggly Wiggly, as it appeared to have gone out of business.  I did, however, find the homes of my three closest childhood friends and drive slowly past, which was a trip.  Going back to revisit childhood memories after 23 years makes one feel aged (but wizened).

On our way to the official north, we stopped in the town where my other grandmother lived and just as I was blubbering to Natan on the sidewalk about heavy things like family, death, and fear, the woman who lived next door came up and started talking to us!  She remembered my whole family (and called my brother a “little cotton-top”).  Her son and I were in preschool together!  Of course, their family is all still together in the same place and mine is scattered to the wind (sad face).  Also, the whole town is apparently facebook friends with each other, which is oddly comforting. 

My grandmother's house (doesn't look as nice as it did 20 years ago)

We drove from here to Peoria, IL, where we were taken in and treated the way weary travelers want to be treated—coffee drinks every morning, homemade food and use of the master bedroom!  It was fantastic!  For a few hours, Natan contemplated buying the house down the street and making corn country our home. (Visiting affordable and less trafficky parts of the country really made us question our station in life.  Social service workers can’t live comfortably in the bay area, sadly).  My cousin even came over from real corn country (Iowa) to visit with his kids!  We want to go back next summer.

All together on the couch.

 Theo is particularly handsome in this one.

 Extended family time! (my uncle, cousin, me, Theo, my aunt, my cousin's daughter and son)

Caterpillar has a museum in downtown Peoria--with a life size model of a mining truck.  Those things are big! (the better for destroying the earth!)

 This is some 4-year-old's dream museum.

 Right before we left. 

Up next—CHICAGO! CHICAGO! CHICAGO! (We loved it so much, it was like we’d never been there before, much less lived there for 6 whole years).

Graceland

On my last day of the conference, we heard an awesome talk about the diaspora to Chicago.  To summarize:  mechanization of cotton picking destroyed sharecropping jobs --> mechanization created jobs in Chicago --> sharecroppers (ex-slaves) took the opportunity to get out of what one can assume was a living nightmare and move to better pay and what they hoped would be better treatment (it wasn’t.  See:  American history and what passes for current day Republican humor)--> they took their culture with them --> their culture (food music) changed urban America --> urban culture trickled down to rural America -->American culture is the way it is because of this fundamental shift in population -->America today (BAM).

We also made mojos of our trip.  A mojo is supposed to provide a power, and our mojos gave us the power of memory.  It was a really fun ritual and I realized that most vacationers harbor this tradition—collecting souvenirs or pictures to have and remember.  My sands of the world collection is a simple mojo.

 

But this was just the beginning of the trip for Natan and me.  We spent several days driving up the blues highway (61) to Chicago, enacting our own northward journey out of Mississippi.  We stopped along the way in Memphis so I could see Graceland (a dream of mine that originated when I was in 8^th grade and read a biography of Elvis).  Natan and the baby did not go with me because it was a crazy hot day and cost $35 dollars to get in!  When it has been a life goal, one does not question prices, but I understand his reluctance.  I ended up getting super mad towards the end of the experience when I walked up to the Lisa Marie (his plane), excited to get a glimpse inside and was told that I needed to drop even more dough for a separate ticket for the plane.  What kind of crap is that?  Also, every road led to a gift shop, which I’d heard about and was prepared for, but really bothered me in practice.  So let me save you 35 clams, and show you some pictures of Elvis’ home.  

15 foot white couch.

 His dear mother's room.

He had three TVs because he heard that Lyndon Johnson did that to watch all three network news broadcasts.

 The jungle room (green shag carpet ceiling).