Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Trust



There is hope now. The winter will gradually subside. As I leave work instead of darkness there is light and only while driving home does the night gradually surround me. I trust that this will happen, and year after year I am rewarded by the fact that it does.

I base my life on natural cycles. Living in southern Florida for several years I became bored with the sameness of the climate. I longed for the tumult that I now, often as not, wish would go away. Oh, not to awake to another blizzard; not to huddle in my boat as a fifty knot squall blows; not to swelter in the toxic mixture of heat, humidity and pollution of a summer inversion.

I wonder, does this change keep me young or is it slowly leading to my demise. So far none of my friends, mostly fifty and above, have moved south to Promised Lands as many of my parent’s friends did. Maybe the fact that we traveled freely in our twenties allows us the freedom to stay put. In young adulthood we traveled for fun and enlightenment, while our parents, at least our fathers, traveled to fight a war.

My friend’s adventurous father, who would never go sailing with us, recounted stories of sleeping in a hammock off the bridge of his ship in the Pacific during WW II, only at the end of the war to be turned around and sent home via the North Atlantic in mid winter. His story became fuzzy when he talked about the crossing, but he was profoundly affected and determined never to set foot on another ship if possible.

This winter turned out to be an especially challenging one. The past decade of relatively benign winters seems behind us, and the same can be said for our economy and our politics. I live in the Fifth Congressional district and to say we have a checkered past would be a tragic understatement.

As I trust in natural cycles, I have reluctantly begun to trust in cycles of greed, mismanagement and fraud that envelop us every decade. Thankfully I missed the Great Depression, but lived it through my parent’s cogent discussions of living a life with few resources and their wariness, even with their modest means, of anything financial. Years of analysis are not necessary to figure out why I am an under-the-mattress type when it comes to money.

The scale of our present debacle rivals the vast atmospheric changes that take place in our Midwest home: frigid cold pressure systems that descend from Canada; moisture laden low pressure originating from the Gulf, and the North and the South Pacific, blown across thousands of miles, hitting or missing us depending on the vagaries of the jet-stream; and Nor’easters that scud down 300 miles of Lake Michigan only to slap us in the face just as we start to let our guard down.

But this is mother earth at work. It is hard to fault her for doing what she does; after all she was here before us, but not to fault the individuals, the government and the businesses that we entrusted to look out for our well being, as well as theirs, is beyond me.

Here in Chicago, with its reputation for ignored mass thievery, we are cursed and blessed with both sides of the coin. Only from a place that takes such joy in diversity, individualism and tolerance could our recent national leaders come from. I am not blind to the racism and the cronyism that has marked our past. It was, and is, despicable, but amongst and within this climate we have worked to rectify our wrongs. Granted it is a work in progress but at least it is a work progressing.

We are not languishing. We are not complacent. I have lived in many cities. None where two strangers can have a informed and heated discussion about Louis Sullivan and Mies van der Rohe, about Howlin’ Wolf and Buddy Guy, about Jane Addams and Studs Terkel, about Daley the First and Harold Washington. For better or worst we reinvent ourselves and more importantly are not scared to do so.

I am hopeful that my most recent trust has not been misplaced. Though if it turns out to be, I will get on with life. Do not take lightly that we are known as the city that works. It is our mantra.

Volume 5753 (4), 3/20/2009