“An abacus of sparrows”

On three parallel clotheslines strung across someone’s backyard, there was an abacus of sparrows.

The Bird Artist, page 193.

An abacus of sparrows… lovely! So much better than smattering of sparrows, a cluster of sparrows, a few (ugh) sparrows.

Where else could “an abacus of” work? Do you need physical lines or wires?

Or would it work on benches, say in a courthouse, and relatives of a defendant? Or bystanders in a street and its bordering sidewalks?

This paragraph saved my story today

Lately obsessed with the Shirley Jackson book, We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Like I tore through it, put it down a minute to get a glass of water, then started right over again.

Here’s how it opens:

“My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death cap mushroom. Everyone else in my family is dead.”

Right? All the book’s themes are right there, hiding in that graf, hiding in plain sight.

So when I got stuck this morning writing a story I couldn’t set up right, I thought of Jackson and her magical little graf. Tried to channel her a little bit.

Story’s still going. Will post when it’s done. I * think * the opening lines get at its themes.

Best. First. Day. Ever.

There was champagne in the Sun Times newsroom today, and applause and cheering for these three guys.

Awesome. What a sunny omen as I start this new assignment.

That Irish pub book story turned up elsewhere, too

Like Downstate?

Go figure. I wonder which wire they were using. And why they picked a Chicago dateline when I write from Tinley Park…

Plans foiled by the news

Ah damn.

Verdict came in too late to do what I had planned.

All kinds of action carefully noted during this trial will not quite see the light of day in print.

Listen to the six-minute power transfer

I didn’t record this for publishing purposes. Just wanted a taped back-up of the public meeting in case I couldn’t keep up with the notes.

Then the meeting, the whole thing, took just under six minutes.

Have a listen. The sound is unedited from the time Mike Madigan starts to speak (“Good Morning”) until he’s done.

six minutes

Full disclosure: I did cut off the noise room at the start of my tape. Hit record about 10 seconds before the meeting began. I also faded out the end, after Madigan sends everyone off, to end the applause.

And Steve Landek’s acceptance speech afterwards, too.

Coming Sunday: Faces of Freedom

I will miss this project so much once it’s over, even though it’s why I’m still up tonight.

Their photos. Their stories. Our history.

‘Southland Scouts get back to basics’

On Saturday, I tried this muscle and stayed narrow, but went deep. Walked into camp on a gorgeous day and considered: Follow 150 scouts? Or one troop as they tried to build a fire?

Though the sun shone on a bright and warm Saturday afternoon, Paul Gacek and Steve Gries just had to get a fire going.

The tall frame they chose – four sticks standing against each other, kindling underneath – wasn’t catching. Tepee fires might burn the hottest, but on windy days, they’re too open underneath to catch.

So Paul and Steve and the rest of Oak Forest Boy Scout Troop 341 scrambled to change plans. They couldn’t let Midlothian’s Troop 437 beat them.

As Boy Scouts have been doing for the past 100 years, more than 150 south suburban scoutsand their leaders from seven troops camped all weekend in Goodenow Grove Forest Preserve near Beecher.

They called it a camporee.

They mastered outdoor cookery: cobblers and bacon in Dutch ovens, eggs and sweet potatoes over open flame, pizza baked in ovens made from boxes. They walked obstacle courses blindfolded, trusting directions from troopmates to make it through. They slept in tents
and stained their mouths with Kool-Aid and ran around the grounds.

And they raced, Boy Scout-style, to see which troop’s fire first could burn through a length of kitchen twine stretched about 2 feet high across metal poles.

So Paul and Steve, and Ian McNamara and Ronan Morrissey, and Andy Marcheschi and Nick D’Agostino, and other boys started over with a shape they knew as the “log cabin.” They laid down thin wooden shivs and skinny branches in a square, one piece at a time going around,
until the slatted box climbed a good foot. Justin Scasny wadded up dry leaves and dead grass and shoved the kindling into the middle.

“I have flint and steel!” Steve said, holding up both.

Instead, they lit it with lighters and held their breaths.

A few boys kept watch on the competition from Midlothian, which had built a log cabin. That fire blazed merrily, charring the bottom rope line that limited the height of the firewood.

Remember teamwork, boys, an Eagle Scout from Midlothian advised. And worry about your own fire.

Then the Oak Forest troop’s twine snapped, and its boys cheered.

Their victory, though, came 30 seconds too late.

Midlothian’s fire already had won.

But before the boys headed downhill to cook dessert, before the barrel of water was splashed on the flames, one of the fires let off a dull bang.

The Scouts were delighted: A lighter left too close to one of the fires had blown up.

Saturday assignments, I’ve decided, are for writing practice. I just wish there were an editor present, just in case.

Published in the SouthtownStar, Oct. 17, 2010.

‘Who knew sacrifice could taste so good?’

I learned about this outdoor fish fry while reporting on the HOPE ministry at St. Elizabeth Seton Parish in February. Met David Blaha, who, while telling me about his unemployment, talked about his cooking and his fish fry recipe he, um, discovered, while fishing one weekend long ago.

While driving past signs advertising Lenten specials, I thought about how Lent’s another time of year when you eat certain foods that don’t come out at any other time. Like Christmas cookies in December. Or fried tomatoes in August. And the Southland is so mush more culturally Catholic compared to the Philadelphia neighborhood where I grew up, I felt like Lent was everywhere. Would people talk about sacrifice?

The long road from paczki to ham is paved with fried fish.

The 40-day observance Catholics and Orthodox Christians mark to prepare for Easter is supposed to be a time of sacrifice.

Fridays during Lent have long been associated with going without meat, recalling the sacrifice of Jesus, who died on a cross on Good Friday, Christians believe, for their sins.

So for a few weeks a year in the Catholic Southland, pepper and egg sandwiches and battered fish reign supreme, popping up on restaurant menus and signs all over the place.

Except, how is any of that a sacrifice?

Well, it mostly isn’t, Lenten diners agree.

Take the recent fish fry at Our Lady of the Ridge church in Chicago Ridge, where Knights of Columbus lovingly rolled strips of beer-soaked cod into a spicy mix before tossing them into turkey fryers.

Up they bubble, golden and glorious, crispy and perfectly tender, these simple little cods. Nearby, awaits a table of lemon wedges, crusty bread, a little green salad. For the kids, there’s also macaroni and cheese, made from shredded cheddar and orange cheese sauce stirred into vats of warm elbow macaroni.

“There are a lot of substitutes for meat and I don’t feel like we give up all that much for Lent,” parishioner Lorraine Rakowski, of Chicago Ridge, said, tucking into her platter with her friend, Mary Casey, of Worth.

These ladies would know. Both single, they dine out a ton, making a tour of local restaurants and fish frys at several south suburban churches.

For 40 days, many menus specially feature goodies the ladies enjoy:

Smoked salmon, tuna salad, grilled cheese.

“And some restaurants have like half a cantaloupe with tuna fish,” Rakowski continued. “Shrimp. I love shrimp and lobster. I could eat lobster beautifully.

“Really, Lent doesn’t really hit me that much as far as giving up something.”

‘We join in the sacrifice’

There’s nothing unholy about meat, said the Rev. Kenneth Fleck, of St. George’s Parish. It just was a staple food that everyone ate, so abstaining from eating it took some thought, he said.

Before the Vatican II conference in the 1960s that modernized the Catholic Church, meat was forbidden every Friday of the year.

“There was abstinence from meat on Friday out of respect for the fact that Good Friday was the day Christ died,” said Fleck, who’s partial to peanut butter and jelly, or peanut butter with bananas, for a Friday Lenten lunch.

“We join in the sacrifice,” he said.

I like to eat egg salad, though I forgot to make it this year. It’s the only time of year I think to make it. My Mister and I went out for sushi a couple of times on Lenten Fridays until I felt like we were cheating the spirit of the law. Mister makes tons of tuna sandwiches. My own mother bakes a macaroni and cheese from scratch — the top gets super crunchy in the oven — that’s to die for. It’s also simple and cheap.

Read the whole story as published in the SouthtownStar, April 2, 2010

PDF 2010-04 Sacrifice never tasted || The SouthtownStar || A1

2010-04 Sacrifice never tasted || The SouthtownStar || A10

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Lisagor finalists revealed today

And my unemployed veterans made the cut of Chicago’s journalism awards.

I love this story, too. I can’t wait to tell the vets we’re all up for glory and honor come the end of April. Sadly, there’s no chance I’d get to go + 4.

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