The Portage
The Chicago Neighborhood Guidebook is out in the world. Thanks a million to everyone who came out to our book release party at the Hideout last week, and to our *second* book release party this week at Marz Brewing. We have two more events coming up soon, in Andersonville and in Logan Square, but then there'll be a little lull, which is fine and good. This week I've been spitballing with various people ways to roll out a second wave of programming around the book later this year -- smaller, more neighborhood-based, less celebratory/more participatory events? Vague plans are already in the works for Back of the Yards, Pullman, and South Chicago. Do you have a neighborhood coffeeshop, bar, or front room salon that would like to host us? Please let me know!
In the meantime, real talk: the flurry of enthusiasm and activity around the book has been wonderful and so gratifying and also, eek, a little emotionally exhausting. With the culmination of any big project always comes a crash, and this is no different. It's OK. I anticipated it, and was able to plan ahead a little even, to put some psychological crash mats in place. While I do get a charge out of talking to people about whatever it is I'm on about, and out of hosting events (duh), I'm fundamentally an introvert, awkward at being looked at, and always have conflicted feelings about the performative nature of it all. Mostly I try to remind myself that the work is the work and that it is good, and will remain so and have meaning for people long after the tv camera has moved on to someone else. (Did I mention I was on I was on tv? Go here to see me wave my hands around on WTTW while wearing a shit-ton of makeup.)
More tangibly, I've been distracting myself from brooding with little field trips. Like I said, I went down to Pullman on Friday and got a great walking tour of the neighborhood from artist JB Daniel (above, one of his "Labor Paste" installations of wheat-pasted silhouettes of Pullman labor leaders on an empty building). It was a beautiful day drenched in September sunlight and, Pullman is itself just gloriously pretty and odd. It was a tonic. And yesterday I went to Bronzeville, for a walking tour organized by CNG contributor Vitaliy Vladimirov and to the (former) Overton Elementary School at 49th and Indiana, closed by Rahm and currently repurposed for the Chicago Architecture Biennial, with a bunch of installations that I found for the most part thoughtful and curious. I can be easily put off by the pretension and jargon of the design world but the vibe at the Overton site was very chill and welcoming. Highly recommend.
And last weekend went on a solo odyssey to the southwest suburban township of Lyons, on my bike -- a 28-mile round trip. Specifically I went to the Chicago Portage National Historic Site, in the Ottawa Woods Forest Preserve at the edge of the Des Plaines River. This is the spot where in 1673, per the Chicago canon, Marquette and Jolliet, returning from their exploration of the Mississippi, took the advice of the local Potawotomi and portaged their canoe and gear from the east bank of the Des Plaines across a few miles of muddy terrain to the Chicago River, which led them to Lake Michigan, connecting the St. Lawrence to the Mississippi, the Atlantic to the Gulf, the Old World to the new. Almost 200 years later, the I & M Canal was dug here, thus making Chicago the hub of transit, shipping, and commerce it remains today.
I went on this little trip because I needed to clear my head after all the activity of book release week, and because, at my book party, a kind stranger gifted me a copy of a book called "Historic Chicago Sites." Published in 1953 it is about what you'd think -- a primer on early Chicago history, written in the vaguely racist, Acts-of-Great-Men style of the times. And of course, it starts with the portage; because that's where the story of Chicago starts, or the white man's story at least. Reading it the day after the party got my mind going in a discursive loop about ending and beginnings, where one story starts or stops, how they're all really one unmanageable story, how we get from one place to another. So, I decided to check it out.
The portage itself is confounding, both an end and a beginning, an action happening across time and a place fixed on the land. At the end of this long, hot summer, when I have at times felt like I was portaging my own body from one site to another, through the muck and mud, fueled at times only by the faith that up ahead somewhere there is clear water, an easier passage ... it resonates. And by the end of the bike ride, which took me home via Berwyn, Oak Park, and Austin (and of course there's a whole other essay there on endings and beginnings of neighborhoods and their visible and invisible borders, hello) I was tired and sore, and longing for nothing but some tacos and a hot bath. I got both, and I was happy. Here's a picture of Marquette and Jolliet's butts.
I'll stop there for now. A few links for your Sunday pleasure, just in case you missed them!
A piece on coastal erosion in Loiza -- the latest in this year's Pulitzer Center-funded work in on property rights in Puerto Rico -- went up at Latino Rebels this week. Kari Lydersen and Isabel Dieppa did most of the heavy writing lifting here, but I helped out with some reporting and photos and cheered them on.
The Chicago Reader ran a nice feature/review on the book last week; I really had a good time talking with writer Andrea Michelson, and she was very gracious when I was half an hour late because I went to the wrong coffeeshop, because I am unable to read a Google map.
And Curbed Chicago published this very generous piece on the book. I had a great interview with writer Tanner Howard back in late July, and I'm grateful that they took the time to connect with some of the contributors as well, for their insight.
Last: Please do come out if you can to one of our upcoming book events. Those are, again: Tuesday October 1 at The Hopleaf, at 7 PM (organized - thank you! - by the kind people at Tuesday Funk) and Wednesday, October 9, at Rosa's Lounge, also at 7 PM (and organized by me). Like I said, I'm working on ways to roll out a second wave of programming around the book later this year, but for now this is it. Hope to see you in October!