Category: Chicago Centric

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Festival of Lights Parade for Beginners

I have never used this platform as a means to endorse or promote a particular brand or product and I take this very seriously.  You all don’t come here to find out what car to drive or broom to use.  You come here to read about life and love and hope and family and all those kinds of good things.  Chevy didn’t ask me to write this and I waffled about whether or not I should.  In the end, I am so floored and grateful to have been given this opportunity that here I am.  I guess I found my line in the mommy blogger sand.  

Chicago’s Festival of Lights Parade down Michigan Avenue has always been something I have wondered about, but never actually been.  It seemed like a cool thing, but a “thing,” you know, where lots and lots and lots of folks not from Chicago come in to enjoy the sights and sounds.  If you live here, you become a city snob and avoid those things like the plague.  You can add the air show, St. Patrick’s Day Parade, and Taste of Chicago to this mix, too.

Shhhhhh.  Don’t tell anyone I told you that.  Us city dwellers have an unspoken code that I just breached.

All that changed a few weeks ago when I got an email from a new acquaintance at GM.  In September I had been awarded the “Our Town, Our Heroes” award that GM sponsors.  Every month they pick a local person that has been nominated for their community service to others.  I was nominated for the things our charity, Donna’s Good Things, does.  Specifically, funding dance education and scholarships in our Rogers Park community and providing programming at Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago in partnership with the Old Town School of Folk Music.

SHAMELESS PLUG:  This year we started funding weekly dance education at Rogers Elementary — that’s 700+ kids getting arts education on a weekly basis for the course of the school year.  Considering that there is minimal or no arts education in the average CPS neighborhood school, we are pretty damn proud of this.

Enough tooting my own horn, though!

Fred wrote with one of the most generous invitations I have ever received.  Would my family like to participate, as a guest of Chevy, in the Festival of Lights parade?  Oh, yeah, and we would be IN the parade, riding in the pace car.  Um, yes, Fred, why yes we would like to ride in the pace car of the Festival of Lights parade, thank you very much!

It was AMAZING.  Honestly, the experience of a lifetime and something I am so proud to have been able to share with my family.  Mary Tyler Son and Mary Tyler Dad both had a blast and were wowed by all of the things we saw.  No parade will ever be quite the same.  Donna taught me the importance of moments, the necessity of seeking out the wonders in everyday life, the need to go to the joy.

Thanks to Chevy and Donna, as I think both had a hand in helping my family make this memory.

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Prince in Chicago: Date Night with Royalty

Chicago is segregated.  True story.

There is tremendous diversity within the city, but more often than not, those diverse peoples don’t mix.  As Mary Tyler Dad and I walked into the United Center last Wednesday night, one of the things we were both struck by was how amazingly, wonderfully diverse the Prince audience was.

Handshake

Gay, straight, young, old, rich, not so rich, black, white, and everything in between.  There were wealthy North Shore power couples sitting next to South Side teens.  There were Harley Davidson tees and pony tails next to Sean Jean jackets.  There were hookers (at least they sure looked like hookers) next to old ladies in their Sunday finest.  It was beautiful, people, beautiful.

The other thing that struck us was that people dressed for this.  It was an event and people paid attention to what they were wearing.  We don’t do that enough.  Men and women were turned out.  Turned out — black velvet, purple stockings, brocade shoes, fedoras, heels, lace, spandex, animal prints, and pearls.  It was a thing of beauty, like Sunday church, but on a random Wednesday night.

Hooker Shoes
Green Fedora

I’ve been a fan of Prince for many, many years.  1999 was released shortly after my 13th birthday, Purple Rain released when I was 15.  The music you listen to as a teen, when angst runs high and identities change like underwear, is the music that sticks with you.  At 42, I still believe Purple Rain is some of the best music ever made and sounds as relevant to me today as it did to my 15 year old self.

I once heard that the true definition of a Prince fan is someone who knows where they were the first time they heard “When Doves Cry.”  Check and check.  Me?  I was sitting in my Dad’s used Cadillac, driving around Minneapolis (Prince’s home town), visiting my oldest sister.  Some radio station was playing an early copy. I was mesmerized.  Transfixed.  We had stopped to park and I begged my Dad to let it play out.  He was not one to indulge his kids’ requests, but he did.  Maybe the old goat was a bit transfixed himself.

Prince

That power to transfix is why Prince draws such an all encompassing crowd.  We all want to be transfixed, don’t we?  His music is full of life and joy and grit.  And, let’s be real, sex.  Life is dirty and so is Prince’s music.

His show was amazing.  Just as I had hoped it would be.

I had never seen Prince live.  I would see him on TV and be amazed.  The guy is so damn mesmerizing.  Do you remember the Superbowl halftime show he did in 2007?  Hands down, best thing about football that night.  Anyways.  I had never seen the man and wanted to, badly.  He did not disappoint.  He came out in yellow yoga pants.  Yellow yoga pants, folks.  Think about that.  Who on earth looks good in yellow yoga pants?  I’ll tell you who — Prince does.  Damn, that man is sexy.

The show was a lot like Prince himself — short and full of awesome.  It clocked in at 90 minutes, minus encores.  Too short, but every moment of it was on the money.  In the end, 90 minutes of perfection, 90 minutes of forgetting your sorrows, 90 minutes of dancing with my man and 23,000 other Chicagoans.  It was all good.  So very good.

The encores were also good.  The concert ended with the most democratic of dance parties to some of Prince’s protege’s hits from the 80s — Morris Day and the Time and Sheila E.  I wrote in Donna’s Cancer Story, “You have not fully lived until you have danced with young and old alike.”  There on Prince’s stage were folks as old as 70 and as young as 5 or 6 singing and dancing and laughing and so damn full of life.

It was a privilege to be there.  Thank you, Prince.  You sexy motherfucker.

Brocade Jacket
Photo Op
Purple Rain

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Chicago Teachers Strike: What Happened to the ‘City That Works’?

red ribbons

Chicago teachers strike.

I was watching the news last night and was ashamed of my City.  In the midst of what is obviously a heated situation, I saw Karen Lewis yell at reporters and chide one who dared to bump her with a microphone.  I saw Mayor Emanuel, the candidate that got my vote, face the cameras and call out the Chicago Teachers Union time and again.  He was backed by a bevy of City big wigs representing schools, police, negotiators, and the Board of Education.

Between 10 PM and midnight, there was much casting of blame, much discussion of text messages, and a lot of work trying to curry the favor of Chicagoans from both sides.

I support labor.  I come from a long line of union workers.  My Mom’s uncle was shot in Chicago’s Memorial Day Massacre around striking steel mill workers.  My sister, a PhD labor historian, just published her first book about the labor movement, Eyes on Labor.  There is a lot of union blood that runs through my veins.

But still, I was not happy with everything I saw.  When adults choose to bicker through the media about who is sending whom text messages, I shake my head on behalf of all of Chicago’s children.  When the CTU puts out a letter condemning the City’s contingency plan as a “train wreck,” I’ve got to wonder.  If the CTU believes Chicago’s children are unsafe in said contingency plan, then stay at the table.  If they think the kids will be cared for in a ‘good enough’ fashion, then don’t put out alarmist rhetoric.

As for the contingency plan, the irony of administrators highlighting that there would be one adult for every 25 children just made me angry.  If a 1:25 ratio is valued and of importance, then why are teachers expected to work with numbers that far exceed that ratio?  What is good for the goose must be good for the gander.  For our children to succeed, not only do our kids need more time in school, they need to be in schools that are conducive to learning.  And, yes, that includes air conditioning.

I heard David Vitale, president of the Board of Education, this morning, hemming and hawing on NPR that the BoE wants air conditioning for all Chicago public schools, too, but if they pay for air conditioning, they can’t pay for people.  No joke.  This is 2012, Mr. Vitale, and your boss is pushing for school year round.  A/C is as necessary in Chicago as heat is in January and February.  You can thank global warming for that.  And my guess is that the BoE offices are nice and temperate year round.  Again, if it’s good for the goose, it must be good for the gander.

Last Friday I was named an “Our Town, Our Hero” by GM.  I got a cool plaque and a nice Visa gift card, and the use of a pretty sweet Buick for a week.  GM asked some supporters of our charity, Donna’s Good Things, to help support me at the official passing of the keys, if you will.  A bona fide first photo op.  Well, I am not much for photo ops, but I reached out to Katie, the Director/Owner of the dance studio where we fund scholarships, and she went to town for me.  At the award ceremony, Katie had arranged for not only the Alderman to be there (nice to meet you, Ms. Silverstein), but invited the teachers of Rogers Elementary School to support me.

Rogers Elementary is the Chicago public school where Donna’s Good Things is funding weekly dance education for every student for the 2012-2013 school year.  The administrator has been fantastic to work with on this initiative.  The faculty has been so supportive that every single one came out last Friday to support me and DGT at the GM ceremony.  This was Friday at 3:30 PM, just as their strike was looming.

teachers

I had never met these teachers before and they don’t know me, Donna, or my family from Adam, but there they were.  They are an enthusiastic crowd.  I chatted with many and none wanted to strike.  Their wish was to be in the classroom this morning.  But on a Friday afternoon, long after they could have gone home for the day, there they were, supporting a stranger who is working to support their classroom kids.

I was moved beyond belief.

Those are the teachers I support.  Those teachers who are invested in the education their classroom kids receive.  Those teachers who want very much to be back in the classroom, doing their jobs.  Those teachers who don’t get a hell of a lot of support from the Board of Education or the Mayor.  Those teachers who are responsible for the next generation of Chicagoans.  I support those teachers.  All of them.

Now let’s get them back to work.

And as for Rahm and Karen Lewis?  Well those two both got to get it together.  Their egos are MASSIVE.  Huge, bullying individuals, both of ’em.  They need to stop thinking about who will win and who will lose in this negotiation.  They need to work together, modeling behavior for the students they both profess to worry over, and get it done.  No more cheap shots.  No more sparring through the media.  Just get it done, do their jobs, and prove that Chicago is still the City that works.

The teachers, parents, and students of Chicago are waiting.  Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock.

toilet

You see what I did there?