8.15.2025 - Weekly Digest
Another week in Chicago. Lots of good folks and sights. Short and hastily organized observations for your pleasure. Next week's Digest will emit from oaky California. Til then, thanks for reading.
-JA
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8.12.2025
They don't mess around, these curators. These archaeologists. The models and skeletons in the main hall were on the covers of books I lived inside as a kid. And there are cool side exhibits too, some that aren't even about dinosaurs. Dinosaur books don't usually bother with those but I liked the one about a day in the life of a Senegalese woman. There's some kind of digging operation going on downstairs but it's dark and sulphurous and I can hear the shouts of children dragged to oblivion by dinosaur ghosts. I'm not in the mood to be dragged to oblivion. If I'm in any mood at all it's to appreciate the danger and grandeur of a dinosaur in silence. Lookit that one. Diet: MEAT. This horn-toed sonofabitch could filet you before you hit the ground. That giant pelican over there walked on the claws at the ends of its wings and its bones inspired humans to invent dragons. And what have you accomplished? Who've you frightened lately? Nobody important I bet.
8.13.2025
The doctor and me at Burner Phone Park to support our team. Tribal affiliations. Our people identify with Detroit. Frenemy territory. This park has always been utilitarian. Characterless. Loud. Southsiders are one thing, White Sox fans are another. We are versus them. We represent something noble, late summer hopes of a city overgrown with algae and plants like an abandoned swimming pool. Chicago has nothing to prove which somehow makes it worse. Fenway Park the year after the Red Sox won the Series was a terrible place to be, the doctor tells me. He was on first response duty at the ballpark. Why do they sing Sweet Caroline I asked him. Because they're idiots, he said. We take our seats. First row left field. Equal parts White Sox and Tigers fans. Guy behind us getting steadily drunker and louder. All of us in the sun. Young law school guys from South Carolina. One drops his drink, everyone gives him shit. He purchases a replacement, a tall fluted vessel filled with frozen vodka slush. Everyone gives him shit. Guy behind us getting drunker and louder. Universal appreciation for the ball girl who gets behind and traps it. Carries herself like a professional softball player and might be for all I know. Words with the guy behind us at the end. The woman with him hates his guts. There's no problem here, the doctor says. That's right you don't want that problem, the guy says. Tigers win 1-0.
8.14.2025
Electric train adventure. The doctor, the four year old, the art director for a tv show about a restaurant everybody likes. Also the one about firefighters nobody admits they like but apparently lots of people watch. Passenger in the corner in the upper deck, comfortable like he lives there. Previously undiscovered suburb. Legend from the old days, a brewery in a train station. Oh yep that's it right there. Pick us up by the THAIRapy place. Heard tell of, sure. Folks like it down around here. Our friends like it down around here. Stately brick house on a lot of land. What do you know about those neighbors? The woman was a genius, the guy was in a war, built the house himself. Your children are older than they were before, I say, it's funny how that works. Sorry in domestic settings I feel like I'm flopping on the tile with my gills out. Health news, stuff we hadn't heard about. Wow man that's a whole thing isn't it. Yep sure is. It's so dark at night is the only thing, someone says. You should buy a telescope. That's a great idea. You can see the stars out here. There's value in that. Speaking with authority I walk my face into a tree. Long ride back in the dark and we discuss politics, finances, the issues around owning property. I don't know what any of that is like but I'd like to. I thought you came back to fight. So did I. I don't even know how to start.
8.15.2025
We're on a mission to pick up wood. The doctor has built a contraption to place on top of the car. The contraption is also made of wood and its purpose is to carry other wood. They need a lot of wood around here. It's not like the North where I was for a while, where you just wait for a storm and a hundred year maple comes down so you can chainsaw it up for wood-burning or -building needs. This requires planning. It's always good to know a guy on top of that. The wood store smells of pine and baltic birch. I know that without reading the signs, which isn't true. I do know walnut when I see it, and oak, and some endangered trees like ash and elm. In Oregon I carried around a plant identification book so I didn't have to guess at what I saw. Driving back the Southwest side is as alien yet familiar as the Willamette Valley was. The Midwest makes me tired sometimes. While I type this the doctor is out in the garage with the wood we successfully brought back without incident. Boards are planed and fit to be glued to form a table upon which wood will be placed and that wood will become something new. At work he's discouraged from being creative with his patients, playing with their organs or tying their blood vessels into new and pleasing shapes. Dead trees' families don't care. The methods are more or less the same.