Welcome!
When I moved to Chicago in 2006, I met someone who was on his way out. His reason? "I want to live somewhere so big it never starts to feel small."
I come from the cornfields of Indiana. I know small. Though I disagreed with my friend that Chicago is small, I was willing to concede this much: For some people, feeling stuck in a small town is like losing your foothold to the event horizon. Once you cross over, once you're sucked in, the rest of the universe dies away. Or seems to. Light diminishes. Or appears to. Suddenly it's disturbingly quiet, and you're not entirely sure if it's the neighborhood that stopped ticking or your interest in it that did.
But for me, even ten years later, Chicago remains a playground full of noise and color, a place to behold with wonderment. It's a great city to explore an interest and add dimension to an existing one. My first week here, I was at the Harold Washington Library when I saw a playbill for Changes: A Science Fiction Tap Opera featuring the music of David Bowie. People who know me can imagine my reaction to this. Unfortunately, the playbill was old, but I took comfort in its existence. I thought, If there's a market for this, who knows what else the city has to offer?
The purpose of this blog is to document the people and places that have helped me identify Chicago as home. My new home, anyway. This was home circa 1984. Thanks for stopping by, and welcome!