Larry is a street person living here in Chicago. His thing was to steal newspapers and resell them at “L” stops. He was on crack, he had eyes as big as Jamie's, which is to say he had orphan-Annie eyes. Whatever reality Larry was living in, I didn't want to share it and yet, there he was, living in my newspaper warehouse.

He'd been invited into the warehouse by the ever trusting Al Martin. You know the logic: he's a newspaper thief, he's on crack, he'll steal everything he can to sell for more crack. Let's give him a key to the warehouse? That's how he ended up in the Paulina newspaper warehouse. Paulina was a hole. Actually there was a hole in the roof. During rain storms, the water from the roof, about the size of a football field, poured through this hole. We survived by moving the newspapers away from the hole. But that's another story.

So, along with the huge rat colony in this warehouse, they made donuts in there by the way, we enjoyed the company of Larry. He showed up, broke the door lock and we couldn't get rid of him.

I'm told that there is some sort of mental disorder that causes people to decide to spread their feces. I can tell you from having had it done to a WC I wanted to use, that it creates a mark of territory. Sort of like some animal marking its territory: you do not want to deal with it.

So Larry did that to us at the Paulina warehouse, the men's room became his room. There are no words I can use to describe the sight and smell of human feces spread all over a wall. We abandoned the building (it was torn down and condos replaced it.) and moved to newer digs on Fullerton. We thought we'd left Larry and his feces wall behind, the agreement being that no one was to tell Larry where we'd moved.

We were not even done celebrating when Larry showed up at the new digs. Al denies to this day that he told Larry where we moved.

Now at this time, we hadn't yet connected Larry to the feces on the wall. As you can imagine, we had another, more colorful name for this... phenomenon. But, within a short period, the new men's room sported the same colorful stain.

It began to connect when I donned a haz-mat set of clothes (they were thrown away after this incident) and cleaned what the cleaning crew ignored. Then I faced down Larry and Al. I believe I had some moral authority, after cleaning up this situation. When I was finished, Al just looked hurt. Larry, who I threatened to arrest if he ever returned, he left. And, bingo, no more feces on the wall.

So, I was considering this long ago situation as I cleaned up after Jane's cats. She is ill this week. And the cat's welcomed me to their world by doing a Larry in the litter box. No greater love have a man for a woman than to clean up after her cats.

Jane has been chaperoning me around the city. The van, as pictured, is deep in snow. It's sort of like the annual rite of resurrection. For the past several winters, I've allowed it to get buried in, then as it thaws it comes out of the white shroud and miraculously roars back to life.

Monday morning and the sky is that winter blue that says it is going to be bitter cold outside. Jane has the day off for Rev. King. We'll probably try to slip off to the Conservatory for her mid-winter sanity break. Later, we need to find the fireworks. After eight long years, the nightmare comes to an end tomorrow.

When this guy started in office, he didn't frighten me. Granted his election was a stain on the history of the country, there was such an uproar, that I figured he wouldn't be able to be an effective leader. During the summer of 2001 he became irrelevant. Then the madmen attacked the West. That was when he used the power of the military to kidnap people, slip them away into the dark, torture them. People in this country who should have known better, including our useless Congressman, now the White House Chief of Staff, were frightened of challenging him.

He developed software to listen to our calls, he developed laws to strip our rights. At one point, as Jane was doing one of her protest things at a public event, I explained that the country had slipped. “One of the goof balls around you will hassle you, maybe physically assault you” because of your political views. She was really depending on me to defend her and I pointed out that first, I'd do it automatically, but that I was older and would be hurt. And second, political speech was under attack. The police would send my ass to jail for protecting her. The guy who attacked us would be considered a hero.

If he hadn't overplayed his hand, attacking a country for weak political reasons and with a poorly thought out plan of exit this might have continued. People would have gone along and felt protected and safe while freedom was whisked away to be beaten and tortured in the dark corners of this country and the globe. The excuse would have been that it was only happening to “bad” people.

His inability to connect to people, his creation of a bubble of reality, his lack of awareness all seemed to come home to roost in August, 2005 when his political appointment of Michael Brown and his dismantling of FEMA led to a failure of the system when Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. No, we were not attacked by a foreign power. A hurricane demonstrated that the country had wasted nearly five years and billions. It was that wind that finally knocked down his house. What safety was there in this administration? We could survive a tropical storm and still die, waiting for it to answer the phone.

That he pursued economic policies that were doomed was evident early in his administration. Enron should have been a wake-up call that platitudes about market self regulation are just that. Enron happened early in this administration, and he could have blamed it on the Clinton's and been justified.

But, despite Enron, he pursued economic policies meant to dismantle market regulation throughout the economy. The final wake-up call for all but a minority of the country has been having their jobs threatened, their values of their homes and investments crash.

So, we'll celebrate tonight. And hope and pray for something better: a resurrection of the American spirit.

The 30/30 project is back on track, after I spun my wheels for a few days wondering where the story was going, it made a huge leap forward and is on target for 30K words by the end of the month.

Meanwhile, outside the cold is continuing to freeze the city. Nice Pix of the bike I discussed in another post for everyone to consider. There's a good wind outside today and more snow expected. How deep do you think it will get on that bike?

A bit of sadness here. One of our favorite rock bands had a HUGE blowout fight last night. I'm talking of course about PSYCHO NEIGHBOR. I'm not sure they have the FaceBook page up yet, but these guys are terrific.

Anyway, last night, one of the two female vocalists was shown the door by two other members of the band. Right in the middle of a gig too! I mean, what are the chances of that happening? Kim, who is known to smash up furniture and is just a generally destructive rocker in the image of the WHO, was threatening the vocal abilities of the young lead, Mel in the last month as the band expanded beyond its traditional list of cover tunes.

Now I don't know the whereabouts of Adam, the percussionist, but apparently there was an on-stage argument about missing the beat and artistic license. It didn't end well for Kim, always a favorite of mine and, I believe, one of the key forces for the creation of the band too. As Brian, the strong silent type guitarist, went along with Mel. There were tears of rage and all that rock stuff. More as I get word of what really happened.

HA! I just noticed that Jane changed the opening picture! I had to study it for a moment to realize what it was. Here's a clue, look at the traffic layout.

We have hit the week of cold. Right now, with the sun shining, I'm certain it is below zero (or for those of you using the Celsius scale, -19), with a howling wind. I can see the snow blowing off my neighbor's roof and into our yard.

Our yard, which Jane and I describe as the nicest rooms in the apartment, are snowed in. They are still the most beautiful rooms in the apartment. Brian left his bicycle locked to a post in the yard and when I last looked, about two minutes ago, the snow was as deep as the hubs. It is an irritant when I'm out there with the new electric snow shovel. But it is a strange thing of beauty from my normal vantage point, behind the curtain wall on the porch.

There can be no doubt, either, that the curtain wall is worth every penny spent.

My car, the 2000 Silhouette van, is also snowed in, caught up to the hubs in the snow. I put a luggage hauler on it to pick my brother up, that was two weeks ago. Together, with the snow, I can see the van and it's huge block of snow tower into the sky above the other cars.

Ceili returns to school next Tuesday. I'm continuing to progress on my 30/30 challenge. Though there hasn't been much traction in the last few days.

Ceili and I used the excuse of the terrible weather to undertake yet another tradition of the winter. We usually associate it with January, rather than Christmas, but the whole thing is about renewal of the spirit, of how death is conquered and sacrifices made for the greater good. So, we traipsed off, in the bitter cold yesterday, to take on the Chicago Transit Authority and the Botanical Garden.

The Chicago Conservatory was designed by Jens Jenson, the famed architect and opened 101 years ago. For as many years as we've lived in Chicago it has been the center of at least one winter trip. You arrive in a frozen world of snow and ice. The breath floating about in whispers. Inside, you remove your coat and take in the green warmth and humidity.

What a great break from winter.

In the past two or perhaps three visits I've come to appreciate a significant difference between the way Ceili perceives the world and the way I do. I'll be staring at the iron work, watching the light spill through the leaves and onto the water. I'll notice how from a certain spot Jenson allowed you to see across an entire room, to take in the water, the trees and how the skylights provide a grey background. You forget where you are, it is transcendent.

Ceili will point at something, sometimes literally under my nose, and expound on that little thing. A flower or a stem. She'll wander under a canopy and see a single flower dangle there, above our heads. She is more into the details, while I'm taking in the forest.

I force myself to try to appreciate the world as she sees it. Wow, it is really different. This visit is a reminder to me of the wonder of having raised this person. Here is a fundamental area of difference between us. She sees details and I take in the depth. Ying and Yang.

Yesterday, as we entered the new four elements display, she took out a sketch pad to draw something she saw. I sat down and allowed the visit to wash over me. I refer to it as gorking the moment. I just want to undertake to allow my senses to take everything in, without attempting to filter them or categorize them, so that later I can try to recreate the moment when I write.
As adults we lose some of the perspective of wonder. This is one of the moments in the year when I force myself to adopt another's view or to simply abandon that adult perspective. This is truly a thing of great wonder. Jenson was a genius.

So, I watched as an older man, holding the brim of his baseball hat, wandered through. He looked surprised and in a hurry. He wasn't sure what the two of us were doing, sitting a few feet apart, and actually out of sight of each other, but he didn't want to intrude. Some mothers were playing in a play area just around the corner, with their children. They were discussing insurance of all things. I don't think they ever even realized we were there listening.

The light from a pond, something about the size of what we've discussed putting into the backyard, shown up from beneath the surface. The streaks were sharply delineated and formed a rough cross while the light itself broke through the surface to underlite a huge leaf. There were smells of wet clean dirt from the mist, sounds of water falling from somewhere. The rock below moved a bit. It wasn't bolted down. Eventually I turned away from the children and the water and concentrated on a relatively blank cement wall. The paint was peeling and some vines were reaching for it. Of course, once Ceili showed up, she immediately noticed something that had eluded me, a single plant had flowered on this concrete object.

“It's wet,” she said. I asked her if it was sweet. She tasted the pollen and said it was very sweet.

Then I laughed and said it was poisonous too.

And in those moments, the ending for the 30/30 hit me. It will be sad, not triumphant. First clue to what is a sports story.

I need to figure a way to put a pond in the yard. It is a tight fit, but Ceili loves Koi, loves to draw them and I think she needs that to “own” the yard. I think, too, that I need it. I think having this thing around could be something that allows me to draw on my creativity too. I think I'll encourage spiders to live there too. There is something about seeing the silk catch the light that intrigues me.

Last month my editor at the ChiTownDailyNews had talked to me about some exercises to break writers block. A simple one that I used immediately was to sit and start writing without editing for a set period. I was to write as fast as possible and not to look back at typos or grammar errors.

I tried that exercise and the result was first, the computer ate the running consciousness piece (it is gone forever) and second I started writing the series of articles about Sam Zell's shrinking ice berg. I really felt it was a good series and I'm sorry it wasn't given greater attention by my own publication or the public.

The other exercise he suggested was that a writer take on a 30/30 task. That is, to write 30,000 words in 30 days-- on one subject. That's a thousand words a day. I guess like most people who write, I have an idea for something in my head. And I decided to pursue it.

So, now, nine days into the new year, my resolution was to write 30/30, or actually, because January has 31 days, 31/31. After nine days, I'm at 12.6K. I took yesterday off due to a migraine. But, even with that, I'm more than a third past my goal.

Jane says she wanted to be in it, although she has no idea what I'm writing about yet. I guess I should have told her that my first non-fiction short was racy? The story is developing and I'm excited. The main characters are in place and the first story line has been developed (there are several that I'm weaving together.) I don't know when it will be ready for review, but I am real excited. This exercise is working. The computer is storing this great story.

I've often told Jane that a good editor makes your work even better. And a bad editor destroys your work. Geoff helped me past the writers block and into a new field of writing: fiction. And he did it with a few words of patience and encouragement. All of my blogging has picked up speed. I'd say he's a damn good editor.

New Year's Day here in Chicago. The Hawks v Wings game today was sort of the centerpiece of the day with Kim and Ron C stopping over with their ferrets. Jane and I published a real nice series of articles about the game on the chitowndailynews. Unfortunately, we weren't able to sell the article.

Geoff, picked it up at the chitown, but we were hoping for more.

I'm going to try to write 31K words in January on a single subject. That's an average of about 1K words a day. I'm making the numbers so far, I hope I have something good when it's all done.

And finally, I used my old hockey blog, Sit Down and Shut Up, to live blog the Winter Classic today. So, lot's of writing today and for the next 30 days.