Happy Birthday Rynn!

Eight years!

Where has the time gone?

 Birthdays Gone By...

2010

2009-2003

The Slackline

Friends,

meet

The Slackline.

It is Jason's new toy bought with the last of his Christmas credit at REI.

He set up his own tightrope in our front yard.

Fun for the whole fam.

These pictures were taken a few weeks ago. 

 We now have considerably less snow and,  I'm happy to report, Jason can walk all the way across without falling. 

We are having balancing on one foot contests in the kitchen.

Jason is thinking of growing out his hair and saying things like, "DUUUDE."

 As long as this slackline is not strung between buildings or bridges.  

Maybe just some palm trees in Mexico...

Jane Eyre

Last week I saw the preview for the new movie Jane Eyre starring Mia Wasikowska (from Johnny Depp's 2010 Alice in Wonderland).  It sparked my interest enough to stop by the library and grab the most recent Penguin Classic edition of Charlotte Bronte's novel.  The new Penguin cover not only caught my eye but the eyes of my children and strangers alike (more than one person stopped to ask "what book is that?").    Little did I know I would be so absorbed in the story!   I feel a kinship with Jane Eyre as one who is small in stature but large in the intensity of emotional response to life.  Sometimes we little people need to make up for always looking up at the world.  The mystery, the dreams, the haunted manor, the dark mysterious man with secrets who captures her heart all keep me riveted.  A love inspired by not mere outward beauty- but by those inner gifts of mind, intellect, heart, and spirit- rules the pages of this novel.  The language is powerful, mysterious, emotional, and in a 19 c. sort of way...sexy.  But wait, before you dismiss Jane Eyre as mere female brain candy with a big vocabulary (ie. a quaint version of the Twilight series) consider the internal struggles of conscience the characters face as they wrestle demons without and within.   I am tempted here to wax on about how the Transcendentalist or the Romantic/Gothic movement in literature affect Jane's development of character, but I'll spare you.  There are plenty of articles and reviews to be found if those things interest you.

I wonder if the movie will be able to capture the depth of the characters, the Gothic darkness of the story and the landscape, or the passion of the romance.   In this case I'd recommend... "READ THE BOOK FIRST."

Little Girls in the Big City

Sometimes, as my Uncle Billy says, "you just got to get on that train and RIIIIDE."

Not bad advice.

 We rode the 'L' from our neighborhood to downtown this afternoon, making stops along the way for spirits and treats, with no other agenda than being together and exploring the city.

We saw a mobile homemade bike powered puppet show... 

and ate blue and pink cookies at Intelligentsia Coffee.

Photos are IPhone quality, but you get the idea.

Rynn's favorite part of the adventure?

when the Red Line goes underground

Eleanor's favorite part?

the "Reeaaaaallllllly tall buildings"

Gross moment of the day?

Eleanor licking the handholds on the L train 

Nasty. 

Yummy moment of the day?

Sweet potato fries and a local microbrew from a great restaurant on Devon called Uncommon Ground


And on another note.  Today the temps climbed above the freezing mark to a balmy 35 degrees.  I felt like pulling out my shorts!   I'd like to point out that this winter has been Chicago's coldest winter in 27 years.  Don't believe me?  Consider Chicago's meteorologist Tom Skilling's report.
 (I know, you are all getting a bit bored with me talking about the weather.  This is IT.  I promise!)
"The meteorological winter season has been a long one to date--with more than twice the normal snowfall (53.4 inches vs. 23.3 inches), the fewest above-freezing days of the 141 winters on record (12 vs. the average to date of 41), and the greatest late season snow cover (17 inches) since 1979.

The Edge of the Earth

It takes a little work to find elevation in Illinois.

But, for those who persevere...

it can be found.

On Saturday afternoon we drove thirty minutes North to Fort Sheridan Forest Preserve.  The site of an old fort built to keep the peace during labor riots in 1880s Chicago, the Preserve is one of the last remaining open prairies and bluffs along the Illinois coastline of Lake Michigan.  The view is stunning, especially with the icebergs floating in the lake and the fresh snow from the blizzard.






Having lived my entire life in places with hills I sometimes feel strange living in such a flat place as Illinois.  It is wonderful to have the sense of elevation, to be above the trees, and to enjoy a breathtaking view of the lake.  The sledding is too steep for the girls but provides plenty of adrenaline to satisfy Jason for a few days.  I can't wait to return with a kite and a bottle of wine for a summer picnic on the bluff.  Ahh...summer.  Sigh.

In Sunday School yesterday we talked about how God's love for us is so great that the Scriptures say that He "dances over us with His love."  I love that image.  Deep joy.  Deep celebration.  Deep love. This is who we are in the image of the One who made us and in whose grace we live.  

Think on that one today.  

Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann

For the past three years in Portland I have enjoyed participating in my community library’s “One Book, Everybody Reads” program.  I’ve read some varied and interesting books this way, plus I find it a fun community event.  This year our library chose the National Book Award Winner (2009) Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann.  Set in New York City in 1974 the novel uses the historic and now iconic event of Philippe Petit’s tightrope walk between the World Trade Center towers as the unifying narrative spine upon which the nerves of many different characters connect.  Yet, the novel is not about Petit’s walk (if you are interested in that I recommend the amazing documentary Man on a Wire which you can get streaming from Netflix).  Rather, the book is about an array of ‘normal’ people such as a prostitute in the Bronx, a grieving mother on Park Ave., or a radical Catholic monk serving in the inner city.  McCann’s genius is in creating characters that capture the imagination and tap into the tension of the unique individual soul amidst that vast impersonal city.  In the end we are all connected.  

Sometimes I drive through the streets of Chicago, look up into the immense buildings filled with people towering above me, and wonder “How does God know all of us?  How does He care?  What stories are contained all in the hundreds of people in that one building?.”  McCann’s novel touches on those same sentiments- how are we all connected?  How do individual lives matter in the masses of the city?  By using the image of a tightrope walker crossing between the World Trade Towers McCann seeks to use “an act of creation that stands in direct defiance to the act of destruction 27 years later” as a means of healing and redemption.

The problem with this novel, though, is that in the end McCann offers little redemption.  He even admits in an interview that “really the ending of this particular book says: There is no end.  There is grief and there is love and they spin together in this human body, which is, in itself, also a book” (364 interview with McCann).   If all there is is grief and love spinning around inside individuals loosely connected on this spinning planet, then where is the hope in that?   This book is praised for “lifting up a handful of souls” or offering us a “masterly chorus of voices”  and these things are true.  The characters are wonderfully rich and interesting and in the end all connected in a quirky and ingenious way.  But the irony is that the very redemption the author is trying to bring, by unifying individual characters around one event of human triumph (the tightrope walk),  he undercuts by too many characters whose chapters end too abruptly.   Part of being made in the image of God is that we not only have a beginning but we have an end.  And while the great world may spin with suffering and tragedy, history has a telos.  It has a purpose.  Our lives have a purpose, and we are all interconnected to one another moving toward that great day of redemption when all things will be restored. 

Snow Day!!

"Snowmaggedon" ain't all bad.

Activities of the day included:

One Snow Cave built by Jason in the backyard

Snowshoeing in the park 

Kite Flying

Sledding off a snow ramp from the top of the deck

Shoveling the driveway

Doing cannonballs off snow mountains in the driveway 

Blizzard

A few weeks ago I posted that "snow days" don't happen in Chicago.

Well, I was wrong.

For the first time since 1999 Chicago Public Schools decide to close for weather.

up to 60 mile/hr winds

at least 2 feet of snow 

waves as high as 20 ft on Lakeshore Dr.

perhaps the biggest blizzard since 1967

(jason says he'll believe it when he sees it)

my first winter in Chicago

baptism by fire...or snow as it may be.

Before the blizzard begins I take Roscoe for a quick walk down to the lake to take some pictures of the huge swells on Lake Michigan.  My little camera doesn't catch much because the wind is blowing so hard I can't hold the camera still,  my hands are freezing, and mostly because Roscoe REALLY doesn't want to be there.

 Some ice sculptures form from the drips of the warm bridge above.

Summer's a long way away at the sailing club...

but the tractors are ready

 Picking up the girls early from school...

They won't pose for me but another mom throws a smile my way.

oh the wind is COLD.

And this is Alec. 

 He is our crossing guard extraordinaire.  He is 75 years old and was raised in Mississippi picking cotton before the Civil Rights movement.  

He's promises me when it warms up he'll tell me his story one afternoon before school lets out.  

I can't wait to hear it and write it down.  

Alec makes me smile every day.  I like his outfit today.

Hopefully tomorrow we'll be drinking hot chocolate, reading books, and digging out the snowshoes!