My Walk Around the Sun

Sam Barnett brought me a copy of the Summer 2009 issue of The Journal of Ordinary Thought, entitled “My Walk Around the Sun,” published by the (Chicago) Neighborhood Writing Alliance. The articles and poetry remind me of the title of my 1980s Steel Shavings, “The Uncertainty of Everyday Life.” Most of the authors write of having to make tough choices and dealing with poverty, illness, no job, being behind bars, raising kids in a rough environment, and loneliness. But while the tone of many is resignation, others are hopeful. Sandra Gildersleeve Freeman ends her poem “Never Stop Trying this way: “When you can’t jump over the mountain, Ship over the hill.” Editor Alice Kim writes about Ronnie Kitchen, one of the Death Row Ten, an innocent man kept behind bars for 21 years who told her that “society is unforgiving, but I need to forgive to move on.” The most poignant deal with might-have-beens. Thus, Ammadiyya King’s poem “Where Would I Be Now?” starts out:

If I had gone to college?
Would I have moved to L.A.?
Earned a degree in fashion?
Where would I be if I hadn’t taken that job in the mall after high school?

The first verse of Mayi Ojisua’s “A Chosen Key” goes:

I have a bunch of keys
To very many doors.
Not one have I opened.

How fortunate Sam Barnett is to know many of the people associated with the Journal of Ordinary Thought. It must be exciting to live in the Chicago neighborhood of Rogers Park although I am certain the vicissitudes of urban life can be a little much for one like me used to living on top of a sand dune without oddball neighbors close by. Speaking of unique individuals, here’s an entry from the “Retirement Journal: “A guy selling newspapers at Lake Street has a trademark salute that never fails to bring a smile to my face. At the Tri-State Broadway exit a guy was gesticulating as if preaching to a crowd. Gary has its share of characters. A peanut vendor is a fixture on Martin Luther King Boulevard, and a guy selling flowers near Ridge and Broadway often dresses in a tux. Sam Barnett saw someone crossing the street on Broadway with a pair of glasses with bug eyes that looked to be hanging out.”

Sam tells me that the various writing alliance centers have readings and that audience members react to good performances vocally similar to a congregation at a Black church. One poet who’d love that atmosphere is John Sheehan, a good-hearted soul who taught in the Gary schools for years. Here is his “Gary Postscript 89.”

the schools I taught in were noisy but friendly
the jiving was mainly merriment
the gangs mostly clubs
the learning more than you’d think
though six of my students were shot to death
out of six thousand
I’ve lived in this house for sixteen years
I walk the dog down the street to the woods
kids and their parents call me by name
for better or worse Gary’s my home
and I’d rather live in this left-over city
than in any suburb I know

Ten years ago John Sheehan moved away from Gary to be close to wife Margie, confined to a nursing home following a stroke. The hirsute former priest had inspired a generation of students and colleagues. In “Leaving Gary,” he wrote: “I feel like I am betraying her. I came to identify so much with this ill conceived steel mill mismatched city; this scapegoat of our confused society . . . this enchanted place where 1906 and after have not completely destroyed the woods and swamps and dunes of centuries.” The poem ends: “O Gary, heart of our mixed up country, I love you now and forever.” His departure left a void.

I showed Sam a book just donated to the Calumet Regional Archives by Gregg Hertzlieb, Curator of the Brauer Museum of Art at Valparaiso University. It’s called “The Calumet Region: An American Place” and features photos by Gary Cialdella that, like Camilo Vergara in “American Ruins,” poignantly capture industrial and urban decay and, according to Hertzlieb, reveal “striking juxtapositions of industry and domestic life unfolding in its shadow.” He includes many photos of well-maintained working class bungalows, often located literally within the shadow of a mill or refinery, with distinct personal touches, a garage door painted with flowers or statues of a deer or the Virgin Mary in the back yard. Some photos are similar to those Sam has taken. In an introduction Hertzlieb writes: “I remember riding along Indianapolis Boulevard in a typically enormous car in the late 1970s, seeing refineries on both sides of the street that seemed to go on forever, as if we had driven into a world of industry, full of lights, pipes, flames, smoke, and steam.” Even though, as Ciadella writes, “with every passing year, pieces of the Region’s distinctiveness disappear,” it is still fascinating to drive through Whiting, East Chicago, Hammond, and Gary and imagine the hubbub of activity that once was.