1/10/24

 Wednesday, January 10, 2024

In bed at 9:20, awake at 4:15, and up at 4:33 with mid back, left shoulder, and right wrist pain.  Lilly didn't show up to be let out until 5:40.  31°, high of 33°, windy, wind NW at 17 mph, 5-19/33, wind chill 19°, 0.7 inches of rain/snow in last 24 hours, 0,1 inch expected today.  Sunrise at 7:22, sunset at 4:35, 9+13. 

Treadmill; pain.  The arthritic back pain clears up pretty quickly with movement, but the right wrist pain is sticking around and made the morning kitchen clean up, dishwasher loading, and pots and pans washing a bit of a challenge, hard to hold anything with my right hand.  Early exercise: 30:19 & 0.60 at 9 a.m., watching the 2nd half of "The World's Most Religious Community" about the Hasidic community in Brooklyn, N.Y.  Very interesting.  Later, at 5 p.m., 20:00 & 0.45,  while watching a documentary on Trump's mental illness/pathology.  Daily total: 50:19 & 1.05.

I'm grateful for my home.  I'm grateful that I have never been homeless, that my family and I have always had a roof over our heads, protection from rain and snow, and from wind and cold temperatures.  The first home I remember was pretty basic: a living room, a bedroom, a kitchen, a bathroom, and a closet, all in the basement of 3 story, 12-unit (plus ours) apartment building on the southeast corner of 73rd Street and south Emerald Avenue in the Englewood district of Chicago.  My current home is a palace, a mansion, a château, an estate compared to that first home and I've resided in each for about the same length of time, about 12 years.  

We lived in the basement apartment for years during and after World War II.  The small kitchen had a door opening onto a sunken passageway or ‘gangway’ that led from the building's concrete back ‘yard’ to Emerald Avenue.  The kitchen also had the only eye-level windows in the apartment, one looking out on the ‘gangway’, the other double window looking out on the entry area to the rest of the basement, the one used by the residents of the above-ground apartments.  This sunken entry area was the space beneath wooden back porches and stairways behind the upper apartments.  

The apartment’s one bedroom was adjacent to the kitchen as was the living room.  There was also a bathroom and a small walk-in closet next to a door leading into the rest of the building’s basement.  The kitchen and bedroom could not have been more than 10’ X 12’ and were more likely 8’ or 9’ X 12’.  The living room was perhaps 10” X 13’, but more likely a foot or so shorter in each direction.  Even by a child’s scale, the apartment was tiny, barely 400 square feet.  The main axis of the apartment building was east/west along 73rd Street and the entryways into the upstairs apartments faced 73rd Street.   Our apartment was probably intended as living quarters for a janitor or custodian and was the only unit with an Emerald Avenue address.  When I drove by the corner many, many years ago (and again in 2005), the building had been razed, leaving a vacant lot (which we called a “prairie” when I was young).  I was stunned to see how very narrow the lot was and to be reminded of how exceedingly small our apartment was.  The one window in the bedroom and the windows in the living room bordered the ceilings and looked out directly on the soil and lawn in front of the apartment.  The bedroom had a bunk bed used by Kitty and me and a single twin-size bed used sometimes by my Uncle Jim and sometimes by my Grandpa Denny.  My mother and father slept on a sofa bed in the living room.  Exposed hot water pipes servicing the radiators in the apartments above ran along the ceilings in our apartment.  

Frequent visitors in our subterranean dwelling were what we called “waterbugs” and the rest of the world called oriental cockroaches.  They were big, an inch or so, oblong, black and shiny.  They looked like someone had applied Vaseline to their wings.  They cracked and were messy when stepped on, but they usually were fast enough to avoid a stomping foot.  They would scurry under the refrigerator or stove or behind the bathtub.      The roaches have flattened bodies that permitted them to come into the apartment from the rest of the basement under the back door, through the openings for the hot water pipes running through our space, or the openings for our plumbing.  They liked warm, humid spaces which meant they loved our superheated apartment.  Each female could drop up to 18 egg capsules, each of which contained up to 16 eggs so efforts to rid the apartment of roaches were doomed to failure. 

It is said that our personalities are formed by the time we are 6 years old or so.  If that is the case, that little basement apartment was where my sister Kitty and I were formed.  It was home from infancy until I was at least 12 or 13 years old.

Geri and I joke that our current 3 bedroom, ranch home, which we love, is the neighborhood's 'slum house,'  surrounded by more expensive properties than our own.  But we love this house, even its full basement which I call my 'sanctuary', and dread the thought of moving away from it, or at least I do.  I'm not sure about Geri's view.  The idea of downsizing into an apartment or condo, or the terrifying thought of moving into a "continuing care" facility (independent, assisted, memory care, nursing care) makes me almost shudder.  I don't want to dwell on that today.  I'll just focus on being grateful for where we are and what we have.

Snow Day is a bust in Bayside; bad north and west.  We had precipitation most of the day and evening but it was mostly rain or snow that melted or turned to icy slush when it hit the ground.  Lake Michigan's warm temperature protected us from the heavy, wet snow that beset much of the state.  The bad news is that another "very powerful storm" is headed our way on Friday.  It's unclear what that means for us close to the big lake.  (The photo on the left is a selfie I took last night after schlepping the recycling cart out for pickup this morning.)

    Shelters were available for those in need last night, specifically Guest House at 13th and Juneau, Milwaukee Rescue Mission, at 18th and Wells, St. Ben's at 9th and State, and Repairers of the Breach at 13th and Vliet, on the North Side and Milwaukee County Hillview Health Care Center at 22nd and Lapham on the South Side.  Each lists its hours of availability as 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., making me wonder whether these shelters really put their overnight guests out on the street again before sunrise.  I note that the North Side shelters are all just north of the Marquette University campus.  Guest House is 3 blocks east of Notch House where my roommates and I lived in our 2nd and 3rd years at MU.  The Rescue Mission is across the street from Mr. Gate's drug store where I worked during my junior year.  Stl Ben's is across the street from the county courthouse, jail, and State Secure Detention Facility (i.e., jail for parole violators).  Repairers of the Breach is just north of the Guest House and has a 'tent village' in the vacant lot next to it.  The locations of these shelters tell us where most of Milwaukee's homeless are found, i.e., in the African-American neighborhoods surrounding Marquette.  All these North Side shelters are within walking distance from the House of Peace.  My mind is stuck on that 7 a.m. hour.  Where do the homeless go?  Perhaps most will go to the Central Library at 8th and Wisconsin, but it doesn't open until  ???  We know that many of the homeless have one kind or another of mental illness, from depression to schizophrenia.  Every night and every morn, some to misery are born.  Every morn and every night, some are born to sweet delight.  Some are born to sweet delight.  Some are born to endless night.

LTMW I see no birds.  Again.  What's up?  

The Christmas tree and decorations are back in the basement.