a new apartment, and a protest

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Fall is here, the cooler weather energizes me, and I try to make the most of my continuing isolation during the pandemic.

In July, I moved into a new apartment, a couple of blocks away from my former studio. This is a one-bedroom, larger, more comfortable, with windows offering views both to the north and south. The act of moving, of choosing new furniture, decorating, and making decisions, occupied my mind and my energies for about a month, offering a respite from the concerns of COVID-19.

It’s also a sentimental journey for me, since I’m on the same street where I lived at age 22, fresh out of college, and being here feels almost like coming home. The reminders of my youth offer a counterpoint to my imminent 65th birthday, and that signifier of older age, Medicare.

Recently, in response to threats by the Chicago City Colleges board to cut teaching hours and teacher positions, our local AFSCME union stages a protest outside Chicago City Hall. To threaten to cut Adult Education programs, at a time when they offer a lifeline to segments of our society most in need, and to threaten teachers’ jobs at a time when 22 million Americans jobs have been lost, is insane.

We made our points – rather loudly – and felt that we were taking positive steps to stand up for our careers and those we serve. This is not the time to cut spending; government, in fact, should be spending more to keep our education system and economy afloat. Instead of shrinking our programs, City Colleges needs to expand its offerings to more of the community, through outreach and recruitment programs for students.

isolation

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remembering: a rainy day, Hong Kong, 2017

I’ve been reminiscing about past good times during my time of isolation, viewing many photos from my years in China and from some of my travels. My favorite photos are of food; among the hundreds of images, I can remember the exact location and the taste of every dish as I savor it again in its afterimage. During the COVID-19 lockdown, there’s a lot of time – too much, even – to reflect on the world as it used to be, when people moved freely and wandering through crowded places didn’t pose untold dangers.

In many ways, however, the isolation suits me. I’m an introvert, and what others call “loneliness” is actually my preferred existence; you see, I enjoy my own company. In the midst of global uncertainty, I’m actually developing new skills as an online teacher, and as a designer of online study materials. My visual contact with students is limited to four hours a week of virtual Zoom classes. Zoom is a poor substitute for personal contact and moving through an actual classroom, monitoring students and viewing their work. However, it’s the primary tool for social contact in this new existence, even though I reach out to my students in other ways: by email, text messages, video lessons on YouTube, Brightspace (a virtual learning platform used by my college), Google Docs, and the occasional personal phone call.

My personal sheltering-in-place will last until at least August, when summer classes end, and some speculate that in-person classes won’t resume until early 2021. No one knows. Our country’s response to the pandemic has been criminally inept, endangering health and lives, and proving that our government’s real allegiance is to profits over people. I’m not naive enough to believe that we’ll emerge from the pandemic with a system of universal, single-payer health care, a more a equitable society with job and income guarantees, or greater democratization of our social and political processes, but it’s nice to envision such a country.

February

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Howard elevated station, north side of Chicago, December

Winter this year hasn’t been too severe. I wouldn’t mind if it were, because I love this season. It’s nice to be living in a place that experiences the four seasons.

Life has settled to a continuous hum. I have my work, teaching two classes that I love, and I look forward to the opportunity to eventually add more teaching hours. I have my daily writing practice, in which I rotate my various fountain pens and inks in filling page after page with the best handwriting that I can produce. It’s not exactly a journal, but a form of meditative practice that leaves me feeling incredibly content. It’s the physical act, the movement of writing instrument across paper, that’s captivated me since childhood.

I’ve just finish a book by Anne Fadiman on the joys of reading, book collecting, and yes, becoming attached to writing instruments. In her case, it was a special 1940s Parker 51 pen given to her by a classmate at age 15, who had evidently stolen it from his father. The pen eventually was lost, and no instrument, even a duplicate pen of the same vintage, ever wrote as well or made her as happy as the original. I can understand that sense of irretrievable loss.

I’m currently deep into James Joyce’s Ulysses. It’s one of the items on my personal bucket list. This is the year in which I’ll turn 65, and my thoughts naturally turn to my own mortality; for goodness’ sake, I’ll qualify for Medicare in a few months. Other items on this list, in no order of importance, include: trekking in the Himalaya, circumnavigating the globe, attending a wild sex orgy, and parachuting from an airplane (once). I’d also like to become really good at something; abilities such as playing the guitar, calligraphy, or becoming fluent in French come to mind. I secretly envied other kids while I was growing up who developed talents and did something really well. I never managed to develop a real proficiency at anything, except perhaps for academic writing (so guess what I teach now – academic writing). I felt inferior. Add to bucket list: no feeling of inferiority!

A relaxing evening draws to a close, and it’s time to put myself to bed with my current murder mystery (Ulysses is not bedtime reading). Perhaps this year I’ll be better at updating my blog, but that’s not a promise, since it’s not on the bucket list.

open house Chicago 2019

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Sculpture in the auditorium of the Nederlander Theater

Open House Chicago, 2019 edition, proved almost as exciting as the previous two annual events I’ve attended. Sponsored by the Chicago Architecture Foundation, the weekend-long viewing opens hundreds of building interiors to the public, who might otherwise never have the chance to view them.

My favorites this year: The Nederlander Theater (formerly the Oriental, a 1920s movie palace) and the more modern interiors of the 333 North Michigan Avenue Building, offering stunning views over Chicago’s skyline.

Nederlander Theater, opulent auditorium interior

This year, I learned to pace myself, confine myself to the downtown area, and not to scurry madly all over the city in an orgy of architectural indulgence. I also took breaks whenever my feet got sore. In short, I concentrated on quality over quantity.

A hidden 4th-floor patio in the Fine Arts Building, ideal for resting weary feet
Also in the Fine Arts Building, a gorgeous antique clock on the elevator wall

As a side note, I’m learning better how to adjust the color temperature settings in my camera for interior photography, not always an easy thing to accomplish.

The London Guarantee Building viewed from a terrace at the top of the 333 North Michigan Building
Art deco elevator doors, 333 North Michigan Building
A final view of the Nederlander Theater: art deco “oriental” figure in the lobby

September already

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Belmont Avenue, west side of Chicago

Summer is having its last hurrah, as we head into autumn and cooler weather. We’re well into the new term at Wright College, halfway through the first 8-week session. The semester is divided into two parts, with new registrations each 8 weeks, so sometimes a sense of continuity gets lost between the new and returning students.

At long last, after paying my dues for two years with split shifts, morning and evening classes with long gaps in between, and hideous commutes, I now have the perfect teaching schedule. My classes are now back-to-back, from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. I finally have later afternoons and evenings free, and I no longer sacrifice huge chunks of my day to between-class breaks.

I continue to teach Level 2 ESL, and I’ve recently been assigned a Transition reading and writing class, which bridges the top ESL level and college credit classes. I’m finally able to make use of my experience teaching academic reading and writing skills, and I’m quite content with my new work situation.

Reading and writing are both immensely complicated, multi-level skills requiring critical thinking, fluency, and using the language for purposes other than day-to-day communication and survival skills. It’s taken the first four weeks to decide what activities best fit the needs of my 20+ students. I focus on sentence-level grammar, progressing to paragraph writing, and finally, in a week or two, will introduce basic essay writing. I’ve settled on three or four textbooks that, I feel, best present the materials I want to cover.

As I’d previously discovered while teaching in China, there’s a fine line between teaching “correct” English-language academic writing and encouraging individual creativity. I make sure to acknowledge students’ use of vivid description, and their use of descriptive adjectives that is sometimes original and startling. At this point, I hold back from “correcting” student writing too much; as in my speaking classes, I believe that fluency is more important than accuracy. The students are eager to learn, and seem to be enjoying the course so far. I’m feeling my way, and as in every endeavor, creating a new class is a process that requires trial and error.