Tales of Protesting, Cooking and a Discontinued Childhood (now with pictures!)

Starting a blog post is the worst. A nifty trick I learned while working at The University News (shameless plug because I can’t let go. I totally followed all the news stories about Biondi’s planned Sept. 1 departure. Judge me.) was that sometimes, the best way to start writing a story was to begin in the middle and then develop a beginning and an end later on. I rarely if ever wrote my lede (Google it. I’m done being the journalism nerd.*) first. It was usually the last thing I would write because I would need to tell the entire story first to really grasp what was the most important nugget of information and to think of a creative way to present it.

I do that with blogging too. Except I don’t have a tidy structure to follow, so I just begin wherever and see where that takes me. I could try to write a lede, but I know that’s likely a lost cause. Obviously everything in my life is extremely important, so it would be impossible to pick what to present as the MOST important. Ah, the struggles of being painfully interesting.

Let’s see…we left off with me expressing my enjoyment of this new city.

I still really, really like Chicago. But as the days grow shorter and August fades into September, there is something looming over this city. Every Chicagoian knows it. Some may even still fear it. We are haunted by a phrase ever present in the back of our minds, echoing as we enjoy our discoveries in this new place:

Winter is coming.

Yes, Chicago is basically a bigger Winterfell (Yeah, that’s a Game of Thrones reference. I won’t even bother to pretend I’m not a nerd about this one) and every Chicagoian is a Stark. I can’t even express my love of the city to anyone who lives here because I know they’ll just tell me I’ll hate it come winter. The sad reality is that they are probably right. I can’t stand being cold. This fact tends to surprise people because I’m from the northern state of New York. We not only have some pretty gnarly winters there, but it sometimes snow so much school gets canceled for a week.

So let me clarify: I am capable of existing cold weather. Doesn’t mean I like it.

The impending Chicago winter gives an almost sinister sheen to Lake Michigan. When I drive past it on my express bus going home, it’s scenic beauty almost seems to be whispering, “I’m going to make you so miserable in a few months. Get ready to hate everyone and everything.”

Lake Michigan is actually pretty scary, you guys.

Terrifying. 

Luckily, my commute is generally confined to temperature-controlled buses, so when winter finally does descend on the city, I'll only need to be out in it for like, ten minutes on a bad day.

I just wrapped up my first full week at the Elam Davies Social Service Center, which shall now forever be referred to as EDSSC because not only is abbreviating after the first reference proper AP style, but it'll save me like, two seconds of typing time. Looking back now, I'm not sure anything really exciting happened. Besides the saving the world and eradicating poverty bit. That’s always exciting.

The only day of work that really stands out to me this week is Friday, when the gravity of what I’m doing finally hit me in one of the worst ways possible: I had to turn a guest at the center down for services. EDSSC offers emergency food and clothes to guests, but you can only get these services so many times a month. If a guest has gotten a full set of clothing in one month, for example, they are not eligible for clothing until the next month. Food is a little more lax, as we have a bagged lunch program three days a week that we often offer to guests as an emergency food option, but even still, if a guest gets a bag of food from our pantry on Monday, they cannot get another one come Friday.

Emergency food and emergency clothes are supposed to be saved for emergency cases. More often, we encourage guests to make appointments for the food pantry or clothing closet. I like this model better because it puts the majority of the responsibility on the guests: they must make and keep the appointment, and in return they get to pick out their own items with a greater variety of choice. Emergency food and clothes are more of a Band-aid for the bigger issues, where as appointments can potentially sustain a guest for a much longer amount of time.

One guest has been to the center nearly every day since I started a week and a half ago. He received food and clothes and made appointments for both the pantry and the closet. Then there was a mix up (likely my fault because I was still learning the system, but no one pointed fingers at the new girl, thankfully) and he received additional clothing the next week when he shouldn’t have. We decided it wasn’t a big deal and that we would just have to explain the rules more carefully to him the next time he came in.

Well, the next time he came in, I was the lucky sucker who had to explain to him that no, we can’t get him food and clothes right now because he got both already and yes, he would have to wait until his assigned appointments. I was wrong in thinking this would go over smoothly. I didn’t expect him to beg me to bend the rules and certainly didn’t expect such desperation from someone we had already assisted so much already. Our guest was visibly upset. I can handle being a stickler. I can’t handle not being able to help someone in need when it would be so easy to walk back and pack him a bag of food.

I did what I was supposed to do, which was give him some resources for other places that could help him and reminded him of his upcoming appointments. That didn’t make him any happier. Instead, he sat sort of moping in our lobby until security swept by and asked him to leave.

The worst part was that I had to walk past him multiple times to get other guests emergency food and clothes. That situation is just crappy for everyone.

I get why the rules are there: we don’t want people to become dependent on us. We want just the opposite, which is why we are currently working on expanding our case managements and housing projects. But it doesn’t make it suck any less when you can’t help someone who needs help. It’s not like you can even rationalize a way in which this guest doesn’t need help. He’s homeless.

I felt really overwhelmed by the situation and I can’t figure out why. I didn’t necessarily do anything wrong, but no one left the interaction going “I got something good out of this and can now continue my Friday in a pleasant manner.”

That sort of set the tone for the rest of my day, unfortunately. I missed getting to go on outreach this week because I was registering a guest who refused to give me any accurate information. No sir, I don’t believe you own the Drake Hotel and I don’t believe Chanel clothing store referred you to us. I can’t help people if they aren’t being honest, so once again, no one got anything good from the interaction.

I’d been looking forward to going out with Good Neighbors again all week, too.

I was so bummed, I went out and spent some of my stipend on a box of 70 green tea bags to keep in my desk. I rationalized the purchase in four ways: 1) Buying things is proven to make you happier. This is the result of a consumer society that thrives on and encourages the over-consumption of goods. While this is not the best society we could possibly be living in, all the social cues to go out and purchase things are alive and well. I am not a consumer drone, just a product of my unfortunate environment (humor me). 2) My office is really cold all the time. I wear long sleeve shirts and jeans to prevent hypothermia, despite it being 90+ degrees just outside my very tiny basement window. Having easy access to tea would be a good way to keep my blood from freezing. 3) Green tea is, like, super good for you. Everyone one says so. And 4) I just like green tea, okay?

So now I have 70 tea bags in my desk. Maybe I’ll add a counter to the blog so y’all can keep track of how much tea I drink at work. Wouldn’t that be exciting? (Again, humor me. I’m out of ideas as to how to make this blog fun.)

The protesters congregating in front of the Bean. 

On Wednesday, I decided to check out a protest at the Bean that I found out about on Facebook. It was a mixed group of Veterans for Peace and members of the LGBT Liberation group in Chicago who came out to protest the way the Obama administration handled the trial and sentencing of Chelsea (then still being referred to as Bradley) Manning. I'm not sure where I fall on the matter, as I didn't follow it as closely as I should have when it was still making headlines, but I'm always intrigued by issues of speech. I feel like that's what the recent discussions of how to deal with whistle blowers comes down to. Sure, whether or not they are harming their country and putting lives at risk is also a factor, but part of what makes our country so unique is how liberal we are with our protection of speech. Some out there might disagree with the use of the word "liberal" here, but in comparison to other countries, we're pretty easy going. But dealing with confidential information, like in the Manning case, tends to muddy the waters a bit. It's not as if the information she released was false, nor did it cause as much harm as administrators were saying it did. Did the public have a right to know about that video, or was this a gross violation of an agreement to keep this information confidential. And this situation also will bring more question about how to deal with Snowden. Shouldn't the public have a right to know that their government has this kind of access to their information? But at the same time, how much harm does widespread knowledge of such a system cause?

I'm just thinking out loud here, because it's my blog and I can do that. I have nothing of any real substance to say on the matter. So sue me. 

Shameless Bean selfie. How could I not?

But anyway, I wanted to check out the protest to see what this side of the aisle has to say on the Manning matter. It wasn't a very well attended demonstration, but I got some literature and checked out the Bean area a bit. I've still got a soft spot for people who try to create change by standing in one place and yelling into a megaphone. 

As far as other things I do in my free time these days, I’ve really taken to heart a simple living-tip they gave us at orientation: Don’t actually buy stuff, just visit the stuff. Sounds weird, but its basically just window-shopping with zero ability to buy anything. When you visit stuff, you just check it out and then leave. Kind of like visiting relatives. I realized recently that I’ve been visiting stuff even before I was a JV. I would always browse stores to kill time or to pretend I could afford things. It’s not as lame as it sounds (yes it is). But anyway, my work location is a prime stuff-visiting spot. Last week, I went Crate and Barrel and visited a laundry hamper that cost more than my entire August stipend. This week, I went to Trader Joe’s and visited the liquor. It was all oddly satisfying.

So when it rained on Thursday this week, I decided that was the day I would visit the stuff in the Water Tower Place Mall. It kept me out of the rain and allowed me to get my pseudo-shopping fix.

I don’t know how many of my readers are familiar with this mall, but it is where the American Girl Doll store is located. American Girl is a cherished brand of my childhood. All the cool kids had an American Girl doll. They came with so many accessories, there was no way you could ever get bored with them like you would with Barbie (there’s only so many times you can play hair dresser…). To top it off, they all had such interesting back-stories. There was Josephina, a Pueblo Indian girl trying to navigate her desert landscape and changing culture. There was Addy, a slave girl who escaped north to freedom, but only ever wanted to be reunited with her father and brother, who were sold to a different owner. There was Felicity who…did something. I was never really sure what made Felicity interesting, besides being a colonial kid.

Naturally, I had the coolest doll of all: Kirsten Larson. 

LOOPS.

Not only was her name very similar to mine, but she also had a super unique story. She was a Swedish immigrant who, after losing her best friend to cholera, moved to the icy tundra that is Wisconsin. There, she did things like be a pioneer and meet Native Americans and fight off bears. Plus, she had the best hairstyle: two pigtail braids in LOOPS. LOOPS dude.

I decided on this rainy Thursday to go visit Kirsten and see what sort of new fun things the company had put her up to. As I strolled down the aisles, I felt an impressive wave of nostalgia as I passed Molly and Kit and Josephina and all the new dolls they’ve come out with and…

Hold the phone. Where was Kirsten?

A feeling akin to losing my bus pass swept over me, despite not having actually lost anything. But I did what I always do when I think I’ve lost something: I check everywhere three or four more times because usually, I just overlooked it and it’s been there the entire time and NO, AMERICAN GIRL DID NOT DISCONTINUE KIRSTEN.

I circled the store so many times I think I was worrying the nice looking sales clerk. No Kirsten. Still in denial, I booked it back to work ten minutes early to consult Google. Surely I was just going blind and they didn’t actually stop selling Kirsten, right?

Wrong. They pulled Kirsten from the shelves back in 2009. I was more than a little devastated. American Girl discontinued a part of my childhood. What was so wrong with Kirsten? Is the blonde-haired, blue-eyed doll suddenly perceived as threatening to young girls? Was her status as an immigrant too controversial for the times we live in now? Does the universe actually just hate me? Who knows, but all these questions won’t bring Kirsten back.

I spent the rest of the afternoon being unreasonably bitter. Sure, the kept Josephina, easily the least amusing of the group. She’s got all sorts of new and exciting stuff going on, while Kirsten is collecting dust in some warehouse somewhere. And what the hell is with all these new dolls? Why do we need a doll that looks like a hippy whose only interesting tidbit is that she’s from the ‘70s? I bet she does something stupid like meet Richard Nixon or something. Yeah, whatever. Kirsten fought a bear.

I lamented the situation to my housemates on our walk to the Salvation Army to buy mugs. I’m sure it didn’t help me as I continue to try to prove that I am not a crazy person and that I’ll be easy to live with for the next year.

Speaking of the house, we have a new cooking rotation that started this week. My designated day is Monday.

So, it’s finally happened. I had to cook for my housemates. I was first in the line up of our new and improved “Anna from Virginia Should Not Have to Cook Every Meal in this House, Even if She Enjoys Doing It and Everything She Makes Tastes Like It was Prepared by Angels in Tiny Chef’s Hats” weekly-cooking schedule. Monday’s are slow days at the office, so I knew I would be able to leave on time and make it home to prepare a dinner for five. Problem is, I have zero creativity when it comes to cooking. The food I prepared for myself in college consisted almost solely of eggs, oatmeal and whatever I could throw in a pot that would make enough food to feed me for a week. I don’t have a refined palette in any sense of the phrase. When I drink wine, I don’t pick up on fruit flavors or subtle hints of wood. The best I can do is correctly identify that I am, in fact, drinking wine. Wine that was probably made from grapes. I’m the same way with cooking; I just don’t get fancy.

I won’t lie, having to cook for an audience created some anxiety. My jokes about accidently giving everyone food poisoning were mostly fear-induced premonitions. I would be the girl they told stories about at JVC orientation. The Chicago JV who was so bad at living in community, she killed off her housemates the first time she tried to cook for them. I was going to be one of those lost cause JVs who would go down in history as what exactly a JV shouldn’t be.

All because I can’t cook.

The Sunday night before, I gathered up all the cook books in the house to try and find some ideas of what to make. What do normal people make when they cook for people? I didn’t want to make pasta, but I didn’t want to completely try and fail at something fancy. The cookbooks weren’t helping at all. There some weird stuff in those books that are clearly just there to be filler.

I wracked my brain for things my mom used to make that always went over well. She did make a mean corn bread for a woman who lived her entire life in the north. I texted the twin to see if she could remember the recipe, which she fortunately did.

Alright, so we were going to be having corn bread. Problem is, corn bread isn’t a meal. Corn bread is at best a side dish. What do people eat with corn bread?

The obvious answer is barbecue  Or it should be, but I’ve been a vegetarian for like nine years now, so meat is never my first resort. I wouldn’t know how to cook meat even if I wanted to anyway.

Then I got it into my head that corn bread and chili were a good match. I did have a pretty good recipe for veggie chili that I’ve used before, but that was also when I was still cooking for myself and didn’t care if what I was eating tasted edible. But it was the best idea I had all night, so I settled.

I booked it home from work that Monday so I could have enough time to get everything ready. 

Naturally, I way underestimated how much time it would take to get everything ready. Six o’clock rolled around and all I had to show for my dinner efforts were kitchen counters littered with knives and spoons and bowls, but nothing anyone would call “food” yet. I didn’t have enough regular chili powder for the recipe, but I found a bottle of “Mexican” chili powder, so I settled for that. I don’t believe it was actually any different than the regular chili powder, but I was still really concerned that this different spice would ruin everything. Plus, it was hot as a sauna in hell in that kitchen. Our house doesn’t exactly have air conditioning and I had the oven and the stove going at once. I was sweating and stressing out. I was like a sitcom episode where the show’s token bachelor tires to cook for himself. I wistfully thought back to a time when I could have just ordered a pizza and called it a day.

Thankfully, everything somehow came together around 7:15. Even better: people seemed to like it. The best part? No one died.

Tune in next week for a new episode in Kristen’s Cooking Dramatics: Adventures in Eggplant Parmesan. Pray for me.

The only other exciting thing that happened this week was that my community finally met our support people. Community support people are generally former JV’s who’s job it is to hang out with us and make sure we all don’t starve to death. Last week, our support people were on vacation in Cape Cod, so we didn’t get to meet them until this Thursday.

Turns out, they’re this adorable newly wed couple who go by the names Colleen and Steve. They had us over for dinner and then took us to get ice cream. It was awesome, mostly because we didn’t have to do any of the cooking. Props to Colleen and Steve. I’m genuinely looking forward to getting to know them better.

Wow, this was a long post. Do y’all remember when I was like “blogging is hard because I don’t know what to talk about?” It’s a great talent I have that I can make a short story super freaking long. Can you imagine how long this post would be if I didn’t actually have things to write about? I feel like I could probably write a novel out of nothing.

But that kind of wraps things up.

Thanks for reading. You rock.

PS: I want to get a library card. To do that, I need mail. If you feel like being generous and sending me a letter, shoot me an email at kmianogm@gmail.com and I’ll give you my mailing address. Thanks in advance.

PPS: I know the font style randomly changes in my posts. I don't know why and nothing I do to fix it works. I apologize for the inconvenience. 


*Lede- the most important line of a news story. Tells you the who, what, when, where, why, and occasionally, how. Not necessarily the first line you write, but burying the lede is often frowned upon in conservative news writing, as the idea is usually to get all the information upfront and to the reader as quickly as possible. And with that, I reassert my journalism nerdiness.