OUR LOCAL PAPER which typically runs a mix of feel-good stories about Oak Park residents doing nice things for their community and controversial policies over leaf removal now also covers the ICE detention center in neighboring Broadview and our Hispanic Heritage Celebration, ¡Viva! Festival, was canceled due to concerns that ICE agents would use it as a sort of honeytrap to come and kidnap people and at the Kol Nidre service a friend tells me that her granddaughter’s school in Chicago told families that if they were at all worried about their kids being snatched by ICE agents they should not send their kids to school on the day of the Fun Run. But now even staying home is not a safe option since there are raids removing people from their homes in the middle of the night and separating families.
I've reached the point where my imagination has been "awed to the point of paralysis" to quote John McPhee's take on "deep time," something so far beyond my range of normal experience that I can only begin to comprehend it by comparing it to horrors of the past—that is far from reassuring.
But you still have to "get dinner on the table" as a friend recently put it. I have been thinking about the diary of Anne Frank, a German refugee in Amsterdam who never became an official Dutch citizen which meant that she was illegal and therefore could be sent to a prison camp, and how even though she was hiding from people who wanted her dead she still had crushes and argued with her mom a lot and went through many of the feelings that a typical tween goes through during puberty.
My own tween is around the same age as Anne when she went into hiding. We keep her informed about what is going on, but also remember that other things matter, too. For example she is excited about the new Taylor Swift album which comes out today.
And she had her first pimple.
Chad and I are also very aware of new sounds in the neighborhood. More sirens than usual, tons of helicopters at night. Which puts us on edge.
Three Things That Kept Me Going This Week
- I received an out-of-the-blue request for an interview I did about twelve years ago with the actress Louise Lasser. The interview had originally been published on the website The Toast, which sadly is now totally defunct. I dug the interview out from storage and put it on my website. Now you can read it here, and dear Liz, thank you for inspiring me to revisit this!
- Speaking of storage facilities: As one website or magazine after the other bites the dust, I should probably start an online archive, ala Friend of Mushroom Head and Pulitzer Nominee Ed Park, whose newsletter The Dizzies is full of rich content pulled from "The Parkhives." I enjoy it immensely! Ed also has a new collection of short stories, seen here in the wilds of Chicago.
- I finally finished Prairie Fires by Caroline Fraser and it was stupendous. So much more than a biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder; really it is a biography of rural midwestern America, from the homestead movement to the New Deal. Since my mother's family followed a very similar path to that of Wilder I feel like I now understand them so much better having read this. Fraser also provides a great deal of biographical material on Wilder's daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, a fascinating figure herself who is considered a founding "mother" of the libertarian movement along with Ayn Rand. I can't even sum up here all that makes this book worth reading. I was inspired to pick it up after Michaela and I read Little House in the Big Woods and I have much more to say about all of this, so please stay tuned.
Til next week, sending all my love,
Claire