A Dark And Quiet Room

Yes. This.

Beautiful Feet

Lord God, John Knox once prayed, “Give me Scotland or I die.” I confess that my vision is not as broad as his. But Lord…give me Peoria. Give me the South Side. Give me the Near North Side and Downtown and Bradley University and Renaissance Park. Give me the poor and the broken. Give me the prostitutes and the johns, the crack addicts and the drug dealers, the abused children and their abusers, the poor and the rich. Give me the broken of our city, the discarded detritus of our society, and build from them a temple for Your name.

And with it, Lord, give me an open and willing heart. Give me the love and compassion to reach out once again to the hurting who lash out. Give me the hospitality to open my home to the dirty and inconvenient. Give me the willingness to sacrifice my comfort, my sanity, and my privacy for the sake of those you send my way. Make me the kind of man that I need to be to carry out this mission.

Lord, I walk the streets and alleys of my city, and I see a people who desperately need You. Do not be far off.

Give me Peoria, Lord, or I die.

I just finished reading Dennis Lehane’s A Drink Before the War, the first book in his Kenzie/Gennaro detective series. As a point of reference, Book Four is Gone Baby Gone, which was recently made into an outstanding film. (I discuss the film with spoilers here.)

This is an unformed thought, but here goes.

So, this book is part of a stream of crime fiction that I’m finding I really appreciate. To wit, it’s social critique in fiction form. The Wire would be another example of this. (Fun fact: Dennis Lehane wrote several episodes of The Wire.) Specifically, it’s a form of crime fiction dealing with issues that counselors and social workers would have to address. In many ways, it seems comparable to the Spy vs. Guy espionage fiction written by John le Carré and others, as both are actually about addressing social and political ills through genre fiction.

And all this makes me think about an aptitude test that I took way back in high school. This was one of those tests that you take to help you figure out what you want to be when you grow up. At the time, I knew what I was going to be: a computer programmer. Duh.

So, imagine my surprise when “social work” came back at the top of my list.

That’s stuck with me over the years.

But, as I’ve gotten older, it has started to make more sense. That’s really where my heart is: with hurting, violated, abused people who need to be rescued from their sins. Hurting people who hurt people. That’s how I see my calling.

So I guess that my interacting with crime fiction makes sense. It’s preparation to interact with the people that I really want to help. Maybe that’s why it feels so much like coming home.

Hooray! Peoria made the national news!

Illinois Police Pepper Spray Crowd Mourning 4-Month-Old Baby

Honestly, this looks like a mild rewrite of an article from our very own Peoria Journal-Star.

Baby found dead in Peoria home; police fire pepper balls on crowd

Sounds pretty bad, doesn’t it?

Now, one of my co-workers is a member of the Tazewell County Auxiliary Police, and when this story was passed around the office, he was a bit put out. He pointed out that it is the job of the coroner to take the body of the deceased. It’s also the job of the police to secure a crime scene. For the record, an area where an infant died suddenly counts as a crime scene. Finally, he noted that it is normal procedure to give multiple warnings before using pepper spray.

Here’s an excerpt from the Journal-Star story:

“A bunch of family and friends came and were refusing to let the officers out with the baby,” said Lt. Marshall Dunnigan. “We had to use great force to get the coroner out with the baby.”

So, hang on a sec. There was a crowd of people attempting to interfere with the police doing their proper duty, and so the police eventually responded to protect the coroner and enforce the law? Why is this a problem?

But even the Journal-Star story sounds like the police overreacted, not to mention the Associated Press story that Fox News ran.

Another co-worker put his finger on this issue:

The problem lies in the use of the word “mourners.” That automatically puts the police in a bad light, implying they used force on people who were in emotional distress. It was a crowd gathered at the house that threatened to turn into a mob by interfering with police. Mourners are usually found at funerals, visitations, grave sites, etc., not congregating at a possible crime scene. It shows us how one eight-letter word can skew the perception of an event.

(Emphasis mine.)

And that’s it right there. Let me reword the lead sentence of that news article by making a slight adjustment:

Police officers fired pepper balls into a group of mourners mob gathering at the house of a 4-month-old girl who died in her South Peoria home Wednesday.

Makes a big difference, doesn’t it?

Or, as an alternate example, check out how I tweak this headline:

Officers use pepper balls to break up mob of about 100 people fire pepper balls at group of children

Use of force by the police always draws a lot of scrutiny, and that is certainly a good thing. I’m fairly confident that the entire situation will be reviewed and investigated as necessary internally; moreover, it’s good for the police to be accountable to the public at large. At the same time, we all need to be careful of the opinions that we form as a result of our interactions with the media. Just a single word or phrase can change all our opinions and reactions.

Learn to read between the lines.

First, check out this video of David Simon, creator of The Wire, talking about Baltimore. Here’s a salient quote:

“Some of the smallest, gentlest moments I’ve ever experienced have been being a bystander to how people relate to this city and to each other as Baltimoreans. The trick is to tell the stories [on the Wire] with enough insider affection and insider angst and insider worry and insider anger that other Baltimoreans recognize that it [The Wire] is something of a love letter. It’s from a conflicted and often frustrated lover, but it’s nonetheless a love letter.”

Replace “Baltimoreans” with whoever you live with. Yeah, that’s how I think Dirty Secrets ought to be played.

As I worked on designing Dirty Secrets, I found myself developing this same affection for Peoria. Yeah, I learned all kinds of badness about my city, and I’m still learning more. But, at the same time, it’s my city…the place that I love. This same sense drives my political critiques and all that. I love where I live, warts and all.

So I hope that some of the players of Dirty Secrets would develop a similar feeling about where they live. I guess we will see.

“In that regard, Bob Brown is what every police official and neighborhood association claims as the solution to the trouble in their streets. He is every bit the old-time beat cop, the retrograde image of walk-the-footpost, know-the-people policing. Get the cops out of the radio cars, runs the latest theory, and you begin to get them back into the neighborhoods. Get the out walking their real estate, and they’ll start to reconnect with the people, learn the neighborhood, prevent crime. Community-oriented policing has become the watchword of the nineties in law enforcement. Houston, New York, Washington, Detroit–everyone is nostalgic for foot patrols and grassroots policing and whatever the hell else kep the streets safe in 1950. That Bob Brown knows his post from one end to the other, that he can recite most of the players and their deeds by name, that he has fought for the same terrain for two decades–all of it seems the textbook model of what the visionaries in law enforcement are promoting. That there are already Bob Browns on the streets, that for all their will and desire and knowledge, they have lost their private wars in hardcore places like West Baltimore–that is somehow beside the point.”
–The Corner, David Simon and Ed Burns, p. 152

I came across this on CNN.com:

Is America’s suburban dream collapsing into a nightmare?

Instead, they are looking for what Leinberger calls “walkable urbanism” — both small communities and big cities characterized by efficient mass transit systems and high density developments enabling residents to walk virtually everywhere for everything — from home to work to restaurants to movie theaters.

The so-called New Urbanism movement emerged in the mid-90s and has been steadily gaining momentum, especially with rising energy costs, environmental concerns and health problems associated with what Leinberger calls “drivable suburbanism” — a low-density built environment plan that emerged around the end of the World War II and has been the dominant design in the U.S. ever since.

Yep. We’ve been seeing some of this happening here in Peoria, too. And, generally, I happen to think that this is a positive trend. There’s something a little too sterile about suburban living, or at least the way that we’ve practiced it here in America.

However, this comes with its own price:

Yet Nelson also estimates that in 2025 there will be a surplus of 22 million large-lot homes that will not be left vacant in a suburban wasteland but instead occupied by lower classes who have been driven out of their once affordable inner-city apartments and houses.

The so-called McMansion, he said, will become the new multi-family home for the poor.

“What is going to happen is lower and lower-middle income families squeezed out of downtown and glamorous suburban locations are going to be pushed economically into these McMansions at the suburban fringe,” said Nelson. “There will probably be 10 people living in one house.”

In Shaun Yandell’s neighborhood, this has already started to happen. Houses once filled with single families are now rented out by low-income tenants. Yandell speculates that they’re coming from nearby Sacramento, where the downtown is undergoing substantial gentrification, or perhaps from some other area where prices have gotten too high. He isn’t really sure.

(Emphasis mine.)

So, yeah, what about them poor folk that used to live in the urban cores? Where are they going to live?

We’re seeing some of that here, too. My neighborhood is poised to be a part of the ongoing urban renewal in Peoria, which means that real estate prices in University East are pretty high, compared to what they were just a few years ago. This is going to make it more difficult for working-class families to be able to live here.

Sure, this is really just a mirror development of the previous migration of the poor to the urban cores. However, there’s at least one significant difference. The urban centers actually had generally well-built buildings. For example, my home started its existence as a single-family dwelling, was divided up into three separate apartments, and then was returned to being a single-family dwelling by the time that we bought it. It’s a solidly constructed house.

The McMansions of the suburbs, though, are not so well built. The quality of materials and construction simply isn’t as good as the older homes. As the working class moves into the suburbs, are they also going to be trapped in rapidly decaying buildings?

And where will they work? If you live in town, at least you can use mass transit or hoof it yourself. If you’re out in the ‘burbs, your options are limited. After all, the suburbs only work as long as those who live there have automobiles.

Now, I say this as one who really enjoys the thought of living in the proposed Renaissance Park area. My idea of a good night is hanging out at One World Eats or Water Street Wines, Cafe and Coffee on the riverfront, both of which are the results of the sort of urban renewal that we’re talking about. Personally, I like the idea of living in a bustling urban area, filled with arts and music and coffee houses and restaurants, all within walking distance of my house. That sounds fantastic!

And yet, I have to raise the question: who are we displacing? Are we forcing the working poor into another migration, simply because we want to have our beautiful urban centers?

Or is there another way?

These are real questions. I don’t have answers. But I think that the time is rapidly approaching where we need to begin thinking about how to answer them.

“A large city cannot be experientially known; its life is too manifold for any individual to be able to participate in it.”–Aldous Huxley

Recently, I read the book Our America by LeAlan Jones and Lloyd Newman. This book drew from the two recording projects that these two boys were involved with:

Ghetto Life 101

Remorse

You have to register on the site to listen to these pieces, but it’s free! (They are also available here and here.)

Ghetto Life 101 was just a trip around the projects, which was harsh enough, but Remorse was about the murder of Eric Morse, a five-year old boy who was dropped from a 14-story building in the projects by two older boys because he tattled on them. Now, when I say “older”, I mean “ages 10 and 11″.

And the book had pictures, too, taken by a friend of these two boys. So they roamed their neighborhood with camera and recorders, asking people about their lives and about how the murder affected them.

Troubling material.

It was all the more troubling because of the constant presence of the false gospel of success. “You’ll get out of here,” people said. “You’re smart and good-looking. You’ll go to college and be better than this.” Your knowledge will save you. Your intelligence will save you. I would think that, in a place as bleak as these tenements, this false gospel would have expired. I guess not.

But, as I read between the lines of this book, seeing what was said and what was assumed, I discovered something profound.

LeAlan Jones never met his father.

Lloyd Newman’s father is a drunkard.

The father of one of the murderers was locked up at the time, imprisoned for domestic abuse.

The theme that knit together these heartbreaking stories of pain was a deep father-hunger.

In his book Ten Things You Can’t Say In America, Larry Elder makes the case that what is destroying the black community in America is illegitimacy. I remember my mother citing some study that showed that things began to go wrong when the illegitimacy rate hit 25% in the black community. She would then go on to point out that the illegitimacy rate among whites had hit 25%. And that was 15 years ago.

As Isaiah said:

Woe to the wicked! It shall be ill with him, for what his hands have dealt out shall be done to him. My people–infants are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, your guides mislead you and they have swallowed up the course of your paths.

(Isaiah 3:11-12)

And yet…

The Spirit of God is at work in our nation. Over the last several years, I’ve seen a growing emphasis by Christians on masculinity and fatherhood. It’s a messy process, to be sure. There’s a lot of work to do and, let’s face it, men aren’t always civil and polite. And yet, that is exactly what we need: men who are willing to be men, acting with courage, forcefulness, and fortitude in order to take up their place as servant-leaders in the home.

It doesn’t look like much. Mostly changing diapers, insisting (once again!) that your son get to bed on time and not talk back to his mother, and trying to teach your children to listen to what God has to say about life while they mostly ignore you.

Yeah, it doesn’t look like much.

But it is changing the world. Because, if you look around, it is this very thing that so many lack.

Happy Father’s Day, eveyone.

So, there I am, working on my computer, when I get an instant message from Bryan. “Your blood pressure seems a bit low,” he says. “Maybe this will help.”

Great. Now I’ll have to blog about it. So here goes….

A Chicago suburb has just banned visible window-mounted air conditioners.

From the Chicago Tribune:

In an effort to improve Addison’s aesthetics, the Village Board in March passed an ordinance that prohibits window-mounted air conditioners on walls that face the street or on side windows within 12 feet of a street-facing wall.

My bedroom faces the street. Since we don’t have air conditioning upstairs, I’ve placed a window unit in my window to cool down my bedroom. If I lived in Addison, that would make me a criminal.

And for what reason did the village of Addison make this ordinance? Were they pulling a Berkeley and trying to save the environment from leaking coolant? Were they trying to impose some sort of energy efficiency on the citizenry? Not that I’d be pleased with these sorts of reasons.

Oh no. The answer is far worse.

Village officials said the ordinance is geared toward window-mounted units that tend to look shabby, especially when spaces around the units are jammed with cardboard or boards. Also unsightly, they said, are the slap-dash braces made of two-by-fours that support some units on outside walls.

(emphasis mine)

Yep. The government of Addison said that the window units were ugly. Therefore, “ugly” is now illegal. And, tell me, why is “ugly” now illegal in Addison?

[John Berly, assistant village manager said,] “The front yard is what the public sees. The condition of the front is a major factor in determining property values, and it reflects the community norms of acceptable maintenance.”

There it is. Property values. That constant bugaboo.

So, what’s the expected outcome?

[C]ontractors have advised the village that the cost of cutting a hole in a wall and installing a rectangular sleeve and an air conditioner would range from about $600 to about $1,000 depending on the type of wall construction and the complexity of the job.

[A local landlord Vito] Mossa said profit margins in apartment buildings have been trimmed to the bone in recent years because of stable rents but rising costs for heat, taxes, insurance, water and garbage removal. Retrofitting for legal air conditioners would cost too much, he said.

“I would probably just tell [tenants] they can’t put an air conditioner in the window. . . . I’m going to lose tenants,” Mossa said.

(emphasis mine)

Let’s parse this out, shall we?

Who is most likely to be using window-mounted air conditioners? People who can’t afford central air conditioning or aren’t in a position to have it installed. In other words, renters and home-owners who are poor. Also, who is most likely to have “unsightly” improvised home repairs? That’s right; poor people. So, who is this ordinance going to affect the most? (All together now.) Poor people.

But, it’s okay if they leave, right? I mean, do we really want those sorts of people in our neighborhoods? Look what they do to the property values. It’s better for everyone, or at least, it’s better for property owners. And then, our neighborhood will be a better, happier, more prosperous place, right?

But will it?

Vito Mossa doesn’t think so. He thinks that he is going to lose tenants because he can’t afford to install air conditioning the way that the Village Council has demanded. So then what happens? In order to attract tenants, he will have to lower his rent. Assuming he can afford to do this, what quality of tenant do you think he will get? Most folk will want the air conditioning, so he will only get tenants who are too poor to afford the nicer apartments. Of course, the lower rent will mean that Mossa will have even less money to put into maintenance of the apartment building. Plus, the lower quality of tenant will probably attract its own trouble.

But what if Mossa can’t afford to lower his rent? Well then, eventually he will have to go out of business as a landlord. So then, what happens to the apartment building? Mossa will have to sell it, but how will he accomplish that? Eventually he will either have to sell at a loss, or he will have to sell to someone with enough money to pay for all the additional air conditioning updates. Do you think that this buyer will be a nice local landlord? I rather think that it will be a real estate holding company of some kind, who will probably be just another “absentee landlord” that the Village Council is already complaining about.

And what if he can’t sell? Do you think that he will be able to rent apartments in a building that is on the market? Again, only the really desperate would rent in that sort of situation. Or perhaps the building merely stands vacant. But, as I know from personal experience, a vacant building is a drag on a neighborhood, attracting all sorts of trouble.

And what about Mossa? His business is destroyed, and probably his personal finances, too. Where does this leave him?

But, hey, in the end, the village of Addison drives away all those nasty poor people and preserves their property values for good, decent people! Hooray! Another win for the middle class!

Another win against those awful poor folk.

Of course, the really sad thing is that this won’t work. In the end, Addison will probably be left with a worse situation than they started with.

So, I don’t live in Addison, right? I live in Peoria. Why am I so exercised about this?

It’s because I see the same pattern playing out right here in my neighborhood.

Last week, Code Enforcement came through the neighborhood, doing a “clean sweep”. The agent was fairly lenient on us, since she admitted that the purpose was mostly to focus on tenants, not on home owners. That didn’t save my neighbor, who managed to pick up a substantive fine for having front stairs in need of repair. Do the stairs need repair? Yes they do, and my neighbor (who I will call D) knew this. In fact, she had been saving money all year so that she could get them repaired over the summer. They are concrete, so you need to wait until the summer heat for best effect. But now, she has to pay a fine. Where is she going to get that money? That’s right: from the money that she saved to repair her steps.

D is a home owner. In fact, she’s lived in the University East neighborhood for a number of years. On top of that, she is raising her five grandchildren by herself, while working a job in the public school system. She’s not exactly made out of money. And yet, she was being responsible, trying to take care of her property as best as she could. She has covered her stairs, trying to decorate them to make the best of a bad situation. But it did not save her.

And then I hear people in the neighborhood who are happy about this. Indeed, they call Code Enforcement to inform on their neighbors. Then they vigorously defend the right of Code Enforcement to trespass onto other people’s property in violation of the Fourth Amendment. They want the city to keep putting pressure on renters. They want to enforce a certain standard of living on this neighborhood, using the power of the government to accomplish it. And their goal? The preservation of their property values. They want to force this neighborhood to be a nice, upscale neighborhood, without any of those “unsightly” rental properties.

Yay! Another victory for the middle class! Another win against those awful poor folk.

But what have we won, really?

Is this how to accomplish our goal of living together peacefully as neighbors? That is our goal, isn’t it? A neighborhood? But how can we form a loving community if we found it on the suffering of the poor? How can we form a trusting community if we enforce it with anonymous calls to government agencies? How can we form an open community if we are constantly watching each other for infractions?

Are we looking to form a neighborhood? Or are we just looking for a nice place to live, regardless of who pays the price?

Last night, around 6:00, my family left the house to visit with the Evans’ family.

Last night, around 7:30, a neighbor named John was mugged in front of the neighboring house. Essentially, it happened at the base of my driveway. They took his wallet and his keys and left him on the sidewalk. You need to understand that John is in his 60s, plus he is autistic (or somesuch thing). Attacking him was the act of cowards, looking for an easy hit.

Another neighbor met him just after he was attacked. She called the police and then called us to let us know. I’m still a little unclear on all the details, but that’s really close enough.

I saw John last night. His cheek was scraped up and he had a nasty bruise under one eye. He was with a social worker from White Oaks who was trying to help him find his keys. Without them, he couldn’t get back into his house. I helped the social worker look around, but we couldn’t find the keys, which probably means that John stayed the night in a shelter last night. The social worker told me that the police had captured two of John’s attackers but the keys were still unaccounted for. So, honestly, it may have been better for him to be elsewhere last night. If someone unfriendly still had his keys, then he might not have been safe in his own house.

I prayed with John. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time. And I prayed for vengeance on his attackers.

I guess this is why we moved here. That whole “being a light in a dark place” thing. And I’m glad that I was able to try to be helpful to John and to pray for him. Feels like a first step in following my calling in this neighborhood. But still, I would rather that it hadn’t happened at all.

Something that Gabrielle and I realized when reflecting about our game of Bliss Stage is that our characters did the exact thing that we often criticize in other Christians: bailing out of the city to hide in the country. I think that our playing through this game has given us a different perspective on the issue. Yes, it’s possible to be hiding in the country from the problems of the city. At the same time, it’s also possible to withdraw from the city in an attempt to regroup and to train your children to be better warriors than you are. Sometimes you just don’t have enough of a foothold to be able to fight effectively.

Still, it feels retreatist to me. But how much of that is because it’s the truth, and how much of it is my own hang-ups? I’m still trying to figure that out.

From the Peoria Journal-Star:

Once upon a time, the couple enjoyed shopping and strolling in Peoria.

Even as the heart of the city decayed over time, the twosome - now in their 70s - maintained their loyalty to Peoria’s traditional business districts.

That all changed Monday night. Despite safety precautions, they were attacked in a brazen robbery attempt at one of Peoria’s biggest intersections, Main and University streets.

I’m posting this for two reasons, both directed to those of us who live in the Renaissance Park area and want it to flourish.

First, do remember that living here is not just a walk in the park. People get hurt and robbed in our neighborhoods. Do take proper precautions. And when I say “precautions”, I mean things like these:

1) If you are elderly or female, don’t walk unattended, particularly after dark.

2) Be aware of your surroundings. Walk the fine line between being friendly to everyone and suspecting everyone.

3) Be armed, if you can. I know that the laws in Illinois hamstring the ability of law-abiding, peaceful citizens to defend themselves, but do the best that you can.

Second, while we pursue the dream of a beautiful rebirth for this place that we love, we must not lose sight of the fact that we face serious opposition. In particular, the University East neighborhood (where I live) is balanced on a knife’s edge. Encourage your friends to move into this neighborhood and buy houses. Pray for good neighbors to share this land and our lives.

Finally, pray for Renaissance Park. It is only by the grace of God that any city endures in peace. Pray that Jesus would bring his peace to Renaissance Park, so that young and old would once again be able to walk our streets in safety.

As a result of watching the developing Spione project, I’ve become interested in the Cold War. It’s an area of history that we tend to ignore, even though it shapes many of our assumptions about the current day, including the current War on Terror.

So, that all being said, when perusing the Spione site today, I found this link which shows various pictures of the Berlin Wall during the 1980s. Here are some that stood out to me:

Checkpoint Charlie
the “dead zone”
another view of the “dead zone”
a watchtower
a view through the trees
walking beside the Wall

So, as the result of reading the first issue of “Fell” online, I’m reading the article which apparently coined the term “feral city“. I’m only a couple pages into it, so I can’t really speak to the content. However, I realized something about myself.

See, I’m doing this reading as part of my overall research for the new game that I think I’m going to be working on but you didn’t hear that from me. So far, I’ve been looking at things from the angle of the detective/”noir” story, but it occurred to me in an email conversation with someone that the “rotting city” aspect of the genre is of interest to me as well.

Then I realized something. The “rotting city” idea has always been of interest to me.

I guess God’s been getting me ready for Orange Street for quite some time.