Friday in Obama’s kind of town, Chicago

This is my kind of town, Chicago is … The Wrigley building, Chicago is the Union stockyard, Chicago is one town that won’t let you down. It’s my kind of town. Thus, crooned Sinatra and Manilow. That was the ’60s. The images were proletarian. This city then was known as the Southside of MLK Jr., Jesse Jackson, Saul Alinsky’s social lab, the Black Panthers and the raised clenched fist, and the bohemian hangout at the University of Chicago and the U of I in Chicago. Daley family defined local politics.

Then Uptown took on the earmark of the middle/upper-class of the world having come to stay. There were 42 languages spoken and taught at the Truman Community College in the late ’70s. But Chicago was also the Magnificent Mile, which is glitterati Michigan Ave. by the Park. It was also the Gold Coast, the stylish nouveau riche home by the lakeshore, and inland, the reactive Aryans and Caucasoids by Pulaski.

This city was “home” in the decade between the ’70s and the ’80s. I had not been to the windy city since, and this time, I am visiting family—first, my eldest daughter, hubby and my grandson (Vergara-Campbell) in the luxurious The Lake dwellings in Schaumburg, Illinois, northwest of O’Hare International Airport, and a stone’s throw away from the International Village (lots of south and far east-Asian cyber experts—was expecting a bumper sticker that read: I Brake for Alien Techies!) abut the Motorola Corporate Headquarters. The surrounding environment is Beamer upscale, IKEA contemporary and CostCo affordable.

Second object of visit also is my adopted Saipan family (Con-ui/Yohannan) who are in the process of moving to the Chicago’s northwest-side around the Milwaukee-Addison-Belmont neighborhood, if it proves to be a viable home for the family. Once haven to eastern European immigrants, the area around the historic landmark Carl Schurz High School is now pueblo to many whose heritage is traceable to Iberia and the practices, albeit, less chivalrous, chronicled by Cervantes in Don Quixote de la Mancha and his Sancho Pancha.

This June day of 2008, gearing up to the U.S. presidential election in America, Chicago remains Barrack Hussein Obama’s kind of town, definitely progressive and ever the can-do optimism that Obama shares with his erstwhile rival, and now ally, Hillary Rodham Clinton. A walk around Millennium Park on Michigan Avenue reflects a city that does not hesitate to confront the reality of its diversity, and lift it up for artful celebration. The park sits next to the famed Art Institute of Chicago and sections of it has been adopted by some of the city’s corporate offices.

The Cloud Gate of the AT&T Plaza consists of two boxed tower fountains, water cascading on the side with rectangular blocks embedded with digital chips which together shows pictures of representatives of Chicago’s racial mosaic, and on interval, the mouths of the images facing each other would turn into a water spout and shoot water to the glee of playful adults and screaming children, flirting youth and swooning young adults of all three genders who do not hesitate this late spring day to get wet under the sun.

A few meters toward the lake is the massive Pritzker Pavilion that this Friday has Chicago’s Fifth Ensemble singing to the noon crowd. The outdoor concert hall sports the latest in sound management designed to please an audience in a semicircle grandstand seats elongated by a grassy knoll where concertgoers can spread their picnic blankets and lazily lounge consuming their seasonal fruits and Wisconsin cheeses washed down by their Merlots and Zinfandels from far away lands from where some of them came from.

Astride the Crown Plaza is a reflective and shiny liver shape sculpture displayed like an artifact on a pedestal that the natives endearingly refer to as the “Bean,” where any given day, the baby stroller brigade parade as digital cameras capture their images reflected by the sculpture’s sheen.

Further north on Lincoln Park is the city Zoo and the city’s famous botanical garden. The Zoo is managed by the Chicago Zoological Society, which also manages Brookefield Zoo further west of the City. The Lincoln Park serves the rapid transit arriving crowd from its urban sprawl, and is funded from the public coffers. Entrance to the place is free, though the cost of parking can easily mean parting with a Jackson, or two, if one adds the cost of fuel. On the other hand, Brookefield serves the dwellers of suburban DuPage and Cook Counties, and is driven by membership patronage. A sprawling conservation park where the animals are not “caged” reflects the latest in zoo management thinking, encouraged by Jane Goodard’s respectful stance towards the object of her research.

Here in the city’s parks, zoos and gardens walks a grateful humanity from all corners of the world seemingly satisfied and fulfilled for just being alive, exemplifying with their daily existence and lifestyle Obama’s “audacity of hope.”

Indeed, this is a celebration of life with a big INSPITE OF and NEVERTHELESS, for the news this day included the 27th victim this year of youth homicide in the continuing struggle with street violence of the young vs. the young, and the gruesome incidence of a 70-year old lady bludgeoned to death in her own basement by heretofore unknown assailant(s).

There is a recognizable middle class who is neither ostentatious or deprived, though gauging the state of somatic measures, there evidently is a widespread epidemic of obesity by default where and when the food portions in eating places are humungous.

Iraq defines the deep cleavage between McCain and Obama, and painfully so. Oprah Winfrey’s celebrated author Eckard Etolle provides a balance. Faith that the U.S. past led by Bush is done, finis, and can be forgiven. There is no sense in flailing a dead horse. The future that Obama and Rodham yearn for is open and available for all to decide. Embracing the here-and-now advocated by Oprah’s Etolle might just be the Friday affirmation, patently exuding in Obama’s Chicago, is what the nation needs and requires.

Chicago remains my kind of town; and Obama, my kind of Chicagoan on the roll!