Who Am I? Am I A City?

And the junk stood up into skyscrapers and asked:
Who am I? Am I a city? And if I am what is my name?
And once while the time whistles blew and blew again
The men answered: Long ago we gave you a name,
Long ago we laughed and said: You? Your name is Chicago.
Early the red men gave a name to the river,

the place of the skunk
the river of wild onion smell,
Shee-caw-go

- The Windy City, Carl Sandburg

Love Chicago? Love poetry?
Don't know Chicago? Don't know too much about poetry?

Whatever your answer, you should check out the Poetry Foundation's Chicago Poetry Tour.

This is an amazing feature produced by the Poetry Foundation with several tours of Chicago, featuring poetry from many Chicago poets. You can watch the tours online, with audio recordings of poets reading their works about or inspired by the city. Or, you can download the audio to play as you walk through the city. The site also has downloadable maps. There are 22 tours of downtown Chicago landmarks and surrounding neighborhoods. You can listen to Carl Sandburg reciting The Windy City, or Gwendolen Brooks, reciting her We Real Cool, as well as readings by other poets, writers, and critics. You can navigate to specific poems or poets, rather than navigating via the tour map.

I often think that New York is my favorite city in the world, but if I give it 'Best in World' title, I think it could be exempted from the competition for the Best in US laurels, a title which would then, undoubtedly, go to Chicago.

I'd love to see similar features of other cities, featuring snippets of poetry and prose of and about each city. Hmmm...this has me pondering what I would choose to include if this was done for my hometown. I think that's a future blog post.

Hands in the dirt and a trip to Chicago

Today was gardening day. While I only have one flat of flowers planted so far, my guys and I did a lot of shoveling of dirt today. There is something invigorating about the smell of dirt and worms on a cool, sunny Spring day.

Here are some pictures from the garden:

It's going to take more than one flat to cover this hill side, newly without ground cover because the landscapers cleared the wrong area. That's okay, though, it allows for adding some color on the wooded slope. Complements the sign too!

I found this delicate little wildflower in the woods as I was planting the begonias.

Right now, standing on my porch or walking down the driveway, is a sensory delight, with the honeysuckle in bloom. Some call this a weed. While it is invasive -- it's even banned in Illinois -- I like it a lot. Lonicera maackii:


Speaking of gardening and gardens, I was in Chicago last week and had the opportunity to walk through Millennium Park. Lurie Gardens is beautiful.


I was with a Dutch friend who especially liked the tulips:


As we approached Jaume Plensa's Crowne Fountain, I thought maybe they had changed it. I liked the changing mural of flowers on the glass wall, but was a little disappointed that it wasn't what I expected.


Then, the picture changed:


How can you not smile at this? Even though it was cold, there were children splashing in the water. How can one resist laughing?


From Carl Sandburg's poem Chicago:

Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders:

Since I was with friends on their first trip to the US, we did the tourist-y thing and went to the top of the John Hancock building. I haven't done that since sometime in the 1970's. We also walked on the beach for awhile. Although they live on the Indian Ocean, my friends were amazed by Lake Michigan.

Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.

One last view of the City of Broad Shoulders.