CHICAGO CARLESS

(Photo: xxxxxxxxxx.)

Perhaps the biggest open secret in my life is my heritage. The Irish last name is a red herring. I’m actually one-hundred percent Hispanic. Mom was a first-generation American born to Spaniard parents. My father was Puerto Rican. Him I never knew, and mom brought up all of her children white-bread American. By other children, I’m referring to the brother and sister I rarely reference and haven’t known in years. There’s a deeply substantive-abusive reason for that on their part, but that’s a backstory for another time.

Though I never did learn to speak Spanish in childhood (and, boy, did it kill my mom to hear me coming home from college speaking French and Italian), I did learn a thing or two in the kitchen. My most cherished culinary memory from childhood will always be my mom’s Spanish rice. It’s been my go-to dish for years and will be again tonight as I bring a couple of vats of it to the Gapers Block potluck dinner meeting for the Drive-Thru food & drink staff.

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(Photo: “Local Chicago blogger Jasmine Davila has a vagina and is not afraid to use it.)

The first step to getting healthy is admitting you have a problem. There’s no getting around it, I am hopelessly addicted to Cincinnati chili. I and my waistline dream about the stuff. I find myself making excuses for being in Lincoln Square, eight miles from my downtown home, to accidentally drop in at Cinner’s, Chicago’s only authentic Queen City chili parlor. Just such an accidentally intentional trip is how I ended up discussing vaginas with fellow local blogger Jasmine Davila (a former Chicagoans Project subject on these pages).

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(Photo: Bet you never thought you’d see that picture on this website.)

When I told the Gapers Block editors last week that I wanted to take them up on their last-minute offer to interview Food Network celebrity chef Sandra Lee, creator of the Semi-Homemade television and cookbook empire, their response was instructive: “You’re not going to shred her, are you?”

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(Photo: Different bridge, same exodus: my experience on 9/11. Credit: Joseph Rodruguez.)

An annotated version of the following entry is cross-posted on my Huffinton Post Chicago byline.

Today, with the world again awash in retrospect, I usually prefer to be blogging about about courtesy, or kittens, or one of any number of safer, happier, topics. Seven years on and I had originally thought not to mark the occasion again. At some point, we just have to emotionally let go inside, or we destroy ourselves. In the end, while I feel no need to make a pilgrimage to a dusty construction site in Lower Manhattan, I still feel a need for words. I wrote these particular words in 2006, to mark my experience of the fifth anniversary of 9/11. Here’s my story from that day…

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(Photo: Forever lost view from the World Trade Center’s Top of the World observatory. Credit: terraxplorer2.)

You have better things to do today than to read a post from me. There are important people in your life and you know you’ve been taking them for granted. Yes, I’m talking to you. Now get off the Internet, pick up the phone, and tell them so: husbands; wives; life partners; children; brothers; sisters; best friends. Every one of them. No, I’m not kidding.

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(Photo: “I am Cincinnati; no flashbulbs, please.”–Leah Spurrier, co-founder of the Queen City’s fabulous High Street.)

Let me eat my words up front. Despite my pre-trip trepidation to travel to the land of the abandoned subway, as it turned out, Cincinnati is cool. And don’t you know, ex-New Yorker and current Downtown Chicagoan that I am, I half-expect to turn into a pillar of salt for saying so.

I had been jonesing for a break from blogging before the end of summer, so when Cincinnati Jamie asked if I wanted to ride shotgun on a weekend trip back home to check on his Queen City condo, I jumped at the chance. I didn’t expect more than a few quiet days in a quaint backwater, a plate of chili, and some gratuitous references (on my part) to WKRP.

I admit it. Cincinnati blew me away. (See trip photos on my flickr.)

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(Photo: Sarah Palin goes to her happy place during her GOP acceptance speech.)

I admit it. I watched Sarah Palin’s acceptance speech last night for the Republican vice-presidential nomination. At first I couldn’t believe anyone could deliver such insipid, jingoistic remarks with any sincerity.

Then I realized, given the scrutiny she’s been under lately, what with the stress of the coming grandbaby and all, there had to be a little voice in the back of her head somewhere, doubting, wondering if the small-town girl from Wasillia really had the chops to be become President when–oops, I mean if–John McCain drops dead in office before 2012.

They say there are two sides to every story. I give you my interpretation of the inner voice inside Sarah Palin’s head during her acceptable speech…

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