Entries Tagged as 'ornament'

Red Ornament

December 23rd, 2011 · No Comments

I walk through 203 N. LaSalle every day as an indoor shortcut from the Clark/Lake blue line. I noticed my reflection one day in their holiday decorations. Apparently, I like to take this kind of photo:

- Roscoe Village Community Christmas Tree (love this one!)

- Dallas and I at Breakfast at Kitsch’n This Morning

I thought I had more examples but I can’t find them right now.

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Roscoe Village Community Christmas Tree

December 19th, 2007 · 3 Comments

Roscoe Village Community Christmas Tree
Roscoe Village, Chicago

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Dallas and I at Breakfast at Kitschn This Morning

November 29th, 2006 · 4 Comments

2006_11_kitschn.jpg

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Foreign Familiar

November 23rd, 2004 · 11 Comments

Homemade Christmas Ornaments, Ukrainian Village, Chicago
Homemade Christmas Ornaments, East Ukrainian Village, Chicago

In 1995 I was 20 years old. I was in my 6th year of a 7-year-long relationship and we lived together in Kaukauna, Wisconsin. I was 20 going on 40, or at least it felt like it, and I made a lot of homemade Christmas ornaments. Plastic canvas, cross stitch, painted ceramic and wood. I remember being so proud that there wasn’t a store-bought ornament on our entire Christmas tree.

Fast forward through a whole bunch of stuff to the summer of 2001. I was in San Diego preparing to move to New York City. I knew my apartment was going to be small so I packaged the things that meant something to me and shipped them to my parents’ house. All of the rest, I sold. When I moved to Chicago earlier this year my parents brought down some of the things that they’d been storing for me. I was eager to use my closets (closets, can you imagine!?) and I didn’t really have time to go through it all so I stored it away. Last night I went through some of the boxes and found all of my homemade Christmas ornaments.

Yesterday I was talking to Margaret about deer hunting and the shooting that happened over the weekend in Wisconsin. The suspect is Hmong. Margaret grew up in NY state, not a great distance from New York City, and didn’t know what a deer stand was. She also didn’t know anything about the Hmong community and the prejudices they many times face and are going to face in the wake of this weekend’s shooting. And I knew far too much. When I talk about these things, when I hold a Christmas ornament in my hand that I spent hours making almost 10 years ago, it feels foreign. But so familiar. Like it was another life, and yet it could have been yesterday.

I look around me right now and wonder which things that I hold dear, which things I make with my own two hands, will seem foreign to me when I look back at them 10 years from now. My digital camera? This website? Who knows. But one thing is for certain: I am getting fucking old. And sappy.

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