Es lebe Chicagos "Deutsche Hauptstrasse"

Lincoln Square is dead.

Well, actually, it's more alive than it's been in years. When I passed it the other day, I spied a new coffee shop and paused to reflect on what a job it's done of reinventing itself, attracting new businesses while other city business districts are struggling. Sure, it's lost some of its distinctive ethnic character as Germans and South Slavs have been replaced with homogenised hipsters. But that's a small price to pay when other neighbours have lost theirs only to see it replaced with shuttered stores. Or so I told myself.

But when I heard that Delicatessen Meyer closed last weekend, it was like someone ripped the heart right out of the place. For almost two decades, "going to Lincoln Square" meant going to Meyer to me. In fact, I heard of it before I knew a thing about the neighbourhood, way back in my second year of college. There was a Kaffeeklatsch for students who had studied abroad in Germany and even though I wasn't due for my tour for several months more, I was invited along. The Brötchen, I was told, came from Meyer.

Whenever a place I love closes, I always ask myself, "Well, when was the last time you were there?" After all, I can't expect other Chicagoans to bear the burden of supporting spots I like just so I can go there once in a great while when the mood seizes me. It's true it had lost some of its pull, despite the fact that I lived closer to it now than I ever had. Blame, among other things, our changing diets, which made it harder to justify stocking up on marzipan, Butterkäse, and Spatzle on a regular basis. At the same time, some of the specialty sweets I would go there for have gotten easier to find. For years now, my annual Nikolaustag pilgrimage to buy goodies for my colleagues has shifted to the Christkindlmarkt downtown. I wasn't even making it up there regularly for Von Steuben Day until the past couple of years.

Even more than the products, though, I'll miss the staff. It's true that the elderly German Kauffrauen have gradually given way to younger Bosnians, but it remained the one place in Chicago where I could reliably hear and speak German whenever I wanted. The owners of Selmarie may be fluent, but I just know that the fresh-faced young clerks who always serve me don't speak a word. Even Lincoln Quality Meat Market, practically the last survivor of the old guard, isn't that dependable.

I certainly don't wish the new tenants any ill will, but it's going to be hard to pass whatever moves in--another shoe store, a sports bar, a gee-gaw emporium--without feeling that they don't really belong there.

Atzo mofeta ikusi nuen

I think I've mentioned before the possum that lives behind the tennis courts of the Cycle and Saddle Club. I see her some nights when I'm skirting the fence on my way home from chez monshu. The only other visible wild mammals in that park are rabbits, squirrels, and chipmunks--or so I thought. Last night, while walking back, I spotted a skunk! It was way out in the middle of the playing field, too, and when it saw me approaching, it began scuttling toward the courts. These were a long way off, however, and his route paralleled mine, so I got to watch him for a distance. Skunks are not pretty runners; it's like the back legs were built too tall to go with the stubby little forelegs.

("I saw a skunk last night" is the title of this entry--in Basque. I wanted to do it in Osage, but then I realised I didn't know the word for "skunk". I thought about using sįkaleze (lit. "spotted/striped squirrel"), but that seems like a better name for a chipmunk. Maybe I can find it in LaFlesche tonight. As monshu can tell you, I'm getting into Basque right now, and it really reminds of Amerindian languages. It's not polysynthetic, but it's getting there. Almost all verbs are conjugated periphrasticly with auxiliaries which mark the objects. Nuen, for instance, is "1S-PAST-3S", i.e. "I did [something] to it/him/her". From the skunk's view, ikusi ninduen "he saw me".)

We're starting to see forsythia blooming all over these days, just not on campus, and trees are budding like mad. The other day, I found myself wondering when the Bradford pears are going to have their brief moment of florescence. Already the crabapples and hawthorns seem to be getting ready to go.