Chicago Bound

TL/DR: Chicago celebrates the Feast of St. Patrick and I will be playing with my old Irish band. Yes, I’m Irish. Higgins, Glen, Gurney…we’s all up in the pub.

Photo by K. Mitch Hodge on Unsplash

I get on a plane in four hours.

If all goes well, I will land in Chicago in time for lunch. I’m thinking junk food…you know, a good and true hot dog or maybe a taqueria. Chicago foodways are no joke.

As ever, I am in love with Richmond Hill. I am in love with Richmond and its confusing, charming, and devastating history. A train rumbles past the old slave market as I write this. Every time I share with you that a train rumbles through Shockoe Valley, know that’s where the slave market was. Richmond’s history is America’s history.

Chicago has its own devastations, of course. Shanty towns and brutal poverty were a policy choice. Reversing the flow of the Chicago River and poisoning the farmland outside the city is something they are still recovering from. It is profoundly segregated. Langston Hughes was right about the Chicago and the South.

Still, I love them both.

They are home to me. Richmond is my family place. Virginia is the homeland. The home of Presidents and Hudginses alike. I spent much of my childhood less than two miles from one of Patrick Henry’s homes and now I live two blocks from St. John’s Church where he said, “Give me liberty or give me death.”

We were colonizers. We still are. Monacan land is underfoot, soaked with the blood of the African. Powhatan land is underfoot suffering the continual insult of strip malls and big box stores.

Chicago, of course, is home of the blues, African migrants from the South had music. Glorious music. You can still hear it. And the jazz…unreal. It’s also the home of the Irish immigrant, the Polish, Ukranian, Thai, Filipino, Japanese, and various others. Have you been to Chinatown? Glorious.

The river was poisoned by the tanneries and slaughter houses. They poisoned their own water. So, they engineered the river to flow backward away from the Lake back to the farmland. Do you know that story?

I found beloved community and romance in Chicago. I lived my thirties there, met my wife there, got sober there. It is a salvific place and I love it even with its checkered past.

No human civilization is innocent of cruelty and bigotry. And none is immune to grace and beauty. Humanity is a complex lot.

My band is called One of the Girls. We sing the music of the Irish diaspora. We sing drinking songs, rebel songs, and songs of lost love. We also cover some 80s tunes (“Take On Me” is too much fun not to play.). Here’s a battle song.

You can catch us at…

The Woodstock Opera House, Chief O’Neill’s Pub, Evanston Space, The Celtic Knot, and on WGN’s morning show on the day proper. I love The Girls.

Okay…I should get ready. The weather will be wet and cold while I’m there. Perfect weather for kilts. Ha!

Here’s a blessing for the journey.

Go n-éirí an bóthar leat,
Go raibh an ghaoth go brách ag do chúl,
Go lonraí an ghrian go te ar d’aghaidh,
Go dtite an bháisteach go mín ar do pháirceanna,
Agus go mbuailimid le chéile arís,
Go gcoinní Dia i mbos a láimhe thú.

May your journey through life be successful/prosper,
May the wind be always at your back,
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
May the rain fall softly upon your fields,
And until we meet together again,
May God keep you in the palm of his hand.

Y’all be excellent to each other.