If the sixth sense is intuition, then the seventh must be the sense of adventure. After all, everything we do is one, if we choose to look at it that way. When I walk out of our front door, and I do it frequently, I don’t know what will happen next, even whether or not I’ll ever walk back through it again!

Well, that’s the way I was feeling most of this winter, due to the ice crisis. I walked several miles a day despite the fact that I was terrified of falling. Last week I thought it was spring and decided not to dwell on fallen fellow Midwesterners, but on the residents, incidents, surprises, I come upon as I meander, or rush (more likely rush), through the day.

When I started to blog in June, 2006, I figured I’d write about the many interesting people I run into on a daily basis, get the character of Shorewood by showing the characters in Shorewood. After all, that is an adventure! Then I modified the concept, not wanting to name names, and blogged more about incidents than about particular people. Last year I wrote LOCKED OUT AND LOCKED IN  when I found one of my grandsons locked out of his house early in the morning and later that same day had to call 911 for a lady who’d been trapped in her garage for an hour and a half. And I blogged about the speeding car that killed a dog last month, INCIDENT AT AN INTERSECTION. 

Several days after I posted that blog, someone asked me, as I walked along Maryland Avenue, “Are you the lady who wrote the article about the dog? I had the same thing happen to me. I saw a car hit a dog and speed away, except the dog was a puppy, and the dog-walker was a little boy!”

This past January as I walked along Oakland, a woman standing alone across the street shouted to no one in particular, “Doesn’t anyone have a cell phone?” Why did she want one? Then I saw a man peering under his car’s hood, smoke billowing into his face. He slammed the hood closed, screamed a stream of unbloggable words, and the woman yelled, “Someone call 911!” I did. And I moved as far as possible from that car. About thirty years ago, Connie Wypp, one of Adolph’s art students at UWM, parked her VW Beetle across the street from our house in Bill Nichols’ driveway, leapt out of the car, and within seconds the car was in flames.

That didn’t happen this time. Even before my 911 call went through, the rescue squad arrived. Two brave men lifted the hood and put out the fire, while the combustible VW Beetle burned in my mind.

Yesterday it occurred to me as I passed familiar faces along Oakland Avenue, that I've lived in Shorewood almost 39 years and have probably seen most of these people many, many times, and even if I've never had a conversation with someone, he or she seems familiar. Curious thought. But that's my point. Usually it’s the residents, not the incidents, it’s walking everywhere, or biking, being part of the environment and not enclosed in a car, interacting with whatever's happening, that makes each day an adventure.
 

“There’s a time for streetwalking.” I actually said that to strangers passing in the road, and they smiled. Well, streetwalking is keeping me upright. The weather still swings, snow, then a melt, frigid, then ice, snow, melt, frigid, ice, I should write a tune for my disenchanted chant. The cleanest walks become the most treacherous as they layer themselves with black ice, and only those with a layer of snow are safe for me to use.

Every store was out of street salt the other day, several other days in fact. And table salt didn’t do the trick, the grain’s too fine. I had wanted to buy some and walk through ShoreWood, like Hansel and Gretel, keeping track of my tracks as I created traction. Until now I’ve always used sand, feels like it’s harmless if it ends up on the shoreline. And I’m not anxious to live near a great salt lake.

If there’s too much traffic, I do use sidewalks, when I can find a way to reach them. Yesterday iciness on sidewalks surprised me several times, but I managed to save myself from hitting bottom.

Later: I went back to Pick ‘n Save. They finally had salt in 20-pound bags. Then I saw it was four-ingredient salt, sodium chloride the last ingredient, and I wondered about the safety of the other three. I didn’t have to wonder long. If I have to keep it out of reach of children, how can I put it on the sidewalk? Not only that, little kids think snow looks like ice cream, and they love to lick. The easiest way to stop my younger grandkids is to remind them about what dogs do in snow.
 

Today is Sunday, and the name’s deceiving, should be called ice day, or ice stay. The temperature’s in the mid-30’s, and that, too, is deceiving, unless you like puddles with hidden layers of ice. They’ll turn solid tomorrow. Weird weather, unexpected swings of Mother Earth’s moods. It’s all part of global warming, so we’d better get accustomed to this bipolar world.

The Fitness Center was in my plans for today, but I was afraid to walk out the door, imagined myself lying unnoticed on the steps. By 2 PM I decided to risk it, sprinkled our last grains of sand on the path and sidewalk. We’re running out, and neither of us drive, a problem if we want to get more. After the gym I’d see if there’s salt at Walgreens, but is that environmentally sound?

I ventured forth, and made it, barely, to the corner of Maryland and Olive, safer to walk in the street. So I did, right down the middle of Olive. It wasn’t too bad at first, then got worse, all ice. Made it to Murray, and that street, too, was clearer than the sidewalks, I followed the visible pavement, moved near the curb and watched if I heard a car coming up behind me. When I was about to pass Wood, I heard a motor, turned around, police, the car slowed almost to a stop. Was he going to give me a ticket? Or did he think I needed help. Whew, he moved on.

The Fitness Center had already disappeared from my agenda. I’d better go directly to Walgreens, and then back home. I crossed Murray to talk to a friend walking her dog on Wood.

“Your block’s well-shoveled as usual,” I said.
“Yes,” she replied, “That policeman actually considered giving you a ticket for walking in the street, I saw his mind working, but they don’t give people tickets for not shoveling walks. If our block can do it, why can’t everyone?” I looked down the block at two young men in tee-shirts breaking up residual ice, didn’t think a 70-year-old woman could follow suit. “I called the village,” she continued, “And the manager told me if they give out tickets, he gets a lot of angry phone calls.” I was thinking if they give out tickets, they’d have to give some to themselves. Atwater School’s sidewalk on Maryland and the one on Oakland near the bus stop in front of Shorewood High, a route for lots of old people, are often two of the most dangerous walks in the village. “Well,” she added, “You caught me on a rampage. I have to walk my dog, and I don’t want to break an arm or leg.”

A few minutes later as I walked down Wood, so clear of snow and ice, I thought that if I lived on Wood and had to walk my dog, I’d simply stay on the block, walk back and forth between Murray and Oakland. Four round trips would add up to more than a mile.

The west side of Oakland was clear, walking easy, Walgreens didn’t seem far enough to substitute for the Fitness Center. I continued, noticed several bags of salt in Sendiks’ window, went in and tried to lift one, couldn’t budge it.

At Walgreens the salt was sold out. What else could I use? Kitty litter was probably an invitation to cats to litter. Ah, potting soil was on sale! Perfect. Maybe. And if any remains on my walk after this siege of snow and ice, I can sweep it into my garden.
 

Sometimes we hate to say goodnight after French Table. We stand around chatting in front of Schwartz on Oakland at closing time. That’s what we were doing a few nights ago. Then brakes screeched, everyone gasped, I spun around in time to see the back of a car speeding down Jarvis, bouncing at every bump. It looked like a police chase, without the police.

“What happened?” I asked. It was dark across the street. All I could see were shadowy figures under the dim streetlight, and I could hear a yelping dog. “That car hit a dog,” Anne, who had younger eyes, said, “And it’s dying.” How could she see it was dying when I couldn’t see it at all?

A few minutes later I crossed over, checking traffic carefully. Jean-M was on his cell, talking with the police. Two women, each cuddling a small dog in her arms, stood crying. “Which dog was hit?” I asked Keith, who had run across immediately. He pointed to a third dog lying dead at one woman’s feet. “I checked, couldn’t feel any pulse,” he told me, “They’re taking him to the animal hospital anyway.”

About 27 years ago our son Joshua brought Happy to the animal hospital, put him on the table, and the vet exclaimed, “I can’t do anything for that dog, he’s dead,” with a tone that said, why are you bothering me with this? Perhaps he didn’t realize that pets are family members, and we don’t want to let go. Perhaps the speeding driver didn’t realize that either. Or perhaps he sped up when he heard the thud, to make sure he’d never know whether he’d hit man or beast. Or perhaps he didn’t know he’d hit anything, just another bump in the road.
 

Last Monday the grass was green where snow had melted, and the streets looked clear, except for the cloud of fog that hugged the East Side. I figured I should bike to Trader Joe’s while the snow and ice were water. As I put on my helmet, I had to admit I was afraid, of ice patches, of drivers on cell phones, of predicted thunder storms, of being too old to bike.

I pedaled along Maryland Avenue, avoided a friend who stepped off the curb without looking, too busy listening to his iPod, he said. Despite my loud pink jacket, I felt invisible, mists never more than a few feet away. The fog wasn’t pea soup, wrong color, more like vichyssoise without the leeks. I started to think of new blogs, wished I had a little tape recorder. Passers-by would think I’m on my cell phone. I smiled, relaxed, soon was coasting down Hampton, and I knew why I was biking. It’s more than a matter of getting to Trader Joe’s; it’s being out in the world, not enclosed, cruising through outdoor air.

I walked down the aisle, skipped the bulky produce, zeroed in on cereal, tofu, polenta, thinking that’s what’s cheap at Trader Joe’s, most health food I get at Outpost, better to shop there, shop  local, calculating what would fit on my bike. Then a voice said, “Suzanne! How did you get here?”
“Oh, Ruth, hi! I biked.” “You certainly can’t carry everything on your bike. You’ll have to let me drive it back for you.”

I mention this not because Ruth drove my groceries home for me, though she did, but because she told me about her recent mammogram at Bayshore. She had asked her technician about the incidence of breast cancer in the area. The technician replied that it’s unusually high on the North Shore. I’ve heard that several times recently, haven’t read it anywhere.

The following day at the Fitness Center a friend told me that some of the young women who live near her have breast cancer, and one died, leaving behind two young children. Then she added, “So many of my neighbors use pesticides, I’m thinking of moving out of Shorewood.”

I guess some people are dying to have no dandelions.
 

When I got back from New York last week, I found a message in my inbox that made me muse on what qualities make a village a great place to live, at least for me. There’s location, of course: trees, flowers, gardens, parks, maybe even a lake or river, breathable air, livable homes, convenient shopping, nearby cultural events. Walkability. Bike-ability. Bus-ability.

Then there’s the people factor: diversity in every sense, ethnic, racial, economic, religious, age, a community of people who care about the arts, education, social justice, the environment, of people who are informed. I could continue, but I want to return to the inbox message, which concerned the possible development by Sunrise Senior Living of land along the river. So I googled Sunrise Senior Living and found articles in The New York Times, The Business Journal, and The Washington Post, just for starters.

After I wrote this, I saw that Dave Tatarowics had already posted the same message, from Tim Vargo, on December 17. But in case you haven’t read it, I’ll repost it so you can read it now and ask yourself: Is this really where we want to go? Will this improve the quality of life here? Will it help Shorewood become a prototype of a green community?

Dear Shorewood friends,
Some of you may have heard about a proposal to tear down the Riverbrook Restaurant and the Sherburn place apartments (where I live) to put in a senior living center.
 
As a resident of the apartments and a professional in the field of research and environmental education,  I find SO MANY problems with the development from just about every angle.
1) The developers are not considering any green design.  They are tearing down perfectly good buildings and bringing in all new materials.
2) The developer when asked about green building showed no interest and gave misinformation to the zoning committee. Specifically, she said LEED Certification, (the recognized standard for measuring building sustainability) meant nothing more than slapping a green roof on the building.
3) Green design is not only environmentally friendly, but it is functional and considers the use of the building and the residents that live there.
 4 ) The developer is advertising river views from the upper floors but assured me through some magic of landscaping that you won't see the building from the river
 5 ) It's a HUGE 4-story, cookie-cutter box  building from a national chain of senior living centers in which the owners are facing lawsuits for fraud and neglect  (Sunrise Senior Living) .   This is so against what I feel are the strengths of Shorewood - walkable neighborhoods with locally owned businesses.  If senior living is truly needed, it would be easier to swallow this change if this were the future of sustainable design in senior living, designed by Kubala-Washatko, something Shorewood could be proud of.  This is a valuable piece of real estate, and the change they create will be around for a long time.  (And I think the building is hideous)
 
6) We will lose one of the only pockets of diversity in Shorewood where there is relatively affordable living (Sherburn Apartments) and sit-down dining (Riverbrook).  I ate brunch at the Riverbrook on Saturday and was floored by how packed the place was and by the degree of diversity I observed.
 
7) There are currently 50 people at Sherburn apartments, including families, some elderly, and people that have lived there almost thirty years.  At any time these people could get 30 days notice to leave according to the owner who has had terrible communication (virtually none) with the residents or even the building manager.
 
The truth is, for me this will be an inconvenience - I've moved around a lot.  For others this will be a life upheaval.
 
The project is still in its preliminary stages, but if nothing is done, it will undoubtedly move forward.  Please forward this to friends or anyone else who you feel may have an interest in this project.  These are elected officials making this decision and it's up to us to make sure they represent their constituents over an outside developer.
Thank you for your support!
Tim Vargo

 

Last January I wrote a blog that I saved. I wanted to think about it more and offer suggestions before I posted it. But now I see that Dave Tatarowics has been looking at the very issue that troubles me, so I thought I'd post my blog now. Nothing has changed that I know of since I wrote it:

On Martin Luther King Day, as I listened to a replay of Dr. King's last speech, I mused on that sore spot in the psyche, the one that makes tragedy repeat itself. MLK, JFK, RFK, each time we celebrate their lives, I'm reliving their deaths, re-mourning their absence, and wondering how history would have played out if they were still here.

Our country needs Martin Luther King, Jr. more than ever. So does Shorewood. Last summer at a rummage sale I overheard a man ask a woman, “Did you move to Shorewood?”
She replied, “Never. You know me.”
“Why wouldn't you move to Shorewood?” I asked.
“Lack of diversity.” That's what I figured, and although I love living here, I felt ashamed.

Shorewood seems more diverse than it was when we moved here in 1969. One big change is all the Russian Jews, who walk the bike path fearlessly and shop along Oakland Avenue. I googled the statistics, and here's what I found: Shorewood Population - 13,763 (I suspect this is a couple of years old): Latino 2.5%, White 89.8%,  Black 2.4%, Asian 3.2%, Other 1.8% Median income $56,698. Thanks to busing, the schools are somewhat integrated, but they should be integrated thanks to housing. We do have a lot of modest housing, Milwaukee bungalows and duplexes that would be reasonably priced if they weren't located here. People move to Shorewood for the schools, not the homes, yet living in a diverse community is a major part of education.

I heard a segment on NPR last week about a new study: Diversity Spurs Workplace Creativity. My personal education stems in large part from the places I've been, not from the places themselves but from the people I've met there, from trying to understand lives as different as possible from my own. That's the challenge for us all.

Where am I going with this? Possibly nowhere. The solution is affordable housing, and I don't hear anyone talking about that. Well, actually I do. As the housing market bottoms out, maybe Shorewood will become affordable.

Why not blog? I can think of plenty of reasons not to, and they all come down to time.

Then why blog? Perhaps to force myself to think about, and write about, whatever's going on around me from a different angle, more like a traveler through my own town, but a traveler who already has intimate knowledge of the streets she's winding through.

And when I travel, it's not so much the Great Wall and Forbidden City, not the museums, the restaurants, or battlefields that are still hanging out in my mind years later and that change how I look at the world. It's the contacts with those who live there.

And so it is in Shorewood: the people make the town an exciting place to live. And the location. The eastern boundary is an endlessly changing view of Lake Michigan from Atwater Bluff. The western boundary is Estabrook Park with its bike path, its trail along the edge of the Milwaukee River, its budding crab apple trees in spring, its frog-filled duck lagoon. The southern boundary abuts the university with a great range of educational opportunities and events, and beyond that lies the cultural landscape of Milwaukee. So in a sense Shorewood is a small town in a big city.

If it's the people and the daily life that interest me, I'm looking at Shorewood not as a journalist but as a journaler.