I’ve lived in Chicago, and called it home for 15 years. I dig the city. Aside from the extreme flatness, I’ve found it to be very engaging. From the tremendously expansive skies, the magnificence of the lake it builds up to, it’s architectural significance, the food, the people, and even the weather. I stay pretty engage here. It has considerable extremes, big disparity in income and opportunities. The weather, not it’s biggest selling point, can be oppressively hot and stifling then shatteringly frigid. It’s a city that I’ve described as grand but not pretty. Large tracts of it could be said to be blunt. And wealth is evident. No surprise, city amenities and services follow the bucks. It was a big blue collar town but it has been developing more and more to the needs and nods of a white collar work force. The areas of this city that don’t have deep pockets can be quite brutal. In the 15 years I’ve lived here, and the 6 years prior to that during which I would come and visit my friend Tony Fitzpatrick, the city has seen very evident changes, not just in the profile and elevation of the city’s skyline, but in the taming of several rugged neighborhoods. A process some refer to as gentrification.
I will say that the previous administration made real effort to glamorize the urban experience in parts. And while in the minds of many, mine included, the previous mayor may have had a fondness for arboreal development, large floral planters along some of the boulevards, rooftop gardens and showy park improvements, he went out a cad for a truly miserable and suspect privatization of the city’s parking meters. His record on public schools was nothing to mention on a resume either. The dreadful misadventures of meters and schools aside, the city has some neighborhoods with real gracious amenities. And some sections of the city enjoy being extremely engaging and beautiful urban habitats. Might even call some areas pretty at long last. The campus of Loyola in Rogers Park has seen a remarkable turnaround from one of the country’s bleakest campuses to a thoughtful and more bucolic public space that takes full advantage of it’s choice lakeside plot.
  
 
 
 
Continuing to make extensive use of white on toned paper, be it the Pitt Big Brush Pen or White China Marker, sometimes combining both. I like laying one or both down as a base over which I can add color to spike it’s luminosity and achieve a cleaner hue. I do wish I could get a starker black on the toned paper. It seems to me that it softens or dulls the pitch thru absorption and contrast perhaps. Fountain pens don’t produce as crisp an edge in these books either.
 
 
 