October 2025 - Ephemera

Into the City – Living in the Shadow of Chicago

I love Chicago. But I would never want to live there (again).

Growing up in Northwest Indiana, you are always aware that you exist in the shadow of one of the world’s greatest cities. All roads lead to it, literally. All the railways lead to it. Sometimes, it seems that all the culture leads to it. Most of our parents either worked in Chicago or worked for people who worked in Chicago. That’s what happens when you are less than an hour from a place. Northwest Indiana is closer to Chicago than most actual Chicago suburbs.

Chicago doesn’t think much about us at all, except maybe in the summer when they come to use our beaches and eat at our restaurants and stay in our hotels for a quick weekend away from the city (or pass through on their way to Michigan).

When I worked in Downton Chicago a few years after college, a rite of passage most ‘Region rats’ go through at least once, and I told people that I drove in from Indiana every day, they looked at me like I was from Mars.

“Indiana?!?!? That’s so far away.”

“Not really, it’s less than an hour.”

“Still”

The cognitive dissonance of someone who spent 45 minutes on the El to get from the North Side of Chicago to the Loop for work.

When I travel abroad and people ask me where I’m from, I simply say Chicago. This pisses off people who are actually from Chicago (and if I encounter a fellow Chicagoan abroad and they ask me where in Chicago I’m from, and I say Indiana, actually, I’m less human in their eyes immediately).

“You’re not from here!”

Well, I’m sorry, but I am. I grew up with Chicago TV stations, watching the Chicago news, watching Bozo on WGN, and cheering the Bulls during their reign in the 90s. Our football team was the Bears (definitely NOT the Colts), our baseball teams the Sox or the Cubs (and let’s be clear, NWI is neutral territory with fans of both teams living in peace). We went on field trips in school to all the major Chicago museums. We’ve all been to the Sears Tower once. We all still call it the Sears Tower for crying out loud. I’m a member of the Art Institute of Chicago. I attended college in Downtown Chicago (briefly).

The only difference is that there’s an invisible line on the map that separates us from Chicago, where the taxes are lower, cigarettes are cheaper, and you can buy fireworks legally (not to mention gamble, but Indiana no longer has a monopoly on that), and has superior beaches once you get away from the industrial sprawl (Chicago’s beaches are fake, not natural. Do you know where they get the sand? They truck it in from Indiana).

I haven’t worked in Chicago in 15 years; it’s not that I’m not willing to work there again, it’s just that commuting 12 hours a day no longer appeals to me. So, I get to live in Chicago the way I choose to. As in, I visit it a few times a month. We don’t really hesitate to go to Chicago, whether it’s for a sporting event, a symphony concert, or the Lyric Opera. Or a special exhibition at the Art Institute. Or if we just need something from a particular store on the North Side. Or the fact that my favorite barber (Truefitt & Hill) is on the North Side. Or we want to visit a favorite restaurant (the best Ramen noodles in the Midwest are in the Fulton Market District).

It’s only an hour away.

There’s power in that.

Chicago is always alluring. We can always go there. But the key thing is that we can choose to go whenever we like.

Then, when I’m done with Chicago, I can retreat back to Mars (I mean across state lines) and return to my home. I live in an idyll in rural LaPorte County. I have a nice-sized house, on three acres of grass and woods. The end of my street used to be a dirt road. It’s practically paradise. Why would I live in a city when I can live here? And then be in that city within an hour, do the thing I want, then return to my idyll. Though sometimes, I question this life choice when it’s midnight and there’s still 45 minutes left of the drive on the Indiana Toll Road until I can be in my bed.

I like this arrangement. The perks of living adjacent to a big city, with none of the consequences (which there are, and this can easily turn into the rant that small-minded locals would make about Chicago).

Locals here in NWI live in complete fear of Chicago. They fear Chicago’s problems coming here (what they really mean is Chicago’s minorities). A few years ago, when the Northern Indiana Commuter Train District (NICTD) spent a huge sum of money to upgrade the South Shore railway lines to Chicago, the number one criticism was that it would bring Chicago’s problems here much faster. This is ignoring the fact that the trainline has been there for one hundred years already, and a train journey taking 30 minutes less wasn’t going to be a motivation for someone weighing the chance to do crimes.

I’ve met people around here who have actually never even been to Chicago, and that’s not something to be proud of. How can you live next to the greatest city in the world (after London, IMHO), and never take advantage of that?

Another major benefit of living near Chicago is our access to Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. Anyone who knows better, reading this, will immediately think that’s not a benefit. Trust me, it is. The airport has seen better days, but they’re rebuilding it into the world-class airport it needs to be. But how cool is it that you can drive to O’Hare and fly practically anywhere in the world, directly? Last time I checked, you could fly to all six continents (obviously, except Antarctica) directly. Personally, O’Hare has been my gateway to the United Kingdom, with almost a dozen daily flights to the UK, and I’ve traveled there more than anywhere. It’s comforting to know that every day, there is a conveyor belt of planes that come from Europe, land in Chicago, turn around, and fly back to Europe.

Northwest Indiana is very disconnected from the rest of Indiana, much like Chicago is very disconnected from the rest of Illinois. I can count on two hands the number of times I’ve been to my own state capitol, Indianapolis. It’s a perfectly nice city, I just rarely have a reason to go there, and there is not much there worth driving almost three hours for. Why would I drive there to go to Ikea? The one in Bolingbrooke is closer!

Recently, the Irish national airline Aer Lingus made news by starting a direct route from Dublin to Indianapolis. It’s always good news when a third-tier airport gains an international connection. What was amusing about it, though, was that the partners involved spent some money on an influencer campaign to send Irish social media influencers to Indianapolis and portray it as this hip, interesting place that would justify an entire trip from Ireland to visit. Anyone from Northwest Indiana would find such a video hilarious. I don’t mean to be mean about Indy, but it’s a boring place, boring but nice. There will be more people flying to Dublin from Indy rather than the other way around.

There’s a movement in Indiana to merge it with some of the more rural counties of Illinois that feel they are being unfairly represented in Illinois because of Chicago’s political power. There’s a concurrent movement in Illinois to do the same for counties in Indiana. Indiana has even gone to the trouble of forming a border commission to explore the idea. If either state lost counties to the other, you know who wouldn’t notice at all? Northwest Indiana and Chicago. Which is probably one of the reasons why our current governor is trying to redistrict Northwest Indiana to neuter our political power.

The United States may be made up of 50 states, but those borders mean very little in practical reality. The real state borders these days are television broadcast area transmission areas. If you were designing the governance of the four states around Lake Michigan again, I doubt you would divide it up between four states. It’d be one state. Chicago. Its border would stretch from Lake Geneva in Wisconsin, around the lake to South Haven in Michigan, and South Bend in the east. It’s Southern Border? Probably US Route 30. Beyond that is Rural Indiana. Aka Mars.

It’s not something that’ll ever happen. But it’s amusing to think about. Until then, Northwest Indiana will continue to be wedged between larger powers, but with its own unique identity. It took me a long time to be proud to be from here, and I hope my fellow region rats understand the privilege we have living here, but also next to Chicago.

We Needed This – Autumn Arrives With The Rain

Autumn arrived this year with the rain. There was anticipation for days as the weather forecasters said the heat was ending, and the cool autumn would begin. The rain brought with it the cool weather we seemed to have waited all September to finally arrive. It was an unusually warm September. Until yesterday, October 6th, we were still running the air conditioner every day. It was almost 90 degrees a few days ago. But now, that should be done. Our Indian Summer has left, and the rain has brought the cold front that will probably stick with us until March or April.

One of the best things about living in a moderate, temperate place like the Midwest is that it does rain, but it doesn’t rain a lot. It usually rains just enough. A few days of wet every month to wash away the dirt and dust is enough to keep these lands green, lush, and suitably moist. We have droughts occasionally. But it’s hard to believe it when you live next to 20% of the Earth’s fresh water. What do you mean there is no water? It’s RIGHT THERE!

So, when the rain comes, it’s a bit of a treat. Sometimes it comes with a storm, which is not so much of a treat (that is, if it brings tornadoes). But mostly, it just comes on its own. A weather front that came from the west, starting as moisture collecting around the peaks of the Rocky Mountains, and then pushed east by the Westerly winds and the rotation of the Earth. Sometimes the rain will come from the south or east if there is a hurricane or a big enough weather system to disrupt the normal flow of weather in the Midwest. Mostly, the rain just comes from the west.

The same weather that can seemingly starve the Great Plains of water brings it here, instead, where we have quite enough water. Such is the wonder of weather and geography that is the Midwest.

Everything gets a sheen of wet, including the dogs, who don’t much like the rain, that’s for sure. The thick rain clouds create an overall gloom that suddenly switches the brain to a thoughtful and ponderous mode. There will be more of these gloomy days to come in the next six months than there will be sunny days. That will be hard for many people, but it’s not hard for me. You have to balance sunny and gloomy, like a weather yin-yang. It also changes the tone in my house; no longer are the large windows bringing in copious sunlight. The hallways are dark and cavernous, and the library is a gloomy as it is outside. It creates a feeling of coziness, of the walls closing in for the long winter ahead.

It’s certainly autumn now. All the furniture needs to come in. The citrus plants that live outside in the summer need to come in. The pool needs to be closed. The wood store needs to be filled. The water lines need to be winterized. The garden has started to die off, giving off the last of its bounty, leaving a weedy mess to look at all winter. There’s always a long list of things to do with the seasons changing so starkly like this. When I spent a year living in California, it was so strange that when the seasons changed, we didn’t need to do any of these things. The furniture stayed outside. We could stay outside. It never got below freezing. It was unnatural. My body rejected the lack of four seasons quite forcefully.

So, I’m happy to be back here, in the autumn rain. It’s washing away the hot summer. Everything is getting a cleaning it has needed for months. The trees are drinking up what they need left before they start dropping their leaves. The tulip tree growing behind my house that started growing the year we moved in is always the first tree to turn its giant leaves. My favorite golden color. Though the walnut trees tried to cut in line this year, it wasn’t their fault. They were infested with gypsy moths this year, which ate almost their entire foliage. All that was left were the green walnuts, which fell almost all at once in the strong winds we had a few days ago. They say sturdy trees like walnuts can take one infestation of gypsy moths, so I hope the trees will be fine next year. In the meantime, it will look naked all winter.

The dense undergrowth has started to retreat, and I’m only now realizing how much lawn we’ve lost in recent years to the forest around us creeping back into the yard. I think we will be doing some clearance work this autumn. Too much mulberry. Too much honeysuckle. It’s not native, and it eats everything. We cleared a lot of vines last year, and overall, I think the older trees in the forest were healthier this year. But there’s still much clearing to do. I like to act like we can tame these woods, but one thing is true after living here for 10 years: there is very little we can actually do to tame them, other than get them to recede a bit. This property WANTS to be a forest. We’re the only ones keeping it a bay, trying to keep our patches of grass green and healthy.

It’s time for the forest to take its long nap, and for us to huddle up for winter. This is my most favorite time of year.

Note: Photo is of the newest addition to the Thomas household, my Irish Setter puppy Hudson. New life in the house during autumn is the perfect way to spend an autumn in Indiana!

Region Walks: Bluhm County Park in Westville, LaPorte County

I may have found my new favorite walk in LaPorte County. Most of my walks are pretty boring, I either walk down my street to the end and back (which is 2.5 miles) or I walk around Downtown Michigan City when I’m at work (as long as I want it to be, but usually a 1.5 miles)

Recently, after dropping off my kids at their grandparents’ house in Chesterton, I decided to stop by Bluhm County Park in Westville since it was halfway. It was a nice sunny day, with about two hours of daylight left, and I still needed to get my walk in. Driving all the way home and then walking down my street did not appeal.

Walking down my street is all right, but lately, it’s become trying. The walk is easy enough, that’s fine. But I don’t know if it’s just me, or what, but the drivers who tend to drive down 400 W in LaPorte have gotten worse in recent months. They drive 60-70mph down this country road that I treat as my sidewalk. They don’t even slow down when they see me (some people even speed up). When I first started walking down the street, I would wave at people, and they’d wave back. No one really waves anymore. It might be a reflection of the larger problems in America right now, but simply walking down my generally quiet country road now feels risky and dangerous because the drivers simply don’t care about common courtesy anymore.

So, I’ve been trying to find alternative walks that are close to my house.

Bluhm County Park is a former farm that was donated to the county when the owners died a while ago. Donated in 1992 by Gayle and Lucille Bluhm. The Park has 96 acres of spring wildflowers, upland forest, wetland, prairie, and a pond. It’s been developed into a lovely, free, and public park with multiple features. There are several developed and paved walking trails, kids’ play equipment, shelters for rent, bathrooms, and even a very nice-looking dog park. I applaud the county and Westville – the park is well-maintained.

For my first walk, I took the paved marshland walk. It was a lovely afternoon, the sun was low on the horizon, and it wasn’t too hot. The cicadas were out in full force. As I got further and further away from the road, I started to hear what has started to become my favorite noise: nothing at all.

It was so peaceful walking through those fields and marshes with just the sounds of the bugs and birds. The silence was wonderful. I never have complete silence at my house; I live too close to the Indiana Toll Road for that. I walked the path until it stopped at a woodland, but decided to keep going. The woodland part of the walk was lovely, though the mosquitoes couldn’t believe their luck at the snack they suddenly found themselves enjoying.

I walked through the woods to the end of the path and turned around, returning the way I came. I walked the other way around the marsh/pond area and soon found myself back in the parking lot. In total, about 1.25 miles.

It was one of the best walks I’ve experienced in quite a while, mostly for how quiet and peaceful it was out there in Westville. I liked it so much, I’ve been back since with my wife for another walk. Next, I’d like to add some distance with the Lincoln Memorial Trail at the other side of the park.

When my new Irish Setter puppy arrives in a few weeks, I look forward to taking him for walks here and joining the dog park so he can get some run and play in with other dogs. It looks like the perfect place for that. The only downside with the park is that it takes about 15 minutes to get there, down Indiana Route 2, which can be slow going if you’re in a hurry.

But my lovely, slow experience in the park is a great reminder that slowing down and enjoying the pockets of nature we have in LaPorte County is a wonderful thing. I can’t wait to go back. I’ll try to do this walk at least once a week.

Here’s a map of the trails with distances if you’re curious:

An Opinionated Guide to Building Your Own Library

A smart person’s house should have a library. It is the duty of any literate, ponderous type person to have a library. But not just any library. A library that covers a wide range of knowledge and disciplines. It should exist for entertainment, but also for growing one’s own knowledge about subjects they know nothing about and possibly never really thought they’d want to know about. It’s also important to have a reference for a wide range of subjects.

The existence of Wikipedia and ebooks can make it seem like it’s no longer necessary to have a wide range of printed books in your own library. But let me ask you this: if Wikipedia went away tomorrow, would you be able to find out what you want to know? You can if you properly build out your own library.

So, as someone who has spent ten years building a library, here are my opinionated tips on the matter. Your mileage may vary; this is not gospel, but it is MY gospel.

First, your library needs its own room. Your library needs a dedicated space, and I don’t mean a corner in your living room or sewing room. No, the books need their own room entirely. The only purpose of the room is to store books and for you to read them. There should be places to sit (and they should be decorated like a library). Ideally, the room should be free from the distractions of the outside world. I will permit a smart speaker or a simple radio to listen to music while reading. The room also needs to be big enough to store a few thousand books.

How big should your library be? There is no upper limit. You should have as many books as you can fit in the room. There should be so many books that you have stacks of them on the floor because you ran out of shelf space. The books should be spilling out the door (but you should be able to shut the door occasionally).

To build in or not build in bookcases? This is up to you. Any shelves will do. I bought Billy bookcases from Ikea. They’re cheap, and they last forever. Yes, the shelves will bow if you don’t organize your books properly, but that just adds character. My biggest tip would be to decide on the color you want for your Billy Bookcases and buy all the bookcases you’ll need at once. Otherwise, you will have a schism like I do in my library. One side is Cherry Veneer, but by the time those were filled, and I started filling out the other side of the room, they had discontinued it and only had a brown veneer.

The difference is imperceptible, but I know it’s there.

Building in gives you more book space, yes. However, I like putting random things in the little space between the top of the bookcase and the ceiling. My ceilings also are not plumb or level anymore due ot the age of the house. Building in shelves would be a carpentry nightmare. There are social media ‘hacks’ that can help you turn your Ikea bookcases into ‘built-ins’, but these are a lie and won’t last the test of time. There should be no lies in your library.

As the number of books gets into the hundreds or thousands, the question of organization will arise. I’m sure some people are perfectly happy to use the Dewey Decimal System, but that’s perhaps a little too far for me. My organization is rather chaotic, and I’m not sure I like it, but I have so many books, I’m not about to reshelve them all again. I organize my books by subject/interest. As in MY favorite subjects and interests (I’m sorry, lovely wife, who must conform to my terrible system).

Examples:

British stuff (this is 1/3 of my library)
Science and science fiction
World War II
General World Non-fiction
Fiction
Fancy books – signed or leather-bound Easton Press editions (for display, not reading anyway)
Winston Churchill (he has an entire bookcase).
and so on

Beyond that, they are not organized any other way, certainly not by title or author. Like I said, it’s chaotic. And I do sometimes struggle to find a particular book, but in general, I know where a specific book is, because I bought it and put it there.

Under no circumstances are you permitted to organize your library by color. This is complete madness. Anyone who does this is a secret serial killer. The same goes for the new trend of turning the books around and only showing the white pages. That’s a particular kind of insanity that only Hannibal Lecter would appreciate.

I mentioned needing somewhere to read in the library. We have a couch and a wingback chair (plus an ottoman to put your feet up on). We also have a desk, where anyone can sit and work or write if they’re so inclined. In fact, that’s where I’m writing this little essay.

A library should not be limited to works of fiction. There should be more non-fiction than fiction in a library. A library isn’t just for entertainment; it is for learning and reference.

What should you put in your library? Well, whatever you want, but also what you SHOULD have in a library.

They’re getting hard to find these days, and are mostly outdated, but it doesn’t hurt to have a set of encyclopedias. Good for general knowledge. Buy them, put them on the shelf, and forget about them until you need to look something up. You should also have a good dictionary, bonus points if you manage to find a copy of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), but this is a nice-to-have, not a need-to-have. You should also have a set of ‘Great Books.’ There are several options for this, and they’re relatively easy to find in bulk at a Half Price Books or used bookstore. They will give you the most important books that everyone should read at least once.

Personally, I’ve been collecting the Harvard Classics Easton Press Editions, the ‘five-foot shelf of knowledge’ that gives you an excellent overview of the entire Western Cultural Tradition. My set is almost complete. I pick up a few volumes every year. It’s a multi-year-long quest, made easier by eBay, but I’m not in a hurry because it would take me years to read them all anyway once I set out to do so.

Then you should collect your favorite series of books. For example, I have the entire Master and Commander set by Patrick O’Brien. Have I read them? No. But I will one day. One should have the complete works of their favorite authors – I have all of Hemingway. Most people should also have Jane Austen, Dickens, Twain, etc.

You should also collect the most notable books in your favorite subjects. For example, I have a great interest in World War II, so I have iconic titles such as the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by Shirer, Richard Evans’ Trilogy, but also singularly important titles like Stalingrad or The Battle for Spain (which should be read with For Whom the Bell Tolls). I also think it’s important to understand other cultures, so I recommend having the major religious texts of all the major religions and books about them (I have the Koran, Bible, etc). You might as well have Marx as well as the major Capitalist thinkers. It is important for us to understand each other.

It’s also important not to think of your library as a to-do list. You will never read all of these books. I’ve come to terms with the fact that I will never read all the 2,500+ books in my library. But I could read them all. They are a promise of future knowledge. When curiosity strikes me, I’ll have the book I want. I can just go down the hall and get it.

How can you do all this affordably? Books, it turns out, are a remarkably cheap hobby to pursue. Don’t just build your library from Barnes & Noble. Books are surprisingly worth little after they’re purchased. Regularly raid the secondhand/used bookstores in your local area. They will have books for only a few dollars a title. Some are almost free. It’s a great way to build up the ‘classics’ part of your library. I generally avoid library sales, as the books are in too bad of shape. Don’t get me wrong, I have bought far too many books ‘new’ from the bookstore. But I’ve bought way more from my favorite used bookstores (my favorite of all is Lowry’s Books and More in Three Rivers, Michigan). I’m also very lucky as the editor of an online publication that I get sent lots of books for free to review or talk about on my podcast. Those are very welcome additions to the library!

How to keep track of it all? Why bother? I used to use an App called Libib, and I meticulously scanned every book in my library. But I realized it was only useful in the sense that I could make sure I didn’t buy a book twice. I stopped scanning the books years ago. I can remember who I lend my books out to, if I do at all. I can also generally remember if I already have a book. I’ve only bought a book twice, a few times in ten years of library building. Double books make good gifts for friends (or a contest for my publication).

Most of all, you should never treat building your library as work because your task will never be done. I’ve been building my library for ten years. The walls are all filled with bookcases, all the bookcases with books, yet every week, new books magically appear in the library. They are stacked on the front of the shelves. Stacked on top. Stacked on the floor. It’s only going to grow. It’s all right. There is actually virtue in having too many books. It shows you want to learn about things, and understand things.

Your library is your own personal island of knowledge, safe away from the world. No one is ever going to take it from you. They’d have to burn down your house to take it away. Besides, who’s going to move 2,000 books anyway? That’s a problem for your heirs.

Rotation is also important. You’re going to hate books you kept in your library for years and finally read. Don’t be afraid to cast them out if you no longer think they deserve a place in your library. You shouldn’t be afraid of knowledge you don’t like, but if you’re never going to read it again, let it go. There are also books that, once you read them, you realize are fluff you’re never going to read again (like a celebrity memoir). You can let those go, too. Perhaps you could have a Little Free Library in front of your house for cast-offs. I keep an ongoing box of books going to the second-hand bookstore that I can trade for more books.

In today’s practically post-literate world, the most important virtue is to want to understand and learn rather than just have a blind opinion based on ignorance or a lazy desire to just believe everything you see on social media. So, start building that library. It’s your duty as a citizen of a literate society. It is the only thing that will protect you from lies, incorrect facts, and ignorance.