The People Next Door.

posted in: Chicago, D.C., Day In The Life 12
Newspaper ad for the 1917 propaganda film, "Who's Your Neighbor." When you're done here, google it: pretty interesting stuff! Image: Wikipedia.
Newspaper ad for the 1917 propaganda film, “Who’s Your Neighbor.” When you’re done here, google it: pretty interesting stuff! Image: Wikipedia.

 

While I was away last year, singing in the pool at my rawther glamorous residence and getting pooped on by birds, a not-high-rise-but-higher-than-my-mid-rise condo building was going up kitty-corner from my building here in the South Loop. It was in the last stages of construction when I moved home; I would see the crane and the workers, the construction cones out in front of the main entrypoint.

Over the summer it was completed. You know how in Ghostbusters, when Zuul blasts away that chunk of the apartment building in Manhattan where Sigourney Weaver lives? There’s a chunk carved out of this building kind of like that, except that it’s on purpose and paid for by developers and they’ve put a garden in there! Or is it a park? It’s what cityfolk call “greenspace” and I have a great view of it from my windows! Way cool. Gardens come to me, baby.

There’s also a pool on the other side of this new building and I can see just a slice of it from my perch on the sixteenth floor. It looks like a great pool. I should try to make friends with someone over there so I can scope out what my windows look like while swimming.

What’s really fascinating is that for some months I looked over at a tall, dark, glass thing…and now there are people living there.  I can see their glowing TV screens. Someone has a bright red couch and in the daytime, I can see it. I mean, it’s right over there, right there across the sky.

Who are they? Are they excited? No matter who they are or where they came from, they all have one thing in common: They just moved in.

12 Responses

  1. J M
    | Reply

    Not Kitty-cornered, Fons – cater-cornered – pronounced caddy-cornered my non-blond friend. Anyhow, hope all is well.

    • Christina
      | Reply

      It’s kitty corner in my neck of the woods, which is pretty close to Mary’s of woods.

      • J M
        | Reply

        That just may be Christina, but that neck of the woods is wrong – soooo wrong – and always wrong – I mean Great Lakes? Nah, it’s either an ocean or it ain’t.

    • Beverly Letsche
      | Reply

      The Grammarist (and Merriam-Webster) says: “Catty-corner, kitty-corner
      Catty-corner, kitty-corner, and cater-cornered all derive from the Middle English catre-corner, literally meaning four-cornered. All three forms are used throughout the English-speaking world. They usually mean positioned diagonally across a four-way intersection, but they can work in other contexts relating to one thing being diagonal from another.” Kitty-cornered works, Mary.

      • J M
        | Reply

        Yeah, but that’s Merriam Webster – we need to go with the Oxford dictionary and the Oxford dictionary says I’m write Beverly because I wrote it!

  2. Lori jansen
    | Reply

    Binoculars !!!!

  3. Susan
    | Reply

    Been thinking of you Mary, and hoping sadness is behind you for now. Hmmmm. Interested in the owner of that red couch…

  4. Lisa Gainey Floyd
    | Reply

    I have a red couch, which I love. My husband thought I was crazy when I first mentioned red, but now he loves it.

  5. Sarah
    | Reply

    Lots of smiles for all of the above.

  6. Debra White
    | Reply

    I am from the Midwest and have always said kitty-cornered. I also say “crick,” not “creek” and both are acceptable (Google crick vs. creek). Sweet hubby drinks from a bubbler while I prefer my drink from water fountain. I find regional differences fascinating. Oh, and Mary, I would want to meet the person who bought the red couch.

  7. Barbara
    | Reply

    I really love to read your blog.

  8. Karen
    | Reply

    I googled “Who’s Your Neighbor?” and you were right, it led me down an internet rabbit hole. I came across a listing for it in a 1917 newspaper (see page 20) and I thought you might enjoy browsing, especially the pages “for women”. https://newspapers.library.in.gov/cgi-bin/indiana?a=d&d=SBNT19171202.1.20

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