Beginning to Look Like X-mas

And I do mean "X" mas. As in "Winter Holiday" or the "Holiday Shopping Season." The lights are in the trees along the Mag Mile, but not yet spread out into the branches. Instead, little bundles of Italian lights are hanging down like grapes. Next week (maybe the weekend after Thanksgiving) there will be the Disney parade, which a half-million or more people will come downtown to see, and Mickey will turn on the lights block by block. See what I mean by X-mas?

Marshall Fields has its "great tree" up, with the Swarovski crystal topper, and along State Street, 10 or 12 foot long trumpets shoot out from the facade. Sorry the picture is not too great, but you get the idea.

At least the Kristkindlmarkt (spelling????) in Daley Plaza is still "Christ Child," but I think that is because it really is a German Christmas market, with maybe 30% of the merchants coming in from Germany to exhibit traditional wares. There are elaborate embroidered tablecloths, hand-carved nutcrackers, and zillions of delicate glass ornaments: lots of fruit, onion-shaped ornaments, glass Santas. The booths are being set up around the enormous tree, which is really many trees set up on a kind of scaffolding.

It's beginning to feel like X-mas weather, too. Snow flurries and maybe a light sprinkle of snow is expected this week. And at the same time, the one boon to Chicagoans in the winter is being taken away to allow for construction. I'm talking about the underground sidewalk that connects key buildings in the Loop. When the weather is ugly, I am so grateful to be able to pop down the slick stairs and find refuge from the wet and cold. I can go from our corner all the way to a half-block from St. Peter's, toasty and dry. But not any more, and not for another 26 months to come. The long-vacant "block 37" right across from Marshall Fields is going to be turned into shops, condos and an underground rail connector station (to include a rapid train to O'Hare and another to Midway, direct from the Loop). But meanwhile, why did they have to start construction in November? The odd thing is, a different part of the Pedway was closed for the first two years I was here, and the whole thing has only been open for about two years. And now it will be closed again for two years (if the project is on schedule). Oh, well!

When I saw the signs announcing the closing (to begin tomorrow), my first thought was "Why November?" My second thought was, "What's going to happen to the keyboard man?" He is a blind person who almost every day taps his way to the Pedway with his white cane in one hand and his arm around a large electronic keyboard. He sets the keyboard on a crate, sits on another crate, and puts a bucket in front, and all day long plays and sings for the passers-by. Ray Charles he's not, but he is a good entertainer. Sometimes the police have made him leave, but I think they do that unwillingly. Now he's going to have to find another safe spot for his music and his instrument. A place where he can keep warm and dry, and keep singing.