Being violated comes in many forms.
When the congregation of All Saints’ Episcopal Church on Chicago’s North Side convened for the early worship service on Sunday, photocopies of a column I had written, about a weekly food pantry at the church, were placed on an entryway table.
In the back of the sanctuary were a broken 3-inch-by-3-inch pane of stained glass and damp wooden floorboards.
The column discussed chagrin among some neighbors in the well-heeled area around the pantry, which now draws about 350 people each Tuesday night. It concluded that volunteering might keep “fellow citizens from drowning.”
At 8 a.m. the day after it was published, a carpenter working inside the church found a garden hose jammed through the broken window and several inches of water in the back of the sanctuary. The hose had been on for hours.
He called his boss, a contractor overseeing work on other stained-glass windows in the church. With the pastor out of town, nobody would have discovered the water damage for quite a while.
This wasn’t “Law & Order,” so there was no big investigation to determine any nexus among the column, unease over the pantry and the vandalism. But I felt awful. I’m conscious of the power of words, especially in the age of the Internet, cable television and talk radio, where attitude can reign and provocation can be prized above accuracy.
I stopped by the church Saturday, after I heard about the incident. As I spoke with the contractor, an advertising art director who has lived nearby for 21 years, Mark Stevens, opened the church’s front door. Mr. Stevens was outraged and convinced that “somebody who read that New York Times column” did the deed. He assumed it was “residual resentment” toward the pantry and later cited a principle called Occam’s razor, which stipulates that the simplest explanation tends to be the correct one.
David Lerner, a floor trader at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, disagreed. He lives across the street, and, while concerned about security around the pantry, loitering and past altercations, he served as a negotiator between the church and neighbors. He even took the pastor, the Rev. Bonnie Perry, to a hunger service at his synagogue.
Mr. Lerner supports the pantry and believes “this was almost a crime of opportunity, almost a fraternity prank, as opposed to something premeditated.”
During the Sunday service, the minister was forgiving. Citing the porous floorboards and “mud pit” in the basement, she joked: “That’s why I give 10 percent of my salary to this place each year. The floorboards are porous, and we change people’s lives.”
On Tuesday night — as nearly 200 people stood in line outside for a can of beef stew, a can of carrots, a bag of cereal, a can of green peas, a can of sliced pears, a quart of milk, a loaf of bread, a chicken or a frozen steak — higher forces seemed to take the drowning metaphor literally. It was pouring. The 160 or so others who went inside for dinner got clam chowder, mixed vegetables, French rolls, apple pie and, most of all, companionship.
Inside, industrial-strength drying machines dealt with the water the hose had left behind. Scanning the warping floorboards was Joe, a husky, bearded former Philadelphia trucker who lives on the streets and is a pantry regular. He said he would hurt the offender if he found him. “These are good people here” he said. “A lot of us depend on them.”
Under a rain-drenched tent, Tony Black, a graphic designer just back from Louisville after many years, was passing out bread and meats after reading the column. He was taken back at how much bigger the operation is now than it was 15 years ago.
And overlooking it all was Mike, one of two off-duty police officers who provide security (imagine a younger Dennis Franz in a yellow windbreaker). We chatted about the vagaries of victimization, including how we have both had catalytic converters sawed off 1990s’ Jeep Cherokees, most likely for the resale of the platinum.
“Imagine if people put all that energy to better purposes,” he said.
Earlier that day, Ms. Perry found one of her tires deflated outside the church. Maybe it was all connected, maybe not. But, like the busted pane, the hole in the tire was small and thankfully dwarfed by her larger aim: feeding spiritual and physical hunger, especially in a downpour.
James Warren is a longtime Chicago journalist and the publisher of The Chicago Reader.
by JAMES WARREN | Nov 26, 2009
Being violated comes in many forms.
When the congregation of All Saints’ Episcopal Church on Chicago’s North Side convened for the early worship service on Sunday, photocopies of a column I had written, about a weekly food pantry at the church, were placed on an entryway table.
In the back of the sanctuary were a broken 3-inch-by-3-inch pane of stained glass and damp wooden floorboards.
The column discussed chagrin among some neighbors in the well-heeled area around the pantry, which now draws about 350 people each Tuesday night. It concluded that volunteering might keep “fellow citizens from drowning.”
At 8 a.m. the day after it was published, a carpenter working inside the church found a garden hose jammed through the broken window and several inches of water in the back of the sanctuary. The hose had been on for hours.
He called his boss, a contractor overseeing work on other stained-glass windows in the church. With the pastor out of town, nobody would have discovered the water damage for quite a while.
This wasn’t “Law & Order,” so there was no big investigation to determine any nexus among the column, unease over the pantry and the vandalism. But I felt awful. I’m conscious of the power of words, especially in the age of the Internet, cable television and talk radio, where attitude can reign and provocation can be prized above accuracy.
I stopped by the church Saturday, after I heard about the incident. As I spoke with the contractor, an advertising art director who has lived nearby for 21 years, Mark Stevens, opened the church’s front door. Mr. Stevens was outraged and convinced that “somebody who read that New York Times column” did the deed. He assumed it was “residual resentment” toward the pantry and later cited a principle called Occam’s razor, which stipulates that the simplest explanation tends to be the correct one.
David Lerner, a floor trader at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, disagreed. He lives across the street, and, while concerned about security around the pantry, loitering and past altercations, he served as a negotiator between the church and neighbors. He even took the pastor, the Rev. Bonnie Perry, to a hunger service at his synagogue.
Mr. Lerner supports the pantry and believes “this was almost a crime of opportunity, almost a fraternity prank, as opposed to something premeditated.”
During the Sunday service, the minister was forgiving. Citing the porous floorboards and “mud pit” in the basement, she joked: “That’s why I give 10 percent of my salary to this place each year. The floorboards are porous, and we change people’s lives.”
On Tuesday night — as nearly 200 people stood in line outside for a can of beef stew, a can of carrots, a bag of cereal, a can of green peas, a can of sliced pears, a quart of milk, a loaf of bread, a chicken or a frozen steak — higher forces seemed to take the drowning metaphor literally. It was pouring. The 160 or so others who went inside for dinner got clam chowder, mixed vegetables, French rolls, apple pie and, most of all, companionship.
Inside, industrial-strength drying machines dealt with the water the hose had left behind. Scanning the warping floorboards was Joe, a husky, bearded former Philadelphia trucker who lives on the streets and is a pantry regular. He said he would hurt the offender if he found him. “These are good people here” he said. “A lot of us depend on them.”
Under a rain-drenched tent, Tony Black, a graphic designer just back from Louisville after many years, was passing out bread and meats after reading the column. He was taken back at how much bigger the operation is now than it was 15 years ago.
And overlooking it all was Mike, one of two off-duty police officers who provide security (imagine a younger Dennis Franz in a yellow windbreaker). We chatted about the vagaries of victimization, including how we have both had catalytic converters sawed off 1990s’ Jeep Cherokees, most likely for the resale of the platinum.
“Imagine if people put all that energy to better purposes,” he said.
Earlier that day, Ms. Perry found one of her tires deflated outside the church. Maybe it was all connected, maybe not. But, like the busted pane, the hole in the tire was small and thankfully dwarfed by her larger aim: feeding spiritual and physical hunger, especially in a downpour.
James Warren is a longtime Chicago journalist and the publisher of The Chicago Reader.