Marian R. Byrnes Park, one of the newest parks opened by the Chicago Park district is an open space and greyfield transformed into a park with trails. This open space has been in the neighborhood for decades. The entrance being a little league baseball diamond and an open wildlife area my neighborhood friends would often explore in the late 70’s and early 80’s. As the South Deering community went further into depression due to the steel industry leaving the area, the diamond was abandoned, neighbors and businesses moved away and we were left with open space that was not cared for and was an illegal dump site, very much like Big Marsh by the mid 80’s. It wasn’t until spring of 2007 when my interest in the prairie would be sparked by the screening of Chicago: City of the Big Shoulders. Dir. Harry Wiland. Prod. Beverly Baroff. Media Policy Center, 2006. Alexander Street Database. Web. at Cornell University’s City and Regional Planning graduate student social. This video featured my n
“Invisibility, let me explain, gives one a slightly different sense of time, you’re never quite on the beat. Sometimes you’re ahead and sometimes behind. Instead of the swift and imperceptible flowing of time, you are aware of its nodes, those points where time stands still or from which it leaps ahead. And you slip into the breaks and look around.” — Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison