Setting the Stage: Welcome to Streeterton, Illinois

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 16:18:00 -0400

Streeterton is a northeastern suburb of Chicago, located 29 miles from Madison and State, a quaintly peaceful and surprisingly prosperous little town primarily noted for the infrequency with which it is noticed, its tranquility broken by little other than a series of much praised and occasionally attended festivals of the arts that dot its year. Long known as the summer escape of the upper crust, Streeterton has long quietly prided itself on the discreetness of its citizens, the endurance of its traditions, and the elegance of its gated communities, whose high wrought iron fences have put minds at ease for over 150 years.

Forests cover its shoreline, which its founders had the foresight to keep as a public trust, and as the summer days fade into night and the fairy lights of the ancient gaslamps begin to flicker between the leaves, the faint sound of music gently played by loving, if inexpert hands, can often be heard drifting out of the woods, as a few gentle souls celebrate the beauty of another day now ending. While Streeterton has been a playground of the very rich for most of its existence, it welcomes physicians, lawyers and others among the less fortunate without judgement, hoping that they will enjoy their brief visits. If you should decide to join that happy throng, I would offer one simple piece of advice so that you might get the most out of your excursion.

Bring your water wings. If you’re 29 miles northeast of State and Madison, you’re maybe about 20 miles out from shore, in about 250 feet of water, and Lake Michigan has no deep water islands. Streeterton doesn’t really exist, except as a backdrop for the stories on this amateur fiction blog, and in half-imagined form at that. At present, I’m picturing it existing on a collection of small islands connected by bridges over the shallow channels that divide them - kind of like Venice, only without the Italians. Or the culture. Or the actual professionals, for the most part, because our gentlefolk are usually far, far too genteel to ever exert themselves enough to earn more than the gentleman’s C that is their ticket to the sweet fraternity living, and a lifetime of soirees to come, not a one of which they dare miss and need not, so long as they have inheritances to invest and stockbrokers with names like Abramowitz available to frantically correct their choices before they lose too much to their clients’ wise and farsighted investments, doing so from a discreet distance, of course. Business is so grubby, not a fit subject for polite conversation. Don’t you agree?

No? How curious. But let us continue, my good man, agreeing to disagree. Streeterton is, in part, a combination of a number of places I’ve been, exaggerated ever so slightly, with the unreal - but not impossible - element added of that middle of the lake location. The ferry leaves for Chicago at 6 am each morning, and returns each day at 6pm, 8pm and 10pm; between those times, there is no way on or off the island (or islands), except by private boat. Isolated from a gauche world, a group of people (who would never use the word “gauche” out of fear of appearing effete, as they wish to fancy themselves “regular joes”) read their papers (The Times and Wall Street Journal, usually - Streeterton’s business dealings are with New York more often than they are with Chicago), talk about nothing in particular, and pass the time aimlessly, as cursed by their prosperity as they are blessed - thus the name of the blog, for reasons that should become obvious in the next few posts, if they aren’t already.

There are a few things that I won’t promise you.

Great writing. These are writing exercises, not professional, published stories. I’ll take a publication - often a newspaper - maybe do a post or two mentioning which of the days stories I’m mining for ideas - and then build on that to create a story. It’s improvisation, sort of - sometimes it will work, sometimes it won’t.

Lack of repetition - Where there is a draft one, there is often a draft two or even a draft three and four. This is a journal, not a novel. I’m going to try to improve on what I’ve written.

Reliable consistency - Streeterton is being created in the course of my writing this blog, so yes, I’m going to have to tidy up a lot.

Political Correctness - either the liberal or the conservative version. The poor aren’t all going to be misunderstood angels and the rich aren’t all going to be evil moneygrubbing sociopaths. I’ve seen both worlds, their inhabitants are real flesh and blood people to me - not cartoons, not archetypes - people, with a variety of strengths and weaknesses, virtues and vices. While some may have issues with this (largely because they have issues, I would maintain), that is how I will try to portray each, not shying away from bringing up the dysfunctional aspects of each subculture.

Some will like this, some will hate it. To the former, I’ll say that I have a lot of work to do on this and - being a rank amateur - can’t honestly promise anything other than uneven results will reward your patience. To the latter, I offer the consoling thought that even though I’ll be reducing you to a steaming rage, counseling for anger management problems such as yours is widely available in our society, and that if all else fails, you can simply elect to not read this blog. Glad I could help.

Let us move on in our own good time. Your yacht or mine?

Still deciding ...

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 18:53:00 -0400

Even under a cloud cap, I’m wasting precious daylight indoors, so I’m in a hurry to go, but Tumblr seems to want me to post something. Fine. I’ll post something.

There are some social networking site providers that have recently disappointed me, some much more than others. This site will become the successor to my site at one of them. I’m not sure which one, yet, but as the title I have posted at present would suggest, I could offer a reasonable guess. Read between the lines.

Cocktails Before Dawn: Joseph Dunphy's Journal

Setting the Stage: Welcome to Streeterton, Illinois

Still deciding ...