MAD GUMBO OF HUMANITY: The boy is down for his morning nap, although he's likely up within fifteen minutes or so. But the dishes are done, the garbage is out, and the laundry is agitating in the basement, so I've got a few moments to blog.

I'll take on the first image from yesterday, the guy with the flag and the Darryl Worley song.

We live in a really cool neighborhood, Chicago's Bucktown. Despite all the gentrification of the past decade (and yes, my wife and I were unabashed gentrifiers some eight years ago), our 'hood remains wildly diverse. There are Eastern European stalwarts -- Slovaks, Poles, some Ukrainians. There are a lot of Puerto Ricans and some Mexicans. There are black families (I'd type 'African-American' if I knew for sure that was their heritage). There are gay couples, single parents, DINCs, eccentric old people, artists, stockbrokers, hipsters, Jews, Christians, pagans, homeless guys, millionaires, hillbillies, Limbaugh listeners, peace protesters, dog lovers, cat lovers, dog haters, fitness freaks, disabled kids, disabled adults, chain smokers, tattooed folks, gang-bangers, breakdancers, white trash, drug addicts, recovered drug addicts, ex-cons, missionaries, Republicans, widows, widowers, white families with black kids and Asian kids, black families with Asian kids, all manner of mixed marriages, common-law marriages, doctors, napropaths, restauranteurs, waiters, NY transplants, San Francisco transplants, plant lovers, and so forth. We've got it all.

And yet, in the face of all that diversity, that mad gumbo of humanity, it was a plain old white kid, glasses, a little paunchy, driving around in a beat-up SUV with an American flag hanging out the window blasting a redneck country song and looking like he might be about to go all Columbine on our neighborhood's ass that actually gave me pause. Plunk this kid down in any small town in Indiana or Ohio or Texas or Colorado and he's Joe Average, the kind of kid who does his chores, goes to church, gets teased at school, and probably watches the NASCAR broadcast every week on FOX. But here in our little urban melting pot he stuck out like a sore thumb. I actually got the chills when I saw him. I thought, "That's trouble." Meanwhile "sodomites" roll by in shiny import convertibles, gang kids wrestle one another in front of the corner building, and a virtual United Nations of neighbors shuffles by me in the alley, and I barely notice.

Diversity is my operating reality. It's the old school white-guy-in-a-truck playing country music that raises the goosebumps on the back of this neck.