Driving Miss Elizabeth

I am single and ready to mingle. But the spouse that I seek is not what most women search for. Rather than searching for an eligible bachelor who can treat me to dinner, buy me gifts, and generally serve as a sugar daddy by impressing me with his wealth, I seek to be the provider. Instead, I want my partner to perform acts of service including driving me around and cooking for me.

I make a decent salary as a recovering lawyer turned PhD student. I have signed up to lease a crimson 2024 Subaru Legacy. But having grown up in the Big Apple, I’m an inexperienced driver. I am afraid to go faster than 55 miles per hour for fear of losing control of the vehicle. To that end, I got an optometrist to check out my vision and signed up for five hours of nighttime lessons with Above Average Driving School in Durham. I am also going to practice short, sweet drives around Carbondale, where everything is located 10-20 minutes away. Finally, the car has a number of safety features which make it hopefully idiot-proof: these include a rearview backup camera, cross-traffic control, automatic pre-collision braking, lane assist, and EIGHT airbags.

I put my ex-boyfriend Gabriel on my insurance so that he could drive me around in bad weather or at night. He is a pretty skilled driver with excellent night vision, as he eats a lot of carrots and green vegetables. Therefore, I am letting him use my car for Instacart as he tries to earn some quick cash to save up for seminary (after we parted ways, he decided to pursue the priesthood). In return, he has to give me rides when the drives are long or the roads are icy or wet. I think it’s a fair trade.

After my mom graduated as the salutatorian of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, she sought to have an arranged marriage with another professional. She met a doctor, who said that there wasn’t room for two doctors in a household. After the rejection, she met my father, who resembled a Bollywood star with his big mustache. However, his mother (my grandma) was so impressed with my mom’s academic credentials that she went on a hunger strike until my dad agreed to marry my mom. My mom was the breadwinner, making three times my dad’s income, and my dad was in charge of the children and the household duties. This arrangement worked out for them, and I think a trophy husband would work out well for me. Any takers?

Carolina In My Mind

“In my mind I’m gone to Carolina.

Can’t you see the sunshine?

Can’t you just feel the moonshine?

Ain’t it like a friend of mine to hit me from behind?

When I’m gone to Carolina in my mind?”

– James Taylor

Spring has finally sprung in North Carolina. I find myself enjoying the verdant beauty of the Queen City today, having taken a bus trip from the Research Triangle to Charlotte for the weekend. I had decided to attend two networking events with the Mecklenburg County Bar Association. Unfortunately, the Business Law section lunch was cancelled without an explanation given. Also, yesterday’s FlixBus was so delayed that I missed the Young Lawyer’s Division social yesterday evening. I met a Bank of America lawyer in Panera Bread for coffee today, and then proceeded to Mellow Mushroom for some pepperoni and pineapple pizza.

My time in Durham may be coming to an end once my lease expires in July. I am considering relocating to Charlotte, among other places. The Carolina lifestyle is different from the hustle and bustle of NYC to which I am accustomed. It’s greener and less crowded but the job opportunities are still good. The climate is favorable for starting a business because the tax rates are low.

I’ve been doing document review for a big firm for some time now, but working from home doesn’t suit the extrovert in me. I crave social connection and want to bounce legal ideas and engage in discourse and dialogue with other lawyers.

North Carolina has a strong Christian community, which is part of my motivation for working on my dissertation remotely from here rather than being an in-person PhD student in Carbondale. There are tons of church activities and Bible studies.

This Lent, I’m not depriving myself of anything but am rather adding something: an extra weekly devotional with the young adults of Immaculate Conception Church. I received some pushback for this from the members of my Bible study at the Duke Catholic Center, who felt that Lent should be a time of suffering to imitate the Lord rather than a time to experience joy. From my perspective, I’m just adding to the fun of the bunnies, chocolate, and egg hunts of Easter season.

Evanston Reparations Program

Chicago suburb moves ahead with pioneering reparations program

Four years after Evanston, Illinois, passed the nation’s first reparations law for Black residents harmed by discrimination,the law has support across all ethnic and demographic groups and all in nine wards, a recent survey found.

As of last August the program had disbursed $1,092,924 in reparations funds through the Local Reparations Restorative Housing Program. Another $439,397 is pending for mortgage assistance and construction or remodeling projects.

Funded by a local tax on cannabis, the program is focused specifically on redressing housing discrimination. Qualifying applicants can put down $25,000 toward a down payment on a new property, mortgage assistance or housing renovations.

The pioneering programs have led to others across the country, with several gaining momentum in recent years. In 2022 in St. Louis, the mayor signed a bill allowing residents to make voluntary donations to a reparations program, a first step. Other Midwestern cities with new reparations programs, at various stages, include St. Paul, Minnesota, Kansas City, Missouri and Detroit, Michigan.

Evanston’s reparations program specifically addresses housing discrimination and segregation between 1919 and 1969, which have been documented in the “Evanston Policies and Practices Directly Affecting the African- American Community” report. The report led to the City Council to pass Resolution 126-R-19 and Resolution 37-R-21. The City Council members said the program is an attempt to rectify the past harm caused to Black residents.

Black codes

The discrimination Evanston seeks to address dates back to slavery. Before the Civil War, the state of Illinois established “Black codes” restricting residences, settlements and job opportunities. Segregation occurred in restaurants, theaters, street cars and housing in 1918, when an Evanston branch of the NAACP was founded.

“Practically every restaurant in Evanston refuses to serve Negroes who, when they go to even the less respectable ones, are simply ignored,” the Daily Northwestern, the university’s student newspaper, reported in 1936. Evanston’s Cooley’s Cupboard restaurant, a popular place for college students, regularly refused service to Black people. Early sit-in protests were held at the restaurant. Black attendees of the New Theater of Evanston had a separate stairway and sat only in a reserved block of seats in the balcony. Evanston’s Alderman Edwin B. Jourdain led the fight against the practice. When the issue of whether or not to allow theaters to open on Sundays was before the City Council, Jourdain spoke out against allowing Sunday openings, arguing that it would only add another day that Black residents would experience segregation in theaters.

For years, Evanston’s two hospitals, Evanston Hospital and St. Francis Hospital restricted access to Black residents and employed no Black doctors on their staff. As a result, in 1914, two Black doctors, Arthur Butler and Isabella Garnett, opened a hospital for Black patients at 1918 Asbury Ave., known as the Evanston Sanitarium.

Over the next 15 years, the sanitarium served Evanston’s Black population from a converted residential home. The operating room was next to the furnace room, separated by a door. After Butler’s death, the sanitarium was renamed Butler Memorial.

National discrimination

The history of discrimination in Evanston is not unique. Frederick Douglass, the Black Civil War-era abolitionist, said “the history of civilization shows that no people can well rise to a high degree of mental or even moral excellence without wealth. A people uniformly poor and compelled to struggle for barely a physical existence will be dependent and despised by their neighbors and will finally despise themselves.”

Thinking like this prefigured the development of the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Co., which Congress established on March 3, 1865. Deposits were invested in safe government securities. Congress created a board of trustees with prominent citizens who lent their reputations to the bank. Within 10 years, it handled $75 million of deposits made by more than 75,000 depositors.

In 1917, the Department of Labor under President Woodrow Wilson promoted an “Own Your Own Home” campaign and convinced people to buy single-family units rather than rent. The Wilson program was targeted to white veteran homeowners, and closed to Black people.

James Taylor, the head of the Department of Commerce’s Housing Division, advised residents to “buy partnership in the community. Restricted residential districts may serve as protection against persons with whom your family won’t care to associate, provided the restrictions are enforced and not merely temporary.”

Property owners and builders included language in home deeds and neighbors pacts that prohibited future resale to African Americans. The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) recommended that deeds to property for which it issued mortgage insurance should prohibit resale to African Americans. When neighborhoods integrated, property values initially increased because of Blacks’ need to pay higher prices. But then white homeowners sold at big discounts and property values fell. Because of this phenomenon, it was seen as a problem when Black families moved to white neighborhoods.

Last month, Alvin B. Tillery Jr., a political science professor at Northwestern University said in an interview, “City governments and banks would conspire to redline Black areas so they would not loan for mortgages in those areas.” This practice of not lending for mortgages would drive up rental prices for Black communities and families, when the federal government was helping white people buy their homes and get low-cost loans because of their veteran status. Northwestern University’s research did support the reparations program, but its newspaper took a neutral stance in deciding how to cover it.

“White men were getting sweetheart deals,” Tillery said. “Prior to the 1940s, when Freddie Mac was created, you had to put down 15% of the principal and pay it off within 15 years.” The federal government created lending instruments that made homeownership easier and within the reach of most Americans. “The problem for Black Americans, if you track the history, is that the military was segregated prior to 1948 so the city through racially restrictive covenants conspired to keep the new housing stock built for the white veterans and so they redlined neighborhoods,” Tillery added.

In the unanimous Shelley v. Kraemer decision in 1948, the court ruled in a St. Louis case that deeds that barred sales to Black people could not be enforced in state courts because of the 14th Amendment.

How the reparations work

Evanston is awarding $25,000 cash payments for mortgage payments, down payments or furniture. The program is run on an honor system, Alderwoman Robin Rue Simmons told the Evanston Roundtable. Rue Simmons is the founder and executive director of FirstRepair, a nonprofit that informs local reparations on the national level. She is also a residential real estate broker seeking to help young adults build wealth through homeownership.

“It is my understanding to keep with your legal framework that has allowed us the success to disburse and it’d be a cash benefit, unrestricted related to housing, and not for us to sort of manage or dictate in what way that it’s used,” Simmons said.

The city’s Reparations Committee decided on an electronic process randomly selects city direct descendants for the cash payments, akin to a lottery system for Black residents who lived in Evanston during 1919-1969.

“They have to prove that they lived in the time period between 1919-1969 before the city passed its housing discrimination ordinance,” said Tasheik Kerr, assistant to the city manager.

Broad support for program

A recent survey conducted by Northwestern University’s Center for the Study of Diversity and Democracy found that every ethnic and racial demographic group within the city, across all nine of its political wards, supports this historical reparations program.

Northwestern surveyed about 3,500 Evanston residents between February and June 2023. About 70% of Caucasian respondents viewed the reparations program as “good public policy” for the city of Evanston. This Northwestern survey differs from nationwide surveys, which have historically recorded about 20% support among white respondents.

The Evanston survey shows that other groups also support this program, including 64% of Black respondents, 61% of Latino respondents, and 62% of Asian respondents.

City Manager Clayton Black told the Daily Northwestern that committee members suggested using Liberty Bank and OneUnited Bank, two Black-owned banks with which the city is considering depositing money, as long as the bank can promise to hold collateral worth 105% of the city’s original deposit. Student journalist Joyce Li covered the story.

“I would have imagined that opposition to reparations would be more likely to come from conservatives, but the debate that’s going on is within the Evanston Black community about how it can be done or whether reparations are sufficient,” Li said. “Our coverage has been able to include perspectives that are critical of the reparations program.”

Evanston’s program has faced some opposition. There were local community groups who advocated for cash payments to be an option. “We didn’t have that in the beginning, but the reparations committee added that option,” Kerr said. “All their meetings are public – members of that group showed up to meetings and voiced their opinion and made public comments. There wasn’t a lot of interaction with city staff.”

–An ABC7 Chicago report featured Evanston Rejects Racist Reparations, whose member Rose Cannon argued that no reparations can ever be enough to repair the damages. Kevin Brown, a member of the group, described the Evanston program as “managed by a white-run finance company, and a meager $25,000 is not given to the injured but to white-run perpetrator banks who redlined Black people out of beautiful areas and caused generational harm.”

The groups prone to criticizing the program, such as Evanston Rejects Racist Reparations, want to give people cash rather than giving money to the banking industry. The Evanston Reparations Program is evolving in response to their demands.

Published in the winter 2023 issue of the Gateway Journalism Review

Memento Mori

“Memento Mori” is the Latin phrase that slaves whispered in the ears of Roman generals on their victory parades after conquering other lands. It means “Remember you will die.”

All Saint’s Day, the day after Halloween, is also the day before All Soul’s Day in the States and Dia de los Muertos in Mexico. Families remember their departed loved ones and prepare sugar-candied skulls to feast in their honor all over Mexico, but the tradition has migrated to the United States.

In my Bible study with the Duke Catholic Center, we discussed the concept of “legacy” in the context of the recent passing of Matthew Perry, the actor who played Chandler Bing on the sitcom, “Friends.” He suffered from addiction and told audiences on his book tour for “Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing: A Memoir” that he wanted knowing him to be viewed as a good rather than a bad thing.

I have had a number of Spiritual Directors through the Catholic Church over the past four years, including a retired lawyer, a nun who was a grandmother before becoming a nun, and a professor-priest of Africana Studies with a Ph.D. from Yale. These sessions are an appropriate place to discuss my burning philosophical and existential inquiries about the meaning of life, the existence of God, and what kind of legacy I’d like to leave.

Since I don’t have children, what will people remember about me? Will it be the journalism I’ve produced using my passion for the written word? Will it be my debate skills and the lawyering I’ve done? Will it be my Socratic teaching style and my ability to get undergraduate students interested in the law? Will it be a beautiful mind and those who have witnessed my thought leadership?

I found some inspiration in the story of the Book of Life, a movie that came out in November 2015. Figurines at this Mexican museum exhibit represent Xibalba and La Muerte, gods who rule over The Land of the Remembered and the Land of the Forgotten, respectively. The animated gods select mortals Manolo and Joaquin upon whom to place bets. La Muerte bets that Manolo will marry Maria; whereas Xibalba wagers that Joaquin will win her hand. Xibalba stealthily stacks the odds of winning in his own favor by entrusting Joaquin with the Medal of Everlasting Life, which protects those who wear it from death and injury.

In the movie, the Candle Maker, who balances the gods’ powers, tells the protagonist, Manolo, “You didn’t live the life that was written for you, You were writing your own story.”

For Better or for Worse

Congratulations are in order for the momentous occasion of the wedding of my little sister, Dr. Theresa Tharakan, to Dr. Selby Chu. This was a special weekend for Theresa, as she got married not once but twice.

First, a priest led a full Catholic Mass at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis on Friday, May 12. The ceremony was very traditional, with the inclusion of thali and manthrakodi, an Indian Christian custom in which the groom ties a gold necklace thali around the neck of his wife and the first wedding gift he gives her the manthrakodi, an elaborate red and gold piece of cloth worn around the head to symbolize their union.

Second, the groom’s brother, Selwyn Chu, led a May 13 ceremony with romantic, self-written vows at Missouri Botanical Gardens. The venue was moved from indoors to the Bayer Event Center because of the thunderstorm advisory, but Theresa, Selby, and their wedding party got some excellent photographs by carrying umbrellas and hiking to the Japanese Garden during a sunny interlude.

I split maid of honor duties with Theresa’s best friend, Sushi Subburamu. In preparation for the wedding, we threw a bridal shower and deluged Theresa with feminine gifts at an East Village Ethiopian restaurant called Awash this past December. Sushi also hosted a bachelorette weekend in Miami.

I lent Theresa my Marian medal, bought from St. Patrick’s Cathedral gift shop and blessed by a priest, as her something borrowed and something blue. She got black vanilla body lotion as her something new. Finally, her something old was a pearl bracelet.

As a wedding gift, I set up an audio keepsake for Theresa and asked everyone on the guest list to call in to a phone line with voice messages that included a piece of marital advice for the happy couple. I made sure to solicit advice not just from happily married guests but also from single ones. But getting the majority of folks to participate was a daunting challenge because I had to verbally ask people to call in.

Theresa wore two fancy white dresses at the wedding and a red lehenga at the reception. She and Selby did a dance performance for the guests, where they showed off their moves.

Theresa also had my mom, my brother, and me make speeches Friday and Saturday evening. I delivered my speech last night, but slipped up a couple of times when I forgot the next line because I didn’t bring up a card or piece of paper with me. I figured the dramatic optics of a memorized speech was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to celebrate a wedding. Here is the full text of my remarks:

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When I was 7 years old, I was an only child and a lonely soul. I had no one to play with so I asked my parents for a sibling. When Theresa came home from the hospital as a newborn, I was so excited that I wrote her a letter which to this day is still attached to my mom’s cubby at work. “Dear Theresa, I love you very much. You are very laughative. Love, Chechi.” Chechi is what she and Joey call me, which means older sister in the Malayalam dialect.

This dialect was something we learned from our late father, who enjoyed teasing Theresa and carrying her around. Daddy asked why she couldn’t ask our Mother to carry her around, and she said “You’re stronger!”

Theresa was always very sociable and outgoing, and she loved inviting friends over from Bronx Science, Harvard, and Einstein to practice ballroom dancing. She loved traveling to far off lands to visit these friends, sample ethnic cuisines, and to take photographs of the places she saw and the people she met.

It is hard to believe that a free spirit like Theresa is now settling down with Selby and getting married. But Selby is the perfect person to lead her into domestic and marital bliss, as he is a ninja in the kitchen and good with kids, being a pediatrician. But I’m hoping that they’ll have adventures together as husband and wife. In the words of Winnie the Pooh, “As soon as I saw you I knew that a grand adventure was going to happen.”

Basic Photojournalism Portfolio

For Julia Rendleman’s Basic Photojournalism class, I am selecting the 12 or so best images that I took with a DSLR camera (a Nikon 3600) and captioning them.

Guests eat snacks at April Smith’s surprise birthday party on April 15, 2023 in Evansville, Ind.

Car pans at 10:30 a.m. Monday, Feb. 13 2023 outside Communications Building in Carbondale, Ill.

Car with freeze motion at 10:30 a.m. Feb. 13, 2023 outside Communications Building in Carbondale, Ill.

April Smith’s parents serve a birthday cake on April 15, 2023 in Evansville, Ind.

Julia Rendleman talks with students in her office Feb. 26, 2023 in Carbondale, Ill.

Guests approach Harbaugh’s Cafe from outside March 28, 2023 in Carbondale, Ill.

Noel Ivester, 26, and Francisco Ivester, 1, enjoy a Mardi Gras party February 16, 2023 at the Southern Illinois University Newman Center in Carbondale, Ill.

A lined pattern decorates the hallway leading to the trash can at the Southern Illinois University Communications Building Feb. 20 in Carbondale, Ill.

Vaibhavi Gujar leads a Bollywood Dance class at the Southern Illinois University Recreation Center April 12, 2023 in Carbondale, Ill.

Tourists visit The Bean in Millennium Park March 19, 2023 in Chicago, Ill.

A car moves quickly outside the Communications Building at 10:30 a.m. February 13, 2023 in Carbondale, Ill.

Hikers walk along the Garden of the Gods Observatory Trail to view the Devil’s Smokestack sandstone rock formations March 7, 2023 in Herod, Ill.

Las Conquistadoras de Cancun

My best friend, Christina Wang Kloster, turned 40 on January 4, 2023. To mark the occasion, she invited her nearest and dearest female friends to celebrate this milestone birthday in style. I agreed to fly to her venue of choice, Cancun, during my winter break.

The main highlight of the trip was a two-hour bus ride from Cancun to the Yucatan Peninsula, which houses ancient Mayan ruins in a pre-Columbian city. These ruins, known as Chichen Itza, are one of the seven wonders of the modern world. There was a tour guide who lectured us on the architecture and the history of the bloodthirsty Native American preoccupation with knives and swords.

We traversed the sandy beaches and went to a drugstore, where we bought authentic Mexican salty snacks, and a swim shop, where I bought a pair of navy surf shorts. We also participated in a submarine excursion that involved being in a boat underwater and quickly getting dizzy and lightheaded while viewing the coral reefs.

We also went a bit loca (Spanish for crazy) ordering Mexican food, indulging in pork, shrimp, mojitos and margaritas, and a sweet pudding dessert known as flan. Christina and her friend Hao did a shot competition, the rules of which I didn’t pretend to fully understand.

Christina and Hao both spoke excellent Spanish, so they practiced ordering food and seeking directions in the native tongue. But the locals had a soft spot for us tourists because we tipped well!

Call and Respond

“The next day John was there again with two of his disciples. When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, “Look, the Lamb of God!”

When the two disciples heard him say this, they followed Jesus. Turning around, Jesus saw them following and asked, “What do you want?”

They said, “Rabbi” (which means “Teacher”), “where are you staying?”

“Come,” he replied, “and you will see.””

Southern Illinois University Carbondale campus minister, Brendan de Padua, began his speech at the Nov. 12 2022 Fall Gala with this set of verses from John 1 35-39 to describe God’s practice of calling and our practice of responding.

Brendan sandwiched his remarks in between those of Tim Taylor, Director of the Newman Center, and Father Joel Seipp, pastor of St. Andrew’s parish in Murphysboro.

Undergraduate and graduate students at SIU volunteered at the gala in exchange for a free dinner. In terms of the duties that Brendan assigned, I did coat check at first, then served salads and refilled water at a back table, and finally helped the other students out a bit with basic cleanup to get the chapel to transition from a Saturday night banquet table setup to being ready for the 11:15 am Mass the following Sunday morning.

The choice of prime rib or pork loin along with options of mashed potatoes, green beans, appetizers including meatballs and nachos with cheese sauce, frosted chocolate cake, a choice of ice water, lemonade, iced tea, sangria, or other alcoholic beverages made the night special for all of us.

The dance floor also included a lottery drawing of raffle tickets for either a quilt or a night in a cabin sponsored by the owners of Larry’s Towing in Carbondale, a silent auction for donated goods, requests for generous tithing to keep Newman’s programs alive, and dancing to Footloose by Kenny Loggins and to Billy Joel’s Uptown Girl.

It was ultimately a pleasure to serve and a wonder to see so many church parishioners respond to the diocese’s call to participate.

Trick or Treat

All Hallow’s Eve brings about witches, wizards, elves and other mystical creatures that go bump in the night. This Monday was Halloween so I wanted to publish a post with a spooky theme.

I own two costumes, both flapper dresses. One is a conservative calf length red dress suitable for church and one is a thigh-high black dress inappropriate for church.

My boyfriend Gabriel and I went to the Spirit Halloween in Carbondale to go shopping for his costume. Next to the flapper costumes was a costume called “Dapper Gentleman” that Gabe paired with fangs and a fake cigar to be a vampire detective.

But we didn’t have that many formal activities to choose from because it’s illegal for adults over 18 to go trick or treating in Carbondale and we couldn’t find a suitable Halloween party without drinking so instead he just came over to my apartment and my roommate Ushna took a photograph of us together with her brand spanking new iPhone 14.

We also went on a pumpkin walk which was a nature hike with lots of decorated charity pumpkins and jack o lanterns.

We did the nature walk once and Gabe wanted to go on a hay ride and do the hike again at night so we could see the jack o lanterns glowing in the dark, but I was too afraid that a ghost would haunt us!

The Book of Revelation

Faith, fellowship, and food are the fundamental elements of a successful Bible study. This spring, the graduate students affiliated with InterVarsity’s Graduate Christian Fellowship opted to study the most obscure and interesting book of the New Testament, Revelation, with a motley crew over potluck dinners. Keyla and Tori, our leaders, had difficulty finding an organized study of this book, because there just don’t exist too many prepackaged studies of Revelation out there.

Eventually, we got to see the marriage union of heaven and earth in a way that is rife with prophesy and symbolism taking us back to the Garden of Eden and the book of Daniel especially. The seven angels with the seven bowls containing the wrath of God, the plagues, the dragon and the serpent representing the devil, the prostitute representing ancient Babylon, and the slain lamb were all highlights in the passages that we covered. The descriptions of the angels and the temples are absolutely stunning visually, where fine linen and dazzling jewels cover everything.

The Bible Project accompanying video highlighted how the disciple known as John (the same author of the book of John) wrote to give hope and encouragement to the seven churches that were facing persecution under Nero’s Rome after Jesus’s resurrection but before the widespread rise of Christianity. The Babylon about which the book of Revelation speaks most likely represents Rome, a city full of emperor and idol worship at the time.

I am fascinated by the idea that there’s a Judgment Day where God decides who is righteous and who has behaved too despicably to go to Heaven. When a professor’s husband passed away, I gifted her with the Barbara Walters documentary Heaven, in which the acclaimed journalist interviews religious leaders of different faiths to ask them what the afterlife is like in their imaginations. I wonder about questions like what happens to former believers, what happens to scientists who wanted to believe but couldn’t, as well as what happens to those who followed religious laws and principles even if they weren’t believers. Revelation describes this judgment day in metaphorical detail, but leaves the faithful reader with more questions than answers.