Dear Ones, Isn't it amazing how a topic that touched so many of us can spark such a list of responses. We are certainly story animals! Here's mine! Until 1980, Fred and I had not lived in Chicago under assignment. We had visited both the West Side campus and then in 1972 after participating in the opening of the Indianapolis house during our intern year, attended the Summer program in the Kemper building from the Indianapolis House. Since I did not know any of our neighbors there, I had no way to know what they thought of us as we moved in and out of the building so frequently. Then of course, following the summer program, we ALL moved out with suitcases, beds, and every thing else one could think of into all of those big trucks waiting behind the building in the alley! I really wondered then who they thought we were! We arrived from Nairobi and Kawangware in the summer of 1980, Fred being sick with malaria and I following along later to find him better but still weak. Imagining that we would return to Kenya later that summer, we had left most of our "stuff" behind, under out bed over the bar in Kawangware. But life had another plan fr us - surprise? Priscilla Wilson as part of the assignment commission, decided that Fred and I were called to guide, facilitate, join the staff .... of Phase One including the Student House, EG structures and youth clusters out in the regional houses. It was then following a difficult decision on my part to take the Phase one assignment that we began to understand what it would look like to live in Uptown! Although those of us who lived in the Kemper building, 3rd floor suggested that we be seen as living on the moon! we certainly interacted with others who lived in the rest of the building in many creative and not so creative ways! That is another story! Our interactions in the neighborhood was mostly through the student house residents as they told stories of encounters with kids from school and around Uptown. However, I do remember Church's Chicken, Siam, The Green Mill, the El train stop, Joan Arai school, the church, hospital's etc. And, I do remember driving Metro and leaving Uptown with a crowd of teenagers in the Sububans for the car-crowded streets of the suburbs to deliver grocery flyers. What a time! One more memory of being in the Kemper building for the first time .... do you remember? One evening during the program, someone decided that whosoever would go over the the West Side and sing hymns. Joe and Lynn were there, someone played the piano and we sang for several hours - no music, just our memories of being raised in a church that sang! I remember watching Joe sing! I can still hear us singing, even now after 41 years! So much for memories that just seem to spill out of me .....thanks for sharing yours. With love and gratitude, Nancy