WELCOME MESSAGE 

Here comes the sun

by MATT McCARTHY, Editor & Publisher  

It’s been a long, cold, lonely winter, little darlings, but here comes the Spring Issue of the Messenger, Volume 2, Number 2, jiving down Milwaukee Avenue in our short sleeves and sandals on the first forty-five degree day of the year, ready to kick back in a beer garden and celebrate another triumph over the winter blahs.

We did it. Another Chicago winter in the rear view. 

And I feel that ICE is slowly melting.

As the days get longer and warmer and that breeze off the Lake loses its bite, we’re reminded why we love living here (in case we forgot during the darkest days of winter). Blue skies and green leaves pop through the gray. The city shines with relief and gratitude and optimism. The civic focus shifts from surviving the winter to enjoying the summer. 

I know for a lot of us that feels at odds with the state of the world right now. It’s easy to look at things and be pessimistic. The news is the worst. It feels so big and heavy all the time. It can smother you. Consume you. 

Bury you. 

You can’t ignore it. You shouldn’t hide your head in the sand and pretend like it’s not happening. You have to keep fighting.

But goddammit, you have to hold on to the love and optimism too. 

Because if you don’t, then what’s the point?

It’s so easy to get caught in that negative spiral. When I was cranking up this issue of the Messenger and considering what to write here, I fell into the spiral. Every time I sat down to write, I felt like I had to shine a light on what’s wrong. To wring my hands and air my grievances and use the platform to try to stand up against it all. So, after several days of ruminating, I wrote another in a series of very gloomy, very angry columns, and showed it to my spouse for an opinion. 

She (metaphorically) slapped me in the face like Cher in Moonstruck and encouraged me to “snap out of it.” 

Wise Chicagoans like Ms. McCarthy know we have to appreciate the good days and gather our rosebuds while we may. So, I scrapped the gloom and doom and tried on something else. 

Spring is here. And spring is the season for optimism. 

If you’re having trouble feeling optimistic right now, that’s okay. For me, the pathway to optimism lies in gratitude. 

I thought about how grateful I am to have a strong, loving partner to help lift me up when I’m down; how lucky I am to have people who love me and who let me love them back. I thought about how grateful I am to live in a city that stands up for immigrants, and in a neighborhood where everyone looks out for each other. I thought about how much I love this city in summer, like when you’re walking down Milwaukee Avenue at the golden hour and the streets are just humming and everything feels possible.  

And I thought about what a privilege it is to work with all the wonderful artists, writers, and poets who submit their work each season to the Milwaukee Avenue Messenger for nothing more than the love of art and community, and how grateful I am to all of them. 

And then the optimism began to flow.

Spring is elusive here in Chicago. Blink and it’s gone. One day it’s 20 degrees and the next day it’s 90. It’s a transitional season, by definition. Sometimes the transition is sudden and sharp, sometimes it’s more gradual. And sometimes it snows in April. 

Know what I mean? 

But spring is here and that means summer’s not far behind.

Sun, sun, sun, here it comes.