The View from MY Chicago Desk

Ah! Let’s hear it for the soul-warming, sunny southern exposure the view from my Chicago desk offers me daily!

And, what about those postcard-perfect images my balcony conjures up
when I look west,
to the spine-steeling Water Tower, the only public building to survive the Great Chicago Fire of 1871,

or east, to Lake Michigan’s Spirit-calming ever-changing blue, blue waters?
I pinch myself often to test my Good Fortune’s realness.

No matter the work, woe or worry I’m wrestling, seeing my big-shouldered city that Carl Sandburg poetically-tagged “a tall bold slugger” miraculously keeps me at bat.

And should I falter somehow, and strike out, I can always pull up an internal treasure or two I’ve stored for such times.

Like the pure joy the seven talented writers (pictured below) magically made and bottled last week during our Manuscript Workshop at the Landgrove Inn in Landgrove, Vermont.

                           ( Left to right: Heather Preusser, Lee Miao, Libby Ester,
                             Jerry Oberle, Mary Serocynski, Beth Najberg,
                             Cheryl Sullivan)

Happy viewing from your desks, both in-and-ex-ternally!

Esther Hershenhorn

PS.
If you’re curious as to what I would see if able to look north, click here. :)