After 30 minutes of wandering a three-story house filled with treasures I found Patricia Green picking out five cent ornaments. “I’ve been coming here for the last, oh my god, thirty years. This place has been just a blessing for me,” Green said as I fumbled to get my audio recorder rolling. She was so cute and nice. Green allowed me to follow her as she shopped for everything you can imagine. Christmas tree with ornaments, bows, shoes, towels, bundt pan, wreaths, jewelry, and a $1 winter jacket. She shops for 7 grandchildren, 3 great-grandchildren and many kids in her Austin neighborhood that are in need.

They’ve got a few more sale dates before Christmas. It’s an adventure and shopping all in one.

OAK PARK 12/3/09 Patricia Green inspects an umbrella she would eventually purchase at the Economy Shop in Oak Park, Dec. 3, 2009. The 90-year-old store is staffed by volunteers of local charities. "I've been coming here for the last, oh my god, thirty years. This place has been just a blessing for me." Green said. Green shops for her seven grandchildren, three great-grandchildren and some of the other under privileged children in her Austin neighborhood. "Every Thursday, every Saturday I'm here. I look forward to coming here and shopping. When I leave I'm always happy like a little child at Christmastime," Green said. (Rob Hart/Staff Photographer)

So I totally want some chickens now. My cats would *love* them.

4/24/09 OAK PARK, IL Helen Standen's chickens Poppy and Magnolia run around her backyard where she raises them at her Oak Park home on Friday, April 24, 2009. Standen harvests the eggs daily and build her own coop. (Rob Hart/Staff Photographer)

excerpt from Chris LaFortune’s story:
Perhaps this comes as a surprise, but Helen Standen doesn’t mind that people call her the chicken lady.
“I home school, too,” the Oak Park resident said. “I’m used to being different.”
Standen grew up just outside of Cleveland on 12 acres of land. Her parents owned goats, pigs, other farm animals, but they weren’t really farmers.
Standen’s father traveled a lot for work, her mother was an avid gardener and canner.
“Looking back now that I’m grown up as a parent with kids, I don’t know how my parents did it,” Standen said.
So she’s quite content with just the two chickens that she owns and keeps in her Oak Park backyard. Poppy and Magnolia, two ISA Browns, have a coop in the back of Standen’s yard, a structure she built.
“It’s great for the soul to produce stuff, to make stuff,” Standen said. “It doesn’t have to be of professional quality.”
The Standens first owned chickens in 2004. They’ve lost a few over the years to various mishaps, and the current pair came in last year.

4/24/09 OAK PARK, IL Helen Standen's chickens Poppy and Magnolia run around her backyard where she raises them at her Oak Park home on Friday, April 24, 2009. Standen harvests the eggs daily and build her own coop. (Rob Hart/Staff Photographer)

4/24/09 OAK PARK, IL Helen Standen with one of the two chickens she raises in the backyard of her Oak Park home on Friday, April 24, 2009. Standen harvests the eggs daily and build her own coop. (Rob Hart/Staff Photographer)

Staff Writer Chris LaFortune holds a chicken in Helen Standen's backyard in Oak Park, IL.

In my family a violin was called a fiddle, and how could I not drop some video of my all-time fiddle player at a show from my neighborhood. A fella who woke me up by playing the banjo after an epic show. Ladies & gentlemen, the Professor of hillbilly music.Mr. Donnie Herron. You can find video of him playing with Bob Dylan, but he kills when he’s in his element.

At each station was an honest discussion about charity, forgiveness, helping others, ect. I was surprised when a participant (my notebook is at work y’all) mentioned she was a bit embarrassed to be carrying a cross through downtown Oak Park, knowing people were judging her. “I’m more than my beliefs,” she said.

“It makes you think about the brutality, and how Jesus suffered. And how there is still so much brutality in the world today,” One woman said.

I’ve been to the crazy crucifixion re-enaction in Pilsen on Good Friday and it seemed like going to a play, where you know it’s totally unreal. Photographically that event is like fishing with a scud missile. I enjoyed the quiet discussions and real life lessons like helping out at the PADS shelter.

“Act out of strength, not out of weakness.” Those words kept bubbling up in my head all day.

Results are trickeling in from the Illinois Press Photographers Association annual contest. So far I scored a 2nd in Pictorial and three HM’s. Two for Enterprise and a Sports Feature. My co-workers Ruthie Hauge, Tamara Bell and Suzanne Tennant have also placed. Looks like the Oak Park staff is up 9-0!

http://ippaonline.com/ippa/

To get to Antonio Munoz’s shoe repair shop, customers have to step down a set of concrete stairs into the basement of the Oak Park Avenue retail building he’s set up in.

A little bell at the door rings as people step into Tony’s Shoe Clinic, 115 N. Oak Park Ave., a small space that smells of leather and shoe polish. There’s a whirring noise in the store: Munoz’s mechanical sander, constantly on.

Munoz can be found before the sander, grinding away at the bottom of a pair of shoes, preparing to replace their soles.

Behind Munoz is his workbench, a pile of adhesive clumped up on the table, easy access when he needs to glue on new heels or those replacement soles he’s preparing.

Two metal stands are off to one side with fittings Munoz can place the shoes on when he needs to hammer new heels into place. Next to his sander is a press to push shoe leather into place.

Munoz has plenty of work, from adjustments people want done to newly purchased shoes to major renovation of pieces of leather that are shoes only in name.

Thirty years ago, when he started in Oak Park, there were 10 shoe repairmen in town, he said. Now, he’s the last, putting in 15-hour work days.

“I come over here at 6 o’clock in the morning and I go at 9:30 in the night, every day,” Munoz said. “When you like the job … you stay here. If you don’t like the job, it’s boring in one day, boring in one hour.”

And he likes the work, repairing not just shoes, but purses, luggage, belts, jackets. As he says, Munoz can fix just about anything with leather.

Munoz has spent 43 years in the business, he said, starting in Mexico. When he was younger, he needed work.

“One guy said, go there, they’ll find you a job there,” Munoz said. He went into shoe repair and never left.

Not only does Munoz take the jobs that walk in the door, he said, but also takes overflow work from other repairmen who don’t have time.

“It’s too expensive for new (shoes) right now,” he said. “Five years ago, it was … cheaper.” – Chris LaFortune