lovely views

Since I'd borrowed Mom and Dad's car for a couple of days this week, I used it to take Eoin and Finola up to Chicago for a visit yesterday.


And took the train back to C-U this morning.

a funny thing happened on the way to the suburbs

Yesterday when I was on the El on the way to my parents' from the city, a person who I think was homeless thought that I was homeless.

I came up from Champaign Friday night and stayed with Didi, so I had my ratty old duffel bag full of clothes for the weekend. I also had a shopping bag with a pair of shoes I'd picked up near the station and my purse/handbag, which is rather large. I was wearing jeans, a blouse, and a cardigan, and I hadn't taken a shower.

The man had a black garbage bag full of stuff and a bike. He was wearing jeans with a cowboy-style vest and no shirt.

I was sort of day-dreaming when I made eye contact with him, so I smiled. He looked at me with concern and asked me if I needed help finding a place to stay. Confused, I said, "No, thanks. I'm good." Then he asked me if I needed any fare money. "No, thanks. I'm good." Then he asked me if I needed any coffee. Again, I told him I was good. Before he got off he checked again that I had someplace to stay, and then he gave me a slip of paper with his name and phone number on it "in case [I] need anything."

This was altogether a very strange experience.

commuting

I happened to be on The El at 5ish today. Crowded and sorta sweaty, yes, but there's something about seeing Chicago from that venue that always gets me all antsy and stuff. It makes me feel like there are so many places and people that I need to see and know. It's overwhelming. I like seeing all the well-dressed (and not-well-dressed) people, and I wonder where they're going, where they're coming from, what they do, who they're texting, and why, and what music they're listening to. I also like being able to look down at people's backyards and onto their porches and into their windows. Not in a weird way, just like, "Huh, cool place." Kinda reminds me of that subway piece in Will Eisner's New York.

What a far cry from my "commute." I usually don't see anyone as I walk through my quiet neighborhood, and my brain is usually fixated on figuring out things that happened throughout my own day. Sometimes, I see Richard Powers walking home from work. Wonder what that guy's thinking.

"Ghetto Bus Tour"

I came across an old copy of the Daily Illini from July in a shop on campus today, and picked it up because the full-page image of a woman with a microphone on a school bus and the headline "Touring the Projects" caught my eye.

The story highlights the work of Beauty Turner, a former resident of the Robert Taylor Homes in Chicago. Ms. Turner shows the $20-paying customers on her "Ghetto Bus Tour" that "all those news reports [about the violence and drug-activity in the projects] distorted what day-to-day life was like." She says, "All the horror stories that you heard about in the newspapers, it was not like that at all." These tours, she hopes, will help to raise awareness of her cause, alleviating the plight of former residents of the various projects that are being destroyed as part of the Chicago Housing Authority's $1.6 billion "Plan for Transportation." Where are they supposed to go? is what she wants to know. Quite wisely, she observes, "People that come in [to these neighborhoods] don't want to look across the street and see seven little black churches in a three-block radius. What they want to see is a Dominick's, and sushi joints and a Starbucks."

Don Babwin, the AP journalist who wrote the article, doesn't seem to be entirely convinced. Or he might just be presenting both sides of the argument. Anyway, he lists a few of what Turner refers to as the "horror stories" and mentions that the Housing Authority are accusing her of only showing the "bad things" and of "taking a circuitous route so she doesn't have to drive by the new stuff."

Frankly, I'm behind Turner. What exactly will the planned progress look like? Where are these former residents going to live, and where are the seven little black churches going to fit? Without knowing, admittedly, too much about this Plan for Transformation, I'm still a little skeptical.

That said, a tour? How useful is a tour? Babwin reports that Turner's clientele consists of "students, academics, activists, journalists and residents of Chicago and surrounding suburbs -- most of them white and visiting a part of Chicago they've only seen on television or from the expressway as they sped by." I'm torn, because I'm part of that group. I've never spent any time in any of those neighborhoods; I've seen them from the Dan Ryan. At the same time though, making a tourist attraction of people instinctively feels wrong to me. But what would be better?




In other news, classes started today. One of my profs, after placing a fan on the desk on one of my classmates, literally inches from his face, asked us to write down all of our contact information on these recycled business cards that she passed out. But they were already printed on both sides? And then she wrote on the board "Name," "Where you're from," and "Doing with your life" and asked us to introduce ourselves with that information.

Doing with my life? Oh I don't know, today I've been thinking about Ghetto Bus Tours. I'll probably get some coffee later.

"Why any woman give a shit what people think is a mystery to me."

I'm just back from a lovely evening at the theatre with my mom, our second lovely evening at the theatre this week, actually. Wednesday night, in Vegas, we saw Cirque Du Soleil's LOVE, which is the one that they do to Beatles music. Tonight we saw The Color Purple at the Cadillac in Chicago, the Oprah-produced, Broadway version of Alice Walker's novel.

Live entertainment is so cool. Probably creepy, but I really like watching the other people in the audience. For some reason, I'm really affected by the way the other people in the audience are responding to the performers.

For instance, at LOVE, I was seated next to a family who was speaking French before the show. The lights went down, the extravaganza began, and all of a sudden they were singing along loudly. By the end of the show, as the rest of the audience began to sit back down for the post-standing-ovation number to "All You Need is Love," they were on their feet dancing around, still singing every word.

And tonight, when the actress who played Celie came out for her curtain call, a young woman across the aisle from us was literally jumping up and down and screaming she was so excited.

I mean, I thought both the shows were great, too, but I was really glad to be sitting both times near people who seemed so completely overwhelmed with joy and admiration. It's such a beautiful thing to watch.

There was also this crotchety, older white couple sitting near us tonight. When Celie and Shug, played by Michelle Williams (Destiny's!), kissed for the first time, the man got all noticeably wiggly in his seat. Almost wiggly enough to make me feel a little wiggly. And during the intermission the woman said, in an obnoxious Chicago accent, "Well, the singing's good but I can't understand a word they're saying." Hhhhhh