"What do we want? Peace! When do we want it? Now!"

I'm standing shoulder to shoulder in a crowd of hundreds of thousands of American men and women from all over the country. We're massed on the lawn of the Whitehouse late morning on Saturday, September 24, 2005. While much of the Gulf States were bracing for another hurricane, we were getting geared up to march for peace. To end the war in Iraq. And to end the conflict in Israel. As I looked back and forward through the throngs of people, I was empowered to see the great diversity of people who made the trip to D.C. to take part in this historic event. Men, women, children, and people of every conceivable ethnicity were present. There were multitudes of signs with slogans like "George Bush, Iraq War, Hurricane Katrina . . . All Disasters," "War is a lack of Imagination," "Impeach Bush," "Who Would Jesus Bomb," and so many others. Buses rolled in from every state in the union sponsored by groups like Answer Coalition, United for Peace and Justice, Neighbors for Peace, Impeach Bush.org, etc. In many cases, buses were sponsored by community groups of like minded individuals who just needed to be there and make their voices heard. I had never seen so many people united for a cause in all my life. We listened to speeches delivered by Rev. Jesse Jackson, Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, Elias Rashmawi: National Council of Arab Americans, Ben Dupuy: Former Ambassador At Large for the government of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Malik Rahim: New Orleans community activist who survived Hurricane Katrina, Cindy Sheehan, Wesley Clark, George Galloway: British Member of Parliament, Jos Williams: President, President of the Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO, Curtis Muhammed: Community Labor Union of New Orleans, Peta Lindsay: Youth and Student A.N.S.W.E.R. Student, Howard University student, Jeanette Caceres: Spoken word artist from New York University, and representatives from the two major groups who organized the event: A.N.S.W.E.R. and United for Peace and Justice. Then we took to the streets of Washington D.C. A river of protestors chanting slogans like "What does democracy look like? I'm what democracy looks like!," "Impeach Bush," "What do we want? Peace! When do we want it? Now!" The march route took us from the Washington Monument grounds passed the Whitehouse and throughout downtown D.C. We effectively shut down all transit in the city. They're were protestors everywhere, as far as the eye could see. There were so many people that the protest line moved in a slow step by step progression. There were people lining the route from end to end, spilling out from city buildings and hotels, intersecting the route from sidestreets. Our contingent became especially vigilant in front of the Whitehouse where chanting became feverish and people screamed for peace. As the day ended, we reconvened on the Whitehouse lawn for a concert featuring Joan Baez and other socially minded musicians. On September 24, 2005, the American voice was heard resoundingly. The American people's presence was felt.

Going into this event, I didn't really know what to expect. I had frivolously been trying to come up with a plan for my birthday weekend. Last year, I had gone to New York City and this year wanted to plan something as fun. It was my friend Jamie who initially told me about the march and the local group out of Evanston that was sponsoring a bus to get there. I hesitated to make a commitment to going for a couple of weeks, but soon decided that I needed to take part in this and that it would be the best thing I could do with my b-day weekend. I traveled on a fairly uncomfortable bus for 15 hours each way through the night making a few stops and eating the worse possible food. However, none of that mattered because I was with an amazing group of people who had come together from all across Chicago. I was amongst people from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds and ethnicity who were united for a cause. My friends Jamie, Cathy, and I also had the opportunity to visit both the WWII Memorial and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. We walked from end to end of our nations capital and at the end of the day knew there was no better way to have spent 8 hours in a day.

Music and Movies

I don't know about you but I had a great weekend. Saturday I went to the Hideout Block Party. Normally, I rarely attend these kind of events. I don't really care for large, open crowd kind of shindigs but the lineup and the fee were perfect. It was $10 bucks for a bunch of awesome bands. Although, the three that really stood out were Eleventh Dream Day, The Sam Roberts Band, and The DB's.

Eleventh Dream Day did alot of new material but rocked us like they are known to do. The way Rick Rizzo plays guitar shows just how much fun he has. They played a couple tunes they haven't even named yet. Following them was this group out of Canada called The Sam Roberts Band. I had no idea what to expect, never having heard of them before, but they are like a 70s/80s rock and roll band (hair and all). They do the kind of songs that could easily become anthems. They sing about social change and the betterment of society. I know, doesn't sound like a rock band but they are. Following them were The DB's who haven't played together since the early 80s. They still have that 80s new wave sound and their songs were all about screwed up love. Ha! They were also the only band that the Hideout crew aloud to do an encore. We all cheered for both Eleventh Dream Day and The Sam Roberts Band to do extra songs but The Hideout was trying to stick to a tight schedule. I guess b/c The DB's hadn't played live in so long, they let them do it. You can check out the whole lineup at The Hideout.

On Sunday, I went to see the funniest movie I've seen in a long time. The Baxter cracked me up. I almost never laugh out loud to the point of tears but Michele Williams is a gem in this flick. The writer/director/and lead Michael Showalter was great as "the baxter." Others in the cast were Paul Rudd and Elizabeth Banks. The infectious humor reminded me of the same kind of things I liked about Kissing Jessica Stein, though not a laugh out loud. I highly recommend this movie to everyone who has an ounce of a romantic nature and you can even take a quiz to see if you're a baxter here.

Next weekend, I'm flexing my activism muscle and marching on Washington. There's going to be a huge peace rally featuring Cindy Sheehan's group, bands, speakers, and folks from all over the country converging on D.C. I'll tell you all about it next week. Get a preview here.

An overly eventful weekend!

Friday was a big opening night for many of the Chicago area galleries and one of my favs was showing the work of Audrey Niffenegger. She's this amazing, prolific artist whose work is kind of mystical and dark and comic. The perfect mix of attributes. She places herself into almost all her pieces, a little self-indulgent, but her work is an expression of her inner thoughts and experiences, so why not? You have to see it to really appreciate it. The show is very thought provoking. In fact, it provoked me into buying two of the pieces. Going into debt for art seems like a noble thing to do. It's probably the closest I'll ever get to doing anything noble at all. Luckily, this particular gallery and I have a long standing relationship, so they "work" with me on payment arrangements. One must have connections when investing in art. Ha! My old friend Trish, who used to do their accounting and was my neighbor, introduced me to them and ever since they've been very accommodating.

I also got my bound MFA thesis back. I had no idea what it was going to look like. I thought, well, binding, what? like spiral bound? staples? a binder clip?! It's nothing brilliant but the lady in the liberal studies office handed me this book, like a real book-book, and I looked at it like . . . what is this? You want me to hold this? And then I realized it was my thesis! They made it look pretty cool. It's hard bound in dark green and has the thesis title and my name along the spine. I had my friend Sherri, who I work with, glue a postcard of one of Audrey's pix to the cover. If you're ever over, I'd be happy to show it off. Into poetry?

Here was the bad, very distressing, and drove me to drink (not that I need an excuse) part of the weekend. I have to give a little back story as I go into this. See, for the past few weeks, I had developed this wierd rash on both my arms and I couldn't figure out what was causing it. I thought it might be poison ivy, detergent, an allergy, something I ate, etc. Well, Saturday morning as I awoke and opened my weary eyes, my head was flat on the mattress and I saw these little things scurrying to and fro in front of my eyes. Getting the chills? I sat up and grabbed my glasses to get a better picture. The upper, right corner of the bed was crawling with little bugs! I jumped out of bed and began pulling back the sheets, slowly, so nothing suddenly jumped out. I sickeningly discovered my bed was infested with bed bugs. Did you're mother or father ever say to you "Don't let the bed bugs bite" as you went off to bed? Well, they really do bite. They're icky blood sucking vamps that feast on you while you sleep and then sneak away in the day. I can't believe I didn't know they were there for almost three weeks. I had to throw everything out. The bed (mattress, box spring), all my sheets, two pillows, my deco frame, and a bunch of old bags that were under the bed. I spent all of Saturday cleaning that room from floor to ceiling. On the upside (there is one, right?), I got rid of a lot of stuff I didn't really need. One the downside, I have no bed. I'm couching it for now. My sofa is pretty comfortable and I'm not ready to bring another bed into the house right now. I have to be sure the vamps are all gone. Anyway, I just agreed to buy art! Art/bed/art/bed . . . art!

By the time Sunday rolled around, I really needed to have some fun. Luckily, I had prearranged plans for the roller derby with my friends Charlotte and Linda. We were joined by a few others and had a blast. We began our outing at Arturo's, one of three 24/7 Mexican restaurants along Western Ave right next door to eachother. Margaritas, a haunted juke box, and the girls said the bathroom may have had a visitation too. I guess the toilet flushes itself.

After getting our buzz on, we meandered over to the Congress for the School Daze Showdown. It was The Fury vs. the Double Crossers and Smells Like Fish (aka The Manic Attackers) vs. Hell's Belles. Roller Derby is everything you might expect if you haven't been before. I hadn't but it made me think of being at a boxing match. Really loud. Groups of unusual people. Team signs and banners. Girls with kick ass names like Jackie Trip'her, Sadie Masochist, Ida Ho, Coco Bang Bang (loved her), Lucy Furr, Quiet Storm (loved her), Ana Mission (rocks!), etc. Booze of course, but really over priced. It's a vicious sport with lots of cattiness and camp, but what a riot. I highly recommend it as a start to the dreary work week.

Then, to top off the evening, we went to Margie's Candies for home-made ice cream creations! Mmmmm! I had a turtle sundae (3 scoops, hot fudge, caramel, nuts, whip, wafer, and a cherry). My friends all had other similar creations. As it happened, Margie's was my dinner Sunday night. Well, it makes sense to have a sundae on Sunday. I think it's okay, even required, to sub ice-cream for a sensible meal (aka my diet plan) on ocassion. Don't you?

An uneventful weekend

It's funny that I'm booked up next weekned but that this past weekend with its extra day, there were no advanced plans, so everything was on the fly. I saw two films: Junebug and The Constant Gardner. Both are worth a see. Junebug is your quirky family dramedy set mostly in North Carolina but with a Chicago connection in the story. This'll be particularly funny for people who know my friend Jennie Wood because she is from NC and this film will give everyone a little notion as to why she fled from there. There's also a great Henry Darger knock-off character, who plays an outsider artist that paints civil war pictures of soldiers with big dicks shooting bullets. Oh yeah!

The Constant Gardner is way more somber but a fantastic story about a diplomat (Ray Fiennes) and his activist wife (Rachel Weiz) living in Kenya. I won't give it all away but in the film's credits there is a dedication to "All the United Way workers and others who died giving a damn."

I also had Thai food with my friend Tamara followed by the best margarita's this side of Mexico. I went to the Lincoln Park Zoo and exhausted myself following my friend Christina and her six year old daughter around. Although, I also ran into an old friend who I thought was living in Germany but has since moved back to Chicago. Incidentally, I also have another friend from Chicago who is living in Germany still.

Saturday morning I had coffee with my downstairs neighbor while I was waiting for my wash to finish and met some of my other neighbors too. I found out one of them had been in the building as long as I have (5 years) and neither of us had seen the other before. The building isn't that big.

I've also been going through the Xena series. I'm up to season three. There's a lot more to that show than I ever realized. I hadn't really watched when it was on and I am surprised by the quality of the show.