[Doyi's Blog] Independent Study Project #1: Group ISP.

After the first blog post, I don't think I ever talked about my Independent Study Project (ISP). In that previous post, I wrote about our ISP class attending a 10 minute film at the Museum of Contemporary Arts in preparation for one of the two huge projects we were assigned.


Yep, not one but two!


Today I'm going to talk about the first one, which was a collaborative ISP.

Since it's a group project, everyone participated in it from beginning to end. We, the students, also had nearly complete control. Aside from the general prompt to create a video piece of any kind (e.g. live TV, film, whatever), everything was up to us: content, structure, editing--everything. It was tough at first. Having no particular plan or passion, the entire class initially struggled to create something out of nothing. We also had conflicting ideas as to what our video should be about. Some people wanted to tell a story, with characters and words, while others--including myself--wanted a more abstract, aesthetically focused product. Some wanted to portray a bloody Western cowboy duel; some, a psychedelic masterpiece. Some wanted to film in the CTA train. Others had no preference. However, finally, after several sessions of group brainstorming and whiteboard doodling, and we figured that we wanted to make a fantasy/mystery/thriller short.


Or, at least that's how I'd describe it. I think.

Why don't you watch it and determine for yourself?

As you can see, we're still in the final stages of the editing process. We've yet to title our film, and we're waiting on Christian to implement the audio. However, we're hoping the audience is still able to read the message/narrative that we're trying to deliver even at its foundational structure.


So...did you get it?!


Basically, the film's about a guy in an elevator, who experiences different, unusual situations at each floor of a building. He may be hallucinating, but he may be not.

On the first floor, the man enters a room full of black and white photos on the walls. At a closer view, you can tell they're all selfies. Coincidentally, four girls stand around taking selfies as well. After a few seconds of narcissistic self-indulgence, they notice the intruder and slowly approach him by taking his picture. Freaking out, the guy runs back to the elevator.

In the second floor, he is shown running in the middle of some empty warehouse. While uneasily observing the space, a seemingly female figure in black appears. Startled, the man reacts by looking away, only to find another behind him. These series of uncanny people popping up continues a few more times. Finally realizing they're gone, he runs the hell out of there.

On the third floor, the man walks into a long path, in the middle of two subways. Although he his walking, the short, rapid time jumps make it seem he is forced into the walkway's end. It stretches continuously, until we see a woman blocking his way. She, too, creepily and rigidly advances toward him. Stopping right in front, the woman suddenly laughs, cries, and stares. The scene ends by her opening her mouth.


Now it might become a little clearer on as to why I can't categorize our film.
Actually, no one really can.


One of our discussions during the scenario planning included the topic of "genre-breaking." Having virtually no bounds to what or how the film should be in terms of genre or concept, we had the freedom to add more ideas and try out anything we wanted. So, it's hard to say where it belongs. It's a narrative without words, horror without blood or death. It's even harder because there's too much ambiguity in the time and setting. Is each floor in the present, past, or future? Are they other worlds? Are these situations really happening for the protagonist, or are they not? These questions help complicate the film and its genre (or no genre), which is why we love our work.


I can't wait 'til Christian is finished with the music and sound effects! I really want to see the final result and how it would differ from our current, original version.


When he's done, I'll upload the finished film. I hope it turns out well!

Until then,

Doyi

Eyes Wide Open

When you know a thing, 
to know that you know it; 
and when you do not know a thing, 
to allow that you do not know it; 
this is true knowledge. 



Okay.  This post is basically all about how much I don't know.

Awesome kids at 826 continued: this week, in-school tutoring was akwardly canceled because it was report card day and they didn't have any school, which we didn't know until we went there.  But last week, I helped a girl with her fictional narrative, and it was great, she basically had the idea for the next best-selling YA series.  They were supposed to do a short story, but hers was more like a series of chapter books.  We spent a long time just talking about it and sorting out her ideas, and then we talked about her characters.  She had three female characters and one male, and she wanted to add two more male characters so the numbers would be even.  I said, "gotta have equality," and she said, "yes indeed."


Yesterday, I made beef!  With peppers!  And cheese.  I don't know what it was, it was supposed to be a skillet thing.  I was looking at recipes and I was like, I could totally make a philly cheesesteak minus the bread, so I bought little steak cubes and cooked them (after dropping about half of them on the kitchen floor) in a skillet.  Then I added the bell peppers, then the cheese.  I used some teriyaki sauce from the fridge (borrowed from an unsuspecting roommate, sorry not sorry), which actually was a good idea.  So yeah.  I'm not sure what it is, but it was good.   Behold, the snazziest thing I've made yet:

It was great.



It's been really interesting working with 826CHI.  Because we help students from Chicago Public Schools, I'm getting exposed to an aspect of the educational system that's sort of been a supplement to a big project we're working on in Core Course.  We started the project last week, when we were first introduced to CPS and Chicago's tangled mess of an education system.  We watched Waiting For Superman and talked with Jackson Potter, who's the staff coordinator for the Chicago Teachers Union.  The assignment we have that's taking over several weeks of core course is called Education Navigation.  Basically, we pretend we're the parent of an eighth grade student in Chicago, and we have to choose the best high school for them to go to.

Which is actually a lot, lot more complicated than it sounds.  Not only are there a wide range of choices, from neighborhood schools to selective enrollment and charter schools (which yes are completely different), but a ton of factors come into play, and they're not just about your kid's ACT score but about where you live and the socioeconomical issues of your elementary school.

Chicago is a very segregated city, and its schools reflect that.  A lot of minorities attend schools that are underfunded and have inadequate resources.  There have been a lot of attempts to even out demographics, from the tier system to shutting down schools and reopening them as charters, but those things haven't helped much.  The contrast in schools is incredible- some I've looked into for the assignment have little more than a quarter of their kids meeting or exceeding state standards in tests for reading or math, while some have almost 80%.  Some schools' ACT average is 29; others' is 16.  The type of school you go to has a big impact on the type of education you get, as well as your chances of graduating and going on to college.  There is a lot of competition to get into the higher performing schools, while the lower performing schools continue to be underresourced and closed down.

Basically, the type of school you go to can determine the rest of your life.  There are some kids who wake up at five in the morning and take a train and two buses to get to a school that will help them get to where they want in life, rather than attending their low-performing, lower-level neighborhood school.  Parents drive their kids, and bypass handfuls of schools that were closer but didn't meet their standards. To get into the top-performing ones, there's an application process, and then the rest of the available spaces are given away according to a lottery.  A lot of students hoping like crazy to get into an amazing school receive a number and sit in an auditorium with hundreds of other students who are hoping like crazy, and wait for a computerized system to randomly pick their number.  In Waiting for Superman, for one school, there were 40 slots that 700 families applied for.  A lot of students pin their future on a good school, and then don't get in.

It's crazy complicated.  Basically, it comes down to this: is education a right or a privledge?  How do we create equal access to it and make sure everyone has an equal opportunity and ability to attend good schools and get a good education?  The current system is failing a lot of students, and denying them the futures they deserve to have.

I've never really thought of myself as a privledged person.  I don't think anyone does, until they get older and start experiencing enough of the world to be able to compare themselves to others and understand that they way it is for them, isn't true for everyone.  But I never realized that there were places where people had to go through this for high school, where you have to look at dozens of options and worry about where exactly you live, and what are you going to do if you don't get into the school that will give you the best opportunity to have a better future.  I never went through that.  I was ignorant of anything like it.  When I was in eighth grade, I knew I was going to Golden High School, the public school in my hometown that my older sister, my friends, and all my neighbors were going to.  There was never much of a question about it, let alone of getting in.  The only other option was Lakewood High School, which is farther away and offers an IB program, which draws in a lot of top-performing students.  But I never really considered that an option.  I never asked what the average ACT score was at Golden, what the demographics were, what the dropout rate was.  I still don't know those statistics and I don't even know what website they're readily available on, or what resources there are to access them.   I never asked, will I get a good education at Golden? 

It's not that my parents didn't care about my siblings and I getting a decent education.  It's that we never had to worry about it.

Where we live is not a rough neighborhood.  Golden has its issues, but overall it's your typical white middle-class community, a community where education is valued and you have access to it and if you want to go a step higher you might go to a place like Lakewood, or to a private school like Mullen, but otherwise you're completely fine.

I had no idea it was like this, that it even could be like this for students.  And it's terrible.  In Waiting for Superman, one of the young students, a little girl, talked about her first choice for school and said, "If I get in, it gives me a better chance at life."  The last thing a student in elementary school needs is to be worrying about is her future.  If she wants to be a doctor, she should be able to be a doctor.  The fact that that she lives in a certain neighborhood or went to a certain school, should not keep her from doing what she wants.  Families pin their whole hopes, and kids their whole futures, on the lottery, on the chance that a ball with their number on it is called.  It's devastating to the paretns, because they understand the implications of not getting into a certain school. They understand that because luck wasn't on their side, their kid is now more likely to drop out, have a lower ACT score, or not go to college.

The whole situation makes me feel just helpless.  It's a huge mess, which is a huge understatement.  I don't think we'll ever get to the point where we completely level the field and every student has the exact same privledges and opportunities.  That's just not how life works.  There will always be someone who has more or less than you.  We can try, the big question is how, and it seems like a lot of what has been tried has just failed the people it needs to save.  And it's a huge injustice that the people who it affects, who suffer, are the elementary school kids with tiny backpacks and hands and pencils, who want to become doctors, who are the students I work with at 826CHI.  It's hard to think that the students I've tutored won't go on to be something, just because their number wasn't called, or their parents who struggle with English don't understand the application process.  It's also hard to think that I had a better chance, because of where I lived.  And I was never even aware of how lucky I was.

Everyone at Golden complains about the food and the classes and the teachers.  We ditch and cheat on tests and live for the weekend.  And we never realize, we get our books the first week of class; there are enough seats for everyone; our teachers care about our ACT scores.  We never realize that what we have is something that an eighth grader in Chicago would love to get.

This CPS assignment has really opened my eyes to the way things are for other people, to the injustice that plagues an entire city's education system.  Like I said, I never considered myself a privledged person.  Privledged people were the kids who lived in the Estates on Green Mountain, whose parents bought them cars for their sixteenth birthdays and traveled to Africa for spring break.  Those were the privledged.  And my family, who didn't have a lot of money but years' worth of hand-me-downs and vacations comprised of driving sixteen hours to Wisconsin in a packed van, were not.  But there are different levels of privilege, and I was privledged to grow up in a safe town where a good education was something that was so assured it was never even questioned.  It took coming to Chicago to make me realize that.

I just look at the kids who come through 826CHI, at the incredibly intelligent and creative students who I tutor, and hope that the educational system will put them on a track to accomplish the dreams they tell me about.  But the hard thing is, for a lot of them, it won't.  And I have no idea what to do about it.  I think the first step is just having awareness, which is what this assignment is creating.

Here's a picture from the Sullivan Gallery at the School of The Art Institute, which the Arts Seminar went to and which right now is showcasing undergraduate work.  It's from a room modeled like an old gymnasium, complete with creepy old pictures of the weird shoulder and jumping exercises people used to do.  The quote is kind of relevant, and true:

"The educator shall free the powers of each man and connect him with the rest of his life." 

Awareness has been a big thing for me lately.  A lot has happened with my ISP.  Last Thursday, I awkwardly carried Patrick K.'s military photos (which were in a huge binder that would not fit in my backpack) through the city to the National Veterans Art Museum, where I hung out for four hours in Patrick's office and scanned them to my computer, then tried and failed to figure out how to view the videos I've taken on my laptop.  I went to a little bakery in Pilsen beforehand and grabbed a bunch of different things and brought them for Patrick, just to kind of thank him for all the help he's given me.  He was excited about the free food and he'd pick something out and be like, "What's this?  It looks good" and I had no idea what I got.  The reason why I like that bakery is because you take a tray and tongs and pick out what you want, instead of pointing and telling someone, which means that I don't have to fail hard at trying to pronounce the Mexican words for heart-shaped cookies, other squarish cookies, donut-type things, and pastry-looking things.  So I had no idea what was in the bag.  But apparently it was all really good.

I had a meeting with Jason, my ISP instructor, and I completely missed it because Patrick and I spent forever trying to figure out how to get my videos to play on my laptop and everything we tried didn't work.  I felt so bad because the museum was preparing for a new exhibit that was opening on Veterans Day, and Patrick was crazy busy and he was already saying how he'd be there past midnight, and he helped me for two hours.  He was asking me all these questions about my laptop and the software it has, for editing and viewing videos and in general, and I didn't know anything.  While we were working he was playing punk rock music and kept asking me who the singer/band was and as always I had no idea.  He was like, "ok, guess who sings this, if you can't guess the whole project's off, I can't help you anymore" and of course I couldn't name anyone to save my life.  In the end, I had to leave with punk rock music in my head and still unable to watch my videos.  Hopefully, at some point I'll figure it out.  I kind of have to.  The good thing was I scanned all of Patrick K.'s photographs, and I now have all of them on my laptop, which feels a little creepy, but I guess if anything ever happens to his binders or his house, someone will have copies of them.


After that, Arts Seminar had a lecture at the School of the Art Institute at 6 and I left the museum at 5:20, so I got there late and had to find my way into the auditorium by myself.  I got to the building and it took forever to get in.  I was with two foreign guys who also said they were there for the lecture, but apparently there were two lectures that night so they left me and when a security guard confronted me, I couldn't even remember the name of the man who was speaking, and I was saved by another student.

I had no idea what I was doing.  That's actually been my attitude throughout this whole project (or, really, this whole semester).   Everything, from interviewing people to the microphone to the sound recorder to editing, is completely new, and I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing, I'm just kind of riding on faith and figuring it out and having Patrick come to my rescue.  Basically, I'm this meme:

Minus the coolio scarf.

Lesson of the day Thursday: I know nothing about Mexican baked goods, cameras, computers, editing software, 90's punk rock music, the military, photo scanners, film, and how to get into the School of the Art Institute.


But I've been a little successful!  On Sunday, I did an interview on my own for the first time.  I talked with Edgar, who was a supply sergeant with the 19th Psychological Operations Battalion from 1999-2006.  We met at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he was studying Art Education while he was in the reserves.  He was in his last year and really close to graduating in 2003, when he was deployed to Baghdad.  It was really nice to be on a college campus again.  I got there early and walked around to get footage of the campus/buildings for the film, and tried to get used to the weird looks I got from people passing by.

There was a lot of awkwardness with the beginning of the interview.  It's always super awkward when you first meet the person, and you're trying to figure out a good spot to talk.  Setting it up is the weirdest part, you're still strangers and the person is most self conscious then, and setting up a shot is not something I'm used to.  You have to take direction and ask them to move and sit a certain way and position the camera.  It was made especially awkward because the ACM gave me a tripod, and it was missing the base plate, which is the part of the tripod the camera attaches to.  I didn't realize it until that morning, when I went to practice so I didn't look like an idiot with Edgar.  It's partially my fault, I'd had it for several days and hadn't looked closely at it yet.  So I had to do the interview without it.  It was okay, we were in a cafeteria so there were tables and I brought a bunch of books I set the camera on, but there's something a little sad about that and I was awkwardly like "I don't have a tripod."
Then, we got all set up and I tried to turn on the sound recorder, and it was completely dead.  So we had to totally relocate near an outlet and Edgar was so nice about it but I was like, great.  Great.  And it slowly got dark throughout the interview, and there was no way to turn the lights on in the room we were in.  It looks completely fine on film, but you can tell.

So.  It wasn't completely smooth.  Afterwards, I texted Patrick and freaked out a little over the audio, I was like, I tried all these different ways to charge it and it didn't work and is it broken and it died when I was with Edgar and that was really embarrassing, and he was like, you just need to change the batteries.
I'm pretty sure Patrick thinks I live under a rock.  Or that I'm incompetent.

Making mistakes is completely ok, though.  Part of doing this whole thing is so that I learn, and once you make a mistake, you'll never make it again.  Now I know all the parts a tripod should have, and I won't go to another interview without extra AA batteries in my backpack.  And you kind of have to mess up to learn those things.
At the end of this, I will be a lot snazzier with cameras and editing and interviewing.  And that's part of the goal.

The other part of the goal is just learning more about the military in general, which is definitely happening too.  I know zero about it.  I'm like, what does it mean to be in reserve?  What's the difference between a batallion and a company?  I don't know what a SAW gunner is.  What does E-5 mean?  How/when do you know you're coming home to stay?  (Edgar got home on Mother's Day in 2006.  He said it was the best mother's day gift he's ever given to his mom :) )  A lot of what I'm asking in the interviews probably won't be in the film, sometimes it's more for my own understanding.  I still don't know a lot, but I've also learned a ton, considering where I was at a month ago.  All I can say is so far it's been really great getting to know these veterans, and to just hear their stories and learn about their art, and get a glimpse into a culture I'm not a part of.   I just hope the final film turns out okay.  I'm nervous about the editing because I've never edited anything in my life.  I mentioned this once, and Patrick said he has the utmost faith in me, which was really great.  I just really appreciate the fact that people have been willing to talk to me and be part of my project, and the least they deserve is a good end product.


On Veterans Day, I went to NVAM and attended the opening exhibit of 100 Faces of War Experience.  All the art they had before was replaced with 100 painted portraits of men and women who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, who were picked to statistically represent the American experience.  They were all created by one artist.  Besides the museum's permanent exhibit of The Things They Carried, which portrays the Vietnam war, the entire place was converted to a gallery and you can almost get lost among all the portraits.  Each subject had the chance to provide a written statement, and a lot of them talked about being a veteran and the type of questions society asks, and how they address those questions.  There were some poems, and one guy said, "I have nothing to say."  And that was it.  The amazing thing about it is there was such a wide variety of people and experiences; there were officers, medics, administrative workers, combat infantrymen, and a few soldiers who had died.  It captured the range of experiences that veterans have gone through, and it didn't focus on just those who were in combat or the important officers, but portrayed everything.

Okay.  So I'd known about the reception for a while, and I'd been really dreading it.  It's like the art reception at the alderman's office all over again.  Patrick invited me to come and I really wanted to go, but I knew that there would be a lot of people there and I am so bad at talking to people (which has already been established).  The artist was there and was going to speak, as well as some of the subjects, so I was like, okay, I'll just try to make it til then and I'll be good.  I spent the first hour there walking around and looking at all the portraits.  I'm glad I did that, because some of the written statements the subjects provided were really insightful, but looking back, I wish I'd made more of an effort to talk to some of the museum's staff, who were also milling around.  I also probably could've talked to some of the people whose portraits had been painted and were there.  I think Patrick expected me to do that.  But of course I chickened out.  They all brought their families and their cute little kids and were busy talking to each other.  Was there room for me to wedge between them and their wife and be like hey, I don't know you and you don't know me, but can I creep on your experiences?  Nope.  I timed getting there so I'd have a decent amount of time before the artist spoke, but not so much time I'd die.  I figured I could survive an hour, somehow float from getting there and saying hi to Patrick, to the speakers.

I did survive.  Everyone gathered after 5 in a room, and the director of the museum talked a little bit about the new exhibition and the museum, then introduced the artist, who basically thanked everyone, and that was it.  It took about ten minutes.  I was like, wait wait wait, whatever happened to the keynote speakers that were supposed to talk for a while and be my saviours?  I was back to the awkwardness.  But Edgar was there!  And he was standing alone, so I went and talked to him.  I saw him earlier but didn't go over to him because he was with other people.  Maybe that's my problem.  It's the group thing.  I can approach one person, even if they're a complete stranger, but if they have other people with them I'm like nope.  Because I know when they're with a group, I'll probably stand there awkwardly not saying anything, with their friends/family giving me looks like who are you, until they reach a pause in their conversation and are polite enough to notice me.  But when they're alone, and you approach them,  they have to acknowledge you immediately.  It's way easier to be like "Hey Edgar" than be like "Hey Edgar and your two random friends, let me barge in on your conversation."
So, lesson of that day: groups are scary.

Anyways.  A big reason why I went is because Patrick emailed a veteran who was in Vietnam, and by some miracle he was interested in my project.  His name is Maurice, and we agreed to meet at the reception when he mentioned he'd be there.  After the not-so-talkative speakers and hanging out with Edgar, I realized I should probably try to find Maurice but I had no idea what he looked like.  So I just wandered around until Patrick showed up with him, and introduced us.  I liked Maurice a lot, and I'm really happy he's going to do the project.  It'll also be really great to get a different perspective; both Edgar and Patrick came home in 2006, and their experiences have been relatively recent, whereas Maurice's was decades before I was even born.  What Edgar and Patrick have been living with, Maurice has for years and years.  He told me how he came back from Vietnam and literally didn't talk about it for thirty years.  He just kept it inside, for longer than I've been alive.

Edgar joined us at one point, and he and I had a bonding moment when he brought up the Avengers, and I mentioned the Avengers: Age of Ultron trailer and how I'm going to die when that movie comes out because I'm so excited about it.  We talked about the trailer and Joss Whedon, then we were both fangirling over the Avengers and Marvel in general.  Poor Maurice had to stand there and listen while Edgar and I talked about awesomeness.

Eventually one of the staff members of the museum came over and talked to us, and then she introduced me to the woman she was with, and told this woman about my documentary.  They were on one side of me, and Edgar and Maurice were on the other, and we were all standing in a little circle just hanging out and talking.  And it was really great.  I felt like I was a part of something.  I was like, look at me Patrick, I'm talking to people on my own.  Yeah.  In end, the night turned out pretty well.

Some pictures from the museum:

The poster for the exhibit:

I finally figured out how to rotate the picture so it's rightside up!  Look at me go.  Patrick would be proud.

I'm interviewing Edgar again on Saturday at NVAM, and hopefully it will not be as technically deficient.  I have more interviews next Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.  Basically, I've gotten two done, and I have five more to go before Thanksgiving break.  Five interviews in a week and a half, that are almost two hours each?  On top of my internship and the huge CPS project and another big project for seminar, both due within that week and a half?  Sure I'll survive.


Between my independent study project and the CPS project, I have learned about so many things, been introduced to different cultures and different ways of life that I had assumptions of before but no real knowledge of.  The whole semester has been like this, showing us the aspects of Chicago that are hidden behind the shine of the Bean and the skyline and the lakefront.  My eyes have been opened to how lucky I've been and how, in so many ways, my life has been easy, or at least, easier.  Should I feel bad about it?  A lot of people would say, you shouldn't feel bad about the good things that were handed to you.  Your responsibility is just to recognize that others weren't given those things, and then do something about it.  But no one tells you what exactly to do.  I'm realizing how lucky I've been that I haven't had to go through some of the things Patrick K. and Edgar have experienced, that I haven't had to live somewhere where I got so used to the fact that I could die at any moment it no longer bothered me. And I've been lucky to live in a place where I didn't need to worry about getting a good education.  But then I'm not sure what to do with this knowledge, except share it.  Maybe the more people who know, the more people whose eyes are also opened, the better a solution we can come up with.  For now, I feel like all I can do is acknowledge that I don't know anything about it, and then learn.


- Laura

Until We Grow Up

Until we grow up, 
we'll be here, 
swinging in the air, 
laughing at the skies.


This post's quote is from a poem that a student wrote at a workshop for 826CHI, that was put on an 826 postcard. They were giving out postcards at an event I went to awhile ago, and I picked up this one because I liked the quote.  It doesn't have much to do with this post, but whatever.  I loved swinging when I was younger (and I still do, and I get so mad when I babysit and we go to the park and I have to push the kids and they yell at me when I try to swing myself) and I feel like the words just remind you what it's like to be a kid again, how you used to look at the world, when stuff like swinging was the best thing in the world and everything was just… free and new.

Now that 826CHI has officially moved into their new space, stuff is happening!  Like in-school and after-school tutoring.  I've had some great and weird and not-so-great experiences with the students.  Every kid I ineract with is in elementary school, and I feel like adults really underestimate young kids' concept of the world.  They say things that are so funny, or so deep.

I do in-school tutoring once a week, and it's great because we work with the same group of kids, and they're starting to recognize us and become familiar and comfortable with us.  Last week I had a student see me, skip over, say "see you next week!" at the end and skip away.  I'd get into conversations with the students about Halloween and fall and school.  One girl was telling me about a field trip that's in the spring that she's already excited about because there's a spring dance that goes with it, but it's at night and she was saying her mom probably won't let her go, and when I asked why, she said, "My mom doesn't trust me."

Another fourth-grade student's personal narrative involved a bad decision where he decided to cut his own hair at his friend's house (we've all been there) and his mom yelled at him.  We were talking about it, and he had a really good line about wishing he could go back and fix it.  I said, "Yeah, a lot of people wish that they could go back and change things."  And he said, "A lot of people in jail- I mean, I'm not saying that I'll end up in jail- but a lot of people who are in jail wish they could go back and change things."

That was so deep.  And so perceptive.  I couldn't even say anything for a couple of seconds.  I think kids understand a lot more of this world than we give them credit for.

I also had a pretty sassy girl and her younger brother last week for after-school tutoring.  She kept trying to make me do her homework for her, constantly complained, refused to follow the rules, and was one of those annoying kids who, when you play games with them, keep making subtle rule changes so they win, and when you try to apply those changes to other players, they say, "That's against the rules."  Her brother was the exact opposite: sweet, a good listener.  They kept fighting like siblings do, I totally should've sat in between them, and at one point the girl was bugging her brother and teasing him, and he said, "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger."  It was great.  I bet his mom told him to say that.

Also last week at 826, I had to drive my boss's car to in-school tutoring.  The staff member who usually takes another intern and I to the elementary school we go to each week was gone, and we asked our boss about it.  She said she'd either give us a ride or let us take her car.  And of course since she's the boss, she neded up being busy and handed me the keys.
If you have never had to drive your boss's car through the streets of a big city, you've never known true fear.
The other intern kept telling me what a great job I did when we got back, but I'm pretty sure we almost died, especially when I tried to turn into the alleyway behind 826 and there was another car coming right towards us, and to keep from crashing into them I pulled back out into the street and ended up on the wrong side of the road facing the wrong way.  But we survived.  And I managed not to crash in the alley.


Anyways.  Food. Cooking.  I'm still cooking a lot of pasta, and I'm starting to get sick of it, something I didn't realize until about a week ago.  My goal for November is to actually do some of the recipes I look at that I always think I should totally do that and then never do.  But I'm starting to incorporate veggies more, and last weekend I felt fancy when I cooked asparagus (and then I left the rest of it in the fridge, and when I pulled it out today there was brown juice at the bottom of the bag.  Of course my fanciness couldn't last).  I still haven't found my ground meat, but I have chicken nuggets that are the best thing in the world because I just put like eight of them in the microwave when I'm really hungry, and I don't have to put much effort into making something that's filling.

Also, two Fridays ago (obviously I've been putting this off) for core course, we spent the day in Pilsen. We all went to Simone's, a bar/restaurant, and met the owner.  It was really great, he gave us free coffee and talked about what it was like to be the owner, and what impact the bar has had on the neighborhood.  The cool thing about the restaurant is that everything's recylced material; the stools are partially made from old door frames, the backs of the booths are made from seat belts, there are old pinball machines that decorate the walls, and there are chandeliers that look like art pieces.  If you want to go to an awesome place in Pilsen for lunch or for a weekend night, go there.

In the afternoon, we went to Blue 1647, which is a local technology innovation center.  I was kind of confused when I was there, and still kind of confused when I left, but I think basically, it's a space for several entrepreneurships and businesses, as well as a space that's open 24/7 to members to come and hang out, learn, and work on their projects.  It has a 3D printer and offers workshops and classes on technology, such as programming and creating apps.  It was a really cool place overall, but what really struck me was the artwork that was there.  Here are some coolio pictures:

An art piece that was there 

Another art piece

The walls in the main room were painted!  It was beautiful.

These are tiny robots (that don't actually move on their own but were still cool) that were created from the 3D printer that Blue 1647 had.  They came out looking exactly like that; no assembly required.

After that, we went to the Chicago Art Department, which was also in Pilsen, and which is an art gallery and residency for artists.  We were given a tour of this too, and shown some of the work spaces upstairs.  Some photos of that:

Real bananas were part of one piece, just sitting on the floor.  It was kind of weird.

This piece was really interesting; the words are spelled out of teeth.  Not real teeth, which is what we thought at first, but molds of teeth.  Creepy, and ironic, given the sentence.  I'm not sure if sanity includes making sentences out of teeth.

A close up of the teeth molds

A painting of the white house on fire

Also, some good advice:

Basically, to sum up the day, Pilsen has a ton of coolio things for everyone, whether you love art, technology, or food.  It's just an awesome place to live and has so many hidden resources, and a big part of our Core Course education is learning asset mapping, and how to evaluate a neighborhood based on its assets rather than its issues; rather than looking at Pilsen as a place that still has a lot of cleaning up to do, we're exploring the huge range of things it has to offer.



The next Friday, we came back to Pilsen in the afternoon and learned how to do makeup/paint faces for the upcoming Day of the Dead celebration and parade, which we were volunteering for on November 1st.  The woman who taught us explained how the Day of the Dead and a lot of the traditions surrounding it are not only meant to remember the dead and celebrate their lives, but to celebrate death itself too.  They treat death as just another step, and believe that dying gives new life to something else.  The sugar skulls that people create and decorate are meant to symbolize, when they're eaten, the dead providing nourishment for the living.
Here's an example (taken off the internet because I didn't take any of my own pictures) of what the end result of our painted face-skulls looked like:

Except that ours were a little less coolio and a lot simpler.

Then we went to the National Museum of Mexican Art, which is literally a couple blocks away from where we live, and we were given a tour of their exhibit of Day of the Dead altars, which were incredibly varied and detailed.  I thought, in my ignorance of Mexican culture, that they would all basically be the same, but the tour guide explained how, just as each person is unique, each altar is unique.  Each one is meant to incoporate who the person was, and showcase their favorite things.  Some of the altars had food, some had wine, some had art and flowers.  Here are pictures of some of them, as well as some art at the museum:

Sorry, these would look a lot better if they weren't sideways but I don't know how to fix it.

This altar had pictures of people with their faces replaced with skulls.

On November first, we all dragged ourselves out of bed and went to Dvorak Park, where we took the awesome face-smearing skills we learned and painted people's faces for a couple of hours.  It was a really interesting experience for me.  I was expecting most of the people who came through to be kids, but I painted mostly adult's faces.  A lot of them had never done it before but thought it was cool, and were nervous about it.  I was like, I'm nervous about painting your face and getting stuff in your hair and smearing your pretty lipstick and having to deal with your beard, but since you're nervous I won't show it.  I learned that I could never be a makeup artist; sitting so close to a stranger and touching their face and feeling their breath was really uncomfortable.  It was kind of nice though, to sit and talk with people for the two minutes they were in front of me.  It was probably evenly split between people from the neighborhood and people from other neighborhoods or tourists.  There were so many different people who came through, which I was not expecting.  One girl told me she'd heard about it a while ago, and it'd been on her bucket list to do in Chicago.  There were a couple of adults who didn't speak English at all, and their teenage children hung around while I painted so they could tell their mom what I was saying.  A kid came whose face was still stained green from the zombie makeup he wore for Trick-or-Treating the night before.  I thought I'd be pretty okay with the kids, since I've been working with 826CHI, but helping a seven year old with their personal narrative and trying to paint their face while they lean away from you and keep looking at their parents and move their mouths right when you really need them to keep still, are completely different things.  But overall, it was fun.  The celebration united, not the neighborhood, but the neighborhood with a lot of people who were from other places, which I was not expecting at all, and that was great.

Last week I made pretty good progress on my ISP.  I talked to an art therapist, and I'm going to interview her later in November.  Patrick showed me how to use his sound equipment, which includes a fancy mini microphone that you can clip to people's shirts, and a fancy recorder, and now I'm terrified of losing any of it.  And last Thursday, I interviewed my first veteran! It was Patrick K., the veteran who I met at the art reception where I had to network and talk to people, and whose email I walked away with.  He lives out in the suburbs, and instead of having to take three trains and a taxi for three and a half hours to get to him, by some miracle Patrick was willing and able to drive me, which took an hour.
Even though it was only an hour away, the drive was so nice.  It was nice to get out of the city, to just take a short break.  Patrick K. lives in this awesome house that he received from a program (I completely forgot the name of it) that provides housing for veterans.  We talked for two hours, then we all hung out for a little bit and talked some more, off-camera, afterwards.
I'm totally willing to admit that I didn't do a very good job with the beginning of the interview.  I was super nervous, for multiple reasons.  It's one thing to talk about something, and another thing to actually do it, and I've never done professional interviews like this.  Plus I'm pretty bad at talking to people at first.  Like, after a while I start to relax, but it often starts off kind of awkwardly.  Patrick K. talked about what he did and why he joined the Marines; he was in the infantry in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and he wanted to be in combat partially because of his grandfather, who was in World War II, and it was 9/11 that really made him want to join up.  At the beginning, he'd talk and then pause, and I'd just move on to the next question, when I could've asked something about what he said, which would've been better.  I just kind of read off my list of questions when I should've been engaged in the conversation more.  When he talked about what he did, instead of being like, "Okay.  So what did you do that you're most proud of?" I should've asked him to go into more details, that kind of thing.  Patrick helped out a little with the very beginning of the interview, and he was so much better at it, so much more casual and relaxed.  But I had to remind myself that Patrick did his thesis in grad school on an hour-long documentary, and this was the very first time I'd done this, ever.

I'm so glad Patrick was there.  He won't be with me for every interview; most of them I have to do alone, but now that I've seen how it all goes, I'm okay with that.  He showed me how to situate the person you're interviewing, how to take the background and lighting into account, and to sit really close to the camera, so when the person's talking to you and they look at you, it seems like they're looking into the camera too, and then on film it seems like they're talking to the audience.  He taught me to pause the audio recording and the camera after a couple of questions, then start them up again, so when I go to edit the film, I'll already have it in chunks, rather than face a two-hour long recording.  He told me it's best to send the person examples of what I'll be asking so they'll have an idea of how the interview will go, and they'll be more relaxed about it.  But I'm also glad he was there because he was kind of a bridge between me and Patrick K.  Patrick and Patrick K. were instant bros.  I think partly because they share the same name, but also partly because they're both veterans.  They were involved in different wars and Patrick was in the air force while Patrick K. was a Marine, but they had a ton of things in common, and they'd talk about the pranks they pulled and all the military acronyms.  I think having Patrick there made Patrick K. more relaxed, like hey, here's someone who can totally relate to what I'm saying, and knows where I'm coming from.  And then there was me.  I had no idea what I was doing, which basically sums up my project.

Patrick K. was so nice.  I asked if he had any photographs to show me, and he brought out this year-book type thing as well as a whole album from his deployment. I asked if he wanted to pick some photos out, and he was like, "You can take the whole thing."  I'm scanning the photos and then bringing it back, of course.  With each veteran I'm asking for a follow-up interview, so at some point I'm going back to his house.  But now I have some random guy's personal military photos sitting on my desk, which I'm also really afraid of losing.

The great thing is he liked my questions!  He said after the whole thing was over, that he was worried that I'd want to know about "the gritty stuff," and he was all prepared to tell me, "I can't answer that question."  He was really glad I'd stayed away from those things.  And I was glad he appreciated it.  The last thing I wanted was to talk about things that would be hard for him.  Since I'm talking to combat veterans, it's basically a given that they have PTSD, and I wanted to be respectful of their experiences.  I talked to Patrick about it on the ride over, that it was what I was most nervous about.  I didn't want to say or do anything wrong, and he said, "The fact that you're nervous about it says a lot.  You're aware of their situation compared to what you want to know.  You'll be fine.  It's the ignorant people, the people who aren't even aware that there is something they could say that would upset someone in this situation, who ask the wrong thing."  It was all good, in the end.

But yeah… I think we're all excited to continue the conversation.  I don't know when that'll happen, and I have no idea who my other two veterans are going to be.  Which is really stressful.  But at least things are happening, and off to a good start.  Yay.

This ISP is really opening my eyes to the military and what that's like.  It seems like its own world, and I'm totally an outsider, trying to understand, but I never completely will, I can only ever try.
Sometimes I wish I was like the kids I work with at 826, little again, with no sense (hopefully) of the hardships of the world (unless you're the amazing kid who recognizes that jail is full of regrets), in a place where you can believe swinging is flying, where you have an hour of homework at most and go home to your family every day after 3pm.  Sometimes I'm glad I've grown up, that now I have the capacity to understand things that are completely beyond me, that I can have a mature conversation with a stranger and try to take their experience and their art and make sense of it.  I'm not sure which place is better.  But things like learning about Mexican culture, and exploring Pilsen, and talking to Patrick K., has made me feel like a kid again in that way where everything is new and amazing and you just take in wide-eyed the fact that observing it maybe makes you a part of it.  That at least, you've become aware of it, and your world has now expanded.  Maybe we grow up when we realize our world will always continue to expand, and we come to be not only okay with it, but to love it.


- Laura