My Chicago

All the arms we need are for hugging. 


I can't believe it's almost been a month since I last made a post.  I've really missed blogging and I really wish I'd been able to do one or two instead of none, but life happened.  Things got really crazy around Thanksgiving, and they've been really crazy since.  Also, I've been putting this off because I've been really needing to talk about my ISP and there is so much to talk about.  This will probably be super long, so bear with me.

I made fancy asparagus a couple weeks ago!  I cooked it with garlic and lemon juice and cheese.  It was actually really easy, I should cook stuff like this more often.  Look at my awesome asparagus!

I have not cooked anything like this since then.  But that's okay.


Anyways.  Awesome/weird things said to me by the students at 826:
"Go back to college."
"No more burritos for you."
"You really should read the bible, you know."
"You're probably a sinner.  But that's okay, because we all are.  And that's okay too because God forgives us for our sins."
"You look 19…80.  Like you were born in 1980."
"You don't use gmail?  What are you from, the sixties?"
"What do you think is wrong with me?  Don't answer that question."

Things they've said in their stories:
"The only conflict is who in the world will be my boyfriend."
"Sometimes you are going to have to be heartbroken."
"King George was a cheap-o."

Just wanted to share how awesome the kids at 826 are.

It was interesting, though.  Two of the kids I've worked with at after-school tutoring in the past couple weeeks were from military families, and their stories, out of the ones I've read, were the most violent and weapons-focused.  For the whole semester, the students have been working on coming up with an imaginary land, and they've been creating titles, rules, animals, weather, and people.  These two kids, who were not related, had lands that were all about weapons.  They had an admiration for guns and tanks and bombs and they'd look up pictures of them on the internet and show me, and they were so excited about them.  They had older brothers who were in the military, and they wanted to grow up to be just like them.  One of the students had it all figured out, he knew where he was going to go to high school and what exactly he wanted to get into.  It was kind of concerning.  Their conception of weaponry wasn't healthy, I think.  They didn't seem to understand the consequences of them.  Like, they were so wrapped up in what the weapons did, and that they wanted to fire them, they couldn't even grasp the fact that they kill people.  Our misconception of the military and warfare that's in our society starts when we're so young.  It was really weird, since I've been talking to veterans, to have these kids think warfare is just the coolest thing in the world, because it is so not.  It was just hard to see.  But it wasn't my place to even attempt to try to change their minds, so I just did my job and focused on helping them make the best story out of it, minus some of the violence.


A couple weeks ago, for Core Course, I took a break from little kids and helped high school kids instead.  As sort of a capstone for our Education Navigation assignment about the Chicago Public Schools system, we went to the University of Chicago and worked with high school seniors to figure out how to calculate how much college will cost, and to lead a discussion about college in general.  There were two hundred students there, apparently, who were applying to ACM schools, and they had each of us sitting at a table with a group of students.  First we did a workshop on financial aid, then the ACM students were supposed to lead an affirmative inquiry activity, but it turned out to be more of a Q&A session on what college is really like than the activity.
I was supposed to be paired with another student, but there were more tables and more groups than they originally thought and I ended up being by myself, with 7-8 high schoolers.  At first I was kind of freaked out.  It's already been established that: 1) I'm not good at talking to people    2) groups are scary.
But I did okay!  I hated the awkward introductions, but it was really great to get to just hang out with the group and talk about college.  After the first couple of awkward questions, everyone relaxed and it became more of a conversation.  We talked about the food, homework, homesickness, do college kids really sleep, is it actually fun and not just all work, how to make friends.  In the end it was actually awesome.  I really love Knox, it's the perfect school for me, so I like talking about it, and what the students asked about made me remember what it was like for me four years ago, when I put off applying for college because I didn't want to think about leaving home.  I was terrified about making friends and being homesick.  It was great to sort of help ease those fears for these students.  The majority of them were first-generation college students too, so their parents couldn't help.  I could see myself in them, how I was four years ago.  It was recent enough that I can still relate to them.

Yeah, it turned out to be completely fine and fun.  At the end, one girl asked me for my contact information, because she had some friends who wanted to apply to Knox and she wanted to give them my email so they could ask more.  I haven't gotten any emails, which I expected, but the fact that she asked me meant a lot to me.  That actually made me really happy! I didn't screw up.  Yay.  I can handle groups now maybe.


The weekend after Thanksgiving, my brother came back with me to Chicago, and it was one of the best weekends I've had on the program.  He goes to school in Portland, Oregon, and what he knows of Chicago is through the touristy, short vacations we'd take growing up, and he kept saying how excited he was to see the city through my eyes, and to see what I've been doing for the past fourteen weeks.
The first day he was here, Saturday, we literally rode seven trains.  We went up to NVAM, and it was so cool because Maurice's artwork is in the front hall, in the entrance to the museum, and it was the coolest thing in the world to be able to say I knew the artist and I talked to him and I knew the personal story of each piece.  It was awesome.  And NVAM has a room that has their permanent exhibit of the Vietnam War, and when we were in there I talked a lot about Maurice and what he's been through.  The other exhibit, 100 Faces of War Experience, is made up of 100 portraits supplemented by written statements the veterans provided.  Since there was 100 of them and there's all that writing, I thought Justin would go through it pretty quickly, because he's never really liked museums much and he doesn't do a lot of reading.  I could tell he mostly came to the museum to see what I've been doing and because he knew it mattered to me.  But when we were walking through 100 faces, after the first couple, he slowed down and he started really looking at them.  He actually went through and really took the time to read the written statements, and we didn't say anything, just walked.  I got bored since I've been there so many times, and I thought he'd be the bored one.  But it was cool.

I also took him to 826CHI, and showed him the awesome secret agent supply store that's in the front of the space, then showed him the intern room and where we did all the tutoring.  And we ate at Filter, this super hipster coffee shop on Milwaukee a couple blocks away from 826, and went and saw Mockingjay downtown and walked around Millenium Park that night.  I took him to Chinatown and to Los Comales in Pilsen the next day.  It was great because Justin saw Chicago's neighborhoods instead of just downtown.  He also saw how much I ride public transportation and how exhausting it is and I laughed at him when he fell as the train moved the first couple times.

We also went to the field museum, which I actually haven't been to yet, because they have their Vodou exhibit, and Justin went to New Orleans last spring break and I knew as soon as I saw the ads he'd want to go.  That was really cool for him too.  I felt bad because I didn't think he'd want to spend too much time in the museum so we didn't get there until 2, but he spent forever in the Vodou exhibit, and he said that he could've spent the whole day in there.  I didn't realize he liked walking around and looking at things so much, because he didn't used to.  Yeah, I felt so bad, we had to leave the exhibit before he was done cause we'd paid for general admission, which includes a 3D movie, and the movie was starting.  We saw Tiny Giants!  It was the cutest movie ever!  It was about a little chipmunk who's trying to get acorns for the winter, and his store gets stolen and he almost dies but he doesn't.  It was the cutest movie I've ever seen.  And the 3D glasses were awesome.  Here's us in our glasses:

Some pictures from the Vodou exhibit:

Yeah… it was just awesome to show him everything, to take him to NVAM and 826 and the movie theater downtown, the things that have been my life for the past couple months, and to show him another side of Chicago.

Now that it's almost the end of the program, everyone's asking me if I like Chicago and if I'll come back.  I didn't mean to fall in love with the city, but I really did, and I didn't realize that until Justin came to visit, and in the weeks beforehand I was thinking of all the awesome things we could do, and what I could show him from the city and I was so excited.  I really love Chicago.  I love walking around downtown at night and all the different neighborhoods, and Millenium Park and how much people want to help each other out here, and the trains and getting around by myself.  I've just started to figure out how to get places and I know my way downtown now, and it's an awesome feeling.  I actually really don't want to leave.  I love it here.  My boyfriend, who I'm planning on moving in with after graduation, hates big cities.  But he's visiting at the end of the semester!  All I have to do is make him fall in love with Chicago too.  But, at this point, all I know is someday, somehow, I really really want to be here again.


Anyways.  I'm not leaving yet.  So.  ISP.  In my last post, I'd met Maurice at NVAM during the Veterans Day opening art reception, and I'd talked to Edgar without a tripod and didn't know the audio recorder just needs a change of batteries.  Since then, I've had four more interviews; I interviewed Edgar at NVAM, talked to Maurice twice, and interviewed an art therapist, Suellen.  My life has changed, in so many ways, through the all the knowledge I've gained about the military, what it's like to be a veteran and the struggles they go through, how art helps heal from trauma, how our nation is not there for veterans, and how to make a documentary.  Basically these past couple weeks have been a crash course in documentary filmmaking, courtesy of Patrick Putze and a billion Final Cut Pro tutorials, and between what was said during the interviews and dealing with all the technical schizz with the video and the editing, this project has been really, really overwhelming.  It kind of took over my life.

It's been incredibly stressful.  But what I'm learning makes it worth it.  Out of anything this project has made me realize that filmmaking is what I really want to do, and it's one of those things where you really have to do it in order to learn it.  I was never that interested in the editing aspect, but now I realize how important it is to experience that as a screenwriter.  I've learned a lot about the little things, and it always felt like there was one thing that went wrong, but then I never made that mistake again.  For Edgar's second interview, I forgot to press record for the first three minutes.  What he said during that won't be in the film, he just talked about the training process because I was curious, but it was really embarrassing anyways.  Then my memory card ran out of space and for a while I couldn't figure out what the icon was saying and I went up to Edgar and I was like "is that the memory card?" He was probably like, wow.  But I had extra memory cards!  So I redeemed myself.

During Maurice's first interview, I learned that the sun is evil and we had to shift around as the interview went on, and for most of it his face is in shadow and kind of dark, and other times sunlight was right on him.  Which makes the footage really meh.  Also, we sat right next to vending machines, and I didn't realize until I listened to the audio afterward that you can totally hear them throughout the whole thing, they're a constant hum in the background.
People who watch this film who know anything about filmmaking will probably cringe a lot.  But that's okay.

I've also learned a lot about people, in general.  You can hear it in their voices in the audio when the veterans talk about things that are hard for them.  They sigh, and when they talk again, their voice has changed, it's deeper, gruffer, it's weighed down.  And their bodies weigh down too, they slouch more.  You can see the change in their face.  And whenever they choked up or struggled with what to say, they'd touch their hair or their face or scratch their head, as if their bodies were trying to make up for the loss of words, as if it was still trying to do something.

Also, memory is crazy.  There were things I thought they said, and then listening to the audio afterward, I realized they never said it at all, or if they had it sometimes wasn't in the same way I thought they did.  It showed me how much our mind makes things up, and substitutes what we think for the things people say, and we believe it's what happened.  Going through the audio and realizing Edgar never said something I thought he did was kind of shocking.


My second interview with Edgar was at NVAM.  To interview him where the 100 Faces is would've been cool since he was in Iraq, but there was this teen council thing going on, and we had to sit as far away as possible from it, in the The Things They Carried room.  It was the first time I was interviewing someone the second time, and we were both so much more relaxed and comfortable.  It went really, really well.  There were two things that he talked about, though, that hit hard.  The interview ended up being really hard to go through, emotionally.

In his first interview, Edgar brought up the fact that he's gay.  I'd asked him if he would go back and change anything, and after answering that question he said that he hardest thing he went through in the military, out of everything, was having to serve under Don't Ask, Don't Tell.  He said that being gay and being in the military were two conflicting things and he felt like they negated each other, and it's something he still really struggles with.

One of my questions for the second interview was why exactly he felt like they negated each other.  I wanted to understand that.  He said how having to pretend that you're not gay, or at least not acknowledging his sexuality, was an exhausting charade that really wore him down.  You basically have to live a lie, you have to be careful of what you say and who you say it to, and you can never be yourself.  He said he feels like they negated each other because whenever someone would tell him he did a good job, or that he was a good soldier, he'd think, would you say that to me if you knew I was gay? And he felt like they probably wouldn't.  His sexuality undercut everything, made him feel like everything he recieved he didn't deserve because it wasn't completely him who did it.

The first interview, he'd told me how he was in the reserves during college, and in his senior year he got the call to go to Baghdad.  He had to quit all his classes and change everything, a few semesters away from graduation.  People were telling him he didn't have to go, that he should stay here and finish school, and he was like, no, I'm going to do it, I'm the one who signed my name on the dotted line, I took the risk and I can't imagine someone else going over there in my place.  He had a couple friends who knew he's gay, and they were like, "Just tell them you're gay, then you don't have to go," but that was the last thing Edgar wanted to do.

This time, he brought that up again, and he said that he went not only because there was no way he wasn't going to and it was his burden to bear, but that part of the reason was also because he hadn't come out to his family yet, and there was no way that he would be like "Hey mom and dad, I was dishonorably discharged from the military because, guess what, I'm gay!  Surprise!"  So he went, and he came out to his parents a couple years after he came back.

Part of the reason, he said, that he went and didn't say anything about his sexuality was because he was afraid of what his parents would think.  Edgar literally told me that he was more afraid of what his family would think of the fact that he's gay,  than he was of getting blown up in Iraq.  "It was a little less scary," he said.  "Well, a whole lot less."

We moved on in the interview because I asked him when he did come out to his family, and we talked about that.  But what he said just floored me.  I couldn't stop thinking about it.  It's been over three weeks, and I still can't really get over that.  I'll never forget that.  I just can't… there has never been something that I've been so afraid to tell my parents, that I was more okay with dying than saying it.  And it's not something you can change.  It's an integral part to yoursef, it's who you are.  I can't even begin to imagine what it's like to have to suppress who you are like that, to hate it and deny it because of other people's view of it.  It is so terrible that we live in the kind of society where Edgar was more afraid of telling his parents who he is, than of what he was facing in Iraq.  And on the parent's side… that would kill me, if I were a parent, and I found out that my son was more okay with getting blown up than telling me something.  I would want my kids to be able to come to me and tell me anything.  Especially before they left for their deployment.

That affected me a lot.  Then I asked him at the end of the interview if there was anything else he wanted to talk about.  He was like, "I could talk about the politics for hours," and I was like, "It's okay, you can say whatever, it's good" and he said, that some of the politcs he'd discussed "is representative of the whole thing, of the massive disconnect between how we say we value our troops and our action."  He went on to tell me how he really believes that people are really ignorant about what's going on in the world, and the issues veterans are facing.  A lot of people assume that veterans are okay when they come home and if they're not, that they'll get over it in the next couple years and be fine, but in reality, they deal with things for their whole lives, and they're not fine.

He talked about the statistic- which is a true statistic- that twenty-two veterans commit suicide every day, and how no one knows about it or acknowledges that we send people overseas and they come home, and they're still dying.  He started telling me about a friend of his who he met through NVAM, who went to Afghanistan twice and was a great guy and when he was in Chicago in 2012, Edgar took him about to lunch and just really liked being around him, and this man took his own life in September.  It wasn't until I was listening to the audio afterward that I realized that was a couple months ago.  Edgar was really upset, he said how disgusted he is with the whole "support the troops" thing, because we have all this money and all this support when we send people overseas, but then that disappears when they come home.  We're like, great, you survived and you're home now, you're a hero, thank you for your service.  And we leave it at that.  We think it's fine, and it's not fine.  They need a lot of help, and we do not provide them that, because we refuse to believe that anything terrible happens in this country and we shield ourselves from what really goes on.  He hates the supposed support and the concerts and the events.  "What real, tangible effect does that have?" he said.  "What sort of substantial change?  Nothing.  It does nothing."

I came away from that interview just feeling, like, whoa.  I had absolutely no idea twenty-two veterans commit suicide every day.  I didn't realize how little support there is when they come back home, that people know about PTSD and the transition into civilian society again, but they don't realize that it can still be a struggle five, ten, fifty years later, that the transition is never complete and PTSD isn't something you completely heal from.  All I knew was that now I knew, and other people should too.



I also talked to an art therapist, Suellen.  When I started the project I originally didn't have any questions about art therapy and I didn't even think of that side of it, and then Patrick Putze was like "I'm going to set you up with an art therapist" and I was just like, okay.
I went to Andersonville, I think.  I'm still not entirely sure where her office was, it was in a completely new neighborhood.  When we left afterwards I was like, "Where are we?"  And I think Suellen said Andersonville?  Hopefully that's an actual neighborhood.
Suellen was so nice!  We were texting before I got there because we were both going to be late, and she was like "do you want a coffee?" and I was like "a coffee would be awesome" but when she showed up she only had one and it was hers.  Throughout the interview I kept thinking about it, I was like, that question totally sounded like she was offering to buy me coffee, right?  Why didn't she?  Did she see my reply and be like, whoa, I'm not buying you anything?  Are my social skills really that bad that I misinterpreted her and now it's awkward?  But then at the end she looked at her phone and she said, "Oh, I didn't see your text."  She also gave me a ride to a bus stop so I could take an express bus and be less late to my ISP class.

Going in to her interview, I was like, "all right this interview will go well, we'll talk about how art helps veterans and about happy things" and then it was one of the hardest interviews I've had.  I didn't realize how therapeutic art can be for veterans and how much it provides communication between them and civilians.  Art can tell you what happened when words aren't enough.  We can get a sense of how they feel by looking at their productions of it.

Suellen talked about how incredibly important it is that we hear these stories.  It's our military that carries the truth, who know what really goes on, and we have to listen, because what they have to say involves all of us and by helping veterans, we help ourselves.  As a society, she said, the least we can do is try to understand them and listen.  We owe them the support they deserve, we owe so much.

Suellen was very emotional and passionate throughout her interview, but when I asked what the role of veteran art is in society, she broke down and cried.  We had to stop filming, because she asked to stop.  I was kind of shocked?  I didn't know what to do.  I was like, I didn't think that was that hard of a question.  What did I say?  I just sat there and let Suellen figure herself out.  She said that she wanted to stop and get herself together because she wanted to answer without any tears.  I think the fact that that simple question made her break down, shows how important it is.

She discussed how asleep our nation is, how we are so out of tune with what really goes on. The people who do know what goes on, who know the true, domestic consequences of our international conflicts, are the military personnel, and she said "if there was a time that veterans needed to be looked at, listened to, highlighted, it is now."  She said how incredibly important it is that we start paying attention, and we need to "understand what's going on in the world through their expression, through their poetry, through their art." The nation as a whole needs to wake up and start paying attention, and art by veterans holds such an important role in that, because not only does it help them heal, but it helps us understand.


Between Edgar's and Suellen's interviews, the purpose of my project completely changed.  It's still about veteran artists and their art, but now there's an aspect to it about how important it is to listen to veterans, to not judge or stereotype or question, but just to let them talk and share their stories.  We might not agree with what they say, but it's incredibly important that they're given the space to say it.  There are a lot of things we're very ignorant of.  And people are dying because of it.

I've seen how much veterans want to tell their stories through the project itself.  My interviews became really long; Maurice's second one alone was over three hours.  We really just hung out and talked, and I could tell they appreciated my questions and my interest and they really want to share what happened/is happening with other people.  A lot of what Edgar and Suellen said, I came away thinking, that wasn't the original purpose of my project, but it can't not be in the film.  It has to be in there.  How can it not be?  It's just not right to not put it in.  Because they're right; people really, really need to know about all of this.


My next interview was with Maurice, who I met at the NVAM reception. He was a mortarman in Vietnam and I really liked talking to him.  Well, I really liked talking to everyone.  Maurice is just so cool.  He's got this really gruff voice and he says "Nam" but his family is also really important to him, and he told me about his grandson and how there's another grandkid on the way, and we met for our first interview at the Newberry Library (which, it turns out, is not public, and we had to awkwardly film in the student lobby) where his daughter got married, and he showed me the stairs and said, "I walked her down those stairs."  He has a problem with authority; there were a couple of things that kept you from being drafted to Vietnam, and one of them was being in college for an education degree, which he was, until he dropped out.  Another thing was being in the army reserves, which he also was until he quit.  So then he was drafted, he got a letter saying, "Your friends and neighbors have selected you for service in the U.S. Army," and he didn't get along with a lot of his sergeants because he wasn't there voluntarily and he expressed that.

The thing that I didn't know at all about the Vietnam war is how unpopular it was.  The U.S.'s strategy was to bomb North Vietnam through air raids, and they ran search and destroy missions in South Vietnam, which were useless becasue companies never held the ground they cleared.  Eighty percent of the casualties from the air raids were civilians.  People in America began realizing that, and with the draft, people became hugely anti-war and there were demonstrations across the country, especially on college campuses.  And veterans, whether they were drafted or not, whether it was their choice to go, were hated.   Maurice told me when he got back to America, he asked his girlfriend to bring a change of clothes to the airport, and the first thing he did when he got off the plane was go into the bathroom and changed into "civies" so no one would know he was a veteran.  He didn't talk about the war for thirty years, and at first it was mostly because it was socially unacceptable.  It was something people just did not talk about.  They knew he was a veteran, but they never asked him anything.  So Maurice didn't talk about it either, and he started doing a lot of drugs.  He told me how at the time he thought he was getting caught in the hippie movement, but now that he looks at it, he realizes how much he was escaping, and the heavy drug use was just a way to try to forget things.  He started crying when he told me how much his wife helped him get over it and how much having a family helped.

I asked Maurice what he's done that he's proud of.  He almost received a bronze star for a time when his basecamp was attacked by the Viet Cong, they tried to overrun it, and he fired mortars at the perimeter.  He could've hit his own guys, but he did it well enough and helped hold the attack off; later on, the men who had been at the perimeter told him how much his mortars helped them.  So he's really proud of that.  He didn't get the bronze star, though, because he wasn't "real popular" with his sergeants.

When I asked him that question, Maurice said, "there's something I can tell you I'm not proud of."  He talked about the bronze star thing and we moved on in the interview, but later on we came back to it because he brought it up again.  He told me how, as a mortarman, he was always so far removed from the front line and he never really saw the effect his mortars had.  He knew, the day he helped hold off that attack, that his mortars had probably killed some men, but it didn't bother him because he didn't know.  Then a lieutenant who he was friends with invited him to join his group that was up on a mountain, and Maurice fired mortars one night, and the two of them went down the mountain the next morning to see if it'd done anything, and Maurice did see the consequences.  He told me that he and the lieutenant found a VC who had been hit.  Maurice's mortar had blown him to pieces, and the man had a letter to his girlfriend in his pocket.  Maurice had a girlfriend then, who he married after he got back home, "back to the world" as he said they called it, and the letter really got him.  The letter is what made him feel like, this guy and I are the same.  There's no difference between us.  His government told him to come out here, my government told me, and it could've been the other way, and why wasn't it?  Maurice couldn't figure out what they were doing out there, why they were doing this.  "That moment on the mountain changed me more than anything," he told me.  That was the moment he decided he was anti-war, that war is not good at all and never will be, and he didn't want to fire another mortar.  So when he got back to base camp, he told another guy he was going to be the gunner from now on, and he didn't do it again.

The really hard thing about talking with Maurice was that I could see and hear and feel how much seeing the man he killed is still tearing him up.  It still really, really affects him.  He has been carrying this guilt around for almost fifty years.  As time goes on, in a way it gets worse, because as you live your life you experience all the things that the people you killed, and the friends who have committed suicide, will never get to experience.  Maurice told me, that guy never got to have children or grandchildren.  Maurice goes through his life and he thinks, I have denied someone this.  And for what?

He's making art about what happened.  He has a couple pieces he's going to start working on, and he told me that it's still painful, after all this time.  I could see how painful it really was.  Maurice gave me a flash drive of pictures, he had four pictures from Vietnam and about fifteen pictures of his art.  We went through his photos and I asked him about each one, for the documentary.  I had them up on my laptop and I'd click on them and he'd talk about it, and there were two that he didn't talk about.  Like, he spent a couple minutes on a piece of art and I clicked on the next one and he said, "That's from the war, yeah."  And that was all he said.

I just can't get over how long it's been and how hard it's been for him.  That's… I don't even know what to say.  And I look at the veterans coming back today, and wonder where we'll be in fifty years.  I look at Patrick K., the first veteran I interviewed who lives in Oswego, who'll still be suffering from his TBI, his Traumatic Brain Injury, which he got when his convoy hit an IED in Afghanistan.  He can't live like most people.  He talked to me about it during our first interview, how his relationship to Chicago has changed and he can't come to the city anymore, because of his PTSD.  He can't be in crowded areas and he can't handle noise.  And he forgets things, a lot.  His memory loss is really bad.  His injuries have also prevented him from being the kind of artist he alway wanted to be.  Before the Marine Corps, drawing was Patrick's life, and he wanted to be a comic book artist and go to art school.  But when he came back, his hand-eye coordination was so messed up he couldn't draw a straight line and it's taken him years to get to the point where he is now, where he can create a painting and it takes him a couple weeks instead of a couple hours.  He really believes he'll never be as good as he was before the Marine Corps.

Since I've talked to him, there are moments where I'll be sitting in a movie theater or I'll be at the Kris Kringle Market or just on the train, and I'll think, Patrick can't do this.  There are so many things he's unable to do, he's literally not able to lead a normal life.  Because of one day in Afghanistan when his convoy was in the wrong place at the wrong time.  At NVAM, at the 100 Faces exhibit, one of the written statements by a veteran states that the day he got his injuries has never ended.  That's true for Patrick.  And for Maurice, that day he saw the man on the mountain has never ended either.  They live with these things, they don't just heal and move on, they learn to deal with it.  And I think that's what a lot of people don't understand, that it's not something you can get over.  When it comes to helping veterans accept their life long injuries and nightmares and do the best they can with them, that's where we are not there for them.

It's hard too because Suellen was saying how the families of veterans are also incredibly affected.  I have a lot of respect for Patrick's wife and how much she's helped him.  When he came home, she was the one who was like, there's something that's changed about you, you're not the same, you need to get help.  And I look at Charlie, his two year old son, and wonder how he's going to grow up.  When he's five and he has certain events that his dad can't come to, how do you explain that?  He's going to have to grow up dealing with his father's memory loss, with his dad not being quite like anyone else's.  The war has an indirect affect on him too.


One of the most important things I've learned through this project is that when we hear of things being hard for veterans, we think of PTSD.  But that's not the only thing that haunts them, that they have to deal with their whole lives.  There's a huge amount of guilt too, for Maurice and for Edgar.  We talk about ghosts following veterans around.  Everyone thinks those ghosts are those who died overseas, who were at their side.  But so many of those ghosts are people who have died since.  Edgar told me that losing his friend made that suicide statistic hit hard.  He's friends with a lot of veterans, and before he'd distance himself from the statistic, he'd think, yeah, I have veteran friends, but they're not those veterans.  But now he looks at them and he worries about who's going to die next.  That's what they had to put up with overseas, they had to face everyday the chance of their friends dying.  It's complete bullshit that they go through that, and then they go through it when they come home too.  That shouldn't be happening.  That is just so not right.  If anything, they should come home and no longer have to worry about losing people because of the war.  But they do.  Maurice said how they essentially fight two wars, one lifelong, and not all of them survive both.  He fought in Vietnam, and then he had to fight the drugs, and they were both life threatening.


I had Edgar's interview where he talked about suicide, then a couple days later Maurice talked in his first interview about what he'd done and how hard it was, how he was trying to escape with all the drugs and he counts himself lucky he survived that, and then two days later I had Suellen's interview where she broke down and cried and told me how incredibly important art is because we're not getting what's going on.  It was just, one after the other.  I was so affected by what they'd said.  My respect for them is huge.  I was deeply affected just by hearing about it, and they're living it.  If I can take what I felt when they talked to me, and make the viewer feel something like it when they watch the film, I think I'll have gotten it right.


The reason why this has affected me so much is because I had no idea it'd turn out to be this way.  I knew it'd be hard, but not in this sense; I didn't know that what veterans struggle most with sometimes is what they've gone through since they've come home.  I'd tell people how the interviews became really hard emotionally, and really overwhelming, and their reactions have been, "That's what you wanted, right?" "That's good though, right?  For the film?" "Well you picked a heavy topic to begin with."  And I did.  I decided to talk to combat veterans.  I knew it'd probably end up being really hard, and if I wanted the film to really make an impact, that was the route it'd need to take.

But I didn't have any questions about PTSD or what happened overseas.  I didn't ask, "Did you kill anyone?"  Which, interestingly, all three veterans brought up.  They said as soon as they say they're a veteran, people ask them that.  And out of everything you could ask a veteran, that's the worst.  I didn't have any questions like that.  I didn't want to assume that they have PTSD, many of them don't, or that they had that kind of experience.  I didn't bring up the hard things; the veterans brought them up themselves.  I wanted to talk about it if they wanted to, but I wasn't going to force it.  So going in, I did not assume that this is what we would end up talking about, and because I wasn't assuming, I wasn't expecting it, so I wasn't prepared when it happened.  This could've gone two ways: either the veterans would avoid talking about their hardships, or they'd address it on their own terms.  And it so happened that they talked about it, without me asking.

When I say it's been hard, I know what people are thinking: they're thinking, oh, the veterans are talking about what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan and Vietnam, and that's what's hard.  And that's true.  But what has happened afterward has been even harder to hear about.  It's been even harder to have Patrick K. ask me what we were talking about during an interview.  It's been even harder to have Edgar talk about his friend who died, and how he now wonders who's going to die next, harder to witness the pain Maurice still feels.  That's what's been hardest with this whole thing.  And what makes it even more difficult is that so many people are unaware of it.

It reflects my previous conception of the military and veterans, which I think is representative of society's conception of it: That it's hard overseas, not here at home.  Veterans have PTSD but they get help and they get over it.  You go and do your service and you come back home and thirty years later you're fine.  We need to realize it's not fine.  It's impossible to just get over it.  That's what these veterans are saying, that's why they participated in the project; we need to do something about it.  Edgar and Suellen were both stressing how incredibly important it is to know what's going on.  And no one knows what goes on better than the veterans themselves.  It's not like, don't listen to the government, the government is evil, they're not necessarily saying that.  We just need to hear all sides of the story, hear the whole.  A lot of times, we get just a part of it, and the part that's left out is too often the veterans'.


The project has also really affected me because this is the first time I've actually sat down and talked to veterans.  We all hear about war and the terrible things that happen, but it's different when you talk to someone who experienced it.  It's like homelessness; we all know it exists and we see it on the streets and know the terrible stories, but if you go to a shelter and volunteer, and you sit and talk with a homeless man for five hours, that's incredibly different.  There's something about this that has made it seem more real to me, made it come alive.  I guess because now, it's part of my life too, part of my own experience.  It was real, it was right there, I was seeing and dealing with the aftermath of warfare directly.



I don't know.  When I left the interviews, I was really upset.  And I'd go back to class (which I'd always be late for because I'd let the interviews go for as long as they needed to) and I couldn't stop thinking about what they said.  Some of the things they told me, I'll never forget.  The whole thing, is just really upsetting.  And it's like the CPS school system; the facts themselves are upsetting enough, but the realization of your ignorance is in a way even more upsetting.  I just think, why didn't I know about this?  Why don't more people know more about this?

It's also hard to have someone talk about your country this way.  And it's not like, hey, I love America, how dare you talk about it that way.  But it's like, I'm part of the problem.  I was ignorant, like so many people are.  And whose fault is that?  You can't really blame civilians.  There are a lot of things we are not aware of in this country, but it's not necessarily our fault, there will always be things you don't know and that's just how it works out.  I just think, with Vietnam, veterans for a long time were not given such public spaces to communicate about their experiences, and now with the recent wars, we're becoming more aware than ever before.

I can't even begin to describe how glad I am that I made a film.  Because people need to hear this, people need to know.  I've learned all this and it's been overwhelming, and I need to share it with other people.

The next step is unclear.  Where do we go from here?  I don't know.  How do you prevent twenty-two veterans from committing suicide each day?  We're still in the learning stage.  It's sad that more people will die before we get our act together, but I think it's starting to happen.  I think it's starting to really come to light, what's happening, the suicide and the lifelong trauma and injuries, and how badly veterans need to be understood.  I think their stories of what it's been like coming back has been heard more than before.  We're still at that edge of realization, and beginning to do something about it, but there's still an uncertainty to it.  I asked each veteran what we can do to help, and they said to support places like the art museum, and to listen, to accept the stories even if you might not agree with them.  For now what we can do is try to understand.  And, like with CPS, share that knowledge with other people.  That's what veterans have been doing for years, trying to share their knowledge.  More people are starting to listen.  Hopefully my film will help that along, bad-quality, school-project feel and all.


Yeah, this was super long.  Writing it down is how I understand things, and I really needed to just write all this out.  I know a lot of people can't be bothered to read all this and kudos to you if you did.  This project has just been my life for the past month, everything has been so overwhelming and now I have the responsibility of fitting it into a specific format to share with others.  I've been really needing to talk about it all and get it all out and this was a place I could do it.  I want to do one more post about the end of the semester and everything, so I wanted to just get it all out at once.  I guess ultimately what I'll be trying to do with the film in the end is to share the veteran's stories, and raise awareness, and hopefully inspire people to at least start thinking about it and to have more converstations with it.  And to do something, even if it's just listening to a veteran talk or going to NVAM, for now.  Sometimes just paying attention is all we can do, but it means so much to the people who need to be heard.

I love Chicago, and I'm so glad I'm coming away with something that I created here, something that involves the people and issues here.  I feel like I did something with my time, and I'm walking away with something to show for it.  Something that will hopefully open people's eyes like mine have been, something that will make people learn about an issue they weren't aware of, and will make the 826CHI students who have military families realize that all the arms we need are for hugging.

- Laura

[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