Chicago-Women's Issues

2/27/12

After blogging last night, we got into a really great discussion sparked by a presentation Kelsey gave us. To provoke some exciting conversation, we've been having people share information on topics they are interested in or know a lot about. Kelsey is involved with an anti human trafficking group at MU and had a ton of information and statistics on the subject. It stimulated other conversations as well on topics like rape culture, body positivity and construction of gender. As per usual, exhausted from a long day of work, we all started drifting off with the lights on by the end of conversation. We crawled off to bed so we'd be ready to wake up and do more work on Tuesday.

Tuesday morning a handful of group members woke up early to go on a run. We're fortunate enough to be staying only a few blocks from the lovely Douglas Park, so we jogged there for about 30-40 minutes. After breakfast, even though our supervisor was gone, we started our projects bright and early (yay self-motivation!). We began the arduous task of resurfacing the ceiling in our headquarters, called the Gertrude Stein room. This involved moving all the furniture and our belongings out of our temporary home and meeting place. As we peeled some of the paint off the ceiling, we realized that the paint may be the only thing holding it together (yikes.) Many innuendos ensued as we used caulk to reconstruct the disintegrating ceiling.

We started in on our giant ambiguous list of tasks to complete, given to us by the lovely Dianna. Today we learned we are qualified to do anything, including building fences, mixing concrete, spackling and child care. This means nothing to you, but the cow fences will never be covered. We got to relieve some fence-related stress by smashing glass bottles with a hammer to make low-budget mosaic stepping-stones. We had a surprise visit from our new friend Daryl, the energetic nine year old from the neighborhood that came by hoping to help. Then we continued the never-ending task of weeding the garden–the dandelions seem to multiply while we're not looking, as do the bits of glass we continue to find underneath them. The hardware store was a frequent destination today, as we had to make three trips for extra supplies. Later, we cooked a gourmet dinner of grilled cheese and tomato soup. We found that we had too few bowls for ice cream and had to make do with mugs with bizarre Christmas dinosaur scenes painted on them.

Now we're congregated back in the semi-fixed up Gertrude Stein room and soon we'll be off to bed to prepare for our free day tomorrow. The work is never done, as Allana is still putting the finishing touches on some fence railings that will surround some UAR trees. They will sport inspirational phrases, one of our favorites being, "Keep your face to the sunshine, and you cannot see the shadow." –Helen Keller

With love from the West Side,

ASB Chicago