Chicago was elated last night. After work I went downtown to Grant Park to JumboTron the evening for Obama. A group of four of us gathered on the lawn of Hutchinson Field for the non-ticketed rally attendees with about 50,000 others by 8pm.
On our way to the park we passed an endless array of Obama-related memorabilia. One in my group purchased the endearingly boisterous "Obamapalooza" shirt. On the back, this shirt read "...I Was There When Change Happen [sic] in Grant Park Nov. 4, 2008". Poignantly, the borders of the shirt's margins had been breached with so much to proclaim that correct verb tense just wasn't in the cards. And even better? On the front of the shirt, the font of choice was none other than Mac's standard 1994-era font; you know, the one that appeared in Mac OS, oh say, 2 in the window's status bar.
I concluded the evening attending a friend's election-night party, to watch Obama's speech. The streets immediately came alive--literally--as bicyclers and pedestrians went into the medians and surrounded the subway stations yelling and honking their bicycle horns. Cars joined in with a crescendo of beeps. Sure, this is a little overly-sentimental sounding, but it's true-- everyone was celebratory in a big way.
Surprises: Pennsylvania, Ohio.
Montana. Well, not exactly a surprise, but a very close race for Obama.
Plus, recent Chicago art obsessions of note. Spires. They seem to be all over the news, in fact.
Chicago boasts a few notable spires. Sears Tower, the Hancock. Also the Chicago Spire, a height-defying building planned to enhance Chicago's skyline now postponed because of budget cuts. And, recently, artist Andrew Goldsworthy's new project working with San Francisco-area forested areas (on land once used by the military) for "natural" installation art was reported in the Times--building spires from already cut wood to eventually be "reclaimed" by the forest itself as tree growth covers once-open spaces. This was notable because of a collaboration class many some of us MFAers took with visiting poet Michele Galzer at Montana where we watched (and debated) Goldsworthy's 2001 doc "Rivers and Tides", discussing the artistic merits (or, as some saw it, folly) of his work.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
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2 comments:
I wish that I'd been in Chicago at that moment! This is truy an amazing event in the history of the World!
I watched the Grant Park footage from home. A part of me wanted to be there, but I don't do well in large crowds; they make me twitchy. Thanks for the recap of what must have been an amazing night for you and your friends.
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