a relaxing weekend

Every year, a committee in Chicago puts together a series of cultural events downtown that runs for about three weeks and focuses on an apt theme. This year's theme was climate change. Apt indeed. The events include panels, movies, concerts, and speakers. Hmm. It sounds like I'm advertising. But seriously, it's quite nice.

Trinity gets to send four students as Chicago Humanities Festival fellows each year. This is my second year going, and both years I've really enjoyed the experience. This was an especially fun weekend and I found it to be quite relaxing, actually.

Friday: Finished up classes and around-campus errand running. Carrie and I spent some good side-by-side time. I tried to do a little homework, but then I ended up talking to my long-lost friend Amy on the telephone, trying to catch up on a trimester of happenings. Talking to Amy comes before homework any day, especially Friday. Then I filled my camelbak, a pleasant reminder of many happy adventures, with stuff for the weekend, left my laptop on the desk and the books on the shelves, and headed off to the train station with my friend Kendra.

We armed ourselves with three-day unlimited CTA passes and rode the L downtown to the hostel, where we soon went to bed. I got more sleep than I had gotten in a long time, but Kendra couldn't seem to sleep. One of the things she kept thinking about was how we had completely forgotten to pay for parking. When she told me this the next morning, I shared in her sense of alarm, but there was nothing we could do about it.

After breakfasting at Panera, we attended The Paper Bag Players presentation of On Top of Spaghetti which really had nothing to do with climate change and was geared for 3-6 year olds. It made us laugh a lot. Next was a panel entitled, "What do philosophers have to offer?" (A lot.) Then we went to a concert of the Chicago Complaints Choir. Here's the general idea: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eBPHDyu9jE. Hilarious and inspiring.

While waiting for the next event, "Writing Nature," I wrote my own list of complaints, including "the dishes fill up the sink within a few hours of washing them," "there is a whole in the bottom of my right foot black croc," "my joints pop," and "people are too refined in the wrong way." Now I just need to set my complaints to music.

Saturday's evening event was by far my favorite event of the festival. One eighty-year-old man performed the entire Apology of Socrates from memory with skill and humor. It was incredible to watch because I felt that this man was actually Socrates. Who knows, maybe instead of executing Socrates, they actually froze him and thawed him out just recently so that he could speak to us. And indeed, Socrates has much to say to our generation. A favorite quote: "The unexamined life is not worth living."

Incidentally, this performer also performs this work in the original Greek when he is called upon to do so.

When we returned to the hostel, still reveling in our encounter with the real live Socrates, we set the alarm for 7:00. Thankfully, this was on a auto-resetting cell phone, so we did take advantage of the extra hour of sleep. I wonder if Spain has daylight savings time. Will I have to loose an hour sometime next semester, or will I just throw that in with the jet lag?

Sunday morning we breakfasted "with" and listened to E.L. Doctorow at the Symphony Center. I've never read his works, but he sure is a great guy to listen to. Next we heard Kim Stanley Robinson talk about how much fun it can be to combat climate change. He asked us to examine our activities with these questions: Did I pay for it or do it for free? Did I do it indoors or outdoors? Did I do it alone, or did I do it with others? Did I watch someone else do it or do it myself? Usually the latter answers to these questions are both more fun and better for this planet. I also appreciated his renunciation of monocausotaxophilia.

We topped off the festival festivities by attending a panel called "Religion and the Environment." The Muslim representative talked about Islam's tradition of setting aside land for sanctuary. The Jewish representative talked about the idea of the Sabbath, even suggesting that America should take a sabbath year to reflect on where to go from here and realize that it isn't true that 'the more we have, the more we are.' But the Christian representative had few positive things to say. He could've talked about the purpose of God's creation and the Bible's explicit call for stewardship. Instead he focused solely on the reasons why evangelical America has failed to respond to climate change. As much as I was upset that Christianity was not fairly represented, I agreed with what he had to say. When we evangelicals see humans as exclusively important, expect a rapture at any moment, fear agreeing with New Age followers on any issue, and value objectives by corporate interests, it is no small wonder that we fall short of doing all that we can to care for the beautiful creation God has formed.

When we got back to my car, there was no ticket waiting for us, and we rejoiced in an answered prayer. We returned to this campus refreshed and ready for the Social Justice Chapter meetings, homework, and piled-up emails that awaited us.