7 Days, This is 7 Days

Alright, this is to help give you an idea of what 7 days in my life looks like. This doesn't cover it all, there are some images I'd like to have in here which are missing, just no time to work on them, others have already been posted. There are, of course, things I did, very happy events, which I enjoyed, didn't document. But this is 7 days, from Friday, March 28th till Thursday, April 3rd.

The theme of my seven days was awesome people.

This includes some former residents of the Henry Horner CHA projects. They had a great conversation, which I was minimally part of, about the past. Basically, the past is the past, we've made our mistakes, it's where are we going, who are we now. It's one thing for me to say this, it's another to hear this from a man who's done some time. It's also always fun to hear stories about the projects, and how wonderful they were, how much fun, how strong of community there was. It's so easy to see what we want to see, or what was most recent, to forget that there is so much more there, there once was so much more there, if we just sit down and listen. Stories about kids growing up, and parents having to sneak out to have a drink because they couldn't be seen drinking in front of their kids. Doors left unlocked because it was community. Kids goofing off, and while going up the stars getting a whoppin' from adult after adult for their misbehavior, till they got home, the parent thanked all their neighbors for whoppin' their kid and then gave em' a whoppin' themselves. The kids learned quick, communities are wonderful things.

Lloyd Bradbury, a blind painter. He can see just a few inches out of one eye. He's happy, a kind of sarcastic in a fun humorous way, funny, intelligent, and a pretty decent painter. We had a good talk about how art has to come from what the artist feels. He's good people, good people, and someone who I look forward to talking to again.

Otherwise, a week of good friends, good to awesome talks, some really hard stuff, really hard. I hate watching bad things happen to really good people, but it does, and it sucks, I wish I could protect my friends, but alas....

Other more random photos:

The man with the bat is Ernie Banks. Not to exciting the PR shot essentially, but cool, because it was Ernie Banks, not to mention Hank Aaron was there, we just goes to neat'o in my book.

The building is the Chicago Cultural Center, and it's Escher like nature. I'd been meaning to shoot that space for a while, and I've still got a lot of exploring of it to do, but it was fun to spend some time there before having dinner with a friend.

The play was something I shot as a job for a buddy of mine. The usual theatre stuff.