Thanks to all our contributors this week! Your posts are stimulating and really put "contribute" back in the word.
Betty is now in D.C. with her floppy dog. This trip was excellent, truly philosophically challenging, inspiring and beautiful because Cleveland, Milwaukee, and Chicago are all BEAUTIFUL cities. She'd like to give a special shout-out to Milwaukee for defying all her expectations:
You are great, Milwaukee.
There is so much to tell about and digest. In Milwaukee, she saw beautiful old houses with unemployed people living in them. She saw the lake shore and vacant sites where factories once sat, as big as towns. She saw many people with no jobs, the abandoned Pabst factory and its abandoned gift shop, people struggling and living. People are trying to make it work again - will the green energy industry become the new economic engine? This is the trip where Betty realized a service economy is not sustainable, or is only sustainable in a climate where extreme exploitation goes unchecked. The U.S. has to make things, too, and pay people as it prospers from unique, indispensible products.
In Chicago, she and Bimbo loved the Art Institute and "The Bean" at Millenium Park. They ate Swedish pancakes in Andersonville, and then Betty and a friend saw old graves in Rosehill Cemetary and gay softball teams laughing and watching football at a friendly bar. Chicago is welcoming and laid back and the home of one of Betty's favorite people - for our purposes, let's just call him Marvin the Martian- and the two of them had adventures that included a trip to the Chicago Police Station at 18th and State, and a colorful bus ride on the way!
And the best detail (or the second best, after the red circus train in Cleveland that wound through town when Betty opened her first window): Depending on the winds, several streets in downtown Chicago smell like deep dark CHOCOLATE, thanks to a factory not far away. Why isn't this smell as famous as the winds that spread it around, deliciously?
No comments:
Post a Comment