Sissy and I went downtown, today.  She’s never ridden on the El (she lives here), and we wanted to go root around in vintage stores and admire street art, in Pilsen.  So we got the El.  Sissy took a selfie, to mark the occasion.  Only she didn’t like her facial expression, which made me giggle.  So she took another.  She was pulling the same face, and I was in pleats.  So she took another.  Long story short, by the time she was satisfied with *her* face, *I* was absolutely weeping with laughter.  That’s the story of the photo at the top of this post….

Pilsen is the Mexican neighbourhood.  The write-up said it has lots of murals (I do love a muriel) and vintage shops; so we were going to take ourselves on a little tour and a rummage and see what we could see.  The plan was that we would meet Tim for lunch in the downtown Blues bar of his choosing.  Getting tickets for the El was the first challenge.    We navigated our way through the ticket machine which finally beeped insistently, like a freight wagon reversing, demanding our cash.  I inserted my card, selected Debit (because it’s a debit card), entered my pin – it was spat out again.  So I re-inserted it, the right way round and repeated.  Spat out again.  It doesn’t like my meagre British plastic.  Meanwhile, the machine is beeping and a little message on the screen says “Are you still there? This operation will time out in 25 seconds unless you get the fuck on with it.” (or words to that effect).  Sissy sighed at me. “Here, let me do it!”  She inserted her card (which, incidentally, is the exact same British debit card from the exact same bank) and repeated my actions.  Surprisingly, the machine spat it out again.  So we both rummaged in our purses and conjured the requisite amount of cash in $$$.  Sissy fed a note into the beeping machine.  It spat it out.  Sissy re-fed it, the right way up.  You get the picture.  Some minutes later we were, somewhat miraculously, on the train.

Descending from the El at our destination, I pulled out my guidebook to check the route of its suggested walking tour.  Nose stuck in the pages, Sissy nudged me.

“Hang on…”

*nudge*

“Hold on! I’m just looking where we’re going!”

*nudge*

I scowl up at her.  She points.  I look over the road…

We were in the right place.

We walked up W 18th St as far as …. South Racine and then down W 19th to Harrison Park and the Museum of Mexican Art.  We did pootle into a couple of vintage shops, which were lovely.  I was tempted by a black velvet evening dress, for a function when I get home, but truly I am not short of an evening dress so I left it on the rack.  We saw fabulous street art, though.

Almost every other building up W 18th had some kind of mural on it.  Some were political, some religious, some inspirational and some purely decorative.  But all were vivid, rich and vibrant; and all spoke of a community very much established in its neighbourhood.

The museum had an exhibition about the Day of the Dead – traditionally 1 and 2 November – in which significant ancestors (of family, or of the community) are honoured with shrines of offerings.  This festival has pre-Christian roots, but has been largely assimilated into Mexican catholicism.  The exhibition had some beautiful examples of ofrendas (altars) created in the various traditions from Afro Mexican towns along the Costa Chica to the Mixteca towns in the state of Puebla.  Ofrendas memorialise dead relatives and incorporate elements including photographs; a special sweet bread known as pan de muerto which represents the soul; water, stole, coffee, tequila or another favourite drinks of theirs are also placed on the altar.  The family will often visit the cemetery to eat, drink, and pray beside the graves of their relatives.  These gatherings are meant as joyous occasions bringing the warmth and food of the family to their deceased relatives.

This exhibition was dedicated to the victims of the El Paso Walmart shooting in August this year.

Towards the end of the exhibition, there were some quite hard pieces.  One had been put together by a class of children and their teachers.  They’d been talking about the nature of immigration, and what people leave behind to make a new life somewhere else.  They talked about the I.C.E (US Immigration patrols) and the child separation policy.  They made casts of the children’s feet, pointing in different directions to symbolise that they didn’t know which way they were going; and their hands climbing up the wall to reach a better life; they’d also done casts of their faces at the top of the wall.  But at the base of their ofrenda were six little faces, surrounded by flowers.  They were six of the children who have died in custody under the child separation policy and damn, they were hard to see.

Another of the final pieces looked at families staying in touch despite ICE custody and was also beautiful, but hard to see.

Finally, there was a wonderful picture of a woman and child.  The words scrolling around her head are the words from the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me”

The words in her skirt say:

Good! Let them take their criminal parents with them when they go!  GTFO! Why aren’t these people expected to do anything to help themselves?  They were illegal the second they crossed the border with their illegal parents! Americans before illegals!  We want the wall! We want dreamers deported!  We dream about the day when all the illegals are out of America!  Send them all back! How about we make our country safer?  They are here illegally that makes them criminals!  End chain migration, the lottery, and build the wall!  The wall is good! I say put the army on the border and shoot them as they cross!  Shoot them shoot them shoot them SHOOT THEM!

*Shudder*  I am thankful that I can only imagine the horror and fear of being on the receiving end of such invective.  I am ashamed and horrified by this kind of politics.

Anyway.  Wiping tears, and somewhat subdued, Sissy and I made our way back to the El to meet Tim.  We had exceeded the two-hour validity of our original ticket, and so had to buy new tickets.  With sinking hearts, we stood in front of the machine.

In short order, a small woman in CTA uniform appeared between us.

“You want tickets?”

“Yes, but these machines don’t like our English cards.”

She smiled at us, knowingly and efficiently tapped her way through a two-ticket order.  She then took Sissy’s card, inserted it in the slot (right way round first time – pesky professionals!); selected ‘Credit’

“But it’s a debit card…” I faltered, silenced by a tolerant side-eye

At the request to enter the PIN, she pressed ‘0’ and the ticket dutifully spat two tickets at her.  If only we’d known!!

And before we knew it, we were at Adams/Wabash and navigating down Adams to Buddy Guy’s Legends – a little blues club where we ate fabulous food and listened to an amazing blues singer for a couple of hours until it was time to head home again.

The place was, as you can clearly see, largely empty.  Downtown is quiet, today, with a goodly number of road closures limiting traffic, and the pedestrian population is substantially swelled by marathon runners collecting their race packs ready for tomorrow.  I have to admit, I have a little bit of marathon fever.  Our visit is deliberately timed to coincide because my running partner was due to be running.  She’s deferred her place due to life throwing her a bit of a googly, and I’m rather thinking I might enter the ballot to run with her, next year…

But, to sum up today we have seen some real beauty.  All of it, one way or another, provided by immigrants.  On our way back to Union Station, the street we were walking down was dominated by Trump Towers, peeking through the gap in the skyline.  As we passed the parking meters, each containing a warning that all cars must be cleared by midnight tonight or be towed, this quiet moment of rebellion summed up my feelings just beautifully.  (Disclaimer: obviously I don’t advocate actual violence….)