The Women of Lockerbie, a play

Today Don and I walked part of the distance to Fourth Presbyterian Church at Chestnut and Michigan Ave to attend the “men’s group” script reading presentation of Women of Lockerbie, a play by DeborahBrevoort about the crash of Pan Am 103 in 1988 or so. It blew up over the small town of Lockerbie, Scotland, the victim of Lebanon terrorists.

The play concerns itself with a New Jersey mother who roams the hills of Lockerbie Scotland, looking for her son’s remains lost in the crash of Pan Am 103. She meets the Women of Lockerbie, who are fighting the US Government to obtain the clothing of the victims found in the plane’s wreckage. The women, determined to convert an act of hatred into an act of love, want to wash the clothes of the dead and return them to the victim’s families. The Women of Lockerbie is loosely inspired by a true story, although the characters and situations in the play are purely fictional. Written in the structure of a Greek tragedy, it is a poetic drama about the triumph of love over hate.

The cast is small, consisting of only five women and two men:

MADELINE LIVINGSTON: A suburban housewife from New Jersey. Her 20-year old son Adam was killed 7 years ago in the Pan Am 103 crash over Lockerbie, Scotland.

BILL LIVINGSTON: Her husband, father of Adam.

OLIVE ALLISON: An older woman, from Lockerbie and leader of the laundry project.

Two middle-aged women from Lockerbie.

HATTIE: A cleaning woman from Lockerbie.

GEORGE JONES: The American government representative in charge of the warehouse storing the remains from the Pan Am 103 crash.

I know it sounds like a cliche, but all of us were rivited to the delivery of the words as each actor delivered them. Everyone who discussed it with the actors afterwards, in an open discussion, prefaced their comments with quotes of either a sentence or a paragraph.

The playwrite had Bill nailed down perfect. Only a woman could have. The quote or situation that hit me like a brick was description of having to return a Christmas gift to a 16 year old clerk. And then do it over and over again the same day for the rest of the gifts. It brought it alive. I played it like a video in my mind. I have a daughter who has worked retail since she was 14.

I could go on, but it would ramble. Her words will stay with Don and me for a long time.

joggers along LSD underpass

joggers along LSD underpass
Originally uploaded by finefoto.

Although Don is visiting his son Matt and the new baby, John,
for Johnny’sfirst birthday, I nevertheless decided to take a
walk along thepark.

 It had been warm the previous day and overnight the melted

snow that drained over the jogging paths and sidewalks and

rocks had become a very deceiving thin glaze. On top of the

glaze was a erratic thin drizzle of moisture from fog water

from the melting snow along the side of the path.  Unless the

light was in front of you and glaring off the ice or water, you

did not see it. If jogging, the forward movement would send you

off into space until you landed on your rear end and a sprained

wrist. Luckily I became aware of this and did not experience

this. I recall it happening to me over 15 years ago around this

time during one of our walks just south of Diversey along the

rocks. I landed on my back. It knocked the air out of me and I

couldn’t utter a sound for at least a minute, or longer. 

I had thought of bicycling, but for some reason thought better

of it. I was quite releaved that I did, because of the ice.

It was like bicycling on oil. Some intrepid folks were all

dressed in their colorful spanex and bicycling, but at only 

5 to 10 miles an hour! Not one was speeding like usual. 

I discovered a jogging path now is along the Diversey “rocks”

that now is a rock wall from the south entrance of Belmont 

Harbor to Diversey Harbor entrance. 

Sceary "just do it" stencil graffiti from Portugal

just_do_it
Originally uploaded by cudmore.

I've been flaneuring graffiti and documenting it for over 40 years. A long time in the past I had the cover and 3 pages in the Chicago Tribune Sunday Magazine about the paintings on the northside lakefront rocks.

So I was delighted to discover the flickr.com site and do a search for graffiti. There are over a thousand photos there of graffite. I have only probably looked at 50 to 70 images yet.

I opened an account there but have only posted a few images. I want to only post low res images so no one can really use them for anything but display on their computer screen.

I found this searching for graffiti again on flickr.com. Photographer: "Graffitti is way cool. This is from Lisboa Portugal, somewhere near the hill leading to the castle. This one is pretty balzy and comes at you from different levels."
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cudmore/

"you lie" graffiti rat

you lie
Originally uploaded by niznoz.

I found this graffiti image during search on flickr.com. I saved a 4MB high res version on my HD.

I wrote the photographer and he responded:

"I took it on New Bond Street in Mayfair, a street with a huge number of very expensive stores and I don't imagine graffiti lasts very long there.  Except that these stencils of a small animal look like they belong -- they look as if they are an organic part of the urban

scene, like pigeons -- and so may be ignored by those who scrub graffiti."