I don’t know what bloody category this belongs in. “Events” is fine.
Big protests today. I got up on my soapbox to try and get the staff to join me in marching at 8:30 am from Lincoln Center with a group of puppeteers (Bread and Puppet Theater – “now’s your chance to work with one the most renowned agit-prop theater troupes in the world!”). Yeah, no one bit. I think some of them thought my email was innapropriate. Unprofessional. Apparently, you can interrupt everyone’s work day to model the new pants you bought at H&M on your lunch break, or give us moment-to-moment details of your last shrink appointment, or lip sync to your favorite 80’s hits, but you can’t share political thoughts or global concerns. Lesson learned. This is my office.
I awoke at 6am with the thought of walking in the bitter cold, alone, with a bunch of puppet people and I just couldn’t do it. The NYC puppet underground can be really cliquey. I work with some. I’ve noticed. It would have been a trip to do it though. Maybe get arrested wearing a big paper-mache head. I do like the puppets these days.
So now I don’t know what to do. One second they’re telling us to buy water and duct tape and reports about how easy it would be for crazies to release chemical and bio bad stuff in the subway system. The next moment, the mayor actually says that the best way to keep NYC safe is to go shopping. I had a panic attack. They are all mocking me. I’ll go to the protest around 10am and meet up with some friends who couldn’t pull any real plans together.
I’ve been to one other protest – on the anniversary of 9/11. It was a “lay down” in Union Square Park. Only the organizers couldn’t get the right permit, so we weren’t laying in the park, but on a little traffic divider triangle that splits Union Square East and 14th St. And we got there late so we were forced to the rigth up to the curb. I was cleaning dirt out of my ears for three days. Parker Posey is a friend of a friend and she was laying right next to me. She had the scarf around her head and the big sunglasses (and some lavender sceneted wipes that came in very handy). It was a gorgeous day, very much like the year before. We laid there, quietly, peacefuly even, for about 15 minutes when slowly I began to notice photographers hovering above us getting shots of the one celeb at this gathering. None of them spoke English – it was the foreign press. Chances are one of my limbs has appeared in a Brazilian paper next to Parker Posey. Does that count towards my total 15 minutes? It was a good way to spend that morning. I was glad I did it. And I got cool tee shirt.
Hey, look at that. Who needs questions to write a blog?