Last night I slept with the windows open and this morning around 7:30 I was woken up by a man yelling on the sidewalk. He eventually moved into the middle of the busy street next to where I live and began yelling at the cars. Then he moved on to a different side street and I started my day.

A little later when I was walking the dog a girl across the street yelled out the window of her screened in porch, “It’s my birthday!” “Today?” I asked. “Yes, and I am five years old.”  “Happy birthday,” I said. “Thank you,” she politely answered, still at top volume from across the street. A few seconds later she saw the ten year old from a few doors down who had come to pet my dog. “Audrey, it’s my birthday today,” she yelled. “Happy birthday,” Audrey said.

I took the el downtown to meet out-of-town friends for lunch. Two young men were in the middle of an impassioned conversation that transitioned from bicycle culture to the future of Artificial Intelligence. An older man across the aisle began to get frustrated with them. “The thing is,” he said loudly, “The thing is that we’re going to get a new mayor and we need a new mayor and that’s what’s going to make a difference, not all this computer stuff. We need someone to do something around here, and you need to vote.” “I can’t vote,” said one of the men with a slight accent, “I’m not a citizen.” “Well, all I know,” the older man answered, “All I know is it can’t be that Bill Daley, we’ve had enough of that, we don’t need a third. Maybe Toni Preckwinkle, she might be ok, maybe vote for her.” “I can’t vote,” the man repeated, “I’m not a citizen.” The older man continued debating the various candidates.

After lunch I walked through “Agora,” a public art installation of 106 headless, armless torsos standing and walking.

The agora, the marketplace, the center of town, it’s one of the concepts I remember from high school humanities class. Sometimes we are in the agora by ourselves and sometimes we are with others. Sometimes we have something we want to say and others hear us. Sometimes, we are just yelling at cars on a Sunday morning.