May 6

I stopped at a red light, feeling foolish as always for stopping at an intersection at an hour when the streets are deserted, just because a colored lightbulb told me to.

David Wong, John Dies at the End

My parents are appalled at my acquired jay-walking skills. You would be run over without so much as a by-your-leave in Taiwan, my mother tells me. But I’ll get tuition money if I’m hit crossing Sheridan, I respond. I notice the red lights most when it’s late at night, past the hour when most people are walking about (which, for Evanston, seems to be 10 pm), and I wait alone on the empty streets.

I have recently grown more fond of the color red; I used to hate it. Upsdell red is a deep medium red, similar to fire engine red, and was named as such for the Reverend G Upsdell, starting 1963. He was the first headmaster for the new site of the King George V School in Hong Kong after World War II, when the school extended its enrollment to include students of all nationalities. It is apparently preferable to pure red in night time ceremonies.

The Cubs’ stadium is quite red. To get people to eat more, perhaps? Up till today, I’d never seen a baseball game before in my life. I think I get the appeal – it feels like live television, where the objective is to spend time with friends and family, rather than to pour all your energy into actually watching. Something always feels different when I am away from school. I don’t know where the worlds meet. We talk a lot about the borderland between the United States and Mexico in one of my classes – I wonder where the one between Evanston and Northwestern is.

look: Violeta Parra, Contra la Guerra
listen: Jack Norworth, Albert von Tilzer, “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”
read: Craig Santos Perez, ginen sounding lines