Friday 7/11 – Thursday 7/17
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Last spring there was such a severe drought in southern India that a 12th-century Krishna temple that had more or less lain underwater since the KRS dam was built across the Kaveri River in the 1920s appeared aboveground, and priests were conducting services there. Unfortunately, the temple was all that remained of the 36 villages that were flooded to make way for the project. Around that time, Booker Prize-winning novelist Arundhati Roy was agitating to stop the construction of the Narmada dam in the northern state of Gujarat. That dam–if built, the second-largest in the world–would displace over a million people and destroy three million acres of forest. “I began to feel as though every feeling in The God of Small Things had been traded in for a silver coin, and if I wasn’t careful I would become a little silver figurine with a cold, silver heart,” Roy says of her turn toward activism in Dam/Age, Aradhana Seth’s documentary on the campaign against the Narmada project. The dam has yet to be built, but Roy served a day in prison on criminal contempt charges as a result of her protest activities. Seth will answer questions after tonight’s screening, which is sponsored by the Public Square and starts at 7 at the Chicago Historical Society, 1601 N. Clark. It’s $10; call 312-993-0682.
12 SATURDAY “We’ve unstocked the welfare pantry / to restock the wall street gentry / it’s economically elementary / because values don’t pay / yes, american dreams are on permanent layaway! / (there was limited availability anyway),” writes Brooklyn-based poet Alix Olson in “America’s On Sale.” Since her victory as part of the 1998 Nuyorican National Championship Slam Team, she’s been on the cover of Ms. and the Lambda Book Report, toured with the Butchies, and headlined NOW’s national conference. She’ll perform work from her new CD, Independence Meal, tonight at 7:30 at the Mountain Moving Coffeehouse for Womyn and Children at the Summerdale Community Church, 1700 W. Farragut. Singer-songwriter Alix Dobkin opens. There’s a suggested donation of $15; call 312-409-0276 or see www.alixolson.com.
16 WEDNESDAY Twelve years after the publication of Douglas Coupland’s Generation X, the Canadian author is on his ninth novel and the term “McJob” is in the dictionary. Hey Nostradamus!, Coupland’s latest offering, begins with a Columbine-esque massacre in a high school cafeteria and traces the aftershocks of the event 12 years later in the lives of Jason (who lost his pregnant teenage bride in the attack), his new girlfriend, and his ultrareligious father. Coupland will read from Hey, Nostradamus! tonight at 7 at Borders Books & Music, 830 N. Michigan, 312-573-0564. It’s free.
