Saturday, May 31 – Chicago Dream House: a housing rights event responding to the foreclosure crisis in Albany Park and Chicago.  With the community, Chicago Dream House will paint a symbolic house, while presentations by local organizations happen in the central area.  Skill shares abound: urban gardening, guitar lessons, bike repair, furniture repair, book-binding & making, painting and drawing lessons, yoga, qi gong and more!! CTX is tabling!  Potluck to follow.

Saturday, May 31 – opening for Joshua Kent’s residency “On the Impossibility of a Singular Hand.”  The show runs Mon June 2- Sun Jun 8.  Joshua will live in the gallery and attempt to grow a seed in the palm of his hand. Roman Susan will be open 24-hours a day for the week, and each evening features a response from fellow artists: performances, skill shares, gift circle. See the event schedule here.

Sunday, June 1st – Freedom Flow Fest: community event centered around the alternative currency of abundance, co-presented with CTX and Shareable. This out & indoor event explores the possibilities of cooperation; offering participants tangible, FREE gifts and services:
•Movement Classes
•Creative Arts
• DIY Food & Gardening Demos
• Wellness & Healing

Saturday, June 7 – The Chicago Free Store: Bring what you want to give away and/or take what you like!  It’s all FREE!

Saturday June 7 – opening for the The Swing and the Wall.  This event will run 4 Sundays in June from noon-9pm, reclaiming “creative idleness, pleasurable learning and meaningful exchange, inviting neighbors, friends, artists, children, parents and activists to participate, in both a programmed and drop-in way.”

HOT DAMN!!!  Chicago’s got it going ON!

 

This post is by guest blogger and CTX member Elaine Wagner

Chicago Time Exchange has proved useful and helpful on many levels over this surprising and challenging past year.  Last October, I lost the capacity to drive my car, work at my job, and do many household tasks for two months due to an injury. In order to not burden friends and neighbors excessively during this time, I decided to sometimes ask for help within the CTX community, repaying people with some of my accumulated time dollars, many of which Jami Garton was generous enough to transfer to my account from my previous participation in another Time Bank several years ago.

I was hesitant at first to ask for help from CTX.  Would people respond?  If so, would they be gracious? Would they be resentful?  My CTX experiences during this painful and problematic time were overwhelmingly positive.  People responded out of kindness, generosity, and a sense of shared community with rides to the surgeon in Niles, shopping errands to Whole Foods and other stores, rides to my office in Edgewater, where I was able to catch up with some of my vast backlog of work, help bringing my car to the gas station, picking up mail at the post office, and more.  

Today, I feel thankful to many people for the new kind of community I have experienced with CTX.   And as if all the above were not enough, thanks to CTX, I now have several mended wool sweaters, and another one on the way.

I also have had the opportunity to share some of my skills, such as flower essence work and chi gong instruction with people who were interested in learning from me, and hope to share more skills and give more to CTX in the future.