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Festivals are way more fun than they are NOT fun

Summer in Chicago is a time of fests. We have a lot of them. And they are everywhere. Without planning it, my Saturday turned into an encapsulation of what I want in my life, so BOOM, crushed it, thanks, Saturday.

I had a Gilbert & Sullivan audition. Then I went to a LADY festival in Andersonville, which is technically called Midsommarfest, but is really just Ladyfest. Andersonville is known for being Swedish and for being populated with lesbians. 



yes.

Those are the only two things you need to know about Andersonville. Also that it is delightful and has a bookshop called Women and Children First that you should support if you're ever in Chicago.

FROM THERE, I discovered that the Printers Row Lit Fest was happening downtown by the library, which I did not even know. Shame, shame on my face. Printers Row Lit Fest is where booksellers from all around (from the far reaches of Illinois, they came! I see you there, Rockford Books) set up little booths and sell books and you maybe get in a slightly uncomfortable fundraising discussion with the revolution bookshop over on Ashland, but it's all fine, because they have a $3 Lillian Faderman book.




I got the Feminist Reader at Women and Children First, then Sealskin Trousers at the fest because, um, how am I NOT going to have that on my bookshelf, then the Faderman book, THEN an 1885 bio of George Eliot which was HALF-PRICE which made it $15, and as the wily bookseller told me, "That's really only five dollars a book." I'm onto you, bookseller. But I will still buy your wares.

I flipped through the George Eliot when I got home (p.s. the bookseller was like "What is it with you young ladies and George Eliot! I've sold almost all of the books I had of hers!", so, George Eliot revival happening, pass it on) and I found this HILARIOUSLY VICTORIAN sentence:

The intimate life was the core of the root from which sprung the fairest flowers of her inspiration.

Later it calls fame "in truth a rose with many thorns," so I think this guy just super-liked plants. IN A TOTALLY PLATONIC WAY, jeez, you guys.

THEN I napped. Because I walked all the above in heels and it had been like five hours, and let me tell you, when I got home and was able to take off my shoes, it was, in truth, amazeballs.




BUT THEN. I met up with my friend at Second City and we went to the Women's Funny Festival. After which I got drunk. So it was a rich day of fullness. And now I have more books and that is not cool because MY SHELVES they can only hold so much weight, but I have a loose plan involving being yelled at by someone while I sob and put books into a 'to donate' box. I'm sure that'll work out well.

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