From: chris lloyd Mailed-By: gmail.com
To: pm@pm.gc.ca
Cc: Andy Cook
Date: Sep 16, 2006 9:37 PM
Subject: Killer's family pleads for privacy; Une quarantaine de personnes soulignent la mémoire d'Anastasia De Sousa

Dear Stephen,

We made it to Baltimore but not together. Claudine had misplaced her
passport and didn't have a birth certificate (it was inside her
passport) so the Air Canada rep said she probably wouldn't get across
the border and re-scheduled her flight. The bummer was that when I got
to customs and they asked to see my ID I only gave them my drivers'
license. D'oh! She arrived just after Andrew Hunt and I finished our
artist talk, which started an hour and a half later than scheduled.
The timing for everything was fairly loose; Andy and Mike and Hans
arrived less than an hour before the opening and finished installing a
few of the pieces; there was a cute intern, Michelle who was there
when I arrived and who had helped file all my letters. Well, almost
all, as there was a few months missing but there was a Kinkos nearby.
I installed the basketball hoop and the paper shredder around a desk
that contains all the letters and shredded and balled up a few to get
started. Andrew Hunt arrived after 6 with his painting; he had been
caught up in traffic slowdowns along the highway from NYC. The opening
was decently-attended and I like most of the work in the show,
especially Cooper and Emily's video 'songs of praise for the heart
beyond cure'. Eventually a group of us went to a bar near Andy's house
called Dizzy Issie's (but everyone pronounced it 'Diseases', which
,considering that it is still a smoking establishment, seemed to make
perfect sense). We drank unbelievably cheap beer, the local Matty Bo,
short for 'National Bohemian'. It was just after midnight when we came
back to Andy's to crash but it felt like tomorrow, we had been up and
on the go for so long. We slept really well in one of Andy's roommates
rooms, except Andrew slept poorly on the couch. Other roommates work
bar jobs and came home late and then after that someone threw a
basketball at the window and woke him up and kept his nerves on edge.

Today we grabbed breakfast at a funky 24-hour diner just a few doors
down, the Paper Moon, then went to the National Aquarium and spent
hours watching fish and rays and sharks and frogs and eels and crocs
and tons of other interesting things, like the thousands of people
wandering around watching the same things. It's a fabulous aquarium.
After that we stopped by an area of town that the city is trying to
designate an 'arts district' but the only people we met were
crackheads and couldn't get into the huge building, which houses
studios and some exhibition and some live-in spaces.

There was a street-festival happening up on The Avenue, John Watters
old stomping ground, called Hampden Fest, with bands and vendors and
people wandering the streets drinking beer. Lots and lots of hipsters
with an incredible array of tattoos. Ate at a western-themed diner
with a mostly organic menu. Now we're back at Andy's debating whether
we have the energy to go back to the Current Gallery for a night of
bands, Swan Island, Odd Bones and Mess up the Mess. We're leaving in
the morning with Andrew for NYC.

Baltimore is an interesting city. I think I'd like to visit again and
spend a little more time exploring. Hard to do it all in one day.

-chris