Fire & Change

This 10-foot tall Peace symbol stands beside the Van Pelt Library at the University of Pannsylvania. It's really just a pleasant period-specific sculpture that goes well with its surroundings. But there was a lady, who I knew a little, who thought about it more intensely than anyone else ever did. Kathy Change (born with the surname Chang in 1950 to a family of distinguished Chinese intellectuals) was in her forties when I first knew about her, but she had already done many interesting things in activism, theater, and the arts long before that. It's impossible to forget her now because she would do very loud and colorful performance art in public places all over the city, typically waving rainbow-colored streamers and wearing a chrome-plated bikini. She would yell slogans at the top of her voice against war, Capitalism, and anti-marijuana laws, among other things. Between performances she would just chat about whatever came up in conversation. Once at an anarchist gathering we had to negotiate with her to do her thing just outside the door so that the speakers could be heard by their listeners. In conversation she was a calm, intelligent fellow-traveler.

After many years when Kathy and her views were very familiar to everyone at the university, the campus police banned her from the grounds. Kathy had a dark side that was not known outside her circle of friends, and on October 22, 1996 she went to the lawn area outside the library where students were relaxing on the grass and passing by. She left small stacks of flyers around the area (her goodbye note) and then sat lotus-style in front of the peace symbol, drenched herself with a gallon of gasoline, and lit herself on fire. She is still memorialized to this day on the anniversary of her death.

As I have said many times, Kathy Change was nutty, but she was cool. I took this picture as the first heavy drops of a torrential rain were falling.

A bit more about her can be found here and here.