`DID Y0U MAKE A FIRE T0NIGHT?' February hits Ithaca, New York, once a year for four months. Here, there is a quiet rage. Controlled. Students pin their backpacks with ideals, slap them onto the bumpers of their cars. Townies, more permanent residents, gather in coffee houses and pavilions outside of shops, arm their faces with beards and scarves, bodies protected by flannel. And the rage takes on other forms — poetry and song, protests and solidarity. It mellows. It melts. Tonight, in this pavilion in the middle of town, the solidarity is with Egypt,
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Written by Nikki Black Photographs by Patrick Barnes
and Andy Doyle is sitting on a bench, hoping he put the right flag on his poster board. “I just wanted to say, we’ve been collecting poetry about Occupy Issues, and we’re having an open mic tonight at 7:00 at The Shop, so if anybody has anything — ” says a man with a megaphone, standing in the middle of a stone pavilion. Andy will be on his way to The Shop, on his way to the second Friday of this month, which brings him, as most second Fridays do,