Puttin' on the Wacker
Now Playing: John Lennon and Elton John--"Whatever Gets You Through The Night"
My "relative" (technically speaking, my half-aunt, which actually sounds hilarious) graduated from Garrett Evangelical Seminary at Northwestern with a Master's in Divinity last weekend, and so I decided it was the perfect excuse to visit Chicago for a couple of days, and the announcement of my raise certainly helped me make the decision. As a result, part of this was written at the Harold Washington Library Center on the edge of the Loop.

The train: The train was arguably better that day than the one two years ago that I took partway to Karen's wedding reception in Shelby Township. This time, of course, we were heading west, with a larger load of people. The only time I've ever been west of the Ann Arbor area in Michigan was the Planned Parenthood lobbying day in East Lansing, a couple of years ago, and I wasn't sure what to expect, looking at the map. The route ran along the Huron in one way or another for a good while, letting me see some of the places I intend to find on foot one day. Once it left the river, the countryside started to become more consciously bucolic, with rolling hills, classic-style red barns, pleasantly old-fashioned residential small-town neighborhoods, and little rock-riddled streams, beginning to tend towards disused mills and derelict office buildings on our approach into the rather dingy Jackson. Wondering what was going to happen next, I found it didn't matter much as we ran into a wall of fog just west of Albion, and anything beyond the immediate horizon that wasn't a "repeat-and-alternate" version of what we'd seen before was pretty invisible. Then it lifted, and was an entirely repeat-and-alternate version of what we'd seen before, with a few interesting kinks, most notably the pretty red-brick train stations at some of the smaller stops (Niles' was especially well-kept, an entertaining contrast with Ann Arbor's station) and the existence of "live nude exotic showgirls" in Battle Creek (what kind of movie would that wacky situation make?--and at which point I also remembered I hadn't eaten cereal in something over a year). Passing through Indiana, we started with gorgeous bottomlands along the lake with wild fowl doing their thing among the reeds until we approached Gary, which really fulfilled my mental image of Soviet-era resorts in the Baltic or Caspian: the saurian spectacle of the U.S. Steel mill placed right next to a variety of casinos and marinas was pretty bizarre. Chicago loomed dimly through the fog, and it was exhilarating to arrive at the monumental Union Station and run into the Sears Tower right as I got out.

Hotel Wacker: Probably the cheapest hotel in downtown Chicago, very much akin to the Embassy in Ann Arbor, where I stayed on my first visit to my present home. It's definitely on the sketchy side, but once I got past the flophouse lobby and the mysterious smell in the ancient tenth-floor corridor, my room was rather nice and well-kept. I didn't have any problems and will probably stay there on my next visit.

The Shedd Aquarium: Worth every penny; I hadn't been to an aquarium in ages, and found this one utterly engrossing, not just the headliners, like the beluga whales swimming around in the oceanarium, but the less spectacular specimens also. Maybe it's a result of all the cooking (as well as the PR work done for nature, particularly of the watery variety, by a friend of mine--loved the invasive species exhibit!), but I paid attention to fish and aquatic wildlife I'd never have thought to do a year or so earlier. Best of all, I finally got to see a live octopus up close; it hid out in its "cave" the first time I passed, but spread itself out over the glass the next, and was utterly fascinating to watch. The beluga and the dolphins provided a dependably popular attraction (as did the penguins), but again, the place really did its job in getting me to think about how it all ties together.

The Field Museum: The Field is probably the most famous component of the Chicago "Museum Campus", and was actually something of a letdown. "Sue," the most complete reconstruction of a tyrannosaurus rex, was definitely worth seeing, but most everything else was the kind of thing you could see in a dozen museums across the country (two of the University of Michigan's museums included). The two lions featured in that goofball 1995 epic The Ghost and the Darkness are indeed in the museum, and failed to "still make me afraid," so whatever. Apart from an excellent exhibit on the history of Native Americans through crafts (including an assload of Moche ceramics--the only ceramics I really have any time for) the whole thing was vaguely shabby. It didn't help that the place was (a) getting hit with the same juvenile onslaught as at the Shedd, (b) getting ready in the main hall for some special event that involved a colossal effort of catering setup, and (c) still shackled by some of its 50s-era displays and exhibits, which might have had a funny "meta" effect if it wasn't so obviously unintentional.

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra: I had joked to myself that I should go see them when I went, and then realized "why not?" The ticket was relatively cheap and it looked like an interesting program: Beethoven's Coriolan Overture, Witold Lutoslawski's 1986 quasi-violin concerto Chain 2, and Anton Bruckner's Seventh Symphony. Last year, conductor Daniel Barenboim made way for Bernard Haitink, who led the orchestra in this performance. It was a long way from Hill Auditorium, believe me. Orchestra Hall's a lovely old building on Michigan Avenue, right across from the Art Institute, and it was a really thrilling and weird experience being in a music-making venue that's seen so much history. It got rather more thrilling for the wrong reasons once I found out how high and narrow my seat was. Those who have been to the Hill will be able to, if not understand, then picture, my usual stance in the seats, which is pretty much as close as possible to splaying; they really invite this kind of informality. Not so at the CSO, I fear. The audience was an interesting one--a lot of teens, many of whom seemed to be part of some school trip (maybe the same ones who'd been at the Shedd and the Field earlier), and the old orchestral diehards. I wound up between two respective specimens of each. The old lady made a little small talk on learning I lived in Ann Arbor, the kid huffed at the temperature in the Hall and was probably worried that the 20% off keg rental somewhere in central Wisconsin would run out at midnight (too late!), and I steeled myself to avoid looking out over the railing and perhaps accidentally hurling on Maestro Haitink. Once the lights dimmed, it was cool, and the Chicago's really one of the world's great orchestras; the Bruckner almost didn't seem as long as it actually was. Lutoslawski's definitely worth checking out further, as I'm guessing is the Chicago Lyric Opera, which was doing Bartok's Duke Bluebeard's Castle and Schoenberg's Erwartung on a double bill, the former with Samuel Ramey, who I've heard do the thing on CD (not a huge fan of that particular opera, but it's fun to say, anyhow).

The Art Institute: It should have been a disappointment, as I lost my ticket for both the general collection and the special exhibit--"Picasso to Cezanne", apparently organized around the life of Ambroise Vollard, their agent--and couldn't get in the latter once I was in the former, but there was so much to see that I simply wrote it off as a voluntary contribution (especially as it took me two hours to see the "regular" stuff). The AIC has a fantastic collection, with some of my personal faves very well-represented. I didn't expect to find Goya's "El Mauregato" series of small paintings (concerning a friar's real-life 1806 foiling of a bandit robbery in a tavern), and was impressed with their collection of post-Impressionists and Expressionists (which I usually take to mean any pre-1940s artists--Miro, of course, but also people like Max Beckmann and Pierre Bonnard, my own favorites in the collection). I passed up the ceramics, but then I generally do. The layout is rather confusing, so that I left after two hours, only realizing a few minutes later that I'd completely skipped the American paintings, and therefore Hopper's Nighthawks and Grant Wood's American Gothic. No big deal; just another thing to look forward to on my next trip.

The streets: I intentionally decided not to try and see or do too much, as I wanted to simply wander the streets of a truly big city a bit (and rode the Loop several times just to do so, marveling at the conglomeration of different neighborhoods--what a way to tour a city!), and wound up having lots of time to do so, waking up at 5:30 Friday and 6 Saturday. That Friday, I walked into downtown, along the river, past the Marina City of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot fame, along the beach, and then to Navy Pier, where I got my fill of Lake Michigan-watching. That very moment, the breeze picked up, and what seemed like a balmy late spring day turned into a whirlwind that pretty much lasted the rest of my trip. At the graduation ceremony in Evanston, I found many of my Louisiana relatives laid low by the intensity of the sudden weather. Welcome to spring in the Upper Midwest, I thought.

Thankfully, the trip back was nowhere near as depressing as the last comparable journey I took, flying back to Akron from visiting Karen in Santa Barbara five years ago. Chicago's always loomed large as my next possible move (it's in the right direction and it's a big city) and it was great to get a feel for the place, however fleeting. I'd advise it not to get too comfortable...