Wisconsin Journal

Number 25

19 April 1998



The kids had the week before Easter off (as well as the Monday after),

so we took the chance to spend a few days in Chicago with our

friends Steve and Sharon, and their kids Samantha and Niels.



We headed straight to the Field Museum, a natural history museum in

a grand edifice next to Soldier Field, right on the lakefront. We

probably couldn't have seen everything even if we spent our whole

trip there, so we had to pick and choose. We all started out in

the Hall of Gems exhibit, which Luke liked enough to go back to later,

on his own. My favorite items were two opalized fossils, a snail shell

and a piece of bone. After that, Sarah and I headed off by ourselves,

to look at artifacts from China. A set of puppets caught

Sarah's eye. They were for presenting a drama about what befalls

sinners in the underworld. There were several demon puppets, plus

puppets depicting what punishment different people would get.

The most gruesome showed a women going through a grist mill. She

was half-way ground up, with her blood dripping out between the

millstones and a dog lapping it up. Glad my daughter wasn't spending

the afternoon watching all that crap they show on television. On

a lighter note, she also liked a case showing cricket-care supplies.

Various cages and feeding dishes, along with small brushes that

seemed to be for cleaning your cricket.



>From China we headed for the Pacific. Actually, they are adjacent

in the museum, as they are in the real world. The first part of the

exhibit showed how volcanic islands form, erode, turn into atolls,

and eventually end up as underwater reefs. The next part of the

exhibit tells you about what it would be like to live on a particular

atoll, the Majuro Atoll in the Marshall Islands. It's not a tropical

paradise. Not much to eat other than coconuts and fish. Drinking

water is a constant problem. You can try to catch rain water, but

there are dry seasons. On some atolls you can dig a well and find

fresh water, but heavy seas crashing over the island can foul it.

And there's little natural protection from tropical storms and

limited building materials for artificial shelter.



In another section of the Pacific hall there is a re-creation of a

market scene from Papeete, Tahiti. The shops had signs in French,

Chinese and English. I also watched a video about the long, skinny

canoes used on the rivers and flood plains of New Guinea. Besides

canoes for day-to-day use (fishing, getting around), each clan has

a ceremonial canoe. Disputes are often settled by races between clans.

The most interesting part was the "retirement" ceremony for a canoe

that has either gotten old or distinguished itself by winning races.

After a procession, the members of the tribe hack it to bits with

axes, to release its spirit, who would otherwise grow restless.



Further on there were several cases devoted to Vanuatu. (Today's trivia

quiz: What did Vanuatu used to be called?*) There are boars on some

of the islands whose tusks are tightly curved, and will eventually

grow into a complete circle, if the boar doesn't chip them off.

These tusks are prized a jewelry (worn as arm bracelets) and are

also incorporated into carvings similar to totem poles. The carvings

are like totem poles in that they look like a stack of stylized

animals, but the look is "lacier", as the poles are pieced together

from smaller sections, and are hollow inside with lots of cut-outs.

Sarah spent quite a while with a display that identified the animals

on a particular pole.



We had told Kaye and Luke we would meet them at a particular time

back in the main hall. We had intended to be on time, but our route

back took us through the bird section, and we needed to stop and look.

After connecting with the others, we decided to stay a little longer.

Sarah and I headed off to the Geology wing, because she is currently

studying minerals in school. This part of the museum seemed to be

the "least recently remodeled" area, but I guess the rocks don't

change much over time. The most interesting item to me was a meteorite

that fell in 1938 in Benld, Illinois, penetrating the roof of a

garage and the car inside.



>From Geology we headed through a re-creation of the tomb of Unis-Ankh,

which eventually lead us down a floor to an exhibit on ancient Egypt.

The part we liked best was a series of miniature dioramas on how to

make a mummy. First you need to remove all the vital organs, for

separate drying. Then you fill the chest cavity with absorbant materials,

and cover the body with a mixture of minerals called natron (mainly

salt, baking soda and sodium carbonate) to speed drying and to keep

the bugs and rats from chewing holes in it. Once it is sufficiently

"cured", you fill the body cavities with linen rags soaked in resins

and spices and then wrap it carefully with cloth strips, being sure

that each toe and finger gets covered separately. The body is then

ready for placement in a sarcophagus. The lungs, liver, etc. went

into separate jars. Mummies aren't only humans. The museum had a large

collection of bird mummies that had been interred with the deceased.

Falcons seemed especially popular.



We made a quick dash through Africa before heading out. I liked the

parts on life in Dakar, Senegal and the cloth sculpture of a giraffe's

alimentary canal (78 yards long!).



The kids and I then headed over to the Shedd Aquarium. The aquarium

is laid out as a six-pointed star. One point is the entry area and

museum store, and the other five feature particular parts of the world:

tropical oceans, rivers, Great Lakes, etc. I liked the Flashlight Fish,

and Sarah spent a long time in front of the Spotted Garden Eels. These

guys are about the size of a fat soda straw, and live in close-fitting

tubes they make in the sea floor. They slowly slide out to feed and

look around, but drop back into their holes when large fish come by.

While we watched, two of the eased out and more or less tied themselves

in a knot.



The aquarium was more crowed than the museum, and I became very aware

of all the different languages being spoken around me. I must have

heard about 15 different ones, only about half of which I could

identify.



We had to leave because the aquarium was about to close. The directions

Sharon and Steve sent us to their house took us through a very impressive

part of Hyde Park--several blocks of mansions. Most of them were brick,

but two stood out. One was a rectilinear steel and concrete affair,

with different panels of the walls painted different (bright) colors,

and a big sculpture in the yard. It screamed "sixties!" The other was

a new house, golden-tan stucco if I remember, with a huge stained-glass

window facing the street and a wrought-iron fence all around. Steve

told me later that it belongs to Louis Farrakan, and you can tell

when he's home because three bodyguards are patrolling the sidewalks.



The next day we headed downtown. Our first stop was the Art Institute,

where Sarah and I split off on our own again. We headed downstairs

to see the collection of miniature room interiors. These were constructed

under the supervision of a Mrs. James Ward Thorne, between 1933 and

1940, primarly to set off her collection of miniature furniture and

tableware. There are about 50 of them in all, and all are constructed

at 1" = 1'. In the 50 are several chronological series of rooms,

arranged by country: England, France, United States. The detail is

amazing, down to tiny pots of daffodils. My favorite was the Shaker living

room. Downstairs also had a special area for kids that explained

the background of certain works of art. We like the section on a

painting of St. George and the Dragon, where there were reproductions

of about six other paintings on the same subject, for comparison.



We then looked at a small exhibit on "Egyptomania"--ancient Egyptian

styles in design and commercial products. This fad kicked off in the

US during the 20s, after the discovery of King Tut's tomb.

We saw a box of "Tea of Tut" and a bar of "Cleopatra" beauty soap.

There were also pictures of builings contructed with in an "Egyptish"

style. Movie theatres were most common, but there was at least one

Department of Public Works buildings with the style.



Around the corner is a hall featuring medieval weapons and armor,

which I always like to look at. I was pointing out to Sarah some

of the features in armor to help in jousting: bullet-shaped helmet

and cuirass (chestpiece) to deflect the opponents lance, iron straps to

hold the helmet to the body armor, a special plate that goes over

the shoulder holding the lance, a hinged or removable bracket to

support the lance. Then she pointed something out that I had never

noticed before. Most of the helmets had more or extra holes or slot

in the area of the right cheek. We figured out these were so you

could see where the end of your opponents lance was as he approached.



>From there we headed downstairs to Euorpean decorative arts, which

contained quite a bit of modern work. Sarah liked a group of four

chairs from Italy. They were made of cloth-covered foam, and stacked

up to form a big cube. We headed back to meet up with Luke and Kaye,

and passed by a display of architectural elements (gratings, windows,

cornices), mainly from Chicago buildings. There were a lot

of pieces designed by Sullivan, and a few by Frank Lloyd Wright,

including parts of the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. After deciding with

the other when to meet for lunch, we headed up to the painting galleries.

We spent most of our time with impressionists and modern artists.

Sarah was able to identify a Monet from across the room, though she

claims it was a wild guess. There is a great series of haystack paintings

by Monet--the same scene at different times of year and different times

of day, which really shows his fascination with color and light

well. Seurat's "La Grande Jatte" is at the institute, and Sarah

recognized it. (I became fascinated by Seurat as a third-grader one

summer, while taking an art class at the museum in Buffalo, NY. They

had showed us some pictures by impressionists, and told us to try

to paint like one of them. I tried the pointillist style, and

was impressed by how long it took to paint that way. My Mom offered

to buy a print of one of Seurat's paintings for me in the museum store.

It turns out that the only thing they had by him was a nude, but

she bought it for me anyway, though I could tell she wasn't totally

enthusiastic about the idea.)  (Thanks, Mom.) We also enjoyed looking

at the large collection of Joseph Cornell boxes. We could see

the back of one, where there are typewritten directions on how to

rearrange the pieces if they get disturbed in shipping.



>From the Art Institute we headed over to the Walnut Room at Marshall

Fields for lunch. The Walnut Room was the first restaurant to be located

inside a department store. While Fields now has several other restaurants,

and a food court in the basement, none compare to the charm of this

place. Dark wood panelling all around, and the central court of

the restaurant extends up two stories. The whole central fountain

area was covered in flowers for Easter, including large azaleas in

pots. There was also an Easter Bunny in costume visiting the tables.

The kids usually aren't very fond of being seen with people in

animal costumes, but this one had a lot of class. Instead of eggs,

she (he?) was handing out Frango mints.



After Fields, we walked a couple blocks to the Chicago Cultural Center,

which I think is the old main library. In one part of the building

is the Museum of Broadcast Communication, which covers the history

and radio and TV programming generally, and concentrates on broad-

casting in Chicago in particular. They had some original scripts from

"Fibber McGee and Molly," and you could pull open a closet door

and hear a tape of Fibber McGee's closet crashing down. A small

exhibit featured the Motorola company, from the Chicago area. Motorola

was the first company to produce a radio you could play in the car,

while the car was running. (That is, they made it sturdy enough

to stand the bumping around, and sheilded enough to reject ignition

noise.) We saw a set of orginal NBC chimes, and watched old commercials

featuring Edie Adams and Ernie Kovacs. Adams did singing commercials

for Muriel cigars ("Why don't you pick one up and smoke it sometime?")

and Kovacs did little silent skits that panned to a box of Dutch

Masters cigars at the end. I believe the Kovacs ads were an integral

part of the Ernie Kovacs Show. I've seen reruns of that show, but

the cigar ads have now been cut. We also saw props and costumes

from a children's show on WGN called Commander Goose (I think).

WGN is celebrating their 50th anniversary on the air, and I saw

a special on the history of the station recently. WGN has been

an independent station for most of is existence, and originated

an incredible variety of shows over the years: Bozo the Clown,

weekly beauty contests, a big band show, courtroom dramas (with

real lawyers), quiz shows. I can only think their current affililation

with the Warner Brothers network represents a great loss. Upstairs,

the museum has archives of old shows and commericals you can watch,

but we didn't have time to go up. There was a tape playing downstairs of

the Nixon-Kennedy debate that aired on CBS, along with one of the TV

cameras used to shoot it. I learned that one reason Nixon looked so

uncomfortable during the debate was that he had an extra 400 watts

of light on him that Kennedy didn't. They were there at the request

of his campaign staff, who were hoping they would wash out the bags

under his eyes.



After that we walked along the El (elevated train) tracks for a

few blocks, which Sarah recognized from watching ER, and I remember

from many car chases in many movies. In fact, the meters on one

block were hooded, with notices that there would be no parking

for the rest of the week because of filming to be done there.

Sarah thought a good plan would be to come spend the next day hanging

out around that block, with hopes we might get to be in the movie.

Luke thought it would be a good plan to get a new sister.



Steve and Sharon live near the University of Chicago, so we walked

over there on our last day. On the way we stopped at the Robie House,

one of Frank Lloyd Wright's best known Prarie Houses. It was too

early for a tour, but we did look around the gift shop. We then

headed on to campus. There is no way to mistake the UC for anything

other than a college campus. John D. Rockefeller, who paid for much of

it, wanted it to resemble the great colleges of Europe, and indeed it

does, with lots of quandrangles, quarried stone and chapel-like

halls (one of which is indeed a chapel). The kids checked out the

bookstore while Kaye and I checked out all the quadrangles. We

headed back to the house past the Henry Moore statue that commemorates

the first controlled nuclear reaction, in Enrico Fermi's atomic

pile in a squash court under the bleachers at Stagg Field. That

event took place on 2 December 1942; the football stadium has since

been razed and rebuilt nearby.



The last stop was the Science Museum, which is housed in the Palace

of Fine Arts built as part of the 1893 Columbian Exhibition. From

1894 to 1920 it served as the home of the Field Museum, and then

fell into disuse and disrepair. At one point it was close to being

torn down, but was restored to house a new museum. One of the most

interesting parts of the museum is the stairwells. In one there

are all kinds of linkages and gear mechanisms you can turn to see

how they work. In another is a pair of cadavers that have been

sliced into 1/2" slabs, one vertically and one horizontally.



I spent some time with Sarah in an exhibit on topology sponsored

by IBM, where we learned about genus and Klein bottles. She already

knew about Moebius strips from school, but she liked their model where

you could run a little car around it, making two circuits before

coming back to the same place. There is now most of a Boeing 727 jet

hanging in the main hall, but we didn't get to go inside, because

there was a press conference being taped in front of it. We did

see the gondola from the Picard balloon, which ascended to a record

height of 11.59 miles in the 1930s.



The stupidest exhibit in the museum was the self-esteem house, which

tried to convey the twin messages "You're good because you're you!"

and "Don't do bad things!" It was all designed so there was very

little chance of failing on any of the activities. However, Sarah

managed to get an incorrect answer on one of the questions asked.

I congratulated her on being able to figure out a way to go wrong

in a place designed so you would do everything right. I told her

she must be a very special child.



Sarah hooked up with Kaye for a while, and I headed off on my own

to see the section on food and nutrition, and then a gallery of

old cars. Off to the side of that hall was an exhibit from the

General Motors Parade of Progress, which was a fleet of buses that

went town to town in 1933, carrying exhibits and demonstrations on

sciece, technology and manufacturing. The exhibit I saw was an

automated vignette of a sleepy country town turning into a thriving

burg after a four-lane highway came through the middle of town. The

story line in the narration was quite involved, talking about a woman

whose beau goes off to WWI and is listed as missing in action.

She marries someone else, but he's an oaf, so she opens a diner

to make ends meet. Her old boyfriend turns out not to be dead,

and ends up starting a chain of restaurants. Her husband eventually

gets himself killed, she converts her diner to a franchise operation

in the chain, and her old flame comes to visit. We are left

to imagine what happens next. All because of cars.



The last thing I looked at was the chemistry section, which features

a wall-size chart of the periodic table. For all the elements that

aren't too radioactive, there are examples of products made with them.

We finished out the day at an Omnimax movie on thrill rides.



And then back to Madison, stopping every 15 minutes along I-90 to

pay a 40-cent toll, until we hit the Wisconsin border.



That's all for now; I hope to catch up with the rest of our travels

soon,



Dave



*New Hebrides