Just got back from a fantastic trip to the capitol of the Great Lakes, Chicago. Jeannie had never been there before and I hadn’t been since the 1990’s when I used to go there for work alot, but mainly spent my time in an office park out in the suburbs.
The motivating excuse was COCon, the Chicago Origami Convention. This is the first time for a Chicago convention, and they had it in one of the big hotels downtown. We arrived a day early, on Thursday to play tourist in the city. The flight out there was smooth. We got up before daylight to get to the airport in time for our flight, and we landed mid-morning. I slept on the plane so it felt like the start of a new day. We grabbed a cab, checked into the hotel, and were out walking around the city before noon.
It must be said that Chicago is a great city for walking around. And the weather was beautiful the whole time. We were right near the waterfront at a place called Navy Pier, and there was a scenic walkway for bicycles and pedestrians. Then into a park with a funky piece of public art called The Bean. It’s basically a giant curved chrome blob that you can walk around and underneath and see really interesting reflections.
The main attraction for the afternoon was the Art Institute of Chicago. It’s a world class art museum to rival the Met in New York or the one in Vienna. It’s got a great collection, and very well presented. Famous paintings on display included Sunday in the Park, American Gothic, Nighthawks, a Van Gogh Self Portrait, and one of the missing stained glass windows from the Darwin Martin House in Buffalo (I wonder if the plan to repatriate that someday) to give you an idea. Also a wing full of great Asian bronze, pottery and sculptures, going from ancient to contemporary artists, ancient Greek and Roman stuff, and a wing of European art including lots of paintings and sculptures and a whole hall full of arms and armor. On the way back to the hotel we walked thru the Honorable Richard J. Daley Plaza where they got that Picasso, across from the Cook County assessor’s office.
Walking back to the hotel along the Chicago river we came upon a plaza with some cafes, and stopped for some beers and a late lunch. Chicago is famous for its architecture, and we were right across the river from some crazy art deco googie tower apartment buildings with parking garages spiraling up the lower half and boat docks in the basement. In and around the river, the museums and various other places downtown I noticed a pattern on the architecture that I’m calling the Chicago motif. It consists of a square divided into eight triangle by square cross and an “X”. Coincidently, this is also the crease pattern of an unfolded waterbomb base.
That night we went out to dinner at a bar across the street from the hotel where they had the football game on. I had a burger with a fired egg on top, cuz if I’m in a place with that on the menu, that’s what I’ll usually get. Later we met my friend and colleague Ann Marie, with whom I’ve been on several zoom calls a week the whole year, but never met face to face before. She invited us to join her and her friends at a different bar downtown where there was a hallowe’en themed burlesque show. It was a lot of fun, with a very positive vibe, and as she put it, classy with a capital A-S-S. Afterwards, we walked around downtown for a good hour while Ann Marie played tour guide and pointed out lots of notable things like restaurants, architecture, and historical sites.
Friday we went to another great museum, the Field Museum of Natural History. It’s alot like the American Museum of Natural History in New York which I know well, but maybe not so large and a little bit more shiny. Great architecture. The star attraction was Sue the T-Rex, named after her discoverer Sue the human. It’s the most complete Tyrannosaur skeleton every found, virtually complete. The T-Rex is the centerpiece of a great hall of the history of life on earth, with tons of fossils and other artifacts. There was also a short 3-D film about the discovery, unearthing and preparation of the Sue fossil, and how they analyzed and what they learned about the living creature’s life and death. It turns out Sue was fully grown, 40 feet long, at 19 years old, and died at 29. During his or her life he or she suffered nine broken ribs and a fractured tibia and recovered from all of those injuries. Among the things I never knew I never wanted to know was that Sue was infected by parasite worms that burrowed holes into it’s jawbone.
For all its attention to scientific detail the film’s CG animation was strangely inaccurate in several ways. For one, they showed the dinosaur’s gait as having wide-set feet like a sumo wrestler, rather than more plausibly with the feet under the the body. Second was that whenever the terrible lizard appeared, the other little dinosaurs would wait for it to get close, then turn and shreik at it before running away, rather than running off at the first whiff of trouble like real animals do. Lastly, in a visualization of an epic battle with a Triceratops a la Disney’s Fantasia, where they conjectured the T-Rex got it’s leg injury, somehow the T-Rex almost effortlessly bites the three-horned adversary on the neck under it’s protective crest. It’s almost as bad as that bit in Toy Story where the light fixture disappears into the ceiling.
There were also halls of taxidermy, a really nice collection of gems and minerals, and whole hall of jade and carved jade art, a bit of crossover from the day before with artifacts from various antiquated civilizations, shown here for the naturally historic rather than artistic value.
After the Field Museum we hit the Aquarium, which was right next door. Highlights include beluga whales, dolphins, sharks, sea turtles, jellyfish, eels, tropical coral reefs, cuttlefish, a cool movie about octopus, and a whole section of tanks devoted to Great Lakes fish such as pike, walleye, perch, trout, and bass.
We walked back to the hotel along the lakeshore trail and by the time we arrived, other origami people were starting to filter in. We spent happy hour at the bar with some friends, and then I set up my exhibit (more on that later). We went out for dinner for authentic Chicago style deep dish pizza. Most excellent. Returned to the hotel for late night folding. I mostly practiced models I would teach the following day.
More on the convention itself next.