Trying to Stay Cool in Chicago

Once L&N finally got us out of bed and out of the house, they took us to Lake Michigan to cool off from the stifling heat. where we parked next to this statue of Karel Havlicek, who Wikipedia says was a Czech writer.  The bio didn't mention Chicago so it wasn't clear why the statue was here.  But at the end was this addendum:

A Monument was raised to Havlicek in Chicago by Czech residents of the city in Douglas Park. Unveiled in 1910, the statue by Joseph Strachovsky shows Havlicek in a revolutionary pose, dressed in a full military uniform and a draped cape with his outstretched arm motioning the viewer to join him. The Monument was moved to Solidarity Drive on today's Museum Campus in the vicinity of the Adler Planetarium in 1981^[2]. In 1925 a biographical film was released.

The rest of these will have to pretty much speak for themselves.

This is from the spit that has the planetarium at the end.  That's the Shed Aquarium (lower left)  which our hosts are boycotting because they have "sentient beings" in captivity, including Beluga Whales.  I tried to find something about protests over the whales, and had to go through a lot of google pages until I found this 1991 Sports Illustrated article:

Recently the Shedd, a not-for-profit aquarium that first opened more than 60 years ago, has been the site of numerous protests. And as they have been doing for the past three years, animal-welfare groups throughout the world continue to file legal suits to prevent belugas from being taken into captivity. Lately the battle has escalated. In September two of the Shedd's six belugas died, prompting the governments of Canada and the U.S. to join in an investigation into what killed the seemingly healthy captive whales.

More recent articles talk about two baby belugas born at the aquarium, one of which died.  You can even go into the water and pet a beluga.  As an Alaskan who can from time to time see wild belugas, I have to remember that seeing these belugas live may do more good to protect our Cook Inlet belugas by making more people aware of these great animals.  It's a hard call and I don't have enough information to form a conclusion.  Two calves were born here in December, but only one survived (though this article focuses on the one that survived and the death of the other one is buried in the article.)  The article also says

Beluga newborns in the wild have a 50 percent survival rate and only 10 percent of calves born to first-time mothers live.

I'm not sure how they know this.  The ten percent rate sounds like  bad, if not impossible, evolutionary odds.

Did I say it was hot?

This is the bean at Millennium Park. as we drove by Tuesday afternoon.  Yesterday we spent time at the park and I'll do a post just on the park. 

These are shots from the back seat of the car as we drove through downtown on the way back to Oak Park where we're staying.

We stopped for dinner at a Middle Eastern restaurant that had great food at reasonable prices.  It's called the Chickpea.  

It was full of Western ads and movie posters all in Arabic.  You don't need to know Arabic to get the messages.

And the moon played light games with the clouds when we got home.

Omaha Airport Has Free Wifi

That may seem like a minor issue, I have been trying to identify the airports I've been in that have free wifi.  DC didn't.  Berlin didn't.  The Eurostar train station in Ebbsfleet didn't, nor did any of the trains we were on.  All had wifi available if you paid. 

So I like to give credit to airports that still give free wifi. 

The panel went well this morning.  Another panelist had a paper which used the beheading of John the Baptist to make a model of scapegoating which he then applied to Abu Ghraib.  And there are some interesting possible applications to Juneau too.  You can read it here.  I changed my paper too much to post it. 

We Walk to Iowa Before Dinner

As part of the conference, there was a guided walk along the redeveloped Missouri River waterfront near the hotel.  Our guide was the Army Corps of Engineers biologist who played a major role in the work.  He spoke to us a lunch about developing a plan for the Missouri including people from all the states it runs through and how the Corps had to be dragged into a new way of thinking about dams and about citizen participation.

The walk started on the Con Agra 'campus.'  Merriam Websters' online dictionary defines campus this way:

Etymology: Latin, plain

Date: 1774

1 : the grounds and buildings of a university, college, or school
2 : a university, college, or school viewed as an academic, social, or spiritual entity
3 : grounds that resemble a campus

I wonder when definition 3 came into use.  Anyway, ConAgra is a major employer here.   They are a major purveyor of packaged foods in the US, but they did withdraw advertising from the Glen Beck show,  but one could ask why they were advertising with him in the first place.  Probably because that was a good audience for them.

 Soon we were walking along the river on this warm, but very windy evening.

This is the pedestrian bridge across the Missouri River into Iowa.

This sign told not only of the good things the dams built along the Missouri did (stopped flooding downstream), but also the serious negative impacts (such as 51 of 67 native Missouri River fish are now rare, reduced in numbers, and in one case endangered). That's not something common in such public signage. 

The Missouri River from the bridge.

And into Iowa. 

Kaneko, Much Warmer, Cold

There was a reception last night at the Kaneko.  What I could figure out was there is an artist named Jun Kaneko.  I liked what I saw there, but there wasn't much information about the space.  The website gives a little more info.  The mission statement seems appropriate to this blog:

Creativity begins with an idea - seeing things differently.

By the way, did you know there was Nebraska wine?  I'm not drinking alcohol for health reasons at the moment, so I can't give a report.

It warmed up a lot - into the 70s - yesterday and today was supposed to be much warmer, but when we got up it was pouring out.  It really has to be raining hard for me to pick up the falling rain on my camera.    And then it stopped.  The parked cars in the lower left of the picture above are the same cars in the lower right of the picture below.

Those white tents in the back are the farmers' market.   J went and got some tomatoes, but I have to report, sadly, they didn't taste any better than the ones we get in Costco in Anchorage.  Not even as good.  But cheaper.

Meanwhile, I'm fighting off a cold with lots of liquid and vitamin C.

I've gotten to see some old friends and meet some new ones.  There have been some good exchanges of ideas, but nothing spectacular.  And my cold isn't helping.

The National Gallery's East Wing

Back to DC Wednesday, we went through the underground passage from the National Gallery to the East Wing.

Then you look up.

Sol Lewitt

Lewitt up close

Max Ernst
[UPDATE Sept 2012:  I immediately thought this was the piece I'd seen at Dokumenta 3 in Kassel, Germany in 1964 and eventually found the picture of me sitting on it.]

Lichtenstein

Stuart Davis

There was something about this black and red painting that really drew me.  It's called Achilles and was painted by Barnett Newman in 1952.  Here it is close up.

Two Calders in a room full of Calders

Jackson Pollock close up

And this one is for my daughter

To Blog or Not at PATNET

I'm tempted to bring my computer downstairs and live blog the conference. But this is a conference I've been to as a participant in the past, not as a blogger, and I'm not sure I can do both. I'll try to get up a sense of what's happening to my brain here, but I've decided it's better to spend my time talking to folks than to be blogging hard.


Mark Bevir did the opening talk this morning and then there was an afternoon panel on his talk and book Democratic Governance.  

It's been seven years since I've been to a PATNET conference and it looks like Powerpoint has made a significant beachhead.  This was a conference that had resisted the technology in favor of people talking directly to each other. 

This was a panel on the impact of technology on governance and decision making.   More later, but I'm just doing this as a quick break. 

Turners, Constables, and Winslow at National Gallery

We're in Omaha for the conference now, but I want to catch up on some of the DC sights. We did a number of things very superficially, but just walking through some of these rooms was like an aesthetic massage.

We finally got to the National Gallery.

The museum has a 'quick visit highlights' sort of guide so you can see their = - what should I say? most famous, most significant, best works. This one of Napoleon by David was on the list. But we got there accidentally.

Doug had suggested we go see the Turners in our quick visit at the National Gallery in London and somehow we missed them altogether. He also had planned to take us out to Constable country - where Constable painted in Essex. So these pictures are for Doug. The one above is a Turner. This British site says Turner is the Romantic painter of light.

Here's a Constable.  We did have a day with sunshine, but from what I can tell this isn't typical. 

More Turner.

Turner close up.

Even closer.

This is a closeup from Edward Hicks' Peaceable Kingdom.

I liked this one, but didn't get the name of the artist.  But I'll put it up anyway. 

And this is one of my favorite Winslow Homer paintings.  It's called Right and Left. 

I like to see artists working in the galleries like this. When I took a computer art class long ago, we all had to copy a masterpiece. I found I really discovered so much more in the picture than I ever would have. I'd recommend to anyone to even just try to sketch a picture. You suddenly see details and nuances you don't catch on the first 50 looks.

OK, next will either be a post on the conference or the East Wing of the National Gallery. I have shots of some delicious paintings.

More DC Walking Wednesday

We're headed to the airport early today and after a plane change in Detroit, we should be headed for the conference in Omaha.  Meanwhile we were tourists again yesterday in DC.  After the bookstore we wandered past the White House. 

I didn't ask what this was about.  I didn't want to know.  But I had the impression they didn't like Obama. 

These folks were taking their pictures in front of the White House.

Here's a  Segway tour group also near the White House.  They did look like they were having fun.   It's good to know some people have discretionary income these days. 

We talked to a very nice woman named Denise who said she wasn't allowed to have her picture taken who works for an organization that does security and clean up in the downtown area.  She said this was the old post office and you can get tours up to the top of the tower.  But we wanted to see the National Gallery of Art.  But on the way, I couldn't resist stopping in at the Natural History Museum.

This tarantula was live in the insect zoo.

The Komodo Dragon - a kind of monitor lizard - was stuffed.

And then there were several rooms of skeletons.  These two are from a swordfish.

Woodpecker.

Alaska Brown Bear.  But now that I think about it, it isn't very big.

The Hope Diamond.

Then off to the National Gallery.  I'll post that later.