Oh the places you'll go: Chicago (again)

I know, I know, you're getting bored with the whole midwest thing. I promise the next trip is going to be way more exciting. Here's a hint. Or two. (It's a two part, ten day event.)

In the meantime, Chicago was lovely - it's really growing on me. The flight was good, if early, the hotel was fun, provided you're not anti-French. (I do like a separate bathtub for soaking.) I visited the Museum of Contemporary Art Tuesday afternoon, enjoying an Alexander Calder exhibit, and their 40 year retrospective, including the Other Vietnam Memorial.

A preliminary sketch of his Other Vietnam Memorial foresaw a "list of three million Vietnamese killed during the US involvement in Vietnam"; it would be on "Copper pages, hinged on [a] central pole," and could be turned by viewers. In the catalogue prepared for a 1992 exhibition of The Other Vietnam Memorial at the Museum of Modern Art, Burden is quoted as saying, "I just thought somewhere there should be a memorial to the Vietnamese that were killed in the war. So I wanted to make this book, sort of like Moses' tablet, that would be an official record of all these three million names. I would suspect that we will be lucky if we get twenty-five percent of the names; other ones would be nameless, basically faceless, bodies. . . . I want the size of the sculpture . . . to reflect the enormity of the horror." The result is a memorial statistically impressive in its numbers, at the cost of making actual sense. In order to register three million casualties, Burden took a catalogue that contained four thousand Vietnamese names, transformed them into verbal integers, and designed a computer-generated permutation of them.

It was beautiful, and moving.

The rest of the visit was the usual blur of meetings, meals, and conference calls. We hit Vermilion for delish cocktails and Latin/Indian fusion food - it was actually quite good - one night, and finally made it to Pizza Due for deep dish. Next time, we'll check the pizza more carefully when it arrives, as this one was loaded with unwelcome 'shrooms.

I forgot I would be battling Friday afternoon traffic on the way to the airport, and missed my original flight, but they booked me on the next one without a hitch. The young man who had to get out of his aisle seat bumped his head hard on the luggage rack getting up, and then proceeded to do absolutely nothing for the entire flight. I take it back, he ordered and consumed a Dr. Pepper. I /read/ my 842 page September Vogue.