Tuesday 21st - Stars and Blues

The morning was spent visiting the last museum on Museum Campus, the Adler Planetarium. In the past I've been able to look at the area a webcam that used to sit on top of the planetarium and have watched the re-development of Soldier Field. Adler Planetarium is very much a hands on museum, giving visitors plenty of opportunites to interact with the exhibits. You can create your own moon crater as well as see how much you would weigh on the moon or Saturn. There are some fascinating exhibits on how many ancient religions were based on the passage of the stars. The main hall as live view via a very sophisticated telescope to the surface of the sun. It was amazing that I was able to watch solar flares "as they happen". The main exhibit in the hall is a roughly 20 foot high half-sun. This is a scaled representation of the sun as a red giant. The sun as it is , to scale, is roughly the size of a baseball. Next to this a pinhead sized representation of the sun when it has collapsed. This is, however, is TO SCALE! The Adler Planetarium is the only museum in the world with two full-size planetarium theaters. Powered by brand new Digistar 3™ simulator technology, the StarRider Theater is a completely digital, virtual outer space environment. Since 1930, the wonder of the stars has been visible in the historic Sky Theatre. The famous Zeiss Planetarium projector is capable of accurately reproducing the movement of every aspect of the night sky. The museum is worth a visit even if you're not into astronomy, I'm sure you'll find it interesting.





Having visited Buddy Guys Legends on my first visit to Chicago in 2000, The itinerary for this evening was to visit a blues club on the North Side,namely Blue Chicago. There are two Blue Chicago clubs on North Clark Street and I chose to visit the one at 736. I arrived at about 7:30 pm but found that it didn't open till 8, but luckily the Clark Street Ale House was next door so I popped in and sampled a couple of American beers. The pub was not what I expected. Guess what? It's almost like a British pub! Apart from having American football on the TV rather than good old British football there was very little differentiate between this bar and some of the pubs I've visited in my time (though I don't make a habit of visiting pubs you understand!)
Despite there being a couple of British beers, I chose a Goose Island Seasonal as I'd tried a pint at the Navy Pier and it had gone down very well. Once again they hit a spot and after a couple I made my way next door to Blue Chicago.

Blue Chicago is a long room with a bar at it's centre with a smallish stage at the far end of the bar, with booths around one side and the back of the room. The walls were covered with photos of the blues masters and some not so familiar as well as some genuine old concert posters featuring some of the blues greats, such as Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf.

9 pm saw the band of the evening start their first set, The Linsey Alexander Blues Band. The band, made up of both young and old players as well as female drummer. The other young guitarist in particular (unfortunately I didn't catch the names)was kicking out the licks like a veteran. There was just a hint of peak period Peter Green in some of his lead playing as well as some pretty fine rhythm work when Linsey Alexander himself took the lead.

Joining them on the stage was Big Time Sarah, a veteran of the Chicago Blues scene. Sarah has been compared to Koko Taylor and that wouldn't be too bad a comparison. Sarah puts on a raunchy performance and tonight gets the mainly tourist audience involved in the show. There are now three men who now know where Sarah's "42'S and 68's" are! The ladies were not left out as she got three of them onstage to shake their booties. One young lady in particular seemed to really get into it if you know what I mean!

All in all a very enjoyable evening with some decent American beer and some fine blues. What more could you ask for?

Monday 20th - How great thou art

A visit to the Art Institute was the plan for the day. This was another place I had visited on my previous visit to Chicago and luckily this time I was able to see at first glance a favourite piece of American art that was not on display in 2004 which was Grant Wood's American Gothic as well as Edward Hopper's, Nighthawks. A collection of Hopper's work was recently in London which somehow I missed.

The Art Institute has a massive collection of the old masters as well as modern pieces. A particular poigniant piece is Felix Gonzalez-Torres' Untitled (Portrait of Ross in LA) 1991, which consists of a pile of candies laid out on the floor. It's a tribute to his partner who had died of an AIDS related illness. Visitors are invited to take sweets from this pile, which is topped up on a daily basis. Visitors are only allowed one piece of a candy per visit. Here the weight of the pile of sweets equals the ideal body weight of Ross, 175 pounds.

The afternoon was then spent shopping and eating, two things that can be done remarkably cheaply. Safe to say I will have to buy another case for the return trip to London. I've had to buy myself more than one or two T-Shirts amongst other things as I only put a couple in the case and so far the temperatures here haven't dipped much below 70 degrees F during the day. This, Lillie tells me, is not that unusual for this time of year. I can guarantee you though, as soon as I step off the plane in London next Monday it will be pouring with rain!

Sunday - The Chicago Celtic Festival

One thing I've noticed about Chicago is how cosmpolitan it is, so I wanted to check out the Chicago Celtic Festival.As this festival was quite close to the hotel, I took a stroll down to Columbus Drive where the fetival was being held. I was more than a little interested as ,being a "Celt" myself, being born in Wales, I wanted to find out how Chicagoans looked at their ancestry and how they identify themselves. Do they consider themselves to be Americans first, then Irish/Scottish or whatever, or do they call themselves Irish Americans? Every cop show set in Chicago has an O'Malley or Doyle so I was interested to find out more. One thing that did intrigue me was a young lad of no more than twenty who was dressed as you would expect an Irish lad to dress if he was from Dublin. The cliche again I suppose as he was wearing a tweed flat cap, waistcoat and hobnail boots.

The festival itself covered the entire spectrum of the Celtic races. Apart from the more obvious Scottish/Irish connections there was the Welsh contingent, and the societies covering the Bretons of France, the Cornish of the extreme west of England and the Manx society which covers the Isle of Man. All these peoples are covered by a similar Celtic language.

Now I have to say first of all that I speak little Welsh myself. Such was the education system when I was a boy that Welsh was only beginning to be re-taught in schools when I left. There appears to be a resurgence in learning the Celtic languages in schools. Wales has its own Welsh speaking TV channel, S4C, as well as Scottish and Irish channels devoting some hours to their respective Gallic languages.

I popped over to the Welsh tents, unsurprisingly, and picked up some of the brochures. The main Welsh tent was being run by a first generation Welshman who had married an Chicagoan and had emigrated to the USA. He had started an organsiation called the Chicago Tafia. For those not in the know the main river in Wales is called the River Taff and runs from the Brecon Beacons to Cardiff, the capital city of Wales, then out to the Bristol Channel. Any one who comes from Wales is usually called a Taff or Taffy, even if they are from other parts of Wales and born nowhere near the Taff!

An interesting fact I gleaned from them was the explorers,Lewis and Clark, who were responsible for opening the interior of North America to exploration and colonisation, had initially set out to find proof that the US interior had been colonised by a tribe of Welsh speaking Native Americans.

In 1179, a Prince Madog led a flotilla from the coast of North Wales and many people believe that he landed in what is now Mobile, Alabama, therefore discovering America a few centuries before Columbus. Reports circulated of a Mandan tribe who were light of skin and spoke like Welshmen. Many words claimed to be alike in both languages were cwm (Welsh) and kwom (Mandan),meaning valley;prydferth(Welsh) and prydfa(Mandan), meaning beautiful ; and hen,glas,aber,mawr and many more.

You can find out about the Welsh language and how to pronounce some of the words at here.

There were many musical tents and a variety of Celtic music was on show, from pipes to harps and Scottish and Irish dancing was on show. There were also many food stalls selling a variety of what could be considered "Celtic" food. However the Welsh culinary delights such as Welsh cakes and Laver Bread were conspicuous by their absence. Laver Bread is made from a type of seaweed and is full of vitamins. The closest Welsh dish I could find was Curried Chips (or French Fries to our American friends). This is not exactly houte cuisine but if you visit Cardiff on a Friday night after the pubs have closed, this will be the dish that most lads will be getting from the local fish and chip shops!

Day Three - Lights! Camera! Action

Saturday had been arranged as a visit to the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, in particular, the special exhibition called "ACTION! An Adventure in Moviemaking". Myself and Lillie both have an interest in film so decided to go and see what was on offer. The exhibition consisted of a number of different parts, each spolighting a different aspect of the film making process. There were many exhibits on display,such as Indiana Jones' whip, hat and leather jacket; the model of the elephant shaped building used in Moulin Rouge and costumes from Spiderman,X-Men and models used in the Star Wars films. The conclusion of the exhibition was a chance to "star" in a movie.

As well as being a lot of fun for the kids, it gave some of the dads a chance to ham it up in front of the camera. The more educational side of it was to show how some of the special effects are created in films. At the end of the "shoot", everyone in the group was shown the finished product, some parts of the sequence having already been shot, as well as inserting a car chase sequence from The Bourne Identity, The Abyss and Passenger 57.Safe to say my part as henchman number two was the hightlight of the film, all two seconds of it. Well if Dame Judy Dench can win an Oscar for best supporting actress based on about eight minutes screen time, there's hope for us all! At the end you had the opportunity to purchase the finished film. You can also download it online here. Watch my "blink and you'll miss me" performance as Zircon's Henchman Number 2!
. It's a 4 Mb Windows Media File, so if you're not on DSL be patient!

The rest of the afternoon was spent looking around the rest of the museum, my particular interest being the Henry Crown Space Center. Part of the exhibition there included the Apollo 8 module. It was watching the Apollo 8 mission on TV in the 60s as a child that fired my interest in space and science fiction literature. The Aurora 7 capsule, one of the many Mercury spacecraft, is also on display. Looking into this craft shows just how small it was. It seems to have been no more than a tin can with just enough space for a suited astronaut and a plethora of instruments. The Apollo astronauts seemed to have had it slightly better with a little leg room and the relative comfort of canvas seats! It's claimed that the total processing power in the computers on board the Apollo series of craft was the equivalent of the processing power found in today's microwave ovens.

The evening was spent at the home of Lillie's friend Marion, who at one time was the entertainments editor of the Chicago Tribune. Marion lives with her mother Lena in the suburb of Berwyn. If ever there was any one who has seen it,done it, been there and worn the T-Shirt, Marion is that person. She has flown with the Blue Angels aerobatic team, a photo of which proudly hangs on a wall. Now retired she has also finally done the two things she had never done in her life - ride in a hot a balloon and have a tattoo. She has now ridden in a balloon and has a tattoo of a rose on her wrist!

I was made to feel very welcome and a fine meal of pasta and meatballs was the order of the day. I was still suffering from the effects of jetlag so a combination of pasta and a very good Merlot meant I was occasionally nodding off towards the end of the evening. Lillie once again played cabbie and drove me back to Downtown Chicago as well as showing me some of the other sites around town.

Day Two -Musuem Campus

In Friday I decided to visit the Field Museum. On the same site is the Shedd Aquarium and the Adler Planeterium. As the musueums are in the south of Chicago, about a couple of miles from the hotel,I took a walk at the new Millenium Park
The highlight of the new park is the Jay Pritzker Pavilion, designed by architect, Frank Gehry. It's claimed to be the most sophisticated outdoor concert area in the US and it's not difficult to see why. It covers a msasive area and, as you can see from the photo below,the arches have speaker systems built within them to counteract that slight delay you get from being a distance from the stage. A possible venue for Three Blind Mice? Who knows!



The Field Museum is home to the most complete set of fossilsed bones of a T. Rex, that goes by the name of Sue. The paliantologists are unsure of the sex of the beast but "she" was named after Sue Hendrickson, the scientist who discovered the remains. There's also a working lab where paleontologists work with newly discovered fossils, cleaning them up and removing the material around them. With the lab surrounded by glass so that the public can see the scientists at work I wonder if they don't feel like musuem exhibits themselves!

Further in the musuem is a display of various wildlife, consisting of stuffed animals set in poses and scenes of what would be their natural habitat.There are exhibits ranging from the great bears of Alaska to zebras from Africa.
Part of me thinks it's a great shame that these animals have been killed just to become museum exhibits. However I guess in the days when these exhibits were created, before mass media and the Internet, this would have been the only way that many people would have seen many of these creatures "close up". Thankfully times have changed.

Next stop was the Shedd Aquarium, whose emphasis is on conservation. The last time I was in Chicago in 2000, there was three Baluga Whales, in fact one had recently been born there. The aquarium now boasts five. They are very vocal animals, so much so they have been called the canaries of the sea. They might even be called parrots as they have started to mimic the sounds they hear around them, from the recorded bird calls in their area to the breathing of the scuba divers that swim with them.



The aquarium boasts an elder statesman in an Australian lungfish. No one at the aquaurium knows its exact age but it has been at the museum since 1933! This makes it one of the oldest living fish ever.

By the time I'd done the tours it was getting closing time so it was time to head back to the hotel. Now the plan was to put my feet up for an hour and then head off to see some music. After all this was one of my reasons to visit Chicago (and of course to see my buddy, Lillie!). Murphy's Law raised it head and found my self waking up at about 2am the next morning .DOH!!

Day One Proper

Got up at , for me, a reasonably early hour. Had some breakfast in the hotel cafe and then set off to do the first of some sightseeing. The last time I was in Chicago it was November and there was a not a lot going on. Luckily this time it was still the "high season" so there was plenty of opportunites to get and do some sight seeing. The day started with a temperature of the high 60s and by the time I hit the Navy Pier at about eleven it must have been at least 70 degrees F.

Additions to the Pier included by various artists consisting of everything from what appeared to be a giant wooden piggy bank on wheels to various human figures such as a sleeping man on a bench to a carprpenter surveying his work on the pier itself.

The afternoon consisted of windows shopping at Marshall Fields near the old Water Tower, one of the few buildings that survived the Great Fire in 1871. It is surrounded by the usual skycrapers and almost seems a little lost surrounded by all this modern architecture.

Wet and Windy in the City

I finally arrived in Chicago with just half an hour's delay due to being kept in a holding pattern for some time due to "weather" over Chicago. Not sure what the Captain meant by weather exactly. It looked OK as we landed! However just as I left the terminal with my dear friend Lillie, who had kindly arranged to pick me up, the heavens opened. Seems I'd brought the good old British weather with me!

It was surprisingly humid and Lillie told me that the last few days had been sunny and warm in the Chicago area. Trust me to go and spoil it. We went out to dinner and eventually made it to the hotel with it still raining of course. The room at the hotel is basic but very comfortable. The view looks out onto a garden with a swimming pool, a barbecue and seats and a table and plenty of greenery. All very nice considering the room is on the 9th floor and the garden is one floor down.

After an 8 hour flight and the jetlag, safe to say that it wasn't long before I was out like a light.

We're all going on a erm..summer holiday!

Well OK, not exactly summer but a certainly a holiday. I'm writing this at work (quickly looking round in case the boss is about) as I slowly wind down at my last day at work for two weeks. Tomorrow I fly from London's Heathrow Airport to the "Windy City",Chicago. My laptop is coming with me so I can keep this blog habit going, keep an eye on emails but also to be able to listen in and catch at a more reasonable time, taking account of time zones, one of the best alternative internet radio stations, Wholewheat Radio. Netcasting from a shack in Talkeetna, Alaska, you won't hear Britney or Top 40. What you will hear is an eclectic mix of "Americana",folk, blues and music with the obvious Alaskan leaning. I found out about the station from my good friend Victoria, manager of Three Blind Mice over a year ago. I've not really listened to conventional "terrestrial" since. For my humble endevours I run two Live365 stations, one playing independent music and one playing blues. Jim and Esther however show how webcasting should be done.

If all goes to plan the next stop will be the Cass hotel in Downtown Chicago.

Here's the first one!

Well here goes! The first toe in the water that is blogging. It may be a passing phase or it might last, who knows. Like they say, "you don't know till you try."