Joho the Blog
An Entry from the Archives

I was six years old, lived in an apartment at 52nd and Cornell, and many days when school was out, my mom would fix me a snack and send me on my way, off to the Museum just across the green from Bret Harte School, my kindergarten alma mater. I suppose six year old kids aren't making that walk alone these days, but what do I know? Maybe they are! At the Museum there were wonderful airplanes hanging from the ceiling and the best electric train layout imaginable. I re-visited the museum a few years ago and the train layout was still there, a little shop worn, but still pretty fabulous. In 1950 they had a closed circuit video set-up with large screens in a projection room and a continuous stream of people walking past the cameras. The audience was amazed to see their friends and families real time on the big screens. The "stars" were impressed to see themselves in the monitors.

More recently there was a medical telemetry studio exhibit with surgeons in Kamchatka consulting with colleagues in Chicago as they performed medical procedures on patients whose lab data was being assessed at labs around the world best equipped to provide good insights and answers.

I love the Museum of Science and Industry. I'm sorry you thought it stunk.

I've been to the Science and Industry Museum twice in my life. Once, oh, twenty years ago or so (gods, I though I had at least another five years I started saying things like that) my parents took me to the Museum when we passed through Chicago to see an old friend of my Mom's. The trip rocked my pre-pubescent world. You have to consider that my life at that time consisted of not much more than an endless search for video arcades. Well, I did read a lot, so I guess it all wasn't a complete waste.

I particularly remember the tour of the WWII submarine. I think it was German, and I remember everything was so crowded inside. I really wanted to play with the control panels inside, but the tour through the sub was far too quick. There were just so many places to explore, and so many thing to do; I never wanted to leave. The whole experience stayed with me for quite some time.

I went back a couple years back when I moved to Chicago for work. The magic had worn off a bit, in part I think because I had become a science and engineering geek, and found myself getting nit-picky with the simplistic explanations in the displays. Or maybe I was grumpy because I couldn't find the submarine, I'm not sure. But I am sure that the Museum will be number 1 on my Places-to-Force-My-Son-to-Go-to-So-He-Can-Resent-Me-Forever-and-Ever list.

By the way, what makes you think that teacher knows better than you? Not that letting 6 year olds be 6 year olds is a bad thing, but it seems to me the teacher is engaged more in crowd control than in trying to create a moment of education. But, then again I could be wrong too.

I am happy you enjoyed your trip. A good vacation is enjoying where you went, not going to every place in the plan.

Pizza, architecture, science and art museums--mix this up with 30,000+ GOPer's infiltrating in at the end of August, NYC is THE place to be.

Frank, I thought it stunk for 53-year-olds. And if all the knob-twiddling works for the designated age groups, then, more power to it.

John, the sub exhibit was closed for refurbishing. Too bad. It sounded interesting.

Bill, NYC is perpetually the place to be. But Chicago was certainly a place to be. And oh so livable!

When I grew up in Chi-town in the 1960s there was a little store-front discovery place (not a "museum") that had cool booths in which we watched smell-a-vision and found out how rockets worked. There were very few adults to bother us and tell us what we did was "educational." Borg Warner put it together... I think it was on Michigan Avenue. ((Sometimes big corporations do good things.))

Before you leave Chicago, dine at Rosebud on Rush. When last there with Ernie the Attorney, Jesse Jackson was dining near us. Great place, great food.

That you found Chicago friendlier than Boston is no surprise. I've been to Chicago many times and have had a similar observation.

As a New Yorker and a major NY chauvinist (and Yankee fan, of course), my observations about Chicago and Chicagoans:

∙ That the pace was fast --but not hectic, as it is in NY (or frenetic, as in Boston)

∙ That denizens of Chicagoland love Chicago, and want to kvell about it -- unlike NYers who have an almost angry pride over the superextraspecial greatness of NYC (and then there's the general snobiness one can find in Boston, a unique strain if that can also be found in Cambridge, although there are also a number of oases of non-attitude in Cambridge, coexisting with their snooty counerparts)

∙ Chicagoans take it easy -- NYers tend to wear stress as though it were a red badge of courage (no comparison here to Bostonians)

∙ Chicago's ball teams are beloved, revered, and even more so, or so it seems, when they come in second. The long run of the Bulls was greeted with joy, not with arrogance or pride. And even the poorly ranking Chicago teams don;t have equally miserable management (like, say, The NY Mets, or those misbegotten Red Sox, Celtics, et al).

∙ That the people driving there are much better drivers,kinder and more considerate than NYers. Of course, the blind are better drivers than most of the natives behind the wheel in almost all of Massachusetts, especially Boston (where they observe the "left of way").

∙ Chicago is a fun place, whether one is there on business, vacation, or for a quick meeting of some sort.

The only negative thing that immediately comes to mind about Chicago is Ohare, and, oh yeah, the way the city fathers acted during the 1968 Convention Riots. But that was then and this is now. Chicago is a great city, with great people, lots of culture, arts, and plain old neat and nifty things to do.