Friday was uneventful.
Saturday I started out by walking to the Halstead region. I managed the only route that took me through the projects. I was getting a little worried at one stage. Here they were having a street party with some bands and Market stalls. It was called Halstead Market Day, and was held every year to raise money for the community.
I watched a couple of bands, (Clip, ManPlanet). Clip were pretty good and it was such a pity no one thought likewise. After watching the bands I went for a walk round Halstead and stopped in a bar to cool off with a Guinness. I had had enough of drinking Miller, and it was really very hot out in the sun.
Went back to the Street Market and watched an R&B band. Looked at the stalls, 25% were Gay and Lesbian stalls. I later found out that this area of town was the Gay area. Stopped at one stall and asked why I should want to go to Manchester. It was a Manchester tourist board stall. They were advertising the Gay community of Manchester.
Went back to the hotel by the Brown Line train to pick up my messages. Fred had said he would ring about dinner. Messages left said that he was or was about to be at Barbara’s and that to ring. I rang, got her address and found that she lived in the Halstead area and had been at the Street Party. So back on the Brown Line train to Halstead. At Barbara’s there was Fred and family, and Marianne Parkhill. After a couple of beers we went out for a Thai curry, and then back home.
On Sunday I did the museums in the area. But first I visited the John Hancock Observatory. This used to be the highest building in Chicago, until the Sears tower was build. First was the Shed Aquarium, were they had some good exhibits, some a bit like the sea shore at the Plymouth aquarium. There example was the yearly rise and fall of the river in the Amazon forest. They also fed some of the fish in another aquarium by hand with a diver swimming amongst them. Not sharks.
In the Ocean pool they had Dolphins and Whales. These performed for us.
Next on to the Adler Planetarium. I watched one show of the night skies over Africa. The rest of the exhibits were educational, but geared at the child or person who knows nothing of physics. One good exhibit though was the Atwood Sphere. This was a large metal sphere in which you sat. The sphere was rotated around you, and light entered through holes in the sphere configured as the night sky. Eight of you could sit in the Sphere at one time. This Sphere had been build eighty years ago and was the way the night sky would be shown to people. It was superseded by the Zeiss projection system a few years later. The Sphere then was used by the Navy to teach navigation during the war, then it was donated to the Adler and was a curiosity. It was very good and we were shown the constellations of stars.
The final museum I did was the Field museum. I specially looked at the exhibits relating to the Native Americans, and then looked at the mineral exhibits. They had a very good collection of meteorites, including the one which fell in the 1930s, through a car garage roof, the car roof, the seat floor pan, and stopping at the exhaust pipe. The museum had all the bits of the car and garage roof, which had been hit by the meteorite.
Back to the hotel for supper and a shower. Very sore feet after all the walking I had done.
