A Short Chicago Trip to See Old Friends

Why is it that the days seem shorter and more frantically full here in Monmouth?  Or is it the daily familiar grind doesn't appear to merit notice?   I am thus moved to make a brief entry that sustains the thought that change attracts attention and is more apt to be memorialized.   We start with last week's magnificent sunset that we appreciated from our front porch.

For more summer delight we had to take the train to Chicago where a magnificent exhibit of Manet's paintings at the Art Institute. This one just seems always to catch the spirit of how the world ought to be in everlasting sun with a love at your side and the blue water trickling bye.

Lunch in the Art Institute's fabulous courtyard with a mama duck and her charges.

 I am always brought up short when I see something that says theatre.  This lifesize statue  no longer has a head but the ancient mask remains at his side to declare that this is an actor. 

A special Art Institute treat was to discover just before we left that there was a lovely exhibit of London Underground Posters on view.  This exhibit was put together by the British Museum, but we had seen many examples of these charming, colorful, and skillful ads at the London Transport Museum in previous visits to our favorite city in the world. Without a car and never quite flush enough to take a taxi, Jan and I were constant users of the tube and buses.

We have seen literally hundreds of plays in our many visits and traveled to most of them on the tube.

I loved this one as it delved below the surface to show you the complexity of tunnels that exist beneath your feet as you travel.  Oxford Circus was a maze when it opened as it was a crossover between the Bakerloo and Central Lines.  Today it is even more complicated because it is now also a Victoria Line stop. 

We loved this one for its colors and the fact that we spent time in London during the spring on several of our trips.  And also because Kew was my mother's favorite spot when she visited us in 1971-72 while we were living there.

Later that day we had a lovely dinner with two of my now also retired Monmouth College colleagues

and their spouses.  We are so blessed to have made so many close friends during our working years and that we  have been able to continue sharing their lives even though many of them are dispersed around the country now.