Yeesh, as I write this Sunday morning at 8:13am, it’s already 80° outside with 77% humidity. Yesterday we tried to go to Summerfest and wimped out, mostly on account of me, we left at a little after 5:00 having been there since 3:00, when the band we were really there to see, Japanese Breakfast, didn’t start until 9:30. According to the car, the outside temp was between 98° and 100° all the way home. Looks like it was a good show.
As soon as we got home, the headlines started flashing on my iPhone that the US had bombed Iran, although little on the local TV news, oddly. NPR made up for that the next morning.
Summerfest was our second concert of what was supposed to be a two-fer weekend. The plan was to go to Chicago, see a Chicago Symphony Orchestra concert, spend the night at John & Megan’s, and finish up at Summerfest. The Friday up to about midday Saturday portion of the trip went great. I had a dentist appointment, and we headed to Chicago right after that. I was happy with the dentist appointment where I saw a new dentist, who replaced the prior new one who I only had two appointments with. The prior new dentist had recommended that I get a large old filling and an old crown in my mouth replaced, no surprise, he left to go back to Marquette University and get a degree in endodontics. The new new dentist’s assessment was, “your teeth are looking good. You have some old dental work in there but let’s hang onto it as long as it’s still doing the job.” My opinion as well. We got to Chicago in time to get a parking spot right outside John & Megan’s and Megan actually in between meetings to let us in to drop bags.
We had a 2:30 reservation at Wrightwood 659 to see their First Homosexuals show, which I think is shaping up to be the summer blockbuster art show in Chicago. Because of where John & Megan live, the museum is a 20-30 minute car ride, or 20 minutes by bike, but almost an hour on public transportation. So, we took an awkward-ish Lyft ride there through a bunch of construction that seems like the Lyft app should have told the driver to avoid. There was a Colectivo right around the corner from the museum, the first one in Chicago, I think, so we went there and had an iced coffee until it was time to go in.
It’s a massive show. When we arrived they estimated it’d take two to two-and-a-half hours to go through. I’m a fast looker in museums so I thought I’d be done quicker, but I wasn’t. You start on the 4th floor and work your way down. The show has 8 sections, but the smartest thing they did was to arrange t so that when you get down to the second floor – and are getting really tired – there are a couple of rooms full of depictions of beautiful flesh to perk you up.
This photo is from Stirpad and when I was in that room, I did not get captions for all three paintings, so I only recall that at least one of the male nudes is by Thomas Eakins, maybe both.
I took just a few random photos of pictures I liked, and also lots of captions so I might remember artists’ names.
Oscar Wilde – he really does look like Stephen Fry (the actor who played him once)
Marie Laurencin, La Danse
Janet Flanner, by Berenice Abbot
One of the last times we were in Chicago, I read Janet Flanner’s 1943 New Yorker article, “The escape of Mrs. Jeffries”, about Mary Reynolds’ escape from occupied France and return to the U.S.
Claire Waldoff, by Emil Orlik
Lili Elbe by her wife Gerda Wegener. The film The Danish Girl was loosely based on their story
Self portrait attributed to Dora Carrington, played by Emma Thompson in the movie.
After the show, Megan biked over to meet us at Small Cheval Lincoln Park for an early dinner. It’s kind of like an indoor picnic there, and they had good fries (although they’ve switched to cooking them in beef tallow, maybe due to MAHA slamming of seed oils? or because it tastes good) and a veggie burger for Megan. We were there with all the little kids and families and grand parents. We took the El to the symphony and she headed home, still in the according to plan, all good part of our trip. We took the EL part of the way back and ubered the res of the way, from North & Milwaukee.
In the morning we got up and took a walk around the Humboldt Park neighborhood, got coffee at Humboldt Haus, walked on the Bloomingdale bike path for a few blocks, and stopped at a Walgreens where I got sunscreen, my regular brand in a spray. And I even has $1 on my Walgreens rewards to apply to the purchase. All good.
We had lunch at Flying Saucer, then headed to Summerfest. Too early as above. We shoulda hung in Chicago and not gotten to beer town until 5:00 or later.
Fred, one of the feral cats in John & Megan’s neighborhood
The previous weekend, we also went to Chicago, just for the day on Friday. While we were gone, the abatement services came and removed the walls and ceilings of my bathroom, creating a clean slate for remodeling, and getting rid of the big lumps of grout that contained some asbestos.
Suspicious cats getting shut in the porch for the day to keep them out of the way of the demo.
Lunch wreckage at Gotham Bagels in Chicago
Here’s the stripped bathroom.
That was Friday. Saturday morning I went out to Tipi Produce and picked strawberries and then went to the No More Kings March.
I posted the recipe for the cake. I thought I might use it for one of last week’s CSA recipes, but ended up sitting at my computer until almost 10:00 Tuesday night, in the last of three chat interactions with my hosting provider that finally fixed my website. It started as a PHP error and turned into a permalinks problem. You could see the main page of the site but not get to any category pages or recipe posts. I suggested Strawberry Spoon Cake for CSA instead, this version, but there are many, many, out there.
Going back a bit, Sunday was the Waterfront Fest and we were celebrating 20+ years of Dorla Mayer’s tee shirts. There was a display in a store window and I took a picture in the morning on my way to meet Susan but the light wasn’t very good. Later I got to introduce a band at the fest and I made a woman in the front row stand up and show off her shirt.
Tuesday morning I went out to Monona to take my car in for a pre-road-trip check, before our drive to Pittsburgh, and Susan met me and we went to the gym. We were done before the car was ready, so she dropped me off at a coffee place and I sat for a few minutes and then walked back to the garage past huge catalpa trees. There’s a big on on the 1000 block of Spaight Street, too, that I went past on Sunday, but didn’t take a picture.
Some night in there, I made rhubarb ripple ice cream, semifreddo really, based on this Bon Appetit recipe.
Wednesday Jaser started a class out at the Aldo Leopold Center.
He did not take a nap that day
Thursday I made a version of my summer pasta with the ingredient below, salad turnips, sugarsnaps, zucchini, peppers. And greens.
Pasta ingredients
Komatsuna leaves that also went in the pasta
And if that’s Thursday, we’re all the way back to Friday again, so that’s it for now. Whew.