I seldom travel into Chicago.  As years have passed, I have less reason to visit the city.  In the past we’d go frequently to experience the sights, the galleries along Superior, the sensation of the Mag Mile, and the festivals at Grant Park.  For some of those years Laura worked in the city.  Chicago was and continues to be a part of us.  How could it be otherwise?  It is a world-class city.

Our purpose for riding the Milwaukee Road train into union station yesterday was tickets to the Cher Show at the Oriental Theater.  The play is a biographical telling of the life and work of Cher.  You could say that Cher belongs to Chicago and to every other place due to the songs, television, movies and theater of her long career. She turned 70 on May 20.  Cher’s music has been an important part of my life for many years.  Sing on dear Diva!  I recommend the show.  Go if you can.

Whenever I am in the city I experience the emotions of any tourist.  I am dwarfed by the architecture, soaring into the sky, “sky scrapers” as they are called for good reason.  On the sidewalk I am the presence of giants.  That is so, -given the comparison in scale, between myself, other humans, and the surrounding buildings.  Certainly this is a very old sensation. Such a feeling came to every Roman citizen who  approached the great coliseum in Rome.

Our buildings are symbols, displaying the prestige, the power, and the hubris of our civilization.  I noticed the oversized logo’s placed on the surface of the stone facades, the entry ways at street level.  ADM, Deloitte, and other institutions which escape memory at this moment represent the apex of hegemony which we believe that we exercise over other societies and people.

We visited the River Walk, a promenade added in recent years to the side of the Chicago river.  The River Walk is below street level and presents opportunity for people watching, and gives a different vantage point for viewing the buildings adjacent to the river.  On a hot summer day the river is utilized by excursion boats, and by many in kayaks enjoying the sunshine along with a good workout.  I could not help but notice the Trump Tower prominently dominating the river.  I admired its design, the curved, stacked ascending form.  When I viewed the out-sized, block letters of the name installed tasteless, along the entire side of the building, I was reminded of his business practices.  I refer to the irrelevance of truth to his promises, his overweening quest for aggrandizement, and his apathetic disregard for those at the grass-roots who have been ruined by his policies.  He is a toxic individual.  All of this came to mind.

I include here a few pictures with which I hope to retain the memories of our excursion into Chicago.

Finally, and of greater importance is a you tube video of Cher performing her great song, If I Could Turn Back Time.

In hindsight who does not imagine what we’d like to have done differently, or would like to have happened differently in the past.  Personally, if I could turn back time, I wish that John F., and Robert Kennedy had not been assassinated. I also wish that Martin Luther King Jr. had lived.