Gallery 200 is an art gallery in West Chicago that’s run by artists, for artists, featuring the work of local creators in all sorts of mediums! Paint, markers, felt, jewelry, dishware… to paraphrase, “you can walk through three times and always find something new.”
My experience so far has specifically been at the exhibit openings, an evening reception with snack food, several of the artists, and, this month, live music! The gallery is usually open on afternoons, Wednesday through Sunday, and I’ve just learned they offer workshops as well! It’s such a magical little corner of the world, truly, full of pretty things and lovely people.
Yesterday played host to Brookfield Zoo’s Hispanic Heritage Fest, an absolute blast of an event I hope they bring back in future years! Events we didn’t get to included the bilingual story times and games, and… that’s about it! There was enough in the schedule that we didn’t make it to every single item in a given category, and enough room in the schedule to hit a little bit of everything.
Events we did get to included multiple Zoo Chats featuring thematically appropriate animals, like Andean condors, llamas, and Eastern screech owls; various dance performances; and the general wandering a zoo entails, with special signage listing which Spanish-speaking countries each species heralds from! Say that five times fast. There were also community groups and vendors set up for a few hours in the East Mall, and special menu items at the nearest food sources. All in all, a lively, educational time!
“Why do you take so many cat photos?” I asked myself once. “Because they’re doing something cute.” “But they’re always doing something cute.” “That’s why I take so many cat photos.”
This, it turns out, is true for more than just cats, which is how I came out of Brookfield Zoo – somewhere I’ve been more times than I can count – with even more animal photos. In my defense… just look at them!
“I am one with the plant and the plant is with me.”“I fits, I sits. Even if nobody is sure how I got up here.”The flamingoes took full advantage of their parade around The Swamp. Not pictured: one walking right up to us and waiting impatiently for its photo to be taken.
We seem to have had really lucky timing this trip, from start to finish! Happy Pride indeed.
When last I wrote about Kuipers Family Farm, I sung the praises of their apple picking and sunflower features, with a blurb about the pumpkin experience I’d never actually done. Well, I’ve still never been to their pumpkin picking, but they’ve now added a tulip festival!
Like the sunflowers, the tulips span seven acres, and you can pay extra to cut your own and bring them home. Or, if you have cats like ours who don’t understand “don’t chew that” (tulips are bad for them), you can just pay admission to wander and enjoy. It’s in the same area as the pumpkins with what I assume are year-round features (though again, never having been to the latter, I can only infer). These include a sort of jungle gym, games like tetherball, and a small zoo! There are also food vendors. All in all, it was a lot bigger than I expected, and of course the tulips were gorgeous! Their season is over now, but there’s always next year.
This tour is specifically featuring MALINDA’s album It’s All True, as well as some other originals (like “Don’t Make Me“!), folk covers, and sean-nós, or “old style” Irish music. What I learned at City Winery is that MALINDA concerts are so, so special, not just because I love her music, not just because she has an extremely talented team joining her on tour, but because there is such an infectious energy to her concerts! It’s epic and personal and More (With You) and the audience participation for songs like “Figured Out” was really just the icing on the cake.
If there was ever a concert worth seeing over and over and over again, it’s definitely MALINDA’s, and if you’re near any of the cities that still have tickets left, I highly recommend going! It’s absolutely worth it. As for the rest of us… here’s to the next tour!
In past years, Brookfield Zoo has had either a Lego animal display or a dinosaur animatronics exhibit available all through summer. This year, they changed it up a bit and brought us Ice Age Giants instead! Also featuring life-size animatronics, this exhibit focuses on megafauna from the most recent Ice Age, from wooly mammoths to giant cheetahs to something called a “Josephoartigasia.” (Picture a capybara, except it’s 9-10 feet long!)
This post is absolutely, 100% an advertisement for this exhibit. It’s awesome, it’s informative, and it runs through October 30th (free with general admission!) so if you’re in Chicagoland you should definitely check it out!
Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry is both expansive and entertaining, full of different wonders to learn about and explore.
On our most recent trip, we started with the upper level balcony area, learning about the science of storms through a variety of interactive displays. Some were physical, like the tornado tube and the controlled flame in the wildfire section, which you could, adjust the fuel and mist content for to see how it altered the live thermal readings. Others were purely hypothetical, such as a simulation about how scientists study lightning by launching rockets to draw it to them.
The next section, Chemistry, had its own fascinating facts, and what may have been my favorite of the permanent displays — a large table with the periodic table projected on it, and pucks with which we could select elements, and then combine them off to the side, unlocking intriguing facts about each new compound. I also particularly enjoyed the firework simulator, which shows you how different chemical compounds burn different colors, and then lets you choose a few (and patterns for them) to light up the virtual sky! Meanwhile, the coolest part of Taking Flight (presented in partnership with Boeing and United Airlines) was either the actual retired plane you could tour… or the lesson on the various signals ground crews use to help the plane park safely. I feel like there should be an obvious answer here….
There are a plethora of other amazing exhibits, like Genetics (they have baby chicks!) and Colleen Moore’s Fairy Castle, which is the single most intricate dollhouse I’ve ever seen, full of fun tiny Easter eggs like Cinderella’s slippers and the golden harp, and of course the many areas we didn’t even get to this trip, but none of that is actually why we were at MSI this fall. No, our trip was prompted by something a little more… Marvel-ous.
That’s right! Through October 24th, 2021, the Museum of Science and Industry has partnered with Marvel to bring forth a superhero-themed exhibit, showcasing the evolution of the super hero genre and its many iconic characters! Do I sound like I’m advertising this? Yes, I suppose I do. But y’know what? This was awesome. The way they had everything laid out combined history, some statuary photo ops, framed comic book panels (many of which were the original art), and a variety of the very same costumes worn in the movies, which had me geeking out at every turn. And this is coming from someone who hasn’t read the comics! (And now kinda wants to!) It was just… wow.
All in all, MSI is one huge hub of geeky, nerdy glory, with so much variety it’s 99% guaranteed to have something for everyone, and if you’re in the area I highly encourage you to check out Universe of Super Heroes while it’s available.
Capricon has rolled around again, and as some of you may recall, last year I mentioned (here) that my cousin and her friends run a party called the Box Fort. Standardly, we’d arrange one of the party rooms at the con with pillars and arches and partial walls of boxes, complete with thematically appropriate cardboard cut-out decorations and markers so people could draw on the fort. This year, of course, Capricon had to go virtual, so the box forts are a DIY project. And in our house, where there are boxes, there are cats.
Unfortunately none of the real cats are in the next photo, but I wanted to share it anyways. Since most of the boxes were in the living room in the fort shown above, and Mom and I were attending the parties’ Zoom rooms separately… I made my fort out of plush instead.
It should be noted that I rarely write about books, shows or movies, specifically because I find it difficult to properly express my appreciation of the works without spoiling anything. However, this musical was phenomenal, and I feel it warrants a post. Not about the plot, just a little bit of why I appreciate it. I will, as always, try to avoid spoilers.
I should start by saying that The Secret of My Success is new, and it shows. While the musical is based on a film (which I haven’t seen, so I can’t really compare the two), the casual use of (light) swearing and more traditionally “inappropriate” humor (nothing too crude, and if your children understand it’s not the musical’s fault) mark it as a modern work. So do some of its references — both Barack Obama and Prince Harry were mentioned.
One of the keys to this show is the humor. They make fun of themselves (“Is he singing at me?”) and have plenty of in-character comedic moments, so even though the story actually has a lot of deep, serious messages, you spend the whole performance laughing.
I can’t say much about the serious themes of this show, what made it so clearly modern, or the details I appreciated, because that’s spoiler territory, but I will say that I appreciated how intelligent the kid in this story is. Ernie is eight, which, it seems to me, is an age often written with linguistic difficulties and a lack of situational comprehension. Possibly because I was a precocious child, or just because I was close enough to that age to be interacting with real, live eight year-olds semi-regularly, this portrayal always bothered me. In contrast, Ernie is an intelligent, articulate young man, who, while he still (rightly) acts like a kid, is also aware of what’s going on around him. I can’t begin to pick favorite lines from this show, but Ernie definitely had some good ones.
In short, I really, really loved this musical, and I’d highly encourage you to check it out!
I’m at Capricon, and while I’m not going to talk about the whole con yet, because it’s still going, I am going to express my excitement at the parties.
So, in case you don’t know, parties at conventions are in hotel rooms/suites in the evenings, and there’s generally alcohol involved. Obviously, I’m not drinking at the parties, because, well, ew, and also, you know, legal minor and all that, but now that I’ve been turned loose, I’ve discovered that they’re pretty fun to go to anyways. There’s food and conversation and (at least, at the comic book themed party) trivia and it’s a really casual way to hang out and chat.
A large part of why I get to roam is because my responsible adult is now busy helping run a party — the Box Fort, which my cousin and her friends started last year. Since they’re all busy with the party (which I’m not actually allowed into yet — they decided to make it strictly 21 and up for alcohol and legal liability reasons) I get to go to the other parties — basically, wherever I’m allowed into and have any interest in being, which is why I’m spending a lot of time in the Marvel/DC comics room and in the Books and Beer party, which an author friend of mine runs.
So, I realize this isn’t a particularly useful and/or informative post, but I’m super excited about this and wanted to share that energy. And the knowledge that there are, in fact, parties that are both welcoming and interesting for teens.
