Mid Oct. updates

I don't have the energy to make a very thorough post, but I'll provide a few highlights of the last week or so.  We were in Chicago visiting relatives last weekend.  I had the kids for much of Saturday.  I almost turned around when my daughter said she was woozy on the train to downtown.  This is becoming a real issue, and we might not make it to New York (where getting from the airports is not easy and pretty much everything involves long train rides).  I think we have to see where she is at in another year, but this is a total drag.

Anyway, we did make it to the Art Institute of Chicago for the final weekend of their René Magritte exhibit.  My daughter was not all that cooperative when she saw the line, so, to keep the peace, we went and did some drawing in the children's wing first.  She was still balking but I said that I would carry her if there were too many people for her to see the art.  We actually got in when the wait was a bit under 15 minutes.  By the time we were done, the line was more like a 45 minute wait, and it was getting worse with every passing minute.  I might have just given up had we gotten there later, which would have been an incredible shame.  It was a good exhibit, but one marred by very thoughtless considerations of spacing and crowd control, like forcing everyone to go around a tight corner into a small room.  I'm sure it was ok during the week and most weekends, but on opening and closing weekends it was really hard to maneuver around the crowds.  (Quite possibly the worst laid out exhibit I have seen there.)  Needless to say, I had to pick my daughter up constantly.  The most amusing moment was when we saw one of the famous paintings that read "Ceci n'est pas une pipe."  I told her it said This is not a pipe.  But it is a pipe, she said.  And everyone around us laughed...  The second half of the exhibit was better spaced and more fun.  We saw a bit of the Modern Wing after that, and I made sure to see Seurat's La Grande Jatte and Caillebotte's Paris Street, Rainy Day.  (They have many great paintings in their collection, but the Caillebotte is probably my favorite.)  My daughter's favorite was the Renoir with the two girl acrobats (below).

Renoir, Acrobats at the Cirque Fernando, 1879

They were getting a bit tired after that, but we did walk next door to Millennium Park and saw the Bean and took some photos.  Maybe I can post one tomorrow.

Then we made a super quick trip to a Subway, but they looked at me like I was crazy when I asked if they had yogurt parfaits (which they carry in nearly all their Canadian outlets).  Then we looked at some modern art at the Cultural Center.  Interestingly, my daughter liked this odd exhibit on the second floor the best of everything she had seen that day.  (The exhibit was called "here and there pink melon joy" and was by Chicago/Oak Park artist Sabina Ott.)  Her favorite was the words moving about on the walls (the last photo below).

 

Then I handed off the kids to my wife (who had been checking out the David Bowie exhibit at the MCA).

And I was free!  I went off to see two plays -- one at Steppenwolf's Garage Theatre and then Caryl Churchill's Owners at Athenaeum.  They were both enjoyable, though I found the cast of Owners to be projecting just a bit too much for the space they were in.  Also, the AC was really cranked up.

The trip back to Toronto was generally less stressful, though we didn't find everything we had hoped to find downtown (running shoes, flu shots, Halloween costumes, etc.). It was nice to have Monday off (Canadian Thanksgiving), though I ultimately ended up working a fair bit.  Given all the horrible headlines lately (ebola and some potential hurricanes and even Calgary losing power downtown for several days), I really ought to donate to the Red Cross, given that we are so fortunate.  On the other hand, the United Way Campaign just kicked off at work, and I may be too stretched to contribute to both.  But I will make some donation shortly.

At work this week I feel I have been playing catch up the whole time, even after going in on Monday.  I guess it was just writing one more darn proposal on top of two projects with extremely demanding deadlines (and clients).  (It definitely didn't help my mood to get so wet coming home on Thurs.  I actually was biking but was out of the rain (at the library) for the worst of it.  Could have been worse -- being on the subway when they had to suspend service due to flooding!)

Today, I ended up working close to midnight to get something out, as did one of the juniors, though I must admit that while he was making some changes to the spreadsheets, I went off to my concert at Roy Thompson Hall.  Still, I had to come back after the concert, check his work, make some changes and send it off.

But enough about that, the concert itself was quite enjoyable.  It was actually the London Philharmonic in town, conducted by Vladimir Jurowski.  They are doing a North American tour, mostly playing Russian pieces, and tonight was no exception.  They did a rousing version of Prokofiev's Piano Concerto #3 and Shostakovich's Symphony 8.  I liked a lot of what they did with the uptempo sections of the Shostakovich, and they were quite magical in this section where the winds kept trading off (this was probably the 3rd or 4th movement).  But the symphony as a whole dragged on too long, and I really thought Jurowski slowed it down too much in the 5th movement.  Still I was not at all inspired by the ending and would have preferred something else.  Those endings that just peter out can sometimes work for symphonic poems or string quartets, but not really for symphonies.  And while this is a very minor point, I just strongly dislike how European conductors come back for curtain call after curtain call.  I think he was up to 5 when I finally got up and left.  There is much more of a tradition of getting the entire symphony to do an encore in Europe which is basically non-existent in North America, so this certainly leads to some misunderstandings. 

It seemed appropriate that I was listing to this Russian program while wrapping up Tolstoy's Family Happiness, though I guess it might have even been better had I been reading Platonov at the time (though that is probably a couple months away still).  I have a few things to note down about Tolstoy, but I think that can wait for another day.  We are supposed to drive up to see the McMichael Collection tomorrow, so I had better get at least some rest tonight. Ciao.