DEC-B-6
CHRISTMAS-TIME CHICAGO:
A TIME FOR SINGING AND CELEBRATING
AND ADMIRING VAN GOGH AND GAUGIN
Dec. 17—20, 2001
Downtown Chicago is all decked out for Christmas. There is certainly no hint of any energy shortage in the myriad of little lights on everything from planted decorative trees to the wooden sheep at fourth Presbyterian Church’s garden—a site of some significance here. I am in the Whitehall Hotel, a small hotel with an American restaurant Molive’, where we began with dinner. I am familiar with the Whitehall, a spot I remember well from one of my first visits to the ACS Clinical Congress in Chicago some twenty five years ago. It is close to lots of things, including Water Tower Place, and a number of small restaurants and other features.
We got to shop at Abercrombie and Fitch, formerly an expedition outfitter and now a trendola teen gotta-have store. After a huge brunch in the Mitey Nice, we went on to the Chicago Art Museum, where the special exhibit of the Van Gogh/Gaugin paintings and how each had influenced each in the “Studio of the South” in Arles. The crowds are thick, and we may have to peer over the shoulders of a score of folk while listening to the taped explanations of the audio tour, but it was almost like a directed PhD thesis in comparing and contrasting the styles of the tow artists and how they influenced each other, often in painting the same thing from t he same view and a different perspective.
We went to Del Rio, where I was part of the “first set” of the dinner/songfest that Virginia has run and performed for now over ten years. I met her friend Barb, who is from Colorado, and after a prolonged stay in Chicago is moving back to the Colorado from which she came. It is a sold out double header every night, and the group is always cheerful, and not only eager to hear the performances but also to engage in singing, Christmas Carols as well as a raucous “Twelve Days of Christmas.”
It has been a quiet restful stop for the pre-Christmas week. I am glad to have got my Christmas letter off in the mail over a week ago, which might have many of them delivered by now, although I have not heard from any of the recipients. I am getting on a train to go up to the Del Rio for another performance, and then getting on a train tomorrow to ride up to Grand Rapids to visit family for the several days until Sunday 12/23, when I return to Derwood for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.
Happy Christmas from the heart of the Midwest, where, now, at last, it is starting to snow!