Yesterday’s activities included two special destinations. First, we dropped Josiah and Laura off at Midway Airport for their trip to visit Laura’s folks at their summer home; since we were in the neighborhood, we took Pippa to Springfield-in-Chicago, the local
where we gawked at the remade convenience store and chuckled at the clever Simpsons allusions. We will not rest from our critiques of consumer culture — but if you’re going to run a franchised convenience store, you might as well do it with self-deprecating wit. Jeneane swears our package of Krusty-Os will be valuable someday if we keep it unopened; I’m unconvinced that the cost of storing and reselling the cereal will be surpassed by what anyone would pay for it. On the other hand, I haven’t opened the box yet.
After obtaining a sour watermelon Squishee for PIppa and some marginally-nutritious snacks, we turned north to take Pip to the Art Institute, where Margaret and I had gone a few weeks ago. We proceeded first to a gallery in the Asian collection to which Laura had called our attention. Then Pippa led us to a photography exhibition that she wanted to see. I admired the photography treatments of Koto Ezawa (would Flickr consider that a photograph? Remember when that was a hot topic?), but Margaret and I were knocked out by the photos of Sarah Hobbs and Angela Strassheim.
Then we took a very quick stroll through the European paintings before we ran out of energy.
A splendid time is guaranteed for all.