Dear everyone,
I skipped letter writing last weekend because we were in
Minneapolis on Saturday (and I didn’t feel like writing on Sunday). Cindy and I flew to MN the Tuesday prior to
thanksgiving instead of driving. I don’t
think we were up to a 7 hour drive in the Tesla (or parking in the city).
Flying to and fro went fine both ways, although I feel guilty about the carbon
cost. More money to abatement, I guess. The airports did not appear super busy (of
course, we flew Southwest from Midway, which is rarely as crazy as O’Hare, and
Southwest flies into terminal 2 in Minneapolis, which is pretty sleepy).
We took the light rail into the city, and then walked a
couple of blocks from the football stadium to our apartment unit. We were staying at a Sonder owned Airbnb. Sonder is a multinational company that buys
up condo properties, and rents them out.
We got a nice two bedroom/two bath with a kitchen and a pull out sofa
for the five of us (Nicola, Wes, and Lucas all joined us as the trip went on). Our unit was just above a Trader Joe’s (very
convenient for breakfast grocery shopping), and about 4 blocks to Owen and
Alison’s, with the Loft hotel, where the Highland Park Browns were staying, in
between us. Luckily, the condo unit had
a small gym, so I was able to get in a passable work-out on a couple of days.
We took the first of many walks to the Owen/Alison
apartment. Security there is tight - -
you don’t just get buzzed in - - someone has to actually come down to escort
the visitor upstairs because a physical key fob is required to make the
elevators work. That’s a long way down from the 12th floor. Anyway, we hung out with the Minns and Owen’s
brood until dinner: a chicken dish with chick peas and some kind of curry
sauce, with rice, peppered carrots and black lentils. Yummy.
Before I go any further, I should commend our hosts Alison and
Owen. They acted with forbearance
throughout, and Owen did a lot of cooking!
On Wednesday we had two kinds of gluten-free pasta with marinara sauce. Thursday we had beautiful smoked salmon, pigs
in blankets in almond flour, two turkeys (one smoked in an electric smoker),
green beans with walnut sauce, and several pies. Lots of champagne also, spiced up with
raspberry liqueur or Miletti
Amaro.
On Wednesday afternoon Owen and I went for a birding hike
south of the city near Ft Snelling - - the Minnesota Valley National Wildlife
refuge, I think. We saw several bald
eagles, hairy woodpeckers, and a hawk hunting over the marsh - - either a
Harrier (marsh hawk) or a rough-legged hawk.
After dinner on Wednesday we played a variety of games, as
we would for several days. The two that
stand out were: a trivia game where you had to know the three right answers out
of six choices, and a collaborative word spelling game that was like mastermind
with words. We played these games several times over the week - -not recommended with alcohol or other recreational drugs on board.
Thursday we did nothing but eat. Friday morning we went to Museum of Science
where we met Catherine Early, the Brown chair of ornithology. She told us about her research trying to
model prehistoric and modern bird brains by analyzing the inner shape of the
skull. Joey had a very good question - -
what about the evolutionary forces that change the shape of the skull (for
instance, penguins vs. eagles). How
might that affect brain shape?
Afterwards we went on a tour of the museum’s research collections, and
then into the museum itself. The Science
museum is fun - - sort of a mix of the Field/Peggy Notebaert, Science and
Industry, and any children’s museum. Friday
dinner was at Tamara and Sarah’s lovely house with a beautiful kitchen. We had a taco bar which featured Sassy’s
luscious refried beans. There was also a
fire pit in the backyard, and I turned myself into a human marshmallow.
Monday evening, after we returned, I went with Alex Paul to
the residence of Chicago’s British Consul.
This is the duplex apartment on the 60th floor of a building
in the Olympia
center. They were hosting a party
for Kheiron, a British company who has created a computer algorithm to analyze
breast mammography. They were in town
because Chicago hosts the annual meeting of the Radiologic Society of America,
and they are a vendor of analysis equipment.
I’m not sure how they got the consul to sponsor this party, but it has
been yearly for the last several (notwithstanding 2020’s ‘gap’ year). We didn’t learn very much new about the
company, although we did have a long discussion with the company’s chief technology
officer. The US market is very
fragmented, and we are not sure how they will make money. The party did offer very nice gin and tonics
- - colored slightly pink (for breast cancer) with a thimbleful of cranberry
juice.
Little else is new. I
got a COVID booster shot several weeks before Thanksgiving, and Cindy has scheduled
herself for one. Who knows how well it
will work against the Omicron variant (you have to love how ominous it sounds).
I have finished reading two interesting books. One, The
Greek Revolution, was in some ways about the European response to the
waning Ottoman Empire, and a bit about the return to monarchy between Napoleon
and 1848. The Greek revolution was botched
from beginning to end: after a year the Greeks freed the Peloponnesus, but went
into a several year civil war between landholders, robber barons, and
republicans. Then the Egyptians almost
took over the whole country for the sultan, but a last minute deal between the Russians,
French and British led to an Alliance fleet that destroyed the Ottoman forces
just before they had almost taken over the entire peninsula. The British and French weren’t quite sure what
to do with the victory, although the Russians used it to cement their presence
in the northern Balkans.
The other, The
Hydrogen Revolution, is an energy industry executive’s account of how
hydrogen is necessary to help us decarbonize the planet. It’s an easy read, and informative, although
obviously biased to the author’s point of view - - that doesn’t mean he’s
wrong, though!
Love, H
Public parts of the consul's residence
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