April 23, 2023

 

Dear Everyone,

In the last three or four weeks, Cindy and I have done a ‘Chicago Cultural quadrafecta’.  In my last letter I mentioned we had been to the opera and the Field museum; in the last week we have gone to Brookfield Zoo (BZ), and the Museum of Science and Industry (MSI)

We are members at BZ, so we had a chance to go to a ‘lunch and learn program’.  We were at one last fall that featured owls (They paraded live owls in the room!). This time it was about the BZ Mexican Wolves.  At one time this grey wolf subspecies had a range from southern Colorado and Utah south to central Mexico.  There may have been about 4000-5000 wolves total.  Now they exist only in a reserve between central New Mexico and Arizona, and a smaller separate population in northern Mexico.

The wolves at the zoo used to be part of a ‘Species Survival Program (SSP).  This was basically a stud book kept between the different North American Zoos to try to circulate the managed wolves to different institutions to prevent inbreeding.  The breeding program has been a success, and now the wolves (and other species as well) are in a Saving Animals From Extinction (SAFE) program.  SAFE is a more holistic approach that involves many institutions beyond zoos, and this can be seen in the attempts to reintroduce the Mexican Wolf.

20-30 years ago this was done by repatriating adult wolves back into appropriate environments.  This has been successful enough that there are over 200 wolves in the US reserve.  What they try to do now is much more complicated, which is to attempt to ‘cross-foster’ wolf puppies.  In short, the hope is that a wolf mother in a zoo is ready to whelp about the same time that one of the wild wolves in the reserve is after birth.  Than the zoo staff and US Fish and Wildlife check to see what each respective litter is like.  The USFW people will say, for instance ‘we would like to cross foster a male and female pup’.  The zoos look to see if there is an appropriate litter.  If there is, they take the puppies from the zoo mom, take a private plane to Phoenix, get in a truck to drive to the reserve, and then hike to the wild wolf den, where they switch over the puppies.  Then they go back in reverse to place the two wild puppies with the zoo mom.  This process helps to keep both the wild and captive populations as genetically diverse as possible. It takes a lot of coordination and veterinary care!

This was all very interesting; unfortunately, no wolves were brought out for show and tell.  Actually, the wolves at the zoo purposely have no direct human contact as part of the SAFE program, to keep their behavior as wild (i.e. human fearing) as possible.  Afterwards we walked into the children’s zoo where we saw the parakeet room (deafening), wallabies, and goats.

Today we went with Jasper and Vivian to the MSI to see the special travelling Pompeii exhibit.  I would not advise going to this unless you were already a MSI member; the exhibit is pretty thin.  There are a few artifacts (but not many), and some nice, short video displays, but there isn’t much explanation on how they even knew to look for the city - - certainly no references to Pliny the Younger, or the archeologists of the 1700s.  We did go into the special building that houses the U-boat.  Sadly, we were too late to actually tour the inside of the boat (I have never been), and you needed to purchase a special ticket anyway.  We did see some nice exhibits of ship models, race cars, airplanes, and bicycles.  MSI seems so commercialized with corporate sponsorship.

Afterwards we went to eat at Virtue.  The meal was quite good, but I enjoyed it more when we were there last, about 18 months ago.  Jasper had a dish (lamb on lentils on a bed of harissa) that I certainly wouldn’t call ‘Southern Cuisine’ (maybe southern Mediterranean), and I thought the food was a little over salted.

I have been birding a few times over the last weeks, even though it's been pretty cold, other than a very warm week three weeks ago, and have seen some nice birds, but nothing exceptional.  

As usual, I have been reading some interesting books.  A Fan’s Notes was written in 1968.  Pretty funny, but pretty dark, and most would consider it insensitive if written today.  I was struck with how much of the book revolved around the narrator's psychiatric issues.  This must have been a leitmotif (Alison!) of the 60s, just off the top of my head I can think of several similar books (e.g. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance).  Was there was more fascination with psychiatric pathology then? 

Another good read was If It Sounds Like a Quack, about America’s (the world’s?) fascination with snake oil salesmen. This was given a big goose in the mid-1990s, when supplement manufacturers got the green light to sell their fakery without FDA review.  Somehow over the last 30 years these liars have become associated with right wing politics.  It’s a dangerous mix. Where is today’s Morris Fishbein?

Some additional interesting reads: Non-fiction;  The Devil’s Element (about phosphorus); Fiction: When the Angels Left the Old Country,  The Two Doctors Gorski and Mr. Breakfast

Love,

H.

PS I sent a mailing out to everyone who expressed interest in a river cruise summer 2024.  If you didn’t get it, but are interested, please send me an email.