alikander

Here I am in a far-away, exotic locale, and I've only called home twice so far.

The first time I called to report my safe arrival. I was on N. Michigan St, and ducked into a skyscraper's entry alcove, to better hear dougmander and fisander. I looked up, and there was a cannonball up on a plinth. The plaque identified it as coming from Pevensey Castle in England -- I place I used to play as a child. OMG!

A few paces along, a came across Fanny May. Back in the day, it was the Burdicks of Chicago. My grandmother used to get vanilla creams from them on special occasions. Sure, they're not so special now--and it wasn't the original store--but I still popped in for a few vanilla creams.

I then hiked all the way down to the Field Museum, to see their exhibit Maps. It was amazing, and I'm very sorry dougmander won't get to see it. They had lots of important maps, including Minard's Napoleonic map, Snow's cholera map, the map Lindberg used to cross the Atlantic, Smith's map of Virginia, Champlain's map of Nouvelle France, Mercator's "New and Accurate" map, Speke's map of the Nile, THE Mitchell map of North America... it just went on and on. Old, new, Western, non-Western, by the famous (Jefferson, Da Vinci, Halley, Ortelius) and the obscure. (Most striking of the last were Inuit map carvings of the coast of Greenland.)

They also had two maps by Tolkien: the first sketch of Thror's Map, and a contour map of Minas Tirith. But what pushed me to call home a second time, was that they had The Land of Make Believe, which hangs over Fiona's bed.

Now I am tucked into my room with my dinner -- and my chocolates. Mmm.

And soon, Zzzzz.

PS Here come Bob and Carol! I can't help humming this tune every time I walk down the street here. It's embarrassing.