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June 24, 2008
Just Blown in From the Windy City
I know it's been awhile since I posted (thanks for the reminder, Ann!). While my external hard drive kept me from losing most of my valuable information when my computer crashed, there was one teeny little problem. On my old computer, I had just bookmarked my blog so when the mood struck to create a new entry, I got on-line, clicked on "Kirby's blog" and my user name and password were filled in automatically. When I tried to log on after the crash, I realized I had no idea what my password was. I wasn't even too sure about my user name. Thanks to my son-in-law, I'm now back in business. But here is another lesson you can learn from my mistakes: write your user names and passwords down somewhere!
I'm just home from my first trip ever to Chicago. I had the chance to speak to the wonderful folks at the NIU-NIRC Reading Conference in Naperville. They are not only the most gracious people imaginable, they are the most patient. Note to self: make sure all essential technical equipment is in hand before leaving the hotel. For the lack of the proper dongle, my Power Point presentation was on hold until my darling husband could navigate the tollway to our hotel and back to the conference site.
Our plan was to spend 2 nights in Naperville, then wend our way to the Windy City. However, my husband is a state capital magnet. So we checked out of our hotel and drove 3 hours south to Springfield where we were enthralled with our tour of Lincoln's home, and the neighborhood in which it sits. There was time for a quick run through the Lincoln Museum and the requisite photo of Neil standing on the steps of the capital building. 13 state capitols down, 37 to go! Oh, joy.
Chicago. Sigh. We drove in along Lake Shore Drive, found our hotel and quickly ditched the car. It was simply not needed in that great city. We got around by foot, boat, free trolley, bus, cab and L, taking in the Hancock Tower, the Institute of Art and the Field Museum. We cheered the Cubs on to a 1-run win over their crosstown rivals, the White Sox, and we felt buoyed by the unrelenting cheerfulness of every person we met.
Are buildings huge in Chicago, or what?! Take the Field Museum, for example. What hit me when I saw the Field was, "think of the vision." When it was first built, I suspect that not every hall, nook and cranny was filled with fascinations galore, as it is today. There were no doubt many empty rooms, many bare shelves. The museum board didn't look at what was but what could be. The same holds for the skyscraper architects, city planners and mail order tycoons.
So I came home, eager to Chicago-ize my writing. I'm going to let myself dream and dream big. Sure the current novel manuscript is full of holes -- something I knew and my critique group recently confirmed. I am celebrating those holes because they mean I've got room to build something bigger and grander than what's on the page right now. I can build this book as high as the Hancock Tower or as massive as the old Marshall Fields building.
But I can't do that while blogging. So -- it's back to work!
Posted by kirby at June 24, 2008 03:22 PM