The Galapagos are a group of volcanic islands in the Pacific Ocean that straddle the equator. They are part of Ecuador. They became part of the Ecuador National Park Service in 1959. The Galapagos has a population of 30,000, most of which are on San Cristobal, Santa Cruz and Isabella islands. Only five of the islands are inhabited. When I visited last month it had been two months since the Galapagos had their last COVID infection. While the islands are primarily known for their wildlife which attracts visitors to play with the sea lions, swim with the sea turtles and gaze at the many species of birds, the Galapagos is also the setting for a good deal of unspoiled natural beauty.
Kicker RockSombrero Chino
Skeleton on beach at Cerro Brujo
Lava tunnel at Santa Cruz
Mangroves at Black Turtle BaySanta FeSanta FeCrater at Los Gemelos
The Equinox Preserve consists of 900 acres on the slopes of the Equinox Mountain. The land was donated by the Equinox Resort. The land and trails are maintained by the Equinox Preservation Trust.
It was a cab driver in Quito who commented to me that the sea lions of the Galapagos are the “owners of the islands.” I didn’t come across anything to make me think otherwise. Whether you are landing on a beach in a panga, kayaking along the cliffs, or coming in face down with a snorkel, the sea lions are there to greet you and to offer up a play date. They’re not unlike puppies, just bigger.
This guy grabbed onto the rope that was attached to our kayak and took us for a ride.
The Dusable Bridge, built in 1920 and named after the founder of Chicago Jean-Batiste Pointe DuSable.
Marina City
Tribune Tower, home of the once excellent newspaper. It was purchased this year by Alden Capital, a hedge fund that started cutting staff two days after closing the purchase.
The kayak cruiseMerchandise Mart
Dave Mathews Bridge. It was 2004 when the Dave Mathews tour bus was headed over this bridge and the driver decided he would unload the bus septic tank into the Chicago River. That alone would have been bad enough, but it turns out he dropped some 800 pounds of human waste onto a tour boat much like the one I’m taking this picture from.The El.Lyric Opera Bridge, behind which is the Chicago Lyric Opera HouseRiver City. Built by the same architect, Bertrand Goldberg, as Marina CityPing Tom Memorial Park, Chinatown. Named after Ping Tom, a Chinatown civic leader who was instrumental in acquiring the land and developing plans for the park. He passed away before it was completed.Ping Tom Memorial Park muralsA lift bridge!!!A map of the river is etched onto this building. The dot you see is a “you are here” marker.
The tallest building in the photo is the St. Regis Chicago. Designed by architect Jeanne Gang, it is the tallest building in the world designed by a woman.
The poster above and those below were created by Thomas W. Benton and are part of the Freak Power exhibit currently on display at the Poster House in New York. Benton was an artist, originally from California, who is best known for his political posters. These works were created in the 1960’s and 70’s while he was in Aspen, Colo.
In Aspen, he teamed with Hunter S. Thompson in creating the Freak Power Party. Thompson, an author and journalist known for his work with Rolling Stone, is associated with the “gonzo” style of journalism. That involves writing in the first person, with the writer being part of the story and with no concerns about objectivity. Freak Power stood for racial and gender equality, legalization of marijuana, sexual liberation and respect for nature.
Using Benton’s posters as they’re primary vehicle, he and Thompson created the Aspen Wall Poster as a news outlet to replace the Aspen Illustrated News when it closed. Under the Freak Power banner, Thompson ran an unsuccessful campaign for Aspen County Sheriff. Benton produced the campaign posters.
Colorado would become the first state in the U.S. to legalize marijuana, but that was 42 years after Tom Benton created this poster in 1970.
Before there was Trump, there was this guy:
Freak Power campaign poster
And then there’s the music
These posters advertised shows at the Avalon Ballroom and Fillmore in San Francisco in the 1960’s. They were commissioned by promoters Bill Graham and Chet Helms. The designer’s name is on each.
Crown Fountain opened in 2004 with the opening of Millennium Park (four years late). The 50-foot high video sculpture was designed by Spanish artist Jauna Plensa. There are some 900 videos of Chicagoans that appear on the fountain for about five minutes at a time.
Cloud Gate
British sculptor Anish Kapoor named his piece Cloud Gate. Chicagoans renamed it The Bean. The design in based on liquid mercury. It was built with 168 steel plates, but there is not a seam to be seen. It opened in 2006.
Jay Pritzker Pavillion
The Millennium Park amphitheater is home to musical performances and shows of all types. Designed by Los Angeles architect Frank Gehry, it has 4,000 seats, behind which is a 95,000 square foot Great Lawn.
Chicago artist Christine Tarkowski named this installation: “When we call the Earth by way of distinction a planet and the Moon a satellite, we should consider whether we do not, in a certain sense, mistake the matter. Perhaps – and not unlikely – the Moon is the planet and the Earth the satellite! Are we not a larger moon to the Moon, than she is to us?”
Most slang words fall into a handful of categories. Among the most common:
Body parts.
Sex acts.
Racial, ethnic or gender slurs
Fools
Since the first three categories are completely off limits for this ‘I don’t want to offend anybody’ blog, I’ve had to double down on the fourth category for the Wednesday’s Word series. Already I’ve covered prat, nincompoop, berk, jerk, and goober. Today’s entry is hoople.
Perhaps I’m showing my age when I say that when I hear the word hoople, the first thing I think of is this:
It turns out that the 70’s rock band Mott the Hoople was named after a book. An American author, Willard Manus, wrote a novel titled Mott the Hoople in 1966. I haven’t read it, but from the reviews I take it that the main character Norman Mott was a lazy dude who thought up various scams so as to avoid work. Manus himself borrowed the term hoople from a syndicated newspaper cartoon strip called Our Boarding House, an establishment overseen by the proprietress Martha Hoople.
Hoople is also a place. There is a town by that name in North Dakota with a population under 250. It was named after an early settler Alan Hoople. Hoople is the home of Southern North Dakota University at Hoople, an institution that exists solely in the imagination of composer/comedian Peter Shickele, who is also the mastermind behind the equally fictional P.D.Q. Bach.
My understanding of the word hoople goes back to the days when I was a teenager working in an ice cream store in Clifton, N.J. Whenever one of us, in our youthful state of distracted nonchalance, would screw something up, our boss would pronounce the offending party a hoople. He was a cheerful guy and it was said in a jocular, not abusive manner. Thus I think of hoople as somewhat synonymous with goofball.
In that vein there is a variation, hooplehead, defined by slanglang.net as “an idiot. He’s stupid, ignorant and illiterate.”
Not too many of the dictionaries seem to want to consider hoople. But the Urban Dictionary has no such reservations and here’s some choice entries:
–A useless or self-serving organization. A wasteful business run by incompetents. A public sector organization with no useful purpose other than to generate paperwork, internal reports and provide incomes for its executives.
–A derogatory term describing or referring to an unsophisticated person from a rural background or community. Sometimes disparaging. A white member of the Southern rural laboring class. A person who is an irresponsible or unscrupulous operator in business and pleasure.
–A person who frequently drinks alcohol to excess; to the point where it becomes his or her defining characteristic.
–A bird that cannot fly straight. Someone not responsible with money.
The glass house at the Cleveland Botanical Garden is a replica of a cloud forest. It is modeled after the forest in Monteverde, Costa Rica. I have neither the equipment nor the patience to come up with pictures of butterflies, but there are so many here you can’t miss them.
off the leash 