On Thursday, during one of Wes's days off, we went to the Chicago Historical Museum. It's long been on our list of places to go and see, but it was something that I never wanted to do spur-of-the-moment. So we planned and we went and we saw. It's a really cute museum. You get an audio tour done by a Second City actor as part of your admission, and that was fun. The museum takes you through an original El car, one of the first trains, Pullman porters, the stockyards, the Great Fire, the Haymarket Square Riot, the 1919 and 1968 race riots, Chicago neighborhoods, stores (did you know that Crate and Barrel was a Chicago original?), architecture, housing, music, the World's Fair, sports, and theater, plus a timeline of the city. Downstairs you can see artifacts related to Illinois' favorite son (Abraham Lincoln, of course), plus two special exhibits.
We went to the Abraham Lincoln Bookstore (one of Wes's favorite places, though I had not been previously been) before dinner and a show, where we learned from one of the shops insanely knowledgeable Lincoln-philes that the museum has only recently become so diverse. Evidently, the museum has a wide array of Lincoln artifacts -- including Mary Todd Lincoln's bloody dress from Ford's Theater -- that used to be out but now are stowed to make room for important things like Michael Jordan's shoes.
Anyhow, if you come to Chicago and enjoy history, it's worth a stop. The highlight of the audio tour was, of course, a brilliant pun. Evidently, in the 1990s the Chicago city council officially exculpated Mrs. O'Leary and her cow for any responsiblity in the Great Fire. Our narrator's take on that decision: "To err is human, to forgive bovine."
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