I was planning on running early this morning, but a massive storm broke over the city and I couldn’t get out until almost eight. The sky was suddenly blue again and the only traces of what had come before were the litter bins that had been blown all over Chicago’s north shore beaches. With a placid Lake Michigan beside me (difficult to believe that anything so huge could be a lake!) I ran up the shore to the zoo and back. The view of the city from the north shore is lovely (especially because the Willis Tower cannot be seen). About halfway along my path I came across a bust on a plinth of Emanuel Swedenborg. What on earth was it doing there? I e-mailed a knowledgeable Swedish friend. Back immediately came his reply: ‘Swedenborg was immensely respected, a kind of Einstein of his age. And the Mid-West was settled by Scans. It takes only a few wealthy Scan-fans to raise a statue.’ And he was right, as this link and this one show! Strange, though, to see such an isolated memorial to a once famous European. He now shares that particular stretch of the shoreline with an American Indian chief. We spent the rest of the morning exploring Chicago’s architecture, and then it was time for us to board a train again – this time the California Zephyr, bound for Denver. Everybody in our group had been enchanted with Chicago and vowed to come again.
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