US Air Force missile launch site converted over into a state park site in North Dakota; wanna go visit the silo and play twist-the-key?  (Multimedia tour online)

The missile site, about three miles north of Cooperstown and about 70 miles northwest of Fargo, is one of a handful of U.S. locations that commemorate the Cold War. The National Park ( Read more... )

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From April through September, the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry is having a big Harry Potter Exhibition…tickets just started going on sale. I know a mom and two little girls who would like to go…and a whole ton of fans.

Longtime readers will recall that I’m a great fan of the Dutch-American author Hendrik Willem Van Loon, a taste that I got from my mom and her brother, my uncle.   There’s an online exhibit at the Ohio State University site of Van Loon’s illustrations (crude, but charming) for his best-known work, The Story of Mankind.   I always recommend his ( Read more... )

It was very nice to have Kurt and John out here visiting; I just wish it could have been longer.

There were plenty of screwups in the way, however.  Friday - that you already read about.  Saturday we got a late start, and ended up spending the vast majority of it on the road into Chicago…we were swamped by terrible traffic and never got to do ( Read more... )

The Montgomery Inn at the Boathouse was interesting.  A friend from work and I often see each other at these shindigs and go out for dinner, and she wasn’t interested in my chili hunt, so we went off to the Inn, which is along the river and has a heck of a view of the riverfront in Kentucky.  We both got ribs, with sauce on the side, and I found ( Read more... )