Last entry I listed three things that I loved about this city, and that seems a good format to stick to now, when I know a little more about it and have been exploring. The first of my three wonders for this time around should be Wicker Park. Wicker Park is a neighborhood, about fifteen minutes away from Canterbury Court Apartments on the L, and you could probably spend a week straight walking around there and not get bored.

You step off a blue line train onto a platform high above the neighborhood, and your first glimpse leaves you floored. Down below you is a bustling intersection with streets branching off in five possible directions like spokes on a wheel. Each building you see is, like every building in Chicago, totally individual and idiosyncratic, but at the same time grown into its neighbors like two trees close together in a rain forest. I’ve been to Wicker Park three times already, seeing something totally new and exciting each time, and I’ve only walked down one of the five streets. 

The street I’ve seen happens to be the one with all the amazing vintage clothing stores. I’ve never even seen such clothes: 70s dresses, 40s gloves, overstated clip-on earrings and delicate art nouveau bracelets. Plus there’s Reckless Records, which in addition to selling actual records has CDs and movies for an average of four or five dollars. But the crown jewel, for a nerd like me, is the giant three-and-a-half floor used bookstore, Myopic Books, which seems to be slightly magical in that you walk in intending to just look and walk out with three or four books you never even knew existed but that are just what you wanted deep down. 

And when the scampering around Wicker Park is through, there is scampering in Millenium Park to be had. Millenium Park is an actual park, with a massive stage that frequently has live music, everything from jazz to rock to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, most of it free. (Speaking of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra: mind-blowingly amazing. They might be channeling the music of the spheres, I don’t know.) And right next to the stage is the bean, a giant metal sculpture that will reflect you in all sorts of crazy curvy fun-house ways. It’s the simple things in life we treasure. 

And directly across from the stage is the Art Institute, which is free on Thursday nights. I walked in at about six last Thursday, walked out at eight when it closed, and had seen a tiny fraction of what it had to offer. And I was still overwhelmed. It will take me every Thursday until the end of the semester, probably, to see it all, and I’ll enjoy every second of it. (The Art Institute has the original American Gothic, I discovered. That’s pretty ridiculously cool.)

My third wonder is the Newberry itself. I now have an awesome job working in Special Collections, which is also where most of the documents I’m looking at come from, so I can tell you quite authoritatively: the Newberry has an Academy Award in its vault. And a jewel-encrusted copy of Paradise Lost. Also, a letter written by Michelangelo. And those aren’t even things I’ve worked with.

Somehow they have documents to support all of our mad, wildly varied projects. I’m paging through sixteenth-century Polish chronicle or Latin-Bohemian dictionary, and on one side a guy is reading Bureau of Indian Affairs propaganda from WWII, and on my other side a girl is perusing a colonial American song book. And every day at work I get to walk into one of the four floors of stacks that are just the library’s special collections and wander down aisle after aisle of potential research. I am amazed. And having a blast.

On a more serious note, I’ve been here a little over a week, and I have fallen madly, soap-operatically in love with the soaring skyscrapers, lined with windows, the super-modern right next to aged-stone and cathedral-like architecture, unexpected alley mouths opening up between them like secret passageways, interspersed with parks that wouldn’t be out of place in a castle garden. I’m so overcome by love I’m writing run-on sentences. If what precedes or follows sounds a little too glowing, I would like to remind you I’m from Colorado Springs. Enough said. 

But there are three things that deserve special mention in my first blog entry. The first is the L. Coming from a sprawling semi-city in Colorado that thought so hard about its McCondos that it forgot about everything else a city usually has, the public transportation in Chicago was actually what I was most excited for. The L did not disappoint. Occasionally, it is a subway. And then, without warning, it will leap from the earth and go flying along wooden-and-steel tracks high in the air, giving everyone inside a view of the brick roofs below and the cityscapes from horizon to horizon on either side. And it goes absolutely everywhere. It is so easy to get around in this city, it’s ridiculous. 

Secondly, the lake. Within walking distance of the apartments they put us all up in. People tried to give me a sense of this lake, but I heard “lake” and imagined a quaint little body of water lined by grass and picnics. I walked down there because I had nothing better to do and promptly felt my brain explode. It is the SEA, complete with sandy beach and water, water, everywhere. Also seagulls. I looked at it, texted all my friends about it, took a picture of my bare feet underwater. Then I ran through it laughing like a little girl and got my shorts soaked from knee to mid-thigh. Then I threw myself into the sand with my book, water before me, city at my back, life, for the moment, quite complete. 

And third, because it is the whole reason for my being here, the Newberry Library. An intricately carved stone arch over the door, marble-floored halls and stairs, dark wood-paneled reading rooms. Wow, that’s all very… Yeah, but what about the books? My own projected topic was one my professor and I had thought up, that seemed pretty hopeful to me now: the spread of printing to Eastern Europe. I came up with a back-up topic, just in case. My professors ignored this and told me my first topic sounded quite good. I was growing doubtful. Sure, they had some old stuff here, but I’d learned from painful experience that in libraries, England and France outnumber Poland and Hungary a million to one. 

I sent a tentative e-mail off to the man in charge of the collection on the history of the book. Is this even possible? I asked tremulously. The response was a matter of fact, Well, a cursory glance says we have thirteen printed manuscripts from before 1600 from Poland alone. Oh, that’s… wait, what? I… wow. I take it back, the Newberry may be some kind of wormhole that contains everything in the universe. They even have an Academy Award buried in the stacks somewhere.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to bury my nose in a 1450s Chronicle of Poland. Or perhaps bury my feet in the sand at the lakeshore. One of those.

Until next time!