One day in the Windy City should include a deep dish pizza and a visit to the Medieval Torture Museum
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As we inch through the underpass, ever closer to the off-ramp, I turn up Sinatra to drown the clangor outside the windows. “Chicago, Chicago, I’ll show you around…”
When you think of Chicago you think of The Blues Brothers and the Bulls, The Staples Singers and The Smashing Pumpkins, gangsters and jazz, Second City and Art Deco, sausages and deep dish pizza.
We’ve got one day to breeze through the Windy City. There’s the architecture, the galleries, the dining and the shopping, and we can’t possibly do it all.
I’ve got a confession to make. I’ve never eaten deep dish pizza before. I’ve always preferred a thin crunchy cornmeal crust like I could find in New York. Recent trips to Detroit have enabled the culinary segue. Detroit style, with it’s thick layering and crunchy cheesy edges seems to be the Goldilocks between the thin crust and the deep dish.
We don headphones and listen to stories from yesteryear about the ignominious fate of real and suspected criminals. No detail is spared. Throughout this show and tell exhibit, each installation is accompanied by another gory story. All manners of execution from impalement to decapitation, Columbian necktie to Iron Maiden and guillotine, are all life-sized for maximum cringe. Interestingly, visitors here range from couples to families. For an off-the-wall time-out from the cosmopolitan pulse along State Street, this is a step back in time to an unfathomable past that pre-dates persnickety things like liberty and due process. The wide-eyed conversations afterwards of “can you imagine…” extend the experience to humorous ends.
Installations include the history of the X-ray and its use during wartime to locate bullets in the body; a history of blood transfusions, evolving from using a quill to using a needle, with transfusions between dogs and humans, to just humans. Paintings, books, ancient skulls and a replica of an apothecary are interspersed between profiles of iconic figures like Florence Nightingale, pioneer and founder of modern nursing, to Seishu Hanaoka, the discoverer of general anesthesia.
Research and methods are explored from primitive to advanced treatments and the international co-operation that exists today, including studies of human responses to space travel. For example, one of the effects of micro-gravity is increased pressure on the optic nerve that can blur vision. This affects 50% of astronauts. Health in space is a universal interest. This exhibit is developed and produced by the Canada Aviation and Space Museum in collaboration with the Canadian Space Agency.
As NASA investigates travel to Mars, astronauts will need to be more self-reliant with respect to medical challenges like loss of bone density in space. Gravity, radiation and isolation all pose threats to health in space. Canada has been integral in the development of technology to measure and monitor neutron radiation in the space station it collides with cosmic rays. The presentation of information elicits questions we never thought to ask.
Chicago is like a Choose Your Own Adventure book in which there seems to be infinite possibilities to whet every appetite, satisfy every curiosity, and inspire minds. There is no shortage of evocative places to visit, gastronomic delights to taste, and pretty walks to enjoy. This is a bucket-list destination chock full of experiences to shake the doldrums and check every box.
By Adam Waxman