Highlighted quotes:

• Observed forty or more rodent (rat) droppings in kitchen
• Worn rubber gaskets on cooler doors

• No running water
• Issues with a pump that leads to inconsistent supply of hot water
• No paper towels in bathrooms (sign indicated that towels were to be supplied by teachers; inspectors observed kids going into bathroom w/o supplies)
• Water leaking from bottom of steam unit
• Chipping paint on walls in kitchen area

The inspection record indicated that the location must serve cold breakfast and lunch using plastic utensils.

There have been issues at this location in the past as well. Here are records of 4 recent inspections.

The school is slated to be closed, according to a list published by the Chicago Public Schools.

Last time I checked in at Lincoln Marsh it was to document calendrical closing of our durable winter. This crunchy reeds were everywhere and ice mixed with water:

As we went through the bucket-style downpours last week, I often thought of what that would mean for the marsh. More water, for one, which would be welcome, given the mud that replaced water in the dryness of last summer:

What I forgot about, however, was the burn. Every year the forest preserve does prescribed burns to renew the marsh. Sometime between today and the last time I was there, they burned down all the reeds of winter.

And mini-logs that caught fire look more ominous in tilt-shift:

Now the full fresh water has returned:

There’s not much green, but the base is there:

This field mouse will see nothing of hot summer:

We’re so lucky.

Complete set here.

On Friday, the banquet area of the Drake Hotel— the high-end venue at overlooking Lake Michigan at Oak Street Beach– failed a restaurant inspection. There are some pretty harsh things observed by CDPH inspectors:

• Two employees didn’t wash their hands after going to the bathroom
• An employee handled raw chicken and didn’t use soap to wash up
• A cook scooping soup with a bucket, then placing that bucket on the floor
• Cockroach crawling on a wall
• Hanging fly traps in the kitchen
• Peeling paint
• Food strainers with loose wiring

Not good. Here’s a full list of suspected food poisoning inspections.

If you suspect that you got food poisoning, report it here.

ROBERT G. EDWARDS, 1925-2013
Changing Rules of Conception With the First ‘Test Tube Baby’

Robert G. Edwards, who opened a new era in medicine when he joined a colleague in developing in vitro fertilization, enabling millions of infertile couples to bring children into the world and women to have babies even in menopause, died on Wednesday at his home near Cambridge, England. Dr. Edwards, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for his breakthrough, was 87.

Dr. Edwards, a flamboyant and colorful physiologist who courted the press and vigorously debated his critics, and with his colleague, Dr. Patrick Steptoe, essentially changed the rules for how people can come into the world. Conception was now possible outside the body — in a petri dish.

Gina Colata tells the sprawling British story of audacious science. The one where a couple of doctors, with little official support and many cast aspersions, never gave up on the idea that there could be another way to conceive a human life.

They were right.  In vitro fertilization is a fact of humanity five million times over. It’s neither my job nor wont to consider the morality or ethics of this fact. I just know that it was a remarkable human life, ended just yesterday, that helped make it so. Worth reading about it today.

And his description:

All done on 18×24 acid free archival watercolor paper, each print is a limited edition of 125. They are all signed and numbered by the artist. Shipping is included in the price which is as follows:

• Suite of four prints $300US
• Three prints $240US
• Two prints $175US
• One print $100US

Please allow about two weeks for delivery. Payment by PayPal to: theyellowrider@yahoo.com or Andy Kane PO Box 234, Maxwelton, WV 24957

Go get! Also: the artist requests that you “please foward this email to your contacts and also post on Fartbook and Tweetybird”.

There’s an immense in-between-ness to the fields there. Damp ground, cold water, soft ice. A chemist’s meld of states:

Even the ice can’t make up its mind:

The St. Patrick’s Day green is cold and mossy:

The reeds that can be so spongy and fluid in mid-summer are brittle and color-deprived:

There’s no visible sign of Spring’s soon victory:

Though we know, from our own memories and rhythms, that Spring never loses.

Soon, and surely, it comes.

Here’s the entire set (Lincoln Marsh, Late Winter, 2013)

In the course of doing that, I have encountered the Nathan Manilow Sculpture Park. I can be very cynical about public sculpture, but this place is wonderful. I have only just walked a teeny bit of the place, and encountered only four of the 27 pieces, but each of them is serious business. Set in a manicured, rolling prairie with well-considered site lines and great pacing, the place is a joy. I look forward to spending a whole day down there.

For now, here’s my set on Flickr, and a few of my faves:

Frame, 2005, Richard Rezac.
What a great idea– to place an artificial frame on a natural plane

Paul, 2006, tony Tasset
Lots of people want to be Claes Oldenburg. This guy gets there,

Phoenix, 1968, Edvins Strautmanis
Imagine the fiery sun setting on this piece.

Flying Saucer, 1977, Jene Highstein
A smooth wonder.

The iron grate work over the front doors have a staggered pattern of cylinders:

They look to me like slugs of metal from some other process, as if the person who made it just saved up scraps on a shop floor until they had enough for the whole job:

Then there is a marvelously intact lucite door pull:

Really well-done. Complete set here.

The freeze/ thaw/ freeze pattern of late January made for crackly thin ice on the pond:

What used to be green and lush, and recently denuded, became a field of thin twigs:

Stacks of grays and tans never stop:

Stakes were made:

These are the nights of cold gruel that we’ll never remember come summer.

Complete set here and entire series here.