Rainy Day Chicago

Thankfully day 2 was spent indoors or in the bus (they prefer us to call it a motor coach). We had a financial morning at the Chicago Board of Trade and saw the frantic trading going on over corn options and then to the Federal Reserve of Chicago's Money Museum (snooze).  If you are interested continue to the bottom of this post for a fiscal commentary*.

Goddess of Grain

Goddess of Big Macs

No photography permitted inside the Fed or the trading floor

After lunch we headed out in a downpour to Oak Park to the home and studio of Frank Lloyd Wright.

This is Frank's place. Had to move on before I got a better shot

Here is a nini- Fallingwater. Hope those trees never fall on it.

There again was no photography allowed inside FLW's house and the nearby neighbors wouldn't let us in. So no interiors here. Now we head off to Willis (formerly Sears) Tower for a view of the city at night and deep in clouds.

 

This is FLW's design that got altered badly after a fire.



View from the top!



Sitting on air (heavy duty plexi-glass) on the 101st floor

*

Dan and I went on a 4 day AAA tour to Chicago this week and one of the included stops was at the Federal Reserve "Money Museum". You don't really see anything of the building but there is this film and a guy "explaining". His droning low key voice put most of this somewaht elderly crowd to sleep (including hubby) but at the conclusion one alert tourist asked "What are we going to do about this terrible debt situation?"

This guy was not just a an "actor". He explained he was retired from the financial industry and was bored so he took on this little gig. Anyway his reply was "Vote out all the incumbents." And then went on to say that the whole financial meltdown was the fault of "JImmy Carter who insisted that the financial opportunites be opened up back in 1977."

THE END We are escorted into a very silly display about money. I was really irritated as everyone filed out presumably having had an explanation from some real authority. I really wanted to yell out there was another view but could only mutter to Dan how patently ridiculous I thought this was. Yes, it had a very teeny grain of truth, but.....

He said we were on camera and everything was recorded. Creepy!