2008 ROW Lecture Tour - Chicago

From Ireland, prior to flying to Chicago, due to my flying with Star Alliance, their partner airline, does not have a direct flight from Dublin, which necessitated my flying to London, changing airlines, and then on to Chicago. Although the partner airlines, as in Star Alliance, and One World, are very convenient for adding Frequent Flyer points, and a few other minor perks, they can considerably add to the time necessitated to fly from one airport to another. In many instances it requires a whole day, to fly via the hub of the member airlines, whereas a direct flight would be a matter of an hour or so.

The hostel into which I was booked, was close to the shores of Lake Michigan, and almost next door to Loma Linda University. It sounded ideal.The reality was a little different. The location was exactly as I have mentioned, and very beautiful it was too. Tree lined streets, quiet location, and one block from Lake Michigan, with the University next door.



The hostel itself though was a different matter,built, it would appear, as student accommodation in the 1940's, I would say, it did not give the impression that it had been refurbished since that time. It was cheap - yes, and it was far from being nice. The best I could say about it was it's locality. For the first time in my travels, I opted to move out and find other accommodation. I am most thankful that I did, for I do feel that my view of Chicago would have been greatly effected had I continued to stay in the hostel. My overall impression was that it was a very clean, friendly and pleasant, place to be and visit in spite of its rather poor reputation as one of the hubs of gangsterism of the prohibition era.

As the photos indicate, the days here were more sunny than otherwise, in spite of which it was still extremely cold, for they were still coming out of winter, with many of the trees as yet to bud. Fortunately though, it did not rain.

The streets were ablaze with early blooming flowers, a delight to see, lifting the sombreness of the concrete jungle, and giving it a much more human touch.

Most of the garden plots and the pots outside of the business houses appear to be maintained by the various businesses which they fronted. And this appeared to be an excellent arrangement for both the businesses and the civic authorities, the responsibility of their maintenance and up-keep not then falling upon the local authorities and adding to the tax burden.

The fountains were another delight to see, for there is something about them, and water in particular, which is most up-lifting to the spirit. I must say that they are sadly missed in my home town of Cairns.



The foreshore of Lake Michigan was being beautified with a magnificent promenade, parks and gardens, fountains, amusement park, and statues, prominent of which, was this one of Abraham Lincoln the sixteenth President of the United States.

Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln warned the South in his Inaugural Address: "In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you.... You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect and defend it."

Lincoln thought secession illegal, and was willing to use force to defend Federal law and the Union. When Confederate batteries fired on Fort Sumter and forced its surrender, he called on the states for 75,000 volunteers. Four more slave states joined the Confederacy but four remained within the Union. The Civil War had begun.

The son of a Kentucky frontiersman, Lincoln had to struggle for a living and for learning. Five months before receiving his party's nomination for President, he sketched his life:

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"I was born Feb. 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky. My parents were both born in Virginia, of undistinguished families--second families, perhaps I should say. My mother, who died in my tenth year, was of a family of the name of Hanks.... My father ... removed from Kentucky to ... Indiana, in my eighth year.... It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up.... Of course when I came of age I did not know much. Still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher ... but that was all."

Lincoln made extraordinary efforts to attain knowledge while working on a farm, splitting rails for fences, and keeping store at New Salem, Illinois. He was a captain in the Black Hawk War, spent eight years in the Illinois legislature, and rode the circuit of courts for many years. His law partner said of him, "His ambition was a little engine that knew no rest."

He married Mary Todd, and they had four boys, only one of whom lived to maturity. In 1858 Lincoln ran against Stephen A. Douglas for Senator. He lost the election, but in debating with Douglas he gained a national reputation that won him the Republican nomination for President in 1860.

As President, he built the Republican Party into a strong national organization. Further, he rallied most of the northern Democrats to the Union cause. On January 1, 1863, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation that declared forever free those slaves within the Confederacy.

Lincoln never let the world forget that the Civil War involved an even larger issue. This he stated most movingly in dedicating the military cemetery at Gettysburg: "that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain--that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom--and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

Lincoln won re-election in 1864, as Union military triumphs heralded an end to the war. In his planning for peace, the President was flexible and generous, encouraging Southerners to lay down their arms and join speedily in reunion.

The spirit that guided him was clearly that of his Second Inaugural Address, now inscribed on one wall of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D. C.: "With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds.... "

On Good Friday, April 14, 1865, Lincoln was assassinated at Ford's Theatre in Washington by John Wilkes Booth, an actor, who somehow thought he was helping the South. The opposite was the result, for with Lincoln's death, the possibility of peace with magnanimity died.

These battery powered bicycles - I am not sure if this is the correct name for them, as I was never able to find out, were used for guided tours around the foreshore gardens, fountains, statues etc., something I must admit to not having seen before. Quite unique and seemingly very effective.