This Girl

The shoreline in the south loop of Chicago is marked by a concrete walkway that spans the perimeter of Museum Campus, smoothly curving around the Shedd Aquarium and Adler Planetarium. It makes for a nice, long walk that puts you as close to the ocean in Chicago as you can get without hopping on a plane to either end of the country. If you walk along there in the morning, you will pass a community of joggers and dog lovers. You'll witness ducks and geese pecking at moss covered rocks and diving for water. I have yet to see a fish jump, but am sure it will happen some day. Today, near the bend by Adler, a man and whom I will assume were his teenage sons, were gearing up for their morning fishing expedition. Watching them reminded me of my own Dad and brothers on one of their many fishing outings, when they would leave before dawn and come back smelling of crappies and night crawlers. The dad in today's exhibit was the first to cast and trolled the coastline for the target of th...

We learn in chemistry and biology classes that water is the most essential element (it's a compound, but whatever) for life. Our cells are mostly water. Our planet is mostly water. The very process by which we breathe and turn oxygen and carbon into energy ends in the production of water. This simple combination of the first element and the most abundant element in our Earth's crust is what makes us thrive. It connects us to plants in the most uncanny way--while our cells make water to thrive, plant cells break water to feed themselves. This basic, essential element of life is what breathes life to life. Whether you are a staunch Creationist or accepting of Evolution, the theory is the same--life came forth from water. From Genesis, we are told that on the fifth day, God commanded the seas to teem forth with living creatures; whereas the land did not receive this same commandment until the sixth day. Tracing the story of the evolution of life on th...