Night of the 100th Cow
The American Meat Institute, in the days before BSE raged upon the planet, supported a nice little Masters of Science program at the University of Chicago. My dad, who is heavy into corporate meat and will be honored in that fair city this very week for his innovations in food production ranging from excessive use of MSG, through saran packaging, to the invention of the famous Oscar Mayer wiener tunnel (since dismantled to the detriment of quality control of the product) studied there in the early 1950s. As a toddler on the street I remember seeing monkeys in little suits collecting coins from the crowd. I remember standing on tippy toes to see the fabulous model train layout at the museum of science and industry. I remember watching the flag lowering ceremony at Fifth Army Headquarters, and I remember taking the IC into the loop, or maybe it was the El, or maybe they're the same thing.
Anyway, this spring I have a chance to re-visit those old stomping grounds twice... once for the Kraft Korporation ceremonies this week, and again in May for Alex Golub's UBlog Convocation, otherwise known as the Digital Genres Initiative.
Join me there and we can walk in the mooooooo nlight past the old stockyards and see if we can catch a whiff of their fragrant past. Well, okay. It'll be a new moon that night, but so what? The stockyards are gone too.