Max Arts 2011

Max Arts 2011 is now in the books. Hoover, as in years past, was all over the festival. I apologize if I don't name them all, but the list of Hoover performers went on and on. Lots of art in the gallery. Acoustic performances and bit of musical theater on Monday's cafe night. A video entry that brought together Plato and Peart. Bob Dylan was given a unique interpretation on the cello on Thursday night. And we rocked folks' out of their socks on Friday with a series of acts, including the uplifting, organic happiness of the Hoover Family.

Thanks to everyone who performed.

Winter 2011: the Year of the Thunder Snow

So two days without classes might be celebrated somewhere else. Here at the University of Chicago, it was just another chance to reflect, and imagine the snow through the lens of our particular intellectual preoccupations. For example, walking across the midway at the height of the Blizzard, I ran into a Hooverite majoring in American Literature, and he said:

Once in a while the thought reiterates itself that it is very cold and that I have never experienced such cold. As I walk along I rub my cheek-bones and nose with the back of my mittened hand. I do this automatically, now and again changing hands. But rub as I can, the instant I stop my cheek-bones go numb, and the following instant the end of my nose goes numb. I am certain the cold will frost my cheeks; I know that, and I experience a pang of regret that I have not devised a nose-strap of the sort Bud wears in cold snaps. Such a strap passes across the cheeks, as well, and saves them. But it doesn't matter much, after all. What are frosted cheeks? A bit painful, that is all; they are never serious.

I wanted to ask who Bud was, but it was too cold so I hurried on.

Later, back in the warmth of Max Palevsky, one of our Hoover residents, who comes from South Carolina, pointed out that the Blizzard, while it might shut down the city and cancel classes, is really nothing if you take an interplanetary perspective:

Oh your boots are wet? You know, Steve, compared to the storm that produces Jupiter's Great Red Spot, which has been going on for hundreds of years, and at a magnitude your mind can't comprehend, this blizzard is nothing. I'm just sayin'.

My complaints about the weather appropriately rescaled, I went inside and took off my wet socks.

Jonah and Ellie had fun with the snow, and they'll remember it for a while.




Another way to remember the blizzard is to buy a Hell Does Freeze Over t-shirt. See the link in the upper right hand corner of this page. Buy several. So when one fades, you'll have a fresh one waiting in the drawer.