Museum of Science and Industry: Burlington Route PIONEER ZEPHYR Tour

 I haven't been to the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry since I was in grammar school. Oh the Griffin being former Chicago resident Ken Griffin, billionaire financier who gave a gift to this museum hence his name being attached to it.

I don't recall ever seeing this train, nor the WW2 German U-Boat though I may recall the airliner hanging from the ceiling. I do recall the model trainset which I have shared here that portrays the route of Amtrak's Empire Builder. Always thought that was cool.

This is one thing I want to see at that Museum when I go back in the near future, the Pioneer Zephyr was a great design for it's time. It served a non-stop route from Chicago to Denver making the trip in 13 hours.

Russel Sharp Train video's shows us the exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry. [VIDEO]

Successful president & CEO of Shedd Aquarium has died

 This really has nothing to do with Shedd School although the Shedd Aquarium both share the same namesake former Marshall Field's CEO John G. Shedd. One of my favorite memories from school was going on a field trip to the Shedd Aquarium. Of course that trip took place before this man Ted Beattie who recently passed away took over the Aquarium for 22 years.

Before arriving at the Shedd Aquarium he worked for the Cincinnati Zoo, also the suburban Brookfield Zoo and in 1994 arrived at the Aquarium. He left his position as President & CEO in 2016.

Here's more from the Tribune:

In 1994, Beattie was hired to be the Shedd’s third president and CEO. During his tenure, the Shedd perennially ranked as Chicago’s No. 1 or No. 2 paid attraction among zoos and museums. Among the projects he oversaw were the $47 million Wild Reef area and a $79 million rehab of the Abbott Oceanarium.

“He was really hardworking, but he got everything by building a consensus — that’s how he would do that,” said former Illinois Attorney General Ty Fahner, a former Shedd Aquarium board chair. “That’s how he was able to build the Shedd to its size today.”

Beattie told the Tribune in 2015 that he wanted the Shedd “to be the friendliest place in town. Out of that statement we would manage our programs.”

Beattie played a role in the transformation of the museum campus that contains the Shedd, the Adler Planetarium and the Field Museum of Natural History, and he also focused on developing talent at the aquarium.

Retired Lincoln Park Zoo CEO Kevin Bell, a longtime friend, recalled Beattie’s laserlike focus on developing leaders.

“The thing Ted was most proud of in terms of his accomplishments was his work with leadership,” Bell said. “Talk to most people around our industry, and those are the words that are going to come up.”

Fahner noted the numerous leaders of zoos and aquariums across the U.S. who once had worked for Beattie. “He’s got like 11 or 12 people (who worked for him) who are just kind of a diaspora all around the country,” Fahner said. “They were all disciples of Ted’s.”

Well I wonder how they're doing these days.

Come to think of it, time to pay that place another visit and share it on the YouTube channel. 

h/t CapFax

Detailed tour through the Space Shuttle Orbiter

 

[VIDEO] The space shuttle program ended in 2011 and once upon a time I did dream of taking a spaceflight aboard this vessel. It was a radical change from the Apollo program where basically you were in a capsule and you splashed down in an ocean upon re-entry.

With the space shuttle when you re-entered the atmosphere you glide back onto the planet. The shuttle was designed to be reusuable unlike an Apollo capsule where once it re-entered the atmosphere it wasn't possible to reuse and that's due to heatshield technology on space craft.

These days you can take a tour of the Space Shuttle at the Smithsonian as Paul Stewart does in this video.

Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village

The Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village are both located in Dearborn, Michigan just outside of Detroit. As a matter of fact you can take Amtrak to Dearborn via the Wolverine services.

Detroit is a tourist attraction for those who like to do urban explorations and me personally I wouldn't mind checkout out the sites of the automobile industry and of Motown Records. Regardless the Ford Museum is one place I would like to visit and ride around on the train around the complex. YouTuuba takes us there.

Here are the four videos of his excursion from earlier this summer and during a pandemic. YouTube will take you places you never knew existed or you knew existed but never had the chance to visit. 

Michigan Central Lines: Huge HO Scale Layout at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry

 

[VIDEO] The YouTube channel Michigan Central Lines takes a look at the HO scale model train layout at the Museum of Science and Industry on the south side. I've been thinking it's time for me to pay a visit to that museum and share with you some of things I've seen there since the last time I've been. Unfortunately I've not been inside the walls of that place since grade school at least.

Related another local YouTuber artistmac gets a behind the scenes look at this model train layout which is actually part of an exhibit. How about having a job overseeing the design and operation of this layout?

Armstrong Air & Space Museum

[VIDEO] I wanted to share this Armstrong Air & Space Museum in Wapokoneta, Ohio. It basically is a museum to Neil Armstrong and his military, NASA, and aerospace career. Of course you'll see a lot of exhibits related to his time as a NASA astronaut.

Before becoming the first man on the moon Armstrong had been a civilian test pilot and before that he had been a US Navy fighter pilot. One exhibit YouTuber YouTuuba notes was when Armstrong was younger he was able to build a generator.

See the beauty of this internet thing which didn't exist when I was in school is people can take you to places you never know about. What museums exist out there that we have no idea about?

Also note last year the nation celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission where men landed on the moon - our nearest celestial body - for the first time. Something that should be the main exhibit at a museum named for a great figure in the history of space.

I hope you enjoy this brief excursion.

Your Daily Dose of Internet

[VIDEO] Aside from the introduction to this video which is of the various noises of the very good looking walrus at about 1:20 mins into this video we are treated to clips of penguins running around the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago.

In light of this coronavirus the Shedd Aquarium (another namesake of former Marshall Field's & Co. president in addition to John G. Shedd Public School) is closed through April 20, 2020 according to their website. So it's in the news that the penguins were released into the public areas of the aquarium now devoid of people to check out the various exhibits.

The penguins running loose even made the news and not just locally if you can believe that. The clips you saw in that "Daily Dose of Internet" was seen on a recent edition of CBS' This Morning .

Late Night w/ David Letterman Chicago remotes May 1989

[VIDEO] Here's yet another infrequent late night post on this blog. This time we see David Letterman take his Late Night program on the road to the Chicago Theater on State Street. The remotes we see here involve not only the Museum of Science and Industry which was quite hilarious to be honest. He also tours the city with Bozo the Clown. This aired back in May 1989 over 30 years ago.

I only visited the soon to be Kenneth Griffin Museum of Science and Industry a handful of times on a field trip while still in elementary school. And Bozo was a constant presence on school days when Bozo's Circus would air on WGN for an hour every weekday morning. It was nostalgic to see the last Bozo the Clown a man by the name of Joey D'Auria tours the city with Letterman.

I don't remember if I even saw either of these segments on the show, although with the subject matters involved this is something that I'd have gotten a kick out of. The trip to the museum although I never paid a visit to that former German submarine for example. It makes me want to pay the museum a visit after decades.

Behind the scenes of the Great Train Story

[VIDEO] The video above was posted by artistmac where he was shown behind the scenes of this exhibit The Great Train Story at the Museum of Science and Industry. The duration of this video is 31 minutes and it reminds of me of my own field trips to MSI.

To be honest I don't remember seeing this exhibit. If I did see it upon my visit while in grammar school at the Shedd School branch, the model trains were what caught my interest. Not only am I fan of trains, but at the time of this field trip I also played with a model train set. Sadly those old locomotives and cars are no longer in my possession as they were quickly forgotten when I got older.

The only memory of that field trip was passing through the old American main street exhibit. There was even a "nickelodeon" where we could've caught a movie. At that this nickelodeon caught my eye because it's also the name of a cable TV network for children.

Now I recognize that it's just time for me to make my own return visit to the museum. This time I'm not doing this for school, but just for my own enrichment. The lessons of these exhibits I can appreciate more and hopefully won't so quickly go over my head as they had upon visiting here as a child.

The man whom artistmac speaks with named William, truly has a difficult though enviable job as the museum's trainmaster. All he has to do is set up & operate a model railroad at a museum. He also has to keep it running and keep all equipment in museum quality condition. So kudos to him and perhaps he can tell other model railroaders how they could get his job!

Civics project teaches youths they can do big things

A project that not only informs of Dr. Martin Luther King's movement in Chicago especially in Marquette Park on the south side, but also how it encourages students to be leaders:

Students at Gage Park High School who had been unaware of their community's part in the civil rights movement — that Martin Luther King Jr. led marches through the then-all-white neighborhoods surrounding Gage Park and Marquette Park — wanted to build a tribute to the civil rights leader, hoping to enlighten others.

But students from a civics class at the Southwest Side high school — where nearly half don't make it to graduation — didn't want just a stone monument or a brick in the ground. They envisioned WiFi hotspots throughout the neighborhood where people could download audio and video about significant sites to their phones.

The result is a touch-activated interactive history kiosk that stands at the Marquette Park field house. The idea of hotspots didn't work out, but in January, students will get further recognition when the kiosk goes on display at the DuSable Museum of African American History for Martin Luther King Day.

The story of the Marquette Park memorial is not just about a class's journey to complete an innovative civics project. It's also about how a project can inspire students.

Read the whole thing it's a very good article!

Here's a link to the DuSable Museum.