pretty, pretty... pretty over there too

Joan Dickinson

I was assigned a tiny office in a building on Michigan Avenue in the south loop two years ago. Although the office itself is small, there is a large, wall-sized window which opens the wall in an easterly direction, affording me a view of such magnificence as I have ever known in Chicago.

During the first year in my tiny office I stared: at Grant Park, its seasons, its usages, its statuary; at Lake Shore Drive, its poignancy, motion, the push and pull of it, the stops and starts; at our lake, our great lake, Lake Michigan, its weathers, flows, mists, the birds that blow atop it like paper, the sky above it, the paper in the sky above it.

During the second year I began to take pictures. Almost everyday. Almost everyday at the same time. I send them to my friends, colleagues, and students. Some send me messages in return in the form of e-mail and in the form of pictures. One friend sent me a picture of her child, a daughter.