Chicago Reach For The Stars

We went to an OCON session tonight called Chicago Reach For The Stars, which seemed partly designed to introduce out-of-town conference attendees to some of the city's good points. There were 3 speakers, each with solid, lively presentations:

Shoshana Milgram spoke of Ayn Rand's stay here when she first came to America. She's working on a new biography of Rand, and has access to the estate's archives.

Stephen Siek spoke of the city's architectural development.

Jonathan Hoenig, a.k.a. "The Capitalist Pig," explained commodity trading, one of the town's major industries.

My wife and I are native Chicagoans, so in some ways we weren't the intended audience, but I wanted to hear Professor Milgram's talk, because I figured she would have interesting "new" details, and because I remembered her from years ago.

I hadn't seen Shoshana since we were undergrads, so it was a great pleasure to see her presentation and to speak with her afterwards. I also caught up with another couple of old friends that I knew from my college days.

I was kind of a blast
from my undergraduate past.