Chicago Poems by Carl Sandburg

"They Will Say"
Of my city the worst that men will ever say is this:
You took little children away from the sun and the dew,
And the glimmers that played in the grass under the great sky,
And the reckless rain; you put them between walls
To work, broken and smothered, for bread and wages,
To eat dust in their throats and die empty-hearted
For a little handful of pay on a few Saturday nights.


"Who Am I?"
My head knocks against the stars.
My feet are on the hilltops.
My finger-tips are in the valleys and shores of universal life.
Down in the sounding foam of primal things I reach my hands and play with pebbles of destiny.
I have been to hell and back may times.
I know all about heaven, for I have talked with God.
I dabble in the blood and guts of the terrible.
I know the passionate seizure of beauty
And the marvelous rebellion of man at all signs reading "Keep Off."

My name is Truth and I am the most elusive captive in the universe.


"At a Window"
Give me hunger,
O you gods that sit and give
The world its orders.
Give me hunger, pain and want,
Shut me out with shame and failure
From your doors of gold and fame,
Give me your shabbiest, weariest hunger!

But leave me a little love,
A voice to speak to me in the day end,
A hand to touch me in the dark room
Breaking the long loneliness
In the dusk of day-shapes
Blurring the sunset,
One little wandering, western star
Thrust out from the changing shores of shadow.
Let me go to the window,
Watch there the day-shapes of dusk
And wait and know the coming
Of a little love.

Breaking as Art, Self-Expression

The "Transformer" Owl

What do you do when confronted by an enemy -- ruffle up your feathers and prepare for a showdown, or shrink in size and try to hide? If you're the Southern White-Faced Owl (P. granti), it all depends on the enemy. When confronted with a slightly larger bird, the owl increases its size and aggressiveness to ward off a potential conflict. When confronted with a much larger bird, however, it decreases its size and attempts to hide and avoid confrontation. Check out the YouTube video above -- it's hilarious.

Milwaukee Arts Museum

A few years ago, I attended an exhibition of Santiago Calatrava's sculptures at the Met. His designs had a unique organic structure/fluidity to them, leaving a distinct impression on me. So when I visited friends in Chicago this Spring Break, I made it a priority to check out the Milwaukee Arts Museum, and, in particular, the pavilion the Spanish architect designed. I was not disappointed -- stepping into the space literally took my breath away.
For more of his work, visit his website. Two of his most recent projects are proposed structures in NYC -- the WTC Transportation Hub and the residential complex 80 South Street.

Archaeologists Use Ancient Droppings to Date the Presence of Humans in North America

Recent evidence suggests people settled North America at least 14,000 years ago. The evidence? None other than human coprolites -- a fancy scientific term for fossilized feces -- discovered in an Oregon cave.
The photograph above is none other than a healthy helping of number two deposited over 12,300 years ago, containing 14,000 year old human DNA and protein. (Not sure why a person's doo-doo contains human DNA and protein -- the New York Times article, unfortunately, doesn't address this issue).

This is certainly not the first time I've heard of scientists using scat for evidence. Wildlife enthusiasts often use dookie to track and locate animals. Because of my field trip to Taconic three years ago, I can now discern deer defecation from other animal leavings (they are small round balls often in neat little piles). And one of my coolest professors from Swarthmore College was an ethnobotanist who analyzed the chemistry of elephant droppings to determine the nutrients elephants consumed when they became ill -- information that could potentially be used to synthesize new medicines for humans. Pretty neat (though mildly nauseating) stuff.

So the next time you take time to vacate your bowels, ponder this: What are you leaving behind for the rest of the world to discover, and what is it saying about you?

:-/