Daniel Chester French Left This For All to See

We went to the Museum of Science & Industry on Sunday, to take advantage of a free day. I wasn't particularly planning to see anything new, maybe just a few items on exhibit that I'd missed before. In the last three or four years, we've been to S&I five or six times, plus the time I went to see the unnerving BodyWorlds exhibit three years ago.

But it's not a good idea to assume you won't see anything new, even on a short excursion. It means you'll be less open to the serendipity that's always possible, even on a short excursion.

South of the museum, I saw by chance this monumental statue, The Republic -- nicknamed the Golden Lady -- and despite the threat of lightning (see the clouds boiling in the background), and her isolation in a traffic circle, took this photo.

I don't have the energy to import a lot of information about the statue, a Daniel Chester French creation that echoes back to the Columbian Exposition of 1893, but its story is here in great detail, with a lot of pictures, for the curious.