Hog butcher for the world.

Last weekend, as you may or may not know, I ventured out to the City of Broad Shoulders (and fat asses) to celebrate my brother Fred's 60th birthday.

My parents moved to Chicago when I was 20. And as I was already ensconced in an eastern college, I never made the city my home. I lived there for two summers and two winter breaks. I like the city, but what with the demands of life and the vagaries of everyday living, I have not spent as much time in the city and its environs as I would like.

I remedied that a bit last Friday. We flew out and immediately rented a car and drove to Oak Park, a leafy suburb just nine miles from the John Hancock tower.

In Oak Park, you'll find the house Ernest Hemingway was born in.

You'll also find the first home Frank Lloyd Wright designed and his studio, as well as eight more of his houses, all built on Forest Avenue around the turn of last century.

Bad type breaks and all, I was particularly smitten by this inscription over the "hearth" of the home he built in 1889.

Those words reminded me of the short inscription over the door of Milton Glaser's studio.

In this brain-dead era we live in, where spectacle and bombast has shoved thinking to the fringes, I'll take every chance I can get to rub up against thoughtfulness.

As my old man would have said, it's better than a poke in the eye.

Or a butchered hog.