By Mark Schipper The empty paving stones beneath the golden awning of the Palmer House Hotel in Chicago. photo by Mark Schipper A strange sort of desolation has settled over the legendary Palmer House in the heart of Chicago’s downtown Loop, the hotel where the Big Ten Conference was founded one-hundred twenty-six years ago. When life is as it ought be, that turn east from State Street onto Monroe, where the colossal hotel rises up twenty-five stories in the shape of a blunte