Monthly Archives: February 2013

Lakeshore East Park

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I attended an event recently at the Swissôtel Chicago, which is downtown east of Michigan Ave. When it was over, instead of emerging from the front of the hotel on Wacker Dr., I exited at by a back door, planning to walk to Union Station. It had been a long time since I’d walked through the East Loop. So long, in fact, that I’d never seen this park.

Lakeshore East Park, the centerpiece of a mixed-use redevelopment called Lakeshore East — note the residential properties ringing the park. I reported on its beginnings about 10 years ago, but hadn’t thought much about it since my old magazine, Real Estate Chicago, went under. The developers managed to finish a lot of Lakeshore East before commercial development mostly ground to a halt in 2008, but not all of the proposed buildings. The six-acre park park opened in 2005. Needs a snappier name, I think.

Supposedly it’s the only Chicago park with a free wireless signal, but I didn’t test that. February’s about the worst time to linger in a park. No one else was around, either. Bet the place will be busier as it greens up.

This fountain ought to be running by then, too.

This tray of rocks is one of several along a sidewalk running through the park. I expect water will return when it’s warm enough not to freeze.

Keep it to Yourself, Passengers

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I don’t ride in Chicago cabs that often, but recently I did. And I happened to have my camera handy.

I  noticed a charge I’d never seen before. That’s because it’s only been possible for cabbies to levy a vomit clean-up fee since July 1 of last year. There’s a long, gross history of drunks in cabs behind that fee, I figure. Wonder if anyone’s actually been able to collect $50 from someone drunk enough to throw up in a cab.

Disraeli & Gladstone with a Spot of Jam

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The product-package jokers who brought us Avocado’s Number Guacamole have created British muffins. Actually, that isn’t even a joke, just a cute name for English muffins offered at Trader Joe’s, of course. I bought a package the other day and confirmed that they’re exactly the same as what we North Americans call English muffins.

I wonder what ideas they rejected. UK muffins? Albion muffins? Anglia muffins? Or, pushing things back a little, (Anglo-)Saxon muffins? Considering that the ultimate owners of Trader Joe’s are shadowy German billionaires, maybe Perfidious Albion muffins.

Anyway, the name isn’t the really odd thing. The package also features images of Disraeli and Gladstone. It doesn’t claim any connection between the famed prime ministers and the product; they’re just there for decoration. I would have gone with Palmerston and Peel, just to be alliterative.

Maybe they figured that Disraeli and Gladstone were better known than any other 19th-century PMs, but are they really? How many American muffin buyers are going to recognize them? What gives, Trader Joe’s packaging whizzes?

Give Me That Old-Time Papacy

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Miserable cold, windy day, the kind of day that has you chase your trash cans down the street early in the morning, after crossing parts of your driveway that threaten to slip you up. While groggy, because recent days have been such an intense combination of rain, snow, and meltage that your trusty sump pump works very hard to remove water from the lower reaches of your house — and decides to noisily kick in just after midnight. Keeping you (me) awake long past the point at which you (I) wanted to be awake.

But at least I heard about an historic event today, something that hasn’t happened in almost 600 years; rarer than a Transit of Venus, though the resignation of a pope could be more common if the popes wanted it to be. Naturally, that sent me to reference works to look up the likes of Gregory XII, the last pontiff to voluntarily kick off the shoes of the fisherman. That was during the Great Schism, something you don’t hear much about in the news (it’s old news, after all).

The fine Historical Atlas of the World (Barnes & Noble Everyday Handbooks, 1970) has a map called the Great Schism 1378-1417 on half a page, and it’s instructive in the way maps can be. Some areas are purple: “Adherents to the pope in Rome,” such as England, all the Scandinavian kingdoms, Hungary, Poland, and the Italian states. In green, “Adherents of the pope in Avignon,” including Castile, Aragon, France, Scotland, and the Kingdom of Naples. The sprawling, non-centralized Holy Roman Empire is in gold, listed as a region of “Undecided Allegiance.” No surprise there, but Portugal is also undecided. I don’t remember the reason for that, but maybe they were trying to annoy their fellow Iberians in Castile and Aragon.

So who’s to be the next pope? Does Benedict XVI want to be alive to influence the choice? Perhaps to push for a “nephew” for the job? No, papal intrigue isn’t quite what it used to be. What about the next papal name? I still think Sixtus the Sixth would be a good choice.

The Presiding Bishop

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I looked at the back of this card the other day, since it was a February item, and I discovered it’s been five years since I saw the Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori in person. Just another tempus fugit moment.

The back of the card says: Commemorating the visit of the Most Reverend Katharine Jefferts Schori, Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church, to St. Nichols Episcopal Church, Elk Grove Village, Illinois, February 3, 2008.

On an ordinary Sunday in the dead of winter, it’s hard to get out of the house, but how often do you get to see a presiding bishop? Not often, I figured. Lilly and I went.

She’s still in office, which has a curious nine-year term, though there’s probably an arcane reason for it. I’ve always thought the title didn’t have much zing to it, not like those some other Anglican primates get. Just to the north, for example, is the “Primate of Canada,” which used to be “Primate of All Canada,” which is cooler still. Even “Prime Bishop” would be better.

The No Name Storm

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Heavy snow this evening, but it didn’t rise to the level of blizzard. For one thing, there was practically no wind. First rain, than big snow flakes fell almost straight down. Nothing like the promised blizzard in the Northeast, which the Weather Channel is trying to name after a fictional submarine captain or a spunky animated clown fish.

Name winter storms? No, if it’s a real corker, the likes of the “Great Blizzard of 1888” or the “Armistice Day Blizzard,” or the “Blizzard of 1978” will do. Trying to name a winter storm like a hurricane is just the Weather Channel drifting a little more toward infotainment. I’m with the National Weather Service on that score: no names for winter storms.

And speaking of which: no to the new cat Monopoly token. There’s a dog token, of course, but dogs are loyal creatures who will follow you around the board. Cats will lounge around Free Parking all day, waiting to be fed. I’m old enough to remember to man-on-horseback and cannon tokens, which shouldn’t have been retired either. When it comes to weather nomenclature and Monopoly, I’m a mossbacked reactionary.

The Driver’s Seat

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One more daughter picture (for now), because how can a father not post daughter pictures with some frequency?

Lilly, behind the wheel recently. Before we backed out of the driveway. I had to remind her to put on her glasses.

Sledding ’13

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Now that snow’s on the ground, a few inches anyway, the girls wanted to go sledding. So I took them to the catchment where they’ve been sledding for years — except for last year, when snow covered the ground only for a few days, and they didn’t get around to it.

It made me recall fond old memories of sledding as a child… actually, no. I never did that. Snow was in short supply in South Texas from the late ’60s to the late ’70s. And so was the equipment necessary to slide down a slope, in case we ever got any snow.

Anyway, a Nashvillian friend of mine took me sledding for the first time ever when I was 22, in Nashville, during one of its snow events, which happened once or twice a winter. That was a good time, but probably not the thrill of being a small child on a sled.

I didn’t get any good pictures of the girls in motion, like I have before. But I did take one or two that I liked.

Seem a Saint, When Most I Play the Devil

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I read today that Richard III’s bones have been located. I didn’t know they were missing. But then again, the story of Richard III pretty much always ends with, “A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse! Arrrrrrgh!” as some fearsome halberd makes contact with the king’s skull. After that, who cares?

Naturally, there are those who would rehabilitate the monarch’s evil reputation. The NYT article notes: “Among those who found his remains, there is a passionate belief that new attention drawn to Richard by the discovery will inspire a reappraisal that could rehabilitate the medieval king and show him to be a man with a strong sympathy for the rights of the common man, who was deeply wronged by his vengeful Tudor successors. Far from the villainous character memorialized in English histories, films and novels, far from Shakespeare’s damning representation of him as the limping, withered, haunted murderer of his two princely nephews, Richard III can become the subject of a new age of scholarship and popular reappraisal, these enthusiasts believe.”

Naaah.

I was also interested to learn that the king will probably be reinterred in Leicester Cathedral, against the wishes of those who would put him in Westminster Abbey or some such. Not that anyone’s asked me, but I’d go along with Leicester Cathedral. In London, he’d be just another king – albeit a hunchbacked, villainous one – among many. In Leicester, he’d be a star attraction. He’s served his country for centuries as an infamous villain of lore and literature, time now for him to promote tourism to the Midlands. If I’m ever anywhere nearby, I’ll go pay a visit.

Light Snow, But It Added Up

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At last, snow worthy of the name. Or at least in the North. I’ve seen enough Northern winters (or, enough already), so I think I can call this one the first real snow of the winter — looks like an early December snow. Odd.

The deck, early February 2013.

The snowfall also meant the first snow shoveling of the season, hearing the rumble of trucks and their flashing lights entering your room in the middle of the night, and the buzz of snowblowers. I still do the snow manually.