Ruby City

I didn’t take many pictures in Austin this time around. But after dinner one night, Tom had to answer a call, and I had a few moments to document a minor example of Austin neon. It’s a good town for neon.Wu Chow

That was the restaurant entrance. The full name of the place is Wu Chow. Good chow, as it happens.

In San Antonio, I was much more attuned to image-making, at least on Saturday, when I was footloose and out to see new things. Such as Ruby City.Ruby City Ruby City

Ruby City is a new art museum west of downtown on the not-so-mighty San Pedro Creek. Which is wider at this point than much of the San Antonio River.San Pedro Creek, San Antonio

“The story of Ruby City — the landmark museum designed by world-renowned architect Sir David Adjaye… — begins with the lucid dream of a dying woman,” Texas Monthly reported just before the museum opened in 2019.

“In the spring of 2007, Linda Pace, at age 62 a legendary patron of contemporary art in San Antonio, understood that her breast cancer, diagnosed a few months earlier, was likely terminal. All the money in the world could not keep the woman born into both the Pearl beer and Pace Foods families alive long enough to see through her final project, a permanent home for her art collection.”

Ideas for the building design came to her in a dream, the magazine reported, and – having skill in drawing and materials ready at her bedside – she drew sketches and provided them to the architect. About a decade after her death, the building was realized. How much the final structure hewed to the dream-images is impossible to know, at least for those of us standing at the base of the concrete walls years later.Ruby City

I arrived just as the museum opened at 10 in the morning. I’d been encouraged to make an online “appointment” before coming, so I did. Would crowding be an issue at this free museum? Well, no. During my first few minutes there, I was the only visitor. Everyone else worked there, and there weren’t that many of them. It was a little weird being in a gallery in which the employee’s (or volunteer’s) only job is to watch you, except pretend they aren’t really watching you.

Never mind, the entrance asks one and all to “be amazing.” I made a self-portrait.Ruby City

Be amazing. That’s a tall order. Better to be “interesting” or maybe “remarkable” on a really good day. Much of the artwork inside is at least interesting.  A few pieces I’d say were even remarkable, but nothing amazed me much. Maybe I’m jaded.

Actually, this rectangle o’ river rubbish was mildly amazing.Ruby City Ruby City

“Riverbank” (2006), by Luz Maria Sanchez of Mexico City. Made from clothing, bags, bottles etc. found in the Rio Grande. Behind it is “Mobile Home II” (2006) by Mona Hatoum, a Lebanese artist living in London. Its items are connected to laundry lines slowly pulled back and forth by small electric motors.

This one I found remarkable. “Ultimate Joy” (2001) by American artist Jim Hodges. A light bulb artist, at least for this work.Ruby City Ruby City

“View of Gorge” (1999) by Anne Chu, an American artist (d. 2016).Ruby City Ruby City

Outside is a sculpture garden with three pieces – one of which seemed to be removed for now. No matter, one of the remaining ones is an impressive pile: “5000 lbs. of Sonny’s Airplane Parts, Linda’s Place, and 550 lbs. of Tire-Wire” (1997) by Nancy Rubins.Ruby City Ruby City Ruby City

A final comment on the building itself. Maybe not the color I’d have chosen, though it’s an interesting one. Why aren’t more concrete structures one color or another? Is it too expensive compared with plain dirty white? Imagine how many ugly concrete structures would be a little less ugly with a dash of color.

South Texas ’23: Kerrville & Bandera

Last Tuesday, my brother Jay and I drove from San Antonio to Kerrville, Texas (pop. 24,200) to visit an old friend of his, who has a separate small building in his back yard to house an extensive model train that he’s building. We got a detailed tour. Cool.

That was part of a larger trip that took me to Austin and San Antonio to visit friends and family. I flew to Austin on October 18 and returned from San Antonio today.

Rather than take I-10 west from San Antonio to Kerrville (though we returned that way), we drove Texas 16, which is mostly a two-lane highway that winds from exurban San Antonio and then into the Hill Country. Always good to drive the Hill Country, even on a rainy day. It was a rainy week in South Texas on the whole, but still quite warm for October. Had a few sweaty walks in San Antonio last week as well, more about which later.

Besides visiting Bob and his wife Nancy and his HO model train construction, we also stopped by the Glen Rest Cemetery in Kerrville (my idea). The recent rains had made it a muddy cemetery. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust, but also mud to muddy?Kerrville, Texas Kerrville, Texas Kerrville, Texas

A curious figure. At least for a cemetery.Kerrville, Texas Kerrville, Texas

Glen Rest – which is incorrectly noted as Glen Rose on Google Maps – dates from 1892, according to the Texas Historical Commission plaque on site. “Glen Rest Cemetery is the final resting place for many pioneer and historic families of Kerrville and the surrounding Hill Country,” it says.

En route to Kerrville on highway Texas 16 is the much smaller burg of Bandera, pop. 829 and seat of Bandera County. That means a courthouse, and we stopped to take a look.Bandera, Texas

The courthouse itself isn’t unusual, but it is positioned unusually. Instead of being the focus of a square, it’s simply facing the highway. So are a handful of memorials. This one honors “All Cowboys” because Bandera is “Cowboy Capital of the World.”Bandera, Texas

This stone oddity honors a Bandera pioneer named Amasa Clark, giving his birth and death dates as 1825-1927.Bandera, Texas Bandera, Texas

More about him is at Frontier Times magazine, which annoyingly doesn’t say when the text was written, who wrote it or where it was published. Internal evidence, along with the style of writing, puts it in the early 1920s, probably in a local newspaper. Clark came to the site of Bandera in 1852, not long after serving in the war with Mexico, and stayed until his death in 1927 as a very old man.

Also along the highway in Bandera is a strip center including a store the likes of which I’d never seen before. Neither had Jay.Bandera, Texas Bandera, Texas

We had to take a look inside.Bandera, Texas Bandera, Texas

I should have asked to woman behind the counter how long the store has been in business, or whether the man himself gets a cut, or some other questions, but I was in vacation mode, not interview mode. So all I know is what I saw, which was enough. For the record, and this is no surprise, Trump overwhelmingly carried Bandera County — 79.1% to 19.7% for Biden — in the 2020 election.

Some Oddities of Ravenswood Avenue

Fall break time. At least from posting. Back on October 29 or so.

On the North Side of Chicago, the north-south Ravenswood Avenue is a double street, divided by raised tracks of one of the Metra commuter rail lines. East of the tracks, the street is one way headed north; west of the tracks, one way headed south. Some of the streets still show their brick heritage. Mostly such streets in Chicago, as in most North American cities, has long since been paved over or replaced.Ravenswood Avenue

In the neighborhood known as Ravenswood, small industrial buildings line the avenue. Fewer than formerly, but still some.Ravenswood Avenue Ravenswood Avenue

That second image is of Gabel & Schubert Bronze Co. “Your source for donor recognition walls, trees, plaques, and more,” its web site says. Someone makes those trophies and plaques gathering dust in countless glass display cases in high schools nationwide.

New apartments have been developed on the avenue as well.Ravenswood Avenue

Just to the west of the Metra tracks are El tracks. The sort you can stand under.Under the El tracks Under the El tracks

Reminds me of a parody of “Under the Boardwalk” I heard years ago by Four Guys Standing Around Singing, an a capella group along the lines of The Bobs I saw in Chicago in the late ’80s. All I remember is a fragment of lyric: “Under the El tracks/Where the bums hang out…”

Remarkably, the four guys are still singing. At least, some guys using that name. But not The Bobs, who hung it up in 2017. Saw them in Nashville in ’86. My favorite of theirs was “Bus Plunge.”

At 4636 N. Ravenswood is the former Bull Dog Lock Co. building, now home to a number of small businesses, including Starshaped Press, which was a Chicago Open House site. It is a letter press specialist, with a number of cool vintage letter presses and other equipment in its small office, including racks and racks of metal type and many examples of its work.

Such as postcards.

And small wonderful posters.

I bought a few other postcards (the one above and the poster, as ads, were free). It’s good to support such remarkable little operations. If the place hadn’t been so crowded, we would have spent longer.

Also, we had somewhere else to go: 1807 W. Sunnyside, where that street crosses Ravenswood. Also known as the Airstream Building. It too was an Open House site.Airstream Building

Airstream? That’s because perched on its roof, three floors up, is an early ’60s Airstream.

“The former industrial structure was renovated in 1989 to house Chicago Associates Planners and Architects, a design cooperative led by architect Edward Noonan,” the Open House web site says.

“Looking to add a whimsical amenity for employees, Noonan asked city officials for permission to hoist the trailer onto the roof, but was not taken seriously. With a rented crane, the trailer was lifted onto the roof, drawing an emergency response when the CTA mistook it for a derailed Brown Line train. In the years since, the Airstream ‘Conference Center’ (complete with rooftop deck and skyline views) has hosted numerous events and parties.”

Nice views from the deck.Airstream Building

The airstream itself, as I saw it.Airstream Building Airstream Building

Inside.Airstream Building Airstream Building

If I had a party to throw, in Chicago, and wanted to spend a little money, it’s a place I’d consider.

Churches After Lunch

“Nothing matters but the weekend, from a Tuesday point of view.”

Lyrical wisdom from The Kings, a Canadian band who had only one hit in the United States that I know of (or two, depending on how you count the songs). I don’t think I’m going to look it up to confirm that notion. It’s been more than 40 years, after all, and that level of detail doesn’t matter much.

Lunch on Saturday was in Uptown, specifically near the Argyle El station, which is home to a sizable number of Vietnamese immigrants and their descendants. Once upon a time, at a small strip center in the neighborhood, there was a pho restaurant that had the distinction (for me) of being the first place I tried pho. It was the also first restaurant we ever took Lilly to, when she was exactly a month old in December 1997. I’m glad to say she slept through the entire experience in her detached car seat, next to our table. The other patrons were probably glad, too.

That restaurant is gone – or has moved, its space taken by the next-door Vietnamese grocery store – so we repaired to a North Broadway storefront pho spot. Actually much larger than a typical storefront, with room in back for a small stage for live music, colorfully decked out with a handful of small spotlights ready for action, as we saw at some of the larger restaurants in Saigon. Lunch was filling and as good as pho almost always is. Who can ask for more?

After lunch we walked the few blocks to Saint Thomas of Canterbury Catholic Church in Uptown. I lived not far away for a number of years, but had no idea it was there.St Thomas of Canterbury, Chicago St Thomas of Canterbury, Chicago

Another unusual church style, at least for Chicago. Colonial Meeting House, though looking a bit more Georgian than that, my sources tell me. An architect name Joseph W. McCarthy, not to be confused with the number-one proponent of McCarthyism from Wisconsin, did the design. He’s yet another noted designers of churches, back when that was a growth industry.St Thomas of Canterbury, Chicago St Thomas of Canterbury, Chicago St Thomas of Canterbury, Chicago St Thomas of Canterbury, Chicago

Many of the shrines in the church reflect the local population, as shrines tend to do.St Thomas of Cantibury, Chicago

In case you want to know who the 17 Martyrs of Laos are, a poster at the back of the nave tells you. Martyrs figure prominently at Saint Thomas, fitting right in for a church honoring a churchman murdered in a church.Saint Thomas of Canterbury

Later in the day, in fact the last place we visited on Saturday, was St. Ita Catholic Church in Edgewater, at the edge of my old stomping grounds in Andersonville.St. Ita, Chicago

“St. Ita Parish was founded in Edgewater in 1900. On October 23, 1923, His Eminence George Cardinal Mundelein commissioned Architect Henry J. Schlacks to design and build a new church specifically in French Gothic design for St. Ita Parish,” the local parish web site says. I’ve seen a number of his churches.

“The current church, which opened in 1927, was the capstone of Henry Schlacks’ distinguished career as an ecclesiastical architect…. The open tower appears airy and delicate, yet it contains 1,800 tons of Bedford limestone and rises to 120 feet in height. Elaborate Gothic detailing marks the altar, but the medallion windows containing more than 200,000 pieces of stained glass, designed by Schlacks, are the real highlight of the interior.”

I have a vaguely remember visiting the church on a cool rainy Saturday – sometime in the late ’80s, maybe? — but not lingering for too long inside because a wedding was in progress. Last Saturday, cool and rainy, another wedding was in progress.St. Ita, ChicagoSome other time I might see those many pieces of glass, artfully arrayed.

Churches Before Lunch

As we navigated the back streets of the North Side of Chicago late on Saturday morning, the rain kept on coming, leaving scatterings of yellow and brown leaves and sizable puddles.

Tucked away in the Lincoln Square neighborhood was our second site for the day, and first church: Luther Memorial Church.Luther Memorial Church, Chicago Luther Memorial Church, Chicago

As a congregation, Luther Memorial dates from the late 19th century, and was one of the first English-speaking Lutheran congregations in Chicago. Currently part of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America.

The present Indiana limestone church building rose on the site in the 1920s, designed by E.E. Roberts and his son E.C. Roberts, who were Oak Park architects. Not as well known these days as The Genius, apparently, but they did a lot of work in their day.Luther Memorial Church, Chicago Luther Memorial Church, Chicago

Behind the altar is the Christus Window, original to the church in 1926. Blue Christ, I’d call it.Luther Memorial Church, Chicago

The side and back windows were installed about 40 years later, and they look like it.Luther Memorial Church, Chicago Luther Memorial Church, Chicago

That isn’t a criticism. The 1960s are derided as a time of poor design, and it might be in some things – children’s animation comes to mind – but not in the stained glass I’ve seen. More abstract than in previous decades, often, but with their own elegance, though my images don’t quite capture it.

By the time we left Luther Memorial, the rain had slacked off. Our second church of the day is one we used to know, over in the Ravenwood neighborhood, since we attended it sometimes in the late ’90s: All Saints Episcopal. Rev. Bonnie Perry was there at the time, and I understand she was instrumental in keeping the church open. These days she’s bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Michigan.All Saints Episcopal Church, Chicago

An example of stick style, rare in Chicago, designed by John Cochrane, who also did the Illinois State Capitol and the Iowa State Capitol, among many other projects. The church was built in 1883, when Ravenswood was still a suburb of Chicago.All Saints Episcopal Church, Chicago All Saints Episcopal Church, Chicago All Saints Episcopal Church, Chicago

By the time we got there, the church was closed to Open House visitors. Getting ready for a wedding, we realized, when we say people dressed for a wedding going in. An elegant interior, as I recall.

The National Cambodian Heritage Museum and Killing Fields Memorial

It’s mid-October and in Chicago at least, that means Open House Chicago, which we’ve attended most years over the last decade. We’ve visited churches, synagogues, temples, office space, libraries, factories, theaters, museums and more as part of the event. Open House is a worldwide phenomenon.Open House Chicago 2023

Rain fell heavily Friday night, and was forecast to last into Saturday morning – which it did, also obscuring whatever partial eclipse was above the clouds. The weather didn’t stop us from going out, though it did slow us down some, since driving in the city is like driving through glue even in the best conditions. To make things easier, I decided to head into the neighborhoods east from O’Hare – relatively accessible from our suburb – and on to Lakeview near Lake Michigan, as familiar as a neighborhood can be in Chicago, since we used to live there.

Our first stop was west of Lakeview, however, in the much less familiar Lincoln Square. It was still rainy and quite windy when we arrived at the National Cambodian Heritage Museum and Killing Fields Memorial, which I hadn’t known about till I saw it on the Open House List.

The weather discouraged outside photos, but I did manage to capture the mural on the side of the museum building, which faces west on Lawrence Ave.National Cambodian Heritage Museum and Killing Fields Memorial

“Cambodian Color” (2017) by Brandin Hurley and Shayne Renee Taylor.

A detail near the museum entrance, and out of the rain.National Cambodian Heritage Museum and Killing Fields Memorial

It’s a small museum, only a few rooms, but enough to provide some testimony and images about the Cambodian genocide – the evacuation of Phnom Penh, forced collectivization, blunt-instrument murders to save ammunition, Tuol Sleng and other death prisons, the Khmer Rouge turning on itself when an agrarian utopia mysteriously didn’t appear — the whole horrorshow of ideology gone barking mad. A somber place to visit, but that should be an element in one’s wanderings.

One of the docents, a young woman I took to be an American of Cambodian ancestry, asked me if I knew anything about the period. Unfortunately, I do. Not unfortunate that I know, but that there was anything to know. I remember reading reports of mass murders in “Democratic Kampuchea” while the Khmer Rouge was still in power and of course after its overthrow, when much more detail came out. I told her simply yes, that I’d heard of it.

The memorial is in the back room of the museum. National Cambodian Heritage Museum and Killing Fields Memorial National Cambodian Heritage Museum and Killing Fields Memorial National Cambodian Heritage Museum and Killing Fields Memorial

Not really visible unless you look very closely is Khmer script up and down the glass panels. A lot of it, in other words. Names.

“Designed within an environment for quiet contemplation utilizing glass, stone, water, and light effects, the memorial includes the individual names of thousands of relatives lost by Cambodians all over the United States,” the museum web site says.

Not Yet, I Haven’t

Not long ago I came across the blog of a fellow – Everywhereman.me — who aspired to visit everywhere mentioned in the U.S. version of the song “I’ve Been Everywhere.” He then did just that, mostly by motorcycle. I don’t think I’ll do that exactly, but that’s the kind of meshuga I like, since I’m a bit touched myself.

Though others have recorded it, including Johnny Cash no less, I associate the U.S. version with Hank Snow. As well I should.

The original version was Australian, written by Geoff Mack and a hit for Lucky Starr. I have to give it its due. Australia is full of lots of weird and gorgeous place names, after all.

You need a written list to keep up with Lucky, as posted in Wiki. Or a very detailed knowledge of Australia.

Other versions for other places exist. None other than Stompin’ Tom Connors starts off in the United States, but naturally gravitates to Canada, with an entire verse about the Maritimes.

Canada’s fine, but Texas place names are just as good.

By one Brian Burns, who managed to work in some of my favorites, ever since my days of poring over Texas road maps: Pflugerville, Dime Box, and Cut and Shoot.

Fort Sheridan Water Tower

Where are those copy editors, anyway? A Washington Post correction from today.

Much of the former Fort Sheridan in Lake County, Illinois, is now a residential neighborhood, which is only reasonable. Even when it was an Army base, it was mostly residential. The officers’ houses are now refurbished single-family houses and the enlisted men’s quarters are now refurbished multifamily.

Time was short on Saturday, so I didn’t have all the time I wanted to look around the post-military neighborhood, but we did take a stroll on the former parade ground, which is now green space looped by Leonard Wood Ave.Fort Sheridan 2023 Fort Sheridan 2023
Leonard Wood. Ask people driving on Leonard Wood who that might have been and his obscurity would assert itself in the form of blank stares and wild guesses.

I don’t know the details of all of his lengthy military career, but I do know that TR theoretically reported to him in Cuba in ’98 and that, in some alternate reality, Wood captured the Republican nomination for president in 1920 and went on to be 29th President of the United States, rather than the office going to a newspaper publisher from Ohio.

In that case, Wood would surely be remembered. Maybe about as much as Harding. Which might not be that much.

We spotted the fort’s former water tower on the other side of the grounds.Fort Sheridan Water Tower 2023

I had to see that up close, so we stopped by before we headed south for our lunch appointment.Fort Sheridan Water Tower 2023 Fort Sheridan Water Tower 2023

Impressive. A design by noted Chicago architectural firm Holabird and Roche, who did many of the fort’s buildings.Fort Sheridan 2023 Fort Sheridan Water Tower 2023 Fort Sheridan Water Tower 2023
Per Wiki: “Built from 1889 to 1891, the tower was among the first structures completed in the fort. It was built with bricks made from Lake Bluff clay and designed to resemble St. Mark’s Campanile in Venice.”

Fort Sheridan Forest Preserve

On Saturday, we made our way to the edge of Lake Michigan.Fort Sheridan Forest Preserve Fort Sheridan Forest Preserve Fort Sheridan Forest Preserve Fort Sheridan Forest Preserve

We’d come on the sunny last day of September to Fort Sheridan Forest Preserve, a unit of the Lake County Forest Preserve District. For a little more than a century, the U.S. Army maintained a presence at Fort Sheridan and in surrounding acreage for a shifting variety of uses, until base closure turned the site mostly over the private development, with a relatively small slice added to the forest preserve system.

The decommissioning was in the 1990s. I remember writing about the redevelopment, but after I quit much local reporting about the Chicago area ca. 2005, I tucked whatever I knew about Fort Sheridan in a remote filing cabinet in my memory. That is, I forgot it until not long ago, when I noticed the forest preserve on a map – a paper map – and determined to go, since we were due for lunch with Wendy and Ted later in the day in Evanston anyway.

This forest preserve is only partly forest. We took short trails through prairie. Much is prairie. Much is prairie. Much is prairie. Much is prairie.

A ravine runs through it.Fort Sheridan Forest Preserve Fort Sheridan Forest Preserve

Coloration has started. Fort Sheridan Forest Preserve Fort Sheridan Forest Preserve

Barely but vividly.