I Found a Time Capsule

Posted on December 14, 2022 by admin

Thinking more about Kong Dog, it occurs to me that maybe somewhere in the hip little eateries of still-under-the-radar foodie towns (Des Moines? Incheon? Windhoek?), culinary innovators are working on artisanal beanie-weenies.

Gray, drizzly days recently, but at least above freezing, barely, so no underfoot ice. A few days ago, before the drizzle set in, we visited the lights at Schaumburg Town Square, which is a pleasure when it isn’t too cold.

The clocktower, which is at a spot called Veterans Gateway Park. Nice.

While visiting the tower, I noticed a time capsule under the nearby bricks.

How had I never noticed this before? I don’t visit the clocktower a lot, but I have been there over the years.

Sealed herein is a time capsule, its contents gathered to honor and remember the arrival of the new millennium in Schaumburg.

Sealed the 16th day of September, 2001 at 12:30 p.m. by the Village of Schaumburg Millennium Committee.

This capsule is to be opened 25 years hence, its contents enjoyed and added to, and the capsule resealed to be opened in another 25 years.

That’s getting pretty close. I checked and September 16, 2026 is going to be a Wednesday. Will it be opened then or a near weekend? Or just approximately then? Will a new committee be formed? Or will the village forget?

As for the contents, I have to think they made some reference to the recent events of that September, as if they would be forgotten in 25 years. Mostly forgotten in 100 years, that I can see, even with whatever advanced information tech happens to exist in 2101. As the Internet has taught our generation, quick access to information hasn’t made much of a dint in ignorance.

Beaver Pond

Posted on December 12, 2022 by admin

Chilly outside today but no wind at all, so stepping outside is like entering a really large walk-in refrigerator. Temps were a little warmer on Saturday, when I used Google Maps to scout out someplace to walk. Someplace neither near nor far, and new. I have my standards.

By mid-afternoon, we were at Beaver Pond, a unit of the Bartlett Park District.

About a mile around and flat.

Good spot for an easy walk. The trail doesn’t actually dip into the pond, as on the map. I think that’s where a small fishing platform juts into the water, accessible by the trail.

“Water collects here from a 1.5 sq. mile area of streets, residential properties and undeveloped areas,” says the only sign along the trail. So the place might be named for river-dwelling rodents — none of whom were in evidence on Saturday — but it’s really a detention pond.

Still, a nice trail. Sports spots of grassland.

Houses ring the park, with non-marked lot lines, though I’m sure the property owners and park district know where they are. Some homeowners decorated their patch for Christmas. Such as with an epic-sized snowman.

Sure, top hats are the custom among the snowfolk. But wouldn’t it be interesting to see a snowman wearing something else occasionally? Bowlers can have as much magic in them as top hots, Frosty.

Santa says, Ho ho ho. What, I wonder, do snowmen say for the holidays? Nothing. Climate change got ’em.

Art Institute Spaces, Small and Large

Posted on December 8, 2022 by admin

I’d like to say I visited this room recently — looks interesting, doesn’t it? — but I only looked into the room.

An English great room of the late Tudor period, 1550-1603, according to a nearby sign. I couldn’t get in because one inch within this room equals one foot in an actual room of that kind, so at best I could get a hand in.

The Art Institute doesn’t want anyone to do that, and for good reason, since random hands would completely wreck any of the Thorne Miniature Rooms. So they are behind glass in walled-in spaces, and not at eye level for someone as tall as I am.

Still, I leaned over to look in. The fascination is there. Not just for me, but for the many other people looking at the rooms on Saturday. Each room evokes a different place or time, heavily but not exclusively American or European settings.

English drawing room, ca. 1800.

French library, ca. 1720.

Across the Atlantic. Pennsylvania drawing room, 1830s.

Massachusetts living room, 1675-1700.

The fascination isn’t just with the astonishing intricacy of the work, which it certainly has, but also the artful lighting. Artful as the light-play on a Kubrick set. I know those are electric lights in the background, but it looks like the rooms are lighted the way they would have been during those periods. With sunlight, that is.

“Narcissa Niblack Thorne, the creator of the Thorne Rooms, herself had a vivid imagination,” says the Art Institute. “In the 1930s, she assembled a group of skilled artisans in Chicago to create a series of intricate rooms on the minute scale of 1:12.

“With these interiors, she wanted to present a visual history of interior design that was both accurate and inspiring. The result is two parts fantasy, one part history — each room a shoe box–sized stage set awaiting viewers’ characters and plots.” (More microwave oven–sized, I’d say.)

Thorne (d. 1966) had the wherewithal to hire artisans during the Depression by being married to James Ward Thorne, an heir to the Montgomery Ward department store fortune, back when department stores generated fortunes. Bet the artisans were glad to have the work.

It wasn’t my first visit to the Thorne Rooms, but I believe I appreciate it a little more each time. I know I feel that way about the Chicago Stock Exchange Trading Room, which I also visited on Saturday.

The Thorne Rooms are an exercise in constrained space. The Trading Room is one of expansive space. So much so that my basic lens really isn’t up to capturing the whole. Still, I try.

No one else was in the room with me. It is a little out of the way, in museum wayfinding terms, and it is the artwork, rather than being mere protective walls and climate control, so maybe people pass it by.

Not me. I spent a while looking at details.

Overhead.

Such a grand room. Victorian ideas at work, striving to add uplift to a space devoted to grubby commerce. I’d say they succeeded.

“Designed by Chicago architects Louis Sullivan and his partner, Dankmar Adler, the original Chicago Stock Exchange was completed in 1894,” the museum notes on a page that also extols the room as a place where as many as 300 people can meet.

“When it was demolished in 1972, sections of the Trading Room, including Sullivan’s elaborate stenciled decorations, molded plaster capitals, and art glass, were preserved and used in the 1976–77 reconstruction of the room here at the Art Institute.”

I attended an event there myself for some forgotten reason about 20 years ago. Suits and ties (a while ago, as I said), dresses, and drinks in hand, the room hosted such a crowd with ease. If I had 300 people to entertain, I’d certainly consider renting the place.

Chagall’s America Windows

Posted on December 7, 2022 by admin

A treasure from the 1970s: Chagall’s America Windows at the Art Institute (1977). They’re out there, those treasures from that time.

In order from right to left.

Here’s a thought for the 2020s: Odious antisemites need to knock it off. As in, shut up. Then again, “odious” is already packed into “antisemite,” isn’t it? So that counts as a redundancy.

Details from the America Windows.

The museum was busy on Saturday, but I had the windows practically to myself.

A Few Rooms of Ancient Art

Posted on December 6, 2022 by admin

I might be misremembering, but I believe the Uffizi Gallery had a hallway that featured busts of every Roman emperor, plus a good many of their wives, down at least to Severus Alexander (d. AD 235), in chronological order. I spent a while there, looking over them all.

The Uffizi array included famed and long-lasting rulers (e.g., Augustus) but also obscure short-timers whose biographies tend to end with “assassinated by…” (e.g., Didius Julianus (d. AD 193), the rich mope who bought the office from the highly untrustworthy Praetorian Guard and held it for all of 66 days in 193).

I thought of all those emperor busts when I took a look at Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius on Saturday.

Second century AD, no doubt part of what would later be called propaganda: the effort to let the Roman people feel the presence of their rulers. These two busts are among the ancient Roman artworks on display at the Art Institute of Chicago, along with works by Greek, Egyptian and other peoples.

It isn’t a huge collection, though sizable enough. If you put together the ancient art found at Art Institute and the Field Museum and the Oriental Institute Museum, that might be a British Museum- or Pergamon Museum-class collection, but no matter. I always enjoy strolling around the Art Institute’s ancient gallery, which is back a fair ways from the main entrance, in four rooms surrounding a peristyle-like courtyard, though that is a story down.

Besides emperors, you’ll see emperor-adjacent figures, such as Antinous, done up as Osiris, 2nd century AD of course.

Beloved by Hadrian, Antinous took a swim in the Nile one day in AD 130 and drowned. Hadrian founded the nearby city of Antinoupolis in his honor (it’s a minor ruin these days) and proclaimed him a god — the sort of thing a grieving emperor could do in those days.

A Roman copy of a Greek statue of Sophocles, ca. AD 100.

Hercules, 1st century AD.

My cohort learned of Hercules through cartoons. Could have done worse, I guess.

A story never animated for children, as far as I know: Leda and the Swan, 1st or 2nd century AD. A story that nevertheless reverberates down the centuries.

Who doesn’t like ancient mosaics? I like to think these 2nd-century AD works were part of an ancient tavern that served food.

A sampling of Greek vases are on display as well. These black-figure works are from the sixth century BC, probably for storing wine. In vino veritas, though in this case that would be Ἐν οἴνῳ ἀλήθεια (En oinō alētheia), and I won’t pretend I didn’t have to look that up.

I always visit the coin case. Here’s a silver tetradrachm minted in the 2nd century BC in Asia Minor, depicting Apollo. Such detailed work for something struck by hand.

Then there’s this — creature.

Statue of a Young Satyr Wearing a Theater Mask of Silenus, ca. 1st century AD, the museum sign says (and he’s putting his hand through the mask). You need to watch out for those young satyrs. They’re always up to something.

Nth Visit to the Art Institute of Chicago

Posted on December 5, 2022 by admin

On Saturday, I made my way to downtown Chicago, while Yuriko created this most delicious Christmas cake at her occasional cake class.

I rode the El part of the way. Not many people are masked these days, unlike subway riders of a year ago (at least in New York). But there are a few.

Another mark of the shifting tides of pandemic: a storefront on a downtown Chicago street.

I didn’t doctor that image. A white rectangle was painted on the sign. Note that it went from Free Covid Care — though surely they meant testing, not intensive care — to Covid Care, as federal subsidies dried up, to For Rent, as business dried up.

Before long, I came to my destination: The Art Institute of Chicago.

The Art Institute and I go back a ways, and I’m sure I’ve been there more than any other art museum, or maybe any museum at all. Remarkably, I know the date of my first visit: May 17, 1981, during my first visit to Chicago. I haven’t consistently keep a diary over the years, but I did then.

That day I mostly remember spending time at an exhibit called “The Search for Alexander.” I might or might not have known it at the time, but the exhibit had opened just the day before.

A few years earlier, the wildly popular “Treasures of Tutankhamun” exhibit had set the stage for the museum megashows of today, with their crowds, high prices and timed tickets, but most of that was still to come in ’81 (and there were other memorable legacies of Tut, too).

I don’t think the Alexander exhibit counted as a megashow, since I don’t remember paying extra, or dealing with a crowd. But I do remember being impressed by the art and artifacts from the time of Alexander of Macedon, especially a wreath of gold fashioned to look like oak leaves and acorns, held by fine gold branches that vibrated ever so gently in the mild air puffs of a climate-controlled display case.

On Saturday, I once again spent time with the museum’s ancient art, but also lingered in front of the Chagall’s America Windows and in the Chicago Stock Exchange Trading Room, which I almost always do, as well as taking a long look at the Thorne Miniatures, which was by far the most crowded gallery I visited, though this time I didn’t go into the Impressionist rooms, which always pack ’em in.

Wherever you are, Saturday’s a busy day at the Art Institute.

A scattering of people wore masks.

Many more wore beards.

Museum workers were working.

As befitting my age, I spent a good few minutes on the museum’s benches. That gave me time to fiddle with my camera.

Oops.

Judith with the Head of Holofernes, Postcard Version

Posted on December 4, 2022 by admin

I sent this card to my brother Jim in December 1994, on the day that we visited Windsor Castle.

The British postmark is where it should be. The USPS thoughtlessly postmarked the image. Nice going, USPS. Just another example of disrespecting postcards.

As this account of the 1992 Windsor Castle fire says, only two of the castle’s artworks were destroyed by the fire, not including the one depicted on the card, “Judith with the Head of Holofernes” (Cristofano Allori, 1613) which was part of the Royal Collection at Windsor. It still is.

At the time, I didn’t know anything about Allori or the painting. The Royal Collection Trust notes: “According to his biographer Baldinucci, Allori painted this work in part as an autobiographical account of his love affair with Maria de Giovanni Mazzafirri, which ended badly. The figure of Judith, Baldinucci claimed, resembles ‘La Mazzafirra,’ the servant in the background her mother, and the severed head of Holofernes is a portrait of the artist himself.”

I had seen “Judith I” (Gustav Klimt, 1901) in Vienna earlier that year, and of course the story of Judith came up in my studies, but I also didn’t really know how popular Judith was in artistic depictions. This I found out later. Nothing like a story of deception, a fetching feme, a drunken fool and a beheading to inspire art, I guess.

As for the work at Windsor, most recently — as in, last week — I read how it came to be in the Royal Collection. Acquired by Charles I, probably from the Gonzaga collection, Mantua, the trust says, which lead me to read further about the Gonzaga collection. If I had heard about it before, and I might had, I’d forgotten.

The long and short of it is that the House of Gonzaga, after much effort, put together a splendid art collection, only to sell it when they needed cash — to King Charles in the late 1620s, well before that monarch’s grim fate, in a deal facilitated by one Daniel Nijs.

The lesson here? Postcards are educational.

Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historical Park

Posted on November 10, 2022 by admin

Today was probably the last warm day of the year. For the next week and then some, at least, the chill will be on. Lunch and dinner were on our deck.

On the morning of October 15, a warm, clear Saturday in Atlanta, I got up early (for me) and walked from my short-term rental apartment in the Mechanicsville neighborhood to Garnett Station (on Marta’s Red and Gold Lines), mostly via Windsor Street, which was quiet and largely devoid of people.

From the station, I took the train to Peachtree Center, after which I spent time in Centennial Olympic Park.

The CNN Center is adjacent to the park, so I went there for a look too. Also, to find a bathroom, since the management of Centennial Olympic Park, in a gesture I take as hostile to the public at large, hasn’t bothered to re-open the park’s public bathrooms that closed during the pandemic emergency.

CNN employees can ride that tall escalator through a model Earth.

Soon after, I went to catch a streetcar — called a tram on the maps — which stops just outside the park. But I had a little time before the next arrival, so I looked around. In the vicinity of the park, you can see this building, whose name or address I didn’t bother with. Its Pac-Man-ish features, which appear to be the profile of a bold bird, move.

Then it changes its pattern, and they move some more.

The Ferris wheel Skyview Atlanta, another feature of that part of downtown, wasn’t moving yet.

After a short ride, I arrived at the streetcar stop near the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historical Park and Preservation District.

I have the MLK park service publication in front of me. Don’t let anyone tell you that QR codes are better, NPS. The paper pamphlet unfolds in a way a smart phone image cannot, and it allows things to jump out at you in a way they can’t.

As soon as I unfolded it completely, the beginning of a sentence jumped out at me.

“In the twelve or so years that Martin Luther King, Jr. led the American Civil Rights Movement…”

Twelve years. Making Martin Luther King Jr. a bright meteor in American history, an illumination of the better angels of our nature, that’s over and done all too soon. Except that his legacy, his ethical bequest to the nation and the world, is hardly over and done.

The park captures the geography of Dr. King’s early life: a line from his birthplace and boyhood home on Auburn Avenue to his church — the church of his father and grandfather — also on Auburn, only blocks away.

When the King family led Ebenezer Baptist Church, it met here, a building now known as Historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, Heritage Sanctuary. It was completed in the 1920s and restored in recent years to look like it did in the 1960s.

Not open. Some kind of maintenance going on, I think. I’d liked to have seen the inside.

This is the Horizon Sanctuary, a 1999 structure, where the church gathers now.

It isn’t part of the park, but on its border, next to the main visitor center and museum devoted to Dr. King and his times. The church isn’t a relic of the past either, its congregation robust these days. Its pastor, Sen. Raphael Warnock, is in the thick of trying to win a full term in the U.S. Senate.

Close to the historic church and also on Auburn, Dr. and Mrs. King repose in a tomb perched on a circular island, the focus of a deep blue reflecting pool running the length of a brick plaza. Promenade might be a better way to put it, considering that people were strolling the length of it.

An eternal flame on the grounds.

I spent some time in the museum. A fair amount to read and view, but the most poignant artifact was the wagon that carried his coffin.

Outside the museum, there’s a garden with a mouthful of a name: The Martin Luther King, Jr. “I Have A Dream” World Peace Rose Garden.

Also on Auburn, his birth house.

It’s on the left. On the right is a book store and the museum shop. Tours of the birth house were already booked for the day.

“Auburn Avenue was the commercial, cultural, and spiritual center of African American life in Atlanta prior to the civil rights movement,” says the New Georgia Encyclopedia. ” ‘Sweet Auburn’ boasted a concentration of Black-owned businesses, entertainment venues, and churches that was unrivaled elsewhere in the South.”

The street had been renamed Auburn in 1893; originally it had been Wheat Street.

“During the next two decades, as restrictive Jim Crow legislation was codified into law, the city’s African American population became confined to the area between downtown and Atlanta University and to neighborhoods on the city’s east side, known today as the Old Fourth Ward,” the encyclopedia notes.

“It was during this period that Auburn Avenue first achieved prominence as a commercial corridor and became home to the city’s emerging Black middle class.

“Ironically, Auburn’s civic activism led to its undoing. As the NAACP and local voting-rights organizations, from their Sweet Auburn offices, lobbied state and local governments for an end to segregation, and as native son Martin Luther King Jr… led the crusade for civil rights before a national audience, the street began its steep decline. With the legal barriers to integration removed, many Auburn shopkeepers moved their businesses to other areas of the city, and residents began migrating to Atlanta’s west side.”

Historic No. 6 Fire Station, which is part of the park.

The NPS says: Built in 1894 in Romanesque Revival style, the fire station stood guard over the city for nearly 100 years. In the 1960s, it became one of Atlanta’s first racially integrated firehouses. It closed in 1991.

So before the ’60s, Atlanta firehouses were segregated. How nuts is that?

Besides sites associated with Dr. King, Auburn still features some shotgun houses, which mostly aren’t part of the park.

Plus some larger houses. This one is home to the Historic District Development Corp.

Eventually, I wandered beyond Auburn to a parallel street, Edgewood Avenue. It’s an active commercial street in our time, with various establishments.

Plus murals.

I had a late lunch of breakfast food at Thumbs Up, a diner. Its outside wall.

Eggs and pancakes, done up right. Worth the half-hour wait sitting outside.

Centennial Olympic Park, Atlanta

Posted on November 9, 2022 by admin

Remarkably, the election seems to have been anticlimactic. So far, anyway. Probably the best outcome to be hoped for, two sumo wrestlers huffing noisily to a draw. I did my little part, voting about two hours before the polls closed, because it had been a busy day at work, and every time I considered voting early during the last few weeks, I thought, nah.

Even more remarkably, we had lunch on the deck today. This evening at about 8, I sat out there in a light jacket under the waning moon and Jupiter high in the sky, and comfortably drank tea and ate a banana-flavored Choco Pie.

For anyone who’s interested, the International Olympic Committee created a report called “Over 125 years of Olympic venues: post-Games Use.” I can’t speak to the organization’s exact motives in producing such a document, but it seems to be a way to assert that most host cities weren’t stuck with too many white elephants after the Games.

Maybe so. The report notes that of the permanent venues used in both Summer and Winter Games from 1896 to 2018 — there were 817 all together — 85 percent are still in use. Many of those, if not most, already existed when the Games came to town, however.

Those 15 percent of unused venues are what tend to get attention. Or rather, a fraction of them.

“Of the 15 per cent of permanent venues not in use (124 venues), the majority (88 venues) were unbuilt or demolished for a variety of reasons,” the report says, using that charming British style for spelling out % and unbuilt as a verb.

“Some had reached the end of their life, some were destroyed during war periods or in accidents, while others were replaced by new urban development projects or were removed for lack of a business model. The remaining venues not in use are closed or abandoned (36 venues).”

Those last ones would be fodder for urban explorers and editorialists who want to discuss the deleterious impact of the Games on urban spaces. Tellingly, the report notes that Los Angeles isn’t going to build any new venues for ’28.

“The ‘radical reuse’ concept also applies to the training facilities and the Athletes’ Village,” it says.

Guess the IOC is going to have to live with the fact that cities are now hesitant to build spiffy new facilities that mostly benefit the IOC.

Here are photos of some of those abandoned sites. The ones that surprise me are the abandoned swimming pool and amphitheater from the ’36 Games. Sure, those were the Nazi Olympics, but the main stadium has been maintained by a more benevolent German government, why not the pool?

I took a look at that stadium — Olympiastadion — during a walkabout in West Berlin in 1983. That’s only one of two former Olympic sites that I can remember visiting. The other was a facility for the 1976 Montreal Games, the Centre Aquatique, where we went swimming in 2002.

I had these places in mind when I strolled through Centennial Olympic Park in downtown Atlanta. Its origins are on display.

The 21-acre park actually isn’t listed in the IOC report, because no sporting activity took place there. Rather, it was intended to be a gathering spot for visitors and spectators, and then a city park once the Games were over, and so it is. A pleasant place to wander on a warm weekend morning.

The park includes green space.

Water features and plazas.

Some structures left over from ’96.

Sculpture from that same year.

“Tribute” by Greek artist Peter Calaboyias, depicting (right to left) an ancient Olympic athlete, a participant in the first modern Games in Athens in 1896, and an Atlanta Games participant.

Poor old Richard Jewell has a memorial too.

Dedicated only in 2021. About time, I’d say.

The Georgia State Capitol

Posted on November 8, 2022 by admin

It’s been a good year for visiting U.S. capitols. Four all together: Utah, Nevada, California and most recently, Georgia. I believe that makes about 40 exteriors over the years, about 30 of which I’ve ventured inside, and not counting two provincial parliaments in Canada. Not sure about a few of those, because memory is an uncertain thing.

The Georgia State Capitol is in the thick of downtown. It has an impressive dome.

The painted copper statue that looks so small from the ground is known as Miss Freedom, dating from 1889, only a year after the capitol was completed. It’s about 26 feet tall, weighs over 1600 lbs. and is wearing a Phrygian cap, a detail one has to read about to know.

Fittingly, gold leaf from near Dahlonega, Georgia, adorns the dome. One of these days, I need to visit that place, to take in the historic mint. I’d toyed with the idea this time, but stuck around Atlanta instead during the day or so after the conference. The capitol was the first place I went when I had some free time.

The legislature isn’t in session now, and besides, a capitol is an office building — and a lot of people don’t work as much as they used to in offices. So the place was practically deserted. I wandered around the quiet marble halls, a design by Willoughby J. Edbrooke and Franklin Pierce Burnham of Chicago, no less.

The rotunda. Plain, but still worth a look.

The chambers. Closed, but with nice big windows to peer through.

The capitol also has a museum aspect to it, as many capitols do. Including something I’d never seen before in any capitol. Or anywhere that I can remember. A two-headed calf.

The unfortunate beast was born in Palmetto, Georgia in 1987, a nearby sign said. Other curiosities were on display at the capitol, too, but none quite so curious.

Or maybe this is.

It took me moment to realize it was Jimmy Carter, as governor. That isn’t quite the face the nation outside Georgia got to know in the late ’70s. Also, it’s odd that there’s no mention that Gov. Carter went on to, you know, some other office. Even the California capitol acknowledged that Ronald Reagan was more than governor for a spell.

Besides Jimmy, there’s a decided mix of other historic personages on display, some too famous to need naming. A chronological posting:

Interesting, but I was more delighted to find Button Gwinnett. Not only has this been a year for visiting capitols, but for Button sites too.

“Brief but brilliant was the career of Button Gwinnett, Revolutionary Patriot,” the bust says, emphasis on brief.

Guess I need to visit the Button Gwinnett House someday, to really be a complete Button tourist. Or was it really his house?

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Been There