Reasons to be Cheerful, Videos 3

Posted on March 15, 2023 by admin

Back to posting around March 26. It may not quite be spring, and I don’t mean the equinox, but it is time for spring break, for my nonprofessional writing efforts anyway.

Captured a couple of flags in flight not long ago.

Illinois needs a new flag. Remarkably, it might get one. I didn’t know that until this evening, looking around for alternate designs for the state flag. Of course, with a committee working on the matter, there’s no guarantee of a better flag. Even if the state had a design competition, that might not work out either. Guess we just have to hope for the best, or at least the better.

Bet this rock is in the Suburban Boulder Database, which is maintained by the U.S. Geological Survey.

Or it would be, if I hadn’t made that up. The database, that is, not the USGS, which I assume is real, unless it’s a Deep State trick to persuade us dupes that the Earth is round. Yet who else will give us volcano warnings?

I always take a look at plaque-on-rock memorials when I can. I like the economy of the things. No money, or room, for a bronze or marble statue? No worries, affix a plaque.

That one commemorates the 100th anniversary of the founding of Batavia, Illinois, and was dedicated on September 3, 1933. It mentions the first settler in the area, one Christopher Payne, and lauds him and other early settlers “who here broke the sod that men to come might live.”

Maybe, but Payne and his 19th-century passel of children didn’t stay. They soon moved on to Wisconsin.

Never mind what the poet said, March could well be the cruelest month. So it’s time for cheerful tunes.

A wonderful cover of “Honey Pie” by the newly named The Bygones.

Admiration for one Dutch musician can lead to the discovery of others, such as Candy Dulfer.

And of course, a longstanding reason to be cheerful, “Reasons to be Cheerful, Part 3.”

It’s cheerful to recall the first time I remember hearing Ian Dury and the Blockheads — a spring day in Tennessee as I crossed campus. The year, long ago, though at the time it seemed to be the cutting edge of the future. A nearby frat house was broadcasting its musical tastes to all passersby, such as me. The tune: “Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick.” One of the kinds of things I went to college to experience, though I didn’t realize it at the time.

American Standard, Lexington, Illinois

Posted on March 14, 2023 by admin

As points of interest go on a map, I’d say this one’s pretty intriguing.

Crazy Presidential Elephant. Considering that we were going to pass by the exit to Lexington, Illinois on our drive from Normal to the Chicago area on Saturday, I had to take a look at that. For that extra thrill of discovery, before visiting I barely skimmed the two reviews on Google Maps, one of which didn’t say much anyway.

Lexington is a burg of just over 2,000 souls, known for not much, as far as I can tell. On the other hand, Teddy Roosevelt visited as president, and in an example of how the Internet still amazes, with a minimum of research you can read the remarks he gave from the train that day.

The Crazy Presidential Elephant doesn’t have anything to do with TR. Or at least, I don’t think I saw him mentioned on the elephant.

Lexington doesn’t have much as a U.S. 66 destination, but it has this elephant shape conjured into existence with thousands — it must be thousands — of agglomerated manufactured metal objects of varying elements and forms and colors. Countless car parts: a fuel tank, hubcaps, bumpers, door handles, tail pipes; but not all car parts. Long chrome and short iron. Wheel shapes and rods and chains, painted or rusted or neither. The glue holding the multitude of parts must be industrial strength. Or is it? Already the elephant is beginning to lose bits and pieces as the Illinois seasons bake and freeze in turn.

The formal name of the sculpture is “American Standard.”

The agglomeration is one thing, but spicing up the elephant is the writing on many surfaces.

What is this thing? Why is it here?

“This is not your typical roadside attraction — it’s the political platform of artist Kasey Wells, who ran for president as a write-in candidate in 2020. Wells created the piece with Chicago artist Kyle Riley and carted it thousands of miles on a trailer during his campaign,” explains public radio station WGLT.

“The elephant wears a gold crown with ‘Standard Oil’ painted in red, white and blue. Wells ran as a left-leaning independent interested in divesting from the oil and gas industry, transforming the Federal Reserve and putting an end to war, among other things.”

It’s a good place to soak in the details. Endless details.

Look closely enough, and you can meditate on impermanence, and not just in the philosophical sense.

“ ‘American Standard’ sits across the street from a Freedom gas station, adjacent to a historical marker pointing out Standard Oil subsidiary filling stations during Route 66’s heyday,” the station says. (How did I miss that? Never mind.)

“The spot is rife with symbolism, but Wells still owns the piece and can move it or sell it at any point.”

A Normal Parade

Posted on March 13, 2023 by admin

I found out by chance on Saturday that Normal, Illinois, was holding its St. Patrick’s Day parade this year on that very Saturday, when I happened to be in town to pick up Ann for her spring break ride back home.

Compare with the downtown Chicago St. Patrick’s Day parade, a few years pre-pandemic.

Not that the pandemic made the difference. Many more million people in the area to draw from made the difference.

Still, the spirit of celebrating Ireland is there, and maybe the urge to feel alcoholic mirth as the day unfolds. Stereotype has these to be one and the same, but I won’t sully the good name of Ireland by suggesting such a thing, though Eire did come in at number seven highest in liters of alcohol per capita consumed among the nations of the Earth in 2016 and is forecast to be number four in 2025. Erin go Bragh.

Though it was a little cold, I enjoyed the more mellow Normal Irish parade. A few people standing around, a few more were in the parade, mostly in vehicles representing local organizations and businesses, and that was about it.

No high school bands or collegiate floats. The parade could have used a few of each, but maybe the Illinois State University administration worried about the possibility of civil disorder.

A few parade-goers were out and about in costume.

One more car in the parade.

The Space Force is recruiting. The slogan: “The Sky is Not the Limit.”

Hot Springs NP, 2007

Posted on March 12, 2023 by admin

Even though it was a digital camera, and a fairly good one when I acquired it ca. 2001, my Nikon Coolpix 4300 had its limits. Mainly, memory. At least compared to the vast memories of current devices.

So that might account for the fact that I only have one image at Hot Springs National Park in March 2007. Or maybe I wasn’t much in the mood for using a camera there. It’s good to put the camera down for a while sometimes, no matter how photogenic the place you find yourself.

This is it, the Hernando de Soto statue at Fordyce Bathhouse. The image itself is only passable.

The sculpture is in the former men’s bath hall and was a centerpiece of a fountain.

The Fordyce Bathhouse is a building of exceptional beauty in its public spaces and state-of-the-art health and fitness equipment of the roaring ’20s in its bath spaces.

“The Fordyce is now the park’s visitor center, and offers tours of its elaborate facilities – self-guided, but at a good price, free,” I wrote at the time. “The building style, Spanish Renaissance Revival, is supposed to pay tribute to Hernando de Soto, who supposedly came this way. No fancy bath houses were necessary for passing Spaniards, Indians or other early visitors, however, who apparently soaked in pools fed by the springs wherever they found them.”

Beverly Lake ’23

Posted on March 8, 2023 by admin

The snow forecast for Friday night didn’t show, though a little rain came the next day. Sunday turned out warmish, around 50 F., and mostly clear.

We made our way in early afternoon to Beverly Lake, which is on forest preserve land almost as far west in Cook County as you can go.

The map’s misleading, or at least incomplete. It depicts the 22-acre Beverly Lake, but most of the trails are in open space to the west and northwest. The trails are marked for cross-country skiing, but on Sunday, they were merely soggy in a few places.

“We’ve been here before,” I said. Yuriko didn’t remember, since it was a while ago: a warm day in April 2004, when we got a break from the kids for a few hours. I probably wouldn’t have remembered if I hadn’t written about it.

The lake.

Trails wide and narrow.

We came across a half-dozen volunteers removing invasive species and making a bonfire out of the debris. An older member of the party, maybe the leader, was keen to explain what they were doing. The enemy, he said, is buckthorn. Once he pointed it out, I started seeing it in a lot of places, including along some of the trails.

The buckthorn is the vine-like branches hanging and clinging every which way on the forest trees.

“… buckthorn species were first brought here from Europe as a popular hedging material,” explains the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. “They became a nuisance plant, forming dense thickets in forests, yards, parks and roadsides. They crowd out native plants and displace the native shrubs and small trees in the mid-layer of the forest where many species of birds nest.”

Even more menacing in black and white, I think.

Former Barrington Banks

Posted on March 7, 2023 by admin

It’s an Irish bar now, but it once was the First State Bank of Barrington. Long ago.

Spiffy bank building from the pre-FDIC days. I passed by it on my short walk around downtown Barrington. Opened in 1916, closed in 1932, so in the financial world, the bank had a mayfly-brief existence, snuffed out by the Depression. Soon after its banking days were over, a series of popular local restaurants opened in the structure, starting with Last National Bank Tavern, “incorporating the teller cages and vault area into the dining area,” notes an Historic Barrington sign on the building.

Currently it is occupied by McGonigal’s, open only during this century. The mural on the wall – framed by a former window – is signed by one Alex Brubacher.

Looks like it was painted in anticipation of McGonigal’s, since it features the building; and its place in the neighborhood near a clocktower, commuter rail line and The Catlow, among the many shamrocks; and a date of 2009. According to a sign over the door, the pub opened in 2010, so close enough.

Across the street, another building originally housing a 1910s financial services entity: the First National Bank of Barrington. For those for whom a mere state bank wasn’t good enough. And who knows? Maybe that made the difference, because First National survived the Depression and First State did not.

Looks like an upmarket clothier on the first floor these days. First National moved out in 1984. (Odd, if I said “nearly 40 years ago” that somehow sounds longer ago.) It didn’t last much longer as an independent bank; a major regional swallowed it soon after.

Just north of Main St., which puts it in Lake County and not Cook, is a named gazebo.

The David F. Nelson Community Gazebo, to be specific, and to gave a name that most passersby probably don’t give a first thought, much less a second. This 2017 article is behind a paywall, but I could read the first paragraph, which tells me that “[Nelson is] known for many years of community volunteerism, as well as serving as the town’s village president.”

Not a bad idea for one’s retirement: become a gazebo

The Catlow Theater Marquee

Posted on March 6, 2023 by admin

Recently I had a few minutes to walk around the smallish downtown of Barrington, Illinois, and I passed right by The Catlow.

That’s the thing-itself theater, including its marquee. On the other hand, this is the theater’s online presence: a plaque saying that the theater would open soon, but in the meantime the marquee was for lease.

It took me a while to figure out that byfs.org isn’t the web site address on the marquee, since it goes to a (temporary?) dead end. Instead, the sign must refer to barringtonbysf.org — the address of Barrington Youth & Family Services. But tickets to what?

Just eyeballing the theater entrance made me think the place has that permanently shut look. I know movies were being shown there only a few years ago, before – ah, that must be it. Temporarily closing in early 2020 turned out instead to be the big sleep for the theater. Unless it actually closed in December 2019, as Cinema Treasures says.

Regardless, considering The Catlow’s location in a well-to-do part of metro Chicago, funds might be raised for a revival of some kind.

“Named for its original owner, a local businessman named Wright Catlow, this Tudor Revival/Jacobean-inspired theater opened on May 28th, 1927,” Cinema Treasures says. “It was designed by the Chicago architectural firm of Betts & Holcomb.

Early on, the venue held live performances and showed movies, but within a few years, it was all movies, and somehow the theater survived into the 21st century. I went there sometime in the 2010s, not for a movie, but to look at the lobby and an adjacent small restaurant. Maybe. Or was that in the 2000s, when I took a photo of the exterior for my magazine at the time?

Never mind, the building seems to have changed hands more recently.

“The owners are currently in negotiations with the Village of Barrington to purchase the theater for use as a Community/Performing Arts Center. New owners took over on October 20, 2022,” Cinema Treasures says, a little cryptically. New owners? Does that mean the village, or someone else?

Questions, questions. If the theater ever starts showing movies again, I’ll make a point of going, provided the movie isn’t too stupid. And as long as the theater doesn’t decide to nickel and dime its patrons (more like quarter and dollar these days).

The Sunken Gardens, 2013

Posted on March 5, 2023 by admin

I’m not sure I realized it during my visit in March 2013, but the Sunken Gardens in Brackenridge Park in San Antonio had been restored only about 10 years earlier, by a public-private partnership. Nice work.

The Sunken Gardens is another one of those places I’ve visited across the decades with a shifting array of companions: my grandmother, first of all, but also every one of my immediate family, cousins, high school friends, visiting girlfriends, other out-of-town visitors, my fiancé-then-wife, my children. It’s a personal favorite of a place.

It isn’t authentic in the sense that Japanese garden designers created it. Rather, the city parks department created it from an abandoned quarry in the 1910s, probably after consulting photographs and maybe other sources on Japanese gardens, but I don’t know that. Maybe the department just winged it.

It is authentic San Antonio: an interpretation of a Japanese garden that whatever the inspiration, is inspired.

The main pavilion, an impressive bit of rock laying.

And of woodwork.

Ah, Texas in March. Spring green, ahead of summer brown.

Youth.

Been 10 years. I ought to go back if I can, but I’ve accumulated a lot of personal favorite places over the years.

Thursday’s Theme: A Lot of Good Things Get Lost or Kicked Around

Posted on March 2, 2023 by admin

March came in like – an emu? Golden retriever? – came in pleasantly, with temps nearly 60 F. That didn’t last, of course, and chilly air is back today, with snow forecast for Friday, which will melt over the weekend.

The other day, I found a Sears bag tucked away in a semi-storage corner of the house under various things. This made me want to look up how many Sears locations survive. As of November, anyway, when Sears Holdings Corp. emerged from Chapter 11, there were 22.

That’s not even a shadow of its former self. That’s dryer lint of its former self.

I don’t know when we got the bag, or what we bought at Sears that needed such a bag. It’s fairly large, though. About as tall as a kitchen trash bag, so I decided to take its picture and then use the bag for trash. Interesting trademarked slogan. One the company maybe didn’t think through. Where else?™

There’s a lot of possibilities, Sears.

Last week, as mentioned before, there seemed to be overnight microbursts in the area, to judge by the tree branches on the ground afterward. This was the only tree knocked down that I noticed, a few days later, after it had been chopped up somewhat before being cleared away. Note the crust of soil it took with it.

I suspect it wasn’t just the wind, but also the fact that the tree stood in a low-lying area that usually fills up during a rain and takes days to empty, weakening the soil. Besides, it might have been a sick old tree whose roots didn’t have the grip they used to, so bam! Down it came.

But even healthier trees can take a beating if the wind is aggressive enough.

Speaking of fallen things, I learned today that the Hotel Pennsylvania is being demolished. That isn’t news, just that I don’t keep up with everything happening in Manhattan. I stayed there a couple of times in the early 2000s, where the company I worked for at the time put me up. I thought it more solid than grand, but I’m still sorry to see it go.

What else to say but, Pennsylvania Six Five Oh Oh Oh

One more thing about time passage, destruction and decay. Something I found unexpectedly. An algorithm suggested it. Might as well be by chance, then.

A poignant song from the point of view of an abandoned house, included on an album called The Rat Plague of ’66. The kind of thing that happens in Australia. Don Morrison seems to be a singer-songwriter from Adelaide, South Australia.

Heron Creek Forest Preserve

Posted on March 1, 2023 by admin

At about 7:05 Central this evening, we were out walking the dog in cool, but not cold temps, with a cloudy haze covering most of the sky. As we headed west on a neighborhood street, I noticed two lights next to each other, just poking through the haze not far above the trees. For a moment, I though it must be an airplane. But it didn’t appear to move.

Then the clouds cleared just a little and I realized the lights were Venus and Jupiter. I remembered all at once something I’d read and then forgotten — that they were supposed to be in conjunction soon. As in, today.

They came and went from behind the clouds for a few minutes. When I got home, I stayed outside and watched from the front yard. One of our neighbors came out to walk his dog, and I pointed it out to him.

“Cool,” he said. I agree.

About a mile north of the town of Long Grove’s shopping district is Heron Creek Forest Preserve, a unit of the Lake County Forest Preserve District.

There was still enough afternoon warmth left on Sunday to take a mile-and-a-half looping walk through the preserve, which at 242 acres, isn’t that large. Some parts of the gravel trails were muddy, marked with rims of dirty slush.

For us, that mostly affected our shoes. For the dog, who lives closer to the ground, that eventually meant a bath. But we all enjoyed the walk through the pre-spring vegetation.

The diminutive Heron Creek.

As far as I can tell consulting maps, this little creek begins at a small lake not far west of the forest preserve, and heads east till it joins Indian Creek, which is a tributary of the Des Plaines River. Heron Creek’s course is entirely north of the aforementioned Buffalo Creek.

Also cool. Just not as epic as two worlds appearing close to collision.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Been There