Daily Leader Mosaics, Pontiac

At the corner of West Howard and North Main Street in Pontiac, Illinois, is an unassuming building.Daily Leader, Pontiac, Illinois

The building itself didn’t catch my attention on Saturday morning before I ducked out of the numbing cold into the Route 66 museum across the street, nor did the glad fact that Pontiac still appeared to have a newspaper.

Rather, there seemed to be small murals on the walls. I went to take a closer look. Turns out they aren’t murals, but mosaics. Five all together.

They are part of the Daily Leader building, to go by the name on the wall. Except I have reason to believe that the paper, which is a Gannett asset, moved a few blocks away recently and a furniture retailer bought the building. That is what this item published by the Illinois Press Association says.

“For the first time since 1968, the Daily Leader has a new home,” the association reports. “As of Wednesday morning, July 13, the Leader office moved approximately four blocks to the northeast, to 512 N. Locust St. The Leader building on North Main Street was put up for sale earlier this year and purchased by Wright’s Furniture on May 13.

“The Pontiac Sentinel was begun as a weekly newspaper in 1857 and the Pontiac Weekly Leader arrived on the scene in 1880. In 1896, the weekly became a daily and the Daily Leader was born.”

One nit to pick: there’s no date on the item. You’d think that would be an important thing for an organization like the association to include, so I’ll assume it’s just an oversight. Happens to everyone.

But I do know it’s from this year, since July 13 was a Wednesday this year, and the story mentions 2019 as being in the past. Still, you shouldn’t have to rely on internal evidence to date a news story.

The mosaics taken together have a theme, the history of the graphic arts. This is the first of the mosaics as they proceed chronologically around the building’s two street-facing walls, beginning with cave dwellers and their art.Daily Leader mosaics, Pontiac, Illinois

Ceramic tiles (tesserae) were put in fully regular x-y grids form the images, though within many of the squares, irregular shapes are cut to fit each other, as long as it serves the purpose of creating the overall image. The more I look at the mosaics here in the warmth of my office, the more I like them.

Next, the scribes of ancient Egypt.Daily Leader mosaics, Pontiac, Illinois

Each mosaic has a caption at the bottom. This one, for example, says:

Graphic Arts 2000 B.C.
Egyptian Hieroglyphics

Next, a medieval scribe.Daily Leader mosaics, Pontiac, Illinois

Notice the detail. Seems simple, until you spend time looking at it. A lamp with candles hangs overhead; shadows lie more-or-less believably around the room; his hair is short but unkempt; the sandals are well depicted; the quill has a pleasing wave; the base of the desk and the bench are in matching dark colors; the top of the desk and paper, along with the contents of the box the right — scrolls? — are in matching light colors; the door is an oddly large part of the image, until you realize it leads the viewer past bushes and a tree to a building with a pointed window, like the room’s window. I can’t help but think that’s a church window.

Next, Gutenberg is making printing by hand obsolete.Daily Leader mosaics, Pontiac, Illinois

The end mosaic, which is on the north face of the building, is longer than the others. This is a detail. It depicts the modern newspaper office. Modern, as in 1970.Daily Leader mosaics, Pontiac, Illinois

I assume that date can stand in for the year the art was created. Let’s say ca. 1970, since I didn’t see a date or an artist’s name, though I didn’t inspect every inch of the mosaics as the wind blew the only direction it blows in winter — in my face.

I never worked for a newspaper professionally, but the characters remind me of the first jobs I had working for paper magazine publishers. To the right, a reporter making notes and another taking photos. Yet another reporter makes a phone call.

The news is thus gathered and then prepared for the press. I like to think the woman at the typewriter is a reporter too — women were entering the ranks of journalism in numbers by 1970, like in other professions — but she might have been intended as a typist.

From there, the text goes to a human typesetter. At my first writing job in Nashville in the mid-80s, we had two typesetters, youngish women back in their own room, though the editors consulted with them often enough about the text. They could be fun, smoking their cigarettes and accumulating coffee cups on nearby flat surfaces and bantering with the staff when they weren’t otherwise fixated on their jobs, which involved screen concentration and flying fingers.

At my next job, the typesetting job was automated by a typesetting program simple enough even for me to use, and I never again worked with human typesetters.

After the typesetter, who had created long strips of glossy paper with text — galleys — the layout man took over, waxing the backs of the galleys and placing them on thin cardboard sheets to create mocked-up pages, which in turn would be photographed for the presses. Man, I haven’t thought about the process in years.

At my second job, the layout man was old, opinionated, and sometimes prickly, having seen and (more likely) heard enough working with Chicago journalists to harden his character. There was a hint of cynicism in everything he said, and often enough much more than a hint. He was probably smarter than he let on. He didn’t smoke and had contempt for those who did. I suspect he drank and had contempt for those who didn’t. After my time, I understand he took retirement, and was replaced by computer programs.

All in all, the mosaics were quite a find on a casual walk. But that’s why I take them.

Get Your Kicks at the Route 66 Association of Illinois Hall of Fame and Museum

Those three ships that come sailing in on Christmas Day in the morning will be trapped in ice this year, according to the National Weather Service.

That’s the forecast for 8 a.m. Central on December 25. Bitter temps, unless you happen to be on the West Coast or in Florida, and even those places will be relatively chilly. Bah, humbug.

On Saturday I drove down to Normal to pick up Ann, leaving a little early so that I could drop by the Route 66 Association of Illinois Hall of Fame and Museum, which is in the handsome former city hall and main fire station of Pontiac, Illinois, a building that dates from 1900.Museum Complex, Pontiac, Illinois Museum Complex, Pontiac, Illinois

The building, now called a museum complex, is home to more than the Route 66 museum, which is on the first floor. Other floors feature a “Life on the Titanic” exhibit, the Waldmire Experience (more about its namesake later), a local war museum and a room devoted to the music of the Civil War. You might call it an eclectic mix.

You might also call the Route 66 museum itself that. It’s a large room full of a lot of stuff. Just what a local museum should be.Route 66 Museum Illinois Route 66 Museum Illinois

Regional, really, since it covers the road formerly designated U.S. 66 as it passed through Illinois, from Chicago to East St. Louis, with such towns as Dwight, Pontiac, Bloomington-Normal, Lincoln, and Springfield along the way.

Display cases along the walls are devoted to each of those towns and others on the Illinois stretch, stuffed with pictures and photos and items, and arrayed in order from north to south (or the other way, if you start there). Plenty of other artifacts are placed freely on the floor or are on the walls.Route 66 Museum Illinois Route 66 Museum Illinois Route 66 Museum Illinois

Old gas pumps. Even during the golden age of Route 66, you needed gas.Route 66 Museum Illinois Route 66 Museum Illinois

A wall of Illinois license plates, one for each year from 1915 to 1984.Route 66 Museum Illinois

Trivia for the day — when did Illinois first put Land of Lincoln on its license plates? The wall tells us. 1954. The same words are on IL plates even now.

Something I didn’t know that the museum mentioned: from 1907 to 1917, Illinois issued aluminum disks to show registration, something like taxi medallions. Car owners affixed them to dashboards. The Illinois Motor Vehicle Act, which required motorists to register each vehicle with the Secretary of State’s office, became law in ’07, and specified the two-inch diameter disks.

The centerpiece of the room is Bob Waldmire’s custom-fitted ’72 VW microbus. Views outside and in:Route 66 Museum Illinois Route 66 Museum Illinois
Route 66 Museum Illinois

Looks like he was a collector of bric-a-brac after my own heart. As a young artist, Waldmire (1945-2009) “determined that he would spend his life creating art that celebrated the history of Route 66,” according to a brochure I picked up. He apparently spent a lot of time driving the microbus along the historic route.

Until he upgraded to a modified school bus, that is.Route 66 museum Illinois Route 66 museum Illinois

The bus is parked behind the museum complex and is sometimes open for tours. Not when I wandered by. Just another reason to drop by Pontiac again, which will be easy enough during the back-and-forth to Normal over the next few years.

Pirates Ahoy, Sydney

Another postcard from a time when that was a more common way to send a short message from afar. In this case, pretty far. I picked up this card in Sydney on Dec. 22, 1991, and mailed it from Canberra the next day.

I’d wandered into a department store in Sydney that day, which I spent walking around the city: Circular Quay, the Opera House, Sydney Tower, the Australian Museum, the Royal Botanic Garden and more, such as the (to my ears) amusing Woolloomoolo district, which I’ve read has gentrified since I was there.

I don’t remember going into a Sydney department store, or seeing the Lego exhibit. Yet the card documents the visit. Lego called it “Pirates Ahoy.”

Jim has a longstanding fascination with pirates — mostly the lore, though I’m certain he’s read some genuine histories. Apparently Lego was setting up pirate-theme displays at the time to promote its Lego Pirates set, which was fairly new at the time, launching in 1989.

The genius of Wikipedia is that there are entries like Lego Pirates. It’s an astonishingly long article, documenting in incredible detail the byzantine history of a children’s playset.

I Found a Time Capsule

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.Schaumburg Clock Tower

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

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.Beaver Pond, Bartlett, Illinois

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.Beaver Pond, Bartlett, Illinois Beaver Pond, Bartlett, Illinois Beaver Pond, Bartlett, Illinois

“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.Beaver Pond, Bartlett, Illinois Beaver Pond, Bartlett, Illinois Beaver Pond, Bartlett, Illinois

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.Beaver Pond, Bartlett, Illinois

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

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

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.Thorne Rooms

French library, ca. 1720.Thorne Rooms

Across the Atlantic. Pennsylvania drawing room, 1830s.Thorne Rooms

Massachusetts living room, 1675-1700.Thorne Rooms

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.Chicago Stock Exchange Trading Room, 2022 Chicago Stock Exchange Trading Room, 2022

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.Chicago Stock Exchange Trading Room, 2022 Chicago Stock Exchange Trading Room, 2022 Chicago Stock Exchange Trading Room, 2022

Overhead.
Chicago Stock Exchange Trading Room, 2022

Such a grand room. Victorian ideas at work, striving to add uplift to a space devoted to grubby commerce. I’d say they succeeded.Chicago Stock Exchange Trading Room, 2022

“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

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.Chagall's America Windows Chagall's America Windows Chagall's America Windows Chagall's America Windows

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

A Few Rooms of Ancient Art

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. Art Institute of ChicagoArt Institute of Chicago

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.Art Institute of Chicago

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.Art Institute of Chicago

Hercules, 1st century AD.Art Institute of Chicago

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.Art Institute of Chicago

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

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.Art Institute of Chicago Art Institute of Chicago

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.Art Institute of Chicago

Then there’s this — creature.Art Institute of Chicago

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

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

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.CTA red line 2022

Another mark of the shifting tides of pandemic: a storefront on a downtown Chicago street.Covid Clinic Chicago 2022

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.Art Institute of Chicago 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.Art Institute of Chicago 2022 Art Institute of Chicago 2022 Art Institute of Chicago 2022
Art Institute of Chicago 2022

A scattering of people wore masks.Art Institute of Chicago 2022

Many more wore beards.Art Institute of Chicago 2022

Museum workers were working.Art Institute of Chicago 2022

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

Oops.

Judith with the Head of Holofernes, Postcard Version

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.