This is the view from the South Rim of the Grand Canyon in May 1997.
Below, I’ve adjusted the image. Maybe this is how it would have looked in the late ’40s. At least, a bit like the postcard representation of the canyon in that era.
In any case, grand in all the senses of that word.
Lake Michigan was active but not stormy on Saturday. Views from Loyola.
There’s a coffee-table book in this: chain-hung Chicago signs.
High-res images, of course. Can go on the same coffee table with Austin neon.
Also Chicago. Specifically, on the street. Make that in the street: a Toynbee tile-like embedment doing its part to remind us of the beleaguered Ukrainians.
Recently I started reading Illegal Tender, subtitled “Gold, Greed and the Mystery if the Lost 1933 Double Eagle,” by David Tripp (2004). A remainder table find some years ago; nice hardback. As it says, the book tells the intriguing (to me) story of the 1933 Double Eagle, which tends to make lists of the world’s most valuable coins, along with the likes of the Brasher Doubloon, the 1804 Bust Dollar and the 1913 Liberty Nickel. Coins so special that their names are capitalized.
On that particular list, I hadn’t heard of the 723 Umayyad Caliphate Gold Dinar, but wow, what a name, with images of ancient treasure in distant lands woven right into the words. The 1913 Liberty Nickel was the MacGuffin in an episode of the original Hawaii 5-0. Namely, “The $100,000 Nickel,” which first aired on December 11, 1973.
“A rare 1913 Liberty Head nickel, one of only five ever made, is to be auctioned at a coin show held at the Ilikai Hotel,” says the imdb entry on the episode. “European master criminal Eric Damien gets con artist and sleight-of-hand expert Arnie Price freed from jail so that he can switch a cleverly-made fake with the original before the auction. But things do not go as planned, as Price, fearing capture, tries to dispose of the nickel in a news rack, and the chase is on to recover the nickel before anyone else finds it.”
Naturally, McGarrett and his men recover the nickel. I don’t remember that specifically, even though I saw that episode either that day or on repeat, but that’s a safe assumption for the denouement. I do remember that I’d heard of the nickel before, probably in a Coins or Coinage article.
I think the episode at least partly inspired one of the Super 8 movies I made with friends David and Steve in junior high, The $300,000 Dime, which I think involved Swiss operative Hans Lan foiling the theft of the titular dime. Sadly, this and the other Hans Lan story, The Assassin, plus the SF non-epic Teedees of Titan and a couple of others whose names I’ve forgotten, are lost as the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, except that no one cares.
We were in Niles, Illinois, on Sunday, which you might call a north-northwest suburb. It’s also a close-in suburb, since it has a border with Chicago along Touhy Ave. at one point.
On the Niles side of that road stands the Leaning Tower of Niles, which was built, unlike the one in Italy, to lean on purpose. I’d seen it before, decades ago, but Yuriko hadn’t. So we took a look.
“In 1932, industrialist and inventor Robert Ilg constructed a recreational park for his employees,” the Encyclopedia of Chicago says. “Although the Ilg Hot Air Electric Ventilating Co., later Ilg Industries, was located in Chicago, Ilg lived in Niles.
“He installed two swimming pools and a water tower which he hid behind a half-size replica of Italy’s Leaning Tower of Pisa. In 1960, the Ilg family turned over part of the park property to the Leaning Tower Young Men’s Christian Association. The tower has since been restored and is a symbol of the community. In 1991, Niles and Pisa became sister cities.”
At one time, you could take tours of the interior, but not now. The tower has bells, since it’s a replica of a campanile, but we didn’t hear them ring. Its restoration, like that of the tower in Pisa, probably means that it’s stable, like the tower in Pisa. Still, it’s a little unnerving, standing near that lean.
It also makes me want to see the original. At twice the height of the one in Niles, that’s got to be impressive. And maybe a little unnerving, too.
Today would have been a pleasant day in February: rainy and in the 40s F. In May, you grumble: where’s my missing 30 degrees? The grass is lush and the trees are budding, but so what. When it finally gets warm, though, all will be forgotten.
After lunch on Saturday, I decided a good use of the afternoon would be to visit another sacred space I’d long known about, but never ventured inside, like the Chapel of St. James that morning. That meant an El ride north from downtown to the Loyola stop at the edge of the Rogers Park neighborhood, the northernmost bit of the city on Lake Michigan.
Years ago, I lived a few stops south of Loyola, and occasionally went there. Mostly to visit a bookstore on Sheridan just outside Loyola University’s Lake Shore campus — or was it two bookstores and a raft of other oddball retail? Looking around Sheridan now, there’s no trace of the late ’80s retail that once was there. That isn’t a surprise, but it’s a touch melancholic all the same.
Black Star was the name of the bookstore I remember best. An 1989 article in the Chicago Tribune noted: “Walk up a flight of stairs and you will enter a red and black labyrinth — two of the colors of the Holy Roman Empire`s coat of arms — containing thousands of used books, from dirt-cheap paperbacks to equally cheap hardcovers. There’s a tiny cafe in the back-six wooden tables surrounded by large ferns — where you can sip coffee and tea and munch on some pastries…
“Specialties: Psychology, religion, philosophy, literature, history, occult, art, language, film, romance, mystery, children’s, science, drama, science fiction. Particularly strong in the literature, philosophy and history of the European peoples.”
I bought a few books there. Just another lost bookstore now. I’ve known quite a few.
Back in the present, I walked through the Loyola campus and before long came to the Madonna della Strada Chapel, which is Loyola Chicago’s main chapel. Finished in 1939.
“The curving Art Moderne form is reminiscent of a small dirigible or airplane hanger,” the AIA Guide to Chicago says of the design by Chicago architect Andrew Rebori. “The walls of the apse are ‘accordioned’ — the folds filled with glass blocks, which admit slim slices of light. Names of famous Jesuits are crispy incised along the roofline; the tall tower is flat-topped and windowless.”
The entrance, which faces Lake Michigan.
I’ve read that it was put there in anticipation of facing a northward extension of Lake Shore Drive, presumably all the way to Evanston, but that never happened.
The stained glass is artful. My pictures of it, not so much — that’s a hard thing to photograph, in my experience. Other artwork was easier to capture.
Martyrs on the wall.
To the left, for instance, is René Goupil, S.J., venerated as the first Jesuit martyr of Canada, who took a Mohawk tomahawk to the head in the mid-17th century. It was a tough posting.
The main event on Saturday was lunch with two old friends, Neal and Michele, who live in the city. We ate at the informal dining room of the Union League Club in the Loop and then took an informal tour of the building, which dates from the 1920s and is alive with art on its walls and an elegant, sometimes sweeping, interior design. Informal tour means we wandered around some of the floors and looked at things. An enjoyable walk through with friends; and an in-person experience.
Michele and Neal, 1989.
Before I met them, I took the El to River North and walked to Rush Street. Eating and drinking establishments remain, but the street isn’t anything like it was 40+ years ago, I’ve read. By the time I visited Rush occasionally, starting in the late ’80s, most of that scene had evaporated, but I’ve had a few good meals on the street over the decades, such as a lunch — or was it dinner? — with Jay ca. 2002.
There we are.
One thing that would have been on the street 40 years ago is Archbishop Quigley Preparatory Seminary, a seminary prep school run by the Archdiocese. The school had a chapel. It still reaches skyward, but not as much as the nearby towers on Michigan Avenue. 
The school closed early in the 21st century, and these days the Archdiocese of Chicago occupies the space. The chapel — the Chapel of St. James — was dedicated in 1920, and hasn’t been changed at all since then, except for a recent thorough restoration that took 14 years.
A helpful docent showed us around. One thing she mentioned was that Zachary Taylor Davis did the design. He also did other well-known buildings, namely Wrigley Field.
“I wondered about that for a while, but then a person on one of my tours said, ‘They’re both places of worship,’ and I had to agree with that,” the docent said.
The chapel’s stained glass, which we got to see with the chapel lights off and then on, was patterned after that in Sainte-Chapelle in Paris. I’m pretty sure I visited Sainte-Chapelle, but the memory has faded.
My images are pale moons of the quiet luminousness of the windows.
Pale moons will have to do. They stretch up toward near the ceiling, reminding me of the tall arrays of windows at Heinz Memorial Chapel in Pittsburgh. One wall features Old Testament stories. The wall behind the altar, New Testament stories. The other wall, church history.
On Saturday I spent much of the day in downtown Chicago, for the first time in more than two years, except for a short transit from Midway to Union Station returning from Savannah. Mostly, I’d just gotten out of the habit. Even though I got rained on sometimes — a drizzle some of the time — I was still glad to walk a dozen or more city blocks, ride the El a couple of times, and see what there was to see.
That morning I drove to a parking garage near O’Hare and took the El the rest of the way into the city. Late in the afternoon, I returned the same way. When I’d entered the subway in the city to board the train, the skies were gray and menacing, but the rain had stopped a few hours earlier.
A half-hour later, when the train emerged from a tunnel to run down the median of the Kennedy Expressway toward O’Hare, sheets of rain were pouring on the highway and tapping the top of the train car. Water streaked the windows. I could see wind moving barely green tree branches and bushes off the side of the road. Suddenly, everyone’s phones buzzed a tornado warning from the National Weather Service.
The car was about half full, so the sound of the alert was distinct, seemingly coming from all directions. You’d think there might have been some comment among the passengers about that, but everyone went on with their business — that is, quietly interacting with their phones.
By the time I got off the train and to the garage, the rain had slacked off. By the time I was about half way home on the roads between O’Hare and my part of the northwest suburbs, not only had it quit raining, but the sun peaked out from behind the clouds. I got home and found no damage or even very many large puddles. The storm had passed pretty quickly, it seems. It rained again later that night, but nothing like the violence of the afternoon storm.
At about 7:30, I looked out into my back yard and noticed a rainbow. Actually, a faint double rainbow.
Actually, a near-full rainbow.
Nice way to end a cold, wet April.
Oddly enough, our microtrip to South Bend last weekend wasn’t much of a trip to South Bend. Our motel was in the city, near the airport, and we drove through town a few times, but mostly we were in Norte Dame — which is a town besides being a university of that name — and Mishawaka.
Still, we had a few South Bend moments.
Also, on Sunday morning, I went by myself to the South Bend City Cemetery, because of course I did. On the way I took a short look at St. Paul’s Memorial Church (Episcopal), because of course I did.
With John 12:17 over one of the doors.
The cemetery is a few blocks away. Founded in 1832, with about 14,800 permanent residents, mostly from the 19th century, though I spotted a scattering of 20th-century burials.
An aside: I read this week that Kane Tanaka, regarded as the oldest living person, died at 119. Born in 1903. Though it’s clearly been true for a while, I just realized that means that no one who lived any time at all in the 19th century is still alive. No one whose age is verifiable, anyway.
Except in the sense that we still remember, personally, people who lived at least a little while in that century, such as my grandmother. Is someone not well and truly dead until everyone who remembers him or her is too?
South Bend City Cemetery, the entrance.
The cemetery office, I assume. Handsome little structure.
Not too many large memorials or much funerary art, but well populated by a variety of weathered standing stones. As usual, I was the only living person around. Not even groundskeepers on Sunday.
As I said, the cemetery’s pretty near St. Paul’s, which is in this image.
A handful of mausoleums. No name on this one.
A boarded-up mausoleum. Not something you see much. I like to believe that the cast-iron door that probably hung there went to a scrap drive and did its tiny part to defeat Hitler. But I also suspect that it might have been stolen one night instead.
Large to the small.
The worn, broken stone of Peter Roof, the first recorded burial. Roof, I understand, was a veteran of the Revolution.
There’s a poignancy in time eating away at memorials as surely as it did those memorialized. Worn lettering, old-time symbols, dark smudges of pollution and dirt.
Rust, too. Such is the condition of the GAR stars I saw. This is the kind of cemetery that would have them. Rusty, but they endure as a faint echo of the camaraderie of men who fought and won the day for the Union.
As you’d expect, at least one Studebaker has a sizable memorial. South Bend was their town.
The memorial has lasted much longer than the company of that name.
I didn’t come looking for the car-making family. I had someone else in mind: Schuyler Colfax.
Good old Vice President Colfax of Grant’s first term, famed in — well, neither song nor story. Still, his contemporaries thought highly of him. They must have. Not only did he get the main stone, he got this.
And this — close to our time, in 1978.
Order of Rebekah? Now you know.
Leaving the cemetery, I was glad to see that it’s on Colfax Ave. It’s a more modest street than Colfax Ave. in Denver, but South Bend is a more modest town.
Worth noting: U.S. Grant was born 200 years ago today in Point Pleasant, Ohio. There hasn’t been a presidential birth bicentennial since Lincoln’s in early 2009, which came on the heels of Andrew Johnson’s in late 2008.
Later this year, there will be another one: Rutherford B. Hayes, born in Delaware, Ohio on October 4, 1822. One cold day in the mid-1990s, I dropped by the Hayes home museum in Fremont, Ohio, sparking an interest in presidential sites that hasn’t abated. Good old RBH. President most likely to be mistaken for Benjamin Harrison in a lineup. After his bicentennial, it won’t happen again till Chet Arthur has his day in 2029.
The St. Joseph River flows mostly westward through Michigan and into Lake Michigan, but it bends into Indiana at South Bend and its twin town, Mishawaka. Until recently I gave little thought to Mishawaka as a destination, but then I learned about its riverwalks. We arrived late in the morning on Sunday to sample one of them, the walk along the budding-verdant Kamm Island Park.
Downtown Mishawaka seemed fairly pleasant as well. It reminded me of some of the towns along the Fox River in Illinois — Aurora, say, or St. Charles, both of which hug a mid-sized river and consider it an amenity.
As well they should. Some views of Kamm Island Park.
New development has come to the area. Not sure I’d want to live there, but I’d probably get a kick out of renting one of the units for a few days.
One curiosity on Kamm Island that I didn’t think to take pictures of: the fact that small, colorful figurines and other items, plastic and ceramic, stand at the base of many of its trees. No group is the same. A planned art project or spontaneous whimsy? Homage to elves or the work of elves?
Across the river at Kamm Island is Battell Park, the city’s oldest park, which has its own trail and some features not found elsewhere, namely a rock garden built by the WPA. This is the view of the lower level of the rock structure.
After lunch, which consisted of takeout Chinese from a storefront near UI South Bend eaten at the picnic shelter of a windy park near the Potawatomi Zoo, we stopped at Battell Park for a look at the upper level of the rock garden. Water must flow through its channels some of the year, down to the river, but looks like it hasn’t started for the season quite yet. Still, it’s an impressive work.
As much as I laud the CCC — whose works I keep encountering, some stunning — I have to put in a word for the WPA and its wide legacy too. I grew up with one of its finest projects — the San Antonio Riverwalk — as well as our high school stadium, which once upon a time had a plaque denoting it as a WPA project. This is an excellent site for browsing its projects, along with the rest of the visible New Deal.
Upstream a mile or so from Battell is Merrifield Park, also in Mishawaka. That was the last place we visited in town before heading home, because we wanted to see one of the park’s smaller features, Shiojiri Garden (Shiojiri Niwa), dedicated in 1987. Small but enchanting.
“This garden was a gift to the city of Mishawaka from its sister city, Shiojiri (Nagano Prefecture, Japan),” Atlas Obscura notes. “The designer was Shoji Kanaoka, the same man who planned the Japanese gardens at the Epcot Center in Florida. It features a multitude of trees and flowers, including a grove of cherry trees. There are also two snow lanterns, four bridges, and a teahouse pavilion built in the traditional Japanese style.”
Nice. You might call it a pocket Japanese garden, and Mishawaka — and the world — are better for it.
Along with the rest of northern Indiana, the campus of the University of Notre Dame is just beginning to turn green, with grass fully that color, and bushes and trees budding. We began our walk on campus on Saturday afternoon as one does, at a large parking lot. But the lot had good placement, not far from St. Mary’s Lake.
A nearby lake is St. Joseph’s. You’d think there would be a Baby Jesus Pond somewhere, but I don’t see it on the map.
Next to the basilica is Norte Dame’s magnificent Main Building. Serving as the administrative center for the school, the structure dates from 1879, replacing a building that burned down early that same year, and was designed Willoughby Edbrooke. Its gold-leaf dome was added a few years later, complete with a massive gilded statue of Mary atop it.
The interior looks pretty spiffy. Unfortunately, it was closed for an event. So we headed south along the well-manicured lawns of Notre Dame, eventually reaching the Eck Visitor Center and the Hammes Bookstore, which would be more accurately called the Hammes ND-Themed Clothing Store.
Jesus faces the Main Building.
This isn’t the Touchdown Jesus Notre Dame is known for, however. That, alas, we didn’t see (or First Down Moses, either).
Further down the lawns is the founder and first president of Norte Dame in bronze, created by Italian sculptor Ernesto Biondi and unveiled in 1906.
Namely, the Very Rev. Edward (Édouard) F. Sorin (1814-93), who also had time to found St. Edward’s University in Austin and have a mighty oak named for him. The plinth is inscribed with Latin, lauding Sorin.
South along the lawns is a raft of collegiate buildings with collegiate names: Sorin Hall, Lafortune Student Center, Hayes-Healy Hall, Walsh Hall and the Norte Dame law school. Formally, it’s the Eck Hall of Law. I was impressed by how new the building looked, despite its traditional stylings. It is fairly new: 2008, a design by Cardosi Kiper.
A lot of the buildings looked newish, which tells me that Notre Dame has the dosh in our time — or can source it from donors like Mr. Eck — for capital projects. As indeed it does: the university’s endowment is about $12.3 billion, putting it at number 8 on this U.S. News & World Report list.
That kind of money also buys some nice details, or at least it should.
Further on, the “bookstore” didn’t let you forget where you were.
Finally, I don’t want to forget Chaplain William Corby, who rates a statue not far from the basilica and Main Building.
A plaque near the bronze says: The first bronze sculpture of Chaplain William Corby by Samuel Murray was dedicated on the Gettysburg battlefield by Civil War veterans of the five regiments of the Union Army’s Irish Brigade. His statue is on the same boulder of Cemetery Ridge where he stood to give the soldiers General Absolution on July 2, 1863, the second day of the three-day battle
Minutes later the Irish Brigade went into action at Little Round Top and the Wheatfield. The Brigade lost 27 killed, 109 wounded, and 62 missing. Gettysburg’s individual statues are of generals, except President Lincoln, Chaplain Corby, and a civilian.
This duplicate statue was dedicated here in 1911. Father Corby was president of Notre Dame twice: 1866-72, 1877-82. He planned the Grotto, finished in 1896, and died in 1897.
Last Friday we had the first genuine thunderstorm we’ve had in a while, as opposed to mere heavy rain, complete with the necessary light and noise, plus heavy rain. Saturday dawned warm and sunny, a glorious spring day, made for going somewhere.
But first I loaded the back of my car with two old computers, two banker boxes of papers and an auto battery long since defunct, and took them to a drive-through recycling event organized in an enormous parking lot next to Boomers Stadium (formerly Flyers Stadium). Didn’t take long to dispose of these things, and it didn’t cost me anything, since I assume the recyclers will make something from the materials they gather.
After that, and packing a few things in the now-empty back of the same car, we drove east for a 30-hour trip to South Bend-Mishawaka, Indiana. We arrived at the campus of the University of Notre Dame mid-afternoon, parked in a large lot near the likes of St. Mary’s Lake and the Knute Rockne Memorial Gym, and made our way to a place I’ve wanted to visit for years: the Basilica of the Sacred Heart, Notre Dame.
It towers over campus.
That’s as far as we got toward the entrance before being told that an ordination was in progress, and we’d have to come back when it was over, in about 30 minutes.
There’s plenty else in the vicinity. Soon we found ourselves at the university’s Lourdes-class Grotto, downslope from the basilica. We joined a fair-sized crowd at the place.
I think the last time I was there was on a gray, drizzly day in November maybe 20 years ago, making a brief stop on a longer trip whose purpose I forget. That day, there weren’t nearly as many people. Just me, actually.
Then we started wandering down the sculpted lawns of Norte Dame leading away from the basilica, but hadn’t gone far when the basilica bells started tolling. A joyous tolling.
Note that people are spilling out of the basilica, especially those many in white ecclesiastical robes. The ordination had concluded. Later, I picked up the program.
Three men were ordained that day: Drew Clary, Cameron Cortens and Gabriel Griggs. The cross and anchors on the cover are from the seal of the Congregation of Holy Cross, one of whose schools is Notre Dame.
A bishop soon emerged, who presumably would be the ordaining bishop, the Most Rev. Kevin Rhoades. He stood talking to the priests and others for a few minutes.
Soon people formally, but more ordinarily dressed, poured out of the church, and socialized outside for a while. Taking turns minding the dog, Yuriko and I took turns looking inside.
As splendid an interior as I’ve seen anywhere.
“The church’s history dates to the 1830s when missionaries built a log cabin to house a chapel at the site,” Midwest Guest says. “Father Edward Sorin, founder and first president of the University of Notre Dame, built a larger log structure for the Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus by 1848…
Later in the century, Fr. Sorin tasked renowned church architect Patrick Keely to design him a grand edifice. A little too grand, as it happened.
“Father Sorin apparently experienced sticker shock when Keely submitted a design with an estimated completion price of $100,000 and enlisted his church’s pastor and a religious brother who was an amateur architect and builder to work with Keely to develop a more modest plan.”
Which they did. The Gothic Revival building that stood in front of me, with its bell tower poking the sky, lavish walls outside and in, heaven blue ceiling with gold stars and heavenly beings, was from a more modest plan?