Meacham Grove Forest Preserve & The Temporary Tunnel of Gold

Posted on November 6, 2024 by admin

Though it’s fairly close, we hadn’t been to the Meacham Grove Forest Preserve in a few years, so on the last Saturday in October, I suggested a walk. Bright, warm and little wind: a good day for it.

The path around Maple Lake – called that on maps, anyway – takes you about halfway before you come to another path: a section of the North Central DuPage Regional Trail. We headed west on that trail.

At first the trail passes Spring Brook and Meacham Marsh. The Meacham brothers were earlier settlers in this part of DuPage County and the village of Bloomington was once known as Meacham’s Grove, as a waystation on the Chicago-Galena Stagecoach Trail.

At that moment in October, the trail winds into a tunnel of gold. That’s what I’m calling it anyway, mostly formed by a canopy of maple leaves. Canada has no monopoly on them, even if they put it on their flag.

Roselle Road divides the preserve. The other section is accessible by footbridge over the road.

All these years in the northwest suburbs, and we’d never ventured across the bridge. In the western section of the preserve, the North Central DuPage Regional Trail connects to a half-mile loop, Savanna Trail. Not quite a tunnel of gold, but not too shabby in its foliage.

There’s a metaphor in those leaves somewhere: a brief blaze of glory near the end.

Or maybe leaves are leaves are leaves.

The Port Huron Blog Post

Posted on October 24, 2024 by admin

Every time I visit Ontario, or at least a beach in that province, I scratch a message in the sand for Geof Huth, and promptly send it to him electronically. This time it was from the sandy beach at Bruce Peninsula NP. Why? Why not?

My knowledge of the New Left is fairly sketchy, I must admit. As long ago as my own student days, in the early 1980s, it didn’t seem new, but old hat. I’ve never even read more than a few paragraphs of the Port Huron Statement, though I could get around to it, since it’s easy enough to find. Such a tract doesn’t need to be mimeographed to reach an audience anymore.

At least I’d heard of it when the Dude mentioned his connection to it. As I understand it, there was no second draft, compromised or otherwise. But the Dude inhabits the Coen Brothers universe, where surely there was one.

As for my knowledge of the actual city of Port Huron, Michigan, that’s a little better than it used to be, informed by a short visit on the way home from Ontario earlier this month. It’s one of those places I stopped because I’d never been there, but had long seen it on maps. There’s an endless supply of places like that.

Downtown, especially Huron Ave., made for a pleasant walkabout.

Huron Ave. crosses the Black River – one of a number of rivers called that in Michigan alone – at a drawbridge, just before the river flows into the St. Clair. As we wandered along the riverfront, bells went off.

When you see a drawbridge in motion, watch it if you can. Again and again. Just another of the little maxims I live by.

There are hints that hipsters have discovered Port Huron. Maybe a scattering of them who have been priced out of Ann Arbor.

We spent some time in a sizable, multi-room antique shop on Huron Ave. Not quite as entropic as Reid’s Corner, but nevertheless stocked with all sorts of interesting stuff, including vinyl records (more evidence of hipsters about).

The First Family was first in a bin, offered for only $2. I didn’t buy it. I have a copy that my brother Jay gave me, and he said that he paid about 80 cents for it. I’m glad to have it around, though we have no record player any more. It functions as a reminder about eggs and baskets.

Two dollars might have been the nominal price in 1962, or a dollar or so more. As a collectible, First Family hasn’t even kept up with its original price in inflation-adjusted terms (nearly $21 now), though if you look at eBay or the like, people are trying to get ridiculous prices for the album. The supply of disks is vast, with 7.5 million units reportedly sold before the president’s death.

1962. The same year that the Port Huron Statement was published. Is it a mere coincidence that I saw this record in Port Huron, or is the universe trying to tell me something? I’ll go with mere coincidence.

Ashes to Ashes, Paw Prints to Paw Prints

Posted on March 28, 2024 by admin

Maundy Thursday has come around again, which seems like a good time to knock off posting until Easter Monday, which also happens this year to be April Fools’, known for its pranks and hoaxes. But really, isn’t every day a day for hoaxes in our time?

Or at least absurd assertions. From Wired yesterday: “A non-exhaustive list of things that are getting blamed for the bridge collapse on Telegram and X include President Biden, Hamas, ISIS, P. Diddy, Nickelodeon, India, former president Barack Obama, Islam, aliens, Sri Lanka, the World Economic Forum, the United Nations, Wokeness, Ukraine, foreign aid, the CIA, Jewish people, Israel, Russia, China, Iran, Covid vaccines, DEI, immigrants, Black people, and lockdowns.”

A pleasant Easter to all. Easter is the last day of March this year. Twenty-seven years ago, it was March 30, which put Maundy Thursday on March 27, 1997, which is a date with some resonance for us: we found out we were going to be parents.

Both daughters were in town at the same time for a few days earlier this month. It was unfortunately the same week that Payton died, though the visits were scheduled well before that happened.

Still, we could all enjoy dinner together two evenings (at home, and out the next day at a familiar Korean barbecue joint) and share our recollections of the dog, among other things.

We received the dog’s ashes this week, along with a paw print. I didn’t know memorial paw prints were a thing, but it seems they are.

Truth was, she could be prickly. But once you knew that, you could have fun with it. One way to get a rise was to slowly approach her food. In this video, about a month before her death, I told her, “I’m coming for your food,” but naturally no language other than body language was necessary.

She was already having trouble walking then – the hind legs were the first to fail her – and spent much of her time in our living room, among towels to catch her pee when she couldn’t quite get up to go to the door, and didn’t bother to tell us that by yapping, in which case we could help her go outside. Often enough, of course, she’d miss the towels. We didn’t care much. It was still good to have her around at all.

Gilligan!

Posted on March 27, 2024 by admin

The video that captured the ramming and collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge has a morbid fascination, and you don’t even have to rubberneck to see it. I watched it a few times this morning, marveling at how what looked like a tap – but of course was tons of mass colliding with the structure – could bring the whole thing down so fast.

Then again, we’ve all had similar experiences on a (fortunately) smaller scale. One time I brushed ever so lightly against a stack of dishes drying in the rack, and much of the stack lost its cohesion in a moment, with the dishes suddenly rearranging themselves in a clatter, a handful tumbling to the sink and the floor, though I don’t remember that any broke.

I was also reminded of something I’ve written about before, some comedy about a previous (1989) shipwreck.

“About a week after the [Exxon Valdez] spill, I went to the Second City comedy revue… and they did a 15-second skit about it, a to-the-point gag.

“Silhouetted on the stage was a fellow standing behind a large ship’s wheel. From offstage, an announcer said something like, ‘And now, what really happened on the Exxon Valdez…’ Pause. Then the stage lights went up, reveling a familiar red shirt and white sailor’s cap on the fellow at the wheel, who was fumbling with it. At the same instant, a familiar voice boomed from offstage, startling the fellow: ‘GILLIGAN!’ the Skipper bellowed.”

If Second City had a mind to, they could do exactly the same sketch this weekend, only changing the line to “what really happened to the Key Bridge in Baltimore.” It would be in bad taste, since it looks like six men lost their lives in the collapse, but death doesn’t always nix comedy. In fact, often not. For example in ’86, NASA = Need Another Seven Astronauts.

Would many in their audience miss the Gilligan reference due to their relatively tender age? Maybe, but Gilligan is better remembered than a lot of ’60s TV characters. As an enduring stock character, the bumbling moron, he participates in something bigger than mere TV entertainment. Something that probably goes back a lot further even than Plautus, to the most rudimentary forms of pratfall entertainment among our remote ancestors.

Mallard Lake on a Mild February Sunday

Posted on February 13, 2024 by admin

An unusual run of warmish days for February so far, and by that I mean above freezing every day and a completely melted snow cover. Local plants aren’t fooled, keeping their earth colors for now.

The scene Sunday at Mallard Lake. A few other people were around, walking the trail around the lake. Not everyone was at a pregame gathering.

There are islands in Lake Mallard, and where there are islands, there are bridges.

The stroll was a touch melancholic, since we couldn’t bring the dog, who is too frail for this kind of walk any more. Just a touch, since she’s still with us, just slow moving.

Thunder Bay to Marathon, Ontario

Posted on August 16, 2023 by admin

On the first day of August, I made the acquaintance of Terry Fox. In bronze, anyway, and perhaps in spirit, since he’d been dead for over 42 years. Died very young; he’d be 65 now, had cancer not taken him away. A contemporary.

Apparently every Canadian knows who he was. Ignorant as I am, I didn’t, but I learned some remarkable things about him after seeing his memorial, which is just off the Trans-Canada Highway not far east of Thunder Bay.

It was a foggy morning in northwest Ontario. The memorial features Fox as a runner, which he was. But not just any runner.

He had only one leg, the other amputated to prevent the spread of osteogenic sarcoma, bone cancer, from his knee.

“In the fall of 1979, 21-year-old Terry Fox began his quest to run across Canada,” the CBC says. “He had lost most of his right leg to cancer two years before.

“[He] hatched a plan to raise money for cancer research by running across Canada. His goal: $1 for every Canadian. Fox’s plan was to start in St. John’s, Newfoundland on April 12, 1980 and to finish on the west coast of Vancouver Island on September 10. With more than 3,000 miles (5,000 km) of running under his belt, he was ready.”

So he ran almost every day early that year, gathering attention as he went. By the time he got to Toronto, the nation was watching. But he didn’t make it all the way to the West Coast.

“As Fox headed towards Georgian Bay, his health changed. He would wake up tired, sometimes asking for time alone in the van just to cry… On August 31, before running into Thunder Bay, Fox said he felt as if he’d caught a cold. The next day, he started to cough more and felt pains in his chest and neck but he kept running because people were out cheering him on. Eighteen miles out of the city, he stopped. Fox went to a hospital, and after examination, doctors told him that the cancer had invaded his lungs… He had run 3,339 miles (5,376 km).

“Terry Fox died, with his family beside him, on June 28, 1981… Terry Fox Runs are held yearly in 60 countries now and more than $360 million have been raised for cancer research.”

My goal that day was much easier: drive to the town of Marathon, Ontario, from Thunder Bay, about 300 km as things are measured locally. I actually like having road distances measured in kilometers on lightly traveled Canadian roads, since they seem to go by quickly. For example, 50 km to go? Ah, that’s only 30 miles. The conversion is easy to do in your head – half + 10%.

Though I have to stress that kilometers should have no place in measuring U.S. roads. Miles to go before I sleep; You can hear the whistle blow 100 miles; I’d walk a mile for a Camel. There’s no poetry to the metric system.

(The conversion of U.S. to Canadian dollars is pretty easy these days too: 75%, or half + 25%. That way a $20 meal magically costs only $15.)

East from the Terry Fox memorial is Ouimet Canyon Provincial Park, which I visited as an alternative to Sleeping Giant Provincial Park, which is highly visible from Thunder Bay but which looks like an all-day sort of place. I preferred to spend the day on the road, stopping where the mood struck.

Ouimet Canyon is striking. A easy walk of 15 minutes or so takes you to the canyon’s edge. Foggy that morning but worth the stop.

There was another place to stop in the park: a pleasant river view seen from a bench not far from the road, but tucked away behind some greenery, so that the road seemed far away. There was virtually no traffic anyway. I sat a while and watched the world go by not very fast. Or at all. I had to listen carefully to realize just how quiet the place is.

Also, the fog had started to burn off. Temps were very pleasant, whether Celsius or Fahrenheit.

The Trans-Canada is King’s Highway 11 and 17 at this stretch. Highway 11 eventually splits off and goes way around to Toronto, including Yonge Street, while highway 17 hews closer to Lake Superior, and is the longest highway in the province. It is the one I eventually drove all the way to Sault Ste. Marie.

Much of the roadside is uncultivated flora. I took this to be fireweed, which meant I was far enough north to see it. I saw it in a lot of places in this part of Ontario.

But sometimes fauna, of the non-wild sort.

I found lunch in Nipigon, pop. less than 1,500. I could have had my laptop repaired, if it had needed work, or bought worms and leeches, if I were in the mood to go fishing. I never am.

Nice church. The Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary Roman Catholic Church. Closed, of course.

Nipigon has an observation platform just off the highway, free and open to all, and completed only in 2018.

Naturally I climbed to the top for the vista. I need to do that kind of thing while I still can.

The Trans-Canada crossing the Nipigon River. Elegant, but with a troubled recent history.

The bridge was also completed in 2018. Or rather, it was reopened that year.

“[The reopening] comes nearly three years after the bridge, described as the first cable-stayed bridge in Ontario, failed in January 2016, just weeks after it opened,” notes the CBC. Oops. Apparently no one died as a result, so there’s that.

“Engineering reports found that a combination of design and installation deficiencies caused the failure, which effectively severed the Trans-Canada Highway. Improperly tightened bolts on one part of the bridge snapped, causing the decking to lift about 60 centimetres.”

Further to the east: Rainbow Falls Provincial Park. Another short walk to a nice vista. Another thing to like about this part of Canada.

All together, it was a leisurely drive, but even so I arrived in Marathon, pop. 3,270 or so, before dark – long summer days are a boon up north – and took in a few local cultural sights.

Just the exterior of the curling club. Wok With Chow, on the other hand, provided me dinner that evening, inside and at a table. Good enough chow, and demonstrating just how deeply ingrained Chinese food is in North America.

Along the Rock River, Janesville

Posted on July 24, 2023 by admin

On the first two days of July, we spent some time in southern Wisconsin, staying the night at a hotel near the Rock River in Janesville, a burg of about 65,000 and seat of Rock County.

Late on the afternoon of the 1st, I took a stroll along the river in downtown Janesville. As urban riversides go, it’s drab, an echo of a time when cities generally ignored their rivers, except for purposes of commerce.

Even Rockford, Illinois, downriver from Janesville on the Rock, has a more pleasant downtown riverside, so small industrial-decline Midwestern cities can refurbish their riverwalks. So can the likes of Waco, Texas. The Rock, incidentally, is a direct tributary of the Mississippi, meeting that river at Rock Island, Illinois.

Still, the riverside isn’t completely without its interests. A fairly new pedestrian-bicycle bridge crosses near an equally newish riverside plaza, or at least an open space.

The bridge sports a boulder, too. It’s hard to see, but there’s an inscription on it: The Mick & Jane Blain Gilbertson Family Heritage Bridge.

Jane Blain Gilbertson is CEO of Blain’s Farm & Fleet, a big box chain with 44 stores in the upper Midwest and headquartered in Janesville. The stores carry, among many other things, agricultural supplies and equipment. I remember visiting the one in Montgomery, Illinois, years ago to see what there was to see inside.

Downtown Janesville was eerily empty that late Saturday afternoon. There were a few kids – and I mean junior high or high school kids – hanging out near the bridge, making giggly noises. A small party of adults was having a cookout in the yard of one of the apartment buildings near the river. A few cars passed through the area, but not many. Then there was me.

Every town has one of these. Oddly, it was tucked away in a cul-de-sac.

Why visit Janesville? Why stay there? I’d passed by many times, but not spent any time in the town. I guess when it comes to Wisconsin, I’m something of a completist.

Janesville has some handsome older buildings within a few blocks of the river, most still occupied, but some not, such as a one-time First National Bank.

The McVicar Bros. and Helms buildings. Part of a larger block.

Other buildings.

Evidence of a more robust downtown life in the past: an old Kresge building. Kresge, of course, was the ancestor of Kmart, and a mighty retail chain. Once upon a time.

I had to check: As of more than a year ago, there were only three U.S. Kmarts still open.

That means that this 1987 reference in Calvin & Hobbes will be lost to time. Is already lost to time. I’m sure if I mentioned “blue light special” to either of my daughters, it wouldn’t register.

Calvin: Dad, how do people make babies?

Calvin’s Dad: Most people just go to Sears, buy the kit, and follow the assembly instructions.

Calvin: I came from Sears??

Calvin’s Dad: No, you were a blue light special at Kmart. Almost as good, and a lot cheaper.

I never went to Kmart much, but I did go occasionally, and I remember being in one once, probably in Nashville in the mid-80s, during a blue light special. I heard “Attention, Kmart shoppers!” They did say that. I didn’t buy whatever it was.

That’s the kind of thing that came to mind wandering the empty streets of Janesville.

Wehmhoff Jucker Park

Posted on July 18, 2023 by admin

An easy stroll from downtown Burlington, Wisconsin, is Wehmhoff Jucker Park.

Interesting name. Wehmhoff appears elsewhere in or near town: Wehmhoff Square Park, Wehmhoff Woodland Preserve and Wehmhoff Mound. The Burlington Historical Society posted a 1919 article that mentions both names in passing, but provides little other detail, except that a Mr. Wehmhoff was a jeweler 50 years earlier, and that in the late 1860s or early ’70s, “Miss Emma Jucker, about to marry E. Wehmhoff, sold her millinery business to Mrs. Williams.”

Perhaps the park land was once theirs. Anyway, the people are long gone. A few of the names linger.

The park is on either side of the Fox River, connected by a bridge.

That’s the same Fox River that generally runs along the western edge of metro Chicago, meeting the Illinois River near Ottawa. (Not the one in Canada.) A path runs next to the river for a ways in Burlington, which I followed for a ways.

That’s not the Fox River that flows into Green Bay, and gives a nickname to the Fox Cities of Wisconsin. You’d think at least one of them could be called something else, maybe some version of a Native name, but it didn’t work out that way.

Dublin, Barcelona, Then Venice

Posted on July 9, 2023 by admin

After a mostly dry June here in northern Illinois, early July saw some rain, but not quite enough to end the dry spell. Out beyond the grass and gardens of the suburbs, it’s a “stressful time for corn and soybeans.”

June 25, mid-day, at a cornfield in southern Wisconsin, which is suffering a drought as well. Moderate drought for the county that includes this field, at least as of the end of June.

The field looked healthy to my untrained eye, but for all I know that’s what a stressed crop looks like a few weeks into a drought. I might be up that way again next weekend or the next, and I’ll stop by for a look at the same field if so.

I had the opportunity to spend most of a weekend in Los Angeles in early June, so naturally I did. To visit some of the places that I considered but didn’t have time for in pre-pandemic 2020, because that’s how I think, though I didn’t make it to La Brea Tar Pits this time or earlier. Like the Cloisters on the other coast, it’s a place that still eludes me.

On the other hand, I made a point of going to the Los Angeles neighborhood of Venice this time.

Though named for the place in Italy, Venice has a distinctly American history, invented as it was ex nihilo by a real estate developer looking to reference the Old World in the newest part of the New World, namely California. Not just any developer, but one Abbot Kinney, whose career was circuitous and strange, the way business men could be in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Not only that, the arc of history in Venice is very much American: an initial flowering, subsequent decline, much demolition and disfigurement in the name of modernization, years of scraping along the bottom, an effort to save its meager remnants, gentrification and insane property values – all within the span of about a century, specifically within the 20th, though spilling into the 21st. Which is an affluent time for Venice of America.

“When it opened on July 4, 1905, Venice of America boasted seven distinct canals arranged in an irregular grid pattern, as seen… in Kinney’s master plan for the community,” KCET says. “Totaling nearly two miles and dredged out of former saltwater marshlands, the canals encircled four islands, including the tiny triangular United States Island. The widest of them, appropriately named Grand Canal, terminated at a large saltwater lagoon. Three of the smaller canals referred to celestial bodies: Aldebaran, Venus, and Altair.

“Soon, a second set of canals appeared just south of Kinney’s. Linking up with the existing network through the Grand Canal, these Short Line canals (named after the interurban Venice Short Line) were apparently built to capitalize on the success of Kinney’s development. Their origins are uncertain, but work started soon after Venice of America’s 1905 grand opening, and by 1910 real estate promoters Strong & Dickinson and Robert Marsh were selling lots in what they named the Venice Canal Subdivision. Built almost as an afterthought, these six watercourses are the only Venice canals that survive today.”

The rest, the originals in their irregular grid and with their celestial names, were long ago filled in and paved over – that would be the demolition and disfigurement.

I arrived in the neighborhood fairly early in the morning, early enough – I realized later – to park on Venice Blvd. within walking distance of both the canals and the beach, which is more difficult later in the day. Venice Blvd., near the ocean at least, also happens to be the locus of a handful of residents living in parked RVs and, for those who can’t swing that, tents in the boulevard median.

The canals form a neighborhood unlike any I’ve seen and, I have to say, flat-out gorgeous in our time.

Public sidewalks run between front yards and the canals, with occasional footbridges crossing the canals. This arrangement, I’ve read, is the result of renovation that occurred in the early 1990s. The only vehicular street running through the neighborhood is Dell Ave., which connects with alleys behind the houses with the wide expanse of LA streets. The way residents drive in and out of the area, that is.

The yards are lush, at least they were in June. Temps weren’t that warm the day I visited, and the skies fully overcast and sometimes drizzly, since southern California seems to be in some kind of weird weather bubble these days. Made for a good walking environment, though.

Hard to believe the area spent much of the 20th century as a slum; a quick look at Zillow’s estimates puts no property along the canals at much less than $2 million, and many a good deal more, with a scattering of new houses under way as well. Such is real estate across the decades.

Chautauqua Park, Pontiac

Posted on May 9, 2023 by admin

A total of four hours behind the wheel there and back from the northwest suburbs of Chicago to Normal, Illinois, could be considered a chore, but not if you have time to stop a handful of places along the way. That isn’t always possible – weather or scheduling might prevent it – but when it is, you might happen across things to see. Maybe even things you won’t see anywhere else.

Such as in Pontiac, Illinois, pop. 11,150. It’s been a surprisingly good source of stopover sights since I started driving to Normal on a regular basis, and so it was on Sunday, when I headed down to Normal to load up the car with some of Ann’s possessions. She’ll be done with school for the semester later this week, so the goal was to not be overloaded when she finally returns.

Plunge into the small streets of Pontiac – that might not be the right verb, since its grid is pretty small – and soon you’ll be at Chautauqua Park.

Spring green and on Sunday at least, warm enough to inspire a little sweat.

A good place to walk around, but also to read, with a good many signs like this.

I read at least a half-dozen. Most of them told me about the history of the park as the setting for the Pontiac Chautauqua, as the park name suggests.

A few quotes from the various signs:

A.C. Folsom

“Under the leadership of A.C. Folsom, a group of civic-minded citizens organized to bring a Chautauqua to Pontiac. Between the years 1898 and 1929, the Pontiac Chautauqua Assembles developed into one of the Midwest’s most popular and successful summer festivals.”

“As the Pontiac Chautauqua grew, dramatic presentations became particular favorites of the crowd. Shakespeare, melodramas, domestic comedies, mysteries, and tragedies graced the stage of the pavilion. Troupes of actors from New York, Chicago and elsewhere traveled the Chautauqua circuit, playing a repertory of four or five plays.”

The Chautauqua pavilion as it appears now.

Theatrical presentations still occur there. According to a non-historic sign, the next one will be the Broadway musical version of Beauty and the Beast, June 14-18, 2023, by the Vermillion Players.

More Chautauqua Park history-sign verbiage:

“Specialty acts from all over the world brought exotic sounds which floated over the park on warm summer evenings. Here are just a few of the individuals and groups which graced the Pontiac Chautauqua: Mme. Schumann-Heink, opera star; The Weber Male Quartette; Colangelos Band; The Honolulu Students; Mr. & Mrs. Tony Godetz, Alpine Singers & Yodelers.”

“Each year of the Pontiac Chautauqua Assembly, noted lecturers, politicians and educators came to edify the event’s patrons… some of the most notable speakers include: Booker T. Washington; William Jennings Bryan; Samuel Gompers; Rev. Dr. Thomas DeWitt Talmage; Carrie Nation.”

Yep, there’s Carrie Nation at the Pontiac Chautauqua.

No visible hatchet. It’s clear she didn’t wear a corset. She considered them harmful.

As fascinating as the park’s Chautauqua history is – and there’s the basis of another limited costume series on prestige streaming, namely the story of a plucky, slightly anachronistic woman entertainer on the Chautauqua circuit, ca. 1900 – that isn’t all the park has to offer.

Namely, it sports two of the town’s three swinging bridges. Dating roughly from the time of the Chautauqua. Original iron work, with wooden planks that have been replaced many times.

Naturally, I had to cross them. One of them:

And the other.

They don’t swing, exactly, at least when you walk normally, but they do wobble, and it takes a moment to get used to the motion. Nice views of the Vermilion River along with way.

Bigger than I would have thought. At this point, the waters are on their way to the Illinois River, then of course Old Man River.

One more item in the park: a plaque-on-rock memorial.

Not just any memorial, but a fairly unusual one.

But not unknown. Naturally, I had to look up Fred Bennitt. I’m cursed that way.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Bridges