Thursday Leftovers

Sure enough, a dusting of snow stuck overnight. It won’t last, but what does?

Regards for Thanksgiving. Back to posting around December 1, which can claim to be the start of winter, in as much as a single day can.

The figgy pudding Yuriko made on Sunday. Much of it is gone now, but Ann will be able to sample it when she’s back for the holiday. Bet she’ll be glad for the opportunity.

A stone at Graceland Cemetery last Sunday.Graceland Cemetery, Chicago

No name on it, except “Asano,” which I take to mean this is a work of Hiroyuki Asano, not a stone memorializing him, since he seems to still be alive. Maybe he’s planning ahead for his presence in Graceland, which I believe in the undertaker biz would count as “preneed.” (Pre-need?)

Or it could be a memorial for someone who didn’t want their name on it. That’s unusual, but not unknown: Erma Bombeck’s boulder in Dayton comes to mind. Or, the person who commissioned Asano’s piece at Graceland is also still alive, details to be added later.

John Welborn Root, Chicago architect (d. 1891). Forgot to post him.Graceland Cemetery, Chicago

In my efforts to see stones for well-known people, I also almost forgot to take a look at more ordinary folk. Almost, but not quite.Graceland Cemetery, Chicago Graceland Cemetery, Chicago Graceland Cemetery, ChicagoGraceland Cemetery, Chicago

FamilySearch tells me (footnote numbers removed; but there were eight of them for a single paragraph) about the 161 Depot Brigade. It also features the unit patch, which is to the right.

Secretary of War Newton Baker authorized Major General Samuel Sturgis to organize the 161 Depot Brigade, an element of the 87th Division (National Army). It was later detached and placed directly under Camp Pike, Arkansas, as an independent unit.

The brigade filled two purposes: one was to train replacements for the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF); the other was to act as a receiving unit for men sent to camps by local draft boards. During most of 1918, the brigade was commanded by Brigadier General Frederick B. Shaw.

A different sort of memorial, in a different place – a nearby park that we visit often. We’d noticed Jake “The Snake” Popp’s bench before. Looks like people who remember The Snake fondly decorated his bench for the fall.

In the same park, a lamppost, ready to do its job.

On the post, a sign says it is a product of Traditional Concrete Inc., of Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin. Guess that name stresses the long-lasting — and traditional — material that goes into the company’s product, which is fine. But if I started a lamppost company, it would be Fiat Lux Inc.

Graceland Cemetery: The Stones

No point in burying the lead (haw, haw): among all the memorials at Graceland Cemetery in Chicago, Dexter Graves’ stone surely gets the most attention. For one thing, it stands out at a distance.Graceland Cemetery, Chicago Graceland Cemetery, Chicago Graceland Cemetery, Chicago

Safe to say that the memorial, including a haunting bronze figure called “Eternal Silence,” is better known than Dexter Graves himself. Graves was a Chicago pioneer, settling in the area in 1833, when the place was little more than a marshy spot near the Chicago River. He died in 1845, with reinternment and the memorial coming much later at the behest of an elderly son of his, who is buried there too – in 1909, by which time Chicago was a vast metropolis that probably would have astonished Graves.

Lorado Taft created the sculpture, and while I made images of it standing alone, soon a small group of French tourists came by for a look, including posing with it for pictures. Since the work is near the cemetery’s only entrance, I came back again before I left for another look, and that time an American couple, about my age, were there. The woman asked me whether I’d also seen “Fountain of Time” down in the Hyde Park neighborhood. Happily, I was able to tell her I had, including the quote that goes with it, “Time stays, we go.”

I also recommended “The Eternal Indian,” out in Ogle County, which she said she hadn’t seen. I forgot to mention – it would have been showing off anyway – seeing his “Alma Mater” in Champaign, the memorial he worked on in Mount Carroll, Illinois, his sculptures in the Fern Room of the Garfield Park Conservatory or the Fountain of the Great Lakes at the Art Institute. That’s just a scattering. To see more of Taft’s work, you have to pay attention elsewhere in Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky (in Paducah, I wasn’t paying attention), Washington, DC, Colorado, Michigan, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Kansas and probably other places.

Also, you can see “The Crusader,” which is Graceland, marking the grave of Victor Lawson (d. 1925), one-time publisher of the Chicago Daily News. Lorado Taft did that too, though later in his career, 1931.Graceland Cemetery, Chicago

When was the last time a newspaper crusaded about anything? Not recently, private equity owners don’t like it.

Assorted business tycoons, moguls and robber barons repose in Graceland, without a cent to their names these days. But in their day, they or their immediate heirs had big bucks to spend on big memorials. None is bigger than retailer and hotelier Potter Palmer (d. 1902).Graceland Cemetery, Chicago Graceland Cemetery, Chicago

That kind of dough will also buy you a picturesque waterfront location.Graceland Cemetery, Chicago

I have to say the Palmer tomb is quite a presence, standing out even among many other large tombs, of which there are many. Such as that for George Pullman.Graceland Cemetery, Chicago

The pyramid of 19th-century beermaker Peter Schoenhofen.Graceland Cemetery, Chicago Graceland Cemetery, Chicago Graceland Cemetery, Chicago

Others.Graceland Cemetery Graceland Cemetery Graceland Cemetery
Graceland Cemetery

The cemetery’s stone- and metalwork curls and is otherwise shaped in ways remarkable to see. How can these hard materials be persuaded to take those shapes? By the rare skill of the artisans, as long gone as the captains of industry inside the tombs.Graceland Cemetery, Chicago Graceland Cemetery, Chicago Graceland Cemetery, Chicago Graceland Cemetery, Chicago

A small building stands near the entrance of Graceland, including a patio with iron tables and chairs, a few of which were occupied when I visited, since the day was just warm enough for that. Inside the building, heated this time of year, visitors can rest on a bench, go to the bathroom, watch a video about the cemetery and, just as important, pick up a free paper map that guides you to the graves of some (but hardly all) of the well-known permanent residents.

Not every grand cemetery has that amenity, but when you find one, that ups the visit into a kind of treasure hunt, if you want. A look for the famed stones, like at Hollywood Forever in Los Angeles with its movie stars or Forest Home in Milwaukee with its brewers. My idea of a good time, but I’m eccentric that way. Besides some of the stones mentioned above, the map takes you to lumber baron and Goodman Theatre patron William Goodman.Graceland Cemetery, Chicago

And Mr. Whipple.Graceland Cemetery, Chicago

He’s not actually on the map, probably because the memorial isn’t for the person obsessed with toilet paper, since he was fictional. Even so, I understand he received treatment for his OCD, retired from the grocery business and lived with his daughter in Florida until his death in 2007.

MLB star Ernie Banks, “Mr. Cub,” and the first black player for the Cubs. Nearby is dancer Ruth Page.Graceland Cemetery, Chicago

Minnie Miñoso, a fairly recent stone. In fact, I read that it was erected only this summer. Graceland is still an active cemetery, with more open land than I would have thought.Graceland Cemetery, Chicago

I had to look him up; among other things, he was the first black player for the White Sox. The Cuban Comet, he was called, which sounds like something invented by a sports reporter pounding print on his old typewriter.

Heavyweight prizefighter Jack Johnson, the Galveston Giant, famed for upsetting racists in the early 20th century.Graceland Cemetery, Chicago

The small pyramid of architectural photographer and preservationist Richard Nickel, a favorite of mine in Chicago history.Graceland Cemetery, Chicago

Gov. John Peter Altgeld, another favorite but from Illinois history, who knew that pardoning the surviving men convicted in the Haymarket bombing would probably cost him the governorship, as indeed it likely did. It was that or preside over a miscarriage of justice, he believed.Graceland Cemetery, Chicago

Chicago is a city of architects; Graceland is a necropolis of architects. I didn’t see them all – missed Burnham on his island, for example – but I got a good sample.

Including Mies van der Rohe. For him, a flat black spare Miesian sort of memorial.Graceland Cemetery, Chicago

But he has a splendid view.Graceland Cemetery, Chicago

William LeBaron Jenny.William LeBaron Jenny

Bruce Goff.Bruce Goff grave

Louis Sullivan.Graceland Cemetery, Chicago Graceland Cemetery, Chicago

Talk about teasing a rarefied shape out of base metal. In this case, the work’s designer at least is known: Thomas Tallmadge (d. 1940), who is also at Graceland.

Graceland Cemetery: The Color

On Sunday Yuriko was at her occasional cake class creating some figgy pudding. That’s what I’m calling it, since fig is the star ingredient, along with cinnamon and nutmeg and other spices. I’m also calling it oishi, Japanese for delicious, a word we use a fair amount.

There is no Spam in the recipe, however. Just as well.

Class is in the city, and I am chauffeur on such days, driving to the Humboldt Park neighborhood. The benefit for me: I get to spend a few hours in Chicago. This time I used the time to visit Graceland Cemetery on the North Side, accessed by bus and then the CTA Red Line.Graceland Cemetery, Chicago

More color than I expected. The leaves are a little late in falling this year.Graceland Cemetery, Chicago Graceland Cemetery, Chicago Graceland Cemetery, Chicago

What can it signify? Natural variation in timing? A hint of climate woes? I can’t claim to be smart enough to know, but I do know that my hour-plus stroll benefited from the unexpected late colors. Graceland is a queen among cemeteries for its beauty, so any season will offer a display worthy of that status. Still, fall is special.

As an arboretum, Graceland has over 2,000 trees and scores of species.Graceland Cemetery, Chicago Graceland Cemetery, Chicago Graceland Cemetery, Chicago

In Chicago, as well as other major cities in America and Europe, cemeteries predated city parks as sites for pastoral strolls and quiet contemplation,” notes Chicago Garden: The Early History.Thomas B. Bryan, a wealthy Chicago businessman and avid horticulturist, was the major force behind the creation of Graceland in 1860. Along with other investors [he] formed the Graceland Cemetery Company.

“Graceland’s location was ideal: readily accessible from Green Bay Road (now Clark Street) and later the Chicago and Evanston Railroad, yet far enough removed from the city to avoid health and sanitation issues. The company chose the high ridge area along what is now Clark Street, which was once an old Indian trail… In the sandy soil here, plants thrive better than in Chicago’s typical clay soil.”Graceland Cemetery, Chicago Graceland Cemetery, Chicago Graceland Cemetery, Chicago Graceland Cemetery, Chicago

Water views. The map calls it Lake Willowmere.Graceland Cemetery, Chicago Graceland Cemetery, Chicago Graceland Cemetery, Chicago

An ivy-covered stone. Graceland Cemetery, Chicago Graceland Cemetery, Chicago

That can’t be an accident of nature, since the standard of lawn care is clearly pretty high at Graceland. Could be the Simons wanted it that way. Or still do. Anyway, the leaves are changing.

Coyote, looks like. Graceland Cemetery, Chicago

I didn’t get very close, but close enough, and he seemed nonchalant about being around humans. He just wandered on by. Urban Coyote: there’s an animation project in that for someone.

Color is good, of course. So is monochrome.Graceland Cemetery, Chicago Graceland Cemetery, Chicago Graceland Cemetery, Chicago

In our time and place, cemetery tourism isn’t much practiced. At many cemeteries, I’m the only living person around, except maybe for grounds keepers. Graceland stood out from most in that way. I saw maybe two dozen or so other visitors, including bike riders, dog walkers and a handful doing what I was doing: wandering the 121-acre grounds, taking it in.

The Fine Arts Building

This year on Halloween, I found myself wondering when the apostrophe mostly disappeared from Hallowe’en, at least in U.S. usage. The charts posted at a site called Grammar Revolution (though without citation) offer some information on the question. Hallowe’en, as one might see on a card old enough to be in the public domain, was a more common spelling in the early 20th century.

Around the time of World War II, the apostrophe version started its decline, with the non-apostrophe Halloween becoming more common by far since then. That leads me to the conclusion that apostrophe rationing during WWII inadvertently had a long-term impact. History is funny that way.

The last few days of October this year have been unusually pleasant. On Tuesday the 29th, for instance, I was able to dine al fresco in the afternoon quite comfortably. Yesterday, the 30th, it was still warm enough to sit on our deck in the evening in short sleeves, though the wind was up.

Halloween itself, following rain in the morning, was still windy, but a lot colder. That didn’t deter exactly 30 kids who came to our door for candy – about three-quarters of them before dark. We gave away full-sized Hershey products, which pleased the older kids especially, along with small bags of Utz pretzels, which no one commented on. I didn’t wear a costume for distribution, but I did put on my fez. It was a Christmas present from Jay some years ago, but there are sadly few occasions to wear it. I’d say Halloween or even Hallowe’en is one such.

Back on the October 19 (it was warm then, too), we spent at least an hour getting into, and wandering around, the Fine Arts Building at 410 S. Michigan Ave. Here it is, blocking the sun.Fine Arts Building Fine Arts Building Chicago

Like most vintage buildings, it began as something else: a factory and a showroom for Studebaker, when that company made carriages. The architect who designed it in 1885, Solon Beman (who did the Pullman company town too, among other things), did a redesign in 1898 when Studebaker left, thus creating a rather unusual office building. Since then, the Fine Arts Building has been just that, home to art galleries and artist studios, theater companies, publishers, dance and recording studios, musicians and musical instrument specialists, interior designers, and other arts-associated businesses.

For Open House Chicago, you can wander its long halls.Fine Arts Building

The current tenant directory makes for interesting reading, much more than almost any other office building: designers such as Doorways of Chicago; artists such as L.H. Selman, Ltd., Fine Glass Paperweights; performers such as the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival; very specialized music shops such as Parke Mouthpiece Center, offering “professional brass mouthpieces for trumpet, trombone, horn, & tuba. Interchangeable rims, cups, backbores, tops, & underparts.”Fine Arts Building Chicago Fine Arts Building Chicago Fine Arts Building Chicago

Some of the businesses were open for the event.Fine Arts Building Chicago Fine Arts Building Chicago Fine Arts Building Chicago

The Fine Arts Building is of course going to feature art on its walls.Fine Arts Building Chicago Fine Arts Building Chicago Fine Arts Building Chicago

Plus a lot of fine old details, such as for the manually operated elevators – the only ones in Chicago, I’m told.Fine Arts Building Chicago Fine Arts Building Chicago Fine Arts Building Chicago

Can’t forget the mail chute.Fine Arts Building

That was it for Open House Chicago this year. Still as fine an event as ever, except for one thing: no paper guides and their useful area maps provided to eventgoers, which disappeared when the event was revived in 2021. Sure, they cost money to produce, but I seem to remember advertisements in them that might have offset costs somewhat, or maybe entirely. Just another small step on the road to further map illiteracy.

Next year, Open House New York? We shall see.

Jackson Boulevard Stroll, Starring Monadnock & Rothschild

Not far east of the Chicago Board of Trade at 53 W. Jackson Blvd. is the hulking brown-brick Monadnock Building, one of the great old skyscrapers of Chicago. We passed by on the way to Michigan Ave. during our Open House peregrination. It wasn’t open for the event, but no matter. We’d both been inside, even taken a tour once upon a time.Monadnock Building Chicago Monadnock Building Chicago Monadnock Building Chicago

I also knew a fellow who worked for a nonprofit for a while in the ’90s whose office was in the Monadnock. He said he considered going to work there every day a fringe benefit.

“The northern half has always been the subject of attention and wonder,” the AIA Guide to Chicago says, regarding the Monadnock, which is actually two structures fused into a whole: a load-bearing northern half designed by Burnham and Root (1891), and a steel-framework southern half by Holabird & Roche (1893).

“It was constructed as a thick walled brick tower, 66 feet wide, 200 feet long and 200 feet high,” the AIA Guide continues. “The American Architect in 1892 described it as a chimney. Two cross walls divide the interior space into three, flu like cavities, the centers of which are open from street to roof. A freestanding staircase spirals down from the brilliance of the sky lit 16th floor to the dark lobby cut lengthwise through the ground floor. Around this open stairwell, a light structural grid sustains stacks of rental floors. From these extend the modular alcoves pushing through the facade become bay windows.”

The late 19th century was a time of transition for tall buildings, with the Home Insurance Building in Chicago showing the way as the first building its height (10 stories) to use a weight-bearing structural steel frame to support itself. That building, on West Adams, was a mere diagonal block and a half away the Monadnock. Home Insurance is long gone; but the Monadnock stands. Or maybe I should say, abides.

Further eastward — the direction we were going that day — at Jackson and State is the DePaul Center, originally (1912) the A. M. Rothschild & Company Store, by Holabird & Roche (them again).DePaul Center, Chicago

At the turn of the 20th century, A. M. Rothschild & Co. was a department store rivaling Marshall Field on State Street in Chicago, founded by a German immigrant of that name who also married into one of the richest families in Chicago, the meatpacking Morrises. Abram M. Rothschild didn’t live to see the 1912 building, however. By 1902, his in-laws, who controlled the store, had forced him to retire due to financial problems at the retailer, though he was kept on as a figurehead.

“July 28, 1902 started out like any other day for A.M. Rothschild,” explains chicago.designslinger. “The recently retired 49-year-old retailer visited the sixth floor office of his namesake department store in downtown Chicago that morning, and after a few hours left for home accompanied by his son 16-year-old son Melville. Rothschild’s wife Gusta greeted both of them in the front hall of the family’s large house on Michigan Avenue at 37th Street, and Abram Rothschild headed upstairs to freshen up. He went into his bedroom, retrieved his revolver, went into the bathroom, and shot himself in the head.”

Later, after spending a decade or so putting together the land for it, the Morris family hired Holabird & Roche for a new, 11-story retail building that eventually became the building you can see now, which belongs to DePaul University. Back in 1912, a department store could conceivably use such a building. Hard to imagine now.

“The architectural firm had a number of projects along the State Street corridor, but A.M. Rothschild & Co. would be their largest,” chicago.designslinger notes. “And although the family had a troubled history with the founder, they paid lasting tribute to him by having the architects incorporate the letter ‘R’ into the massive cream-colored, terra cotta facade which was repeated down the entire length of the building.”

As they are to this day, though since I only took an image of (mostly) the Jackson Blvd. elevation, the letters aren’t much visible. The building deserved a closer look, but we were operating on the lunch imperative as we wandered by, more focused on finding victuals. Maybe some other time. No matter how often I go downtown, something there is always worth another look.

The Wintrust Building & The Grand Banking Hall

I don’t know that much about Wintrust Financial, which is a bank holding company that specializes in community banks and has about $63 billion in assets. But I understand that when Wintrust acquires a community bank, which are by necessity locally oriented, the company does not slap the name Wintrust on it, thus sacrificing that local identity on the altar of branding – one of the idols worshiped by corporate America, but not apparently the bank.

I’m not suggesting that brands have no value. Clearly they do. But there are examples of consumer-facing companies gone national that have paved over long established and well-regarded local names.

The consolidation of the department store industry comes to mind. Somehow Macy’s persuaded itself that Chicagoans would respond to their name (which is a New York name) better than Marshall Field, as storied a local store as Chicago has ever had. There are a number of reasons the department store biz is a shadow of its former self, but that kind of thinking is surely one of them.

On the other hand, Wintrust has put its name on 231 S. LaSalle St., which is right at the T intersection with Jackson Blvd., across from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.Wintrust Building Chicago

That’s a better use of a brand, I believe. The building was developed as the Illinois Merchants Bank Building exactly 100 years ago, with a grand design by Graham, Anderson & Probst, which is in the top ranks of name architects from the early 20th century. Since then, the building has been named for a succession of banks, making Wintrust merely the latest in an established pattern. Besides – who gives a fig about Illinois Merchants Bank or any of the others any more anyway?

Wintrust participated in Open House Chicago this year. The grandly named Grand Banking Hall was up a golden escalator.Wintrust Building Chicago

Grand, all right.Wintrust Building Chicago Wintrust Building Chicago

Add a statue of Jupiter Optimus Maximus and take away electricity and you’ve got a Roman temple. Not just any temple, but one of the (that word again) grandest at which the likes of Caesar might have made offerings.

Notes the AIA Guide to Chicago (2004): “[The space] prompted Louis H. Sullivan to suggest that bankers here wear togas and speak Latin” (p. 78). I didn’t know the great Chicago architect Sullivan had a sense of humor, but it seems he did. The bankers shouldn’t take acting Roman too far, however, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to use zeroes.Wintrust Building Chicago

Wintrust moved in after the building was restored in the mid-2010s. The bank uses the space for retail purposes. That’s pretty cool for a bank. Beats leaving it vacant.Wintrust Building Chicago

The bank also rents the space for events. But not (according to the bank web site) for:

  • Weddings
  • Casino nights
  • Gambling
  • Public events
  • Political fundraisers
  • Religious ceremonies
  • Extremist group gatherings
  • Restaurant expos

Wintrust Building Chicago

Below the Grand Hall is a whopping bank vault. Among Chicago Open House visitors, it was a hit.Wintrust Building Chicago

The main attraction is the door.Wintrust Building Chicago Wintrust Building Chicago

The vault itself, unlike the one under the Chicago Board of Trade, wasn’t open. Instead a bit of artwork covering the door depicted the rows of lock boxes inside. What’s going on in there? Time Tunnel experiments after hours at the bank?

A digression: A gritty reboot (is there any other kind?) of The Time Tunnel could be an exceptional show. What about it, Ronald D. Moore? You’re a little younger than me. That and Space: 1999 are waiting for you.

One more detail.Wintrust Building Chicago

Time, the bank might agree, is money.

The Chicago Board of Trade Building

Stroll down Jackson Blvd. in the Chicago Loop and you’ll come across that deco masterpiece, the Chicago Board of Trade Building, 141 W. Jackson. With Ceres atop, put there by designers who knew their ancient lore. Wish it was easier to get a close look at her.CBOT 2024 CBOT 2024

As mentioned, the place was crowded with Open House Chicago attendees, as seen in the magnificent lobby.CBOT 2024

In one way, that was good. There was more time to eye the details. In this building, the deco is in the details.CBOT 2024 CBOT 2024

No mail passes through these boxes any more, which is too bad. Back when I had an office in 35 E. Wacker, one of the pleasures of being in the building was passing through the lobby when I had something to mail, and slipping it into the imposing, ornate box, whose very presence announced: This Is The U.S. Mail. By the ’90s, a thing diminished, but not yet relegated to a has-been.CBOT 2024 CBOT 2024 CBOT 2024

In the basement is the building vault, formerly used to store valuable commodities. The vault door is impressively massive.CBOT 2024 CBOT 2024

Inside, an array of smaller boxes. Empty now.CBOT 2024

Room enough for an upscale bar, I think.CBOT 2024

The trading floor. Not busy on a Saturday.CBOT 2024

Hardly looking the way Stanley Kubrick saw it in 1949, when he took this picture for Look magazine (reportedly in the public domain these days).

Those guys look like they might have traded a few pork belly futures in their time.

Open House Chicago ’24

Open House, which in some places is Doors Open, is a wonderful event. The concept is simple: at designated places around town, you can go in and look around during specified hours on a particular weekend for no charge. I’ve been attending Chicago’s most years since 2013.

More American cities ought to do it. Worldwide, almost 60 cities do so under the Open House banner, with only four U.S. cities participating: Chicago, Miami, New York, and San Diego. Others are Doors Open: Baltimore, Buffalo, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, and the state of Rhode Island, which is only a little larger than a metropolitan area. Note the many missing from both lists, such as Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Denver, Los Angeles, Nashville, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle – and I could add more among large and mid-sized cities.

We were thinking of visiting New York this year for its event, which was a week ago, but ultimately decided on the Bruce Peninsula for our October trip. Maybe next year. As it happened, Chicago was the same weekend as New York, October 19 and 20, and since we were back from Canada by then, we went ahead with another Chicago Open House.Open House Chicago 2024

We focused on downtown this year, mostly because I didn’t feel like driving to any other neighborhood, and Metra takes you right to Union Station. Steps away – as real estate listings tend to put it – is the Sears Tower (I’m not calling it anything else). The blue wavy feature is fairly new.Open House Chicago 2024

The ground level of the tower has been redeveloped since the last time I was there, adding a large food hall. Do-Rite Donuts & Chicken looked really tempting, but no. Some other time.

The open part of the Sears Tower for Open House Chicago was the Metropolitan Club, up on the 67th floor. I’d been there before a couple of times, for business lunches in the early 2000s.Open House Chicago 2024

Nice views, but no one was giving away views from the Skydeck up on the 103th floor. Tickets to that are timed, and sell for $32 or more, a fact that irritates me. I remember visiting in 1987 for $3.50, which is the equivalent of a little less than $10 now. Sure, there’s now a glass box jutting out that stands between you and eternity when admire the vista from that perch. Add a few dollars for that, but that isn’t enough to justify the gouge.

Never mind, we also visited the Chicago Board of Trade Building and the Wintrust Bank Building, both near the intersection of Jackson and LaSalle, as we made our way eastward. Both are marvels of design and familiar — but you can always see something new. After lunch we spent a good long time at the Fine Arts Building on Michigan Ave. Also familiar, but so many details to engage your attention, if you let it. All 10 floors were open, and we rode the manually operated elevator up to the 10th floor and made our way down the stairs.

That was it. Fewer places than in most years because, it seems, word of Open House Chicago has finally gotten around, and each place we visited had a line to get in. So did Symphony Center, which we didn’t want to wait for. If I remember right in 2013, that wasn’t the case, when everyone I mentioned the event to had never heard of it, and you could walk right in each sight.

Thursday Bits, Mostly About Death

Monday’s storms were fierce, all right.

RIP, Bob Newhart. I came along too late to listen to the button-down mind record when new – I learned about it later – so for me Bob played the fellow who walked through Chicago and was a psychologist-chair straight man to a revolving group of eccentrics.

He’s one of the reasons the ’70s was a golden age for sitcoms. As a regular viewer, I must have seen almost all of The Bob Newhart Show. Because I didn’t pay much attention to TV after that decade, I haven’t seen many episodes of Newhart, but maybe now is the time to start.

Speaking of the ’70s, I found this posted online recently.

RIP to all these classmates of mine. The list was compiled by classmates who organize reunions and the like.

A few on the list were good friends of mine, including Kevin Norton and David Bommer. Most of the others I knew, or knew of. For a few I wonder, who was that again? even though AHHS wasn’t that large a high school. About 320 or 330 in the Class of ’79.

I know that because of the astonishing fact – in retrospect, at least to current or recent high schoolers – that periodically the administration would issue every student a GPA card that would not only tell you your exact GPA, but also where you ranked out of those 320 or 330. (I was always near the bottom of the top 10%.)

Twenty-seven names, though probably a few who have passed weren’t listed, so let’s say about 10% of the Class of ’79 is gone. That’s the leading edge of the bell curve of mortality, which will start to expand soon.

But death shouldn’t have the final word, at least not right now. Another way to look at it is that 90% of us have survived those 45 years, mostly as decent folk leading interesting lives, I hope.

Closer to home, in fact at home, how does our garden grow?

Not bad. Not bad at all.

Spring Break Bits

It might not feel like spring out there, but no matter. Time for spring break. Back to posting around April 18.

Not long ago, an entire movie on YouTube called First Spaceship on Venus came to my attention, and I decided to watch a few minutes to see how bad it might be. Soon I realized, this isn’t that bad. For what was clearly a pre-manned spaceflight depiction of spaceflight, not bad at all. I didn’t have time to finish it, but I will at some point.

I’d never heard of it. But I have heard of Stanisław Lem. I read His Master’s Voice years ago – nearly 40 years, so I don’t remember much – and saw the 1972 movie version of Solaris, ditto, though I’ve read it’s rather different from his novel. Turns out First Spaceship on Venus is the American title of Silent Star (Der Schweigende Stern), an East German-Polish production from 1960. Lem wrote the source book, The Astronauts, a few years earlier. The American version is dubbed into English and, I understand, cut in length.

Also, if you want, you can listen to the original soundtrack of Der Schweigende Stern. YouTube’s quite the place.

More idle curiosity for the day: checking ticket prices for Billy Joel and Stevie Nicks, who are appearing the same night at Soldier Field in June. The closest ticket for sale is pretty close indeed: front section, third row. For resale, actually. There are a scattering of resale tickets available in that section, with those on the third row listed for $3,791 + fees. Oddly enough, fourth row seats list for $2,794 + fees. At least for now. So one row ahead, where you can catch a slightly better glimpse of Mr. Joel’s shiny pate, is worth about a grand more?

I expect that represents dynamic pricing of some kind, facilitated by soulless algorithms in the service of maximized shareholder value, and varies from moment to moment. But I was never one for front row seats anyway, or even third or fourth. Checking further, I found that you can bring your opera glasses and sit way back for $179. As it happens, I’ve seen both of those entertainers; separately, in 1979 and 1980. I don’t remember what I paid. A handy inflation calculator tells me that $179 now is the equivalent of $47 back then. I’m positive I didn’t pay that much, total, for both tickets.

Visiting Queen of All Saints Basilica in Chicago last month, I took an image of carved text that puzzled me a bit, but then I forgot to look it up.

“Ecumenical Year?” I remembered to look into that more recently, and realized that it must refer to the first year of Vatican II, which was indeed 1962. Formally in English, the meeting was the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican.

Naturally, when one hears of Vatican II, it’s time to listen to “The Vatican Rag.”

The council might have been 60 years ago, but that song never gets old.