Churches by Bus ’15

Posted on September 27, 2020 by admin

No Open House Chicago this year, as you’d expect; no Chicago Architecture Center bus tours or house walks or Doors Open Milwaukee either. For some time now, those events have often been part of fall for us, such as in 2013 or 2014 or 2017 or last year.

Five years ago we took a Chicago Architecture Foundation (as it was then) bus tour of six Chicagoland churches. The other day I took a look at the images from then.
Such as at the First United Methodist Church in Park Ridge, including docent Jack pointing out some feature.
A detail from the church’s stained glass.
Next was the Holy Resurrection Serbian Orthodox Cathedral. A bell hangs outside.
A plaque next to the bell tower explains, in English and Serbian, that the bell was cast in 1908 and formerly hung at a Serbian Orthodox church in Chicago. “[It] has been placed in this tower so that it may once again peal with joy at weddings and baptisms, announce the commencement of church services, and sadly toll at the passing of our parishioners,” the plaque says.

A detail of the bronze front doors.
A prelate I didn’t know. Now I do.
St. Joseph the Betrothed Ukrainian Catholic Church.
Near the main structure is an outdoor shrine to Our Lady of Hoshiv.“The icon in the grotto is a modern replica of the miraculous icon of Our Lady of Hoshiv, considered by many Ukrainians to be a special place of pilgrimage,” the church web site notes.

“The original icon was painted at the beginning of the 18th century, and during the Turkish and Tatar incursions in Ukraine was taken to Hoshiv for safety.

“In Hoshiv, the icon began to miraculously glow with a great halo, as witnessed by many locals and their priest. After the glow subsided, there were tears on Our Lady’s face.

“After this miracle, the people petitioned Metropolitan Lev Sheptytsky to transfer the icon to a ‘holy place’ and it was moved to the Basilian monastery of Yasna Hora (Bright Mountain) in Hoshiv. There the miraculous nature of this icon continued to reveal itself with many documented healings.

“The Grotto of Our Lady of Hoshiv that stands next to St. Joseph Church was built in 1961-1962, and was dedicated in May 1962 by Bishop Jaroslaw Gabro.”

Outside Our Lady of Hope in Rosemont is, was, a patch of elephant ears.
The church isn’t overwrought with stained glass, but there is some.
Much more stained glass can be found at St. Luke’s Lutheran Church in Park Ridge.

One church we visited but which I didn’t post about — I don’t remember why — was Mary, Seat of Wisdom, also in Park Ridge.

Interesting stained glass, not quite like I’ve seen elsewhere.

Mosaics. Or was it a painting that looks like a mosaic? I don’t remember.
Another detail I liked.
The Eye of Providence clearly belongs in a church, and maybe even on the dollar bill, but it would be interesting if it popped up randomly in public places. Just to give people something to think about.

The Century of Progress Architectural District

Posted on September 23, 2020 by admin

Tucked away on a small road paralleling Kemil Beach on Lake Michigan is the Century of Progress Architectural District, which includes five houses originally built for the world’s fair in Chicago in 1933. The houses were moved by barge across the lake after the fair, and are now part of Indiana Dunes National Park.

More about that shortly. First, the view from Kemil Beach, which is nearly as far south as you can go and still be on the edge of Lake Michigan. The day we visited was clear and sunny, but not hot — more of a moderate September warmth.
If you look carefully at the horizon at that place, the enormous buildings of the Chicago skyline are visible, but look as insubstantial as grey chalk marks on a watercolor.
Not far from the houses is access to the beach itself.

Not many people were out and about, even though it’s part of a national park. Then again, the beach was windswept, bringing in large breakers.
That sounded like this.

Perched right over the shore is the pink Florida Tropical House, designed by Miami architect Robert Law Weed to promote Florida living to fairgoers. Come be Florida Men and Women, that is.

Also perched over the shore is the Wieboldt-Rostone House, which showcased a building material called Rostone (limestone, shale and alkali). Design by Indiana architect Walter Scholer.

On the hill above the road are the three other houses dating from the world’s fair. One, the Cypress Log Cabin, was meant to showcase that building material, and hugs the ground so closely that it was a little hard to see from the road.

Another hillside structure, the Armco-Ferro House, was “an ode to the virtues of porcelain enamel and steel — expressed in the form of a prefabricated home,” the sign at the bottom of the hill told me.Finally, the House of Tomorrow, which is currently wrapped for renovation. Design by Chicago architect George Frederick Keck.

All in all, an interesting little neighborhood. That’s a fitting term, since people actually live in the houses, except for the House of Tomorrow, and someone will live there when the work is done. Signs asked visitors to respect the privacy of the occupants. Tours of the interior are given only once a year, I’ve read, though I expect that isn’t going to happen this year.

In a remarkably imaginative move on the part of a government agency — the Park Service, which owns the properties — the houses are leased for 30 years at no charge, provided the lessees agree to restore and maintain the properties in that period.

Bohemian National Cemetery

Posted on September 21, 2020 by admin

Back in 2004, I met Bob the crematorium operator by chance, and he showed me part of the facility he ran. The interior of this building.That’s the crematorium and columbarium at Bohemian National Cemetery on the Northwest Side of Chicago, one of the resplendent cemeteries in the city. Bob wasn’t around when I returned for a visit on Sunday, September 13, and the building was closed.

As usual even at a beautiful cemetery, few other living people were around. But it was sunny and warm, and I had a good look.

Since the last time I visited, something unique (probably) in any cemetery has been added: Beyond the Vines.

“The 24-foot-long brick monument offering peace to the ashes of Cubs fans is called ‘Beyond the Vines.’ It sits in perpetual sunshine at Bohemian National Cemetery,” reported the Chicago Tribune in 2009, when the cemetery erected the structure.
The front was was in shadow when I saw it.
Still, the purpose of the columbarium is clear.
There are still spaces for anyone who cares for one. This marker for this fellow, name partly obscured, tells a sad story of early death but also the endless optimism of a Cubs fan.
Bohemian National, founded in the late 19th century by the Czech immigrant community in Chicago, has a wide selection of funerary art.

A pharmacist’s stone? Looks like a mortar and pestle.

Civil War and World War(s) veterans are honored with memorials, as you’d expect, but the place also spares a thought for veterans of the war with Spain, erected in 1926. The plaque is in English and Czech.
Deep in the cemetery is Anton Cermak’s mausoleum, but I didn’t see it. A memorial I did see is to the victims of the Eastland disaster.
“The site was chosen because the cemetery on Chicago’s Northwest Side holds the largest number of victims from the disaster — 134,” the Trib says, reporting on the dedication of the memorial in 2015, for the 100th anniversary of the disaster.

Mm, Grits

Posted on March 31, 2020 by admin

There are two kinds of grits in the house. As far as I know, people aren’t hording grits these days, but I haven’t shopped for them since before the pandemic, so who knows.

To the left, the brand I’ve eaten for years. The standard. The go-to. Often the only brand at the grocery store. Easy to make, best eaten after only a few minutes for cooling. Some add butter. I usually add honey, but not always.

To the right, a brand recently acquired. The texture is slightly different, but not enough to put me off of it. Takes longer to make. Naturally, the verbiage on the package tries to make a virtue of that necessity: “You’ll have to hesitate before you eat quick grits again,” it says. Naah.

The standard grits package tube lists the following as ingredients: degerminated white corn grits, plus iron and various vitamins, which are added in the processing. The new grits bag merely lists white corn. Made me wonder if the hull and germ have been removed, which seems essential to grits.

Note this handy definition at Culinary Lore:

Hominy: An endosperm product made from corn, made up of starch, with the hull and germ removed.

Grits: Ground hominy (usually coarse).

I checked the nutrition facts on the new grits package, and indeed it seems that whatever vitamins might have been present in the hull or germ aren’t there, so I assume they aren’t there either.

Anyway, grits and I go way back. As long as I can remember, because my mother made them and I assume her mother did too, though I don’t have any specific memory of grandma’s grits. I learned to make them myself early on.

I also learned that somehow, most restaurants that offer grits serve an inferior version to what you make at home. How is that? Occasionally, though, I find superb grits away from home. For instance, years ago in Mexico Beach, Florida, I had wonderful cheese grits — at a place probably destroyed by Hurricane Michael a year and a half ago.

When I moved to Chicago in the late ’80s, I was glad to find grits in the grocery stores, despite being well north of the Grits Line. I shouldn’t have been surprised, considering how many Southerners, black and white, have migrated to the region over the decades.

Grits aren’t available in Japan. At least they weren’t 30 years ago. We gaijin ordered it by the case from North America, which we then split up. (PopTarts were ordered the same way.) I remember serving them at my apartment in Japan to a Scotsman who also lived in Japan. He liked it well enough.

“Porridge, is it?” he said. I wasn’t sure how to answer. Can porridge be made from corn? Maize, that is. Seems yes, or maybe, since porridge can be any grain, though I think it’s usually associated with oats and not de-germed corn. Porridge isn’t part of my dialect anyway. Growing up I never heard anything outside of children’s stories called porridge, such as what the Three Bears prepared for themselves and Goldilocks pirated.

Yuriko had no notion of grits growing up and still doesn’t care for them. Lilly took to them in a big way, but Ann did not. Different children, different tastes.

Downtown Chicago St. Patrick’s Day Parade, 2018

Posted on March 29, 2020 by admin

I fell asleep to light rain and occasional thunder on Friday night. A comforting sound. During the hours when I was dreaming odd dreams — damned odd, but it all made perfect sense at the time — the rain must have picked up its pace, since large puddles had formed in our back yard by Saturday morning, as usually happens with inches of rain. But not quite this much.

Two years ago we went into the city in mid-March and found ourselves near the Downtown Chicago St. Patrick’s Day Parade. We were going to visit the Art Institute that day, and the parade was passing next to the museum, on S. Columbus Dr.

We walked over to see it, but the crowd was so thick that we never really got a close look. Often enough, the view looked something like this.The crowd was festive, with many dressed for the occasion.

We stayed for a little while and saw what we could.

The solid-waste industry was well represented. Downtown Chicago St. Patrick's Day Parade 2018

Some participants were off to the side. I suppose they were finished and watching the rest of the parade.

Crowds thronged in front of the Art Institute and elsewhere.
No social distancing in evidence. It would have been weird if there had been. No wonder the parade was cancelled this year.

A Journey Around My House

Posted on March 23, 2020 by admin

Snow yesterday around sunset.

All of it melted today. Outbreak or not, it’s still mud season.

Last year I read A Journey Around My Room by Xavier de Maistre (Voyage autour de ma chambre, published in 1794, but of course I read a recent translation by Stephen Sartarelli). I found it at the township library completely by chance, and only a few months later now, I can’t remember why it caught my eye.

I’m glad it did. I won’t review it here, but I will say that it’s amusing, and now and then funny. De Maistres was under house arrest for dueling, an aristocratic punishment for an aristocratic offence. He wrote a short volume about some of the objects in his room, which of course involved various digressions and tangents.

“Towards the end of the 18th century, a young aristocrat, confined to his house in Turin for 42 days as a result of a duel (one presumes his antagonist came off worse), decided to both ease his boredom and make a joke of it all by writing a – well, there it is in the title,” writes Nicholas Lezard in The Guardian. “It was Blaise Pascal who said that all the troubles of humanity came about because of the difficulty men had in simply being happy to sit alone in their rooms; here is the result of such an enforced confinement. And it is wonderful.”

His book comes to mind now for obvious reasons. Time, then, to look around my house and find some objects to write about. I’ll never be as witty as De Maistres, but so what. When circumstances keep you at home, best to ruminate on the clutter around the house. Why else harbor that clutter if you don’t do that sometimes?

Such as one my worn t-shirts, the kind you don’t wear any more, but don’t discard. This is the back; the front is a corporate logo.

In 2002, when I worked downtown editing a magazine, Krispy Kreme opened a location not far from my office. The shop was giving away free doughnuts and t-shirts specially made to extol that particular store, hence the mention of the Loop. The doughnuts didn’t last long back at the office, naturally, but I wore the shirt now and then for a few years, one of the few advertising shirts I was willing to wear.

KK was on a growth bender at the time that didn’t end well, but didn’t put the company out of business, either. The brand contracted for a while, including the closure of the downtown store and one near my house in the suburbs. In the 2010s, the company seems to have grown at a more measured, and presumably more sustainable pace.

In fact, now you can buy KK doughnuts in a score of countries on every continent except Antarctica. But I remember when it was a Southern thing. So Southern, as in the Deep South, that I’d never heard of it growing up in Texas. I discovered it when I went to school in Tennessee, and what a discovery. Delicious hardly did them justice. Good eating by yourself and always welcome at gatherings.

(I realize looking at the 2009 posting that I haven’t mentioned Irwin Hepplewhite and the Terrifying Papoose Jockeys in a long time. Someone has to keep that name going, and that someone is me.)

What I wrote nearly 11 years ago about the KK location that closed is still true when it comes to the nearest open one to us, about 20 minutes away: ” I’m fond enough of their product… but the truth was, the only time we ever bought doughnuts at the Hanover Park location was when we got a hold of coupons offering two boxes for the price of one, since a dozen normally comes at a premium to more ordinary doughnuts.”

California Leftovers

Posted on March 12, 2020 by admin

I drove by Randy’s Donuts near LAX, but didn’t stop to buy any. The first place I did go in Los Angeles, practically right off the plane on February 21, was Roscoe’s House of Chicken and Waffles on W. Manchester Blvd. Mm, good. Almost as good as Maxine’s in Indianapolis, which is high praise.

After I ate chicken and waffles there — a late lunch — I determined that I didn’t have time to go all the way to Venice and stroll around the canals before I had to be back in Ladera Heights to check into my short-term residence. So Venice, California, remains an unfulfilled ambition. Like Venice, Italy.

Instead I drove over to Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery, which is on the edge of Culver City. It has everything it needs to be an aesthetic cemetery — land contour, trees and other greenery — except upright stones or much funerary art.

Still, I found Jimmy Durante. That’s something. Inka Dinka Doo.

I had lunch my first full day in Los Angeles at Grand Central Market downtown. Once a market, now it’s mostly a food hall. A popular place. The likes of which will be largely empty for a while now? This pic is status quo ante.

A large selection of eats. With some good neon.Overpriced, though. While I was eating, rain started to fall outside. Heavy for about half an hour. That was the only rain during my visit.

Saw all too many of these on the sidewalks of LA.
I even saw a man kick one hard in disgust.

I was within sight of the Santa Monica Pier when in Santa Monica, but I didn’t have the energy to actually visit the pier. Didn’t want to put up with the crowds, either.
I did see this.
That would be the opposite of the sign in downtown Chicago.

The East Garden at the Getty Villa includes this fountain.
“The enchanting central wall fountain represents a replica of a mosaic and shell fountain from the House of the Large Fountain in Pompeii,” Alice’s Garden Travel Buzz says. I’ll take Alice’s word for it.

On my return from Texas on March 1, I had a fine view of Chicago as we flew in. First to the south of O’Hare, which was visible as a whole, then across the city and over downtown — I didn’t know that was allowed — and out over Lake Michigan, where we turned. The flight back to O’Hare crossed over the North Side of Chicago, so I got a sky-high view of Wrigley Field, and then lower and lower over the suburbs near O’Hare. I recognized some of the larger roads. Some intersections. A building or two. Wait, what’s that pyramid-shaped building?

The guy next to me on my flight home from Texas rubbed his hands with sanitizer three or four times over two hours. After touching the seatback tray table, I think. If one impact of the novel coronavirus is to encourage people to wash (or clean) their hands more, that’s a good thing.

More Skulls and Bones and Things

Posted on February 5, 2020 by admin

Here’s one reason the Field Museum might have jacked up its admission in recent years: it spent $8.3 million in 1997 to acquire the fossilized remains of the T. rex nicknamed Sue. Or at least part of that hefty figure, since other organizations, corporations and HNWIs also chipped in, I understand.

From 2000 to 2018, Sue stood in Stanley Field Hall. Mostly bones, but also a number of replacement replicas for a few missing ones. Even so, the museum and other sources call Sue the most complete T. rex ever discovered, at about 90 percent.

These days, Sue has her — his — gender actually uncertain, so its — own room in the Griffin Halls of Evolving Planet, a multi-room exhibit about the evolution of life on Earth, complete with various fossils to illustrate various periods. Naturally, most of the crowds gravitate to the dinosaur bones, and not just Sue, but the creatures in the large Elizabeth Morse Genius Hall of Dinosaurs, which you reach before you get to the T. rex room.

Lots of impressive fossils there. Such as a triceratops. Can’t very well have a dinosaur collection without one of those.
Or an apatosaurus.
Or a stegosaurus.
Sue not only has its own room, there’s narration and a minor light show as the narrator describes different parts of the beast, the better for the audience to ooh and aah.
The head mounted on the rest of the skeleton is actually a replica. Sue’s head is kept in a separate box.
If I remember right, that’s the way it was when Sue was in Stanley Field Hall.

Sue isn’t the last of the fossil parade. Time marches on, a meteor kills the dinosaurs, and mammals increase in size. This fellow looks pretty large, even for a bear.
Known as Arctodus, or a short-face bear, it lived in Pleistocene North America but vanished about 11,600 years ago.

An Irish Elk.
How did they hold their heads up? Strong neck muscles, I guess. More subtle minds than mine have taken up that very question. Amusingly, Stephen Jay Gould wrote, “The Irish Elk, like the Holy Roman Empire, is misnamed in all its attributes: it is neither exclusively Irish nor an elk.”

A mastodon.
They are all examples of animals that didn’t survive the most recent Ice Age unless, as Gould mentions, Irish Elk survived into historic times. Just goes to show that no matter how tough you are, along comes a little climate change or hunters with pointy sticks and soon all that’s left is your bones, if that.

Field Museum ’20

Posted on February 4, 2020 by admin

Our main destination on Saturday was the Field Museum. Been awhile since we’ve been there. Looks as sturdy as ever.An important consideration was that the museum charges no admission for Illinois residents during the entire month of February, representing a $69 savings for us. A savings in theory, because it’s unlikely we would have ever paid full price. Maybe half that. I don’t have the numbers at handy, but I strongly suspect that ticket prices have significantly outpaced inflation over recent decades, and that sticks in my craw.
Not that you don’t get a high-quality natural history museum for that price.

Something I didn’t know before: the main hall, the grand, sweeping main hall of the Field Museum, which measures about 21,000 square feet, and whose ceiling reaches up 76 feet, actually has a formal name: Stanley Field Hall. He was Marshall Field’s nephew, but more than that, president of the museum for a long time, from 1908 to 1964.
T. rex Sue, the museum’s most famed — and marketed — artifact, isn’t in the hall any more. Those bones occupy their own room these days, more about which later.

Rather, an exhibit called Máximo now lords over the hall, at 122 feet across and 28 feet tall at the head. Not actual bones, but a model cast from a titanosaur discovered in Patagonia, and considered its own species, Patagotitan mayorum, only since 2018.

Still, it’s impressive.
After the main hall, we spent time at the Granger Hall of Gems, the Malott Hall of Jades and at a display of meteorites. Last time I visited the museum, we were promised that there would soon be a permanent exhibit of pieces of the Chelyabinsk Meteor, which fell to Earth in Russia in 2013.

Here they are.
Not that large, but I think every bit as interesting as the dinosaurs. I’ve always had more fondness for astronomy than paleontology.

Here’s something you don’t see every day, which is pretty much the reason you go to a place like the Field.
We’d happened onto an exhibit called Looking at Ourselves: Rethinking the Sculptures of Malvina Hoffman. It’s a remarkable group of sculptures.

“In the early 1930s, the Field Museum commissioned sculptor Malvina Hoffman to create bronze sculptures for an exhibition called The Races of Mankind,” the museum says. “Hoffman, who trained under Auguste Rodin, traveled to many parts of the world for an up-close look at the ‘racial types’ her sculptures were meant to portray.

“By the time the exhibition was deinstalled more than 30 years later, more than 10 million people had seen it — as well as its misguided message that human physical differences could be categorized into distinct ‘races.’

“Today, 50 of Hoffman’s sculptures are back on display — with a new narrative.”

Namely, that Hoffman did some remarkable sculptures of individuals, not illustrations of racial typologies. There’s some indication that Hoffman herself considered the whole typology idea as malarkey, even as she was creating the artwork.

“In her letters from the field, Hoffman told museum curators that she wanted to illustrate the dignity and individuality of each of her subjects,” the museum says.

“The Looking at Ourselves exhibition team believed that naming Hoffman’s previously unnamed subjects was an important way of illustrating that individuality. They spent months poring over Hoffman’s and her husband’s letters and journals, and consulting the work of others who have researched the Hoffman collection over the years, to find the subjects’ given names.

“For subjects whose specific identities remain unknown, the team worked with anthropologists to correctly pinpoint the names of their ethnic groups.”

The figure above, climbing a tree, is a Tamil man from southeast India, identity unknown. This is a Nuer man from Sudan, also unknown.
A group from various parts of Indonesia, put together by the artist. The two standing figures were modeled on Ni Polog and I Regog, a sister and brother from Bali. The others are a man from Madura and one from Borneo, identities unknown.
A Hawaiian: Sargent Kahanamoku, an aquatic athlete and member of a well-known Hawaiian family.
Glad we got to see Hoffman’s work. Ann and I spent a fair amount of time looking at them and discussing them. An idea for those who would destroy discredited statues: re-contexturalize instead.

Chicago Chinatown ’20

Posted on February 3, 2020 by admin

One of these days, I might pop into the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Museum on S. Wentworth Ave. in Chinatown. It has to count as one of the more obscure museums in metro Chicago, and that adds some interest right there.

But when we went to Chinatown on Saturday, we took a pass on Sun Yat-Sen and had lunch next door instead, at a newish-looking place called Slurp-Slurp. Had some tasty noodle soups there.
Chinatown wasn’t the main destination that day, but it was more-or-less on the way, and always a dependable place to find something good to eat, and things to see. Even if there isn’t a parade.

We arrived at the Cermak-Chinatown El Station and saw something fairly new, visible from the stairs leading to the ground.
Done in hand-made ceramic tile by Indira Freitas Johnson, installed in 2015.

“The centerpiece of the upper panel features Fook (Fú in Mandarin), the symbol of good fortune or happiness,” the CTA says. “According to custom, the symbol is placed upside down and against a diamond-shaped background. Within the context of the stairway Fook (Fú) may be translated as ‘good fortune arrives.’ ”

Not far from the station is a screen wall.

It looks like there had once been a small sign in front of the wall to explain it, but that’s now completely blank. Not to worry, a very short amount of Googling tells me that it’s a Nine-Dragon Wall, a miniature version of such a wall in Beihai Park, Beijing (the Winter Palace).

Wiki tells us that there are various other walls of this style, including one at the Forbidden City that I have no recollection of seeing. Then again, it’s a large place. There’s also one at the Mississauga Chinese Centre in the Toronto suburb of that name.

Besides lunch, we did a short walk on Wentworth Ave., since the weather wasn’t too bad for the pit of winter. Not pit of winter-ish at all, with temps above freezing, though sometimes winds would kick up. Wentworth is the original hub of Chicago’s Chinatown.

There’s evidence of continuing cross-cultural pollination.

About a half block off Wentworth is St. Therese Chinese Catholic Church. Unfortunately, the sanctuary was closed.
Some distinctive Chinese features are visible outside.
Later I learned that the church had been built just after the turn of the 20th century as Santa Maria Incoronata, to serve an Italian congregation. By the 1960s, the demographics of the neighborhood had changed enough for it to become St. Therese, serving a Chinese congregation.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Chicago