At noon on Saturday, the sun was high and mighty and toasting northern Illinois well into the 90s F. Later in the afternoon, an unexpected storm blew through. Unexpected because I hadn’t looked at any weather reports. By late afternoon, the storm was over and temps were in the pleasant 70s.
A good time to take a short walk in Woodstock, Illinois, which might be one of the state’s most pleasant towns. A good place to start was Woodstock Square. At the very center of the square is a GAR memorial to Union soldiers and sailors from Woodstock, which was founded in 1852. What’s a town square without a gazebo? Strolling south from Woodstock Square, I passed by the Blue Lotus Buddhist Temple. I noticed it on a previous visit to Woodstock.
I don’t believe these statues were there the last time. It’s been seven or so years, after all. Plenty of time to add a few depictions of Buddha. The temple isn’t the only religious site in the vicinity. Cater-cornered across the street is Woodstock’s First Church of Christ, Scientist. Not far away are the First United Methodist Church and the Unity Spiritual Center of Woodstock.
It was dark after the show, but I didn’t want to hurry away from Woodstock. Besides, I’d read that there was a new(ish) mural just north of Woodstock Square. So it is, in an alley — which the town calls a “pedway” — off Main Street next to Classic Cinemas Woodstock Theatre.
The mural honors the likes of Groundhog Day, filmed locally and remembered elsewhere in town.
Orson Welles, who spent part of his youth in Woodstock.
The town also remembers Chester Gould, though the Dick Tracy Museum in Woodstock closed a number of years ago. The alley features two statues as well. One is a wood carving of Woodstock Willie, presumably the town’s answer to Punxsutawney Phil, created by carver Michael Bihlmaier. Oddly enough, also near the mural is a small bronze of Welles by a local artist, Bobby Joe Scribner. According to the information sign near the work, it’s the only statue of Welles on public display in the United States. Interesting that it depicts an older Welles. His Paul Masson period, you might say.
Saw a few fireflies the other day, a certain sign of that nebulous period, high summer. The days might be getting shorter, but you don’t notice that yet — like the long moment at the top of ballistic trajectory. Back to posting around July 7.
Usually I rely on rain to wash my car or, if absolutely necessary, a hosing down on a warm day. But after our recent summertime jaunt to central Illinois-Indiana, enough bugs had met their insectoid maker against the leading edge of my car that I ponied up for an automated car wash. Half price ($5), though, since I had a coupon.
I find the journey through the car wash, at less than two minutes, visually and sonically interesting. I get that for my money, besides the removal of bug splatter.
So I held my camera as steady as possible during the splashing and blooping and hissing and flapping, along with elements of a minor light show.
The dog spent some time this morning trading insults with a resident squirrel. At least that’s how I want to think of it. The dog spotted a squirrel in the major back yard tree around 9 and immediately started looking up and whining at it, as she often does. Soon the squirrel was making its own noise, something like a duck with laryngitis.
Age has slowed her (the dog) down a little, but not yet when it comes to guarding the back yard against other creatures. Earlier this year, she spent time trying to scratch through the deck to reach what I suspect was a brood of possums. They seem to be gone now, since that dog behavior has stopped for now.
Chanced on a site called Yarn the other day that purports to offer a search “by word or phrase for TV, movies, and music clips.” So I decided to test it.
The entirety of a press release I got yesterday for no particular good reason, except maybe a robot read this posting and put my name on a list:
What: Accelerate Axe Throwing will host world champion axe thrower Ben Edgington for a free demo and clinic, helping experts and newbies alike improve their game in this fast-growing sport. Sanctioned by the World Axe Throwing League (WATL).
Who: Ben Edgington of Denver, Colorado is the world’s greatest axe thrower, having won the WATL 2018 World Axe Throwing Championship. Axe throwers from every continent except Antarctica competed for the trophy: a (you guessed it) very sharp, impressive axe. In just one year, Ben went from unemployed to landing a job as an axe coach (which he had never done) to world champ. With a name like Edgington, some would say it’s what he was born to do.
One thing leads to another, as always, so I wasted a few minutes looking further into Mr. Edgington. Here’s a video about him. The funniest thing about that clip is the presence of Mr. Peanut in the axe-throwing space. Guess that’s because of corporate sponsorship.
Also, I wondered — but I’m not going investigate this further, I have a life to live — about the deliberations on whether to name the organization the World Axe Throwing League or the World Ax Throwing League. Opinions might be sharply divided (haw-haw) on the matter.
AP prefers “ax” but most other sources say either variation is valid. If it came to blows among axe (ax) aficionados about the spelling, things could get a mite bloody.
When were driving through LaGrange, Texas, on the first day of the trip, I began to wonder. What’s this town known for? I know it’s something. Then I saw a sign calling LaGrange “the best little town in Texas.” Oh, yeah. Famed in song and story.
On the way to Buffalo Bayou Park in Houston, we took a quick detour — because I’d seen it on a map — to see the Beer Can House at 222 Malone St., a quick view from the car. Looks like this. Had we wanted to spend a little more time in Houston, I definitely would have visited the Orange Show. Ah, well.
We enjoyed our walk along Esplanade St. in New Orleans, where you can see some fine houses. Plus efforts to thwart porch pirates. We saw more than one sign along these lines during our walk down the street. We spent part of an evening in New Orleans on Frenchman St., which is described as not as rowdy or vomit-prone as Bourbon St., and I suppose that’s true, though it is a lively place. We went for the music.
At Three Muses, we saw Washboard Rodeo. They were fun. Western swing in New Orleans. Played some Bob Wills, they did.
At d.b.a, we saw Brother Tyrone and the Mindbenders. Counts as rock and soul, I’d say. Also good fun, though they were playing for a pretty thin Monday night crowd.
Adjacent to Frenchman St. is an evening outdoor market, the Frenchman Art Market, which we visited between the two performances. The market featured an impressive array of local art for sale, though nothing we couldn’t live without.
Something you see on U.S. 61 just outside of Natchez, Mississippi: Mammy’s Cupboard, a restaurant.More about it here.
In Philadelphia, Mississippi, Stribling St. is still around. I don’t know why it wouldn’t be, but after nearly 30 years, I wanted another look.
So is the local pharmacy run by distant cousins. Glad the chains haven’t spelled its demise.
During our drive from metro Jackson, Mississippi, to Montgomery, Alabama — connected by U.S. 80 and not an Interstate, as you might think — we passed through Selma, Alabama. I made a point of driving across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, though we decided not to get out and look around. Remarkably, the bridge looks exactly as it does in pictures more than 50 years old.
In downtown Montgomery, you can see this statue. I understand the bronze has been around since 1991, but was only recently moved to its current site not far from Riverfront Park, the river of course being the Alabama. I’d forgotten native son Hank Williams died so young. Some singers die rock ‘n’ roll deaths, some die country deaths like Hank.
Speaking of death, early in the trip, I was activating my phone — whose dim algorithm always suggests news I seldom want to see during the process — and I noticed the name “Doris Day” in the feed. I figured that could mean only one thing. Sure enough, she became the first celebrity death of the trip.
I hadn’t known she was still alive. In fairly rapid order during the trip after Ms. Day, the reaper came for Tim Conway, I.M. Pei and Grumpy Cat. I didn’t know that last one, but Lilly did.
I remember a time that Tim Conway described himself as “the funniest man in the universe” on the Carol Burnett Show. We all took that as a comedian’s hyperbole. But what if he was right? What if some higher intelligence has made a four-dimensional assessment of human humor and come to that exact conclusion?
As for Doris Day, I will try to park as close to my destinations as possible in her honor for the foreseeable future (a term I remember hearing as long ago as the ’80s in Austin).
Also in Montgomery: the Alabama State Capitol. The Alabama legislature had been in the news a lot before we came to town, as the latest state body to try to topple Roe v. Wade. That isn’t why I visited. I see capitols when I can.
From a distance. Closer. The capitol was completed in 1851, though additions have been made since then. The interior of the dome is splendid.
Actually, the Alabama House and Senate don’t meet in the capitol any more, but at the nearby Alabama State House, something I found out later. When we visited, the capitol’s House and Senate chambers seemed like museum pieces rather than space for state business, and that’s why.
Seems like hipsters haven’t discovered Decatur, Alabama, yet. But as real estate prices balloon in other places, it isn’t out of the question. The town has a pleasant riverfront on the Tennessee and at least one street, Bank St., that could be home to overpriced boutiques and authentic-experience taprooms. Of more interest to me was the Old State Bank, dating back to 1833 and restored toward the end of the 20th century. It is where Bank St. ends, or begins, near the banks of the Tennessee River.
Even more interesting is the Lafayette Street Cemetery, active from ca. 1818.
It’s more of a ruin than a cemetery, but I’m glad it has survived. During the entirety of the trip, there were plenty of random bits of the South to be seen along the way. We also listened to a lot of Southern radio on the trip — something Lilly plans to avoid on future trips, Southern or not, with her Bluetooth and so on — and we had a little game whenever we tuned into someone discussing some social problem in earnest on a non-music, non-NPR station. The game: guess how long will it be before the discussion turns to God. It was never very long.
Time for a spring break. Later than the standard breaks taken by students, but it’s been a long time since I could call myself that. Back again around May 21.
Congratulations to my nephew Sam and his wife Emily, whose second child, Georgiana, was born healthy late last week. Nothing like having a daughter. I liked the experience so much I did it twice.
It’s a sobering thought to realize that she and her brother could well live to see the 22nd century.
Closer to home, spring can’t decide whether to be warm or cool, as usual. But there has been rain in quantity when there hasn’t been snow.
I tried to start my lawnmower last week during one of the cool days, while it was still in the garage. Nothing doing. So I anticipated draining its gas tank of old fuel, something I forgot to do in the fall.
On Saturday, when it was very much warmer, I parked the mower outside for a while and let it warm up in the sun. Then I tried to start it and voilà, it woke from its hibernation, ready to trim the grass in its noisy way.
During our recent visit to UIUC, we wandered past Davenport Hall.
From the looks of it, an ag building. But not any more. These days, it houses the university’s geography and anthropology departments. Dating from 1899, it’s one of the older buildings on campus. Nice facade. Reminds me of Texas A&M.
Not far from campus, an all together different kind of building. And yet a building. That’s a broad concept, after all. A bit of local color usually not acknowledged as such.
Some music for spring. Electroswing. Seems fitting somehow.
The first number, “Zoot Suit Riot,” released in the late ’90s, seems vaguely inspired by the incident in early ’40s Los Angeles. The quality of the video is poor, but with the crisp audio that doesn’t matter.
A more recent swing, dating from this decade, though in the case of “Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen,” with a helping of “Diga-Diga-Doo,” the songs are original swing vintage. I’m fond of other versions as well, such as Max Raabe’s, which I saw him do.
Also recent, the lively “Gimme That Swing” and its kinetic, or maybe frenetic, video.
Speaking of music, I’ve picked one more biography to read, now that I’m done with Alexander Hamilton. A genius of a different sort: Cole Porter.
Not long ago we went to the Factory Theater in Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood to see a staging of Othello by the Babes With Blades Theatre Company. I suggested we go because I’d never seen that play staged. Also, Ann read it not too long ago for school — wrote some papers and so on, the usual sort of things you do in high school.
The Factory is a small venue, about 70 seats on three sides of a simple stage. As far as I could tell, we saw a completely traditional staging of Othello, complete with well-done period costumes and actual swords and knifes, except for one thing. Babes With Babes is an entirely female theater company.
But not just a female company. A company of players with some specific talents.
According to the BWB web site: “Our initial showcase, in 1997, was conceived by founder Dawn ‘Sam’ Alden as a two-day presentation of fights and monologues, intended to bring to the Chicago art world an awareness of the large number of stage combat-trained women it had in its midst whose talent was being consistently underutilized.”
While not an overly stabby play (unlike Titus Andronicus)Othello certainly has its share of swords and knives as a part of the action, and the troupe handled them well.
More importantly, they handled their parts well. The novelty of women in the parts always played by men — Deveon Bromby as Othello and Kathrynne Wolf as Iago, to name the principals — lasted for a few minutes. Then it wore off and you were simply watching a solid production of Othello.
Wolf was particularly good as Iago. If you’re not going to have a spot-on Iago, a character that believably exults in the art of deceit, you might as well not do the play, since everything turns on that performance.
Much has been made of the muddled motives of Iago, or perhaps his motivelessness, but I’m not sure that matters. If it’s perversely captivating to watch his glee at destroying the Moor, I’d say the actor has done his, and in this case, her job.
I found this bit of ephemera at my mother’s house last year. She had saved it, tucked away in a envelope. I’d forgotten about the event, but it jogged my memory.
Jog might be too strong a verb. I still don’t remember much about the event, including why I participated. I was in the sixth grade, toward the very end of that year, and didn’t usually participate in choruses. Mainly, I think, because I can’t sing. But somehow or other I decided to do it, and there I am along with scores of other kids. At the time, Alamo Heights had four elementary schools that fed into a single junior high and high school. Among the names of the kids at the three other elementary schools that I didn’t attend, I recognize a lot of people I didn’t know in 1973, but whom I would know by the time I finished high school six years later.
Considering the structure of the district’s schools, and the passage of time, and the way social interaction goes, that isn’t really so strange, and yet it feels strange when I think about it.
Another irrational feeling that comes to me when looking at the list is how normal most of the first names sound. Especially the girls’ names, like Amy, Barbara, Caroline, Laura, Lisa, Lynn, Mary, Melissa, Patricia, Sharon, Susan and variations on Deborah, Julia, Rebecca and Sandra.
The evening’s program.
Three of the four songs by the elementary chorus were from Up With People. I didn’t know that until reading the program recently. Guess they produced the kind of anodyne songs considered good for elementary school children in the early ’70s.
I’ve read a little about that organization, though I can’t say that I know much about it. But I can’t shake the lingering idea that if Ned Flanders founded a cult, it would be something like that.
Rain is more typical than snow for late April/early May, and we’ve gotten buckets of it since the snow melted on Sunday. The grass has responded by taking on new hues of lush green. I expect scads of the much-maligned dandelion to follow. The back yard already has some, but the rain beat them down. They never stay down for long.
How did I not know about Raumpatrouille until the other day? In full, as befitting a title in German, the TV show is called Raumpatrouille – Die phantastischen Abenteuer des Raumschiffes Orion. That is, Space Patrol – The Fantastic Adventures of the Spaceship Orion.
Naturally, when I found out about it, I wasn’t looking for information about the German science fiction television program of that name that’s an exact contemporary of the original Star Trek, premiering on German TV on September 17, 1966 (Star Trek first aired on September 8).
Yet in wandering the Internet’s twisty little maze of passages, or maybe its maze of twisty little passages, I chanced across Raumpatrouille not long ago. I didn’t have time to follow up on the information right when I found it, but I had the presence of mind to do some bookmarking.
Later, it was easy enough to find the episodes — there are only seven of them — on YouTube, which have helpful English subtitles. I watched the first one. Though I’d read it was good, I was taken by surprise by how good it was. As good as anything Star Trek did, and without that annoying Roddenberry vibe.
Actually, there’s a bit of his outlook. By the unspecified year in which the show is set, Earth has a world government. What little you hear about that government, or at least its military, makes it seem officious and a touch German, but not totalitarian.
The characters are supposed to represent a cross-section of Earth’s population. As Television Heaven puts it, “While Major McLane [the commander] is American, his crew includes a Japanese navigator and star cartographer, a Scandinavian engineer, and an Italian computer specialist and armaments officer. This is clearly not a projection of a desire for a Teutonic world order.”
In the single show I’ve seen so far, the story has some intelligence and suspense, plus some character development, and the pacing is good. The sets and props strongly resemble Doctor Who in its early days, since Raumpatrouille clearly had a slender budget. But they did well with what they had.
Also, there are a few moments of unintentional comedy. One scene has the characters at a bar near wherever their ships launch from, and the characters are having a discussion in the foreground. In the background, extras are dancing, as if it were a dance club. Except that they were obviously doing “a dance of the future.” It’s a strange sight with a lot of odd moves, and gets more funny as it goes along.
One major installation we saw at the Elmhurst Art Museum on Saturday didn’t have anything to do with the Bauhaus (which got a Google doodle today), or Mies van der Rohe, or anything but the sky.
“Skycube” by David Wallace Haskins, which was installed in 2015. It may look light, but it’s made from 6,000 lbs. of steel. The mirrors inside the cube deliver an image of the sky to — in — at — the square window — hole — aperture — on the side. It’s a little unnerving to sit there and look at it, but also hard to turn away. Stand next to the “window” and you can get a self-portrait in the sky. Got a surreal tinge to it. The view might be even more interesting on one of those days when rafts of clouds are speeding along at high altitudes.
The YouTube autoplay algorithm is pretty much of the same dense mindset as Top 40 radio is, or at least used to be. Play one song, well known or even not so well known, and it will line up nothing unusual or surprising.
Odd, then — and I’ve tested this on a few separate days — when I queue up something by the B-52s, a good many lesser-known songs of theirs appear on the autoplay. Mostly published by the group itself, but not always (and who doesn’t like a song that mentions ancient Mesopotamia?).
Might just be a fluke, though. Your results may vary. I doubt that algorithms will ever be good enough to weed out all the flukes. Hope not.
The last time I was in downtown Chicago, earlier this month, I paused for a moment to take a picture of a sign on E. Adams St. marking the eastern terminus of the former U.S. 66. That’s the western-facing side of the side, covered by stickers from all over, with many European in origin. Shortly before I took my picture, a group of Germans were doing the same. Must be in their Reiseführer von Amerika. And what does the Meat Bunny know?
By the time I took a picture of the eastern-facing side, the Germans were gone. Leaving only this fellow and his selfie stick.
News I missed, and I miss a fair amount, which I figure is actually healthy: “For the second time in history, a human-made object has reached the space between the stars,” a NASA press release from December says.
“NASA’s Voyager 2 probe now has exited the heliosphere — the protective bubble of particles and magnetic fields created by the Sun…
“Its twin, Voyager 1, crossed this boundary in 2012, but Voyager 2 carries a working instrument that will provide first-of-its-kind observations of the nature of this gateway into interstellar space.”
Voyager 2 is now slightly more than 11 billion miles (18 billion kilometers) from Earth. Or 16.5 light hours. That’s still in the Solar System, though. “It will take about 300 years for Voyager 2 to reach the inner edge of the Oort Cloud and possibly 30,000 years to fly beyond it,” NASA says.
Not long ago, the original Godzilla — Gojira, to be pedantic — appeared on TV, in Japanese with subtitles. Not that the famed atomic beast needs any subtitles. I had my camera handy. I didn’t watch it all, but that’s one way to approach televised movies. Not long ago, I watched the first 15 minutes or so of The Sting, a fine movie I’ve seen a few times all the way through. But other tasks were at hand, so I quit after Luther is murdered.
Later, I had the presence of mind to turn the TV back on and watch the last 10 minutes or so, when the sting is put on gangster Doyle Lonnegan. It’s a satisfying ending, but it got me to thinking.
A con with that many people would surely generate rumors. Just as surely, the rumors would make their way to the murderous Lonnegan, who wouldn’t rest until Henry Gondorff and Johnny Hooker were dead. But that’s overthinking things.
Here’s another example of a dim algorithm. Just about every time I use YouTube, I see anti-teen smoking PSAs. Or maybe they’re blanketing the medium, regardless of audience. Still, if I didn’t take up smoking 45 years ago, I’m not going to now.
That brings to mind the first time I remember seeing one of my contemporaries with a cigarette. That was about 45 years ago at a place called the Mule Stall.
The Mule Stall was a student space on the campus of my high school with a few rooms, chairs, a pool table and I don’t remember what else. It was tucked away about as far as you could get from the rest of the school, opening up to the street behind the school.
High schoolers used it, but junior high kids from the district had gatherings there occasionally as well. The event I remember might have been the wrap party for one of the plays I was in. Besides not acquiring a taste for smoking back then, I also discovered the theater wasn’t for me, except as an audience member. But ca. 1974, as a junior high school student, I did a few plays.
There we were, hanging out at the Mule Stall, when we noticed a girl named Debbie, who was in our class, pass by with a cigarette between her fingers. I didn’t know her that well, and I don’t remember much about her now, though she had curly hair, glasses and the sort of development adolescent boys pay attention to. At that moment, I guess she was on her way out to smoke the thing, though we didn’t see that.
I don’t know anything about her later life. She attended high school with us for a while, but either moved away or dropped out before the Class of ’79 graduated. I wonder if even now, she holds her cigs in yellow-stained fingers and spends part of the night coughing.
As for the Mule Stall, we had occasional high school band parties there later. One in particular involved almost everyone lining up to dance to the “Cotton-Eyed Joe.” That was fun. As Wiki accurately says, the dance was very much alive in Texas in the 1970s.
In fact, the Wiki entry has a description of the style of dance we did. Someone who did the dance seems to have written it, because this is exactly right.
“This dance was adapted into a simplified version as a nonpartner waist-hold, spoke line routine. Heel and toe polka steps were replaced with a cross-lift followed by a kick with two-steps. The lift and kick are sometimes accompanied by shouts of ‘whoops, whoops,’ or the barnyard term ‘bull s–t.’… The practice continues to this day.”
We used the barnyard term. An administration with no sense of history apparently razed the Mule Stall in the 1990s. Now the site is parking.
What’s a town square without a gazebo?
Strolling south from Woodstock Square, I passed by the Blue Lotus Buddhist Temple. I noticed it on a previous visit to Woodstock.
The temple isn’t the only religious site in the vicinity. Cater-cornered across the street is Woodstock’s First Church of Christ, Scientist. Not far away are the First United Methodist Church and the Unity Spiritual Center of Woodstock.
The town also remembers Chester Gould, though the Dick Tracy Museum in Woodstock closed a number of years ago.
The alley features two statues as well. One is a wood carving of Woodstock Willie, presumably the town’s answer to Punxsutawney Phil, created by carver Michael Bihlmaier.
Oddly enough, also near the mural is a small bronze of Welles by a local artist, Bobby Joe Scribner.
According to the information sign near the work, it’s the only statue of Welles on public display in the United States. Interesting that it depicts an older Welles. His Paul Masson period, you might say.
