Churches After Lunch

Posted on October 17, 2023 by admin

“Nothing matters but the weekend, from a Tuesday point of view.”

Lyrical wisdom from The Kings, a Canadian band who had only one hit in the United States that I know of (or two, depending on how you count the songs). I don’t think I’m going to look it up to confirm that notion. It’s been more than 40 years, after all, and that level of detail doesn’t matter much.

Lunch on Saturday was in Uptown, specifically near the Argyle El station, which is home to a sizable number of Vietnamese immigrants and their descendants. Once upon a time, at a small strip center in the neighborhood, there was a pho restaurant that had the distinction (for me) of being the first place I tried pho. It was the also first restaurant we ever took Lilly to, when she was exactly a month old in December 1997. I’m glad to say she slept through the entire experience in her detached car seat, next to our table. The other patrons were probably glad, too.

That restaurant is gone – or has moved, its space taken by the next-door Vietnamese grocery store – so we repaired to a North Broadway storefront pho spot. Actually much larger than a typical storefront, with room in back for a small stage for live music, colorfully decked out with a handful of small spotlights ready for action, as we saw at some of the larger restaurants in Saigon. Lunch was filling and as good as pho almost always is. Who can ask for more?

After lunch we walked the few blocks to Saint Thomas of Canterbury Catholic Church in Uptown. I lived not far away for a number of years, but had no idea it was there.

Another unusual church style, at least for Chicago. Colonial Meeting House, though looking a bit more Georgian than that, my sources tell me. An architect name Joseph W. McCarthy, not to be confused with the number-one proponent of McCarthyism from Wisconsin, did the design. He’s yet another noted designers of churches, back when that was a growth industry.

Many of the shrines in the church reflect the local population, as shrines tend to do.

In case you want to know who the 17 Martyrs of Laos are, a poster at the back of the nave tells you. Martyrs figure prominently at Saint Thomas, fitting right in for a church honoring a churchman murdered in a church.

Later in the day, in fact the last place we visited on Saturday, was St. Ita Catholic Church in Edgewater, at the edge of my old stomping grounds in Andersonville.

“St. Ita Parish was founded in Edgewater in 1900. On October 23, 1923, His Eminence George Cardinal Mundelein commissioned Architect Henry J. Schlacks to design and build a new church specifically in French Gothic design for St. Ita Parish,” the local parish web site says. I’ve seen a number of his churches.

“The current church, which opened in 1927, was the capstone of Henry Schlacks’ distinguished career as an ecclesiastical architect…. The open tower appears airy and delicate, yet it contains 1,800 tons of Bedford limestone and rises to 120 feet in height. Elaborate Gothic detailing marks the altar, but the medallion windows containing more than 200,000 pieces of stained glass, designed by Schlacks, are the real highlight of the interior.”

I have a vaguely remember visiting the church on a cool rainy Saturday – sometime in the late ’80s, maybe? — but not lingering for too long inside because a wedding was in progress. Last Saturday, cool and rainy, another wedding was in progress.Some other time I might see those many pieces of glass, artfully arrayed.

Thursday Rolls Around Again

Posted on October 5, 2023 by admin

Lilly’s been in town for a few days. We’re glad to see her, as always. We’re glad to eat sushi with her, as always.

Another big thing this week is that I got a new phone. Today. With a new carrier. Apparently my old phone was old indeed, since I bought it so I could take it to Mexico City. Soon after that, I discovered the highest and best use for a mobile phone: pulling up Google Maps.

Lately the old phone had been showing its mechanical senility by disconnecting at inconvenient times. This happened more and more often, until it was completely unreliable. One of the last messages that got through, yesterday, was the modern version of the Emergency Broadcast System: The National Wireless Emergency Alert System.

Or Sistema Nacional de Altera Inalambrica de Emergencia.

The sound was jarring, as I expect it’s supposed to be. I wonder how cacophonous a big room full of phones was — say a classroom that doesn’t make its students turn off their devices.

A presidential alert, no less. I like to think that FEMA technicians brought a suitcase to the Oval Office, opened it up, and President Biden pushed a button inside to set off the alert. Maybe a blue button, since a red button might be on the nuclear football, and set off something else all together.

Temps cooled down today after overnight rain. No freezes yet, so we still have flowers in the back yard.

The Flowers of October. That has to be the title of something.

Pyro-Monday

Posted on September 18, 2023 by admin

One of the benefits of the soaking rain over the weekend is that I felt I could grill this evening without much risk of an embarrassing and possibly dangerous grass fire. Brats were duly cooked for dinner about an hour ahead of sunset, which we consumed on the deck along with salad and for dessert some cannoli I bought on Sunday at a Polish grocery store, which were very close to being as good the best in my experience, those I found years ago not in Italy but in Little Italy in NYC.

There will be fewer such grilling opportunities as the movement of the Earth drags us in the Northern Hemisphere toward shorter days.

At dusk, I decided to burn some of the excess sticks always present in the back yard. The wood was a little damp still, but hot charcoal dries it out, and then ignites it.

There wasn’t much wind – another reason to grill – but enough movement give the fire occasional dramatic arcs.

The peculiarities of digital photography added to the seeming movement of that shot, I think. Soon the fire reached full blaze, best shown by zooming in a bit.

The declining phase.

Staring into a fire you’ve made is surely a pleasure we share with how many generations before us? Many.

“Clear evidence of habitual use of fire, though, comes from caves in Israel dating back between 400,000 and 300,000 years ago, and include the repeated use of a single hearth in Qesem Cave, and indications of roasting meat,” notes Time.

Pumpkin Everywhere All at Once

Posted on September 11, 2023 by admin

A rainy day today, first one in a while, after a pleasantly warm but dry weekend. We can use the rain.

On Sunday I visited a popular grocery store chain, one – and there’s more than one such chain – controlled by shadowy German billionaires. Pumpkin merch is already front and center, including actual pumpkins. A pretty array.

Inside the store, I was inspired to look for pumpkin-adjacent products. They weren’t hard to find.

Does all this mean the pumpkin crop is larger than it used to be, to satisfy the lust for pumpkin-flavored this and that? I decided to look it up when I got home. In the meantime, the pumpkin parade continued. Even though it’s still September.

Pumpkin-flavored sandwich creme cookies.

That sounded pretty good, so I bought a box. They are good. Not great, but sweet and pumpkin flavored all right, though not overwhelmingly so.

As for the pumpkin crop, the USDA tells me that all states produce some pumpkins, but six states produce most of them.

This was a surprise: “In 2021, Illinois maintained its leading position in pumpkin acreage, harvesting more than twice as many pumpkin acres as any of the other top states, at 15,900 acres,” the agency says. “In the same year — California, Indiana, Michigan, Texas, and Virginia — each harvested between 4,500 and 7,400 acres.”

That’s a distinction that I never knew about Illinois, as long as I’ve lived here.

“Annual U.S. per capita availability of fresh pumpkins averaged about 5 pounds over 2019 to 2021, similar to levels during the past two decades,” which might mean the impact of those various products is relatively small. On the other hand, 2021 is at the high end of that average, so maybe all that pumpkin in all that bread, breakfast foods, cookies, alcoholic beverages and personal care products is starting to add up.

Late Summer Tomatoes

Posted on September 6, 2023 by admin

Heard the rumble of thunder at some distance during the wee hours this morning, but upon looking outside after dawn, no rain came of it, at least here. We’ve had a few dry weeks now, with the local grass retreating to its brown state till water comes again.

From our back yard. We’ve been watering our small tomato crop through the dry days.

The quarter came from the Royal Canadian Mint facility in Winnipeg, and I picked it up somewhere near Lake Superior last month, and exported it to the United States.

There were more tomatoes in the dish until recently, today in fact, smaller in diameter than the quarter, but we ate those. Man, garden tomatoes are good. I’m hardly the first person to notice that, but it’s worth repeating.

Did some reading about the late singer and businessman Jimmy Buffet today. This paragraph made me smile.

“Mr. Buffett’s original idea for Margaritaville was ‘to expand the opportunity for as many people to experience the lifestyle immortalized in his iconic song as possible,’ according to the statement on the company’s website,” the New York Times reported. “The company had $2.2 billion in gross annual revenue last year.”

The lifestyle immortalized in his iconic song? That of a drunken layabout? You don’t need to visit a resort to do that.

Gary Wright also died recently. That makes two popular musicians who first had hits in the 1970s. You know what that means, according to unfalsifiable popular notions. Number three dead ahead, and I do mean dead.

Summer’s Lease Hath All Too Short a Date

Posted on August 31, 2023 by admin

Adios, August. The black-eyed Susans are looking a little wilted, and the hibiscus are thin, but golden rod is on the way (and ragweed, I assume). Last night’s “blue moon” was a nice full moon, which we took note of when walking the dog. Back on September 5.

Last week, after walking the dog on a particularly steamy evening at Volkening Lake, I used my crummy camera to document her panting, because why not. Sometimes the crummy camera takes interesting shots.

Does the procession of seasons care about our calendar? I suspect not, but September 1 is always worth a mention. In July, I had a zoom with three old friends – Dan and Rich and Steve – for first time in quite a while.

The first day of September is relevant to us, since Rich and I, who already knew each other, met Dan and Steve, who already knew each other, on September 1, 1981, and it wasn’t long before we formed a pretty tight unit.

Not long ago, I got a request from the manager of a non-hotel property I stayed at this summer, who asked for a five-star review, or whatever. I replied.

M—-,

In your previous email you asked for a top rating for your property: X, where I stayed from Y to Z. I would like to rate the place highly, but I cannot. The property itself was comfortable enough, and well located, and I had no issue with access (fortunately).

However, when I arrived at the property, I noticed that the fan was broken — it could not be turned on, as the on/off knob did nothing. These things happen; I understand that. The room was a little hot when I arrived, so I sent you an email at this address, calling your attention to the issue.

That went out at at 7:11 pm. A little later, at 8:50 pm, I sent a text message to [number] asking whether you’d received my email. In both messages, you had my phone number.

As it turned out, the room cooled down enough in the night so that the fan wasn’t really an issue.

What is an issue, is that you didn’t respond at all to my messages. Or, if you were busy, someone else you’d tasked to answer didn’t. In either case, that is a serious red flag. What if I couldn’t get in? What if the toilet had overflowed? Or some other serious problem?

In short, you must respond to your guests. Even if you’d said, I can’t get you a new fan until tomorrow, that would have been satisfactory.

I hope this was an anomaly. But I don’t know. So I’m not posting any recommendation.

Take care.

I haven’t heard from him since, and I suspect he’s learned nothing, dismissing me as a whiner. That guy, wanting service and all. Geez.

Some images from this summer, now waning. At the Getty in June.

“St. Margaret,” German, ca. 1420

Ann’s water bottle, July. Note the – yes – iconic figures.

Taken today: the last remaining creations from Yuriko’s cake class.

Caramel and pecan eclairs. They won’t last much longer.

Marathon to Sault Ste. Marie by Way of Wawa

Posted on August 21, 2023 by admin

I was pumping gas not long ago, and spotted what I took to be shiny penny on the pavement near the pump. A closer look told me it wasn’t a U.S. cent, but I didn’t ID it until I’d picked it up and eyed it when I got back in the car. Ten won, it turned out to be.

It’s the smallest currently circulating South Korean coin, both physically and in value. In theory, 10 won is worth 0.75 U.S. cents. A whopping seven and a half mills. The structure depicted is the Dabotap pagoda, a southeast-coast relic of the ancient kingdom of Silla, which lorded over most of the peninsula more than 1,000 years ago.

Back-and-forth between Korea and the U.S., and more specifically northwest suburban Chicago, is no unusual thing in our time, but still I was mildly surprised to find it — like I felt finding a New Zealand 20-cent piece. Made my day.

On the morning of August 3, I left Marathon, but not before a look at the one-room Marathon Museum, and a talk with a lanky young man who said he’d been hired just three weeks earlier to run the place, his first job out of college. He had grown up in the area, gone away for school, and only now was beginning to appreciate the history of the place, he said, as he read more and more.

Pretty refreshing, finding someone that young with an interest in history. That is an old man thing to say, of course, but anyway I was glad to hear a bit about the town, such as its origin as a prospective wood pulp mill whose development accelerated in the early 1940s when Canadian raw material extraction was deemed important to the Allied war effort. A postwar boom made Marathon into a genuine town; a wood pulp mill town that prospered until the crushing blow of the mill closing in 2009.

A public tank in Marathon.

Here’s a story of early Marathon: POW logging camps were built in the area after Canada entered the war in 1939, and on April 18, 1941, 28 German prisoners made a break for it, and many more attempted it, in a tunneling scheme worthy of The Great Escape or rather the real incident of the 1944 escape from Stalag Luft III. The goal of the prisoners at Camp X, Angler was to cross into the still-neutral United States. None made it. This article, which is serious need of an editor, nevertheless tells the tale of the long-abandoned camp not far off the modern road.

“Travellers on the Trans-Canada highway would not notice the dirt track leading south from the highway some four kilometres west of Marathon, Ontario,” the site says. “There is no sign to indicate where it leads, and no historical marker to record what happened along that track.”

This part of the Trans-Canada has more visible abandoned sites. Making a go of a business must be tough up there.

White River, Ontario has a claim on the origin of Winne-the-Pooh.

All well and good, but why do we see the Disney iteration and not one based on the illustrations by E. H. Shepard? Do you think Winnie wore a jacket at the London Zoo? No, she did not.

Wawa has more than its steel goose statue. There’s a pleasant lakeside path, for example.

On the relatively small Wawa Lake, not Superior. Just an everyday relic of the last ice age.

St. Mary Margaret Cemetery in the town (closed 1954) includes the remains of old-time Wawa-area miners. Most unmarked.

I sought out lunch at Philly Wawa Hoagie. A few days earlier, I’d heard the owner interviewed on a CBC radio show. Why not, I figured. I ordered the shawarma poutine.

How Canadian is that, eh? It was good and I barely needed to eat dinner.

Wawa features a bit more public art than the goose. Including figures all labeled “Gitchee Goomee” just on the other side of the visitor center from the goose.

A few miles out of Wawa, down a dirt road, is Magpie Scenic High Falls.

Not that high, unless you’re about to tumble over the edge. It’s the overflow spill weir of the Harris Hydroelectric Generating Station, which has a capacity of 13MW. Signs at the sight are emphatic about not climbing the thing, since spillway volume is notoriously fickle. (I’m paraphrasing.)

Nice falls, but the glory was getting there and back.

My goal for the day was Sault. Ste. Marie, Canadian side, so I pressed on. More abandoned Ontario.

A plaque about the road itself.

From the plaque, it was only an easy walk to Chippewa Falls, so I went.

Closer to Sault Ste. Marie, near the entrance of Pancake Bay Provincial Park, is a small complex of tourist shops on the Trans-Canada. I took a good look around, and confirmed that stores in this part of Canada offer a woefully small number of postcards. Too bad, there’s a lot of scenic raw material for postcards in this part of Canada.

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.

Barcelona Scraps

Posted on June 29, 2023 by admin

One of these days, we might have a string of holidays and quasi-holidays from Juneteenth to July 4, the warm equivalent of Christmas to New Year’s Day. Anyway, back on July 9 or so.

Not as much smoke today, though it is still an air pollution action day, according to the NWS. Curious term. You’d think it would be an inaction day, at least as far as outdoors activity is concerned.

Barcelona city trucks. Specifically, neteja (cleaning).

The Temple d’August, which is tucked away on a narrow street in the Gothic Quarter.

The only Roman ruins we saw on the trip. Toyed with the idea of going to Tarragona to visit its extensive ruins, but that didn’t happen.

“The uniform columns of the Temple of Augustus inside are 9 metres tall and comprise an imposing relic of one of the temples from Barcelona’s Forum, which stood on a corner site at the rear,” Visit Barcelona says. “The temple was built in the 1st century BC and, as its name suggests, it was dedicated to the worship of Emperor Augustus…. The temple was reconstructed by the architect Puig i Cadafalch in the early 20th century.”

La Rambla, near one end. The end near the ocean.

Columbus still looks out to sea at that point, as he has done since 1888. Monument a Colom, the maps call it, and efforts to take it down have been unsuccessful so far.

There was also a lot of construction in the area, with blocked off sections. I can’t see a sign like that in Spain and not be reminded of no pasarán!

The context is just a little different in this case, however. “Do not pass,” the dictionaries tell me, as opposed the more emphatic will not pass!

I expected to see fast food in Barcelona, but Five Guys was nevertheless a surprise, across the street from Sagrada Familia. Five Guys’ web site tells me that there are currently seven locations in the city, and 28 in Spain all together, with 13 of those in greater Madrid.

Model of Jesus’ head, on display in the small museum in the basement of Sagrada Família.

Cava sangria.

“This variation of sangria called Sangria de Cava in Spanish is made with the sparkling wine Cava, which can be white or rosé,” says Allrecipes. “The name Cava is a protected designation of origin in the European Union, which means that only sparkling wine produced in certain areas of Spain may be sold under that name. To make Cava Sangria, you can use another sparkling white wine instead. The rest of the ingredients is pretty similar to sangria. Cava Sangria often includes orange liqueur.”

Stickers on a wall in Barcelona. A common thing to see. No Buc-ee’s sticker. Not yet.

I took a picture of someone taking a picture of seemingly uninterested musicians, in Parc de la Ciutadella.

Sometimes you’d see the independence flag. Not that often, however. The latest effort at independence fizzled, after all.

Near Palau Güell, you can find the Gaudi Supermercat, Art Gaudi Souvenirs, and the Hotel Gaudi.

Not everything in the area had Gaudi’s name slapped on it. If we’d been hungry, we might have bought kebabs from this fellow.

Elsewhere, more Barcelona flowers.

Finally, manhole covers. Like Dublin, Barcelona had some good manhole covers.

Which is tapa de clavegueram in Catalan, at least according to automated online translation. Now you know.

Basilica de Santa Maria del Mar

Posted on June 15, 2023 by admin

Scenes from a Barcelona grocery store.

Wasn’t a very big one. One of the many 24/7 jobs in the Eixample district.

I like that brand name, Fiesta Brava. Best to translate, Wild Party? Could be. Of course, the store had much more than sangria and boxed wine. Prices might be comparable, but I’d say the few we visited were a cut above U.S. convenience stores in selection.

I’ve read that sangria is considered a drink for tourists, but I have to wonder. I expect it’s mostly Catalans visiting these grocery stores and availing themselves of those rows of sangria bottles.

This is the entry at enciclopedia.cat about one Berenguer de Montagut, machine (Google) translated from Catalan.

Master of works

He worked preferentially in Manresa, where the New Bridge project is attributed to him (1318?); in 1322 he directed the works of the Carmelite convent and from 1328 he was master major of the seat. In Barcelona he contracted, with R. Despuig, the project of the church of Santa Maria del Mar (1329). Later, with Pere Baró, he began the construction of the sanctuary of Santa Maria de Lledó.

I find it astonishing that even the name of the man who – designed – oversaw construction – both, probably – of such an edifice as the basilica Santa Maria del Mar – is known at all. But apparently it is. Still, he didn’t do it alone.

“The neighbourhood’s inhabitants poured all their efforts into building… Santa Maria del Mar, successfully completing it in only 55 years,” says a surprisingly well-written item on the basilica, published in English by a Barceló Hotel Group, of all entities, which also notes that Santa Maria del Mar has been featured in recent novels, and a Netflix series.

“Although this monumental work was overseen by Berenguer de Montagut and Ramon Despuig, the real credit must go to the residents of La Ribera [the surrounding neighborhood] and, in particular, the bastaixos — in other words, those who carried on their own backs the stone from which the basilica was built. The stone had been brought from the royal quarry, located on the Hill of Montjuïc and transported by boat to the vicinity of the church.”

That’s the entrance, but for tourists (as opposed to parishioners), it was the exit. We entered from behind the sanctuary.

But soon enough, the vault appears overhead.

Looking back into the nave.

The chapels aren’t closed off.

The basilica has stood since the 14th century. It abides. Considering the vicissitudes of Barcelonan history, quite a feat. Another line from EB (1929) on Barcelona, on the political violence of the modern period: “ [E]specially serious were the uprisings of 1835, when 11 convents were destroyed, and of the “tragic week” in 1909, when over 60 churches and religious buildings disappeared from the city’s architectural heritage.”

And of course, 1929 Barcelona was completely unaware of other things to come, and soon.

Translated from the basilica’s web site: “One of the most important defeats [sic, incidents] took place at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, when the basilica burned down [sic, was seriously damaged] after a group of anarchists caused a fire there. Part of the baroque altar, some of the stained glass, numerous elements of furniture and an important part of the archives disappeared under the flames.”

Also worth mentioning: the 14th century was one of the prosperous periods in the city’s history, as a port doing well on trade from around the Mediterranean. Just the sort of place to set your historical fiction.

A look at the floor.

If I went to a modern headstone maker and asked for this design, would he or she do it? I wonder, but I’m also certain I’d never actually do that.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Food & Beverage