Category Archives: Holidays

Divers Christmas Trees

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Time to bring a pine into our home and festoon it with lights and baubles. Which we did on Friday.

Liily & Ann Dec 11, 2015My participation, beyond buying the tree and physically bringing it inside, was fairly modest this year.

Dec 11, 2015On Saturday we went downtown, enjoying a cloudy but amazingly mild day — about 60 F. One of the things to see downtown in December are various Christmas trees.

The city of Chicago moved its tree from Daley Plaza to Millennium Park this year (oddly enough, the tree has its own Wiki page).

Chicago Christmas Tree 2015Behind the tree are the curves of the Pritzker Pavilion. That would be something to adorn with lights, but maybe the logistics of getting it done would be too daunting.

The splendid Rookery lobby had a tree as well.

Rookery Christmas Tree 2015As did Pioneer Plaza, which is just south of the Tribune Tower.

Pioneer Plaza Christmas Tree 2015The tree at Union Station wasn’t particularly interesting.
Union Station Chicago ceiling 2015Better were the vaulted ceilings.

How the Whos Really Dealt With the Grinch

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Ann and I decided to watch one of this year’s airings of How the Grinch Stole Christmas! last night, which, except for the commercials interrupting in places not originally intended for that purpose, was worth a watch, as always. I may or may not have seen the show on December 18, 1966, when it first aired, but I did watch it most years during the early ’70s, and occasionally since then.

This time it occurred to me just how forgiving the Whos really were. Not only did they welcome Christmas with song despite having no presents or toys (and no food), when the Grinch returned all of that, they didn’t toss him in the Whoville jail for burglary.

Or worse. Naturally, I had to come up with an alternate ending.

The Whos organized a posse with care
And tracked the Grinch down near his lair.
You’ve stolen our presents, from largest to least,
You’ve grabbed our Who pudding, and glommed our roast beast.
They hit him hard in the name of their town,
They kicked his shins and knocked him down.
And without a word or even a sniff
The Who posse tossed the Grinch over the cliff.

An El Niño Winter?

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Some years, December comes in with the kind of snow we had before Thanksgiving. This year, rain as November ended and December began. El Niño?

I can’t pretend to understand exactly how that works, but I do defer to NOAA on the matter of the impact of El Niño on North America: “Seasonal outlooks generally favor below-average temperatures and above-median precipitation across the southern tier of the United States, and above-average temperatures and below-median precipitation over the northern tier of the United States.”

As a northern-tier location, so far we haven’t had below-median precipitation, but it has been warmer than usual. Suits me.

Other marks of the season, recently spotted in the neighborhood, include creeping Christmas lights. They started appearing just before Thanksgiving and have accelerated since. I expect a rush to put them up next weekend. The neighbors across the street have them up already. A few blocks away, someone did the full Griswold on their house, as a few people do: hundreds of lights everywhere, inflatables, glowing Santas, reindeer, elves, “Nutcracker Suite” characters, and a Nativity setup that might be visible from space.

It’s enough so far that I brought the lights in from the garage, for testing. That makes me ask all over again, how can simple strings become so tangled? Also, three of the four strings lit again after 11 months or so. One did not wake up, like the woman astronaut in the original Planet of the Apes.

Thanksgiving & The Days After ’15

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On the whole, Thanksgiving outside was gray and rainy, but pleasantly warm for this time of the year. The days afterward were drier but much chillier, though not quite freezing.

Pictured: an all-too-common meal snapshot, in this case most of my Thanksgiving dinner. Note the artless presentation. I did that myself. I don’t remember what the plastic fork was doing there, but I will assert that we used metal utensils.
Thanksgiving chow '15The ham came from a warehouse store, while Lilly prepared the various starches, with Ann’s assistance. She combined four or five different cheeses for the macaroni and cheese. It isn’t Thanksgiving without that, she said, and it was the star attraction of the plate. For those who fret about such things, there was a green item on the menu, too: green beans, which didn’t make into the picture, but did make it into my stomach.

Once again, Martinelli’s sparkling cider was the main drink — original and cranberry/apple — though we also opened a bottle of wine we bought at a winery near Traverse City in 2007. I’d post the name of the wine, but that would involve going out to the refrigerator in the garage, where it’s now stored, and reading the label. It was a pretty good Riesling.

Some people shop on the Friday after Thanksgiving. That’s never been my ambition. My ambition is to do as close to nothing that day as possible. Days like that are very rare. This year I almost achieved it. Almost, but not quite.

Which reminds me of this exchange in Office Space.

Michael Bolton: You were supposed to come in on Saturday. What were you doing?

Peter Gibbons: Michael, I did nothing. I did absolutely nothing, and it was everything that I thought it could be.

On Saturday, we watched Vancouver Asahi, a Japanese movie on TV about the baseball team of that name, composed of Japanese-Canadian players during its heyday in the 1930s, when there used to be a Japantown in Vancouver. Not bad on the whole, though about 30 minutes too long. It also had the virtue of being about something I’d never heard of before.

After the movie ended, at about 11:30 in the evening, I went out on the deck and could see Orion to the south, parading across a nice clear sky. Never mind the solstice. Winter’s here.

Post-Thanksgiving Days of a Previous Decade

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Sunday, Nov 22, 2015

Most years the first snow’s a light dusting, but this year full-blown winter precipitation started falling late on Friday and well into Saturday, leaving us with about a foot of wet, heavy snow. Wet probably because it was barely cold enough to freeze, but it did stick to every tree and bush. Turns out the official amount on Saturday — 11.2 inches at O’Hare, where the NWS takes its Chicago-area measurement — was the most for a November snowfall since 1895.

Nov 21, 2015Friday, Nov 24, 2006

Another major holiday come and gone. Now it’s Buy Nothing Day. So far, I’ve bought nothing today, unless you count electricity, natural gas, phone service, etc. I don’t think even the most dyed-in-the-wool believer in the “America as World Pig” model of global economics would shut off his utilities for the day after Thanksgiving.

I’m no purist when it comes to Buy Nothing Day, since I have a strong suspicion I’m going to invest in fried poultry in a few hours, to feed the whelps and my nephew Sam, who’s visiting from Cincinnati. No whelp he, since he’s 23.

Yesterday’s feast was reasonably conventional: big bird, smashed spuds, various breads, even that all-North American berry, cranberries. The only peculiarities involved Sam, who is peculiar in his eating habits and ate a species of Polish sausage instead of bird meat; and our choice of dessert: a pie of no sort, but instead cream puffs.

Lilly, who just turned 9, ate as heartily as the rest of us, but at about 9 pm last night threw everything up in the vicinity of the downstairs toilet. No one else here was afflicted in the same way, not yet. Such are the stuff of special holiday memories. She felt better this morning, fortunately. [But the virus wasn’t through with us.]

Wednesday, Nov 29, 2006

Early this morning, after I’d woken up once to hear the rain on the roof, I returned to the imaginal realm and dreamed of flying – not too common a variety of dream for me, but it happens occasionally. Flying as if I were a kite, tethered to a moving train far, far below through a broad prairie landscape. That was only a part of an elaborate, vivid dream, the likes of which I only have a few times a year. I have plenty of other dreams, of course, pleasant or anxious, but more pedestrian. (The Japanese verb associated with dreaming translates as “see.” I like that. I saw a dream last night.)

Friday, Dec 1, 2006

A foot of snow today, and you’d think that would quiet things down outside. It did, for a while, since the blanket of snow muffled the streets and closed the airports beginning a little after midnight. I was up briefly at 3 am or so and wished I could leave the windows open, since the traffic noise was gone. But as soon as the sun came up this morning, rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr went the snowblowers. And traffic started again.

The National Museum of Mexican Art’s 2015 Day of the Dead Exhibition

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In January 1990, when I knew I was leaving Chicago and not sure I’d ever move back, I spent some time visiting local places I hadn’t gotten around to. That included a few smaller museums, such as the DuSable Museum of African-American History, the Balzekas Museum of Lithuanian Culture, and what was then known as the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum. Now it’s the National Museum of Mexican Art, but the museum is still located in Harrison Park in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago. I made it back there on Saturday for first time in 25 years.

Mainly I wanted to see the museum’s notable Día de los Muertos exhibit, which it mounts every October through December. Who can resist colorful skulls, in two and three dimensions?

Day of the Dead 2015Day of the Dead 2015But there was much more. “Come celebrate the Day of the Dead with the works of over 90 artists of Mexican descent from both sides of the border,” the museum web site notes. Among other works, “thirteen ofrendas and installations were created to remember distinguished artists and members of the community alike. Folk art, paintings, and sculptures comprise the largest annual exhibition of Day of the Dead in the U.S.”

The ofrenda (“offering”)  consists of objects arrayed on a ritual altar for the Day of the Dead, to honor someone who has died. The one that really caught my attention was for El Santo of Lucha Libre fame.
El SantoThe title of the ofrenda in full: “Santo in the World of the Dead: Altar to the Silver Masked Wrestler/Santo en el mundo de los muertos: ofrenda al enmascarado de plata,” by Juan Javier and Gabrielle Pescador of Michigan.

I had only the vaguest notion of El Santo, so I read more about him: Rodolfo Guzmán Huerta (1917-1984), one of the biggest stars of Lucha Libre. It’s too bad that some of his many movies, dubbed clumsily in English, didn’t show up on Saturday afternoon TV when I was young. Such as Santo vs. las Mujeres Vampiro, a poster for which is part of the ofrenda. After all, we did get the likes of The Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy on English-language TV in ’70s San Antonio.

Not to worry, in our time the original version of Santo vs. las Mujeres Vampiro is posted in its entirety on YouTube. If you watch it, and maybe a few other Santo clips, you might start getting YouTube commercials in Spanish, which I find easier to ignore.

(Something that made me smile from the Wiki entry on The Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy: “The movie shows a notable lack of awareness of Mesoamerican civilizations…” There’s a shocker.)

Another large ofrenda was for a woman in a rather different walk of life, though a public persona all the same: Irene C. Hernandez (1916-1997), who was on the Cook County Board of Commissioners from 1974 to ’94.
Day of the Dead 2015The work was created by a number of artists, including students at Irene C. Hernandez Middle School in Chicago. A lot of skeletons have their parts to play.
Day of the Dead, 2015Other ofrendas and installations honored the likes of Anthony Quinn, Selena, Brooklyn artist Ray Abeyta, and notable Chicagoans like Soledad “Shirley” Velásquez. Considering that the theme is death, they’re remarkably life-affirming.

July Back Yard Flowers &c.

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Time for a summer interlude. Back to posting around July 19.

What this country needs is another summer holiday, sometime between Independence Day and Labor Day, and I nominate July 20, to honor the Moon landing. Or the fourth Monday in July, since the 20th is a little close to July 4 — a  Monday holiday to honor the astronauts’ return on July 24, recalling the bit about “returning safely to the Earth,” since the lunar mission wouldn’t have been complete without that.

To keep the accounting snits happy (we can’t afford another holiday!), Columbus Day can be de-holidayed. It’s truly the most insignificant of federal holidays anyway, whatever you think of the Admiral of the Ocean Sea.

New Horizons will fly by Pluto during my interlude. This week’s “glitch” was alarming, but the craft seems to have recovered. (I like the Wired caption: “Among with gobs of planetary science, New Horizons is capturing pictures of Pluto that are increasingly less crappy.”) I will be watching the news closely. Yesterday I came across theses proposed names for geographic features on the Ninth Planet and its moons. Interesting lists. The IAU might not be so keen on fictional explorers and their vessels, however.

Chanced recently across another musical act that I’d pay money to see (and there aren’t that many), namely the Ukulele Band of Great Britain. Pretty much on the strength of their version of the theme from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Too bad the closest they’ll be to me this year is Muncie, Ind., and that isn’t close enough.

Here’s some speculation: Treasury Secretary Jack Lew’s playing a deep game with the $10 and $20 bills. He proposed making Alexander Hamilton second banana on his note to elicit a wave of support for the first Treasury secretary — at the expense of Andrew Jackson. A common notion now seems to be, “Go ahead, get rid of Jackson, but not Hamilton!” Previously, the idea of tossing Jackson in favor of a woman wasn’t so warmly received. But now…

This is a recent headline that amused me: Google Self-Driving Cars Head to Austin, from PC Magazine, which further says that “the company has selected the city to be the next testing location for its autonomous Lexus SUVs…” Austin’s a very safe choice, I figure, especially if you turn the vehicle loose on I-35, where it won’t move very fast, if at all.

Just ahead of rain earlier this week, I went out to take some pictures of flowers. I went no further than my back yard.
July 2015July 2015July 2015July 2015July 2015O Summer,
Oft pitched’st here thy goldent tent, and oft
Beneath our oaks hast slept, while we beheld
With joy thy ruddy limbs and flourishing hair.

July Idles

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This year was a stay-close-to-home Fourth of July. That is, metro Chicago. Some are, some aren’t. We returned to our old haunts in the western suburbs on Saturday night to see the Westmont fireworks, from the vantage of Ty Warner Park. It’s always a good show.

That was a high point of the weekend. So was taking my daughters to Half Price Books, at their request, on the evening of the 3rd.

The low point of the weekend was walking the dog on the 4th, not long before we left for the fireworks show. Late afternoon, that is. Part of our usual route takes us along a path between a dense row of bushes and a small patch of land sporting enough trees to block the sky, when they have leaves. Pretty soon I re-discovered its mid-summer nature as Mosquito Alley. The mossies were especially forceful when I was cleaning up after the dog.

Complaining about mosquitoes, though, is just carping. I’d rather look out of my back door and see this (an early July shot).

Schaumburg, July 2015Than this (an early January shot).

Schaumburg, Jan 2015Bugs aside, I spent a fair amount of time over the weekend on the deck reading The H.L. Hunley by Tom Chaffin (2008), a fine book about the submarine of that name, along with its predecessor vessels (the Pioneer and the American Diver). Or, as I learned reading the book, the “submarine boat,” which is a 19th-century usage. The Confederates gave underwater warfare a shot, but it turned out Age of Steam technology — as inventive as it clearly was — wasn’t quite up to the task. Not without killing more submarine boat crew than Union sailors.

Also, it’s another reason to visit Charleston, to see the vessel, now an artifact on display at the Warren Lasch Conservation Center. Not that I’d need any more reasons for a visit.

A Forgotten Thread About Florida, Remembered

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Posting again on Tuesday. Memorial Day’s a little far ahead of Decoration Day this year, but because of the flux of the calendar, Memorial Day will drift back to May 30 next year (and in ’22 and ’33, just to look ahead). I didn’t realize it until recently, but Sen. Daniel Inouye was eager to return Memorial Day to May 30, introducing resolutions on the matter repeatedly until his death.

Warm again after a couple of ridiculously cold days. It wasn’t freezing — that would be beyond ridiculous, into the insane — but I could see my breath yesterday. Today I sat on my deck in the pleasantly warm air.

I don’t look at Facebook constantly, but when I do, odd things pop up sometimes. Today the system reminded me that “Six years ago, you posted this.”

My first thought: I’ve been using Facebook for more than six years? Tempus fugit.

ApalachOystersThe comment I posted then, along with a small scan of a postcard I’ve reposted here, was: “The best fried oysters I’ve ever had, at the Apalachicola Seafood Grill, Apalachicola, Florida, May 2009.”

My old friend Dan, a resident of Birmingham, Ala., these days, replied: “The Grill has been there for as long as I can remember. I can remember going there 40 years ago. And, as I recall, if you like flounder, they do an incredible job with it as well.”

It’s still there, if reviews on Yelp, Google+, Urban Spoon and the like are to be believed. Good to know.

I answered: “I need to explore Miami more, but I’ve pretty much decided the panhandle’s my favorite part of the state.”

Geof Huth then chimed in: “Hey, that picture reminds me of a postcard I received recently.”

Dan: “By comparison, Miami is soulless.”

I’d say Miami has a really different kind of soul. Pending further investigation.

One more comment from me: “Postcard? What a coincidence. Rich F. got a card just like it, too, since he used to serve discount oysters to me at an oyster bar in Nashville.

“Miami Beach sure was interesting, but you have to like art deco.”

Dan: “and shell pink…”

I might still have that postcard. I have a box of Places I’ve Been Cards, started more than 10 years ago. Back when I worked downtown, I had my own office — an increasingly retro concept; I’m glad I don’t work in an open floor-plate office — and I thumb-tacked a few cards on one of the walls, a couple of places I’d recently been. Then I put up a few more. And then even more. The only commonality was that I’d been to the place. It got to be a few dozen eventually.

When I had to leave that office, I took all the cards down and boxed them. Since then, I’ve added to the collection with cards upon return from a place, mindful always to have a few extra, and with cards I find at a resale or antique shop representing places I went before I stared collecting cards.