The amount of Thanksgiving leftovers, a week after the holiday, is down to a single container, a mix of stuffing and mashed potatoes. It has taken some eating to get to this point.
A week ago, our plates were full like so:
The protein this year, tilapia. On this plate, stuffing transitions to potatoes and that transitions to macaroni and cheese, something like the snow-ice-rain progression on recent weather maps.
November has been much like December so far this year, and occasionally too much like January. On Saturday morning, the view of the back yard was like so.
That’s not even the first snow that stuck. That happened more than a week ago. It melted, but even so, no snow at all till December would be better.
The dog doesn’t care.
Sometimes I get a press release so completely out of left field that I have to wonder about how I got on the list. Here’s a sample of one that arrived recently:
“55.6% of UK consumers surveyed stated that they intend to purchase at least one advent calendar this year, up from 53.4% last year, says GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.
“While chocolate advent calendars remain the most popular type purchased, with 73.6% of advent calendar shoppers stating their intent to purchase this product, this is down on last year as consumers purchase more extravagant advent calendars as a way to treat themselves or others ahead of the Christmas festivities…
“For retailers considering launching an advent calendar, more focus should be placed on non-chocolate advent calendars, with both beauty and alcoholic advent calendars increasing in popularity this year particularly as more brands and celebrities introduce their own advent calendars. The average spend on advent calendars is also up year-on-year highlighting the boost in sales that advent calendars can provide.”
I assume that advent calendars are a more important holiday sales item for British retailers than U.S. retailers, though of course they’re a known quantity here.
Am I also to understand that British retailers are trying to up their game when it comes to advent calendars? Apparently so. A quick search for “celebrity advent calendars” turns up the likes of this. Naturally, the likes of The Guardian carped about luxe calendars.
Probably the advent calendar cartel — it has to be a cartel — wants more Americans to buy them, too. Aldi, which is owned by shadowy German billionaires, is rolling out wine advent calendars for the U.S. market for the first time this year. A thing that makes you go hmm.
On Sunday morning I went downtown to the University of Illinois at Chicago campus and attended a short ceremony to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Armistice, held by the university’s Honors College as the end of a series of events marking the occasion.
My old friend Neal mentioned it last summer and as it happened, Michele, his wife, organized the November 11 event. She did a good job.
The event included the posting and retrieval of the colors, some short remarks, poetry from the period, and of course at 11:00 a moment of silence, followed by the playing of Taps.
Michele read the two poems. This is her preparing to read.
One was “Grass” by Carl Sandburg, dating from 1918.
Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work —
I am the grass; I cover all.
And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we now?
I am the grass.
Let me work.
Also, verse by Dame Mary Gilmore, lesser known in this country, but renowned in Australia. Also 1918.
They are not dead; not even broken;
Only their dust has gone back home to the earth:
For they — the essential they — shall have rebirth
Whenever a word of them is spoken.
About 30 people attended the event, which was held at the campus’ Memorial Grove, a renovated green space. A small tent had been erected in case of rain, but Armistice Day this year in Chicago was sunny, though fairly cold, just above freezing. So I parked myself just outside the tent, where I could sit in the sun.
Guillaume Lacroix, Consul General of France in Chicago, said a few words, echoing those of President Marcon during Armistice Day ceremonies at the Arc de Triomphe only a few hours earlier. Words about the dangers of nationalism, which doubled as a pointed rebuke against you-know-who, a subtext that was lost on no one.
Also speaking were a representative of the Italian consulate and the dean of the Honors College, Ralph Keen.
A Peking lilac (Syringa pekinensis) tree had been planted near the sidewalk a few days earlier, next to the new memorial. During the event, the memorial was covered with black cloth topped by poppies.
The Morton Arboretum says that “The Peking lilac is a dependable urban tree and a great choice even for parking lot, boulevard, and parkway plantings. Native to Asia, it is both hardy and beautiful, with attractive, amber-colored, peeling bark. In early summer, when many shrubs and trees are done blooming, it has large, creamy-white, honey-scented flower clusters.”
Toward the end of the event, the French Consul General, the dean of the college, and the Italian representative lifted the black cloth from the memorial.
A granite block with a burnished aluminum plaque.
According to Neal, the block had once been part of the former skywalk system around campus. When the skywalk was dismantled in the early 1990s, the removed materials were stored. They are still being recycled for newer structures, such as the memorial stone but also some nearby benches installed when the Memorial Grove was renovated a few years ago.
Has it been 100 years? That milestone might merely be a quirk of the fact that we use base 10, but I still think it’s worth an extra measure of reflection on the man-made cataclysm that came to a halt on Armistice Day.
But the Great War wasn’t that long ago. Not really. All of my grandparents were alive for it — were grown men and women, and in one case, my mother’s father, in France when it ended.
I took this picture a few years ago at Cantigny Park, former estate of Robert McCormick, who was so deeply affected by his experience in the Great War that he preferred to be known as Col. McCormick even in civilian life, and named his property after the Battle of Cantigny, in which he participated.
I probably didn’t mean to capture Ann in that picture, but I did. A child amusing herself within sight of a memorial to bravery in the face of a bloodletting she could not imagine, and that her father can only dimly imagine, as informed by books and movies.
Somehow, though, I know November 11, 1918, is a special moment in the history of mankind, and we would do well to remember it. In Breakfast of Champions (1973), Kurt Vonnegut wrote a remarkable passage about Armistice Day:
It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind.
Heavy rains today, but nothing like the Florida panhandle’s getting. Looks like heavy damage in the area.
I have some fond memories of the likes of Seaside and Apalachicola and Port St. Joe. I even think we stopped for lunch in Mexico Beach, which is where Michael’s eye came ashore today. That town is essentially a cluster of buildings along US 98 as it runs next to the ocean. Mexico Beach might not be there any more.
Here in the North, geese forage for food in the suburbs, making their noise and leaving their droppings.
Halloween decorations are going up. I haven’t spotted many inflatables, which is a welcome reversal of that trend. A deflating of it. Most of the decorations don’t involve lights, but there are a few on our block.
This particular house has always been decked out for Halloween, including the faux cemetery. The residents have never been inclined toward inflatables.
This year I decided to watch the Schaumburg Labor Day Parade, whose name pretty much sums up the time and place (no one else in my family was interested). Luck was with the parade and parade-goers this year. The parade was held in the morning, under partly cloudy skies and in only somewhat hot and humid conditions. A few hours later, intense thunderstorms rolled through.
The parade featured a thin selection of local politicos — I expect state reps and senators and such had union picnics or rallies to go to — public service equipment, local businesses, veterans, nonprofits, clubs and two high school marching bands. None of the floats were that elaborate and sometimes there were minutes-long gaps in the movement of the parade. Ah, well. The bar’s a little lower on free entertainment.
The mayor of Schaumburg (actually village president) and some trustees came by first in golf cards, and a while later came the fire equipment.
Both the Schaumburg and Hoffman Estates FDs were represented.
An organization I knew nothing about.
Instead of forays into the wilderness, Sea Scouts take forays onto the water. A different kind of wilderness, I suppose. These days, co-ed.
The odd float of the Volkening Heritage Farm at Spring Valley. Complete with plants and an oom-pah band to celebrate Schaumburg’s German past.
Flag girls. They heralded the approach of the Schaumburg High School marching band.
A different sort of band.
The Memories Entertainment float. According to their sign, the band features Buck-A-Roo & the Fabulous Memories. For this parade, they were dressed as clowns and playing ’70s rock standards.
More flag girls.
This time, ahead of the Conant High School marching band.
When the band paused for a moment near me, I noticed a number of adults moving up and down the lines with squirt bottles, squirting liquid into the mouths of the band members. Water, I assume. I also saw one fellow squirt water on the back of the neck of a band member.
That struck me as odd. Forty years ago, I was in a marching band and we marched in a parade every year in April in San Antonio. Not terrifically hot, but always warm enough, and no one gave us water. I feel a curmudgeonly moment coming on. We marched in the heat and we got dehydrated and we liked it.
Back to posting on September 4, after Labor Day. You’d think a holiday of that name would be time for “Joe Hill” or the like, though May Day’s really the time. Time to lounge around on the deck out back, provided it isn’t raining, which it has been a lot lately.
Actually, it’s the dog who uses the deck for its fullest lounging potential.
Use the deck while you can. Soon enough it’s just going to be a snow and ice collector.
Last year, we went to see the Chicago Chinatown New Year Parade. It was a colorful event. Banners, dragons, bands, etc. The weather was good enough this year — above freezing, no rain — to go again, but instead we opted for the Argyle Street Lunar New Year Parade on the North Side of Chicago on Saturday. I wondered how it would compare.
The short answer: it was a lot shorter. Fewer of everything. Still, not a bad parade. At 1 pm it started, fittingly, on Argyle Street, just west of the El tracks that run over the street. asia on argyle, as the letters just below the tracks say. I took the picture after the parade, when the street got back to normal.
From there, the parade headed east on Argyle; we stood just east of the El tracks. Argyle is the focus of what used to be known as New Chinatown, but in fact the neighborhood is more Vietnamese than anything else, with plenty of Vietnamese restaurants, grocery stores and shops. I’m a little surprised the event isn’t more specifically Tet.
Dragons started things off.
Followed by politicos. I think.
Various floats.
A few colorful banners.
One band, from the Admiral Hyman Rickover Naval Academy High School.
With flag girls.
Some veterans.
And a costumed character or two.
Guess he’s the school mascot. A cat walking in a Year of the Dog parade.
Something I didn’t know until recently: Mexico City, which has more autonomy than it used to, is no longer in the Distrito Federal, which it had been since 1824. Two years ago, the federal government of Mexico signed off on a name change, which the city’s government had wanted, to simply Ciudad de México, abbreviated CDMX.
On Wednesday, December 27, Lilly and I flew to Mexico City, returning on New Year’s Day 2018 — or actually early January 2, since the return flight was late. We stayed at a hotel in the Zona Rosa, just south of Paseo de la Reforma, a major thoroughfare, but also within walking distance of the Roma neighborhood.
We spent our time as dyed-in-the-wool, first-time tourists, seeing impressive places and structures, visiting grand museums, walking along interesting streets, eating a variety of food, taking in as much detail as possible.
Considering that Mexico City is a vast megalopolis — all too apparent from the air as we arrived in the daylight and left at night — we experienced only the slimmest sliver. But an endlessly fascinating sliver.
Adding immeasurably to the trip was the fact that my old friend Tom Jones — known him nearly 45 years — was in Mexico City at the same time. In fact, I’d suggested the trip to him on the phone last summer, when I called him to hear about his experience in seeing the eclipse. He’d been a fair number of other places in Mexico over the years, more than I have, but not Mexico City, so he was open to the suggestion.
So the three of us went a lot of places together in the city. Tom has an impulse for photobombing.
The first place Lilly and I went, not long after we had arrived, was the enormous Zocalo (formally the Plaza de la Constitution), which was packed with holiday revelers enjoying a temporary ice-skating rink and amusement-park slides. We circumambulated the square, said to be the second largest in the world after Red Square, and spent some time inside the vaulting Catedral Metropolitana, which opens onto one side of the Zocalo.
The second day, with Tom joining us, was for large museums in the even larger Bosque de Chapultepec, the city’s equivalent of Central Park: the Castillo de Chapultepec, a grand palace along European lines and now a history museum; and the Museo Nacional de Antropologia, an epic museum devoted to the many and varied cultures of pre-Columbian Mexico (or more precisely, pre-Cortez).
All that makes for tired feet, so the third day was less intense. Even so, we got a good look at a small part of the charming Coyoacan neighborhood, which includes the Museo Frida Kahlo. The lines were too long to visit Frida, but not to get into the Museo Casa Leon Trotsky a few blocks away.
The next day, December 30, was exhausting, but completely worth all the energy and money we spent, because we got to visit the renowned Teotihuacan, which is to the northeast of the city, in the State of Mexico, and climb its pyramids. From there, we went back into the city to see the Basílica de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe — the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe — a pilgrimage site I’ve been curious about since I encountered The Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Des Plaines.
And as if that wasn’t enough for a day, we returned to Castillo de Chapultepec on the evening of the 30th, along with four of Tom’s friends from Austin who were also visiting Mexico City, for an outdoor performance by the astonishingly talented dancers, singers and musicians of the Ballet Folklórico de México.
On the last day of 2017, we slept fairly late, but were out and about after noon, for a visit to the Palacio de Belles Artes, a striking building with art exhibits and some astonishing murals, especially the Diego Riveras. More Rivera murals were in the offing at the Palacio National, the last large site we visited.
We were tired on the evening of the 31st, but not too tired to walk a few blocks from our hotel to the Paseo de la Reforma. One of the city’s two main New Year’s celebrations was being held around the Angel de la Independencia, a famed gold-colored statue atop a tall column in the center of a Paseo de la Reforma traffic circle. The event featured live music by well-known (I was told) Mexican bands, a countdown just like at Times Square, except in Spanish, and then fireworks: a bang-up way, literally and figuratively, to start 2018.
Something I didn’t know before, courtesy of the National Christmas Tree Association: “Christmas Trees were added to the federal agriculture census in 1997, when the responsibility for census shifted from the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS). The agriculture census is conducted every five years.
The 2012 Census of Agriculture results were released by USDA in May 2014.”
That means that for this year’s census, we’ll have to wait until 2019. Then we’ll know for sure whether there was a Christmas tree shortage this year, as has been reported.
The association says: “Recent price increases are due to a tighter supply of harvestable size Christmas trees. The current tight supply situation results from fewer trees being planted 7 to 10 years ago. This was due to a combination of excess supply at that time and the recession both pushing prices downward, along with some growers exiting the business.”
I will say that all of the Christmas tree lots I’ve visited in recent years are gone. Even the nursery that sells trees not too far from my home has none this year. But it didn’t have too many last year.
So this year I went to a big box store, my last resort when it comes to trees. I was late anyway, only getting around to it on Monday. Even that store only had a few. The price was right, though: about $16 plus tax for something not so different from last year’s. Guess the store was trying to get rid of its remaining inventory.
Back to the census. In 2012, there were 309,356 acres of Christmas tree farms nationwide, down from 446,996 in 2002. That could indeed help account for a paucity of trees this year. The number-one state when it comes to acres of Christmas trees under cultivation? Oregon, at more than 53,600. North Carolina is next at about 40,300 acres and then the state I’d have guessed at number one: Michigan, nearly 38,000 acres.
Wyoming is at the bottom at zero acres. Nevada, North Dakota and Oklahoma are all listed as (D) with no explanation. Maybe the data is incomplete. Remarkably, some 52 acres of Christmas trees were cultivated in Hawaii in 2012.
One more thing. The motto of the National Christmas Tree Association is “It’s Christmas. Keep it real.”