A random thought today: Do the Irish bookies take bets on when and which company will be indicted next for antitrust violations? One table of odds for the U.S. and a different one for the European Union?
Not sure why I thought of that. Just one of those passing notions.
This is the day of the year, at least here in the U.S., when people get mildly irritated at the change of the clocks, because it is mildly irritating. (And traffic death stats are trotted out.) By late in the evening, everything’s just a little askew, but that goes away as the week progresses. Maybe early March is too early to switch, but do away with it all together? I’d still rather have those long summer days not end till 9 or 10 p.m. Even better, not have them ever begin at 4 a.m. or earlier. Call me picky that way.
A path I walked along about three years ago, during my visit to the storied Archer Avenue.
To the left in the image is the Illinois & Michigan Canal, relic of 1830s canal mania.
A rail line ran nearby too.
I’d make some comment about how the railroad made I&M obsolete, but that’s only partly true. The nearby Sanitary & Ship Canal eventually took its place, and is no relic. Rather, it’s a legacy of the heroic era of civil engineering (let’s put that between the Civil War and WWI), and is a waterway of commerce to this day. I&M is recreational.
Another warmish day and a not-so-cold evening. We walked the usual path around Lake V. well after dark, taking in the Moon in the cloudless sky now and then. It’s nearly full. Then I remembered that an unmanned American spaceship was due to land near its south pole; Odysseus, which might not be the most auspicious name for a traveler, but at least a noble one from classical antiquity. Maybe the next one will be Penelope or Telemachus.
When I got home, I learned that the landing was successful. Good to know.
A leftover image from “Presidents Day.”
Recently Jay sent me two of those buttons: McGovern and Carter. The others have been hanging there a while.
The Hoover button was created for a Halloween party that a company down the hall from us in the Civic Opera Building used to throw many moons ago. The event wasn’t in that building, but rather the Rookery, whose common areas are excellent for a corporate events. The Harding one I picked up at the Harding Museum in Ohio last year, and the Grillmaster button has nothing to do with U.S. presidents. It was a souvenir of St. Petersburg, Russia.
Spotted at the Schaumburg Township Library not long ago.
It used to say 2023.
“On Saturday, Sept. 23 [2023], more than 850 people gathered at our Central Library (with another 300 joining us online) to watch as we unveiled the contents of a time capsule that was placed in the cornerstone of our Library when it was built in 1998,” the library’s web site says.
I wasn’t one of them. I went to Milwaukee that day instead for Doors Open. The contents of the ’98 capsule are mildly interesting, but one of the Westinghouse Time Capsules, it isn’t. (And no horny toads or cartoon frogs.)
Still, I like the idea of time capsules, enough to bury a few myself once upon a time, including one late in the summer of 1974 in our back yard, which I wasn’t able to retrieve five years later as planned. I dug a few holes in an effort to do so, damaging some grass, which annoyed my mother, if I remember right.
A slice of late March slipped into early February today, not quite warm but certainly not cold, windy and a scattering of rain. The atmosphere was charged enough to set of the waaah-waaah lightning warning gizmo installed in the park within sight of my back yard. Hadn’t heard its bleat in months. Didn’t see any actual lightning.
Went to a local chain grocery store this evening after work, a place I go maybe once a month, though it’s only about a five-minute drive. The local grocery market is saturated. Whatever the opposite of a food desert is, the northwestern suburbs are that.
The store isn’t really local, having been owned by Big Grocery for some years now. But it keeps its legacy name, known to Chicagoans far and wide. The aisles are, of course, fully ready for the next occasion on the North American calendar.
Wait – isn’t there a helium shortage? That’s one of those things I’ve half heard about, but never looked into much. Yes and no is the answer, at least according to an article, restricted to about four paragraphs for us non-subscribers of Gas World, about the prospects for the far-flung international helium market in 2024.
“Intelligas’ assessment of the worldwide supply of helium is about 5.9 billion cubic feet (Bcf) for 2023, up from about 5.7 Bcf in 2022 – back where we were in 2021.
“We forecast that worldwide supply will be short of demand until late 2024 if the large new sources of helium come onstream. The shortage that began in early 2022 when Amur suffered explosions at its first two LNG trains is still having an impact. And history has taught those of us in the helium business that large plants typically incur delays due to unexpected technical issues. Plenty of uncertainty remains.”
Amur explosions?
Again from Gas World, about two years ago: “New information about the explosion and fire that took place at Gazprom’s Amur natural gas processing facility on 5th January [2022] indicates that helium production will remain offline for at least the next six months.”
Maybe I heard about that at the time, but other news from Russia soon eclipsed anything as pedestrian as an industrial accident.
Good ol’ Gazprom. Its name, I believe, goes back to the late Soviet era. Say what you want about the commies, they came up with some boss names sometimes.
Most of the January snow is gone, melted by rain late last week and temps above freezing most of the time since then. More above-freezing temps are forecast for the forecastable future, or another week or so. An odd thing for winter stasis, which is usually a run of days consistently below freezing, but I’m not complaining — and will be glad to be rid of January, as usual.
Another press release that isn’t in my wheelhouse came today, not even within shouting distance of my wheelhouse, unless you count the very occasional times I’ve written about stadium development. Namely, it’s about sports. Rarefied sports: The Super Bowl.
I extracted the following table from it, which reports info from a company that tracks secondary sports ticket sales. These are average ticket prices (so far) for the upcoming Super Bowl and the final averages five games before it.
2024 (49ers vs. Chiefs): $10,408
2023 (Eagles vs. Chiefs): $7,672
2022 (Rams vs. Bengals): $8,347
2021 (Bucs vs. Chiefs): $7,738
2020 (49ers vs. Chiefs): $6,705
2019 (Rams vs. Patriots): $5,629
Italics added, though I could have added them to each and every price listed, to denote how nuts I believe the figures are. Of course, ten grand isn’t what it used to be – can’t even get half of a new car for that, nor (maybe) a decent cruise to Antarctica.
Still, it’s no small sum to devote to parking yourself at football game that only occasionally lives up to its hype. At least, that’s what I hear. Somehow over the years I’ve forgotten to watch the game on TV. That might happen again if I’m not careful.
I made a point of watching the tribute to Norman Lear that was simulcast – now that’s a aging concept – on several networks this evening, at 8 Eastern/7 Central. Mostly, I was curious to see what they would do. Turned out to be about 15 seconds of a picture of him (maybe taken in the late 20th century), his name and birth and death year, indicating quite a lifespan. That was it. I wonder how many people who saw the spot knew who he was. Network audiences skew old, but even that demographic is more likely to remember his shows than him.
But he was well enough known to inspire a torrent of virtual print, so I won’t add to it, except to say too bad Hot L Baltimore didn’t last, while Good Times did. Nobody’s perfect. RIP, Mr. Lear.
Extremely crowded Chicago Christkindlmarkets of years past – mob city, as my mother used to say, not referring to gangsters – must have pushed any notion of visiting it on Monday right out of my head. But when I ambled over to the Thompson Center, I saw the market. Might as well drop in, see if the crowd was thinner. It was. A more manageable Monday in mob city. Just enough to be lively.
First, pass by the eternal flame on Daley Plaza. Dedicated since 1972 to all U.S. veterans of any kind.
Still there. Well, it is eternal. That’s not meant in a literal sense, of course, on past the heat death of the Universe, but as long as humanly possible. The upshot for the flame is that people will maintain it until its honorees have disappeared from common memory. I hope that’s some centuries at least, but who knows.
As I said, lively. It isn’t really crowded unless it’s tricky to navigate through people.
The stalls are more crowded.
Everything in that lower pic is eccentric shapes of chocolate, and pretty much the only place I was tempted to buy anything. The economic model at the market is the same as I described a few years ago: “priced in euros at a lousy exchange rate, with an extra 50 percent tacked on for good measure.”
Paper stars.
Locally themed ornaments, and pickles. Who doesn’t like Christmas pickles?
Eats.
And Paul.
His sign says, “Hi, everyone! I am Paul, the Hamburg sailor! Take a picture with me!’
Paul, huh? Are the Hamburgers having a spot of fun with that? St. Pauli is a red light district in Hamburg, after all, and while Paul here might look clean-cut, on leave I bet he’s out for beir and bumsen. Or maybe he’s a more modern sailor, and while visiting Chicago slips off to North Halsted Street sometimes.
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.
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.
Angry clouds passed by this evening. It had rained on and off all day, rain we certainly needed, and early in the evening we got treated to a heavy downpour and the sound of sirens for a few minutes. As for as official warnings, this:
The National Weather Service in Chicago has issued a
* Tornado Warning for…
Northeastern DuPage County in northeastern Illinois…
Northwestern Cook County in northeastern Illinois…
* Until 715 PM CDT.
* At 651 PM CDT, severe thunderstorms capable of producing a tornado
were located along a line extending from Schaumburg to Glendale
Heights, moving east at 30 mph.
And a NWS warning in Spanish buzzed on my phone. By 7:15, the sun was out again, shining on a drenched landscape. We’d gotten a lot of rain, but not a bit of wind. Guess that blew parallel to us.
Then: “The National Weather Service said a tornado touched down near Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport on Wednesday following warnings of severe weather for the city. A confirmed tornado was on the ground around 7 p.m., according to the National Weather Service in Chicago,” ABC News reported.
“ ‘This tornado has been touching the ground intermittently so far and is moving east. There are additional circulations along the line south of O’Hare. Seek shelter if in the warned area,’ ” the ABC article said.
“Many tornadoes have struck in the Chicago metropolitan area, and several have hit within the city limits of Chicago, according to the weather service…” ABC concluded (a spot of background or historical context: I know this kind of conclusion well, having written many).
“The deadliest formed in Palos Hills in Cook County on April 21, 1967. The twister traveled 16 miles (26 kilometers) through Oak Lawn and the south side of Chicago, killing 33 people, injuring 500 and causing more than $50 million in damage.”
Another report (NBC News) mentioned a large tornado this evening near Summit, Illinois, which is a lot further away than O’Hare.
So the threat of high winds seems to have passed, at least at my spot on the Earth. But there’s always another day.
A few more thunderstorms are forecast for the near future, but mostly it’s cerulean days ahead.
Or will that be azure days?
Tuesday should have been a fine summer day, but it turned out to be our turn. For Canadian smoke, that is. I had a busy day at the word-processing table and didn’t notice anything besides increasing overcast skies as the day progressed. By late afternoon, I saw how strange the overcast was. Like light fog near the ground, but much thicker fog skyward.
When I went out at about 6 p.m., I thought I smelled a hint of wood smoke, but later, around 8 p.m., I couldn’t smell anything, and Yuriko couldn’t either. Acclimated by that time? Maybe.
From the NWS:
From 11:19 AM (CDT), June 27, until 12:00 AM (CDT), June 29
…AIR QUALITY ALERT IN EFFECT UNTIL MIDNIGHT CDT WEDNESDAY NIGHT…
The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency forecasts Unhealthy (U) for fine particulate matter for the Chicago Metropolitan and Rockford regions on Tuesday June 27th. In addition, the Agency forecasts Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups (USG) for fine particulate matter statewide for Wednesday June 28th. Smoke from wildfires in Canada is moving into the region, pushing air quality into the unhealthy or worse categories.
Because of my work, I have unlimited access to three major East Coast newspapers (NYT, WSJ and the Washington Post), so last night I checked them all. You might remember early in June when New York and environs was blanketed with Canadian smoke. That was a BIG NATIONAL STORY! When it happens to Chicago and environs? Of regional interest, way down the page, to go with the heat wave currently gripping Texas.
Today wasn’t as smoky as yesterday, though a light haze lingered. No distinct smell either. Could be that the smoke was worse in the city. Do cities capture smoke, or at least delay its movement more than suburbs? Could be.
It’s been a strange month for weather anyway. Early this month in Los Angeles (more about which later, maybe) instead of balmy summer days, it was in the 60s and misty most of the time. Las Vegas was very warm during the day, but not the blazing heat I expected. Back in northern Illinois, we had a run of about three days cool enough to be April or October in mid-June, and for the entire month, there hasn’t been much rain.