Lilacia Park ’21

Posted on May 11, 2021 by admin

RIP, Helmut Jahn. I never met the man, but I worked in the same building in downtown Chicago as his office, once upon a time. The superb 35 East Wacker, as it happens, where Jahn had his showroom in the top dome. We were on the seventh floor. We could always tell when architects were on the elevator, headed up to Jahn’s office; they were the gentlemen with ponytails.

Lilacia Park, like Cantigny, is in the western suburbs, in Lombard as it happens, only a few miles to the east and a little north. Early May is the time of the lilac blooms there, and it’s been a fair number of years since we went, so we decided to drop by Lilacia on the way home on Saturday.

The park didn’t disappoint, though I think it was a few days past peak for lilacs, to judge by the effusions of flowers I’ve seen in earlier years.

But not for tulips. Definitely peak blooms for many of them.

Lilacia was crowded too. Especially with prom and quinceañera celebrants.

“Lilac bushes are not native to North America,” explains Flower magazine. (Just like most of us.) “The Common Lilac originated in Eastern Europe in the mountains of Bulgaria, Croatia, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Romania. For centuries, the Turks cultivated the species.

“Then, in the 1500s, lilac bushes arrived in Vienna and Paris. The French developed so many varieties that Common Lilac is often called French hybrid or simply French Lilac. Finally, these European specimens made the journey to the New World, and lilac bushes graced the gardens of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.”

And, I have to add, the former garden of Col. William Plum and his wife Helen Maria Williams Plum in Lombard, Illinois.

“Colonel Plum moved to the Chicago area in 1869 and settled in Lombard when it was still a new village. The Plums purchased land and filled it with lilacs, which they fell in love with after traveling to the celebrated gardens of Victor Lemoine in France,” Atlas Obscura says.

“The couple returned from the trip with two lilac cuttings, one of Syringa vulgaris, ‘Mme Casimir Périer,’ a double white, and the other of Syringa vulgaris, ‘Michel Buchner,’ a double purple — the initial cultivars of the collection that stands today.

“The acclaimed landscape architect Jens Jensen — responsible in large part for the design or redesign of Chicago’s Columbia, Humboldt, Garfield, and Douglas Parks — agreed to design the Lombard Community Park, now known as Lilacia Park.”

Cantigny in May

Posted on May 10, 2021 by admin

It looks like Cantigny Park has taken the opportunity posed by the international health crisis to do some work on Col. McCormick’s mansion. This is what the outside of the mansion looked like on Saturday.

We didn’t visit to see the mansion, which we toured some years ago. Instead we wanted to see the grounds in spring. The day was cool — it’s been a cold spring lately — but not bad for a walkabout among the greenery.

And the flowers.

Lots of flowers.

Along with other plants.

We haven’t been to Cantigny in a number of years. More recently than 2010 or 2011, but I don’t remember exactly when. On Saturday we also spent a little time at the McCormicks’ grave, in the shape of an exedra, which isn’t far from their mansion.

Though a little chilly (mid-50s), it was a festive day at Cantigny.

People are gathering in groups once more this spring, or so anecdotal evidence, such as seeing them at Cantigny, tells me.

Riverfront Park, Peoria

Posted on May 4, 2021 by admin

Another recent vaccination destination was Peoria. We spent about 24 hours on the trip, there in the afternoon and a return the next afternoon. Shortly after taking care of the shot at a local pharmacy, we took a walk along the Illinois River near downtown Peoria, including a paved section but also parkland.

Riverfront Park gives you some nice views of the Murray Baker Bridge, which carries I-74 across the river. It’s named for an early executive of Holt Manufacturing Co., later Caterpillar Tractor Co., who oversaw its move to Peoria in 1909.

For what I took to be a fairly old bridge (opened 1958), it looked spanking new, a handsome example of bridgebuilding. Turns out there was a reason for that.

“After a final countdown the lights were flicked on and the Murray Baker Bridge was re-opened to drivers of Central Illinois,” 25 Week reported on October 31 last year. “The bridge, which was shut down back in March, went through $42 million worth of renovations. Workers replaced the bridge deck, repaired the structural steel, repainted, and fixed the LED lights, which was one of the most anticipated changes.”

North of the bridge is a curiosity called Constitution Garden, dedicated to the U.S. Constitution.

Looks a little unkempt, at least this spring, and the plaque is dark. Someone’s comment on the state of our fundamental law?

Not far away, overlooking the river, is the Dan Fogelberg Memorial, which has been there since 2010. A couple was there when we arrived — a man and woman maybe a few years older than me — and they expressed their enthusiasm for the musician to us, and had me take their picture in front of the rocks. Then they offered to take our picture (Yuriko was elsewhere with the dog.)

I hadn’t realized Fogelberg was from Peoria, but he was. The rock to our left features lyrics from “Part of the Plan,” which I told Ann was one of his better-known songs. Behind me the middle rock had lyrics from “Icarus Ascending,” a song I didn’t know, and to our right the rock says:

Dedicated to the legacy of
Dan Fogelberg
Musician, Singer, Songwriter, Artist
Born in Peoria August 13th
1951 – 2007

With some lines from “River of Souls,” another song I didn’t know. I liked Fogelberg well enough when I heard him on the radio, but I didn’t listen to him much beyond that, except for the album Phoenix (1979), which one of my college roommates had and I listened to occasionally. “Face the Fire” on that album has the distinction of being an anti-nuke song — nuclear power, that is, not bombs, clearly inspired by Three Mile Island.

Its lyrics didn’t make it onto a rock, unsurprisingly, since I suppose “The poison is spreading, the demon is free/People are running from what they can’t even see” wouldn’t have the right vibe for his memorial. More surprising is no mention of “Same Old Land Syne,” considering that’s a Christmastime sentimental favorite on the radio even now.

April Foolishness

Posted on April 1, 2021 by admin

Back again on Easter Monday, April 5. Happy Easter to all.

On a day like today, and in fact today and no other day, I wake up and think, It’s April, fool. I could do that each day for the next 29 and still be right, but it’s not the same somehow.

Well below freezing this morning, but such temps won’t last. Not long ago I was pleased to see clover underfoot.

I’ve seen two (?) four-leaf clovers over the years. I can’t remember exactly. I know I spotted one in Nashville years ago. This source at least, claiming an empirical survey, says that one clover per 5,076 has four leaves, so it is a rarity. And five-leaf clovers are one in 24,390. Never seen one of those, or the one-in-312,500 six-leaf clover.

How is that most “clover-leaf” interchanges have four circular ramps, like the variety we aren’t likely to see? Shouldn’t we think of another name? Maybe Buckminster Fuller did. Quadrocircles or something.

A cell tower I saw last weekend near Jelke Creek Bird Sanctuary.

Why take a picture of something so pedestrian? It occurs to me that members of some future generation might quarrel about preserving some of the last standing cell towers as reminders of the 21st century. Most were long gone, having outlived their usefulness after everyone had those satellite-receiving transponders implanted behind their ears.

Also: more about governmental units from the Census Bureau. Jay once told me that Texas is fond of setting up specialized governmental districts, and so it seems.

“Texas ranks second among the states in number of local governments with 5,147 active as of June 30, 2012,” the bureau says. No townships — the Republic of Texas originally spurned such notions, perhaps, and maybe the state banned them in the 1876 constitution (everything’s in there) — but there are 2,600 special district governments.

Besides ordinary things like school districts and housing authorities, they include (and this isn’t a complete list) advanced transportation districts, coordinated county transportation authorities, county development districts, fire control and prevention and EMS districts, freight rail districts, fresh water supply districts, groundwater conservation districts, irrigation districts, levee improvement districts, local mental health authorities, intermunicipal commuter rail districts, multi-jurisdiction library districts, navigation districts, municipal power agencies, noxious weed control districts, rural rail transportation districts, rural and urban transportation districts, soil and water conservation districts, water improvement districts, sports and community venue districts, sports facility districts, and underground water conservation districts. What, no fire ant control districts?

Also: the Edwards Aquifer Authority, Palacios Seawall Commission, Riverbend Water Resources District, Ship Channel Security District, and the Upper Sabine Valley Solid Waste Management District.

Whew. To cross Texas is to cross a welter of districts. Who is number 1 in governmental units, if vast Texas is second? Illinois, with 6,936 as of June 30, 2012. What about the state with the least governmental units? I’d think it was Idaho or Vermont or Little Rhody, but no: Hawaii, with 21. Rhode Island is no. 49, with 133.

I understand that the Louvre has made all of its works available for viewing online, so the other day, I looked up “L’Arbre aux corbeaux,” by Caspar David Friedrich — “Krähenbaum” or “The Tree of Crows” (1822).

This is what I saw.

At Wikipedia, you can see this.

Both images unretouched. What’s up with that, Louvre?

From a press release that came my way recently: “Over the last few years, we’ve seen the rise of cleanfluencers from Mrs Hinch to Clean Mama. Like others, they’ve made the jump over to TikTok to provide us with their best tips and tricks, but how much could they potentially earn from their videos?”

Cleanfluencers? As usual, I’m behind the curve. As usual, I don’t give a damn. And of course, the reaction to this sort of nonsense isn’t new either.

Chestnut Park

Posted on March 31, 2021 by admin

According to Google Reviews, or at least one reviewer, Chestnut Park, which is part of the Hoffman Estates Park District, is a good place to fish. Nice to know, though I don’t plan on fishing there. The other day I stopped by for a look at the park. Why? Because I’ve been driving by it for years — nearly 18 years — and never had done so.

It’s a pleasant pocket park, surrounded by houses and probably put in by the subdivider 50-odd years ago, with the fishing pond as the central feature. Maybe we can detect the hand of Jack Hoffman himself in the configuration of the park, or least one of his draftsmen.

Note that the grass has turned green. That seems to happen overnight around this time of year, sometimes in early April, but this year in late March.

As I was leaving, I noticed a plaque on a rock. I’d never noticed that before, either.

One of the large genre of sad plaques. It isn’t hard to learn what happened to Meghan. Not even 15 years old, she was killed crossing a major street near the park.

Not long afterward, the Illinois House passed a resolution honoring the girl, promising to build pedestrian overpasses at the major roads near Hoffman Estates High School, to prevent such a thing happening again. I drive by that location often, and I have to report that the Meghan Krueger Overpasses were never built here in chronically cash-starved Illinois.

Jelke Creek Bird Sanctuary

Posted on March 29, 2021 by admin

One thing leads to another, especially on the Internet, and yesterday I found myself curious about the township as a unit of government. That led to a document published by the Census Bureau, which tells me (p. 80) that there are 1,431 township governments in Illinois, at least as of 2012. There are townships in one form or another in 20 of the several states, and in Illinois, 85 of the state’s 102 counties have townships within their borders.

I looked into townships when I found out that Jelke Creek Bird Sanctuary is a township park, not part of the Forest Preserve District of Kane County. Specifically, the sanctuary is overseen by Dundee Township, which occupies almost 36 square miles in the northeast corner of Kane County.

Last weekend was another divided one, at least as far as the weather was concerned. Saturday was pleasant and warm, while Sunday proved blustery and chilly. So on Saturday we headed mostly west and took a walk at Jelke Creek Bird Sanctuary. We took a loop through the property that didn’t happen to pass by Jelke Creek, which is a tributary of the Fox River and, of course, ultimately the mighty Mississippi.

Why there? I found it by one of my usual techniques: scanning Google Maps.

The sanctuary is fairly new as a public space. “This open space site was formerly owned by Chicago Elmhurst Stone and the Schuetz family,” the township explains. “The property was purchased as two separate parcels in 2000 and 2001 with grants from IDNR’s Open Lands Trust program at a cost of $4,128,709. The site’s 244 acres are partially protected by an IDNR easement.”

Saturday was a good day for a walk there. Summer would be less pleasant, since there isn’t a lot of shade along most of the trails.

There are some water features. Mid-sized and small ponds. A few spots along the trails were muddy, but mostly they were dry.

Not too many people were around, though at one point we did see four horses and riders. Not the Four Horsemen, fortunately.

All together, we walked about a mile and a half, I’d say. The dog seemed to enjoy the walk too, including the opportunity to lap up a little muddy water. She wisely stayed clear of the horses.

As for birds in the bird sanctuary, we heard some singing, but didn’t see more than a few sparrows and red-winged blackbirds. We passed by one small marshy spot and heard the croaking of frogs, which I took to be males in search of females for springtime action. As we got closer to the spot, the croaking tapered off. Maybe the frogs don’t like large animals eavesdropping on them. More likely, they’re as wary as small animals tend to be at the approach of something bigger.

Spring Valley Winter ’21

Posted on January 6, 2021 by admin

I don’t know Rep. Mike Gallagher (R.-Wis.), but I believe he had the spot-on quote for the day, which I heard on the radio this afternoon: “This is banana republic crap.”

Five months ago, the full flush of summer marked Spring Valley. Two days into the new year, the place was markedly brown and gray and white.We had a pretty good walk anyway, especially since the paths were mostly clear of ice patches.
Snow and ice fell during the last days of December, and on New Year’s Day itself, but it was above freezing the next day, enough to melt some of the ice. Not much ice on the creek either, but I wouldn’t want to fall in.
The unpaved trails offered the crunch of snow underfoot, a sound I like.
The peony field.

The snow was wet enough to cling to most of the trees.It sifts from Leaden Sieves —
It powders all the Wood.
It fills with Alabaster Wool
The Wrinkles of the Road —

(Emily Dickinson)

Pratt’s Castle, Elgin

Posted on January 5, 2021 by admin

It’s becoming clear that my approach to travel — to finding things to see, anyway — has had two distinct phases. One is before I started using Google Maps, the other after I did, a phase that I expect to continue for the rest of my life.

Visiting Voyageur Landing (see yesterday) only counts as travel in the technical sense that we went to a place that isn’t home, or even in our neighborhood. Even so, it was a new destination and before we went, I scouted it on Google Maps.
Pratt’s Castle? I had to found out more about that, and I did.

“A man’s home may be his castle but when was the last time you actually saw a castle in a residential neighborhood?” says Historic Elgin. “Medieval history buff Harold S. Pratt built this imposing replica in 1937. His real home was nearby on Douglas Avenue.

“Pratt modeled the design on a castle he saw along the Rhine River while serving in World War I. This building was a private museum housing Pratt’s personal collection of medieval artifacts. The 50 foot tall tower is surrounded by a mini-moat and a working draw bridge.

“The castle is still in private ownership, although, [sic] Pratt’s collection is no longer here. So, please respect the privacy of those living here and stay on the bike path.”

More about the castle is here, but I haven’t found out much else about the fate of Pratt’s collection, probably because I haven’t bothered to contact the Elgin History Museum. Since we were planning to visit the nearby Voyageur Landing, I made a point of seeking out the castle as well. Google Maps at work, in other words.

First you go to Trout Park River’s Edge, which sure enough is at the river’s edge.
A trail leads both north and south from there, part of the lengthy Fox River Trail, formerly a railroad line (and the green line on the map above).
A ten-minute walk southward takes you to the castle.
Structure. It’s about as much of a castle as Mars Cheese Castle. Still, worth going (slightly) out of our way to see.

Thanksgiving ’20 &c.

Posted on November 29, 2020 by admin

Clear and cool lately, with daytime temps in the 50s. Not bad for late November. So far, no snow yet except for a dusting we had a few days before Halloween. It didn’t last. Next time, it probably will.

Pleasant Thanksgiving at home. Nothing made from scratch this year except the gravy, but the boxed macaroni and stuffing you can get at Trader Joe’s isn’t bad at all. And what’s a Thanksgiving dinner without olives, I tell my family. They aren’t persuaded.

Took a walk last weekend at Fabbrini Park in Hoffman Estates.

The geese were still around, mucking up the place.

The Garfield Park Fieldhouse

Posted on November 10, 2020 by admin

On October 24, as mentioned yesterday, we visited Lake County forest preserves. The next day, a Sunday, we went into the city, near Humboldt Park. Temps were around 50, but the park was alive with people, including a lot of dog walkers.

While Yuriko attended her cake class (just her and the sensei, these days), I decided to pop down to Garfield Park, which is one of the major Chicago parks connected by boulevards. I hadn’t been there in a good while, since some visits to the Garfield Park Conservatory.

The park, just as open and inviting in layout as Humboldt, since it too was a masterpiece of landscaping by William LeBaron Jenney, was nearly deserted on that Sunday in October.
That didn’t encourage me to linger, but I did take a look at a few things, such as the bandshell, designed in 1896 by J. L. Silsbee.

Mostly, though, I’d come to see the Garfield Park Fieldhouse. I’d only ever gotten glimpses of it from the El.
Originally built in 1928 to be administrative offices for one of the pre-Chicago Park District park entities, AIA Guide to Chicago Architecture says that designers Michaelson & Rognstad took inspiration from the California State Building at the 1915 Panama-California Expo in San Diego. (Still standing in Balboa Park, and quite a place.)

“The facade is exuberantly… punctuated with a Churrigueresque entry pavilion of spiral Corinthian columns, cartouches and portrait sculptures,” the Guild says.

Is it ever. I understand that there’s more to gawk at inside, but in our time the building is closed.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Parks