I Am What I Am, Even on Thursdays

Posted on September 13, 2018 by admin

Something else I snapped while on foot downtown Chicago last week: the front of the I AM Temple on W. Washington St.

I didn’t go in. A sign on the door says ring bell and wait for someone. I prefer my religious sites to be self-service.

The organization’s HQ happens to be in the northwest suburbs, not downtown. Without digressing into detail — a foray into the rabbit hole, that is — it’s enough to say that, according to Britannica, “I AM movement, theosophical movement founded in Chicago in the early 1930s by Guy W. Ballard (1878–1939), a mining engineer, and his wife, Edna W. Ballard (1886–1971)…. Ballard claimed that in 1930 during a visit to Mount Shasta (a dormant volcano in northern California), he was contacted by St. Germain, one of the Ascended Masters of the Great White Brotherhood.”

Is it possible that Popeye is a prophet of this movement? After all, he appeared ca. 1930 and was known to say, “I yam what I yam.”

Also, why are rabbit holes a metaphor for endless, bewildering complications? Are rabbit holes that complex? Maybe warrens are, but that isn’t the way the saying goes. Wouldn’t ant nests or prairie dog towns be more suitable?

Another day, another stash of Roman coins dug up in Italy. Late Roman imperial era, the article says.

Bonus: they were gold coins. That’s something I’d like to find in the basement, though strictly speaking, we don’t have a basement. Roman gold-coin hordes must be pretty scarce in the New World, anyway.

Late Roman imperial era, eh? I can imagine it: “Quick, find a place to bury the gold! The Visigoths are coming! We’ll come back for it later.”

The event probably wasn’t that dramatic, but someone put the horde there, presumably not to lose track of it — but they did, for 1,500 or more years. Distant posterity is the beneficiary.

Strictly by coincidence, Ann and I watched the first episode of I, Claudius last weekend, which is available on disk (but not on demand: what kind of world is this?). Been a long time since I’ve seen it. Early ’90s, I think, as it was available in Japan on VHS. I also saw it when I was roughly Ann’s age, on PBS when it was pretty new.

The other day I used bifurcation in an article. That’s more common in business writing than one might think, since it’s sometimes used to describe markets dividing in some way or other (often, winners and losers). It’s also I word I can never remember how to spell, so I always look it up.

Google has replaced a trip to a dictionary as the default for spelling. Sad to say, since the possibility of lateral learning is rife while thumbing through a dictionary. Many times in earlier years I spied an entry, not the one I was looking for, and thought, I didn’t know that word.

Then again, there can be sideways learning with Google. If you let it. Not satisfied with mere spelling, I fed “bifurcation” into Google News to see what would happen. Every single hit on the first page linked to items in the Indian English-language media.

From the Times of India:

GMDA can’t plan drain bifurcation now, say greens

Bifurcate HC too: Centre backs Telangana’s petition in SC

Bifurcation of Badshapur drain on cards to avert flooding in Hero …

From The Hindu:

‘Telangana drawing water from NSP without KRMB approval’

Demand for bifurcation of municipal corporation getting stronger

From the New Indian Express:

Centre to expedite High Court bifurcation: Vinod Kumar

Clearly, the word gets more mileage on the Subcontinent than in this country.

Two Downtown Chicago Churches

Posted on September 12, 2018 by admin

Yesterday evening at about 8:15 I was out walking the dog — sometimes it’s an after-dark activity now that there’s more darkness — and I spotted a pale yellow slender crescent moon hanging just over the western horizon. Low enough to appear luminously large. Quite a sight.

Just after the new moon signifying Rosh Hashanah, I realized. I couldn’t remember the year’s number, so I looked that up: 5779.

While downtown last week, on the way back to Union Station to return home, I ducked briefly into two churches. I’d been in them before, but they’re always good for a look.
One was St. Peter’s in the Loop, a Catholic church on W. Madison St.
The enormous crucifix is by Latvian artist Arvid Strauss. The building dates from 1953. According to Heavenly City: The Architectural Tradition of Catholic Chicago by Denis McNamara, “the stepped-back roof profile of the exterior recalls the Art Deco skyscapers [architects Vitzthum and Burns] had designed and gave the church a modern sensibility, but the facade retained the sign value of churchliness with Gothic decorative elements, pink Georgia marble, and [the] monumental exterior cruxifix…”

The interior. Sacred deco, you might call it.
The building is more just the sanctuary. Tucked away in the structure, hidden from casual visitors like me, are an auditorium, library, offices, meeting rooms and friary completed with living quarters, kitchen and a chapel for the Franciscans who run the place.

Not far away is the First United Methodist Church at the Chicago Temple, an unusual arrangement for a church. It’s at the base and top floors of a 568-foot skyscraper on W. Washington St. I didn’t take any exteriors, but this is what it looks like. A Holabird & Roche design from the 1920s.

It features another handsome interior.
With fine stained glass.

I had no time to tour the Sky Chapel again — I visited ca. 2002 — which is at top of the building and open every day at 2 p.m. It’s a sacred space unlike any other I know.

Stray Thursday Items

Posted on August 16, 2018 by admin

Various things my computer has told me lately:

Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.

Sure, whatever you say.

Tremendous loud thunderstorm yesterday evening. Short but dramatic. The yard needed the water. Been a dryish August so far. But not too hot. I try to enjoy lunch on my deck daily, and sometimes breakfast, because soon the air will grow cold. All too soon.

Cicadas are in full voice during the day now. Crickets are on the night shift, singing their songs. Sounds just the same — to my human ears — as it did in 2015. But for all I know, the songs have morphed since then, and are as different to the insects as Middle English compared with Modern English.

Presidential sites are pretty thin on the ground up on the north shore of Lake Superior, but I did find one place during our recent trip that has the vaguest connection to a U.S. president. Its name: Buchanan.

Here it is.
That might look like undeveloped shore on Lake Superior, and it is, but not far from shore a plaque says: This town site, named after President Buchanan, was laid out in October 1856. From September 1857 until May 1859 the place, though little less than wilderness, was the seat of the U.S. land office for the northeastern district of Minnesota. After the removal of the land office, the settlement disappeared.

This sizable sculpture is on the campus of University of Minnesota Duluth, near that school’s planetarium. It’s called “Wild Ricing Moon.”“The sculpture… was designed by John David Mooney, a Chicago sculptor with an international reputation,” the university says. “The piece is 89 feet tall. The first half of this large-scale outdoor sculpture was erected in October 2005. The first installation, a large steel circle, 40 feet in diameter, represents the full, rice-harvesting moon of late summer.

“A ‘rice stalk’ section and bird was included in the pieces that arrived in June. Mooney described the sculpture as reflecting the North Shore of Lake Superior and natural features of the region.”

Here’s the pleasant open area behind the Allyndale Motel in Duluth.

One morning I ate a rudimentary breakfast there as the girls slept. One night I went there on the thin hope that the northern lights would be visible. No dice.

I spent a few minutes tooling around Eau Claire, Wis., on the Saturday morning on the way up to Minnesota. One thing I saw in passing was the impressive Sacred Heart-St. Patrick Parish church.
Unfortunately, the church was closed.

A little later that day we stopped at Leinenkugel Brewery in Chippewa Falls. The tourist-facing part of the operation is known as the Leinie Lodge®, which “is filled with historical photos, vintage brewing equipment and plenty of Leinie’s wearables and collectibles to take home,” notes the brewery web site. There’s also a bar. Guess what it serves.

Boy, the Leinie Lodge was crowded. That’s the result of years of clever advertising (autoplay) and what we get for going on a Saturday morning. But that wasn’t the irritating part, not really. Leinenkugel Brewery tours cost $10. Admission for a brewery tour?

I’ve been on brewery and vineyard and distillery tours all over the world, including a beer brewery in Denmark, a bourbon maker in Kentucky, a winery in Western Australia and a sake brewery in Japan, and that’s one thing I haven’t run across. Because, you know, the tour is marketing — building goodwill — introducing new customers to your product — not a damned revenue stream. For the birds, Leinenkugel, for the birds.

But I have to confess that Lilly wanted a Leinenkugel shirt, so I got her one. Her souvenir for the trip. I got a couple of postcards.

On the way back from Minnesota, as I’ve mentioned, we ate lunch in Madison, Wis., at the excellent Monty’s Blue Plate Diner.

Across the street from Monty’s is the Barrymore Theatre. I like its looks.

Various live acts play at the Barrymore. Looking at the upcoming list, I see that They Might Be Giants will be there in October after dates in the UK, Germany and Canada. Maybe I should see them again — it’s been almost 30 years now — but it’s a Tuesday show, so I don’t think I’ll make it.

One more thing. At a rest stop on I-94 near Black River Falls, Wis., there’s a state historical marker honoring, at some length, the passenger pigeon. Among other things, the marker says: “The largest nesting on record anywhere occurred in this area in 1871. The nesting ground covered 850 square miles with an estimated 136,000,000 pigeons.

“John Muir described the passenger pigeons in flight, ‘I have seen flocks streaming south in the fall so large that they were flowing from horizon to horizon in an almost continuous stream all day long.’ “

Wow. 136 million pigeons more or less in the same place? A marvel to behold, I’m sure. That and an amazing amount of noise and a monumental torrent of droppings.

A Day in Malacca

Posted on July 1, 2018 by admin

July 5, 1992.

Up fairly early and went to Bukit China, which sports a massive hillside cemetery populated by Malaysian Chinese. The graves have peculiar, horseshoe-shaped walls surrounding small areas dug out of the side of the hill; the gravestones themselves are in the dugout. Some look new, others neglected.

A long walk then took me to (1) the Dutch Cemetery, which contained mostly British graves and (2) the Dutch Church, which is Anglican — and there was a service going on in Cantonese, I think. I sat in a while.

Had lunch at Kim Swee Huat, not bad fried noodles, sweet and sour pork, and a great fruit lasi. On the way to lunch I saw a Chinese funeral procession pass by on the street.

[Wish I’d added a little more detail about that, but I did take a picture in which the procession is barely visible.]
[As well as some pictures of the streets of Malacca. Including an example of baking fusion of some kind.]
From lunch I went back up to Bukit St. Paul (St. Paul Hill). [Bukit St. Paul features the ruins of St. Paul’s Church, among other things. A church structure of one kind or another has been on the site since shortly after the Portuguese conquest of Malacca more than 500 years ago.]

Afterwards I visited the Muzium Budaya, the Cultural Museum. The wooden building is a marvel of its kind, and the displays interesting.

[Again with an abbreviated description. Per Wiki, “the building is a modern reconstruction of the palace of the Melaka Sultanate. It showcases the history of the region.]

Afterwards, I went back to my room to cool down, though stopping at a bookstore I discovered along the way, where I bought The Roman Games by Roland Auguet.

Around sunset, I sought out dinner, and had a remarkable one at Sri Lakshmi Vilas [even more remarkable, it may still be open], a south Indian daun pisang. That means banana leaves, the “plates” on which the food is served.

I had mutton and fish and rice and veggies on a banana leaf that I ate with my fingers, which is the way to do it. Not the best Indian food I’ve ever had, but pretty good, and certainly the most interesting presentation. Even better, it cost M$5.30, or a little more than $2.

After eating, I took a walk through old Malacca. The Kampong Kling Mosque wasn’t open to me, but light and noise were pouring from the open windows of one of the side structures, which I figured might be an attached school. Some rambunctious kids were inside.

Nearby, I saw the Sri Poyatha Moorthi temple and the Cheng Hoon Teng temple. At Cheng Hoon Teng, a large ceremony of some kind was going on, with a lot of chanting. I watched for a while. No one paid the slightest bit of attention to me.

Back to BAPS

Posted on May 22, 2018 by admin

About a year ago, I visited BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir Chicago in Bartlett, Ill., and among the things I thought — besides, wow, look at that — was that the rest of my family would enjoy seeing it too. So on Saturday, ahead of the rain and unseasonably, annoyingly cold weather that gripped the area starting Sunday morning, we went. Yuriko and Ann and I, since Lilly had another commitment.

I’d hoped the extensive fountains would be active this time, but no. Still, the place is as impressive as ever.

This time, I got a better look at the ceremonial gate, which is just as ornate as the mandir, a panoply of intricate white stonework. I took pictures of gate iconography that I’m not familiar with, but liked looking at anyway.

Toward the rear of the grounds, we happened across a small muster of peafowl in a small fenced area. They weren’t out and about the last time I was here.

An important bird in Hinduism. Some details are here.

We also discovered a small cafe toward the back of the haveli, which I didn’t remember seeing before. Just the place for samosa and mango lassi.

Wat Phra Kaew

Posted on May 20, 2018 by admin

Today I looked up the etymology of wat, the sort of Buddhist temple you find in Thailand. Here’s the brief word origin offered by Merriam-Webster online: Siamese, from Sanskrit vāṭa, enclosed ground.

Makes sense. We visited a number of wats in Thailand, especially in Bangkok, where large ones are thick on the ground. Wat Phra Kaew, home of the Emerald Buddha, holds the prime place of honor among the Thais. We visited the complex, which is part of the larger Grand Palace, on May 26, 1994.

Some features stood out right away. This is the Phra Si Ratana Chedi at the wat.

Bangkokforvistors says: “The chedi essentially balances the structures on the upper terrace, but it also recalls the monumental pagodas of the old capital in Ayutthaya… The chedi houses a piece of the Buddha’s breastbone.”

The Chapel of the Emerald Buddha is in the background here.
I made no image of the Emerald Buddha, since I believe that wasn’t permitted. Tourists were allowed in to see the statue, which isn’t sizable, but is definitely elegant, and with an aura of history about it.

The Phra Mondop, or the library, which is not open to casual visitors.

The Wiharn Yod, a prayer hall.

“The wiharn is unique in its Greek cross plan and its Chinese porcelain decoration,” Bangkokforvistors says.

The following are other images I can’t quite pinpoint, but which were in the enclosed ground of Wat Phra Kaew.

Thinking back on it, I have an overall impression of heat and gilding and mirror tiles and heat and intricate but unfamiliar iconography and heat. The time to have gone might have been when the wat opened first thing in the morning, but we weren’t always as energetic as necessary for early-morning tourism in the tropics. Yet sometimes we were.

Curious about more recent tourist experiences at Wat Phra Kaew, I took a look at Trip Advisor. Most visitors rate it highly, which is fitting. But the low-raters point to changes since we were there.

For one thing, it’s now 500 baht to get in. About $15.50 these days. I’m certain we didn’t pay anything close to that much, making it an example of gouging tourists at supposed must-see places.

Also, tourism within Asia has changed somewhat since the 1990s, if Guimo68 from Miami is to be believed. That is, the Chinese are showing up in force (all sic): “Filled with chinese tourists trying to cut in front of you. I had fun trying to cut in front of them, so 2 stars… The whole experience is like trying to see the mona lisa. Too many rude and loud Chinese.”

Then again, there’s no pleasing some people, such as SophieLoveOz of Ellenborough, Australia (all sic): “I was so excited about the Emerald Buddha but was really disappointed as it is teeny tiny and way up high on a high stupa so can’t see it. It is Jade not Emerald, according to our guide. So many beautiful Golden Buddhas elsewhere.”

Trinity Church Wall Street, Alexander & Eliza Hamilton, and Norges Bank Investment Management

Posted on April 3, 2018 by admin

On Broadway in Lower Manhattan, near the intersection with the storied Wall Street, stands the church and graveyard of Trinity Church Wall Street. Looking at the property means you’re peering deep into the history of New York and the early days of the Republic — and into a modern-day real estate story involving Norwegians.

First, the church building.

The current church is the third one on the site, completed in 1846, so it isn’t the building that George Washington and especially Alexander Hamilton would have known. The second building was completed in 1790 to replace the original, which burned down in the Fire of 1776.

Richard Upjohn designed the current Gothic Revival structure as one of the first in a very long list of churches that he did. For a good many years, it was the tallest building in New York, or in the United States for that matter, which is a little hard to imagine in its current setting among taller buildings.

Being Holy Week, the church was fairly busy, though no service was going on when I visited.
Busy inside, but the real crowd was outside, in the graveyard.
A school group happened to be wandering through when I arrived. They might have come for the history of the entire place, but who had they really come to see?

Alexander Hamilton, of course.
I have to admit that I either didn’t know, or had forgotten, that he is buried at Trinity. In a way, that was a good thing, since it was a nice surprise.

Note the enormous number of pennies and other coins at the base of his stone. Seemed like even more than I saw at Benjamin Franklin’s grave, who had the benefit of being associated with “a penny saved is a penny earned.”

Eliza Hamilton, who outlived Alexander by more than 50 years and is buried next to him, collected her share of pennies, too.
That’s what you get for being the subject of a very popular musical in our time. Even I’ve heard some of the songs. Ann plays them in the car. They’re interesting. I’m all for musicals about major historical figures, but I’m not going to pay hundreds of dollars for a ticket.

The Hamiltons weren’t the only famed permanent residents of the graveyard. There’s steamboat popularizer Robert Fulton, who has a memorial fittingly erected by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

Here’s Capt. James “Don’t Give Up the Ship” Lawrence, hero of the War of 1812. His memorial’s looking a little green these days.
Nice detail on one side.

There are also plenty of memorials for regular 18th- and 19th-century folks. I’m glad to say they were getting some attention.

There are stones the likes of which aren’t made any more.

Or on which time has taken its toll.
About those Norwegians. Trinity Church Wall Street, which is part of the Episcopal Diocese of New York, is known for is being one of the wealthiest parishes in the nation. In 1705, Queen Anne granted the church 215 acres on the island of Manhattan. It still holds 14 of those acres, which these days are home to millions of square feet of commercial property. That kind of acreage would make anyone very rich indeed.

Recently — in 2015 — the church monetized 11 of its office buildings by striking a deal with Norges Bank Investment Management, which oversees Norway’s sovereign wealth fund (a lot of North Sea oil money, I reckon). It’s no secret. I quote from the press release the church published:

“Norges Bank Investment Management will acquire its 44 percent share in a 75-year ownership interest for 1.56 billion dollars, valuing the properties at 3.55 billion dollars. The assets will be unencumbered by debt at closing.”

Unencumbered by debt. The sweetest words you can write about real estate.

“The properties are about 94 percent leased and total over 4.9 million square feet. They are all located in the Hudson Square neighborhood of Midtown South in Manhattan… The buildings were originally built in the early 1900s to house printing presses, but have been redeveloped by Trinity Church to attract a mix of creative office tenants.”

San Antonio Missions National Historical Park, Before It Was a World Heritage Site

Posted on March 18, 2018 by admin

In late March 2013, the girls and I went to San Antonio. I’m always glad to show a bit of the town to them, and the visit included some of the missions, which are collectively San Antonio Missions National Historical Park. A couple of years later, they became a World Heritage Site, the first in Texas.

At Mission Concepción.

In full, Mission Nuestra Señora de la Purísima Concepción de Acuña, founded by Franciscans, with work on the current structures started in 1731.
A little more than a century later, it was the site of the little-known Battle of Concepción in the Texas Revolution.
Mission San Jose.

In full, Mission San José y San Miguel de Aguayo, with construction starting in the 1760s, and restored by the WPA in the 1930s.

I forget where Lilly got the small piñata. I think eventually the dog destroyed it.
It’s still an active church.
Mission San Juan Capistrano.
The church building had just been renovated the year before, which accounts for its newish, rather than long-weathered look.

Much of the grounds is open, with a few other ruins.
We didn’t make it to Mission Espada, and I haven’t been back that way since. Maybe one of these days.

Basílica de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe

Posted on January 8, 2018 by admin

We visited the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Basílica de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, in the northern part of Mexico City, 18 days after Our Lady of Guadalupe’s feast day, which is December 12. The new basilica and the old basilica, and the large plaza they occupy, were all crowded the day we were there. This was the scene just in front of the new basilica.
I can only imagine what it would have been like on the 12th. Every paving stone in the plaza would probably have had someone standing on it, or kneeling. As it was people were milling around, though I did see a couple of pilgrims making their way along on their knees.

A wider view at the new basilica, at roughly the same afternoon moment.
The orange-shirted men appeared to be pilgrims on bicycles, arriving to pay their respects to Guadalupe just as we entered the grounds. I don’t know who they were, but I didn’t doubt their devotion.
According to one wag I read recently, Mexico is about 80 percent Catholic these days, but 120 percent Guadalupean. (I would have thought the Catholic percentage was higher, but it seems that religious apathy and Protestantism have gained ground in recent decades.)

The new basilica, as these things go, is quite new — finished in 1976. Turns out the old basilica, built on dodgy soils, was at some risk of collapsing. Pedro Ramirez Vazquez, Gabriel Chavez de la Mor, and José Luis Benllioure designed the structure. Modernist it may be, but the new one has its charms, especially inside.
I’ve read that anyone from any spot in the basilica can see Juan Diego’s cactus-fiber cloak with the image of the Virgin on it. I certainly was able to see it, though the glare was pretty strong. A mass was under way, so we didn’t get that close.

The old basilica was closed after the new one opened, and stayed closed until the building was stabilized in 2000. It’s a fine old colonial structure designed by one Pedro de Arrieta and finished in 1709.

Inside is the the altarpiece that used to hold the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
Behind the old basilica is an even older shrine on Tepeyac Hill, where the Virgin appeared to Juan Diego, but considering that we’d been climbing pyramids earlier in the day, no one wanted to climb the hill to see it.

One more thing, not visible in my pictures. Under the plaza is a sizable underground parking garage and an even bigger religious items gift shop, the largest of that kind of retail that I’ve ever seen. If you want to find just the right souvenir statue or painting or other image of the Virgin — and I was told the faces can vary considerably in their small details — that’s the place to spend some time looking. I just bought a few postcards.

Twelve Pictures ’17

Posted on December 21, 2017 by admin

Back to posting on January 2, 2018, or so. Like last year, I’m going to wind up the year with a leftover picture from each month. This time, for no special reason, no people, just places and things.

Champaign, Ill., January 2017Charlotte, NC, February 2017