Christmas Leaves &c.

Posted on December 19, 2024 by admin

Back to posting around December 29. A good Christmas to all.

For a few years a while back, we received boxes of butter toffee from Guth’s End of the Trail Candy Shoppe in Waupun, Wisconsin, from some PR men we knew well for Christmas. The toffee was insanely good and never lasted long. The Christmas card that came with the candy included Madonna and Child images hand-painted on delicate leaves by, I think, artists from the Indian subcontinent. They have lasted a lot longer than the toffee. I took to taping them to one of the walls in the kitchen.

The leaves occasionally fall to the floor. I then refresh their tape and put them back, but time has taken a toll.

I visited a big box crafts store a few days ago (not this one) at Yuriko’s request. I didn’t really want to go, but I’m glad I did. Got a look at some of the Christmas items.

A different picture than would have been possible decades ago, or even a single decade ago. Good to see, actually, if only to annoy anyone who might get upset over the complexion of Christmas tchotchkes.

Christmas at Ollie’s

Posted on December 18, 2024 by admin

Choose unwisely during this time of the year, and you end up in a crowded retail setting. Not the worst fate imaginable, but I can think of better things to do, such as visit less popular stores – or at least less crowded at any given moment – and look at things.

Christmas at Ollie’s, you could say.

I might be mistaken, but I believe agriculture in the polar regions is meager indeed. On the other hand, Santa surely controls land in temperate zones, including productive cropland of all sorts. His is an operation with a global reach. But doesn’t he have farmer elves to do the actual work?

Be the life of the party.

Put something under the tree for the small fry.

Yahtzee Jr.? Kids these days. We played the same Yahtzee as the adults when we were kids, as we liked it. Actually, I only remember playing Yahtzee a few times, mostly with my cousin, and not especially liking it. Now I’ve forgotten what it involves, except rolling dice a lot. Maybe I should look it up and re-acquaint myself with it. Nah.

Not a Christmas item particularly, but the thought of shooting dog treats just makes me smile. It might or might not really work, in the sense of getting the dog to play along. Of course, it is food, so dogs might be keen to chase down the treats from the get-go. Watching that would be the amusement for the human. I haven’t lived around a cat long, but my sense is that if you shot treats at a cat, the animal would make itself scarce.

Tannenbaum ’24

Posted on December 15, 2024 by admin

The Christmas tree business is still mostly fragmented, with some 16,600 farms growing Christmas trees on nearly 300,000 acres in the United States, according to the 2022 USDA Census of Agriculture. Some farms are large – a wholesaler called Holiday Tree Farms in Oregon’s Willamette Valley asserts that it ships 1,000,000 trees a year, grown on 1,500 acres. But no single entity dominates.

Good thing, too. If an outfit called CTree Group controlled, say, 50 percent of the market, we’d have to buy an annual subscription to receive our trees in December.

The cash money I spent today at a Christmas tree lot with no name here in the northwest suburbs pretty much went straight into the pocket of the farmer. And I mean that literally. That’s where he put it.

He and his (I assume) wife, both of whom looked roughly my age, except more grizzled from spending much more time outside, were stationed at the small trailer, taking money, chain-sawing the stumps and netting the whole trees, for easier transport. These things they did for me. I asked whether theirs were Michigan trees. Over the years, some of our trees have been, including those from the UP. No, Wisconsin. Just as good, I told them.

The thought that the money goes directly to the owner makes it less annoying that the price was up again this year ($65), and that many trees in the lot were priced at over $100, a price I’m sure not to pay. But not completely un-annoying.

The lot, as many are, is set up on an underutilized section of parking in a nondescript strip center. But not completely nondescript. I was glad to see the record store is still there, though I’ve never been in.

I hadn’t noticed this before, also in the strip center.

An organization I’d never heard of. Even so, I have to admit the name Mountain of Fire & Miracles Ministries has a peel of thunder and a whiff of brimstone about it. Makes you sit up and pay attention.

Some detail.

I took it for an independent Protestant sect of the homegrown sort, but no. This location is an outpost of MFM, a Nigerian Protestant sect – at least, in the sense that it isn’t Catholic — founded in 1989. Here’s something from the church’s web site, under “Mission and Vision” as one of the objectives on the ministry:

To build an aggressive end-time army for the Lord. MFM is an end-time church where we build an aggressive end-time army for the Lord. An end-time church is a church where a sinner enters with two options: he either repents or does not come back, contrary to the present day church where sinners are comfortable and find things so easy and convenient.

I don’t know much about the organization, not really, considering how ignorant I am about most things Nigerian. Still, its presence tells me that there must be more Nigerians here in the northwest suburbs than I realized. The world not only comes to Chicago, it comes to the Chicago suburbs.

State Street Windows, 2015

Posted on December 8, 2024 by admin

A coinage for our moment in history: Chief execucide. I won’t claim it’s my invention, however, since I found an example from 1988, though for comic effect. Whatever else is going on with the most recent incident, it isn’t comedy.

We haven’t been downtown since the Open House event, and so haven’t seen this year’s State Street windows at the store formerly known as Marshall Field’s. It probably would be another disappointment. They were once known for their imaginative displays. No more. In recent years the company has been phoning it in.

That wasn’t the case in 2015. Actual designers were carrying on the tradition back then, and I should have taken more pictures. This was a favorite: a snowball fight between Uranus and Neptune.

The conceit was, as I wrote, a “space-flight-enthusiast young boy hitching a ride with Santa to various fantastic versions of the planets (except Pluto), including a return to Earth that seemed to feature a bizarro hybrid of New York and Chicago.”

I did take a few other pics. The first was, I believe, the boy’s room.

C’mon, Macy’s. You can do better windows if you try. If you hire the talent. I expect my nephew Robert, whose profession encompasses such work, would be glad to help for a healthy fee.

Winter Preview

Posted on November 20, 2024 by admin

We’re at the front edge of the first winterish event since last spring. A pretty mild event, as November tends to dish out. Come to think of it, winterish is one of the kinds of days you get in November, with others including gray and damp, and ones that are more pleasant than expected. Sunday was one of those latter kind, an excellent day for a cemetery stroll.

Today and tomorrow (11/20-21) amounts to a mild winter preview. The graph to the right barely needs values, since it captures the downward slide well enough without them. Still, the straight blue line is freezing: 32° F., with the gray lines marking 10-degree differences. Red line: Temps. Green line: Dew point. Purple line: “Feels like.”

Dew point is one of those concepts that I need to look up whenever I think about it, which isn’t that often. It’s not as if anyone will ever say to you, “How about that dew point last night? Man!”

Still, it’s good to know things, but for whatever reason, some things have little traction for me when it comes to being remembered or understood; and dew point is one of those. Just another small reason I’m not a scientist.

This afternoon the wind was brisk and some light snow fell. Nothing serious enough to interfere with errands. One of those took me to the vicinity of the Schaumburg Township Library. There has been a vacant lot across the street from the library for as long as I’ve known about the spot – more than 20 years. Signs have come and gone, promising this or that development, then nothing.

Now something has appeared. Or is in the process of appearing, via new construction.

Hopscotch Beer, Bar and Kitchen. A little looking around makes me think it’s not part of a chain. Usually that’s easy enough to find out. This place doesn’t seem to be affiliated with HopScotch Beer and Whiskey Bar in Franklin Park, just south of O’Hare, which still has a Facebook page but seems otherwise to be defunct. Or related to a standalone place called Hopscotch Kitchen & Bar in Oklahoma City, which seems to be in business.

The Facebook page of Level Construction, which is building the site in Schaumburg, says the restaurant will feature “a vibrant gaming area , an energetic dance floor and indoor golfing and sports simulators .” It included exactly those emojis.

Emojis are no extra charge, I hope.

We Decide Who’s Naughty or Nice

Posted on November 17, 2024 by admin

Saw some houses in our neighborhood this week with lighted Christmas lights. To that I say, no. Sure, put them up when it’s still fairly warm – as it was today, touching 60° F. But don’t light them. How about waiting until the feast of St. Lucia on December 13? That’s a festival of light, after all.

I’m sure that idea would go nowhere. The response to anyone suggesting it, at least here in North America, would be, eh? Who’s that?

Never mind, Christmas is on its way. Some places light up even earlier, and retailers have been at it for a while now. Sometimes that means oddities.

Spotted the other day on a retail shelf. Careful, though: Not intended for highway use, unless you want to scatter elf limbs on the Interstate.

I’d heard of Elf on the Shelf, which makes the joke (mildly) funny, but didn’t actually know that much about it. Turns out the Elf isn’t that old, invented less than 20 years ago. To look at the thing, you’d think it was devised by ad men of the 1920s, as so much consumer culture was.

It also turns out that they are spies for Santa. Ho ho ho. That’s awfully granular of Old St. Nick. Of course, he has a big job to do, making that list. Here’s another idea: Stasi on the Shelf.

Thursday Products

Posted on November 14, 2024 by admin

During my junior year in college, my roommate Rich and I thumbtacked empty, flattened product packages to the wall of our two-bedroom dorm – inside the hallway closet, that is, which we didn’t use for much else. There on the 12th floor of – what was the name of that building again? – we called it the Package Art Gallery.

After 40+ years, I don’t remember the contents of the gallery, except for a flattened box that had held a muffin mix. Specifically blueberry muffins, and one of the tag lines amused us: “The most very blueberry anythings you ever ate.”

Why did we do this? As far as I can remember, collegiate whimsy. Or maybe to make a statement on art and consumerism. Why not? We never did whip up any art-speak for such a statement, but we could have. Nowadays, you don’t even have to do that, you just find a machine to do it for you, such as the amusingly named Artybollocks.

I’ve long put away collegiate things, but I could start an online package art gallery. Maybe based on things I see at discounter Ollie’s, which can indicate a less-than-stellar future for the products. Or not.

A good idea? I can’t deny having ever eaten a Ding Dong, but I’m sure I’ve never drunk any. Some postings about it when it was rolled out in 2020. Since then, less so.

Interesting idea, I guess.

Could be entertaining. Aimed at kids. But it looks like the concept was, Let’s do Risk, in Space! But without any of those annoying geographical names. No, it wouldn’t do to have kids not know something and maybe have to ask about it. Or look it up. Or have an older kid make something up about Kamchatka.

Ask St. Joseph

Posted on November 13, 2024 by admin

Cold rain, shorter daylight, still some green, since there hasn’t been a hard freeze yet. But it won’t be long. Mid-November has arrived all sullen and damp.

We’re not in the market to sell our house, but some things you can’t help noticing. I spotted this in the impulse-buy section near checkout at a hardware store I visit sometimes, an alternative to the big box DIY store not far away, where seeking a particular item can turn into a longish expedition.

I’d heard about burying a statue of St. Joseph to help along a residential sale – I think back around ’09, when that method was probably as good as any other. But I hadn’t thought about it since.

Ten minutes of looking around on line about the practice, and you find out at least two things: a number of sites offering instructions on burying your statue that may or may not endorse the practice, but certainly seem to say what the heck, might as well give it a go (such as here). On the other hand, there are also short essays about the superstitious nature of the practice (such as here), asserting that Catholics shouldn’t be burying saint statues upside down, or at all.

It made me wonder whether St. Joseph can help renters find an apartment that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg, which would be seriously useful assistance in the current market. He is the patron of housing, after all. Just another thing to think about waiting in line at the hardware store.

London Town

Posted on October 23, 2024 by admin

Things you can do in London: walk along the Thames; visit Covent Garden; and see St. Paul’s Cathedral. We did all of those things in the original London, once upon a time.

Earlier this month, we managed two out of three in London, Ontario. The cathedral was closed. Some other time, maybe, since you can drive from metro Chicago to the Canadian London in about six hours, provided traffic snarls on the highways just south of Lake Michigan aren’t any worse than usual and you don’t encounter a testy Canadian border guard, as I did on Canada Day all those years ago, for the most thorough border-crossing inspection I ever received, before or since.

The Thames as it passes through downtown London. The banks are mostly parkland.

Actually, that point is the meeting of the North Thames and the Thames, locally known as the Folks. The river is called as La Tranche in French and Deshkaan-ziibi in Ojibwe, Antler River.

The King Street pedestrian bridge connecting the banks.

Near the Folks is the HMCS-NCSM Prevost, flying these colors – the Canadian Naval Ensign, if I understand correctly.

All that is a fair amount to unpack: the ensign is flying on land because the Prevost is a stone frigate, a naval facility on land. HMCS is His Majesty’s Canadian Ship, of course, but this being Canada, it is also NCSM, Navire canadien de Sa Majesté. The site is a training and recruiting center for the Canadian Navy, and also home to the Battle of the Atlantic Memorial. Another sign is in French, but I only made a picture of the English.

The memorial is still under construction, according to the London Free Press, and it looked like it, with memorial stones being put into place on a small slope. Dedication will be next May, on the 80th anniversary of the end of that battle, which lasted until the Germans surrendered.

I decided to look up one of the ships memorialized: the HMCS Valleyfield.

Commissioned in December 1943. Torpedoed and sunk May 7, 1944, with the loss of 125 Canadian sailors in the gelid North Atlantic.

After the riverside, we took a short walk through downtown, especially Dundas St.

An unexpected mural on that street.

“Johnny and June” by Kevin Ledo, a Montreal artist, and completed only in 2023. (If you want to see a large Ledo mural depicting a young Alex Trebec, go to Sudbury, Ontario.)

The mural, on the side of London’s Budweiser Gardens sports-event venue, is impressively large, at 45 feet tall and 20 feet wide. Larger than life, certainly. A nearby sign says it commemorates the moment on February 22, 1968, when Johnny Cash proposed to June Carter on stage during a concert in London.

As for Covent Garden, that’s where we had lunch. Site of a public market since 1845, though I expect things have been cleaned up some since then.

Not quite as grand as the one in the larger London, but well worth the stroll to look at the shops, and find an eatery. We ate at a Brazilian place. Don’t see too many of those in food halls. Most satisfying.

Lots of goods. Is there a Canadian content requirement?

A few more London details, near Covent Garden. We didn’t see on foot the part of town I found more intriguing, which we drove through: the area around Western University (a.k.a., University of Western Ontario, enrollment more than 40,000). Might be a good place to look around if we ever take that trip to the Stratford Festival, which is practically down the road from London.

I have to like a place with a name like that.

Roadside Ontario

Posted on October 22, 2024 by admin

A few miles (hard measuring habit to break, and why should I?) south of Kincardine, Ontario, is Reid’s Corner Antiques. Now this is my kind of antique shop: not an ounce of froufrou.

I think Reid himself waived us into the building, which had no one else inside. He was a strong-looking fellow in the middle of middle age, and he had a noisy machine on a truck to attend in some way. So we went in.

It’s easy to feel at home in clutter. I know not everyone feels that way, but I also don’t care. All the many Reid’s Corners in the world are a place to revel in the quantity and quality, but especially the quantity, of the vast amount of stuff produced by people.

A place like this ought to be supported by a little cash money, at least. This was under consideration for purchase.

In the end I went with a newer plate, one not quite as old as I am, which joins plates from Texas, Tennessee, Illinois and a Washington state BIGFOOT gag plate in the garage.

Reid’s Corner happens to be on Ontario 21, the two lanes that parallel the Lake Huron shore. If you’re on the way to London, you head southeast from Goderich on Ontario 8 briefly, and then a slightly different direction on Ontario 4. The place where highways 8 and 4 meet is Clinton, Ontario, pop. 3,200.

Near the juncture I caught sight of a fine block of buildings – the Victoria Block (see no. 53), erected 1877. Erected by genuine Victorians, by gar.

Nice. Then there was a large radar antenna perched in a traffic island.

Double take. I have to see that, I told Yuriko as I parked the car on the side of the road. Traffic was fairly light in Clinton, so it was no complicated thing to take a closer look on foot.

Like Reid’s shop, the wider world has human clutter. Not just objects, but stories. Early in WWII, a secret site near Clinton became the first radar training school in North America, the plaques relate, set up by the Royal Air Force as a safe location. The Canadian armed forces kept the facility open long after the end of the war and wartime secrecy, through the mid-Cold War, but eventually closed it. The town got a really big memento on the occasion of the country’s centennial in 1967.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Retail