Doors Open Milwaukee ’21

Posted on September 26, 2021 by admin

Warmish weekend, good for walking around. We did that in Milwaukee yesterday, because the Doors Open Milwaukee event has returned after last year’s cancellation. We drove up in mid-morning and returned not too long after dark, as we did in 2019 and 2018 and 2017. One difference this year was that a few — not all — places required a mask.

Another wrinkle this time is that we took the dog. Leaving her at home alone for more than a few hours is just asking for a mess to clean up upon return. So that meant for most of the places we went, we took turns, as one of us stayed with the dog, either in the car or walking her around.

First we went to the Bay View neighborhood south of downtown, a place that got its start as a 19th-century company town. In our time it seems pretty lively. There we sought out St. Lucas Evangelical Lutheran Church and St. Augustine of Hippo Catholic Church, both late 19th-century/early 20th-century edifices themselves, distinctly built of cream brick.

In the Burnham Park neighborhood of Milwaukee, southwest of downtown, you can find the Burnham Block. In fact, an organization called Frank Lloyd Wright’s Burnham Block, which is part of Wisconsin’s Frank Lloyd Wright Trail, very much wants you to come see the six small houses on that block, designed by The Genius.

Who are we to resist the call of FLW? We went there next. So did a fair number of people late that morning, more than at any other place we saw yesterday. This was part of the line to get in.

Taking turns looking at FLW’s work took up a fair amount of time. Afterward we repaired to a park for a drive-through-obtained lunch. Then we went to Forest Home Cemetery. Usually, I can’t persuade Yuriko to visit cemeteries, but the Doors Open feature was its chapel, which she was willing to visit.

Then, to my complete surprise, she wanted to walk the dog through the cemetery as I stopped here and there among its many stones and funerary art. Forest Home is an historic rural cemetery movement cemetery, as fine an example as I’ve seen anywhere.

We had time enough after the cemetery for two more churches in East Town — or maybe the Lower East Side, hard to tell — St. Paul’s Episcopal Church and St. Rita’s Catholic Church.

By the time we’d finished those, it was 5 pm and Doors Open was done for the day. But I didn’t quite want to head home. I wanted to find a place to see the Milwaukee skyline, something I’d never done in all the years I’ve been coming to that city.

It didn’t take long.

That’s the view from Veterans Park on Lake Michigan, and it illustrates one of the advantages of the Milwaukee MSA (pop. 1.57 million) compared with the Chicago MSA (pop. 9.6 million).

The logistics of getting to that view of Milwaukee were exactly this: drive to Veterans Park, park on the road for free, and walk about two minutes. To reach a similar vantage to see the vastly larger Chicago skyline, I shouldn’t have to point out, is much more complicated, and free doesn’t enter into it.

Veterans Park in Milwaukee also has some nice amenities, such as a place called Kites.

At Kites, you can buy kites, as well as snacks. We got some nachos.

People were out flying kites. The wind was up but it wasn’t too cold, so it was a good afternoon for it. If we’d gotten there earlier, we might have as well.

We walked the dog again, this time a little ways along the lake.

It was a good afternoon for that, too.

(Very) Late Summer Debris

Posted on September 16, 2021 by admin

Cool nights, but not that cool, and warm days — at least through the weekend, according to forecasts. It’s that time of the year when summer ebbs away anyway.

As for Fairbanks, I don’t know whether dips below freezing count as the leading edge of winter, or merely a chilly fall. Anyway, summer’s done.

The crickets are still chirping by night hereabouts. But I find that if I leave the window open a crack to fall asleep to them, which I like to do, I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night sneezing. Not because of the crickets — I’m pretty sure — but damned lingering ragweed.

That happened more than once last night, despite a decongestant I took at about 2, and despite closing the window after the first time. I woke up tired this morning. I managed to get my morning work done, took a siesta in the early afternoon, and felt better after that, well enough to finish the day’s work. Such are weekdays sometimes.

When visiting Wisconsin recently, we wondered whether the dog would want to go swimming.
She did not, though a walk on the beach was fine.

Spotted at a shopping center parking lot recently.

The charging station appeared sometime recently, not sure when. Eventually, they might be so common that no one will comment on them, but I don’t think we’ve reached that point yet.

The Washington Post reported on September 14: “Automakers are betting tens of billions of dollars on the expanding adoption of electric vehicles in the U.S. But a big hurdle for some consumers is the much longer time it takes to charge an EV than it does to refuel a gasoline-powered car. Buc-ee’s Inc., a Texas-based chain of gas-station convenience stores that’s expanding rapidly in the Southeast, could have the answer.”

The gist of the story (for those who can’t access it) is that Buc-ee’s will make — has made — itself so interesting that people won’t mind spending extra time there to charge their cars. Could be. Or it might be the next step for Buc-ee’s toward world domination.

Skeptical? The article also says: “The chain’s origins and most of its locations are in Texas, but they’ve recently added two locations each in Georgia, Alabama and Florida, with new locations under construction in South Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky and Mississippi.”

Wednesday Debris

Posted on July 21, 2021 by admin

Warm days and cicadas at dusk. Back to posting around August 1.

I saw this in my back yard yesterday.

Imagine my surprise. A lawn circle! The suburban version of crop circles. (In the UK, they’re called garden circles.) Clear evidence that space aliens visited.

Spotted in a northwest suburban parking lot the other day.

I ought to look that up, but I don’t want to.

Dear streaming service that I subscribe to: When you send me an email with links in it, the links should not take me to this.

This statue was just east of the commuter rail station in New Buffalo.

“Gakémadzëwen,” which is Potawatomi for “Enduring Spirit,” by Fritz Olsen, dedicated only in 2018. The plaque says it was erected by the city of New Buffalo “in recognition of the generous contributions to the city by the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi.”

“The 1833 Treaty of Chicago established the conditions for the removal of the Potawatomi from the Great Lakes area,” says the band’s web site. “When Michigan became a state in 1837, more pressure was put on the Potawatomi to move west. The hazardous trip killed one out of every ten people of the approximately 500 Potawatomi involved.

“As news of the terrible trip spread, some bands, consisting of small groups of families, fled to northern Michigan and Canada. Some also tried to hide in the forests and swamps of southwestern Michigan. The U.S. government sent soldiers to round up the Potawatomi they could find and move them at gunpoint to reservations in the west. This forced removal is now called the Potawatomi Trail of Death, similar to the more familiar Cherokee Trail of Tears.

“However, a small group of Neshnabék, with Leopold Pokagon as one of their leaders, earned the right to remain in their homeland, in part because they had demonstrated a strong attachment to Catholicism. It is the descendants of this small group who constitute the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians.”

Even so, it wasn’t until 1994 that Congress reaffirmed the federally recognized status of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi. The band now owns some Michigan casinos, including Four Winds New Buffalo, which features 3,000 slot machines, 70 table games, four restaurants, bars, retail venues, and a 415-room hotel.

Got a boring email from Amazon the other day. It said:

Unfortunately, we weren’t able to cancel the items you requested and these items will soon be shipped. We apologize for the inconvenience.

You can track your package at any time. If you no longer want these items, you may refuse delivery or return them after they arrive. You can visit Your Orders to start a return.

There’s no style to that. How about:

Unfortunately, we weren’t able to cancel the items you requested and these items will soon be shipped. No force in the universe can stop an Amazon order once it is past the FailSafe Point.®

Not even the mighty Jeff Bezos can stay your package from its appointed delivery, even from his perch in space. You may refuse delivery or return them after they arrive. You can visit Your Orders to start a return.

Also from Amazon: One of our updates involves how disputes are resolved between you and Amazon. Previously, our Conditions of Use set out an arbitration process for those disputes. Our updated Conditions of Use provides for dispute resolution by the courts.

Well, well, well. The Wall Street Journal reported in June: “Companies have spent more than a decade forcing employees and customers to resolve disputes outside the traditional court system, using secretive arbitration proceedings that typically don’t allow plaintiffs to team up and extract big-money payments akin to a class action.

“With no announcement, the company recently changed its terms of service to allow customers to file lawsuits… The retail giant made the change after plaintiffs’ lawyers flooded Amazon with more than 75,000 individual arbitration demands on behalf of Echo users.”

This is the flag of Greater London. The officially approved flag of that political entity, I’ve read. It looks like it was drawn by a ten-year-old.

One more thing: National Geographic now asserts there is a “Southern Ocean,” hugging Antarctica below 60 degrees South. That’s a term that I know Australians have long used — I heard it from Australians in the ’90s, and saw the term on a sign at Cape Leeuwin — though I believe they mean the “waters south of us.”

Speaking of ten-year-olds, I understand that part of Nat’l Geo’s mission is educational, but a headline asking whether I can name all the oceans, as if I were that age?

New Buffalo

Posted on July 19, 2021 by admin

A Mediterranean pattern has set in, here on the brief plateau of high summer. I’m taking as many meals as possible out on my deck.

Not long ago, we went to Buffalo, so by my idiosyncratic lights, that meant we ought to visit New Buffalo too. So we did on Sunday. Good thing that town is only about two hours away, assuming good traffic, which in no safe assumption. Even so, it isn’t that far, with New Buffalo hugging the eastern shore of Lake Michigan just inside the state of Michigan, only about two miles north of the Indiana line.

New Buffalo has been a nearby vacation destination for metro Chicago for many years. I first visited in 1987, when I spent a short time at the vacation house of a Chicagoan I knew, and went back occasionally after that, though not in about 20 years.

A lot of people go for the public beach, but Waikiki crowded, it isn’t.

We didn’t spend long this time, since it was nearly 90 F, and our idea of a good beach is an almost empty one in the 70s F. It was nice to see the lake, though. And the marina.

A boat belonging to the Berrien County sheriff’s office, docking.

Not far inland from the marina is the town’s commuter rail station.

Not much to look at, but the station and the line facilitated New Buffalo’s growth in the early 20th century, providing easy access from Chicago in the days before the Interstate or major suburbs. Come to think of it, if I were planning to be in New Buffalo and nowhere else for more than a few hours, that would be the way to come, so as to avoid pain-in-the-ass traffic jams south of Lake Michigan.

We parked on a leafy residential street and walked a couple of blocks to the main tourist street. One of New Buffalo’s two main streets is Whittaker, which connects the shore with I-94. About three blocks of Whittaker is lined with retailers, restaurants and new-looking residential properties, such as these.

That told me that, except probably for recessionary downturns of a few years at most, the second home and residential rental business in New Buffalo has expanded over that last few decades, taking advantage of the fondness among well-to-do people for parking themselves close to water. Not an ambition I share, but water does have its allures.

The street wasn’t overly crowded on Sunday, a very warm summer weekend day, but busy enough. We wandered around and looked in some stores, and came away with a t-shirt, refrigerator magnet and some postcards, as one does.

Interesting mural.

I’ve been able to find out that it’s painted on the side of Michigan Mercantile Building, home to a recently opened Starbucks. At the end of a short alley under the mural is the New Buffalo Farmstand by Mick Klug Farm. As for the mural, it looks new as well, but that’s all I know. I didn’t check for a signature.

A detail.

One reason we spent the day in New Buffalo was to have lunch at Redamak’s.

Since 1946 is a telling detail, since the restaurant is on Buffalo Street, the town’s other major thoroughfare. It isn’t a pedestrian-friendly road and the train doesn’t go there, so for Redamak’s to prosper in its early years, it needed car traffic — which was booming about then.

Currently the place is owned only by the second family ever to own it, which makes for continuity. I had a good hamburger there more than 30 years ago, and we had good ones there on Sunday: one with bleu cheese for me, a barbecue burger for Yuriko.

The road out front is also U.S. 12. Ah, where does that go? I wondered as we waited on the porch for a table. My phone wasn’t connected to the Internet at that moment, so I had to wait to find out. Just like in the not-so-old days.

All the way from Detroit to Aberdeen, Washington, running almost 2,500 miles, it turns out. We had a table next to a window. There’s something satisfying about sitting in a storied burger joint that looks out on a 2,500-mile highway. Not a nostalgia-industry highway like the defunct U.S. 66, but a genuine active part of the U.S. highway system in the 21st century.

Long Grove Walkabout

Posted on July 7, 2021 by admin

Sometimes you see something odd, and it does you good.

I saw that building over the weekend in Long Grove, Illinois, when I visited the town for the first time in many years (sometime after 2004, but not sure when). Long Grove is a prosperous place in southern Lake County — median household income, $148,150 — and a fairly large suburb, about 12 square miles, with a small historic district at the intersection of Old McHenry and Robert Parker Coffin roads.

Long Grove is host to various warm-weather festivals, including chocolate-, strawberry- and apple-themed festivals, but on July 3 this year the historic downtown was quiet, except for a singer entertaining the outdoor patrons at the Village Tavern. The lack of crowds made for pleasant walking, despite the midday heat, especially among the buildings and shops away from the roads.

Businesses clustering around the intersection include (among others) Balanced Earth Energy Healing, Broken Earth Winery, In Motion Dance, Long Grove Apple Haus, Ma and Pa’s Candy, Neumann’s Cigars & More, Olivia’s Boutique, Signature Popcorn, and the Olive Tap, an “olive oil and balsamic vinegar tasting emporium.”

Luxury goods, in other words, largely dependent on the caprices of the upper-middle class. Just walking around I could tell that last year was hard on the district, since a number of businesses looked permanently closed.

Still, most of them seem to have survived, such as Viking Treasures. It promises Scandinavian gifts and was the only place I saw still insisting on a mask.

Long Grove is also known for its small covered bridge.

“The historical significance of the Long Grove Covered Bridge is all about the iron, not the wood,” Aaron Underwood of the Long Grove Historical Society writes. “… our bridge isn’t an ‘authentic’ covered bridge, but rather an iron truss bridge that had a protective covering added in the 1970s to protect that iron and integrate it into the downtown’s historic theme. The cover is a beautiful copy of a famous covered bridge in Ashuelot, New Hampshire.”

Elsewhere, he wrote: “Our bridge is historic because it is rare. Only two bridges of this type remain in the six county Chicago metro area, and only thirty-five remain in the entire state. It may well be the only bridge in the state of this type with such an ornate pedestrian walkway.”

That doesn’t keep morons from driving too-large vehicles into the covering, however.

West Tennessee Dash

Posted on April 20, 2021 by admin

On April 10, after leaving Illinois via a white-knuckle, two-lane bridge across the Mississippi into the state of Missouri, I headed south to catch the ferry back across the river at Hickman, Kentucky (green arrow). The point of this exercise was to continue from Hickman on small roads to the Kentucky Bend, marked here with a pink arrow.

There’s nothing distinctive about the Kentucky Bend except its odd status as an exclave of the commonwealth of Kentucky. I’d planned to snap a picture of whatever sign was at the Tennessee-Kentucky border at that point, and maybe visit the small cemetery just inside the bend.

It wasn’t to be. When I got to the ferry, the Mississippi looked a mite testy, swollen from the storms the night before, and probably other spring rains. A phone call confirmed that the ferry wasn’t running.

Without the ferry crossing, visiting the Kentucky Bend would have meant considerable backtracking, so I blew it off, and continued southward in Missouri. I got a glimpse of the bend from the riverfront at New Madrid, but I didn’t linger because I needed to find a bathroom.

Later I crossed into Tennessee on I-155 and soon connected with U.S. 51, which goes straight into Memphis. Despite the years I lived in Tennessee once upon a time, it was a part of the state I’d never seen, except for Memphis itself.

I didn’t quite make the straight shot into the city. Not far from U.S. 51 is Fort Pillow State Historic Park, site of the Battle of Fort Pillow, also known as the Fort Pillow Massacre, on bluffs overlooking the Mississippi. It’s been a state park for 50 years now. The day was as brilliant and warm as a spring day could be by that time, a contrast from the cool rain and less lush conditions further north.

I only spent a little while at the museum and visitor center, but got the impression that the bloody history of Fort Pillow isn’t emphasized. Be that as it may, I was keen to see whatever was left of the fort, or what had been rebuilt. Signs pointed the way.

An longer interpretive sign at this clearing said Nathan Bedford Forrest set up his command there.

On the trail went.

It would have been nice had the FORT –> signs said how far was left to go. Also, I couldn’t quite follow the track I was taking, as compared to the map I acquired at the visitors center, which was a little unusual. Anyway, I climbed another couple of rises and came to a spot where I could just barely see the river.

I figured surely there must be earthworks or something at such a high point, but I didn’t see anything. Then I noticed another FORT –> sign pointing me down another staircase. That meant I’d have to go up again somewhere, because forts aren’t built in lower places. Then to return, I’d have go down and then up again. I didn’t have the energy for all that, I decided, so I made my way back. Still, I had a good walk. By the end of the day, I’d walked about two and a half miles.

Besides, I wanted to get to Memphis. When I arrived about an hour later, I found a spot in Mud Island Park with a view of the skyline.

The Hernando de Soto Bridge. More bridges ought to be named after explorers.

Back on the mainland, I found the Memphis Pyramid. It wasn’t hard to spot.

Or more formally, Bass Pro Shops at the Pyramid.

Taller than the Pyramid of the Sun in Mexico, according to this source, but somehow that ancient Mesoamerican structure has much more of a presence. The Memphis Pyramid has been standing for 30 years now, and seems to be making it as a retail store, after failing as a municipal arena.

The blue-lit structure is an elevator to a view from the top of the pyramid.

Probably worth the price, but the line was long, so I headed for the exit. But I couldn’t leave without buying something to support the Memphis Pyramid, so I bought a box of Moon Pies.

Another One Bites the Dust

Posted on December 15, 2020 by admin

Busy day, including an early evening errand that took me past a nearby Family Video location. What’s that? Looks dark in there. Also, there’s a fence around the building and its parking lot. With some kind of demolition equipment parked inside the fence.

I’d say that the store has bitten the dust. I hadn’t noticed, so it must have been a fairly recent occurrence. As indeed it was, along with some hundreds of other locations. But not that recent: about two months ago, according to the Journal & Topics. Guess I haven’t been paying attention.

“The entertainment business has suffered during COVID-19 and that trickled down to movie rentals, as Vale told the Journal & Topics,” the article notes. Vale was a manager with the chain.

“ ‘There aren’t any new releases right now and that plays a big role in our rentals,’ said Vale.”

New releases. That’s the thing about Family Video that I never quite took a cotton to, its walls of new releases. Three or four or a half dozen DVDs/Blu-rays each of the latest movie confection, only occasionally worth renting. In the center aisles were older titles, but even that selection was meager for someone with sometimes-eccentric tastes.

Sure, give the public what they want, etc. Who would ever thought that the Hollywood torrent would dwindle to a trickle? But as soon as the various casts and crews get their shots, the entertainment factories will be humming along again, if only to feed the on-demand beast. Too late to save the northwest suburban Family Video, though.

NW Suburban Xmas Tree Lot

Posted on December 13, 2020 by admin

Beginning late in the day on Friday, rain starting falling and continued through much of Saturday. Not particularly heavy, and temps were warm enough, barely, to prevent ice formation. But all the wet did delay our planned Christmas tree acquisition until today.

Fairly cold today, but dry, so there were no issues with a wet tree in the back seat. That’s how we carry it home, bottom of the trunk pointed toward to floor of the back seat, the thin top pointed out the opposite window, which is rolled down a bit. This year the top of the tree stuck out about a foot, and the window was rolled down about that much.

The modest NW suburban lot we patronized. Cash only.
Xmas Tree Lot I took that picture last year. This year I didn’t bother. But it looked almost exactly the same today, and the tree-buying was the same. Find a tree at or under what I wanted to spend, exchange a few words with the proprietors (a middle-aged couple), watch as the one of them, the man as it happened, cut a few inches off the bottom with a chain saw and then run the tree through the netting gizmo. I carried the netted tree to the car and loaded it myself.

After some re-arrangement of the debris in the living room, the 7-foot or so balsam now awaits decoration. We’ll get to it when Ann feels like helping. Doing most of it, actually.

Dinosaurs of New York

Posted on August 23, 2020 by admin

Back in the days of paper letters and postcards, not every correspondence I started ended up in the mail. I have an entire file of letters and a few postcards that I didn’t finish and didn’t mail.

Usually that was for ordinary reasons, such as forgetting to complete it for months, by which time the news was stale. Only on rare occasions did I write a letter and think better of sending it because of its content, though I have a few insolent work memos of that kind.

I wrote a large postcard to a friend of mine in Illinois on August 27, 1983, while I was still in New York City. I think it got lost among the papers I had with me a few days later when I went to Nashville, and all these years later, I still have it.

Note the missing piece. I got as far as stamping the thing, but later removed it for re-use.

The printed text of the card says:

ALLOSAURUS (foreground) was a large, meateating dinosaur that lived during the Jurassic period of earth history, about 140 million years ago. This aggressive reptile, which preyed upon other dinosaurs, was about 30 feet long and probably weighed several tons when it was alive. Several individuals of CAMPTOSAURUS, a small, inoffensive, plant-eating dinosaur, are shown in the background.

Painting on Display
THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY
NEW YORK, U.S.A.

I wrote, in part:

Dear R—

I have come to New York to learn such oddities as “August is Bondage Month,” which a simple advertisement in the window of the Pink Pussycat Boutique told me. [Remarkably, the shop is still there; give the people what they want, I guess.]

Since the long line to pass through customs at JFK [returning from Europe], I’ve shuffled first to the P’s house in New Rochelle, then S’s house in Stamford, Conn. Since last Friday (the 19th), I have been at D’s apartment while she is on the Jersey shore with her parents. This is a good arrangement. I’ve become acquainted with the Village and various other parts of the city.

This card, for instance, is an accurate portrait of Brooklyn, by the East River.

Gas

Posted on April 29, 2020 by admin

The grass is high and persistent rain over the last 24 hours will make it higher, except for the dandelions, which are temporarily beaten down. Once the lawn dries out, and I manage to buy some gas for the mower, I’ll cut it. Assuming the mower wakes from its hibernation.

I bought gas for my car on April 17 at a warehouse retailer. Almost no one was in line, which is rare. Around $1.75/gallon, I think, so just over $22 was enough to fill the tank completely. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d done that. I also couldn’t remember the time I bought any gas before April 17, so I checked.

My handy bank records tell me it was March 16. That purchase took it up to 3/4 of a tank, roughly — which is more in line with my gas-buying habits — so in a month, I used only 1/2 a tank, and a fair portion of that was to drive some distance to attend to some business in Des Plaines shortly after the March 16 purchase.

As predicted, not much driving these days, mostly just forays to nearby parks. Guess the air’s a little cleaner for it and the roads a little safer. Still, if this goes on too long, I’ll start missing long drives. Not something I would have predicted before the crisis.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Retail