The Hindu Temple of Greater Chicago

Posted on May 24, 2021 by admin

On a pleasant Sunday in the spring, metro Chicago offers any number of things to see. One of them is the Hindu Temple of Greater Chicago.

The HTGC is in southwest suburban Lemont, tucked away on a moraine hilltop off Lemont Road, not far south of I-55. It’s a temple complex, actually, including Sri Rama Temple, Ganesha-Shiva-Durga Temple, a mediation center and other structures.

The Sri Rama exterior.

Entry meant a temperature check and a few questions by a slightly suspicious hired security guard. The interior features a fascinating array of religious artwork and devotional alcoves.

Next to Sri Rama is a structure called balipeetham, also styled bali peetam. As far as I can understand, it’s a place to ditch your unholy thoughts before entering the temple.

As hinted at by the temple’s generic name, it was an early — maybe the first, I haven’t confirmed that — Hindu temple in the Chicago area, founded in 1977 with the rising tide of immigration from the subcontinent. Many more temples have been established since then, of course. The first structure on the HTGC site was completed in 1985, according to this incredibly detailed and professionally written history of the temple at its web site. (There’s no reason such a history can’t be detailed and well written, it’s just that web-site histories tend to be otherwise.)

This is the outside of the first structure, the Ganesha-Shiva-Durga Temple. Its interior is interesting, but not nearly as elaborate as Sri Rama.

Elsewhere on the grounds are other structures. The one on the left protects a statue of Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902).

Swami Vivekananda is best known in this country — at least among people who know such things — for representing India at the 1893 Parliament of the World’s Religions in Chicago. Which, I have to add, seems like a remarkable event all by itself.

Swallow Cliff Woods

Posted on May 23, 2021 by admin

The parking lot and the road next to the Waterfall Glen Forest Preserve trailhead were packed with cars and people on Saturday afternoon. As the name mentions, there’s a waterfall along that trail and, from the looks of some of the people headed for the trail, someplace to swim.

The thing to do was go somewhere else. Before long we drove to Swallow Cliff Woods, which is one of the many wooded areas encompassed by Palos Preserves in southern Cook County (so is Waterfall Glen). To reach the trails, you climb the stairs next to a former toboggan run. It was late afternoon by the time we got there, though it was still in the 80s.

“Constructed in 1930 [sic] by the Civilian Conservation Corps, 125 limestone stairs lead to the top of a former toboggan run on Swallow Cliff’s 100-foot bluff,” the Cook County Forest Preserve District web site says. Of course, the 1933-founded CCC built nothing in 1930, but whatever the correct year, it’s good to happen across more of the Corps’ handiwork.

The view from the top isn’t bad, though you do have to look at the parking lot.

From the top, a trail leads to other trails, and eventually we made a loop through the woods. One of the spying apps on my phone says we took more than 8,100 steps for the day, mostly in these woods.

Illinois has reached flush spring green.

One structure along the way: a time-worn shelter with evidence that fires are built there sometimes, and partying occurs.

It’s also a horse trail. They were moving reasonably fast at a trot or canter, maybe. I don’t know horse gaits intuitively.
Swallow Cliff wasn’t bad for a second choice, and not nearly as crowded, at least in the woods. A lot of people were climbing the stairs — they’re now billed as “exercise stairs,” as if there were any other kind — but most apparently didn’t continue onto the trails.

The Pond at Dusk

Posted on May 18, 2021 by admin

We walked the 0.7-mile circuit around Volkening Lake on Monday evening just as the light was fading. But there was still enough light to illuminate the dog.

On the other side of the lake — which is really a large pond — we spotted geese and goslings crossing the path.

We wisely held back as they waddled across, since we didn’t want the geese to get any wrong ideas about what our dog was up to.

Sunday at the Forest Preserve

Posted on May 17, 2021 by admin

I thought about going to a new (to us) forest preserve on Sunday, which turned out to be warm and pleasant, unlike Saturday. But I decided that I didn’t want to drive too far, so we went to Poplar Creek FP instead.

That’s the dog, sitting under a tree. We were doing the same. A little context:

After a walk of about a mile and a half or so, we found a shady spot to rest. Just another of spring’s delights, when it actually gets warm.

Thursday Extras

Posted on May 13, 2021 by admin

This was in a window we walked by in west suburban Wheaton not long ago. I like the neon. Who doesn’t like neon? Who doesn’t like gelato? I’d never had any gelato until I went to Florence. That was a great place to experience it for the first time.

We didn’t stop by for any gelato. We did buy a couple of most delicious pastries at a nearby place called Suzette’s.

I found this card in Peoria recently. Near Bradley U. Not at the store itself, but while picking up food at Jerk Hut, where we bought some tasty jerk chicken.
Interesting that the students of Bradley, some of whose parents weren’t around for the original iteration of hippies, would support such a business. Then again, the key might be in that now-obsolete code term tobacco accessories.

I heard a few seconds of an ad on YouTube recently featuring a young Brit walking along the Thames, with the Tower Bridge in the background, to make absolutely sure we know he’s British, as if his dialect didn’t tell us that. He said something along the lines that such-and-such was going “redefine the way you think about men’s makeup.”

Fat chance, ya limey bastard. I can sum up my thinking on men’s makeup in one pithy sentence that isn’t going to change: I’m never wearing any.

Got a press release the other day from someone — some automated mailing list — that doesn’t appreciate my commercial real estate beat.

“With #chlorophyll and #chlorophyllwater trending on social media, I wanted to put Chlorophyll Water® (the only bottled, pre-made chlorophyll drink on the market) on your radar, as it’s selling out in retailers across the country,” the release asserted.

“A favorite amongst Kourtney Kardashian, Rosario Dawson, Mandy Moore and Aly Reisman, Chlorophyll Water® is a plant-powered purified water enhanced by nature with the addition of Chlorophyll, a key ingredient and the distinct green pigment in plant life.”

I probably won’t be a consumer of that product, but who knows? Chlorophyll might be tastier than I think. Also, glad to report that I’ve only heard of two of those celebrities, only one of whom I can acknowledge has some talent.

Received some direct mail the other day promising better lawns through chemistry. It is spring, after all. As chilly as temps have been, it’s still green out there. Anyway, on the outside of the envelope, it says:

Dandelions. Crabgrass. Weeds.

Act now to stop those lawn problems and receive your 20% neighborhood discount.

Plus a FREE Core Aeration. See details inside.

Problems, you say? I say it’s biodiversity. The suburbs need it, too.

This is a gimme letter envelope I had to scan, from a statewide advocacy org with its eye on utility rates. I suspect the risk is pretty small, considering the distinct history of the two states.

You know, in some other context, some other organization might be sending letters screaming, Texas Cannot Become Illinois.

Men Not At Work

Posted on May 12, 2021 by admin

Finally a day warm enough to eat lunch on my deck. Worth noting, and I just did.

A small road crew showed up on my street not long ago and did work on some storm drains. They posted orange cones and MEN AT WORK signs. How long will it be before the village preemptively starts using WORKERS AHEAD? Not because anyone complained, just because they worry that someone might.

The sign was accurate, however. It seemed to be an all-male crew. They disappeared for lunch at one point.

That afforded me a good look down the hole.

Under our feet all the time, yet invisible almost all of the time. That afternoon the workers returned and installed a new storm drain, so this small bit of underground is invisible once more.

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.

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.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Suburban Chicago