Category Archives: Suburban Chicago

A Quiet Suburban Spot

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Rain blew through last night and so did cool air. Dropped temps by about 20 degrees F. compared with yesterday, making today feel like a pleasant day in October. The days ahead look to be warm and dry: a nice run for declining summer.

Spotted near a suburban street recently in Du Page County.Bloomingdale descanso Bloomingdale descanso

I parked – off the road – and took a look. I drive this street fairly often, maybe twice or three times a month, and hadn’t noticed this descanso before. That probably means a recent accident, though a simple search using the street and town names and a few other items turned up nothing. A look at a fatal accident database with a helpful map pinpointing the incidents (just the kind of thing to set your teeth on edge) told me there was a fatality on that road in 2017 involving one car, one drunk driver, and one death.

If this were that person’s memorial, it seems odd that it was take so long, so I doubt it is. My search wasn’t conclusive, but that was as far as I wanted to take it. Someone died unexpectedly on this uncrowded, obscure suburban street, and someone wanted to remember that person.

A Lot of Flowers

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Compared with the July 15 storm, this week’s storm, which blew through on Tuesday, was a gentleman. Some rain and enough lightning and thunder to qualify as a thunderstorm, but the sort that comes in distant cloud-to-cloud flashes and low rumbles off in the direction of somewhere else.

Summertime flora isn’t just for parks. Sometimes a luxuriation of flowers is found in unexpected places. Such as this patch.flowers of the field

Back up a little for context.

How does the verse go? Not even Solomon in all his splendor parked in a lot like this one?

Volkening Lake Summer Flora

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In summer, the north rim of Volkening Lake is all a-bloom.Fred W. Volkening Recreation Area Fred W. Volkening Recreation Area Fred W. Volkening Recreation Area

Contrast to December, when the color was provided by electric lights.Fred W. Volkening Recreation Area Fred W. Volkening Recreation Area

Other parts of the park sport various flowers of various hues as well.Volkening Lake Volkening Lake

The lake is really more of a pond, and according to the Schaumburg Park District, the area is called the Fred W. Volkening Recreation Area. But all I’ve ever heard is Volkening Lake. Fred W. Volkening Recreation Area

Fred Volkening was a Schaumburg old-timer (d. 1993) who used to farm the surrounding land. I’m glad the lake and rec area has his name, rather than that of an otherwise forgettable park district functionary. Still, a park by an other name would bloom as lush, I figure.

Spring Valley Summer ’24

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A new garden has been installed at Spring Valley, which we visited over the weekend, during a run of flawless summer days. We’ve been in every season.

It’s a lush garden.Spring Valley
Spring Valley

Even better, we were all able to get out to take a look.

The black-eyed Susans have emerged.

As well as – sunflowers?

We weren’t sure, but they do have a tall presence and yellow expansiveness, like sunflowers.

Hibiscus Summer

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Hibiscus are blooming. Since last week. That seems a little early, but I can speculate that the summer’s rains might be at least part of the reason.

Only some of our bushes, however. Mainly the ones that receive extra water when we water the vegetables and flowers, which is usually in the morning and evening. That strengthens my speculation about water, but not enough to do any actual research.

They aren’t our only back-yard glories. We have morning glories rising from seeds my brother Jay gave us some time ago. They grow near the garage.

And more.

Worth the small amount of effort when it comes to watering.

Not a Ford Falcon, But Still Evoked Childhood Memories

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What’s that, I thought from far up the street. Possibly a Ford Falcon? Not a model you see much on the streets any more.

I got closer and no, it was a Chevrolet Bel Air. I’m not enough of a car aficionado to pinpoint the model year, but it looks early ’60s to me. Still not something you see much on our 21st-century suburban streets.

My grandmother drove a Ford Falcon. Shorter than the Bel Air, if I remember right, and somewhat rounder. It was the last car she owned, an early or mid-60s model. Again, I’m not enough of an expert to know the exact year, and it isn’t something I would have asked grandma.

I have scattered, but fond memories of riding in that car. It was gray and mostly, I believe, she drove (when I was with her) the short distances to shops she traded at, such as the Handy-Andy grocery store on Broadway in Alamo Heights, or to Brackenridge Park for my amusement.

Oddly enough, besides reminding me of grandma and the Brackenridge Park Eagle, the memory of that old car makes me also think of survivorship bias. There was no seat belt in the back seat, though the the front had lap belts. I usually rode in the back as a kid and, of course, survived the beltless experience. I consider this good fortune.

Some older people – my age, and I’ve seen it in writing – thus come to the conclusion that making children wear seat belts or other safety devices while in a car is merely the heavy hand of a nanny state. Hey, I survived my belt-free childhood in the ’60s! That’s an example of a statement that’s true but also dimwitted. Are there no children (or anyone else) in their graves from that period who would have survived had belts been in use?

Street Sign

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He’s back.

The light is fairly long at that place, so I had time to document his presence not long ago. I don’t know that I see him every summer at this location, at the intersection of two major roads here in the northwestern suburbs, but I know I’ve seen him there over the years. With his straightforward message.

More of the carrot approach, rather than the stick favored by a sign-holder I saw on Michigan Avenue once.

St. Swithin’s Day Derecho

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Things are quiet out in the Atlantic, the National Hurricane Center tells us. Maybe a little too quiet, as the cliché goes.

But not around here. An excerpt from a NWS bulletin this evening:

ISSUED: 9:16 PM JUL. 15, 2024 – NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE

The National Weather Service in Chicago has issued a

* Tornado Warning for…

Southern Lake County in northeastern Illinois… Northern DuPage County in northeastern Illinois… Northern Cook County in northeastern Illinois…

* Until 1000 PM CDT. …

IMPACT… Flying debris will be dangerous to those caught without shelter. Mobile homes will be damaged or destroyed. Damage to roofs, windows, and vehicles will occur. Tree damage is likely.…

We got a fair amount of siren noise, plus some wind and rain, but by the end of the day not enough to do any damage (that I can see). Other places might not be able to say the same. Looks like we got off easy.

Fireworks

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July kicked off much like June this year, warmth and sometimes heat alternating with rain, which cools down things for a while. The threat of cicadas so noisy you can’t hear yourself think has not, at least in my little corner of the suburbs, come to much so far. We’re now getting about as much cicada noise as we do every year, focused around dusk, though perhaps beginning a little earlier in the summer than usual; early July instead of mid- or late July.

July 4 was warm and dry. And on a Thursday, which makes a de facto four-day weekend. Just the time to set off fireworks here in Illinois, where all but the most innocuous ‘works are banned. I didn’t set any off myself, but after dark took to the deck to listen to the explosions.

Somewhere not too far away, someone was setting off M-80s or some noisy equivalent every few minutes, it seemed – a little too much of a good thing, I thought, so I moved to the garage, and listened to the bangs and pops and whizzes from there, with the door open and the lights off and the cars parked outside. The surrounding structure dampened the loudest of the fiery hubbub but still allowed me to hear it all.

There was also much less chance of being hit by a shell, in case some wanker out there somewhere was shooting actual firearms. I know that happens in some places here in the USA. I’ll admit that the odds of that seem pretty slim in our suburb, even at the noisiest moments on Independence Day, but even so probably greater than they would have been only a few years ago.

High Summer Thursday

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Fireflies have been spotted in the yard. Actually I saw a few a week or more ago, early ones, but now they’re out consistently. They’re denizens of high summer, at least around here.

So time for a summer break, in honor of the upcoming Independence Day and Canada Day and the idea of summer indolence. When the living is easy. Alas, there are no destinations ahead for us, at least not for the moment. Back posting around July 7. It will still be high summer, unless something funny happens to the Earth’s tilt on its axis.

The living is easy if you’ve got an AC and the means to furnish it with electricity. Got my latest electric bill today, a steep one, with ComEd helpfully informing me that we used an average of 151% more kWh each day in June 2024 (May 24-June 24, that is) than the same period a year earlier, which is certainly a business way to look at things. This June’s been pretty hot, but also rainy. Practically subtropical this year.

I will say this about the utility: only one power loss in recent memory, which was a few months ago, and lasted only about 10 seconds. Before that, the most recent blackout I remember was on MLK Day, maybe 10 years ago, about a hour long. It wasn’t that cold, so we weren’t at risk from the chill. It was daytime, so we weren’t in the dark either, and I think we played a board game.

The view from my temporary bed the other day.

Not long before I’d woken up from a screening colonoscopy, and had enough energy to put on my pants. The end result was good: the doc found no lurking neoplasms. The worst part of the procedure is over by the time you get to the clinic anyway. Namely, downing the vile liquid beforehand.

My last round of gulping was from 3 to 5 a.m., so to make the time pass – when I wasn’t rushing to the bathroom – I watched a couple of episodes of Northern Exposure, which recently appeared on one of the streaming services I pay for. Now I’m working my way through the series. I saw some, but not all of the episodes when it was new, including a few that a friend had sent me on videotape when I lived in Japan.

Those were the first I’d ever seen, watched on the VHS player that fed into my little Korean TV (the first TV I ever bought, for about ¥25,000 on one of Osaka’s electronic retail streets). The very first one impressed me as amusing. I watched another episode and thought, amusing. And interesting.

Then I watched a third one – which happened to be the late first-season episode “Aurora Borealis: A Fairy Tale for Big People,” originally aired August 30, 1990. My reaction: what is this? How can this be on network television? It’s too wonderfully odd.

One of the plot threads of that particular episode involves Bernard, a long-lost half-brother of Chris, showing up in town for reasons he can’t explain. (That episode also happened to be the one in which Joel meets misanthrope Adam, a character played with remarkable comic focus by Adam Arkin, who later became recurring and somewhat more domesticated.)

Early on, before they know they are related, Bernard and Chris are in the Brick, and have this discussion.

Shelly: What were you talking about this morning? Jung and — what was that other stuff?

Chris: The collective unconscious.

Shelly: Do they tour, or do they just cut records?

[That would, in fact, be a great name for a band.]

Chris: Well, I’ll be reading excerpts from Jung and his study Man and His Symbols all week. So — you can catch up.

Bernard: That was you on the radio?

Chris: Yeah.

Bernard: Interesting. Very interesting.

Chris: Have you read any Jung?

Bernard: No. But I’ve had some strange dreams lately. Very strange.

Shelly: Me too.

Chris: Well, everybody does. I mean, Jung says that dreams are the woofer and tweeter of the total sound system.

Bernard forms an unusually tight bond with Chris, again for reasons they can’t explain, since they still don’t realize they are related. Tired after spending time working on a large metal sculpture Chris is building outside his trailer, they bunk down and promptly share a dream. Or rather you, the viewer, slowly realize that is happening, as dreamtime Chris and dreamtime Bernard talk things over in the cab of a truck neither of them is driving; someone off camera is. In the background is the Chordettes’ recording of “Sandman.”

They talk about their father, who was a long-haul truck driver, and are on the verge of realizing he had two families when they wonder who, in fact, is driving.

“Who are you?” they ask the driver at the same time.

“Hello, boys,” says the balding, gray-bearded driver with an eye patch (?) and a brown suit, in a mildly Germanic accent. “I am Carl Jung. And while I know much about the collective unconscious, I don’t know how to drive!”

They all scream as the truck heads out of control. Naturally, that’s when they wake up.

That scene makes me laugh, just thinking about it. It’s inspired. At the moment I saw it, I realized I needed to watch more of the show. And so I did for a while, but not consistently, and then not often for the next 30 years or so.

Fast forward to last month, when a handful of episodes (including “Aurora Borealis”) were available to watch on the trans-Atlantic flights on Aer Lingus. So I watched a few, including “Aurora Borealis,” and later discovered the show is now streaming for the first time ever. About time, I’d say.