Thursday Jumble

Posted on June 11, 2020 by admin

Intermittent rain and thunder on Tuesday and Wednesday, and some vigorous warm winds. Enough to randomize the arrangement of our deck chairs but not, fortunately, to move the cast iron deck table. Mostly, though, recent days have been clear and agreeably summerlike.

They’ve aged remarkably well.

Last weekend, we made it back to Spring Valley to see the Peony Field, now in full bloom.

Also noticed a Little Lending Library at Spring Valley. I think that’s new. It encourages one and all to Be a Good Human Today.Not as full as the one on my street, but it had a few items, including a stack of booklets whose subject is Baha’i prayers. I took one for a look-see. In each are prayers for various occasions and situations, such as Aid and Assistance, Children, The Departed, Healing, Morning, Parents, Tests and Difficulties, and so on.

Later in the week, we got takeout from an Indian restaurant we visited, and liked, a few years ago. Been buying takeout locally ever other week or so since sit-down restaurants closed.

We feasted on sang paneer, malai kofta, paneer bhurji, lamb bhoona — that was mine — along with garlic naanm, roti and jeera rice. All good.

Thiruvalluvar in the Suburbs

Posted on June 8, 2020 by admin

It’s been a few years since we visited the Chicago Athenaeum International Scupture Park, though more recently than 10 years ago. We went on Saturday toward the end of daytime, taking the dog along for the walk.

All of the same sculptures are still there, but with one recent addition.
The upper plaque has some Tamil script and then English:

Thiruvalluvar (31 B.C.)
Poet & Philosopher Who Wrote the Immortal Thirukural

I wasn’t previously familiar with Thiruvalluvar, being woefully ignorant of most things Tamil, so I did a little reading. Now I’m slightly less ignorant, having learned that he is held in high esteem by the Tamil. Also, that specific date — same as, far away on the Eurasian landmass, the Battle of Actium — is the first year of the Tamil calendar, as determined by the government of Tamil Nadu and various scholars.

The lower plaque says:

Commemorating 10th World Tamil Research Conference
Keezhadi Nam Thaai Madi
July 4-7, 2019, Schaumburg IL
Jointly organized by
Federation of Tamil Sangams of North America,
International Association of Tamil Research &
Chicago Tamil Sangam
Statue Donated by VGP World Tamil Sangam

A sangam is an assembly of Tamil scholars, which seems to have a specific meaning when it comes to assemblies in ancient times, but clearly a modern usage as well.

Never heard about any of that before. I despair sometimes about how much I don’t know about the world. But I also never know when the world will reach out to teach me something — in this case, a brief lesson in the form of a recent northwest suburban statue.

Postcards To Ed

Posted on June 7, 2020 by admin

It’s been almost four years since my old friend Ed passed. His bequest to me was many postcards, including some of those that I’d sent to him over the years. I spent some time looking at them the other day. Odd to see something you dashed off, never expecting to see it again.

A selection.

June 16, 2008

Dear Ed,
Welcome back from Mongolia, etc. I’m expecting a letter. You will soon receive cards from Tennessee or NC or maybe even SC.

Dees

***

June 25, 2009

Dear Ed,
From the last batch of cards I bought. I didn’t expect a planetarium at LBL [Land Between the Lakes]. The show wasn’t all that interesting, however.

Dees

***

Sept. 22, 2010

Dear Ed,
Now this was worth driving to Milwaukee to see: a piece of the 1893 world’s fair. If only I had that time machine —

Dees

***

April 26, 2011

Dear Ed,
Bet it’s been a while since you’ve rec’d a stretch postcard — the gift shop at this museum was practically giving them away, so I got several. I have to like a museum that’s still proud of its dioramas. Until holodecks come along, they will have to do.

Dees

***

April 6, 2012

Dear Ed,
I’ve been remiss is sending cards lately, so here’s one from Yerkes. In case you don’t have enough pictures of Einstein. Nice pics of Africa, by the way [that he sent me].

Dees

Spring Valley Flowers, June ’20

Posted on June 3, 2020 by admin

After dinner yesterday, we went to Spring Valley (in full, Spring Valley Nature Center & Heritage Farm). Temps had been about 90 during the afternoon, but were down by early evening. Our goal was the peony field. It blooms only for a few days.

Plenty of other flora along the walk to the field. No surprise this time of year.We arrived at the field to find not many peonies blooming just yet. But there were some in front of the nearby cabin.
We saw many more buds ahead of a full bloom.Guess the ants get some sustenance from the flower, without bothering it too much.

Logistics on Our Street

Posted on June 2, 2020 by admin

Remember generic products? I do. They showed up in grocery stores in the 1980s. I bought some only occasionally. A lot of people probably could say that, so those black-and-white boxes didn’t endure.

Today, a generic truck showed up on our street to deliver something to a nearby house.

I didn’t see anything large taken out of it to justify the truck as a delivery vehicle. But maybe it carries large and small items. Anyway, it’s fittingly named: a unit of a vast, always-moving, always-changing logistics network stretching from here to China, literally.

Deer Grove Forest Preserve

Posted on May 31, 2020 by admin

Another weekend, another forest preserve path where the problems of a wounded nation seem remote. The last day of May was clear and a little cool this year, good for a walk in the woods. Unlike last week, the path we took through Deer Grove Forest Preserve in Palatine, Ill., headed into a forest.Deer Grove includes about 2,000 acres just south of the border between Cook and Lake counties — note Lake-Cook Road running along its northeastern edge.
We parked near the Camp Alphonse entrance, which I’ve marked with a small red dot. We walked roughly to the blue dot and came back the same way — a mile and a half, more or less.

The origin of the name Camp Alphonse isn’t readily available, but there’s also a nearby entrance called Camp Reinberg. This site at least lists Camp Reinberg as a temporary WWI camp, of which there many nationwide that left little trace. My guess would be that Camp Alphonse was one as well.

The woods were alive with spring greenery and lots of wildflowers.
An elegant spider web.
A few dead trees still lording over the living ones.
The dog had a good time too.
Snacking on leafy greens the entire way.

RIP, Hecky Powell

Posted on May 27, 2020 by admin

I didn’t know Hecky Powell, who died recently at 71 of COVID-19. But I sure knew his ribs, and especially his rib tips. He owned Hecky’s Barbecue, a longstanding rib joint in Evanston, a small place shoehorned into a building at Green Bay Road and Emerson St.

“Explaining his rib methodology, he told the Sun-Times it went like this: Apply a dry rub — based on his mother’s secret recipe — and follow that with 24 to 48 hours of grilling in a smoker. Then, he’d heat the sauce and slather it on.”

Whatever he did, he produced wonderful ribs and rib tips. A former Northwestern student I knew in the late ’80s introduced me to the place. Since Evanston’s a slog of a drive from where we are now, we’ve visited Hecky’s — carryout only — only about once or twice a year in more recent decades.

Still, just by thinking about it, I can picture, and taste, the pound of rib tips we’d usually get. Marvelous. A marvel of the barbecue arts.

Paul Douglas Forest Preserve

Posted on May 26, 2020 by admin

Paul Douglas was a U.S. Senator from Illinois, in that office from 1949 to 1967. I’m fairly sure that the Paul Douglas Forest Preserve in northwest Cook County is named after him, not the radio man and movie actor in Panic in the Streets, a picture I hear is getting renewed attention these days.

On Sunday, as the heat of the day wore off, we went to the 1,800-acre Paul Douglas Forest Preserve. Forest is actually a misnomer in this case, and for some of the other forest preserves, since it includes not only conventional forestland, but also grasslands, wetland and (so I’ve read) a heron rookery.
Pleasant and now lush green.
The seven-mile trail loops the edge of the more-or-less square preserve, which is fine except where it parallels the tollway (I-90).
We walked from the parking lot westward near I-90 and then followed the trail as it bent northward, along the much quieter S. Freeman Road. We followed that for a bit and then doubled back, covering about a mile and a half all together.

Much more pleasant away from I-90; less noise and lots of visible grassland.
Along with wetland flowers.
Even late in the afternoon, it was still a little hot. The day was the first summer-like one of the year.
Soon after I took that picture, the dog found a muddy puddle. She not only drank from it — in preference to the clean but probably bland water we brought — but also cooled herself off by plopping down in the mud.

Wednesday Water & Fire

Posted on May 20, 2020 by admin

Back to posting again on Tuesday. It’s an early Memorial Day this year, five days removed from Decoration Day, and in fact May 25 is as early as it can be under the Uniform Monday Holiday Act. Next year the holiday swings to the latest possible position, May 31, and then in 2022, it’s square on Decoration Day.

Warmish day today, this Wednesday, a relief from a too cool Tuesday. Pleasant enough to have lunch on the deck. The grass is still squishy underfoot.

Many places in this part of the country have had a lot of rain. Too much in some places. I read today that downtown Midland, Mich., flooded because the rain-swollen Tittabawassee breached a dam not far away. Of course, rain was only the immediate cause. Looks like a whole lot of negligence on someone’s part. Boatloads of litigation, dead ahead.

The story caught my attention mainly because we visited Midland only last year, on September 1, taking a stroll in places that are now underwater.

This evening I went outside to take a few things to the garage. Returning, I noticed a bright object in the sky off to the northwest. It looked like a fire balloon. A single one, drifting along. I was astonished. I’m pretty sure I’ve only ever seen pictures of them before, not the thing itself.

Who launched it? Why? Who thought that was a good idea in a suburban area, with rooftops to catch fire? The risk is probably fairly small, but still — that’s not something I want landing near me. On the other hand, the balloon made a pretty sight as it wandered along. I watched it as it went from being a small flickering light to a very small flickering light in the sky, finally disappearing in the distance.

Half-Way Around Deep Quarry Lake

Posted on May 18, 2020 by admin

Heavy downpours lately. Chunk-floaters if you’re in a PG mood, but better known as turd-floaters. Rain late Thursday and into Friday morning, followed by two dry days, and then a very wet Sunday.

One of the dry days was Saturday. On that day we took a walk in the West Branch Forest Preserve, which is in Du Page County. We wanted do the circuit around Deep Quarry Lake.

West Branch Forest Preserve The terrain is pretty much in the full flush of spring.
The rains had pushed the lake level up. Here’s a walkway, probably useful for fishing in drier times, that had been flooded.
A wide path (as seen above) leads around the west side of the lake about half way, then it narrows, with evidence — a lot of small tree and bush stumps — of fair recent path-clearing activity. We walked on.
To the west of the path is the West Branch of the Du Page River, which gives the forest preserve its name. It too was swollen. When we got to the southern edge of the lake, the path was impassible without a willingness to get your shoes, socks and pants soaking wet.
The river had spilled over into the flatlands near the lake. At least we had a view of the land south of the lake, which continues quite a distance, maybe looking something like pre-modern Illinois. We returned the way that we came. All together, about a mile and a half walk.