Category Archives: Suburban Chicago

Spring Valley Animal Farm

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On Saturday we took a walk on the grounds of Spring Valley, where we find ourselves fairly often. In every season. Less often we make it all the way to the part called Volkening Heritage Farm, a small open-air museum that evokes farms of the late 19th century in this part of Illinois, but we did this time. To visit the pigs, for one thing.

I seem to remember seeing a sign posted at the farm once upon a time, something along the lines of All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

Maybe I’m thinking of somewhere else. Anyway, the pigs were doing what I assume are pig things, mostly rutting around in the dirt, oblivious (again, I assume) to their ultimate fate as meat.

Some of them, at least. The pigs we saw must have survived this year’s “From Hog House to Smokehouse” event, which was earlier this month. I figure it’s only a temporary reprieve.

The pigs weren’t the only animals around. A couple of cows made an appearance as well.

And some deer.

I figure they roam Spring Valley as a whole, and don’t reside on the farm.

Charcoal Inferno

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Warmish by day, chilly at night, though not quite freezing most of the time. Today was clear and, since our deck has a southern exposure, it was warm enough out there to eat lunch in some comfort.

On Friday, which wasn’t quite as warm, I got started on building a back-yard fire a little later than planned, as the daylight ebbed away. At first it didn’t catch, but eventually it did. I’ve documented fires out back before, but not the charcoal chimney in use.

Doing my (very) little bit to release carbon into the atmosphere.

Eventually, all the charcoal caught fire.

A small inferno? Can infernos be small?

It was hot enough to cook brats, at least, once I tumped over the charcoal chimney (carefully) and put on the grill. The last outdoor cooking this year, and probably the last until April or May.

South Ridge Park, Hoffman Estates

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Sunny and nearly warm on Saturday, at least for a few hours. Time for a stroll around South Ridge Park in Hoffman Estates.South Ridge Park, Hoffman Estates

Perhaps a mile all the way around the pond. Not crowed on the path at all.South Ridge Park, Hoffman Estates South Ridge Park, Hoffman Estates South Ridge Park, Hoffman Estates

South Ridge is one of a small string of parks in that part of the village connected by walking paths, all located away from main streets. The better to be enjoyed mostly by locals, no doubt.South Ridge Park, Hoffman Estates South Ridge Park, Hoffman Estates

Skipped the playground, which includes (not pictured) an obstacle course for small fry. These days, our small fry are large fry. But there were a number of families around, enjoying the playground equipment on a Saturday afternoon in the park.

Thursday Rolls Around Again

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Lilly’s been in town for a few days. We’re glad to see her, as always. We’re glad to eat sushi with her, as always.

Another big thing this week is that I got a new phone. Today. With a new carrier. Apparently my old phone was old indeed, since I bought it so I could take it to Mexico City. Soon after that, I discovered the highest and best use for a mobile phone: pulling up Google Maps.

Lately the old phone had been showing its mechanical senility by disconnecting at inconvenient times. This happened more and more often, until it was completely unreliable. One of the last messages that got through, yesterday, was the modern version of the Emergency Broadcast System: The National Wireless Emergency Alert System.

Or Sistema Nacional de Altera Inalambrica de Emergencia.

The sound was jarring, as I expect it’s supposed to be. I wonder how cacophonous a big room full of phones was — say a classroom that doesn’t make its students turn off their devices.

A presidential alert, no less. I like to think that FEMA technicians brought a suitcase to the Oval Office, opened it up, and President Biden pushed a button inside to set off the alert. Maybe a blue button, since a red button might be on the nuclear football, and set off something else all together.

Temps cooled down today after overnight rain. No freezes yet, so we still have flowers in the back yard.back yard flowers back yard flowers back yard flowers

The Flowers of October. That has to be the title of something.

Fort Sheridan Water Tower

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Where are those copy editors, anyway? A Washington Post correction from today.

Much of the former Fort Sheridan in Lake County, Illinois, is now a residential neighborhood, which is only reasonable. Even when it was an Army base, it was mostly residential. The officers’ houses are now refurbished single-family houses and the enlisted men’s quarters are now refurbished multifamily.

Time was short on Saturday, so I didn’t have all the time I wanted to look around the post-military neighborhood, but we did take a stroll on the former parade ground, which is now green space looped by Leonard Wood Ave.Fort Sheridan 2023 Fort Sheridan 2023
Leonard Wood. Ask people driving on Leonard Wood who that might have been and his obscurity would assert itself in the form of blank stares and wild guesses.

I don’t know the details of all of his lengthy military career, but I do know that TR theoretically reported to him in Cuba in ’98 and that, in some alternate reality, Wood captured the Republican nomination for president in 1920 and went on to be 29th President of the United States, rather than the office going to a newspaper publisher from Ohio.

In that case, Wood would surely be remembered. Maybe about as much as Harding. Which might not be that much.

We spotted the fort’s former water tower on the other side of the grounds.Fort Sheridan Water Tower 2023

I had to see that up close, so we stopped by before we headed south for our lunch appointment.Fort Sheridan Water Tower 2023 Fort Sheridan Water Tower 2023

Impressive. A design by noted Chicago architectural firm Holabird and Roche, who did many of the fort’s buildings.Fort Sheridan 2023 Fort Sheridan Water Tower 2023 Fort Sheridan Water Tower 2023
Per Wiki: “Built from 1889 to 1891, the tower was among the first structures completed in the fort. It was built with bricks made from Lake Bluff clay and designed to resemble St. Mark’s Campanile in Venice.”

Fort Sheridan Forest Preserve

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On Saturday, we made our way to the edge of Lake Michigan.Fort Sheridan Forest Preserve Fort Sheridan Forest Preserve Fort Sheridan Forest Preserve Fort Sheridan Forest Preserve

We’d come on the sunny last day of September to Fort Sheridan Forest Preserve, a unit of the Lake County Forest Preserve District. For a little more than a century, the U.S. Army maintained a presence at Fort Sheridan and in surrounding acreage for a shifting variety of uses, until base closure turned the site mostly over the private development, with a relatively small slice added to the forest preserve system.

The decommissioning was in the 1990s. I remember writing about the redevelopment, but after I quit much local reporting about the Chicago area ca. 2005, I tucked whatever I knew about Fort Sheridan in a remote filing cabinet in my memory. That is, I forgot it until not long ago, when I noticed the forest preserve on a map – a paper map – and determined to go, since we were due for lunch with Wendy and Ted later in the day in Evanston anyway.

This forest preserve is only partly forest. We took short trails through prairie. Much is prairie. Much is prairie. Much is prairie. Much is prairie.

A ravine runs through it.Fort Sheridan Forest Preserve Fort Sheridan Forest Preserve

Coloration has started. Fort Sheridan Forest Preserve Fort Sheridan Forest Preserve

Barely but vividly.

Pyro-Monday

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One of the benefits of the soaking rain over the weekend is that I felt I could grill this evening without much risk of an embarrassing and possibly dangerous grass fire. Brats were duly cooked for dinner about an hour ahead of sunset, which we consumed on the deck along with salad and for dessert some cannoli I bought on Sunday at a Polish grocery store, which were very close to being as good the best in my experience, those I found years ago not in Italy but in Little Italy in NYC.

There will be fewer such grilling opportunities as the movement of the Earth drags us in the Northern Hemisphere toward shorter days.

At dusk, I decided to burn some of the excess sticks always present in the back yard. The wood was a little damp still, but hot charcoal dries it out, and then ignites it.

There wasn’t much wind – another reason to grill – but enough movement give the fire occasional dramatic arcs.

The peculiarities of digital photography added to the seeming movement of that shot, I think. Soon the fire reached full blaze, best shown by zooming in a bit.

The declining phase.

Staring into a fire you’ve made is surely a pleasure we share with how many generations before us? Many.

“Clear evidence of habitual use of fire, though, comes from caves in Israel dating back between 400,000 and 300,000 years ago, and include the repeated use of a single hearth in Qesem Cave, and indications of roasting meat,” notes Time.

Mid-September Sights

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Chilly nights, warm days. Such are conditions here in Illinois not long before the fall equinox. The trees are still holding on to their leaves, including our quaking aspen.

Goldenrod, seen here in the back 40 of my yard – that is, the back 40 square feet or so, and how is it farmers had back 40s? Something to do with a quarter of a quarter section, which would be 40 acres, though I expect the metaphorical sense long ago superseded the literal one.

Out on a northwest suburban street.

It isn’t until Saturday, but some local motorists have been ready for Mexican Independence Day since last weekend.

Late Summer Tomatoes

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Heard the rumble of thunder at some distance during the wee hours this morning, but upon looking outside after dawn, no rain came of it, at least here. We’ve had a few dry weeks now, with the local grass retreating to its brown state till water comes again.

From our back yard. We’ve been watering our small tomato crop through the dry days.

The quarter came from the Royal Canadian Mint facility in Winnipeg, and I picked it up somewhere near Lake Superior last month, and exported it to the United States.

There were more tomatoes in the dish until recently, today in fact, smaller in diameter than the quarter, but we ate those. Man, garden tomatoes are good. I’m hardly the first person to notice that, but it’s worth repeating.

Did some reading about the late singer and businessman Jimmy Buffet today. This paragraph made me smile.

“Mr. Buffett’s original idea for Margaritaville was ‘to expand the opportunity for as many people to experience the lifestyle immortalized in his iconic song as possible,’ according to the statement on the company’s website,” the New York Times reported. “The company had $2.2 billion in gross annual revenue last year.”

The lifestyle immortalized in his iconic song? That of a drunken layabout? You don’t need to visit a resort to do that.

Gary Wright also died recently. That makes two popular musicians who first had hits in the 1970s. You know what that means, according to unfalsifiable popular notions. Number three dead ahead, and I do mean dead.