A Different Christkindlmarket, But Pretty Similar

Above freezing temps on Friday encouraged us to pay a visit to the Aurora Christkindlmaket, my second such market this year, which is vastly more than most years’ total of zero.

Lights. Artisans. Dark-wood booths evoking Germany. Walking around food. Hot drinks. High prices. Pretty much everything you’d see and experience at the market at Daley Plaza, except you’re in RiverEdge Park along the Fox River.

Adjacent to Hollywood Casino on the Fox is an enormous complex of parking lots, from which a pedestrian bridge crosses the river, opened only a little more than two years ago. A walk across takes you to RiverEdge.Aurora Kriskindlmarket Aurora Kriskindlmarket

Ornaments of the giants mark the way to the market.Aurora Kriskindlmarket

Merchants.Aurora Kriskindlmarket Aurora Kriskindlmarket Aurora Kriskindlmarket

Merchandise.

Swedish joy juice to help get through those near-Arctic Circle wintertime blues?Aurora Kriskindlmarket

Called glögg, but the fine print says non-alcoholic, so I’m not sure that counts. The glögg I got at Ikea some years ago had some kick to it. I didn’t check these bottles too closely, so I’m not even sure it’s Swedish, though a Chicago-area company called Lars Own offers imported goods from Scandinavia – yet its web site is a little vague on its Grandpa Lundquist brand glögg.

Wasn’t Grandpa Lundquist a supporting character on Phyllis? The hard-of-hearing hoot-and-a-half curmudgeon played by a wizened character actor whose career was pretty much simultaneous with talkies? No, I made that up, AI-style.

I didn’t buy any 0.0 glögg anyway. I did buy some praline-filled Ritter Sport, a variety I hadn’t sampled before. It’s good. Of course it is. Yuriko acquired a few ornaments – a few per year, that’s how a mass of Christmas decorations grows. We ate pretzels from a Milwaukee-based bakery, and Ann got hot chocolate in a 0.2-liter mug with scenes of the downtown Christkindlmarket painted on it. Designed in Germany, Made in China, it says.

The similarities between the downtown and Aurora markets are no accident. It’s a seasonally oriented cottage industry.

“The Christkindlmarket Chicago was first conceptualized in 1995 when the German American Chamber of Commerce of the Midwest Inc. (GACC Midwest) was seeking alternative ways to promote bilateral trade between the USA and Germany,” the event web site explains. “Companies from Germany and the Chicago area [participated] in the first Christkindlmarket Chicago in 1996. The market was an instant success and continues to flourish through the work of GACC Midwest’s subsidiary, German American Events LLC.”

Not everything – in fact not a lot of it – is German, or even European. You might call it an international market with North European holiday trappings. It works.

In summer, RiverEdge Park is the setting for concerts and plays. The John C. Dunham Pavilion was familiar, though the last time I was there, temps were high and the entertainment was free Shakespeare.Aurora Kriskindlmarket

The stage control tower, decked out for this time of the year.Aurora Kriskindlmarket

Heard as we were leaving, passing by two people entering:

“So that’s what it’s called? All this time I thought it was the Kris Kringle Market.” (laughs)

I Didn’t Know It Existed Until It Didn’t

There I was today, a cold but clear December afternoon, cruising along Golf Road, a major northwest suburban artery, when I noticed the destruction of a building in progress. A building I’d scarcely noticed before. A nondescript office tower headed for nonexistence. I had to stop to take a look at that.2550 Golf Road

Later I found out that it is (was) 2550 Golf Road, a 10-story, 270,000-square-foot structure in the city of Rolling Meadows. The insurance company next door acquired it not long ago, already vacant. Such is the anemic state of the office market that re-tenanting must have seemed undoable, and such are the economics of repurposing such a building that razing it must have been the best option.

Not a huge office building. Mid-sized I’d say, but still large enough for numerous people over the decades to spend countless hours there. Every work space has an invisible drain into which one’s life slowly disappears, workday after workday. I wonder how many human-hours (formerly man-hours) – or how many human-years – this building represented.

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like LED

Unlike some years, when snow fell just as the month started, December 2023 began with cold rain. Not heavy at all, but persistent through the first morning of the month, and then again Saturday night into this morning. Very pleasant to fall asleep to.

Near Volkening Lake, the local park district has put up a small patch of seasonal lights. Some are nets of blubs wrapped around tree trunks, a fairly ordinary display. There are also other light displays.

Less standard LED constructions, looks like. Come to think of it, the bulbs probably are LED as well. Never seen ones quite like it, but for all I know, they could be the rage among municipal holiday lights.

Spring Valley Animal Farm

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

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

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

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

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.”