Beverly Lake ’23

Posted on March 8, 2023 by admin

The snow forecast for Friday night didn’t show, though a little rain came the next day. Sunday turned out warmish, around 50 F., and mostly clear.

We made our way in early afternoon to Beverly Lake, which is on forest preserve land almost as far west in Cook County as you can go.

The map’s misleading, or at least incomplete. It depicts the 22-acre Beverly Lake, but most of the trails are in open space to the west and northwest. The trails are marked for cross-country skiing, but on Sunday, they were merely soggy in a few places.

“We’ve been here before,” I said. Yuriko didn’t remember, since it was a while ago: a warm day in April 2004, when we got a break from the kids for a few hours. I probably wouldn’t have remembered if I hadn’t written about it.

The lake.

Trails wide and narrow.

We came across a half-dozen volunteers removing invasive species and making a bonfire out of the debris. An older member of the party, maybe the leader, was keen to explain what they were doing. The enemy, he said, is buckthorn. Once he pointed it out, I started seeing it in a lot of places, including along some of the trails.

The buckthorn is the vine-like branches hanging and clinging every which way on the forest trees.

“… buckthorn species were first brought here from Europe as a popular hedging material,” explains the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. “They became a nuisance plant, forming dense thickets in forests, yards, parks and roadsides. They crowd out native plants and displace the native shrubs and small trees in the mid-layer of the forest where many species of birds nest.”

Even more menacing in black and white, I think.

Former Barrington Banks

Posted on March 7, 2023 by admin

It’s an Irish bar now, but it once was the First State Bank of Barrington. Long ago.

Spiffy bank building from the pre-FDIC days. I passed by it on my short walk around downtown Barrington. Opened in 1916, closed in 1932, so in the financial world, the bank had a mayfly-brief existence, snuffed out by the Depression. Soon after its banking days were over, a series of popular local restaurants opened in the structure, starting with Last National Bank Tavern, “incorporating the teller cages and vault area into the dining area,” notes an Historic Barrington sign on the building.

Currently it is occupied by McGonigal’s, open only during this century. The mural on the wall – framed by a former window – is signed by one Alex Brubacher.

Looks like it was painted in anticipation of McGonigal’s, since it features the building; and its place in the neighborhood near a clocktower, commuter rail line and The Catlow, among the many shamrocks; and a date of 2009. According to a sign over the door, the pub opened in 2010, so close enough.

Across the street, another building originally housing a 1910s financial services entity: the First National Bank of Barrington. For those for whom a mere state bank wasn’t good enough. And who knows? Maybe that made the difference, because First National survived the Depression and First State did not.

Looks like an upmarket clothier on the first floor these days. First National moved out in 1984. (Odd, if I said “nearly 40 years ago” that somehow sounds longer ago.) It didn’t last much longer as an independent bank; a major regional swallowed it soon after.

Just north of Main St., which puts it in Lake County and not Cook, is a named gazebo.

The David F. Nelson Community Gazebo, to be specific, and to gave a name that most passersby probably don’t give a first thought, much less a second. This 2017 article is behind a paywall, but I could read the first paragraph, which tells me that “[Nelson is] known for many years of community volunteerism, as well as serving as the town’s village president.”

Not a bad idea for one’s retirement: become a gazebo

The Catlow Theater Marquee

Posted on March 6, 2023 by admin

Recently I had a few minutes to walk around the smallish downtown of Barrington, Illinois, and I passed right by The Catlow.

That’s the thing-itself theater, including its marquee. On the other hand, this is the theater’s online presence: a plaque saying that the theater would open soon, but in the meantime the marquee was for lease.

It took me a while to figure out that byfs.org isn’t the web site address on the marquee, since it goes to a (temporary?) dead end. Instead, the sign must refer to barringtonbysf.org — the address of Barrington Youth & Family Services. But tickets to what?

Just eyeballing the theater entrance made me think the place has that permanently shut look. I know movies were being shown there only a few years ago, before – ah, that must be it. Temporarily closing in early 2020 turned out instead to be the big sleep for the theater. Unless it actually closed in December 2019, as Cinema Treasures says.

Regardless, considering The Catlow’s location in a well-to-do part of metro Chicago, funds might be raised for a revival of some kind.

“Named for its original owner, a local businessman named Wright Catlow, this Tudor Revival/Jacobean-inspired theater opened on May 28th, 1927,” Cinema Treasures says. “It was designed by the Chicago architectural firm of Betts & Holcomb.

Early on, the venue held live performances and showed movies, but within a few years, it was all movies, and somehow the theater survived into the 21st century. I went there sometime in the 2010s, not for a movie, but to look at the lobby and an adjacent small restaurant. Maybe. Or was that in the 2000s, when I took a photo of the exterior for my magazine at the time?

Never mind, the building seems to have changed hands more recently.

“The owners are currently in negotiations with the Village of Barrington to purchase the theater for use as a Community/Performing Arts Center. New owners took over on October 20, 2022,” Cinema Treasures says, a little cryptically. New owners? Does that mean the village, or someone else?

Questions, questions. If the theater ever starts showing movies again, I’ll make a point of going, provided the movie isn’t too stupid. And as long as the theater doesn’t decide to nickel and dime its patrons (more like quarter and dollar these days).

The Sunken Gardens, 2013

Posted on March 5, 2023 by admin

I’m not sure I realized it during my visit in March 2013, but the Sunken Gardens in Brackenridge Park in San Antonio had been restored only about 10 years earlier, by a public-private partnership. Nice work.

The Sunken Gardens is another one of those places I’ve visited across the decades with a shifting array of companions: my grandmother, first of all, but also every one of my immediate family, cousins, high school friends, visiting girlfriends, other out-of-town visitors, my fiancé-then-wife, my children. It’s a personal favorite of a place.

It isn’t authentic in the sense that Japanese garden designers created it. Rather, the city parks department created it from an abandoned quarry in the 1910s, probably after consulting photographs and maybe other sources on Japanese gardens, but I don’t know that. Maybe the department just winged it.

It is authentic San Antonio: an interpretation of a Japanese garden that whatever the inspiration, is inspired.

The main pavilion, an impressive bit of rock laying.

And of woodwork.

Ah, Texas in March. Spring green, ahead of summer brown.

Youth.

Been 10 years. I ought to go back if I can, but I’ve accumulated a lot of personal favorite places over the years.

Thursday’s Theme: A Lot of Good Things Get Lost or Kicked Around

Posted on March 2, 2023 by admin

March came in like – an emu? Golden retriever? – came in pleasantly, with temps nearly 60 F. That didn’t last, of course, and chilly air is back today, with snow forecast for Friday, which will melt over the weekend.

The other day, I found a Sears bag tucked away in a semi-storage corner of the house under various things. This made me want to look up how many Sears locations survive. As of November, anyway, when Sears Holdings Corp. emerged from Chapter 11, there were 22.

That’s not even a shadow of its former self. That’s dryer lint of its former self.

I don’t know when we got the bag, or what we bought at Sears that needed such a bag. It’s fairly large, though. About as tall as a kitchen trash bag, so I decided to take its picture and then use the bag for trash. Interesting trademarked slogan. One the company maybe didn’t think through. Where else?™

There’s a lot of possibilities, Sears.

Last week, as mentioned before, there seemed to be overnight microbursts in the area, to judge by the tree branches on the ground afterward. This was the only tree knocked down that I noticed, a few days later, after it had been chopped up somewhat before being cleared away. Note the crust of soil it took with it.

I suspect it wasn’t just the wind, but also the fact that the tree stood in a low-lying area that usually fills up during a rain and takes days to empty, weakening the soil. Besides, it might have been a sick old tree whose roots didn’t have the grip they used to, so bam! Down it came.

But even healthier trees can take a beating if the wind is aggressive enough.

Speaking of fallen things, I learned today that the Hotel Pennsylvania is being demolished. That isn’t news, just that I don’t keep up with everything happening in Manhattan. I stayed there a couple of times in the early 2000s, where the company I worked for at the time put me up. I thought it more solid than grand, but I’m still sorry to see it go.

What else to say but, Pennsylvania Six Five Oh Oh Oh

One more thing about time passage, destruction and decay. Something I found unexpectedly. An algorithm suggested it. Might as well be by chance, then.

A poignant song from the point of view of an abandoned house, included on an album called The Rat Plague of ’66. The kind of thing that happens in Australia. Don Morrison seems to be a singer-songwriter from Adelaide, South Australia.

Heron Creek Forest Preserve

Posted on March 1, 2023 by admin

At about 7:05 Central this evening, we were out walking the dog in cool, but not cold temps, with a cloudy haze covering most of the sky. As we headed west on a neighborhood street, I noticed two lights next to each other, just poking through the haze not far above the trees. For a moment, I though it must be an airplane. But it didn’t appear to move.

Then the clouds cleared just a little and I realized the lights were Venus and Jupiter. I remembered all at once something I’d read and then forgotten — that they were supposed to be in conjunction soon. As in, today.

They came and went from behind the clouds for a few minutes. When I got home, I stayed outside and watched from the front yard. One of our neighbors came out to walk his dog, and I pointed it out to him.

“Cool,” he said. I agree.

About a mile north of the town of Long Grove’s shopping district is Heron Creek Forest Preserve, a unit of the Lake County Forest Preserve District.

There was still enough afternoon warmth left on Sunday to take a mile-and-a-half looping walk through the preserve, which at 242 acres, isn’t that large. Some parts of the gravel trails were muddy, marked with rims of dirty slush.

For us, that mostly affected our shoes. For the dog, who lives closer to the ground, that eventually meant a bath. But we all enjoyed the walk through the pre-spring vegetation.

The diminutive Heron Creek.

As far as I can tell consulting maps, this little creek begins at a small lake not far west of the forest preserve, and heads east till it joins Indian Creek, which is a tributary of the Des Plaines River. Heron Creek’s course is entirely north of the aforementioned Buffalo Creek.

Also cool. Just not as epic as two worlds appearing close to collision.

Buffalo Creek Park, Long Grove

Posted on February 28, 2023 by admin

This is all the that Long Grove Park District has to say about Buffalo Creek Park in Long Grove: “Buffalo Creek Park became the Park District.”

Maybe that’s just a mangled placeholder. Guess the district will get around to finishing that description sometime. Unless they decide to let generative AI do their jobs for them, like certain exceedingly lazy employees of my alma mater did recently. They need to be careful, though.

Me: Describe Buffalo Creek Park in Long Grove, Illinois.

Generative AI: Buffalo Creek Park is a public park located in Long Grove, Illinois. The park covers an area of approximately 408 acres and features a variety of natural habitats, including wetlands, prairies, and savannas…

There was more, but I’m skipping it because clearly the program mistook this small park with the much larger Buffalo Creek Forest Preserve. Oops.

I don’t know the park’s actual size, but I know for certain it isn’t anything close to 408 acres – 20 or 25 would be my guess. One entrance to the park is near Long Grove’s historic covered iron bridge.

At the stub end of February, the park is a brown expanse.

In contrast to what it looks like in July.

A single bridge crosses Buffalo Creek.

Buffalo Creek is a short (about 11 miles) tributary of the Des Plaines River, which eventually flows to the Illinois, itself is a tributary of the Mississippi. I enjoy knowing that some of the chilled water under that little bridge is bound for the warm reaches of the Gulf.

A gazebo. Long Grove wouldn’t be a very civilized place without one, after all.

Time to see what ChatGPT knows about gazebos.

Me: What’s the difference between British and French gazebos?

Generative AI: British gazebos are typically more traditional and classic in their design. They often have a hexagonal or octagonal shape, with a pointed or domed roof. British gazebos also tend to feature intricate details such as latticework, ornate moldings, and decorative finials. They may be constructed from wood, metal, or other materials.

French gazebos, on the other hand, are often more ornate and elaborate in their design. They may feature curved lines, intricate ironwork, and decorative scrollwork. French gazebos may also have a more rectangular or oval shape, with a flatter roof. They are often made from wrought iron or other metals, and may be adorned with flowers or other decorative elements.

Oh, really? I can make up stuff about gazebos, too, Mr. Robot Brain. It takes me a little longer, but I’d say my make-believe is still higher quality. For now.

Looks like some Eagle Scouts – and their leader, Aadi Jain? – this troop, since Buffalo Grove isn’t far away? – take an interest in civic improvement projects. I’m happy to report that the gazebo ramp is smooth and stable.

One more park feature: a plaque-on-boulder memorial.

The honoree is one Edward H. Wachs III (1907-99), who, according to the words in bronze, was on the local school board, the village board, the park district board and the architectural board. That’s a long lifetime on boards.

Long Grove in Winter

Posted on February 27, 2023 by admin

Heavy rain through much of the wee hours Monday morning, as forecast. Not as pleasant as sleep-time rain on a Friday or Saturday night, or in rental property when the risk of sump pump failure isn’t your concern, but not bad.

Also nice to know that February is just about over. Always good to get the bastard behind you, even if March isn’t that much better. The longer days promise warmer air, and eventually will deliver it.

That said, Sunday was warm (over 50 F.) and sunny enough to inspire us to visit Long Grove, Illinois, whose short and genteel shopping streets can make for a good stroll. The last time I was there, I was promised a sock monkey museum. And there it was!

Please use front door, the sign said. So we went to around to the front door. No dice. Closed on Sunday. What’s up with that? I could have sworn that most sock monkeys were Seventh-day Sabbatarians, but maybe I’ve been misinformed.

So I spent some time examining the nearby bricks, and least until Yuriko and the dog wanted me to come along with them. Long Grove has extensive brickwork at one’s feet.

Including named bricks.

Such as “Carlyle Sciotoville,” presumably a product of Carlyle Brick of Sciotoville, Ohio; and “Barr” bricks, probably associated with a factory that used to operate in Austin, Minnesota; and “Poston Pavers,” which must have been the product of Poston Brick & Concrete Co. of Sangamon County, Illinois.

Zounds, I’ve discovered one obscure rabbit hole: brick collecting, as discussed in blogs and articles and facilitated by the fact that brickmaking used to be a highly fragmented industry, with countless local brickmakers advertising their wares on the products themselves, so that there are hundreds (thousands?) of distinct varieties.

There’s also the International Brick Collectors Association, whose web site looks like it was set up in 1997 and not modified since, but why does it need to be? It does me good to know such an organization exists, even though I’m not planning to collect bricks like whoever set up BrickCollecting.com.

I like this Tumblr site, That Was Our Work, which is partly about bricks. “Bricks, manhole covers and sidewalks are cogs that help the great machine of the world run. They have stories to tell, histories and trends hidden in their design, their materials and their installation,” the site says.

No archives or index, though, which makes it of limited use for looking things up. But it is good for browsing. I’ve been known to take a look underfoot, too. It’s part of my style as a granular tourist.

McNay Art Museum, 2015

Posted on February 26, 2023 by admin

Remarkable how the 2010s are receding so quickly. How is that possible? The tumults of the early 2020s, with the prospect of more to come? A kind of red-shifting of past years that gets more pronounced as old age sets in?

After all, the more moments you’ve had, the less any particular one might count, even relatively recent ones. Or does it work that way? No doubt there are TEDx talks about the plasticity of memory, all erudite and maybe even persuasive — until some future decade, when they’ll be considered wrongheaded if they’re ever watched, which they won’t be.

These thoughts occurred as I was looking through my picture files for February 2015, when I spent some high-quality time in south Texas. One evening during that visit, I popped over the the McNay Art Museum, one of San Antonio’s lesser-known treasures.

I’d been visiting the museum for years. Decades. We went there on field trips in elementary school in the early ’70s. It helps that it’s conveniently located near my mother’s house and the school I went to — no more than a mile away.

“Ohio-born heiress Marion Koogler first visited San Antonio in 1918, shortly after her marriage to Sergeant Don Denton McNay, who was called to active duty in Laredo, Texas. Later that year Don McNay died from the Spanish flu,” the museum says.

“In 1926, Marion moved to San Antonio, where she met and married prominent ophthalmologist Donald T. Atkinson. The following year, she purchased her first modern oil painting, Diego Rivera’s ‘Delfina Flores,’ and the Atkinsons commissioned San Antonio architects Atlee and Robert Ayres to design a 24-room Spanish Colonial-Revival house that would one day become the core of the McNay Art Museum [which opened in 1954]”

There was a later addition (2008) to the house to expand the museum, which now has about 22,000 works, mostly 19th- to 21st century, many regional, but not all.

I’m especially taken with the gorgeous courtyard. I’ll bet more than one proposal of marriage has happened there.

The courtyard features a few works from the collection, such a Renoir, “The Washerwoman” (1917).

The heart-wrenching “War Mother” (1939) by Charles Umlauf (1911-94), a sculptor originally from Michigan, but living in Chicago and working for the WPA when he created it.

The work is credited with helping him get a teaching position at the University of Texas at Austin in the early ’40s, which he held to 40 years.

Another Umlauf: “Cruxifix” (1946).

A remarkable talent. One of these days, I want to visit the Umlauf museum, which is in Austin. And of course, I want to go back to the McNay again.

1 Dollar, Singapore

Posted on February 23, 2023 by admin

Every time I woke last night, which was a few times, I could hear drizzle, but not the tip-tip-tip of frozen drops hitting hard surfaces. I must have slept through the wind gusts, which were reportedly strong in the wee hours. While out late this afternoon, I noticed a number of large tree branches that had been knocked down, as well as a tree completely uprooted and on its side, about a half mile from where we live.

The day was windy and raw, but we had no precipitation after dawn, liquid or otherwise, and the tree and bush branches were no longer tinged with ice. This NWS map from this morning shows how we in northern Illinois dodged the worst of the snowstorm.

What does it all mean? Its snows in the North in winter. Except when it doesn’t.

One more banknote for now. This one does have some Roman letters, prominently featured, and is worth more than a few U.S. mills or cents: the Singapore dollar. The languages on the note include English, Chinese, Malay and Tamil, the four most common ones spoken there.

Also, it’s one that I picked up myself in 1992 or ’94, since these notes – part of the “ship series” – were current at the time, and worth about 60 U.S. cents. These days, I understand that S$1 trades for about 75 U.S. cents, so my note has gained some value, at least in nominal terms. That is, if it can be used as currency at all, since the city-state phased out dollar notes in favor of coins more than 20 years ago.

The ship on the obverse is a junk, common in the waters around Singapore and its predecessor settlements once upon a time. In the ship series, the larger the denomination, the larger the ship, beginning at S$1 and up to the S$10,000 note featuring a general bulk carrier, Neptune Canopus (that note has also been discontinued).

The S$1 reverse features Singapore’s national flower, the Vanda Miss Joaquim, and the Sentosa Satellite Earth Station.

The flower is also known as the Papilionanthe Miss Joaquim, or the Singapore orchid, and apparently there is a Singaporean drag queen called Vanda Miss Joaquim, which I have to say is a pretty good name for a drag queen.

As for the Earth station on Sentosa, that was the city-state’s first one, operational since 1971. Sentosa is a two-square-mile island just off the southern shore of the main island of Singapore. Formerly a military facility – under the British and then the Singaporeans after independence – the island is better known these days for its recreation, development of which began about 50 years ago.

Back in ’92, I took a cable car over to Sentosa for a look around, though the Earth station wasn’t among the things I saw. Unlike the facility at Tidbinbilla near Canberra, I don’t think it was open to the public.

Sentosa wasn’t nearly developed then as it seems to be now.

Universal Studios Singapore, for instance, didn’t open until 2010, and S.E.A. Aquarium (South East Asia Aquarium) not until 2012. Even the Sentosa Merlion wasn’t there in ’92, since it was completed three years later – and taken down in 2019.

The cable car offered nice views of the island, which isn’t really captured in my snapshots.

I believe this dragon-fountain was fairly near the cable car station on Sentosa, but I haven’t been able to confirm its continued existence, though this is a more recent image.

I walked over the Fort Siloso, a former coastal artillery battery.

I also visited the Sentosa Wax Museum that day, mostly I believe to get out of the heat. Most of the wax figures had to do with the history of the city-state (I think), including figures showing two surrenders: the British to the Japanese in 1942 and the Japanese to the Allies in 1945. Not something you’re likely to see anywhere else.

There’s a Madame Tussauds on the island now, so I suspect the old wax museum was replaced by it. The current wax museum’s web site says the place has an “Images of Singapore” exhibit, but I suspect the real action is at the “Marvel Universe 4D” and the “Ultimate Film Star Experience,” and the “K-Wave” zone. Exactly something you’re likely to see somewhere else.

Obviously I haven’t been Madame Tussauds Singapore, but I did pay money, entirely too many pounds sterling, to see the one in London. The place wrote the book on tourist traps. That isn’t to say that wax museums can’t be interesting; the one included in the admission to Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen was charming indeed, even a little surreal sometimes, such as the setup in which wax Einstein was playing chess with wax Hitler.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling