It Reminds Me That Winter Will Last A Good While Longer

Posted on January 25, 2023 by admin

Sure enough, overnight as forecast, the first sizable snow fell since the fun we had around Christmastime. I packed a camera when I was out shoveling this morning.

Been documenting snow on plants for quite a while now. Nothing quite compares to the towering honey locust in the back yard.

Not much wind. That makes it tolerable. Winter winds are sharp, but not quite as much as certain other things, as we’re reminded in As You Like It.

Blow, blow, thou winter wind,
  Thou art not so unkind
     As man’s ingratitude;
  Thy tooth is not so keen,
Because thou art not seen,
     Although thy breath be rude.
Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly:
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:
  Then, heigh-ho, the holly!
     This life is most jolly.

  Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,
  That dost not bite so nigh
     As benefits forgot:
  Though thou the waters warp,
     Thy sting is not so sharp
     As friend remembered not.
Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly…

It Reminds Me That Summer Will Be Back

Posted on January 24, 2023 by admin

Flickering out in the night in my back yard, near the deck, is a solar lantern. I’m a little surprised it glows in the winter, but apparently it gets the juice it needs from the limited amount of sunlight that the day provides.

Back in the summer of 2021, we acquired a set of lanterns, one a tabletop light, the other designed to top out a pole of about three feet. Same box, same manufacturer. They both glowed by night for a few weeks, but then the tabletop unit failed. Being a cheap Middle Kingdom-made item, we didn’t bother with a return.

The stick stands with a lean that has proven hard to straighten, so I let it lean.

The light itself has soldiered on this year and a half.

Rubble on Lunt Avenue

Posted on January 23, 2023 by admin

Less than two weeks ago, we got word of a fire in Schaumburg, in a part of the village populated mostly by light industrial, vehicle repair shops and the like. This nondescript building, seen in 2019 by a Google imaging vehicle, had burned.

This weekend, just out of idle curiosity, we drove by to take a look at the site.

I don’t want to be pessimistic about this, but it looks like a total loss to me.

Ty Warner Park

Posted on January 22, 2023 by admin

As Januaries go, this one has been fairly mild so far. Some days of rain, though we got a little snow early this morning that partly melted during the day. No blast of cold air is predicted for tomorrow, but there will be a deeper chill soon enough.

Two years ago, we took a walk in Bemis Woods, which displayed more snow then than it would this year. On the way home, we stopped at Ty Warner Park in Westmont. I can’t remember why. Just feeling nostalgic, I guess, since we used to take small children to play there, and in more recent years, return for the July 4 fireworks.

Ty Warner, as in the Beanie Baby billionaire, who once had his HQ in Westmont and who made a sizable donation to help create the park.

Our personal nostalgia really kicked in at the spray park and the play trains. The girls enjoyed both, though typically in the summer.

I’d forgotten the gazebo.

Shows you how old I’m getting. How could I forget the gazebo?

More Fun With ChatGPT

Posted on January 19, 2023 by admin

Question (entered January 16, 2023): What does Dees Stribling write?

Generative AI Answer (all sic):

Dees Stribling is a journalist and author who writes about real estate and related topics. He is known for his work as a reporter, editor, and commentator on the commercial real estate industry, covering a wide range of subjects including real estate finance, property markets, and commercial property development.

[So far, so good.]

He writes primarily for Bisnow, where he covers commercial real estate news and trends, including office leasing, retail, industrial and multifamily markets, commercial real estate finance, and investment trends.

[Correct.]

In addition to his journalism, Stribling has also written several books, including “The Rise of the Creative Class” and “The New Urban Crisis” which look at the economic, social and cultural changes that shape the nation’s cities.

[Books? Books? Where on Earth did — never mind, I’ve never written any books. In this paragraph, AI has gone off the rails, confusing its facts in a way no human would, except on purpose. The Rise of the Creative Class, incidentally, is a 2002 book by Richard Florida. I don’t think I’ve ever been mistaken for him before. Or will be again. The New Urban Crisis is a newer work (2017) by Florida.]

Overall, Dees Stribling writes about commercial real estate and related topics, including property markets, real estate finance, and commercial property development, for various publications and also authored books on the topic of urban development and real estate.

Correct, until it isn’t.

Also note, no mention of any of the many other pubs I wrote for as a freelancer for a dozen years, or my writing before that — much it is probably still online somewhere. Or BTST for that matter, which may be nonprofessional, but it’s had my name on it for nigh on 20 years, or since the Internet bronze age, I think. And nothing about my many postcards. Of course, that would be hard to know unless you know me well. AI would have to contact me, or some of my friends, to ascertain that, but how would it know to do that?

The Bronze Giraffe

Posted on January 18, 2023 by admin

Took Ann back to school on Sunday. Mostly a straightforward shot down to Normal and back, with one small detour. A stop to see Maybelline and Charley.

At least, that’s what paper signs taped to their necks called them. They can be found at the Bronze Giraffe Antiques.

The shop is in a grocery-anchored strip center just off I-55 in Normal, next to the grocery store in fact. Ann needed a few items for her room, so we stopped at the grocery. Then we took a peek at the antique store.

I liked the place. Not only stuff in profusion, some neatly arrayed on shelves and tables between partitions – as you often see at antique malls – but some spots as cluttered as an old-timer’s garage. Was there ever any mention of a garage on Fibber McGee & Molly? It surely would have shared some jumbled characteristics with the famed closet.

To be fair, most of the cubicles were less cluttered. But whatever the organization, there were oddities to see. For instance, a bath toy of some vintage.

The bartender in Hell.

“Horseshoe ornaments.”

A Nativity set with a few additional characters.

And Whiz Kids. It was a publication I’d never heard off.

In a rack of third-string titles? I don’t know comics well enough to know for sure, but I have my suspicions.

TV Tropes has a short description of Whiz Kids.

“The Tandy Computer Whiz Kids series was a series of promotional comics published by Radio Shack from 1980 to 1991, and produced initially by DC Comics, then later by Archie Comics. In them, the two titular Whiz Kids, Alec and Shanna, teach their class (and by extension, the audience) about Tandy computer products and occasionally other topics (substance abuse, child kidnappers, environmentalism, etc.).

“They [the Whiz Kids] love school and learning, spend their summer vacations doing charity work and/or something educational, and help the police catch criminals out of a sense of civic duty.

“Alec and Shanna seem more interested in the educational software for the computers they promote than any video games that the computers may have.”

Well, that sounds bad. Nothing I saw in my quick look at the issue made me think otherwise.

Just before we left, I asked the clerk about the bronze giraffes, which are prominently placed at the front of the store. A whim of the previous owner, she said. If you don’t have some whimsy at your antique store, you might as well hang it up.

Buffalo Rock State Park

Posted on January 17, 2023 by admin

This what ChatGPT had to say about Buffalo Rock State Park in LaSalle County, Illinois, in answer to my question, which was, “What can one see at Buffalo Rock State Park in Illinois?”

Buffalo Rock State Park is located in Illinois, USA. It is a historic site that features a large bluff that is shaped like a buffalo, hence the name. The park offers a variety of activities and attractions, including:

Hiking: There are several hiking trails that offer beautiful views of the Illinois River and the surrounding landscape.
Nature watching: The park is home to a diverse array of wildlife, including birds, deer, and other animals. It is also a great spot for bird watching.
Rock Climbing: The park offers several climbing routes on the bluff and is a popular spot for rock climbing.
Camping: The park has a campground with modern amenities, including showers and electrical hookups.
Fishing: The Illinois River is a popular spot for fishing, and the park offers easy access to the water.
Picnicking: There are several picnic areas throughout the park with tables and grills, which is a great place to relax and enjoy the scenery.
History: The park also has a small museum that highlights the history and geology of the area, including the ancient civilizations that once lived in the area.
A playground and a shelter house is also available for visitors.

Overall, Buffalo Rock State Park offers visitors a chance to explore nature, enjoy outdoor activities, and learn about the area’s rich history and geology.

There’s almost nothing distinctive about the writing, and it includes some errors, such as the fact the campground doesn’t have many amenities at all, and there is no small museum. Of course, the system is in beta and presumably will improve in that regard, and the site does warn you that errors are entirely possible. Nay, likely.

More difficult for the generative AI brains to correct, I suspect, will be writing that is so generic as to be almost useless: “The park is home to a diverse array of wildlife, including birds, deer, and other animals. It is also a great spot for bird watching.”

Here’s a human (me) writing the same thing: “A diversity of wildlife calls the park home, including native and migratory birds, foraging deer and other animals. Careful visitors can spot these animals, either as they seek scarce wintertime food or in the flush of spring and summer foliage, but be quiet, since like most wild animals, they shy away from people.”

That, too, is actually generic, but nevertheless a much more readable snippet, if I say so myself, and I do.

Then again, maybe ChatGPT isn’t supposed to function as a replacement for online sources like Wikipedia, or in this case, descriptive information published by the Illinois DNR. Or, for that matter, for a human being who visits a place, sees it with his own eyes, and writes an account of it. Maybe robots will be able to do that someday, but we aren’t there yet.

We went to Buffalo Rock SP on the last day of 2022, which was cold but above freezing. The weather had been dry enough for a few days such that the trails were soggy only in a few spots. The park is indeed a large bluff overlooking the Illinois River, and on the opposite banks from Starved Rock SP, whose views are actually better.

Still, Buffalo Rock isn’t bad at all when it comes to river views.

Two short trails wind through the grassland and copses.

The site has a history that goes back to prehistory, involving various native tribes and the explorer LaSalle, but in the 20th century, it was strip mined. One of the unusual aspects of its remediation, which began in the 1980s, is the Effigy Tumuli earthworks. I read about them before going to the park, and figured it would be cool to see them myself.

It wasn’t. But it was cool to read about the project.

“The Effigy Tumuli earthwork consists of five geometrically abstracted animal forms, created on old mining land along the Illinois River…” said the Center for Land Use Interpretation at some point in the past. “It is one of the largest artworks in the country, and the shapes are so large that they can only be discerned from the air. On the ground, one experiences mounded earth, paths, interpretive signs, drainage control gullies, and patches of grass, shrubbery and exposed earth.

“Michael Heizer was commissioned to make the sculpture in 1983 by the president of the Ottawa Silica Co., who had an interest in art and whose company owned the site. The property had been strip-mined for coal, and was a polluted and eroded barren landscape, with highly acidic soil.

“For this ‘reclamation art’ project, instead of drawing on his vocabulary of abstract forms, Heizer used figurative forms, creating mounds shaped like animals native to the region. There is a snake, catfish, turtle, frog, and a water strider. He considered these figures to be evocative of the Indian mounds that can be found throughout the Midwest.”

Forty years after the commission, the Effigy Tumuli are – what’s the word? – invisible. At least from the ground. I think this was one of them. The long hillock in the background, that is. But I can’t be sure.

The posts holding up the interpretive signs are still scattered here and there, but the signs themselves are not. Completely effaced, as far as I could tell. So if I hadn’t read about the artwork beforehand, I’d have had no idea it was there. Maybe that was the artist’s intention — for the work to merge, eventually, with its surroundings.

Never mind, we found something more interesting just before we left. Buffalo.

Unlike the tumuli, I had no idea there were actual buffalo at Buffalo Rock, but there they were. Three of the creatures, fenced in, each with a body contour just like the image on the former nickel. No signs to explain, but apparently the state maintains them.

The fence means you can practically stand next to the animals, something that would be ill-advised without a barrier. Majestic beasts, for sure, but with an epic smell.

Vestiges of Marshall Field’s

Posted on January 12, 2023 by admin

Back to posting on January 17, out of respect to the legacy of Dr. King, because a holiday’s a holiday, and also since it’s nice to have a little time off not long after a sizable stretch of holidays, which can be a bit tiring.

We’re just ahead the pit of winter, but for now anyway the weather isn’t that bad. “Pit” is an inexact term, of course, but I think of it as the last week of January and the first one of February, more or less. Since the Christmas freeze, temps have been more moderate, but I expect another gelid blast sometime soon.

The following is a reminder that, once upon a time, department stores were the disruptors.

“The development of the department store posed a serious threat to smaller retailers,” explains the Encyclopedia of Chicago. “Many small merchants tried to rally the public against the new behemoths, but they failed to gain much support. Rather than rally to the side of traditional merchants, Chicago shoppers embraced the new form of retail.

“The opening of the new Marshall Field’s State Street store in 1902, only a few years after anti–department store protests, signaled that this newer type of institution had won the admiration of consumers. The opening was a sensational event, and the store decided not to start selling items on its first day of business so that more of the eager public would be able to pass through.”

Ah, if only passing through the building were quite as awe-inspiring here in the fraught 21st century. Still, a visit has its moments of visual splendor. If you look up.

I need to spend more time looking this masterpiece. In person, I mean. Closer views are available on higher floors, but it’s a wow even from the ground floor. Worth the crick you might get putting your neck in just the right position to see it.

“The highlight of the Marshall Field store was the Tiffany Dome (1907), a glass mosaic covering six thousand square feet, six floors high,” EOC says.

Not just any glass, but a special kind of glass that Tiffany & Co. had just invented. State-of-the-Victorian-art amorphous solids in a glassy myriad of hues, in other words.

The Marshall Field Building’s other yawning space – a building that takes up a city block has ample room for yawning spaces – is worth the uplook too.

A building of this kind also has a practically limitless supply of engaging detail. Some of it is literally underfoot, and by literally, I mean literally.

Back on the seventh floor, not long after noon, we wandered through a not particularly busy clutch of quick-service restaurants. At some point, department store management erased the longstanding and high-quality casual food service in the basement, and reconfigured parts of the seventh floor for food service.

Near the restaurants is a corner with floor-to-ceiling windows. Hard to pass those up, so we didn’t. We took in the views from northwest corner of the building.

Looking north on State St.

Looking west on Washington St.

A few years ago, the ornate venue originally known as the Oriental Theatre, which started as a 1920s movie palace, took a new name, Nederlander. After theater impresario James M. Nederlander (d. 2016). Doesn’t he count as a New Yorker? Guess his company would argue that it is national, as indeed it is.

Elsewhere on the seventh floor is a pocket-sized, plain hallway with a small exhibit of figures from Marshall Field Christmas windows on State Street, which were as much holiday tradition at the store as decorating the Walnut Room or hiring a Santa Claus, with thousands of Chicagoans and tourists seeing the windows every year and developing fond memories of the place.

As recently as 2015, the windows were inventive expressions of the window designers’ art.

The items on display in the hall aren’t particularly old: most are from this century. Such as from 2004.

2006.

A luminous creation from 2005.

I could write more – say, 1000 words – contrasting these artifacts with the 2022 State Street Christmas windows, but I don’t need to. Here’s one of the storied windows this Christmastime.

One could take the current owners of the building to task for this diminished creativity, but it isn’t the cause of anything, only a symptom.

I can’t end on that sour note.

While taking pictures at an elegantly decorated part of the seventh floor, I caught an image of a passing lass, elegant as her surroundings.

The Ghost of Marshall Field

Posted on January 11, 2023 by admin

On the second to last day of 2022, we spent a while at Macy’s downtown Chicago store. The chain does business in the magnificent building originally occupied by Marshall Field & Co., the celebrated retailer on State Street, which takes up an entire city block.

On the seventh floor, Marshall Field looks out upon the modern operation. It hasn’t had his name since the early 21st century.

Does the mustachioed shade of Mr. Field (d. 1906) wander the building at night, collar taut, making no noise and visible to no one, because he’s a happy ghost? After all, his building, not quite complete when he died, is still there, and still retail. Or is he having trouble keeping quiet, considering the direction of the department store business?

For some modern context – business context, that is – I fed “Macy’s” into Google News today. Some headlines that emerged:

Macy’s Analyst Remains Bearish Following Disappointing Q4 Preannouncement: ‘Longer Term Structural Challenges’

Macy’s Cautious View on Consumers Hits Shares

Macy’s quietly lays an egg — and more may be coming for retail: Morning Brief

All those are actually relatively good news in the world of department stores, which cling to life but which further disappear with each passing year. I’m not saying that Macy’s is doomed, just operating as one of the last players standing on much smaller playing field.

The downtown Chicago location was fairly busy that day and still decked out for the holidays. Especially on the seventh floor, home to the Walnut Room, which still has a reasonably impressive Christmas tree.

The Walnut Room is a grand space even in our time, serving meals of one kind or another since 1907, and the site of large Christmas trees since that same year. Originally named the South Grill Room, this is how it looked in 1909, not in the holiday season.

Generations of Chicagoans came here to eat or, like me as long ago as the late 1980s, to see the grand tree. Looks like they are still coming for both purposes, so at least Macy’s has that going for it.

“The bold selection of grilled foods was meant to distinguish the South Grill Room from the daintier tearooms,” the Digital Research Library of Illinois History notes. “The restaurants’ role was not to make money (they usually operated at a loss) but rather to lure hungry visitors into the store and give those already inside a reason to stay. Their upper-floor location required diners to navigate past enticing impulse goods while making their way upstairs.

“Because so many customers spoke of this restaurant by referring to its Circassian walnut paneling, it was later renamed the ‘Walnut Tearoom,’ next as the ‘Walnut Grill,’ and finally as the ‘Walnut Room’ in 1937.”

Also on the seventh floor: the Narcissus Room. It used to be a tea room. One of those daintier rooms mentioned above. There were still signs pointing to it, so I decided to go take a look. For all I know, tea rooms are the latest thing among hipsters and Gen-Whatever social media posters.

The room as it once was. My source puts the card at 1920.

The entrance to the Narcissus Room much more recently. As in, about two weeks ago. Note that it isn’t locked, and there were no signs advising against entry by non-employees.

Nice detail on at the threshold.

I opened the door.

I did not, in fact, enter. This view was freely available from outside the door, which is in public hallway in the store. According to Macy’s, you can rent the room for an event. As of that day, anyway, no events seemed to be in the works.

The Art of American Victorian Stained Glass

Posted on January 10, 2023 by admin

If you board the El at the Cumberland station near O’Hare, you can ride to downtown Chicago without any further effort. If you get off at Washington station and head east — but not upstairs, since the El is a subway at that point — you will find yourself in the Chicago Pedway System, a network of underground walkways.

If, like me, you go downtown only sporadically, you won’t know the Pedway System in its entirety. Even regular downtown visitors and residents probably don’t know all of the five miles of tunnel or even the half of it. I didn’t know there was that much until I read it — can that be right?

Anyway, from Washington station, the Pedway goes around the northern edge of Macy’s, which occupies an entire city block. In the wall opposite the basement entrance to that department store, 22 pieces of stained glass from the golden age of American stained glass — installed behind protective clear glass and backlit — welcome curious passersby. Like us late on the morning of December 30.

By golden age, I mean the late 19th century. This one was fabricated by Belcher Mosaic Glass Co., Newark, NJ, 1885-87.

Unknown fabricator, originally in a Louisville mansion, late 19th century. I like to think the mansion belonging to Daisy Fay’s (later Daisy Buchanan’s) family, but I suppose not.

A night owl. Fabricator also a late 19th-century unknown; a lot of them in the exhibit are.

The formal name of the exhibit is The Art of American Victorian Stained Glass. I’m not a scholar on art glass, so I rely on someone else’s expertise, namely the curator of the exhibit, Rolf Achilles.

“We always think that America has been copying everything from Europe. But no,” Achilles said about the exhibit when it was installed in 2013 (which I somehow didn’t hear about). “Painting on glass is one of the things Americans did, but also they stained the glass, and used ornamentation on glass; they added jewels, they added large chunks of glass.

“We have a superb example of this type of work. Look at the jewels, the facet of jewels were cut by diamonds and then chunks of glass were cast. This is uniquely American in the 1880s and 1890s. It was only around late 1890s and 1900s when the European started doing this, and then it is called Art Nouveau and everyone gets excited.”

A detail illustrates his point.

The sign for this one was missing.

One more Belcher. All the stained glass is striking, but this one notches it up to stunning.

“While their era of production was short lived [1884 to 1897], Belcher windows were popular and many examples still survive today, both in situ but more likely in collections,” Wiki says.

Manufacturing came to a sudden end at Belcher. It’s possible the fabrication process, unique to the company and involving various heavy metals, poisoned some of the workers, though that isn’t clear. If so, that would well represent that 19th-century age of beauty and poison, wouldn’t it?

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling