Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie

Posted on January 9, 2023 by admin

Early in the morning of June 5, 1942, coincidentally as the fateful Battle of Midway was underway thousands of miles away, workers were loading anti-tank mines into railroad boxcars at the Elwood Ordnance Plant in rural Will County, Illinois. It was war work, and occasionally as dangerous as being on a front line.

An unknown event triggered a massive explosion that morning at Building 10 of the plant, killing at least 48 workers and injuring almost as many. More than 80 years later, at Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie, you can see a statue honoring those men.

Carved on the plinth is June 5, 1942 Explosion, along with lists of names, plus two more names under March 24, 1945 Explosion, which I assume is a later incident, though there isn’t any other information on hand to tell me. In fact, I wasn’t completely sure there was an accident in June 1942 until I looked it up later, so as memorials go, this one could use a little more exposition.

Still, its heart is in the right place. Those men died in the war every bit as much as the American flyers over the Pacific at the Battle of Midway, and deserve a memorial too. Apparently it took a while for them to get one; not too long ago, the Chicago Tribune published a story about it, though even now I’m not sure if the statue we saw used to be at the Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery, or is a second one.

Elwood Ordnance Plant was part of a larger facility eventually known as the Joliet Arsenal, which once totaled 23,542 acres with nearly 1,400 structures. At its WWII peak, about 22,000 people worked there.

Now most of that acreage is the tallgrass prairie, devoid of many people but not without reminders of its past.

We arrived mid-afternoon on December 29. As large as it is, we only had time for a small section, starting at the Midewin Iron Bridge Trailhead. A short trail from there leads to a bridge across Illinois 53, but also to a set of tracks that go deeper into the tallgrass prairie.

We walked to the tracks.

Clearly they used to be roads.

Now these roads are called the Group 63 Trail, which is a 3.5-loop around the Group 63 bunker field. The road cutting through the middle, however, is the Group 63 Spur. The location of the worker memorial is at the added red dot (I also added the trail names, since Google maps isn’t quite that complete).

Along the spur, which we walked, are abandoned concrete bunkers, relics of long-ago munitions manufacturing. There were more along the southern branch of the Group 63 Trail, which we also walked.

That particular bunker is open, supposedly the only one on the trail. All that’s inside are a few benches. The acoustics are interesting, though. It would be a good place for a very small concert.

Other bunkers — most of them, and there were many — are overgrown. In the summer, they must be almost completely obscured.

On we went.

Near the Group 63 Trail, a large part of the tallgrass prairie is a range reserved for buffalo, fenced off and with signs telling casual visitors to stay out. But there also are a few small viewing platforms on your side of the fence to watch for buffalo. I’m sure they’re out there, but we didn’t see any that day.

We barely even saw any other people, despite the relative good weather. So we enjoyed an experience of remoteness, without actually being remote — you can faintly hear traffic along the highway, after all. This isn’t the first time I’ve found that off the beaten path isn’t really very far off.

The National Shrine of St. Thérèse

Posted on January 8, 2023 by admin

Well over a decade ago, during a summertime visit to San Antonio, I drove to the west side of the city to see the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Little Flower, which I’d never seen or even heard of before, despite growing up in that city. It was very hot that day, as it tends to be that time of the year, so I didn’t linger outside to take many pictures, though I snapped a few marginal ones.

This is a better image. I’m not sure at what point I realized that the basilica in San Antonio and the National Shrine of St. Thérèse in Darien, Illinois, were dedicated to the same person, Thérèse de Lisieux, but I know now. And whatever else I know about St. Thérèse, I also have some sense of her immense popularity as a saint, inspiring edifices around the world in her honor.

We arrived at the Darien shrine just before noon on December 29, an overcast but not especially cold day. Above freezing, anyway. There it is, I told Yuriko.

So we went in. A few minutes passed before I realized that we not in the shrine, but in the nearby museum building, which I believe was the shrine before a new one was completed a few years ago. The sign on this building makes me think that. If so, there needs to be a signage update.

This is the current shrine.

In effect, this is the fourth shrine to her that has existed in the Chicago area. The first two were in the city, a larger one succeeding the original as her popularity grew in the 1920s.

The church that housed the second shrine burned down nearly 50 years ago, but by the 1980s the Carmelites were able to find the scratch the build a third shrine out in the suburbs. The demographics were going that way anyway.

The Carmelites tasked Charles Vincent George Architects, based in nearby Naperville, to design the fourth and latest shrine, which was completed in 2018.

Behind the altar is St. Thérèse in glass.

“The architectural solution pays homage to St. Therese throughout, from the main building’s shape, inspired by the unfolding petals of a flower, a nod to St. Therese’s nickname ‘Little Flower,’ to key structures, such as the plaza clock tower, reminding us of her clockmaker father, and the 24-column colonnade, serving as a symbol of St. Therese’s 24 years of life,” CVG notes.

“As St. Therese had humble beginnings, special attention was taken to provide simple building materials using stone, brick and the limited use of wood for construction materials. The entire building layout focuses on the center altar and image of St. Therese etched in the chancel glass wall, through which there are views of her statue built out into the lake behind the chapel.”

In December, St. Thérèse is the star of Christmas trees in the shrine.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a tree decorated with prayers before, but there it was. All of them to the saint.

The museum included some seasonal features as well, such as a nativity under a more permanent woodwork depicting the saint.

Just in case anyone is uncertain, labels come with the nativity scene. Guess that’s helpful for kids who have just learned to read, but I as far as can remember as a kid, the figures were something that everyone knew. Essential Christmas lore, even for public school children. Maybe that’s not true anymore.

Modern stained glass. Some nice abstractions plus holy figures.

What would a saint’s shrine complex be without some relics?

I didn’t know dust could count as a relic, but I’m not up on what can and can not constitute a relic. The museum also has a few relics of Thérèse’s parents, Louis and Zélie Martin, who happen to be saints as well.

“Louis had tried to become a monk, but was rejected because he could not master Latin,” a sign in the museum says. “Zélie Guérin tried to become a Sister of Charity, but was rejected due to poor health.”

They couldn’t take vows, but apparently did the next best thing: produce five daughters (the survivors of nine children), all of whom became nuns.

Plan B Travels at the End of ’22

Posted on January 5, 2023 by admin

Since Tucson was a no go, we decided to spend the same three days, December 29 to 31, visiting new sights close enough to home to be at home, come bedtime. A suite of day trips, that is. If you can’t go far, go near.

On the first day, we drove southward to near our old west suburban haunts, stopping first in Darien, Illinois, which is home to the National Shrine of St. Thérèse. I’d visited the shrine by myself at some point ca. 1999, but took no notes and made no photos, so I didn’t remember much. Besides, I’d read that a new shrine building was completed only in 2018, so it counted as a new place for me.

I’d also forgotten that Thérèse of Lisieux is also known as the Little Flower of Jesus. The entrance of the new shrine announces that, silently, as you enter.

Later that day, we made our way further south to the Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie. Strictly speaking, we’d been there before as well, all the way back in the summer of ’04. I told Yuriko we’d been there, but she didn’t remember. Maybe I remember because I spent a lot of time that day pushing Ann’s stroller along an uneven grass path under a hot sun. I seem to have left that part out of my posting about it, however.

On the other hand, Midewin is large, with about 13,000 acres and 30 miles of trails open to the public, so I’m sure we walked through an entirely different part this time – one with visible reminders of the area’s time as the site of an ammunition plant.

The sun wasn’t an issue this time.

On December 30, we made our way to a different sort of human environment: downtown Chicago, by way of driving to near O’Hare, parking the car, and riding the El into town. Without planning to, we found something downtown we’d never seen before, an art exhibit in the underground Pedway.

The Art of American Victorian Stained Glass, featuring well over a dozen windows from the late 19th century and early 20th. Wow. Well hidden and remarkable.

We also spent time in other parts of downtown, including a walkabout inside holiday- season Macy’s. I’ve been there any number of times, of course, but this time I appreciated the place with new eyes. One conclusion: it ain’t no Marshall Field.

Well, some things are the same. Macy’s still has the holiday horns hanging on State Street.

One of these days, I ought to give State Street the Wall Street or William Street treatment, but I’d have to be by myself to do so. State Street might not exactly be a great street, but it still has character.

By that, I mean skyscrapers from the early days of steel-reinforced buildings. Also, astonishingly intricate ironwork from a time when a department store (the vanished Carson Pirie Scott) could afford such things.

Actually, the Louis Sullivan building at State and Madison — the (0 0) of the street numbering system in Chicago — was built in 1899 for the retail firm Schlesinger & Mayer; Carson Pirie Scott was a Johnny-come-lately when it bought Schlesinger in 1904. These days there’s a Target in the lower floor. Sic transit gloria tabernae, I guess.

On the last day of 2022, we headed away from metro Chicago again. We’d considered Starved Rock State Park as a destination, but I wanted something new, so we went to Buffalo Rock State Park, which is more-or-less across the Illinois River from Starved Rock. Nice little park.

Afterward, the weather was good enough, and the temps just warm enough, to allow us to eat Chinese takeout at a picnic table in Washington Park in Ottawa, Illinois, in our coats. The last time we were there, it was hot as blazes.

Didn’t look around too much this time, though someday I want a good look at the many churches along Lafayette St. in Ottawa. I did take a look at LaSalle County’s Civil War memorial.

A closer look at the base –

– reveals that even the names of the Honored Dead are no match for Time.

Our Little Experience With Air Travel, Holiday Week 2022

Posted on January 4, 2023 by admin

On December 21, weather forecasters were all agog about an impending snowstorm affecting much of the nation. It’s their job, of course, to be agog at such times.

Still, it hadn’t happened yet, and I was glad we could drive without weather inference to the city that evening to attend a performance of the play Clue at the Mercury Theater. About as farcical as a farce can be, the play is based on the movie of that name, which I’ve never seen, itself inspired by the board game, which I never got around to playing. But I did see a high school version of the play, in which Ann had a part, only months before the pandemic. In the hands of a competent troupe, it’s a lot of laughs, and the Mercury Theater delivered the goods (and the high schoolers weren’t too shabby either).

As snowstorms go, December 22, 2022, wasn’t the strongest imaginable, at least here in northern Illinois. Instead of the eight or nine inches predicted, we got about four. Instead of the high winds predicted, we got almost no wind. Other parts of the country were slapped much harder, and it delayed air travel — more than any of us knew going into that day.

Both Lilly and Jim, from Seattle and from San Antonio, respectively, were scheduled to arrive the afternoon of the 22nd. As the afternoon unfolded, Lilly’s flight (on Alaska) was cancelled but she managed to get on a later flight, which was delayed repeatedly. Jim’s flight (on Southwest) was also delayed repeatedly, and eventually re-routed to Nashville instead (I think) of Dallas.

Well into the evening, their flights continued to be delayed, but not cancelled, without a specific landing time. Complicating matters was that Lilly’s flight was due into O’Hare, while Jim’s was scheduled for Midway. Eventually, Lilly’s flight left Seattle, so we had a definite arrival time for her, about 12:30 in the morning. Jim’s flight hadn’t left, but was also scheduled for around then. Someone would have to wait at the airport if that really happened.

Since Lilly’s time was more definite, we – Ann and I – headed for O’Hare at around 11:30. I was glad Ann came along, to help keep me alert on the cold but not entirely empty roads marked by occasional patches unplowed slush. The roads are never quite empty anyway. Back in January 2019, on the day it hit 24 degrees Fahrenheit below zero, I saw cars traveling on the major road barely visible from our back door.

When we left for O’Hare, the snow had mostly stopped, and temps were falling. That part of the forecasts was correct: near zero F. that morning.

Lilly arrived more-or-less at 12:30 a.m., December 23, at O’Hare. Jim’s flight was delayed again to an hour or so later, so that seemed to work in our favor. One thing that didn’t arrive with Lilly was her luggage, so she spent time filling out the paperwork involved. The bag showed up surprisingly early at our front door, around noon on the 23rd, or the same day.

We arrived well toward 2 a.m. at Midway, and — as Lilly and Ann waited in the idling car at the arrival lanes — I popped in for a look at the boards, since Jim wasn’t answering his phone, and searching for that info using a phone is a pain in the ass for this old man.

I’d say that Midway’s baggage claim area bustled with people that morning, but mostly it was a slow-motion bustle, with people sitting where they could, standing where they could not sit, and mostly waiting either for bags or in the hope of a flight somewhere.

Whenever there are major weather delays, TV news always shows the mass cancellations on the boards at airports. Row after row of CANCELLED next to flight numbers. That’s what I saw. I was too tired to take in much detail, but most of the affected flights were Southwest, since it is the major carrier at Midway. Jim’s flight wasn’t among the duds, but it did have a new arrival time: just short of 3:30 a.m.

Not enough time to drive home and back. Too much time to idle around the airport arrival lane. A 24-hour McDonald’s, not too many blocks south of the airport, provided a wee-hour meal, and its parking lot a place to eat it and otherwise wait. Only the drive-through was open at that moment. Visible within the window, bright lights and a collection of young, grim faces. Who can blame them?

Jim arrived, his bags not delayed, and we made it home by about 5. Seldom have I been so glad to start some time off and have a pleasant few days in a row, beginning when I got up around 11. Compared with stranded travelers, or the storm victims in Buffalo and elsewhere, our experience was only annoying, not traumatic.

Even so, when you participate in a national event, the urge is to put down some details. By Christmas, the nation was wondering, What’s up, Southwest? The storm is over. We were wondering too, since Southwest’s recovery, or failure to do so, would affect our plans.

After some fretting because the same Alaska flight as hers was canceled the day before (Christmas Day), Lilly made it home only a few hours delayed on Boxing Day.

The next day, the 27th, Jim’s flights seemed to be on the schedule, so we left for Midway after breakfast. The online check in system at Southwest didn’t work, however, which made me a little suspicious. My instincts were right. At the airport, we found that his flight was canceled.

Partly canceled. The Chicago-Dallas leg was fine. It was Dallas-San Antonio that had vanished into the scheduling ether. So Jim flew to Dallas, stayed with our brother Jay until the next day, when he caught a bus to Austin. From there, my nephew Dees gave him a ride to San Antonio. There it took him a while to find his car in the airport parking facilities (they must be larger than I remember).

All that represented some aggravating moments at airports. But surely we’d be able to forget it in Tucson and environs, where Yuriko and I planned to travel from the December 28 to January 1. We’d booked a package earlier, when it was clear we’d have the week between Christmas and New Year’s off. A package we’d arranged with Southwest.

So no. The Southwest FUBAR dragged on well beyond the foul weather, as everyone nationwide soon found out. For us, both legs to Tucson, Chicago-Denver and Denver-Tucson, were canceled. After spending time fruitlessly on the 27th with what I now think was a Southwest chatbot — but not billed as such — I did speak with a human being that afternoon, who look me through the steps in cancelling the air tickets, accommodations and rental car.

All that’s in the process of a refund, I understand. And, as I said, we got off fairly easy. But I can’t help feeling Southwest owes me, and the rest of the affected traveling public, more than a mere refund.

Christmas ’22

Posted on January 3, 2023 by admin

Christmas morning, 2022, before we opened any presents.

This year’s tree cost as much as last year’s, mainly because it’s shorter than most with a goofy bend atop, and while its trunk begins straight and true, it then detours in an odd direction, giving the tree a tilt usually associated with an impending fall. The stuff of Christmas movie comedies.

Also the stuff of actual falling Christmas trees, in the days when our tree was placed in a bucket weighed down with bricks and then filled with gravel. Stability not guaranteed. At some happy moment in the early ’70s, we acquired a tree-legged tree stand with three screws to secure the trunk, and it worked like a holiday dream. None of our trees ever fell after that.

I wax nostalgic for Christmases of yore, of course. Who doesn’t at least a little? But if I live long enough to be nostalgic about Christmas 2022, I’ll probably take a pass.

Not because of any family strife or other stereotypical situations. Yuriko and I welcomed both of our children home. It’s rare now to have us all in the same room, and a treasure when we do.

Bonus: my brother Jim came as well. I’m not sure why I made his picture at a Batman villain angle, but I did.

Once Christmas Day finally arrived, we had a pleasant time, sitting down to open presents, doing a zoom with more distant family members, and later convening at the table for Christmas dinner.

Some of the days before and after Christmas were a mite stressful, however, because of the great Southwest Airlines FUBAR. Media outlets are missing something by not applying that term to the situation, since it sums it up so nicely.

One more thing about Christmas. A few days ago, I happened on a posting by a fellow who devised a way to track the Christmas songs that a local (Chicago area) radio station plays. During the rest of the year, the station plays “light” music, but come early November sometime it becomes “Christmas FM.”

What did he find? The station played all of 187 different tracks, representing only 101 different songs during its run this year as a Christmas station. Out of a universe of what — thousands or tens of thousands of Christmas and holiday songs? — the station plays only about 100.

Mr. Program Director, how about expanding your list next by at least a few hundred more?

The program director would have deaf ears for such a request. He knows the radio biz, I do not. He has studies. He has focus groups. Or maybe he isn’t a he or a she, but an algorithm. Whatever the case, repetition is king. All I know is that FM radio used to be about variety, and used to be more interesting, and yet somehow made money.

American Science & Surplus

Posted on December 21, 2022 by admin

Regards to all for Christmas and the New Year. Back to posting around January 3, when I will wonder, as usual, how we could possibly be so far into the 21st century. Which still seems like a new century to me.

On Sunday, I bought a rubber chicken from this plentiful stock, at a retailer I know. I got the regular one for $10.95, not the more expensive, fancy-pants glow-in-the-dark model. Bet a regular one cost $9.95 a year ago, but such is the retail economy in our time.

Why a chicken? (Why a no duck?) My old one must have worn out. Not because I used it for anything, just that rubber doesn’t last forever. Anyway, no household is complete without a rubber chicken. Words to live by.

Where? The truly wonderful American Science & Surplus, which has three stores, two in Illinois — Park Ridge and Geneva — and one in Milwaukee. None of them are particularly close to where we live, so we don’t go often. In fact, I think it’s been about 10 years. We ought to go more often.

This is the AS&S in far west suburban Geneva, which we patronized just around sunset.

As you can see, the store promises rubber chickens.

But that’s only the beginning. AS&S has a retail selection unlike any other in my experience. Toys and toy-like items, but also electronic parts, lab equipment, optical gear, craft items, camping equipment, tools and hardware, militaria, office goods, novelties and more. Much, much more.

The place was fairly busy, with people probably doing what we were doing. Looking for oddities for presents.

You can also buy Teslas there.

Affordable Teslas, that is, though at $20, I took a pass.

Daily Leader Mosaics, Pontiac

Posted on December 20, 2022 by admin

At the corner of West Howard and North Main Street in Pontiac, Illinois, is an unassuming building.

The building itself didn’t catch my attention on Saturday morning before I ducked out of the numbing cold into the Route 66 museum across the street, nor did the glad fact that Pontiac still appeared to have a newspaper.

Rather, there seemed to be small murals on the walls. I went to take a closer look. Turns out they aren’t murals, but mosaics. Five all together.

They are part of the Daily Leader building, to go by the name on the wall. Except I have reason to believe that the paper, which is a Gannett asset, moved a few blocks away recently and a furniture retailer bought the building. That is what this item published by the Illinois Press Association says.

“For the first time since 1968, the Daily Leader has a new home,” the association reports. “As of Wednesday morning, July 13, the Leader office moved approximately four blocks to the northeast, to 512 N. Locust St. The Leader building on North Main Street was put up for sale earlier this year and purchased by Wright’s Furniture on May 13.

“The Pontiac Sentinel was begun as a weekly newspaper in 1857 and the Pontiac Weekly Leader arrived on the scene in 1880. In 1896, the weekly became a daily and the Daily Leader was born.”

One nit to pick: there’s no date on the item. You’d think that would be an important thing for an organization like the association to include, so I’ll assume it’s just an oversight. Happens to everyone.

But I do know it’s from this year, since July 13 was a Wednesday this year, and the story mentions 2019 as being in the past. Still, you shouldn’t have to rely on internal evidence to date a news story.

The mosaics taken together have a theme, the history of the graphic arts. This is the first of the mosaics as they proceed chronologically around the building’s two street-facing walls, beginning with cave dwellers and their art.

Ceramic tiles (tesserae) were put in fully regular x-y grids form the images, though within many of the squares, irregular shapes are cut to fit each other, as long as it serves the purpose of creating the overall image. The more I look at the mosaics here in the warmth of my office, the more I like them.

Next, the scribes of ancient Egypt.

Each mosaic has a caption at the bottom. This one, for example, says:

Graphic Arts 2000 B.C.
Egyptian Hieroglyphics

Next, a medieval scribe.

Notice the detail. Seems simple, until you spend time looking at it. A lamp with candles hangs overhead; shadows lie more-or-less believably around the room; his hair is short but unkempt; the sandals are well depicted; the quill has a pleasing wave; the base of the desk and the bench are in matching dark colors; the top of the desk and paper, along with the contents of the box the right — scrolls? — are in matching light colors; the door is an oddly large part of the image, until you realize it leads the viewer past bushes and a tree to a building with a pointed window, like the room’s window. I can’t help but think that’s a church window.

Next, Gutenberg is making printing by hand obsolete.

The end mosaic, which is on the north face of the building, is longer than the others. This is a detail. It depicts the modern newspaper office. Modern, as in 1970.

I assume that date can stand in for the year the art was created. Let’s say ca. 1970, since I didn’t see a date or an artist’s name, though I didn’t inspect every inch of the mosaics as the wind blew the only direction it blows in winter — in my face.

I never worked for a newspaper professionally, but the characters remind me of the first jobs I had working for paper magazine publishers. To the right, a reporter making notes and another taking photos. Yet another reporter makes a phone call.

The news is thus gathered and then prepared for the press. I like to think the woman at the typewriter is a reporter too — women were entering the ranks of journalism in numbers by 1970, like in other professions — but she might have been intended as a typist.

From there, the text goes to a human typesetter. At my first writing job in Nashville in the mid-80s, we had two typesetters, youngish women back in their own room, though the editors consulted with them often enough about the text. They could be fun, smoking their cigarettes and accumulating coffee cups on nearby flat surfaces and bantering with the staff when they weren’t otherwise fixated on their jobs, which involved screen concentration and flying fingers.

At my next job, the typesetting job was automated by a typesetting program simple enough even for me to use, and I never again worked with human typesetters.

After the typesetter, who had created long strips of glossy paper with text — galleys — the layout man took over, waxing the backs of the galleys and placing them on thin cardboard sheets to create mocked-up pages, which in turn would be photographed for the presses. Man, I haven’t thought about the process in years.

At my second job, the layout man was old, opinionated, and sometimes prickly, having seen and (more likely) heard enough working with Chicago journalists to harden his character. There was a hint of cynicism in everything he said, and often enough much more than a hint. He was probably smarter than he let on. He didn’t smoke and had contempt for those who did. I suspect he drank and had contempt for those who didn’t. After my time, I understand he took retirement, and was replaced by computer programs.

All in all, the mosaics were quite a find on a casual walk. But that’s why I take them.

Get Your Kicks at the Route 66 Association of Illinois Hall of Fame and Museum

Posted on December 19, 2022 by admin

Those three ships that come sailing in on Christmas Day in the morning will be trapped in ice this year, according to the National Weather Service.

That’s the forecast for 8 a.m. Central on December 25. Bitter temps, unless you happen to be on the West Coast or in Florida, and even those places will be relatively chilly. Bah, humbug.

On Saturday I drove down to Normal to pick up Ann, leaving a little early so that I could drop by the Route 66 Association of Illinois Hall of Fame and Museum, which is in the handsome former city hall and main fire station of Pontiac, Illinois, a building that dates from 1900.

The building, now called a museum complex, is home to more than the Route 66 museum, which is on the first floor. Other floors feature a “Life on the Titanic” exhibit, the Waldmire Experience (more about its namesake later), a local war museum and a room devoted to the music of the Civil War. You might call it an eclectic mix.

You might also call the Route 66 museum itself that. It’s a large room full of a lot of stuff. Just what a local museum should be.

Regional, really, since it covers the road formerly designated U.S. 66 as it passed through Illinois, from Chicago to East St. Louis, with such towns as Dwight, Pontiac, Bloomington-Normal, Lincoln, and Springfield along the way.

Display cases along the walls are devoted to each of those towns and others on the Illinois stretch, stuffed with pictures and photos and items, and arrayed in order from north to south (or the other way, if you start there). Plenty of other artifacts are placed freely on the floor or are on the walls.

Old gas pumps. Even during the golden age of Route 66, you needed gas.

A wall of Illinois license plates, one for each year from 1915 to 1984.

Trivia for the day — when did Illinois first put Land of Lincoln on its license plates? The wall tells us. 1954. The same words are on IL plates even now.

Something I didn’t know that the museum mentioned: from 1907 to 1917, Illinois issued aluminum disks to show registration, something like taxi medallions. Car owners affixed them to dashboards. The Illinois Motor Vehicle Act, which required motorists to register each vehicle with the Secretary of State’s office, became law in ’07, and specified the two-inch diameter disks.

The centerpiece of the room is Bob Waldmire’s custom-fitted ’72 VW microbus. Views outside and in:

Looks like he was a collector of bric-a-brac after my own heart. As a young artist, Waldmire (1945-2009) “determined that he would spend his life creating art that celebrated the history of Route 66,” according to a brochure I picked up. He apparently spent a lot of time driving the microbus along the historic route.

Until he upgraded to a modified school bus, that is.

The bus is parked behind the museum complex and is sometimes open for tours. Not when I wandered by. Just another reason to drop by Pontiac again, which will be easy enough during the back-and-forth to Normal over the next few years.

Pirates Ahoy, Sydney

Posted on December 18, 2022 by admin

Another postcard from a time when that was a more common way to send a short message from afar. In this case, pretty far. I picked up this card in Sydney on Dec. 22, 1991, and mailed it from Canberra the next day.

I’d wandered into a department store in Sydney that day, which I spent walking around the city: Circular Quay, the Opera House, Sydney Tower, the Australian Museum, the Royal Botanic Garden and more, such as the (to my ears) amusing Woolloomoolo district, which I’ve read has gentrified since I was there.

I don’t remember going into a Sydney department store, or seeing the Lego exhibit. Yet the card documents the visit. Lego called it “Pirates Ahoy.”

Jim has a longstanding fascination with pirates — mostly the lore, though I’m certain he’s read some genuine histories. Apparently Lego was setting up pirate-theme displays at the time to promote its Lego Pirates set, which was fairly new at the time, launching in 1989.

The genius of Wikipedia is that there are entries like Lego Pirates. It’s an astonishingly long article, documenting in incredible detail the byzantine history of a children’s playset.

Anticipating Arctic Air

Posted on December 15, 2022 by admin

Cold rain well into the night yesterday, enough to wake the sump pump. The good thing was, it didn’t ice everything over today.

Still, we’re on the cusp of a chill. Cold enough by Christmas Eve to snap off bits of Santa’s beard, looks like.

But that’s nothing to the jolly immortal elf. Has he ever got some stories about the Little Ice Age.

In the course of my day today, I was reading about the Lehigh Valley distribution market, which is one of the nation’s largest in square feet (and throughput, I assume). Distribution, as in the system of warehouses that concentrate and store goods until they’re shipped to stores or otherwise delivered to customers. You know, the agglomerations of mostly characterless but highly efficient and valuable buildings that most people drive by without a passing thought. But they’re buying in stores and elsewhere, keeping the whole distribution system in motion.

Then it occurred to me that otherwise I didn’t know jack about the Lehigh Valley. So a little reading followed. The area’s industrial history is deep.

How is it I didn’t know anything about the Lehigh Canal?

Now I do. Glad I got out of bed today.

Another reason I’m glad I made the commute downstairs to my office was my discovery early this evening of Allison Young singing “When I’m With You (Christmas Every Day).”

“I’m hearing some delightful strength and control that wasn’t there in years past,” says one of the YouTube comments. I’ll second that, but add that she was delightful enough in years past (and not too many years past).

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling