I Found a Time Capsule

Posted on December 14, 2022 by admin

Thinking more about Kong Dog, it occurs to me that maybe somewhere in the hip little eateries of still-under-the-radar foodie towns (Des Moines? Incheon? Windhoek?), culinary innovators are working on artisanal beanie-weenies.

Gray, drizzly days recently, but at least above freezing, barely, so no underfoot ice. A few days ago, before the drizzle set in, we visited the lights at Schaumburg Town Square, which is a pleasure when it isn’t too cold.

The clocktower, which is at a spot called Veterans Gateway Park. Nice.

While visiting the tower, I noticed a time capsule under the nearby bricks.

How had I never noticed this before? I don’t visit the clocktower a lot, but I have been there over the years.

Sealed herein is a time capsule, its contents gathered to honor and remember the arrival of the new millennium in Schaumburg.

Sealed the 16th day of September, 2001 at 12:30 p.m. by the Village of Schaumburg Millennium Committee.

This capsule is to be opened 25 years hence, its contents enjoyed and added to, and the capsule resealed to be opened in another 25 years.

That’s getting pretty close. I checked and September 16, 2026 is going to be a Wednesday. Will it be opened then or a near weekend? Or just approximately then? Will a new committee be formed? Or will the village forget?

As for the contents, I have to think they made some reference to the recent events of that September, as if they would be forgotten in 25 years. Mostly forgotten in 100 years, that I can see, even with whatever advanced information tech happens to exist in 2101. As the Internet has taught our generation, quick access to information hasn’t made much of a dint in ignorance.

Kong Dog

Posted on December 13, 2022 by admin

When you see something like this, you may ask yourself, how did that get here? (Not how did I get here?)

How it got here: worldwide cultural diffusion. Considering the near-ubiquity of electronic communications and physical travel in out time, the world’s many, many kinds of human expression are essentially in the same pot now. Let it boil.

To be more specific, culinarily inventive people in South Korea encountered the corn dog at some point. Corn dogs are the kind of folk-food attributed to various inventors, but in any case they originated in the South, as in the southern United States.

The Koreans tinkered with the formula, adding flavors and modifying the texture, but not too much, and pretty soon Korean corn dogs were sold from stands and small chains in that country. Like the dried cuttlefish on a stick that I saw for sale in Japan, and sometimes bought, corn dogs are a natural for the take-away trade on streets dominated by pedestrians, as many are.

An idea like that, it turns out, is too good not to be exported. Korean corn dogs have arrived in the North America. Maybe not always as street food, but instead adapted to the American suburbs as take-out joints in strip centers.

I know all this because we visited a small storefront called Kong Dog on Saturday after our walk. It appeared at that site a little while ago, a month or two maybe, selling Korean corn dogs from a shop in a large strip center a few miles from our house.

We were intrigued. We already knew that Korean-style fried chicken is good eating, something I’m sure even my hillbilly ancestors would have appreciated, if they’d had it. So Korean-style corn dogs were worth a try.

I’m happy to report that they are delicious. As usual, I’m not an early adopter. Google Image turns up a lot. But I guess I’m not too far behind the curve on this one: “Korean corn dog is the latest K-food craze to hit London, and they’re making waves among the foodies of this city,” Honest Food Talks reported breathlessly only in September.

You could call them a kind of gourmet corn dog, a concept that exists here but doesn’t seem to have a lot of traction, since corn dogs are largely still considered children’s food. (And that creation pictured at the Honest Cooking page I’ve linked to are hush puppies, not corn dogs.)

It took me a moment to work out the name. Kong, as in large. Talk about the lasting influence of a movie that’s nearly 90 years old.

Flavor options: original, potato, sweet potato, churro, rainbow, ramen, hot Cheeto, sweet chili Doritos (Yuriko had that), and injeolmi, a “roast yellow bean powder.” The Kong Dog web site says there are 11 sites open, many in metro Chicago but also in some northeastern states (NY, PA), with 23 more locations in the works, in roughly the same parts of the country.

For extra atmosphere, K-pop fills the room. K-pop idols make their moves on video. At least, I assume all that is K-pop. It wasn’t J-pop. Maybe there should be a genre of music for each letter of the Roman alphabet; that’s two right there. A-pop to Z-pop, and the world could not agree on whether that last one is “zee pop or zed pop.”

I digress. They each come in their own little box.

That’s an original. When I try a new place, that’s usually what I get. With all sausage, since you can opt for all sausage inside, or mozzarella, or half-and-half. It was distinctly crisp, and tasted like a corn dog.

A really good corn dog, that is, anchored by high-quality sausage and clothed in a batter tastier than the frozen dreck that’s fobbed off on kids. Guess that’s a low bar. But anyway, it’s good eating, even if a little expensive for a single item ($6). Hillbillies would approve, once they’d scraped up the price.

Beaver Pond

Posted on December 12, 2022 by admin

Chilly outside today but no wind at all, so stepping outside is like entering a really large walk-in refrigerator. Temps were a little warmer on Saturday, when I used Google Maps to scout out someplace to walk. Someplace neither near nor far, and new. I have my standards.

By mid-afternoon, we were at Beaver Pond, a unit of the Bartlett Park District.

About a mile around and flat.

Good spot for an easy walk. The trail doesn’t actually dip into the pond, as on the map. I think that’s where a small fishing platform juts into the water, accessible by the trail.

“Water collects here from a 1.5 sq. mile area of streets, residential properties and undeveloped areas,” says the only sign along the trail. So the place might be named for river-dwelling rodents — none of whom were in evidence on Saturday — but it’s really a detention pond.

Still, a nice trail. Sports spots of grassland.

Houses ring the park, with non-marked lot lines, though I’m sure the property owners and park district know where they are. Some homeowners decorated their patch for Christmas. Such as with an epic-sized snowman.

Sure, top hats are the custom among the snowfolk. But wouldn’t it be interesting to see a snowman wearing something else occasionally? Bowlers can have as much magic in them as top hots, Frosty.

Santa says, Ho ho ho. What, I wonder, do snowmen say for the holidays? Nothing. Climate change got ’em.

Young Mid-Century Doctor

Posted on December 11, 2022 by admin

I have in my possession — because I lifted it from the large collection of photos at the Stribling manse in San Antonio — this square black-and-white snapshot. I think I brought it back at the same time as my pre-1960 election Ken and Sue shot.

In light pencil on the back, my mother wrote, “V.A. Hospital Party 1958.” December is on the edge of the print, so a Christmas party would be a good bet. My father probably took it. He was handy with a camera.

Unfortunately, my mother didn’t write anything else on it. My father worked for the VA at the time, so I have to assume this is a picture of a colleague. I don’t know who he was. My recollections of 1958 are vanishingly small, after all. Zero, as it happens.

I suspect no one would have given much thought about cigar-smoking at a party, or cigar-smoking by a doctor, though I imagine that my mother didn’t care much for the second-hand smoke. As a matter of individual taste, that is, and probably not as a health concern.

Via the magic of easy photo enlargement, most of the bottles can be identified.

The big bottle on the shelf is Canada Dry, which must have been a mixer. Next to it is the familiar shape of a standard Coke bottle, recognizable down the decades. A mixer as well, at least for some partygoers. Good to see a bit of continuity with the present, even if it’s in the shape of a commercial object.

Not sure about that left-hand bottle in the row of four, or the right-hand one either, but there are clearly more Canada Dry bottles in between.

The lower shelf features more Coke and gin.

Hiram Walker’s gin, as it happens. I haven’t checked lately, but I expect that’s still in stores, too.

Art Institute Spaces, Small and Large

Posted on December 8, 2022 by admin

I’d like to say I visited this room recently — looks interesting, doesn’t it? — but I only looked into the room.

An English great room of the late Tudor period, 1550-1603, according to a nearby sign. I couldn’t get in because one inch within this room equals one foot in an actual room of that kind, so at best I could get a hand in.

The Art Institute doesn’t want anyone to do that, and for good reason, since random hands would completely wreck any of the Thorne Miniature Rooms. So they are behind glass in walled-in spaces, and not at eye level for someone as tall as I am.

Still, I leaned over to look in. The fascination is there. Not just for me, but for the many other people looking at the rooms on Saturday. Each room evokes a different place or time, heavily but not exclusively American or European settings.

English drawing room, ca. 1800.

French library, ca. 1720.

Across the Atlantic. Pennsylvania drawing room, 1830s.

Massachusetts living room, 1675-1700.

The fascination isn’t just with the astonishing intricacy of the work, which it certainly has, but also the artful lighting. Artful as the light-play on a Kubrick set. I know those are electric lights in the background, but it looks like the rooms are lighted the way they would have been during those periods. With sunlight, that is.

“Narcissa Niblack Thorne, the creator of the Thorne Rooms, herself had a vivid imagination,” says the Art Institute. “In the 1930s, she assembled a group of skilled artisans in Chicago to create a series of intricate rooms on the minute scale of 1:12.

“With these interiors, she wanted to present a visual history of interior design that was both accurate and inspiring. The result is two parts fantasy, one part history — each room a shoe box–sized stage set awaiting viewers’ characters and plots.” (More microwave oven–sized, I’d say.)

Thorne (d. 1966) had the wherewithal to hire artisans during the Depression by being married to James Ward Thorne, an heir to the Montgomery Ward department store fortune, back when department stores generated fortunes. Bet the artisans were glad to have the work.

It wasn’t my first visit to the Thorne Rooms, but I believe I appreciate it a little more each time. I know I feel that way about the Chicago Stock Exchange Trading Room, which I also visited on Saturday.

The Thorne Rooms are an exercise in constrained space. The Trading Room is one of expansive space. So much so that my basic lens really isn’t up to capturing the whole. Still, I try.

No one else was in the room with me. It is a little out of the way, in museum wayfinding terms, and it is the artwork, rather than being mere protective walls and climate control, so maybe people pass it by.

Not me. I spent a while looking at details.

Overhead.

Such a grand room. Victorian ideas at work, striving to add uplift to a space devoted to grubby commerce. I’d say they succeeded.

“Designed by Chicago architects Louis Sullivan and his partner, Dankmar Adler, the original Chicago Stock Exchange was completed in 1894,” the museum notes on a page that also extols the room as a place where as many as 300 people can meet.

“When it was demolished in 1972, sections of the Trading Room, including Sullivan’s elaborate stenciled decorations, molded plaster capitals, and art glass, were preserved and used in the 1976–77 reconstruction of the room here at the Art Institute.”

I attended an event there myself for some forgotten reason about 20 years ago. Suits and ties (a while ago, as I said), dresses, and drinks in hand, the room hosted such a crowd with ease. If I had 300 people to entertain, I’d certainly consider renting the place.

Chagall’s America Windows

Posted on December 7, 2022 by admin

A treasure from the 1970s: Chagall’s America Windows at the Art Institute (1977). They’re out there, those treasures from that time.

In order from right to left.

Here’s a thought for the 2020s: Odious antisemites need to knock it off. As in, shut up. Then again, “odious” is already packed into “antisemite,” isn’t it? So that counts as a redundancy.

Details from the America Windows.

The museum was busy on Saturday, but I had the windows practically to myself.

A Few Rooms of Ancient Art

Posted on December 6, 2022 by admin

I might be misremembering, but I believe the Uffizi Gallery had a hallway that featured busts of every Roman emperor, plus a good many of their wives, down at least to Severus Alexander (d. AD 235), in chronological order. I spent a while there, looking over them all.

The Uffizi array included famed and long-lasting rulers (e.g., Augustus) but also obscure short-timers whose biographies tend to end with “assassinated by…” (e.g., Didius Julianus (d. AD 193), the rich mope who bought the office from the highly untrustworthy Praetorian Guard and held it for all of 66 days in 193).

I thought of all those emperor busts when I took a look at Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius on Saturday.

Second century AD, no doubt part of what would later be called propaganda: the effort to let the Roman people feel the presence of their rulers. These two busts are among the ancient Roman artworks on display at the Art Institute of Chicago, along with works by Greek, Egyptian and other peoples.

It isn’t a huge collection, though sizable enough. If you put together the ancient art found at Art Institute and the Field Museum and the Oriental Institute Museum, that might be a British Museum- or Pergamon Museum-class collection, but no matter. I always enjoy strolling around the Art Institute’s ancient gallery, which is back a fair ways from the main entrance, in four rooms surrounding a peristyle-like courtyard, though that is a story down.

Besides emperors, you’ll see emperor-adjacent figures, such as Antinous, done up as Osiris, 2nd century AD of course.

Beloved by Hadrian, Antinous took a swim in the Nile one day in AD 130 and drowned. Hadrian founded the nearby city of Antinoupolis in his honor (it’s a minor ruin these days) and proclaimed him a god — the sort of thing a grieving emperor could do in those days.

A Roman copy of a Greek statue of Sophocles, ca. AD 100.

Hercules, 1st century AD.

My cohort learned of Hercules through cartoons. Could have done worse, I guess.

A story never animated for children, as far as I know: Leda and the Swan, 1st or 2nd century AD. A story that nevertheless reverberates down the centuries.

Who doesn’t like ancient mosaics? I like to think these 2nd-century AD works were part of an ancient tavern that served food.

A sampling of Greek vases are on display as well. These black-figure works are from the sixth century BC, probably for storing wine. In vino veritas, though in this case that would be Ἐν οἴνῳ ἀλήθεια (En oinō alētheia), and I won’t pretend I didn’t have to look that up.

I always visit the coin case. Here’s a silver tetradrachm minted in the 2nd century BC in Asia Minor, depicting Apollo. Such detailed work for something struck by hand.

Then there’s this — creature.

Statue of a Young Satyr Wearing a Theater Mask of Silenus, ca. 1st century AD, the museum sign says (and he’s putting his hand through the mask). You need to watch out for those young satyrs. They’re always up to something.

Nth Visit to the Art Institute of Chicago

Posted on December 5, 2022 by admin

On Saturday, I made my way to downtown Chicago, while Yuriko created this most delicious Christmas cake at her occasional cake class.

I rode the El part of the way. Not many people are masked these days, unlike subway riders of a year ago (at least in New York). But there are a few.

Another mark of the shifting tides of pandemic: a storefront on a downtown Chicago street.

I didn’t doctor that image. A white rectangle was painted on the sign. Note that it went from Free Covid Care — though surely they meant testing, not intensive care — to Covid Care, as federal subsidies dried up, to For Rent, as business dried up.

Before long, I came to my destination: The Art Institute of Chicago.

The Art Institute and I go back a ways, and I’m sure I’ve been there more than any other art museum, or maybe any museum at all. Remarkably, I know the date of my first visit: May 17, 1981, during my first visit to Chicago. I haven’t consistently keep a diary over the years, but I did then.

That day I mostly remember spending time at an exhibit called “The Search for Alexander.” I might or might not have known it at the time, but the exhibit had opened just the day before.

A few years earlier, the wildly popular “Treasures of Tutankhamun” exhibit had set the stage for the museum megashows of today, with their crowds, high prices and timed tickets, but most of that was still to come in ’81 (and there were other memorable legacies of Tut, too).

I don’t think the Alexander exhibit counted as a megashow, since I don’t remember paying extra, or dealing with a crowd. But I do remember being impressed by the art and artifacts from the time of Alexander of Macedon, especially a wreath of gold fashioned to look like oak leaves and acorns, held by fine gold branches that vibrated ever so gently in the mild air puffs of a climate-controlled display case.

On Saturday, I once again spent time with the museum’s ancient art, but also lingered in front of the Chagall’s America Windows and in the Chicago Stock Exchange Trading Room, which I almost always do, as well as taking a long look at the Thorne Miniatures, which was by far the most crowded gallery I visited, though this time I didn’t go into the Impressionist rooms, which always pack ’em in.

Wherever you are, Saturday’s a busy day at the Art Institute.

A scattering of people wore masks.

Many more wore beards.

Museum workers were working.

As befitting my age, I spent a good few minutes on the museum’s benches. That gave me time to fiddle with my camera.

Oops.

Judith with the Head of Holofernes, Postcard Version

Posted on December 4, 2022 by admin

I sent this card to my brother Jim in December 1994, on the day that we visited Windsor Castle.

The British postmark is where it should be. The USPS thoughtlessly postmarked the image. Nice going, USPS. Just another example of disrespecting postcards.

As this account of the 1992 Windsor Castle fire says, only two of the castle’s artworks were destroyed by the fire, not including the one depicted on the card, “Judith with the Head of Holofernes” (Cristofano Allori, 1613) which was part of the Royal Collection at Windsor. It still is.

At the time, I didn’t know anything about Allori or the painting. The Royal Collection Trust notes: “According to his biographer Baldinucci, Allori painted this work in part as an autobiographical account of his love affair with Maria de Giovanni Mazzafirri, which ended badly. The figure of Judith, Baldinucci claimed, resembles ‘La Mazzafirra,’ the servant in the background her mother, and the severed head of Holofernes is a portrait of the artist himself.”

I had seen “Judith I” (Gustav Klimt, 1901) in Vienna earlier that year, and of course the story of Judith came up in my studies, but I also didn’t really know how popular Judith was in artistic depictions. This I found out later. Nothing like a story of deception, a fetching feme, a drunken fool and a beheading to inspire art, I guess.

As for the work at Windsor, most recently — as in, last week — I read how it came to be in the Royal Collection. Acquired by Charles I, probably from the Gonzaga collection, Mantua, the trust says, which lead me to read further about the Gonzaga collection. If I had heard about it before, and I might had, I’d forgotten.

The long and short of it is that the House of Gonzaga, after much effort, put together a splendid art collection, only to sell it when they needed cash — to King Charles in the late 1620s, well before that monarch’s grim fate, in a deal facilitated by one Daniel Nijs.

The lesson here? Postcards are educational.

Thursday Debris (Electronic and Paper)

Posted on December 1, 2022 by admin

As expected, full winter is here. Not much more to say about that till a blizzard comes. We’re overdue one, at least when it comes to my completely nonscientific feelings on the matter. Not that I want one, just that it’s been a while, and the Old Man might want to let us have it this year.

Christmas lights are up around the neighborhood and beyond. Have been, mostly since last week. So are ours, but I don’t light them. Soon. I haven’t even gotten around to replacing the white overhead front door light with a green bulb. Soon.

We visited the Elk Grove Village lights recently, which includes a glowing ball you can walk into.

How could I not open an email with a subject line like this?

SAVE at our annual Holiday Open House! Details inside

Easy not to open, actually, and usually I wouldn’t, but since I did know the sender — a dermatologist we’ve visited — I took a look:

Don’t miss our biggest savings of 2022 on skin treatment packages and in-clinic products at our Wheaton/Naperville location. Oh, what fun!

Oh, what fun? Like riding in a one-horse open sleigh?

Ridding the house of excess paper is an ongoing task. Digital age, my foot. Today I found a form letter, undated, from the Schleswig-Holstein Park District. The head:

PARENTAL GUIDELINES

Followed by a lot of verbiage, but I didn’t need to read any more. Those days are over. Out to the blue bin with it.

Before I tossed, in the same blue bin, one of those cardboard triangles that Toblerone comes in, I noticed that the brand is owned by Mondelēz International, complete with macron. Wait, isn’t that the name of the president of France? How is it that the Fifth Republic has a diacritical mark as its supreme magistrate?

Never mind. When did the essential Swiss triangle chocolate fall under the sway of Mondelēz? Back in 1990, when predecessor Kraft bought Toblerone. Shows you what I know. Then again, that would account for Toblerone’s wider appearance in North America since about 1990. Back in the 1980s, the chocolate wasn’t just Swiss made, that’s where you found most of it.

Despite its Euro-sounding name — Iberian-sounding — Mondelēz is actually headquartered in the far-off, exotic city of Chicago.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling