October Present & Past

Posted on October 10, 2021 by admin

Summer is lingering late this year. Sunny and in the mid-80s F. today.

Spent some time on the deck this evening, after dark, listening to the crickets — and the traffic. Looking at Jupiter and a waxing crescent Moon. Marveling at how not-cold or even cool it is. Warm enough, at least during the first few hours after dark, to sit around comfortably in a t-shirt. (One I bought in North Pole, Alaska, featuring the outline of a moose.)

Most the foliage is still green, though the honey locusts along the streets are yellow. But not the one in my back yard. Maybe it’s the carbon monoxide. The grass is still green too. I mowed the back yard just before sunset today. Last time this year, I hope.

Previous Octobers have sometimes been more October-like. Sometimes not. A picture from October 2006.

One thing I don’t do any more: visit places to entertain small children. They have grown, and usually entertain themselves, as it should be.

A May Day in October

Posted on October 7, 2021 by admin

Woke to gentle rain this morning. That’s more pleasant on a Saturday morning, but still a good aural experience on a Thursday.

By afternoon, it was partly cloudy and warm, something like a good day in May. I dried off my chair and spent a few minutes on the deck about 3:30, after finishing a particularly intense bit of work.

Cloudy or not, a parade of planes is always headed for O’Hare.

About an hour later, a thunderstorm passed through, but I was already back inside. All in all, a spring day here in the fall.

Stir-Fried Fish Cake

Posted on October 6, 2021 by admin

Stir-fried fish cake is something you’ll usually get among the many and delicious side dishes served in Korean restaurants. I remember having it as long ago as the late ’80s, when I frequented a Korean restaurant on N. Clark St. in Chicago that I think is long gone, as well as some of the restaurants on Lawrence Ave. during the same decade, when the Albany Park neighborhood was Chicago’s Koreatown.

The Korean population there has dwindled in the 21st century, WBEZ reports. These days, metro Chicago’s Korean hub is suburban Niles, which indeed has a very large H Mart that we occasionally visit.

You can get stir-fried fish cake (eomuk) there to eat at home.

Niles is a little far for us, so Yuriko typically visits the smaller H Mart in Schaumburg, an outpost of the brand. Besides good Korean food, H Mart carries other Asian items, sometimes — often? — cheaper than at the Japanese grocery stores in Arlington Heights.

“It’s typically, a mix of Alaskan pollock, cod, tilapia and others depending on the region and season,” Future Dish says of eomuk, also known as odeng.

“The leftover pieces from these fishes are grounded into a paste and mixed with flour. Then finely chopped carrots, onion, salt, sugar and other ingredients are mixed into the thick and sticky paste.

“The paste is rolled, shaped and cut into various shapes (sheets, balls and ovals). Then deep-fried for a few minutes.”

It might not look good in my picture, but it sure is.

Now if You’re Ready, Oysters Dear, We Can Begin to Feed

Posted on October 5, 2021 by admin

Still able to eat lunch comfortably on the deck some days. Not long ago, part of my lunch included a tin (well, aluminum container) of Crown Prince Natural brand oysters, imported by Crown Prince Inc. of Industry, California. I don’t eat a lot of oysters, and none will ever be as good as the fresh-shucked oysters I ate while drinking kamikazes at the Fishery in Nashville during the fantastic plastic summer of ’82.

Still, there it was in our pantry. Why not make it part of an al fresco lunch, out among the turning trees? Not sure how long we’d had the tin. But I knew I had to hurry. Best if used by May 1, 2025, the box says.

I made short work of them.

The box tells me that these are “sustainably raised and harvested in South Korean coastal waters. Freshly shucked, smoked over oak and packed in Turkish olive oil.”

The box is further careful to point out that each tin (that’s one serving) contains 1,305 mg of omega-3 fatty acids, like that’s a good thing. Maybe it is, but I’m feeling too lazy to look into it, because looking up nutritional information online potentially means macheting your way through a jungle of nonsense.

Also, non-GMO verified. Wouldn’t want to eat any Frankenoysters, I suppose.

South Korean oysters and Turkish olive oil is an intriguing combo. That they can be combined in the same container and sold for a modest sum here in North America is, I believe, a testament to the vast reach of the global economy, even in a time when international logistics is gummed up.

“Often called ‘the milk of the sea’ for its high nutrient content, the oyster has long been a staple of the South Korean diet,” Bloomberg reports.

“Originally harvested by free divers, oysters are now grown in ocean farms along the country’s southern coastline and shipped overseas to the U.S., Japan and Hong Kong. Appetite for the delicacy has made South Korea the world’s second-largest exporter of the shelled mollusks.”

One more thing: a surprising lot has been said about this particular kind of mollusk.

But none like Lewis Carroll. Select verses:

” ‘The time has come,’ the Walrus said,
‘To talk of many things:
Of shoes — and ships — and sealing-wax —
Of cabbages — and kings —
And why the sea is boiling hot —
And whether pigs have wings.’
…
A loaf of bread,’ the Walrus said,
Is what we chiefly need:
Pepper and vinegar besides
Are very good indeed —
Now if you’re ready, Oysters dear,
We can begin to feed.’
…
‘O Oysters,’ said the Carpenter,
You’ve had a pleasant run!
Shall we be trotting home again?’
But answer came there none —
And this was scarcely odd, because
They’d eaten every one.”

오레오

Posted on October 4, 2021 by admin

Acquired at H Mart not long ago (a box, flattened).

I didn’t know that Oreos (오레오) are available in Korea, but it doesn’t surprise me. Who doesn’t like Oreos? It is a little surprising that Korean-made Oreos are sold in a grocery store in the United States, even one that specializes in Korean products. The label tells me that they were made by the Mi Ga Bang Co. of Gangwon Provence, South Korea.

Presumably to Nabisco specifications. I’m glad to report that inside the box, the cookies are exactly the same as domestic Oreos — at least in appearance and taste, down to the distinctive Oreo design on the face of the cookie that hasn’t changed in my recollection. The cookie that Hydrox could not beat.

The Former Hokkaido Government Office Building

Posted on October 3, 2021 by admin

We spent time in Sapporo during our late September/early October 1993 visit to Hokkaido, and one of the more charming structures to be found there is the Former Hokkaido Government Office Building. A handsome pile of 2.5 million or so bricks.

I understand the local nickname is Akarenga, or Red Bricks. That seems fitting.

The building dates from early Meiji period, when settling Hokkaido was seen as a priority, and for a time housed the offices of the Hokkaido Development Commission, and later the government of the prefecture. It burned down twice in the earliest years and was always rebuilt (but I don’t think it fell into a swamp).

“Completed in 1888, the American neo-baroque style brick style brick building was designed by engineers of the Hokkaido Government and was constructed with many local building materials…” says the prefectural government.

“In 1968, it was restored to its original state in commemoration of the centennial of Hokkaido… and it was designated as a National Important Cultural Property in 1969.”

These days (as in 1993), it houses a small museum and the prefecture’s archives. I know we went in, but I don’t remember what was on display. Note the flag on the pole on the pamphlet I picked up at the building, but not in the picture I took.

I might not have seen the flag of Hokkaido there, but I do like it.

Two More Milwaukee Churches

Posted on September 30, 2021 by admin

Royal road to the unconscious, eh? Last night a pleasant elderly couple appeared in a dream: “Mr. and Mrs. Folger.” He didn’t look like anyone I knew, but she looked like Virginia Christine. I know, of course, that wasn’t her name in the commercials, but tell it to the unconscious.

The last two Doors Open places we visited in Milwaukee on Saturday were churches, not far from the cluster of churches we saw in 2017 along or near Juneau St. One this time was St. Paul’s Episcopal Church.

A Richardsonian Romanesque design by the busy Victorian architect Edward Townsend Mix, completed in 1884 for the oldest Episcopal parish in Milwaukee. No Cream City brick this time, but rather another Wisconsin material: red Lake Superior Sandstone, found near the Apostle Islands, and (I think) similar to Jacobsville Sandstone up in the UP.

The church is known for its Tiffany windows, one of which is reportedly the largest opalescent glass window the studios of Louis Comfort Tiffany ever made, at 22 feet x 28 feet. That would be “Christ Leaving the Praetorium.” My pictures didn’t turn out so well, but fortunately there’s a public domain image available.

A few blocks away is St. Rita Catholic Church. Its current iteration didn’t exist when we were nearby in 2017. The church was completed only last year.

“St. Rita Church at 1601 N. Cass St. began in 1933 as a mission outpost of the old Italian parish, the Blessed Virgin of Pompeii Church in Milwaukee’s Third Ward,” the Three Holy Women Parish web site says. “Its basement church was blessed as a new independent parish in 1937, then a building was erected and blessed in 1939… In 2018, the church was demolished with plans to build St. Rita Square, a six-story senior housing campus operated by Capri Senior Communities, along with a new St. Rita Church.”

Some elements of the new church were part of the old St. Rita, and a few were even part of the Blessed Virgin of Pompeii, which was razed in 1967 for highway construction.

“One of those artifacts, an eight-foot-tall bronze statue of Gabriel, is already visible to passersby,” Urban Milwaukee reported in early 2020. “Sculpted in 1904, the year the pink church [Blessed Virgin of Pompeii] was constructed, it had been on the top of St. Rita since 1969. It now rests atop its third church.”

St. Rita has an inviting but relatively spare interior.

The church also has some nice stained glass.

I didn’t know much about the saint. Anything, actually. She’s Rita of Cascia (1381-1457).

Now I know a little more, such as she’s the patron of abused spouses and difficult marriages, among many other awful situations.

Forest Home Cemetery & Arboretum, Milwaukee

Posted on September 29, 2021 by admin

A touch of fall in southern Wisconsin.

A touch more every day, for sure, but this is how the foliage appeared on Saturday at Forest Home Cemetery & Arboretum, Milwaukee, which is mostly still green.

The cemetery’s chapel was part of Open Doors Milwaukee over the weekend. It is a handsome structure, completed in 1892.

“With an exterior of gracefully aged reddish-brown Lake Superior sandstone, the interior features stately buttresses, fine leaded-glass windows and spacious conservatories containing lush tropical foliage,” the cemetery web site notes, a little heavy on the adjectives. “Many of the tropical plants are decades-old and provide a comforting ambiance that truly sets the Chapel apart from others built before, or since.”

The conservatory elements are on either side of the main nave-like room. I put it that way because, according to a docent on site, no denomination has ever consecrated the space.

As for the cemetery proper, some 118,000 people reside there.

The nonprofit that runs the cemetery publishes a wonderful, 20-page full-color guidebook and was giving them away for Open Doors Milwaukee. Maybe they’re always given away, but anyway I got one and used it liberally during my visit.

“Forest Home Cemetery was established in 1850 by St. Paul’s Episcopal Church as a cemetery for the city,” the guide says. “As Milwaukee expanded, the cemetery became the final resting place for 26 mayors, more than 1,000 Civil War veterans and countless prominent people who left their marks on Milwaukee’s history… the property was one of the first landscaped sites in Milwaukee offering a natural respite. Designed by Increase A. Lapham, known as Wisconsin’s first naturalist, it is considered one of the finest examples of a rural garden cemetery in the Upper Midwest.”

Increase Lapham. Makes me smile. Name your babies Increase, hipsters. You could do a lot worse, considering the distinction of this particular Increase.

“A self-educated engineer and naturalist, Increase Lapham [1811-1875] was Wisconsin’s first scientist and one of its foremost citizens,” the Wisconsin Historical Society notes. “He wrote the first book published in Wisconsin, made the first accurate maps of the state, investigated Wisconsin’s effigy mounds, native trees and grasses, climatic patterns and geology, and helped found many of the schools, colleges and other cultural institutions that still enrich the state today.”

More important than the text, the guidebook includes a detailed map and a color-coded key to the notable burials at Forest Home.

Yellow: Beer Barons; Pink: [Other] Industrialists & Business Magnates; Brown: Pioneers, Inventors & Publishers; Orange: Mayors & Founders; Aqua: Notable Women; Red: Black Leaders & Abolitionists; Purple: Entertainers, Artists & Art Collectors; Deep Blue: Military Heroes; Green: Tragic and Distinctive Burials, such as the memorial to the victims of the 1883 Newhall House Hotel Fire, which General and Mrs. Tom Thumb survived, the grave of John “Babbacombe” Lee, and five victims of the 1903 Iroquois Theatre Fire in Chicago.

All together, the guide lists 65 notable burials. Far too many to see during our hour jaunt through the property, but I managed to find a few, which as always is enough. I was especially interested in finding beer barons. A whole category for beer barons; that’s Milwaukee for you.

Valentin Blatz (1826-94).

Frederick Pabst (1836-1901).

The cenotaph of Joseph Schlitz (1831-75).

If I knew it, I’d forgotten that Schlitz died in the sinking of the SS Schiller off the Isles of Scilly on May 7, 1875. The ship is carved on the cenotaph.

Those three were among the largest memorials in the cemetery, but hardly the only striking ones.

I chanced across the stone memorializing company founder A.O. Smith.

As an industrial concern, A.O. Smith has experienced an interesting trajectory. Over the years, it has made bicycle parts, steel vehicle frames, bomb casings and other munitions for the World Wars, brewery tanks, water heaters, air conditioning components, boilers and more. It’s still headquartered in Milwaukee.

We noticed that the statue on top of the memorial of one Emil Schneider had toppled to the ground at some point recently.

The head and hands are missing. Go figure.

Toward the end of our walk, we noticed George Marshall Clark (1837-61), whose spanking new stone was dedicated only a few weeks ago, on the 160th anniversary of his lynching.

As I said, there was only time to see a small fraction of the notable burials. Among the others listed, I’d heard of a few that we didn’t see, such sausage king Fred Usinger, Gen. Billy Mitchell and insurance executive Edmund Fitzgerald, who lent his name to the ore carrier that famously sunk in Lake Superior in 1975.

Many more stones memorialize interesting people I’d never heard of, including Increase Lapham, see above. The world is full of such. That’s one reason to visit cemeteries, or at least those with useful guidebooks.

A selection, including slightly edited text provided by the guide:

Harrison C. Hobart (1815-1902). Union Gen. Hobart was captured at Chickamauga. Along with two other officers, he devised a plan to dig an escape tunnel, working in secret for months until 109 prisoners crawled to freedom.

Christopher L. Sholes (1819-90). Inventor of the QWERTY keyboard typewriter.

Georgia Green Stebbins (1846-1921). Stebbins was the keeper of the North Point Lighthouse for 33 years. Her father, Daniel Green, initially held the job, but was in ill health, so Stebbins unofficially performed his duties for seven years before being appointed to the position.

Xay Dang Xiong (1943-2018). Xiong was a Hmong veteran from Laos who risked his life in secrecy working with the CIA during the Vietnam War. He spent 16 years in the Royal Lao Army fighting in numerous battles while commanding 4,500 troops… Col. Xiong received a full military burial.

Carl Zeidler (1908-42). Elected mayor of Milwaukee in 1940, Zeidler requested a leave from his duties in 1942 to fight in WWII. He died six months later when his ship, the USS LaSalle, was torpedoed and everyone on board perished. Because his remains were never recovered, he was memorialized with a cenotaph. (His brother Frank Zeidler (1912-2006), three-term socialist mayor of the city, is also in the cemetery.)

An FLW Block, Though Built by Mr. Richards

Posted on September 28, 2021 by admin

Once upon a time, Frank Lloyd Wright took a stab at designing affordable housing. He didn’t get far for various reasons (including, maybe, his temperament), but relics of the effort occupy the north side of the 2700 block of W. Burnham St. in Milwaukee to this day. We arrived to take a look around noon on Saturday.

I bought some postcards from the nonprofit that now owns most of the block. One line on one of the cards says: “Burnham Block is the only location in the world where six Wright-designed homes sit side by side.”

I’d say that’s reaching for a distinction, but in any case the block was worth seeing. FLW is usually worth a look, even in the case of an obscure warehouse building in otherwise obscure Wisconsin town.

The houses on the block have that FLW look, all right.

At one point the owner of the house on the left, which is in the middle of the block, had the temerity to put siding on the house, which horrifies the Wright purists, who have been acquiring the houses one by one in recent years, but haven’t gotten that one yet. When they finally do, it will be restored to its 1910s look, once funds are raised (always a consideration with FLW works).

The six are American System-Built Homes. To quote from the last time we saw one, which was in 2015: “Between 1915 and 1917, Wright designed a series of standardized ‘system-built’ homes, known today as the American System-Built Homes, an early example of prefabricated housing. The ‘system’ involved cutting the lumber and other materials in a mill or factory, and then brought to the site for assembly; thus saving material waste and a substantial fraction of the wages paid to skilled tradesmen.”

Much more detail on the Burnham houses is at web site of the organization that owns most of them.

On Saturday, only one of the houses was open for a tour (the B-1 model, roughly 800 square feet), taking about a dozen people at a time, so we had to wait 20 minutes or so each to get in. While we waited, a docent talked about the houses, and FLW, and the houses’ developer, whom he quarreled with — Arthur Richards, pictured in an early 20th-century ad — the cost-savings measures, the history of the properties after Wright gave up on the American System but before the world acknowledged them as products of The Genius, which was decades later, and more.

This is the B-1, with people waiting on the porch to get in.

The inside is impressive in a number of ways, but mainly in its efficient use of the small space, and its inexpensive wood buffed up to look elegant. Two pictures in the slide show here that illustrate that. Nice place to visit, I thought, but not enough room for essential clutter.

Two Churches in Bay View, Milwaukee

Posted on September 27, 2021 by admin

Just at first glace on Saturday morning, the Bay View neighborhood in Milwaukee seemed alive with small businesses and pedestrians along S. Kinnickinnic Ave. (long ago, an Indian trace). I was glad to see it.

The place has a long history, founded separately from Milwaukee. “Captain Eber Brock Ward of Michigan opened his third rolling mill, the Milwaukee Iron Co., in Bay View in 1868,” the Bay View Historical Society says.

“Within a year the village of Bay View sprung up as a company town around the steel mill. Cottages erected for mill workers became the center of the village. Many of these cottages are still occupied today and are a part of the diverse architecture of the Bay View neighborhood.

“With village incorporation in 1879, its rapid growth and demands for city services were so great that a vote was taken and the village was annexed to the city of Milwaukee in 1887.”

Rising at a bend on Kinnickinnic is St. Lucas Evangelical Lutheran Church.

Originally, Evangelische Lutherische St. Lucas Kirche zu Bay View, since it is yet another Midwestern church founded by German immigrants, with the building completed in 1888.

Built using good old Cream City brick, a local specialty.

“The church commissioned architect Herman P. Schnetzky (1849-1916) to design its new place of worship,” Architecture of Faith says. “Schnetzky was born in the town of Wriezen in the Kingdom of Prussia… He came to Milwaukee as a young man and worked in the office of H.C. Koch and Company from 1874 or a bit earlier, [establishing] his own office in 1887.

“Schnetzky’s design for St. Lucas Lutheran is quite similar to his design for St. Martini Lutheran, built just a year prior to St. Lucas on Cesar Chavez Drive and Orchard Street on the South Side. He went on to design at least five other churches in Milwaukee by 1896, under his own name and in partnership with Eugene Liebert.”

A few blocks northwest of St. Lucas is St. Augustine of Hippo Catholic Church, finished in 1908. More Cream City brick.

It too was developed for a German-speaking congregation, with a design by Brust & Philipp, a very busy firm 100 years ago.

A volunteer told me that the platform extending out from the apse (a term he didn’t use) was added after the Catholic church “changed a bunch of things” in the 1960s (not using the term Vatican II). I guess he was used to talking to people who had no notion of that bit of ecclesiastical history. Anyway, the platform was thought better to facilitate priestly interaction with the congregation, now that they faced each other.

He didn’t know who had made the stained glass windows, except that they were original to the church and not added later. They’re wonderful.

The Stations of the Cross on the wall, on the other hand, were salvaged from another Milwaukee church that closed some years ago, though they look like they belong in their current place.

Emerging from the church, I noticed a couple of men on a porch across the street from St. Augustine.

Just a couple of regular Milwaukee guys getting ready for their Saturday doings?

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling