Remembrance

Posted on September 12, 2021 by admin

Ten years ago, Schaumburg had a September 11 remembrance at a spot called Veterans Gateway Park. This year, the ceremony was elsewhere on Schaumburg Road, on a patch of land in front of the village’s memorial for police and firefighters, not far from the headquarters of those village organizations. It started at 8:30 a.m. and lasted less than half an hour.

There was an color guard, singing of the national anthem, a moment of silence, and short speeches — though a little hard to hear, over the din of traffic on Schaumburg Road — by the mayor, police and fire chiefs, the Congressman who represents the area and, a little surprisingly, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle. Perhaps she had a string of events to attend, though I’d think most of them would be in the morning, around the exact anniversary of the attacks.

Door County Vistas

Posted on September 9, 2021 by admin

I’ve read that Peninsula State Park in Door County, one of four state parks on the peninsula, is a good one. And as the name says, it’s a peninsula on the peninsula. I have to like that.

“Deeded to the state in 1909, Peninsula is the second-oldest park in the state system, and with no statistical manipulation, the park is numero uno in usage in Wisconsin — with good reason,” Moon Handbooks Wisconsin says. “The peninsula, rising 180 feet above the lake at Eagle Bluff, is a manifestation of the western edge of the Niagara Escarpment, here a steep and variegated series of headlands and reentrants.”

A pretty and popular place, in other words. On the Sunday afternoon of Labor Day weekend, so popular that when we got to one of the entrances, we — and ever other car — were turned away. “The park is full,” a ranger told us. That must have meant the parking lots, but in any case we had to move on.

On to Plan B: a few miles up the coast on Green Bay is Ellison Bluff County Park, hugging a smaller peninsula not far from the town of Ellison Bay. As a mere county park, it has a couple of advantages: no crowds, no fee to get in. But it had the walk and the vista that we were looking for.

First, the walk, an easy path through shady woods on a warm summer day.

The path loops through the property. A separate short boardwalk off the parking lot goes to an overlook, about 100 feet over the water.

A vista straight across Green Bay to the Upper Peninsula on the horizon, about 20 miles distant, with the wind off the water whipping the trees around.

I couldn’t help thinking of the vista from Polychrome Pass in Denali NP only a little more than a month earlier. Different, yet its enormous sweep is compellingly similar, as if a vast valley were flooded to form Green Bay. Which is, of course, exactly what it is. To encounter two such vistas in the same year — well, that makes for a good year.

Not far north of Ellison is Bluff Headlands County Park. For no good reason, I was expected a similar set up, a trail and a short walk to a view. But no: the park includes a longish trail to the view.

Actually, it wasn’t that long. Half a mile, if that. It started easy enough.

The trail followed a heavily forested cliff edge. Soon the trees didn’t just lord over the ground, their roots were everywhere underfoot, with plenty of rocky patches too. The pictures below weren’t along the trail; the trail went through them.

Every step, an opportunity to take an injurious tumble. That was me, thinking more than ever like an old man. The dog didn’t mind the path — she’s near the ground, after all — and so pulled me along, with more energy than you’d expect from an old dog. Still, I believe her pull helped me keep my balance.

Eventually, we got to an opening in the trees, with a view from the cliff. It was about as spectacular as the one from Ellison, just harder to get to.

The fellow sitting at cliffside was reading a book. I didn’t ask what, since I didn’t want to bother him — or risk startling him.

Door County Shores

Posted on September 8, 2021 by admin

In the outskirts of Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, county seat and largest town on the Door Peninsula, is a simple sign on state highway 42/57 that says LIGHTHOUSES, with an arrow pointing to a side road. After that, you’re on your own if you want to see those structures, which are on the Sturgeon Bay Canal where it meets the Lake Michigan.

Getting to them involved a couple of wrong turns and passing by the intriguing side road to Leif Everson Observatory, marked by what looks like a model of the planet Neptune, with its Great Dark Spot and some Poseidean moons.

Eventually we found ourselves near the shore — and the lighthouses, but also a pier jutting out into the lake.

Besides the road and a small parking lot, most of the area is divided between private property and a Coast Guard station. Many signs warn you not to trespass on either, which hints at a history of miscreants showing up and making messes.

The Coast Guard station has a light: the Sturgeon Bay Canal Light, vintage 1899.
A little ungainly, but I suppose it gets the job done.

The concrete pier is a bit crumbled in places and its iron-and-plank superstructure is a bit rusty in places. The pier is open to the public. To get there, one treads the “public” half of a narrow footpath. More signs warn you not to step off it.

So if you are a mind to, you can go down the pier. We did.

The pier offers some nice views, including the Coast Guard facility and the private shoreline.

Even better is a view of the other light, Sturgeon Bay Ship Canal Pierhead Lighthouse, which is the older of the two, dating from 1881.

The light is on a rock island of its own, connected to the pier by the iron superstructure. In other pictures, the light is bright red, and maybe it still is, in the right light. On Sunday morning, it looked dull red, but even so considerably more handsome than the Coast Guard’s tower.

One more thing: a survey marker way out near the tip of the pier.

Those two lights satisfied the tourist requirement that you visit at least one lighthouse in Door County. So on we went from there, pausing briefly in Sturgeon Bay for gas, and then up the other coastline — the two aren’t very far apart — to the 14-acre Frank E. Murphy County Park on Horseshoe Bay, a small patch of Green Bay.

It’s a pleasant little park, grassland and a beach.

A homely concrete pier juts out into Horseshoe Bay, and we went there too, taking in the wind and the waves.

Frank E. Murphy was a Door County lumberman, cattle breeder and fruit grower in the decades on either side of 1900, according to a sign at the entrance. His family donated the land for the park in 1934.

Another fact on the sign: the man credited with naming Horseshoe Bay in 1842 was Increase Claflin Jr. (1795-1868, pictured). His Find a Grave bio is just a touch hagiographic: “Increase Claflin was a splendid type of a pioneer, a most auspicious forerunner of Door County’s men. He was sturdy, reliable, fearless, intelligent, loyal and self-sacrificing. In the rare quality of his ancestors as well as in his own noble manhood, Door County could ask for no truer type of American virtue.”

The text sounds suspiciously like it was lifted from a 19th-century bio of the man, maybe a newspaper obit, as a reasonable use of the public domain.

Anyway, Increase needs to be brought back as a first name. Perhaps Gen Z parents will take it up.

Door County Dash

Posted on September 7, 2021 by admin

This is a map of the Niagara Escarpment, borrowed from Wikimedia. I can’t vouch for the details, but the general outline seems to agree with other maps I’ve seen.

Over Memorial Day weekend, we visited the east end of the escarpment, where big water flows over a big cliff. Over Labor Day weekend, we visited the west end of the escarpment, where big cliffs overlook big water. That is, Door County, Wisconsin, surrounded by Green Bay and Lake Michigan proper. (The map also fills me with notions of visiting the Bruce Peninsula and Manitoulin Island, though those would be a mite harder to reach from metro Chicago.)

Not our first trip to Door, of course. And maybe not the best time to visit the Door peninsula, since crowds converge there on summer weekends. Still, the place holds its crowds fairly well, except for the narrow streets passing through such towns as Egg Harbor, Fish Creek, Sister Bay and Bailey’s Harbor.

We drove to the town of Green Bay on Saturday, leaving not particularly early, eating takeout Chinese for lunch at an obscure park in Germantown, a far north suburb of Milwaukee, where Yuriko thought there ought to be German food. There is a place called Von Rothenburg Bier Stube there, but we weren’t in the market for that.

West of Germantown is Hubertus, home of Holy Hill Basilica and National Shrine of Mary Help of Christians, which we visited. We arrived in the town of Green Bay late in the afternoon and settled in for takeout pizza from a joint with an Irish name.

Our visit to Door County on Sunday was essentially a day trip from Green Bay. It might be better someday to actually pay Door County prices and stay in Door County, to allow more time to explore the place. The county isn’t very large — only 482 square miles of land — but it packs in the tourist attractions, natural and manmade. Tourists have been coming for a long time, with resorts first developed just after the Civil War, and the industry really kicking into gear with better roads and cars of the 1920s.

My plans were vague, and we often went where whim took us, such as the lighthouse and pier at the south end of the Sturgeon Bay Ship Canal, a walk along a beach, lunch in the crowded but still pleasant Egg Harbor, and visits along the shore of Green Bay, with its sweeping vistas.

We made it to the tip of the peninsula — I’d long wanted to go there — where the ferry disembarks for Washington Island, but the day was running out, so we didn’t go there. That would be a fitting destination from a base camp closer than the town of Green Bay, I think.

On Monday, we spent part of the morning poking around the town of Green Bay, including a look at a few churches, cemeteries, and city hall. Afterward, the drive back was straightforward and not that interesting, though we had another nice lunch in suburban Milwaukee.

All in all, a good little trip. Saw a few things you can only see in Wisconsin, such as this Green Bay item (maybe made here).For the record, that cheesehead hat was taped onto the dinosaur’s head.

Waning Summer Tidbits

Posted on September 1, 2021 by admin

As if on cue, we had a cooler afternoon and evening to start September. Not much cooler, but noticeable. Warmth will be back soon, but the air is slowly leaking out of that balloon as the days grow shorter. Back to posting around September 7.

There’s a nice bloom of goldenrod out by the back fence.

I realize that it isn’t causing our intermittent runny noses, which have been worse this year than last, but not as bad as the worst ever. That would be 1987, the first late summer/early fall I spent in northern Illinois, maybe without much experience with the pollen in question. Ragweed causes that unpleasantness, I understand.

“About Hay Fever,” says American Meadows. “In short, it’s an old wives’ tale. Goldenrod does not cause hay fever. It simply got that bum rap since it blooms at the same time as the real culprit — ragweed.”

Today I started reading When In Rome by Robert J. Hutchinson (1998), subtitled “A Journal of Life in Vatican City,” which is part travel book, part memoir, part popular history, and all very readable and amusing.

Something I found out today: Lyle Waggoner (d. 2020) founded a successful company that provides trailers to movie and TV studios, Star Waggons. After The Carol Burnett Show and Wonder Woman, that’s what he turned his attention to. One of his sons runs it even now, though it has been acquired by a REIT.

One more thing I found out today, early this morning: even at my age, dreams about missing class, or being unprepared for a test, do not disappear completely. Also, the sense of relief is still there when you wake up — ah, I haven’t had to go to a class in nearly 40 years, much less be prepared for one.

Bundaberg Ginger Beer

Posted on August 31, 2021 by admin

Last day of August, spent some time on the deck. A workday, so not a lot of time out there, but I did take the opportunity to finish the last of a six-pack curiosity we acquired from somewhere or other early in the summer.

Ginger beer. Bundaberg brand non-alcoholic diet ginger beer, whose bottle says twice — front and back — that it’s brewed in Australia. That fits. The only place I remember having ginger beer before was in that country, where I found it interesting, though not especially tasty. For its part, Bundaberg isn’t bad, but I’m not going to be a regular consumer.

Or be a drinker of the company’s rum, which it is better known for, at least in Australia. Rum production began there in Queensland in the late 19th century to take advantage of the local sugar industry to produce something Australians really wanted.

Odd thing about the bottle: though the ginger beer is brewed in Australia, and presumably in Bundaberg itself, another bit of text says: Bottled in the UK.

What’s that about? Vats of ginger beer go by container ship from Australia to the UK because… bottles are cheaper in the UK? Most of the export market is there, with a trifle making its way here? Something about EU regs, pre-Brexit? The ways of international logistics, now so tied in knots, are strange even in normal times.

Ida

Posted on August 30, 2021 by admin

Grabbed from NASA. Hurricane Ida yesterday, from space.

A forecast map snipped from NOAA.

Looks like some folks I know in Middle Tennessee, and later New York, are going to get major wind and rain soon. Meanwhile, we’ll see some heat and some humidity, as we have these last couple of weeks.

Turns out Atlantic hurricanes beginning with the letter “i” have been particularly vicious over the years. Eleven have been retired so far, a mark of their severity: Ione, Inez, Iris, Isidore, Isabel, Ivan, Ike, Igor, Irene, Ingrid, Irma. No other letter has so many retired names.

Fuzzy Jungle Pictures

Posted on August 29, 2021 by admin

We spent late August and early September 1994 at Taman Negara, the sizable national park on the middle of the Malay Peninsula. It’s a place of jungle walks.

We stayed where many people do, at Kuala Tahan on the Tembeling River. I’ve read that a road runs to that settlement now, but that wasn’t the case 25+ years ago — you took a boat much of the way.

Had a basic snapshot camera in those days, so I got basic snapshots of the Tembeling. Fuzzy pics to go with fuzzy memories.

Remarkably, whoever took the Wiki picture of the Tembeling River did so from the exact same vantage as I did a few years earlier, including what looks like the same tree in the foreground. Must be a rise on a path near the river, but I don’t remember specifically.

Globes on the Move

Posted on August 26, 2021 by admin

My globes migrated upstairs the other day. Five in all, acquired over the years.

Even the newest of them isn’t so new anymore, ca. 2000, missing features such as South Sudan and East Timor. The oldest globe dates from the late 1950s, including as it does a divided Germany, independent Ghana, but also French West Africa.

Another is ca. 1970, featuring most of the newly independent states of Africa, but also the Afars and the Issas and, elsewhere, East Pakistan. Yet another is from that brief window after the reunification of Germany but before the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

The Moon globe is special, acquired for me during the Apollo era. Many of the craters and other features are unnamed, but some craters have names informally given to them by Apollo astronauts, such as two honoring Charles Bassett and Elliot See. The International Astronomical Union Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature did not, alas, retain those two, at least according to the Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature.

Summer Storm

Posted on August 25, 2021 by admin

Yesterday, a quick storm just before dark. Today, the same.

The gathering August 25 storm here in the northwest suburbs, not long before sunset.

The storm breaks.

After about 20 minutes, rain is still falling and the western sky lights up a pastel yellow that my photo hardly conveys.

Ten more minutes, it slacks off, with thunder rumbles continuing and occasional bursts of rain. The bright yellow to the west devolves into gray and then black.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling