Summertime in W.A. ’92

Rumor has it that a glowing orb might appear in the sky tomorrow. If so, almost the first time in this odd-weather start of the year. Still, whatever else has happened, overcast skies have been the norm. Last Thursday, according to the NWS, it was fog from here to the Gulf Coast.

Australia Day has come and gone. For the occasion, I wanted to scan a 1989 uncirculated set of Australian coins, but the coins themselves, encased in plastic, don’t lend themselves to it. Details are indistinct and the lighting of coins seems weird no matter what angle, though not when you’re looking at them with your eyes. In that case, they have the shiny look of uncirculated coins.

Pretty to look at, but not especially valuable. That’s what you should expect, since there’s not a lick of silver in the whole set. I bought it a few years ago, as a kind of retroactive souvenir, since those were the kinds of coins in circulation when I was there.

The envelope theme: ‘roos in the hot sun.

In early January 1992, I sent a card to my brother Jim and mother from Perth.

“Plenty of strange plants & birds to see,” I wrote, becoming the nth person in history to notice that about Australia, a very high number. Still, that’s a marvel of the place. All you have to do is look around. The flora gets weirder the longer you look at it, and helps you appreciate just how far you’ve come to see their oddities. Damn, I’m at the other end of the Earth, you think.

Vast, empty spaces were indeed ahead on the road from Perth to Adelaide to Sydney. My only regret on that bus epic across the continent was that it was dark when we crossed the Nullarbor Plain.

Then again, aside from the species that make up the scrub brush, a ride across Nullarbor doesn’t look that different from a ride across West Texas, and I’ve done that in the daylight.

Getting Through Various Januaries

The near-zero and subzero days eased off late last week, enough that I completed the task that no one else wants, storing Christmas decorations in the garage. Also, moving snow out of the way on our sidewalks and driveway, though Yuriko did some of that as well. Deep chill was back on Saturday and some today, or at least it felt that way when I rolled the garbage cans out to the curb this evening.

Overcast skies meant there wasn’t even the consolation of constellations, bright in the clear winter night. Some other time, Orion.

Haven’t bothered taking many pictures lately. The bleak mid-winter doesn’t inspire camera-in-hand forays near or far. The back yard pretty much looks like this image from January 2015, except the dog isn’t nearly as vigorous in crossing the powdery flats as she used to be. In fact, just getting her out the door is a process that can take a few minutes, as is getting her back in.

Back even further, she romps through the snow of January 2014. As if there were that much difference.

On Saturday especially we cleaned house, especially in the kitchen the adjacent spaces – the food handling zones of the house. Always needs some attention. January has a way of pressing in on the walls of the house, focusing one’s attention on immediate surroundings. At least, that’s how I feel it.

I did such a January cleaning in 2014 – does that year really correspond to 10 years ago? There goes time, flying again, flapping its wings just a little louder every year. Ten years ago, ours was a house with children. Who spent a fair amount of time on the living room couch.

One day I moved the couch to clean behind it.

For some reason I decided to document it. Was I mad at my daughters? I don’t think I was, but I did show it to them. What with prying the couch from its position, this was a job for Dad.

In January 2006, we visited a showing of snow sculptures in the northwest suburbs.

Nice, but I don’t think I’ve had the urge to seek out any more snow sculpture events since then.

A Tale of Two Kentucky Distilleries

Oh, boy.

Winter’s been pretty easy on us so far, but that’s almost over. We’re headed for the pit of winter now, maybe a little earlier than it usual comes (end of January, beginning of February, I always thought). It might be a long narrow pit that will be hard to climb out of.

Even so, I will enjoy Monday off, including all professional and nonprofessional writing. Back to posting on January 16.

Though not a drinking couple, we figured we couldn’t visit Bardstown, Kentucky, and not drop in on a distillery. Think of all the marketing dollars spent by the Kentucky Distillers’ Association, and the distilleries themselves, that have gone into making this part of the commonwealth a bourbon destination. Toward that end, the KDA established a “Bourbon Trail” in 1999, focusing on Kentucky, but also including operations in Indiana, Ohio and Tennessee.

First we drove to the gates of the Barton 1792 Distillery, which is in town and had a most industrial aspect to it. Also, the gates had a sign saying the place was closed to the public, in spite of what other information had told us.

So we headed out to another distillery on the map, Heaven Hill, on the outskirts of town. It’s a big operation. Off in the distance from the visitor center parking lot are clusters of enormous HH buildings – rickhouses, they’re called, a term used industrywide – to store barrels of the distillery’s products while they’re aging.

“Heaven Hill’s main campus [in Bardstown] holds 499,973 barrels and was also the site of the famous 1996 fire,” the HH web site says. “Fueled by 75 mph winds, the fire ultimately destroyed seven rickhouses and over 90,000 barrels of Bourbon, which was two percent if the world’s Bourbon at the time.”

Bacchus wept. His wheelhouse is wine, but surely he takes an interest in hard liquor too.

Wonder why the HH rickhouse designers didn’t add space for 27 more barrels, so the total would come in at an even half-million. Anyway, that’s a lot of hooch. As for the fire, I must have heard about it at the time, but have no memory of it. I understand that occasionally rickhouses collapse, too. Bad luck for any poor fool inside, who’d be victim of a freak accident. Alcohol kills a lot of people, but not many that way.

Heaven Hill was swarming with visitors, and all tours were sold out on the drizzly afternoon of December 29. We spent a little time at the visitors center looking at some of the exhibits, including about the fire, but also about the family that has run the distillery for many years, the Shipiras – originally successful Jewish merchants in Kentucky – and the original master distiller, Joseph L. Beam, who was Jim Beam’s first cousin.

Soon we went to the Willett Distillery, up the road a piece from Heaven Hill. It isn’t as large an operation, but it too is a family-run business, by descendants of John David Willett (d. 1914) and a Norwegian who showed up in America in the 1960s at a young age and eventually married into the family. Importantly for our purposes, spots were available on the last tour of the day.Willett Distillery

Our guide was a voluble woman in her 50s, who perhaps has a sign in her house that says It’s 5 O’Clock Somewhere. She was informative about distilled spirits, and herself, so we learned that she’s a widow with grown children and some grandchildren, and not originally from Kentucky. Or a bourbon drinker.

“I used to be a clear spirits gal, but since I’ve worked here, I’ve learned to love bourbon more,” she said.Willett Distillery

I might not drink bourbon, but I appreciate the fact that distilleries have a lot of cool-looking equipment. Willett certainly does.Willett Distillery Willett Distillery Willett Distillery

Best of all, we went into one of the Willett rickhouses.Willett Distillery Willett Distillery

Willett is small compared to Heaven Hill, with all of its barrels able to fit into one HH rickhouse, according to our guide. She said that more than once. But she also played it as a virtue, hinting — since it would be impolitic to say it outright — that the neighboring distillery was entirely too big for its britches.

Return From Seattle

Ann’s back from Seattle, where she went last Thursday for a visit with her sister. I picked her up at O’Hare this evening. Heavy snow in the Chicago area today, the heaviest of the winter so far but which tapered off late in the afternoon, delayed her for a few hours at her layover point in Denver after an early start this morning.

She said she’d never been so glad to leave a place as the Denver airport. Just wait, I said, there will be even longer travel days eventually. At least I hope so; airport purgatory is one of the mild prices one pays to see distant things in the modern age.

While in Seattle, she enjoyed some of the cultural richness of that city.

That’s at a place called Archie McPhee’s Rubber Chicken Museum. Can’t believe I’d never heard of it. Only open since 2018, though. Like the Chihuly Museum, a place I must see next visit to Seattle. Of course, it’s really a novelty shop. Ann bought me some stickers there, sporting rubber chickens, and I was happy to get them.

A Ship of Fools Sailing On

The first chill of fall is on. Not freezing, not even in the wee hours, so mild in the grand scheme of the year. A warm day in December, brought forward.

More than a tinge of yellow and brown in the trees, but green is still dominant. For maybe a week. Bright colored leaves will soon detach themselves and find their way to the ground, where they will be pushed around and crackling underfoot: a sound of the season universally experienced but less often mentioned. (But not never.)

Not long ago, I watched the video of “Everybody Have Fun Tonight,” which dates from 1986, a vaguely remembered curiosity. I remember the song being OK, even fun – it’s in the title – but not liking the video, which jump cuts like there’s no tomorrow.

That’s an inventive band name, Wang Chung, who hailed from London, and were not the least bit Chinese. “Yellow Bell” in Chinese, Wiki tells me. A foundational term in Chinese music, Music Educators Journal tells me, but my grasp of music theory – Western, much less Chinese – is a flimsy thing, so I can’t pretend to understand it.

After I watched the video once, I watched it again. And a few more times over the course of a week.

The jumpy visual structure bothered me less and less. I was even a touch mesmerized. Soon I began to appreciate the method to its particular madness. It emphasizes the musicians as their parts begin and end against a spare background, especially the two lead members of the band, whose images are sometimes effectively fused as they sing together. But the supporting musicians get their due. It’s really quite remarkable, this video.

I also paid attention to the lyrics. I’m sure I never did, even when the song was on the radio; that was a time of my declining interest in the radio, for one thing. It’s easy enough not to pay attention, which means you hear the refrain, which is smooth as cold beer and seemingly meaningless. Silly, too. Self-referential. Everybody have fun tonight! Everybody Wang Chung tonight!

Though a line or two of lyric hint at seriousness early in the song, if you’re paying attention that is, the lead singer, one Jack Hues, belts out four serious lines at about 2:30, or half way through, that seem to drop from out of nowhere. (Jack Hues is a stage name for Jeremy Ryder, supposedly picked since it sounds like j’accuse. This just keeps getting better.) Hues sings:

On the edge of oblivion
All the world is Babylon
And all the love and everyone
A ship of fools sailing on

We all feel that way sometimes, don’t we? No? Anyway, that’s peppy pessimism.

Those Lazy, Hazy, Crazy Days of Summer. Especially Hazy.

Tuesday should have been a fine summer day, but it turned out to be our turn. For Canadian smoke, that is. I had a busy day at the word-processing table and didn’t notice anything besides increasing overcast skies as the day progressed. By late afternoon, I saw how strange the overcast was. Like light fog near the ground, but much thicker fog skyward.

When I went out at about 6 p.m., I thought I smelled a hint of wood smoke, but later, around 8 p.m., I couldn’t smell anything, and Yuriko couldn’t either. Acclimated by that time? Maybe.

From the NWS:

From 11:19 AM (CDT), June 27, until 12:00 AM (CDT), June 29

…AIR QUALITY ALERT IN EFFECT UNTIL MIDNIGHT CDT WEDNESDAY NIGHT…

The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency forecasts Unhealthy (U) for fine particulate matter for the Chicago Metropolitan and Rockford regions on Tuesday June 27th. In addition, the Agency forecasts Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups (USG) for fine particulate matter statewide for Wednesday June 28th. Smoke from wildfires in Canada is moving into the region, pushing air quality into the unhealthy or worse categories.

Because of my work, I have unlimited access to three major East Coast newspapers (NYT, WSJ and the Washington Post), so last night I checked them all. You might remember early in June when New York and environs was blanketed with Canadian smoke. That was a BIG NATIONAL STORY! When it happens to Chicago and environs? Of regional interest, way down the page, to go with the heat wave currently gripping Texas.

Today wasn’t as smoky as yesterday, though a light haze lingered. No distinct smell either. Could be that the smoke was worse in the city. Do cities capture smoke, or at least delay its movement more than suburbs? Could be.

It’s been a strange month for weather anyway. Early this month in Los Angeles (more about which later, maybe) instead of balmy summer days, it was in the 60s and misty most of the time. Las Vegas was very warm during the day, but not the blazing heat I expected. Back in northern Illinois, we had a run of about three days cool enough to be April or October in mid-June, and for the entire month, there hasn’t been much rain.

Spring Seesaw

Fitting somehow for Monday morning. Of course, the snow didn’t even last till noon, though it remained chilly all day.

For days before, the warm version of spring had been ascendant, creating conditions for a number of enjoyable meals on the deck. Cold spring returned on Sunday, got worse on Monday but eased somewhat today. Warm tomorrow, then rain, then cold again. Such is the spring cycle.

I almost forgot – because who wants to remember? – that the first night we were in the Uniontown, Pa., area last month, at a upper-mid hotel chain, the fire alarm went off at about 8 p.m. Yuriko had gone to the pool and I was in the room with the dog.

Those alarms are loud. I knew that in some abstract sense, but listening to BLAT! BLAT! BLAT! while you get the dog ready to go, grab an extra jacket for yourself and your wife, and make sure you have all your valuables on your person – it focuses the mind, and not in a good way.

I didn’t think to bring the good camera, which was tucked away. So all I had was my phone, which I use as a phone and to call up maps, but usually not as a camera. Because it takes crappy pictures.

Got to see the South Union Fire Co. in action. Not much action, since there was no fire. Mostly we waited around in the parking lot until we noticed people going back in after about 20 minutes. How did they know the emergency was over? Not because the desk clerk said anything. But I was able to confirm from a passing fireman that it had indeed been a false alarm.

The Ohio Statehouse

Through much of 1999, I visited a fair number of Midwestern cities on editorial business of one kind or another. At some point, that included Columbus, Ohio. I was staying downtown, so during a lull, I popped over to the Ohio Statehouse, which occupies a prominent 10-acre block.

I went in and looked around back then, but thinking about it last month, what I remembered most was the statue of William McKinley near the street. He’s still there, of course.Ohio Statehouse Ohio Statehouse

With verbiage about the immortal memory of President McKinley. That’s what I remembered, how memorials speak to those who already remember, at least among Americans. Later generations do not remember, or much care, except in certain lightning-rod cases. I suppose that isn’t a good thing, but there is the upside of mostly forgetting to hold historical grudges.

The president isn’t alone at that part of the capitol grounds, with some bronze allegories to keep him company.Ohio Statehouse Ohio Statehouse

The back entrance.Ohio Statehouse

We’re used to seeing a dome on such a structure, but state capitols mostly started using that form, patterned after the current shape of the U.S. capitol, after that building took shape in the 1860s. The Ohio Statehouse is older than that.

We arrived late in the morning of March 25, the last day of the trip, after spending the night in suburban Columbus. I would have similar shots of the front, but as innocently spring-like as the pictures seem to be, there was a wicked strong wind blowing. Not terribly cold, just incessant and sometimes so energetic that you could feel yourself tipping one way or another, especially as a gust passed without warning.

Much calmer inside. Under the rotunda.Ohio Statehouse
Ohio Statehouse

Nice detail work. I’m impressed by the Spirograph floor. The Spirograph-ish spirit of democracy, maybe.Ohio Statehouse

The design is much less spare than in West Virginia, but not the work of any single designer. It’s the Greek Revival creation of a series of architects beginning in the 1830s and not finished until 1861, just as the nation fell apart.

Perry, hero of Lake Erie, isn’t forgotten. Not at least on the wall.Ohio Statehouse

Nor Vicksburg. Many Ohioans were there.Ohio Statehouse

Nor Cleisthenes, ancient democratic reformer.Ohio Statehouse

I can’t say I’ve ever seen him at a capitol before, and he isn’t known as a native of Ohio, but it’s a good choice. No less than Herodotus called him “the man who introduced the tribes and the democracy” to Athens, “tribes” being the 10 groups organized by residence in Attica, rather than clan or other kinship.

The seal of Ohio in glass.Ohio Statehouse

The visitor entrance, and the information desk, closed gift store and some museum exhibits, are in the basement, itself fairly handsome.Ohio Statehouse

I didn’t know who founded the 4-H Program. Now I do, but sadly I am likely to forget.Ohio Statehouse

I like this a lot: the counties of Ohio, each in a different stone.Ohio Statehouse

Finally, words of wisdom –Ohio Statehouse

Not because Lincoln had a special connection to Ohio or the building. Just, I think, on general principles.

1 Dollar, Singapore

Every time I woke last night, which was a few times, I could hear drizzle, but not the tip-tip-tip of frozen drops hitting hard surfaces. I must have slept through the wind gusts, which were reportedly strong in the wee hours. While out late this afternoon, I noticed a number of large tree branches that had been knocked down, as well as a tree completely uprooted and on its side, about a half mile from where we live.

The day was windy and raw, but we had no precipitation after dawn, liquid or otherwise, and the tree and bush branches were no longer tinged with ice. This NWS map from this morning shows how we in northern Illinois dodged the worst of the snowstorm.

What does it all mean? Its snows in the North in winter. Except when it doesn’t.

One more banknote for now. This one does have some Roman letters, prominently featured, and is worth more than a few U.S. mills or cents: the Singapore dollar. The languages on the note include English, Chinese, Malay and Tamil, the four most common ones spoken there.

Also, it’s one that I picked up myself in 1992 or ’94, since these notes – part of the “ship series” – were current at the time, and worth about 60 U.S. cents. These days, I understand that S$1 trades for about 75 U.S. cents, so my note has gained some value, at least in nominal terms. That is, if it can be used as currency at all, since the city-state phased out dollar notes in favor of coins more than 20 years ago.

The ship on the obverse is a junk, common in the waters around Singapore and its predecessor settlements once upon a time. In the ship series, the larger the denomination, the larger the ship, beginning at S$1 and up to the S$10,000 note featuring a general bulk carrier, Neptune Canopus (that note has also been discontinued).

The S$1 reverse features Singapore’s national flower, the Vanda Miss Joaquim, and the Sentosa Satellite Earth Station.Sentosa Island 1992

The flower is also known as the Papilionanthe Miss Joaquim, or the Singapore orchid, and apparently there is a Singaporean drag queen called Vanda Miss Joaquim, which I have to say is a pretty good name for a drag queen.

As for the Earth station on Sentosa, that was the city-state’s first one, operational since 1971. Sentosa is a two-square-mile island just off the southern shore of the main island of Singapore. Formerly a military facility – under the British and then the Singaporeans after independence – the island is better known these days for its recreation, development of which began about 50 years ago.

Back in ’92, I took a cable car over to Sentosa for a look around, though the Earth station wasn’t among the things I saw. Unlike the facility at Tidbinbilla near Canberra, I don’t think it was open to the public.

Sentosa wasn’t nearly developed then as it seems to be now.

Universal Studios Singapore, for instance, didn’t open until 2010, and S.E.A. Aquarium (South East Asia Aquarium) not until 2012. Even the Sentosa Merlion wasn’t there in ’92, since it was completed three years later – and taken down in 2019.

The cable car offered nice views of the island, which isn’t really captured in my snapshots.Sentosa Island 1992 Sentosa Island 1992

I believe this dragon-fountain was fairly near the cable car station on Sentosa, but I haven’t been able to confirm its continued existence, though this is a more recent image.Sentosa Island 1992

I walked over the Fort Siloso, a former coastal artillery battery.Sentosa Island 1992

I also visited the Sentosa Wax Museum that day, mostly I believe to get out of the heat. Most of the wax figures had to do with the history of the city-state (I think), including figures showing two surrenders: the British to the Japanese in 1942 and the Japanese to the Allies in 1945. Not something you’re likely to see anywhere else.

There’s a Madame Tussauds on the island now, so I suspect the old wax museum was replaced by it. The current wax museum’s web site says the place has an “Images of Singapore” exhibit, but I suspect the real action is at the “Marvel Universe 4D” and the “Ultimate Film Star Experience,” and the “K-Wave” zone. Exactly something you’re likely to see somewhere else.

Obviously I haven’t been Madame Tussauds Singapore, but I did pay money, entirely too many pounds sterling, to see the one in London. The place wrote the book on tourist traps. That isn’t to say that wax museums can’t be interesting; the one included in the admission to Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen was charming indeed, even a little surreal sometimes, such as the setup in which wax Einstein was playing chess with wax Hitler.

Möngö Notes

The winter storm blasting the upper states showed up in my neighborhood today first in the form of a lot of rain, but cold enough to leave a coating of ice on the bare trees and bushes. Then the rain itself started to freeze.

More currency with no Roman letters on it (well, not many). Three bits of currency, each measuring a diminutive 1¾ by 3½ inches, roughly the size of a business card.Mongolian currency

I didn’t have to do any looking around to know who issued them: Mongolia. I’m familiar with Mongolian notes, ever since I picked up a few of them in Ulaanbaatar.

Besides, the Mongolian national symbol – the Soyombo, which appears in the national flag – is a certain giveaway.

“The Soyombo is… attributed to Zanabazar, the 17th-century leader of Mongolian Lamaism, a great statesman, and the father of Mongolian art and script,” says the University of Pennsylvania, including an interpretation of the ying-yang that’s new to me.

“The yin-yang symbol means that men and women are unified. During Communist times it was interpreted as two intertwined fish, which symbolize vigilance and wisdom, as fish never close their eyes.”

Not having eyelids isn’t quite the same as being vigilant, I’d say, and I don’t much associate fish with wisdom, but I suppose that’s just anthropocentric bias, isn’t it?

I didn’t pick up the notes in country. They came with the grab bag of international paper money cheapies, and are 10-, 20- and 50-möngö notes.

A möngö is one-hundredth of a tugrik (tögrög), the base unit. Considering that U.S. $1 fetches about 3,500 tugrik these days, even 50 möngö isn’t going to be worth much. Indeed, Wiki says of the notes, “Very rare in circulation. Abundant among collectors.”

The möngö notes depict Mongolian sports: archery, wrestling and horse riding. Those are known as the “Three Games of Men,” the Mongolian embassy to the U.S. tells me. It also says that “nowadays, track and field sports, football, basketball, volleyball, skating, skiing, motorcycle racing, mountain climbing, chess and other sports are widely played in Mongolia.”

Also, there’s a Mongolian American Football Association. Learn something new every day.