Monthly Archives: April 2021

Just Another Spring Break

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A pleasant string of warm days came to an end today with cool drizzle most of the time. But at least the snowy mess of February is just an unpleasant memory.

Back again around April 18. Call it a spring break. Who knows, I might have encountered a new thing or two by that time. Never know when you’ll see something interesting.

A recent Zoom. Two participants in Illinois, one in Tennessee, one in Washington state. All VU alumni.

If I were a Zoom stockholder, that is in San Jose-based Zoom Video Communications Inc., I might sell. I’m astonished by the number of people who hate Zoom, the platform, and will probably dump it as soon as they can. I know not to ask about half of my old friends on social Zooms anymore, because they will refuse. Politely, because they are old friends.

I don’t quite get it. Burning out on work Zooms is one thing. But the occasional social Zoom among old friends? On a couple of occasions, they’ve run three or four hours, to great delight of everyone. Sure, if we were obliged to meet electronically even with old friends three or so times a week, that would get old. But more occasionally among people with whom you share a past? Nothing better.

I made a point of watching the new short biographic series Hemingway this week as it was broadcast on PBS. I can’t remember the last time watched TV on a broadcast schedule. Mad Men?

It’s high-quality work on the part of Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, illustrating what a biography should illustrate, the life and times. I knew a fair amount of the material already, though did find out more — another mark of a good bio on a well-known subject — such as the relentlessness with which he suffered major, and mostly untreated concussions. The head injury from the second plane crash in Africa was the only serious one I knew about. Turns out it was one of a string.

That’ll do no good to a man who’s already an alcoholic from a family with a history of mental illness, and who probably had a touch of shell shock thrown into the mix, to use the straightforward Great War terminology. It’s a wonder he didn’t put himself on the wrong end of his shotgun before he finally did.

Springdale Cemetery

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The afternoon was getting long in the tooth in Peoria last Saturday, but I told Ann there was one more place I wanted to go before we proceeded to the highway out of town. Yes, of course, was her mild reaction.

The minor delay was entirely worth it, as far as I was concerned. We soon found ourselves at the entrance to Springdale Cemetery, a wooded, hilly, well-populated stretch of land where gravediggers first turned their shovels in the late 1850s. Roads lead off in various directions through this enormous place, a rare example of a rural cemetery movement cemetery that still retains a rural feeling, even though the city of Peoria is all around.Springdale Cemetery Springdale Cemetery Springdale Cemetery

Springdale isn’t over-thick with stones, though there are plenty. It isn’t thick with sizable memorials, though a few rise over the others.Springdale Cemetery

Deeper in the 223-acre cemetery are rows of soldiers’ stones, beginning with those who fought to save the Union and peppered with later participants in later wars.Springdale Cemetery Springdale Cemetery Springdale Cemetery

Even deeper in, the forest becomes as thick as any I’ve seen in a cemetery. In early April, the trees are still bare, but it won’t be long. The warm air was alive with birdcalls while the din of city traffic — so much part of a “rural cemetery” in our time — was far in the background.Springdale Cemetery Springdale Cemetery

We saw just a handful of mausoleums. I suspect there most be more in other parts of Springdale, since Peoria had a long stint as a prosperous industrial town, and that’s the kind of thing that captains of industry used to buy for themselves. But we only had time for the handful.Springdale Cemetery

Zotz was a German newspaper publisher. Springdale Cemetery The mausoleum door isn’t original. In fact, it’s a recently created trompe l’oeil.

Springdale Cemetery Zotz

Nearby were more modest, but still compelling stones. About 78,000 people lie in Springdale.
Springdale Cemetery
A gorgeous place, all in all. One that would be worth seeing during the seasons other than spring, I believe.

West Moss Avenue, Peoria

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During our stroll around the Bradley U. campus on Easter Saturday, Ann and I also ventured into the surrounding neighborhood to the south. One of its streets is the amusingly named Fredonia Ave., which sports ordinary student houses and apartments.
Further south from there is the wide W. Moss Ave., with its sizable houses/enormous lawns on one side, green and beginning to flower.
W. Moss Ave. Peoria
The lawns are smaller on the other side, but the houses just as pleasant.
W. Moss Ave. Peoria W. Moss Ave. Peoria

We came across a particularly distinctive stack of bricks. Looks like a Frank Lloyd Wright, I said. It was. Guess I’ve seen enough of the diminutive genius’ genius work, which impresses one with its genius aspect, to know when I see one. Well, it is impressive bit of work, anyway.W. Moss Ave. Peoria - Francis W. Little house W. Moss Ave. Peoria - Francis W. Little house W. Moss Ave. Peoria - Francis W. Little house

It’s the Francis W. Little house, dating from 1903. The FLW Trust says: “With its ribbon windows, low-pitched roofs, projecting eaves, and walled terraces, the Francis Little house is typical of Wright’s mature Prairie style designs. The Little house windows are similar in design to those found at the E. Arthur Davenport, William Fricke, F.B. Henderson, and Edwin H. Cheney houses.

“The glass designs found on the interior of the house, which include a variety of skylights and built-in bookcases with glass doors, exhibit more elaborate color schemes and came arrangements than those found on the exterior walls.”

Those elaborate color schemes aren’t for the enjoyment of the public, or at least that fraction willing to pay to tour a FLW house, but rather for the current owner.

Not far from FLW on Moss is the Westminster Presbyterian Church.
W. Moss Ave. Peoria - Westminster Presbyterian
“The construction of Westminster Presbyterian Church was concluded in 1898. The architect, Herbert Hewitt, designed an English Gothic structure with Norman spire,” the church web site says, only to explain that: “Other than periodic upgrades, this church remained unchanged until 1985 when it was destroyed in a fire.”

The congregation rebuilt: “The current church was completed and dedicated in April 1989. The architect of the new building was Ben Weese, a member of the Chicago Seven, a first-generation postmodern group of architects in Chicago.” (Not to be confused with the other Chicago Seven, or Eight, depending.)

Bradley University Walkabout

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Before each Easter comes around, you don’t know whether you’ll get a pleasant early spring day or a chilly late winter one, at least at my latitude. This year, as if to echo the glory of the holiday, we enjoyed a flawless spring day.

Easter Monday and Easter Saturday were pretty nice, too, and on the latter of those two, Ann and I spent much of the afternoon in Peoria, Illinois. During this Vaccine Spring, appointments have proven hard to book close to Cook County, and so I’d found one for her at a pharmacy in Peoria, not far as it happened from the campus of Bradley University.

Since driving down to Peoria, getting the shot, and zipping right back seems like an opportunity wasted to me, we didn’t do that. Bradley was close at hand, so after the shot we took a walk in the springtime sunshine around campus.

Bradley isn’t the grandest or prettiest or most historic campus I’ve ever seen (UVA would contend for all of those, actually), but it had its interests, such as the Hayden-Clark Alumni Center, which fronts a wide lawn.
Bradley University
“Adjoining the circa-1897 Bradley Hall, the center welcomes alumni, students and visitors in a three-story, multi-use building for tours, meetings and special events,” Peoria magazine wrote of the building, which was completed in 2011. “The center’s Shaheen Hall of Pride has become a popular destination, featuring 22 display cases, dioramas and videos that chronicle the university’s growth and influential history.

“Designed by architectural/engineering firm Dewberry, the building incorporates elements of collegiate gothic architecture, such as arches, buttresses and a crenellated tower. The façade is constructed of Indiana limestone, like Bradley Hall and other historic campus buildings.

“Four hand-carved limestone gargoyles sit atop the center. In a gesture of appreciation to the past, two of them are replicas of existing gargoyles on Bradley Hall. The other two are original, overlooking a new view to the west. Technically, they are ‘grotesques,’ rather than gargoyles. Gargoyles are functional — usually as waterspouts and drains — but these are ornamental.”

I have to appreciate a 21st-century building that bothers with gargoyles. Elsewhere, there’s a bronze of Lydia Moss Bradley (1816-1908) in her later years.Bradley UniversityShe founded Bradley Polytechnic Institute in 1897, later to become a university. The statue was erected for the centennial of the school in 1997.

Other campus details that caught my eye follow. A small sampling.Bradley University Bradley University Bradley University
That last one is another bit of Bradley art, “Split Figure: Woman,” by Nita K. Sunderland, an art professor at the university who died only last year.

April Foolishness

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Back again on Easter Monday, April 5. Happy Easter to all.

On a day like today, and in fact today and no other day, I wake up and think, It’s April, fool. I could do that each day for the next 29 and still be right, but it’s not the same somehow.

Well below freezing this morning, but such temps won’t last. Not long ago I was pleased to see clover underfoot.

I’ve seen two (?) four-leaf clovers over the years. I can’t remember exactly. I know I spotted one in Nashville years ago. This source at least, claiming an empirical survey, says that one clover per 5,076 has four leaves, so it is a rarity. And five-leaf clovers are one in 24,390. Never seen one of those, or the one-in-312,500 six-leaf clover.

How is that most “clover-leaf” interchanges have four circular ramps, like the variety we aren’t likely to see? Shouldn’t we think of another name? Maybe Buckminster Fuller did. Quadrocircles or something.

A cell tower I saw last weekend near Jelke Creek Bird Sanctuary.

Why take a picture of something so pedestrian? It occurs to me that members of some future generation might quarrel about preserving some of the last standing cell towers as reminders of the 21st century. Most were long gone, having outlived their usefulness after everyone had those satellite-receiving transponders implanted behind their ears.

Also: more about governmental units from the Census Bureau. Jay once told me that Texas is fond of setting up specialized governmental districts, and so it seems.

“Texas ranks second among the states in number of local governments with 5,147 active as of June 30, 2012,” the bureau says. No townships — the Republic of Texas originally spurned such notions, perhaps, and maybe the state banned them in the 1876 constitution (everything’s in there) — but there are 2,600 special district governments.

Besides ordinary things like school districts and housing authorities, they include (and this isn’t a complete list) advanced transportation districts, coordinated county transportation authorities, county development districts, fire control and prevention and EMS districts, freight rail districts, fresh water supply districts, groundwater conservation districts, irrigation districts, levee improvement districts, local mental health authorities, intermunicipal commuter rail districts, multi-jurisdiction library districts, navigation districts, municipal power agencies, noxious weed control districts, rural rail transportation districts, rural and urban transportation districts, soil and water conservation districts, water improvement districts, sports and community venue districts, sports facility districts, and underground water conservation districts. What, no fire ant control districts?

Also: the Edwards Aquifer Authority, Palacios Seawall Commission, Riverbend Water Resources District, Ship Channel Security District, and the Upper Sabine Valley Solid Waste Management District.

Whew. To cross Texas is to cross a welter of districts. Who is number 1 in governmental units, if vast Texas is second? Illinois, with 6,936 as of June 30, 2012. What about the state with the least governmental units? I’d think it was Idaho or Vermont or Little Rhody, but no: Hawaii, with 21. Rhode Island is no. 49, with 133.

I understand that the Louvre has made all of its works available for viewing online, so the other day, I looked up “L’Arbre aux corbeaux,” by Caspar David Friedrich — “Krähenbaum” or “The Tree of Crows” (1822).

This is what I saw.

At Wikipedia, you can see this.

Both images unretouched. What’s up with that, Louvre?

From a press release that came my way recently: “Over the last few years, we’ve seen the rise of cleanfluencers from Mrs Hinch to Clean Mama. Like others, they’ve made the jump over to TikTok to provide us with their best tips and tricks, but how much could they potentially earn from their videos?”

Cleanfluencers? As usual, I’m behind the curve. As usual, I don’t give a damn. And of course, the reaction to this sort of nonsense isn’t new either.