Now that Ann has finished ISU, I expect two things: solicitations for donations will start, which she will probably deal with by ignoring them, and it will be much less likely that I will go to Bloomington-Normal, just as I haven’t been to Champaign-Urbana lately. With that in mind, I suggested a post-brunch visit on Saturday to the 400 block of Main Street, downtown Bloomington, home of 2 FruGALS Thrift.
The block is also home to Ivy Land Bakery (we bought cookies there once, and didn’t regret it), Exquisite Body Arts (I didn’t get a tattoo there, and don’t regret that either), the Velvet Daisy Shoppe, Merlot and A Masterpiece, That Dapper Pet, Megli Voice Studio, McLean County Democratic Headquarters, Wilson Cycle, Crossroads Fair Trade Goods & Gifts, and Bobzbay Books.
Nice book store, but no postcards that I could see.
While everyone else was poking around 2 FruGALS, I spent some time capturing black-and-white images. On a whim.
Some buildings.
Some details.
I noticed that the metal relief above 418 N. Main is still there, though the business I saw in 2022 is gone. Ayurveda for Healing moved elsewhere; now Jan Brandt Gallery is there, along with Sync Mind Body Pilates & Reiki.
The relief is called “Meditation on a Ball of String” (2021). I know that because a sign has been added sometime in the last three years to describe it. The artist is Herb Eaton. His studio isn’t far away.
Details.
Fine whimsy. Downtowns ought to have more public art like that.
There was some grumbling about the fact that the ISU graduation ceremony, at least the part that involved Ann, had been scheduled for the evening. Old timers, that is me, remembered the fine spring Friday the 13th in Tennessee long ago when VU held its graduation, and its late morning start.
But ISU’s schedule had an upside. The four of us stayed in a hotel room in Normal that night, which was an extra expense, but also enjoyed a leisurely Saturday morning in our room and at the hotel’s no-extra-charge breakfast, which wasn’t bad. Leaving just before noon, we got a look around the property, whose theme seemed to be faux chateau.
How about making it look like a cake? One of those square multi-layer ones, with some French accents. That may have been the thinking during the design phase. And don’t forget bronze lions.
Ann wanted to spend some time on campus taking pictures at specific spots where she has fond memories, so that’s what we did. A few sites were inside a few of the buildings. We also spent some time, under a very warm sun, at the ISU Quad. Not our first time there.
I did what I do, wandering off for quick looks at this and that. Cook Hall is an old favorite.
In front of Cook Hall is “Ruins IV.”
“Ruins IV was created by Nita Sunderland, an art professor from Bradley University,” notes the ISU web site. “The Ruins IV sculpture reflects stylized medieval imagery and is part of a series that Sunderland said stands as ‘a statement about our relationship with history and former societies,’ as well as the importance of learning from mistakes and experiments of the past.”
If you say so, Nita. Is it ever just enough to say, this sculpture’s got some really cool shapes?
No one else approached the plaque-on-rock memorial to William Saunders (d. 1900), the horticulturalist who designed the lawn, but I did. Nice work, Bill.
All together, our ISU amble took about an hour. Then it was time for brunch at some distance from campus, but still in the greater Bloomington-Normal metroplex. We enjoyed some of the following wonders and more, at middle-class prices.
Children grow up fast, according to the cliché. Yet I feel that it was an age ago that I wrote, “About three weeks ago, my second daughter, Ann, was born.” A good age, but an age nevertheless. This weekend I had the pleasure, along with her mother and sister, of attending Ann’s graduation from Illinois State University.
Commencement took place at the school’s CEFCU Arena on Friday evening.
She was among the sea of mortar boards.
The crowd was spirited, so you couldn’t quite hear everything everyone said, but so what? I’m glad to report that none of the speakers, all people affiliated with the school in one way or the other, spoke at any great length. That’s another cliché, that commencement speeches are completely forgettable. That one happens to be true, with vanishingly few exceptions (say, Churchill). But it was good that no one spent a long time being forgettable.
Lots coming up, including Ann’s graduation and a visit by Lilly on that occasion. Back to posting around May 11. Also of note: finally, there have been two days in a row that actually seemed like spring here in northern Illinois.
My ambles in Dubai, under pleasantly warm late winter conditions, took me to a nearly empty plaza not far from both Dubai Mall and the Burj Khalifa. Later I found out the place is called Opera Plaza. At least on maps.
Close by is Dubai Opera, a 2,000-seat performing arts venue with built-in variability, through seats that can be removed or added, and stages of various sizes that can be raised or lowered out of sight, creating different theater configurations.
If you’re a city with any pretentions to great cityhood, you get yourself an opera house, as Dubai did in 2016. Lead architect on the opera house was a Dane, Janus Rostock
“I think the biggest challenge for the Dubai Opera project, which we did when I was at Atkins, was to create this building in the midst of, sitting next to, the world’s tallest building, the world’s biggest fountain, one of the largest malls in the world,” he [Rostock] says. “And to ask how could we create a building that was able to “compete” with these wonders of architecture?”
Design-wise, Rostock wanted to create a building shaped like a dhow, the traditional sailing boat of the region. As Rostock explains, the vessel has its roots in the very city itself.
“The Bani-Yas tribe arrived in Dubai and settled on the shores of the creek,” he says, “and it was the dhow that brought prosperity through pearl diving, through fishing and it also brought trade to Dubai… so the dhow itself is really part of that story, it is something which was deeply rooted in the Emirati culture.”
Not bad for an advertorial. If they were more readable, more people would read them. Other, less famed buildings rise over Opera Plaza, probably not taking their cues from pre-modern Dubai.
Including a tower still under construction. An international style residential development looking, probably, to attract some of that sweet international oligarch money.
With public plazas come public art. Such as this, near the shores of the Persian Gulf, some Persian art.
“Khalvat” (2014) by Sahand Hesamiyan, an Iranian artist. Steel, stainless steel, gold leaf and electrostatic paint.
More details at ground level, halfway around the world.
Instant familiarity in a setting far from its usual North American haunts. The work of Mueller. Hydrant maker to the world, it seems.
“Stop for tea? Food?” our driver said partly through the longish drive from Jaipur to Delhi, on out last full day in the country. I’m sure he had a list, probably in his head, of places he would earn a bit of baksheesh for delivering us.
This wasn’t an issue. That’s how the game is played, and besides, after nearly a week in India, we’d had some pretty good Indian food as a result, mostly the sort of north Indian specialties also available in the United States during the last 30 years or so: curries, dals,samosas, biryani, chicken tikka masala, lots of good naan, lassi, and so forth. Also, corn flakes at breakfast sometimes with warm milk.
His best suggestion was a roadside pullout zone some miles outside metro Delhi sporting an agglomeration of small food stalls, with long benches for common seating under the shadow of a large shed roof, and stand-up eating tables outside in the late February warmth. Indian roads are well traveled by private cars now, and the place had a healthy crowd, though not overwhelming, enough to create a hum of ambient conversation and kid squeals. The ambient smell: ah, Indian spices. Or, as I expect they call them, spices.
We bought tea in small earthen cups with the assistance of a boy of about 10, surely related to the proprietor, who earned a few rupees from me for his trouble. We downed it standing up at a table. But I don’t want to idealize the stop: trucks belched smoke into the air nearby, small mounds of debris – such as pieces of brick or cinderblock, along with some trash – dotted the grounds near the parking lot, which was also home to a few mangy dogs. Still, it was a lively place, and the well-spiced chai went down well.
Our driver’s second-best suggestion was the one between Jaipur and Delhi. We weren’t especially hungry, but had light sandwiches.
The humble grilled cheese sandwich. Imagine my surprise when I took a first bite and the cheese focused me completely on eating the rest of the sandwich with the same gusto. Why is the cheese so good? What kind of cheese, anyway? None I could identify right away. I put these questions out of my mind and enjoyed the cheese, but now I’m thinking about them again.
Happy cows? That seems like an oversimplification, but it is true that in India cows are on that list that every society unconsciously draws up of most favored animals, such as dogs and cats in North America. So less stress for bovines, better-tasting milk products. But that seems a little hippy-dippy and without a scientific basis. On the other hand —
The last night in Delhi we walked the short distance to a small branch of a very large international organization and had dinner. In a place without beef, chicken is the star.
Some observations (I’m working on a coffee table book, McDonald’s Around the World.)*
As I was slowly carrying my tray up a flight of stairs, a young employee came to help, taking the tray to our table. She didn’t wait around for a tip, though I would have given her one.
I didn’t make exact notes of the price, but accounting for the relative strength of the dollar (at the time), I’d say the food was a discount to domestic McDonald’s, though it has been a good many months since I’ve been to a U.S McD’s. Maybe 20 to 30 percent less, as a guesstimate.
The food was… McDonald’s. Not bad, in other words, with the French fries hewing exactly to the formula.
The paper place mat was, alas, not distinctive to India, unlike in some places and times. My idea of a souvenir is the paper place mat I got in ’90s Moscow, at the only McDonald’s I’ve seen with bouncers.
The place was busy, and clearly popular with those under 30. I might have been the oldest person in the place, though that happens more and more to me. I’ve seen it before: McDonald’s in Japan in the 1990s, which attracted few of Yuriko’s parents’ generation. I didn’t visit a McDonald’s in Japan this time around, but my money would be on finding people of Yuriko’s generation well represented.
The sign doesn’t say the winter accessories are ¥300, but rather that they start at ¥300. A critical detail, but even so the items aren’t pricey.
We’d come across a curious shop deep in the heart of Osaka.
Riding into Osaka on a Keihan regional line, we transferred to the city’s subway system, specifically the Midosuji line (御堂筋線, Midōsuji-sen), which runs under a grand avenue of that name, Midosuji Blvd., for a few miles. The Midosuji line proceeds from Umeda to Namba and beyond to places like Tennoji, names that might not mean much to the outside world, but which are old and familiar to me.
My first summer in Japan, I hung out briefly with Bernadette and Lyn, two Kiwis, and Sean, a Californian.
“I tell people at home I can speak Japanese,” Sean said one fine evening at Osaka Castle Park. He’d only been in the country a few weeks.
“Oh, yeah?” said the saucy Lyn.
“Yeah, Yodoyabashi. Hommachi. Daikokucho!”
That was a laugh. He’d rattled off some of the station names on the Midosuji line.
I digress. Yuriko and I went a few stations south, then emerged at ground level and headed east on foot, along another major avenue, though without the ginko trees or skyscrapers or wide bridges of Midosuji Blvd. I had to look up the new street’s name later: Chou-Dori, a literal translation of which would be, Middle Road.
Above Chou-Dori is a major expressway. Built under the expressway is a row of massive buildings, one after another, maybe 10 or more of them: Semba Center, the entire collection is called. Space is at a premium in urban Japan.
Each Semba Center building had entrances on either end, directly in the shadow of the expressway, and each building – at least the half-dozen or so we walked through – was packed with discount retailers, lining each side of a hall that ran the entire length of the building. You want discounters in Osaka, this is the place to come, Yuriko told me. Clothes, mostly, including more than one cloth merchant, but also household goods and decorative items.
At Semba Center Building No. 9, 3-3-110 Senbacho, Chuo-ku, Osaka (to give its full address) is Tetsudo Wasuremono Ichi.
That is, the Railroad Forgotten Items Store. It’s a store that sells items left on JR trains – presumably Osaka-area JR trains, since I know there is an equivalent store in Tokyo. Many millions of people use those trains every day, so it stands to reason that there is a constant flow of many left items, all the time.
JR must have a deal with the store owner, the details of which hardly matter, though I suppose the railroad acts as a wholesaler of items left over a few months (some details are here). I’ll bet really valuable items aren’t sold that way, though. If somehow your Brasher Doubloon ended up in the JR lost and found, it would mean you were grossly careless, someone who found it had no idea what it was, and a JR-favored coin dealer would get to buy it.
Be that as it may, people leave behind a lot of umbrellas. In Osaka, there’s no excuse to pay full price for an umbrella.
The place is well stocked with clothes, too.
Many are the small items. Seems only reasonable.
People lose some odd things.
There’s enough readable text for me probably to figure out what this is, but somehow not knowing is more satisfying as a travel memory.
When thinking about my recent visit to Prague with my brother, certain questions come to mind. Such as, what is St. Vitus Dance? Who was St. Vitus?
As for the latter question, he is one of those legendary saints, emerging from the bloody mists of early Christian persecution. “According to the legend… St. Vitus suffered martyrdom at a very early age under the emperor Diocletian,” the trusty 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica notes.
“Son of a Sicilian nobleman who was a worshipper of idols, Vitus was converted to the Christian faith without the knowledge of his father, was denounced by him and scourged, but resisted all attacks on his profession… Among the diseases against which St Vitus is invoked is chorea, also known as St. Vitus’s Dance.”
Chorea refers to abnormal involuntary movement disorders of a few types, but not epilepsy. A more detailed entry about St. Vitus is in the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia, whichsays: “St. Vitus is appealed to, above all, against epilepsy, which is called St. Vitus’s Dance, and he is one of the Fourteen Martyrs who give aid in times of trouble.”
The text seems to conflate chorea with epilepsy, but you don’t go to books of that vintage for current medical knowledge. Regardless, St. Vitus has a long history of veneration, including in Bohemia. That would account for the naming of St. Vitus Cathedral, which we visited in Prague, coming in early afternoon by way of a streetcar and then a less-visited entrance to Prague Castle.
An impressive hulk of a church on a high hill, St. Vitus Cathedral is a major presence in Prague Castle.
When we were here in 1994, the church was dedicated to Vitus alone, but these days it is the Metropolitan Cathedral of Saints Vitus, Wenceslaus and Adalbert (metropolitní katedrála svatého Víta, Václava a Vojtěcha). The renaming happened a few years later. The thinking might have been that it was all well and good to honor a popular Sicilian saint, but it would also be good to add some hometown martyrs.
Inside the church was, to rephrase for our time (in its original form, a favorite expression of my mother’s), cold as the mammaries of a Wicca practitioner. Colder in fact than outside on that day in mid-March, but I’ll take that as a blow for authenticity. For most of the cathedral’s long history, including centuries when it wasn’t finished, its HVAC was the Lord.
The chill might have discouraged sitting around on pews, but not from taking a circuit up a side aisle, around behind the altar, and back down the other side aisle.
What is it about the Gothic ceilings? A vast volume of space, or at least the perception of a vast volume of space, but it’s more than that.
A small sample of the rich detail.
Call this one mother and child and prelate.
Last but hardly least, a gargoyle from outside now on display in the church.
Retired from the madcap life up there on the roof with the other gargoyles. Or maybe their activities up there aren’t the stuff of comedy. The Gargoyles of St. Vitus sounds like a Victorian horror story. Better yet, TheDancing Gargoyles of St. Vitus. Could be an episode of Night Gallery or, with updated tech, Black Mirror.
I’m not sure exactly what “Hey, this is a World Heritage Site! Show some respect, wanker!” would be in German, but I suspect in German you probably could shout just the right mix of threat and shaming.
Spotted in March on Museum Island (Museumsinsel) in Berlin.
Note that the red-letter headline is in English. I think of that as more of a function of English as a ramshackle world language than the propensity of Americans, Britons or Australians to use bullhorns while peeing on World Heritage Sites from their bicycles or scooters. Well, maybe Australians would. (I trade in that stereotype with abiding affection for that nation, since the Australians I know would sound right back about Americans). To be honest, it also sounds like something Florida Man would do.
We were in the vicinity of the Alte Nationalgalerie.
Make it a Greco-Roman temple, at least on the outside, King Friedrich Wilhelm IVmust have said, though he didn’t live to see its completion in 1876. August Stüler was tasked with the design, but he didn’t live to see it done either.
The museum complex on Museum Island certainly deserves to be on the UNESCO list. A detail from the museum’s tourist leaflet shows the Old National Gallery in relation to the others, and the fact that the Pergamon Museum is “closed for refurbishment.” Dang.
We didn’t go directly to his gallery up on the third floor, but I knew the Casper David Friedrich was a priority at Alte Nationalgalerie. Like visiting an old friend. They say maintaining social relations is important for one’s health in older years, and maybe that’s so. But I’m sure visiting old friends makes your life better in the here and now. Mine, anyway. Including mainly people, but also places and favorites in art or entertainment.
My old buddy Casper’s canvasses are usually good for more than one detail. Such as “Abtei im Eichwald” (1809/10), sporting a good old Casper David Friedrich moon.
Or “Eichbaum im Schnee” (1829). The man had a gift for trees too.
This one is CDF and it isn’t, since it is a copy of one of his paintings, “Klosterrunie im Schnee” (1891), by an unknown artist. The original didn’t survive WWII.
There was even an appearance of CDF himself, at work, in a portrait by colleague Georg Friedrich Kersting (d. 1847).
There probably would have been more CDF on display, but as it happens, the place to be right now to see many of his works is the Met, which is hosting Caspar David Friedrich: The Soul of Nature until May 11. Seventy-five paintings, drawings, and prints by Friedrich are in that show.
No matter, the museum offers plenty else to see, with a collection of European art roughly from the French Revolution to WWI. The place wasn’t crowded, but a fair number of museumgoers were around.
We spent a while looking around ourselves.
Detail from “Die Pontinischen Sümpfe bei Sonnenuntergang” (“The Pontine Marshes at Sunset”)(1848) by August Kopisch, which has a Chesley Bonestell vibe.
Detail from “Doppleporträt der Brüder Jacob und Wilhelm Grimm” (1855) by Elisabeth Jerichau-Baumann.
Detail from “Tükische Straßenszene“(1888) by Osman Hamdi Bey.
Detail from “Porträt Kaiser Wilhelm II” (1895) by Vilma Parlaghy.
Tough luck, Willie. But at least your hope didn’t end at the end of a rope.
When I went to the observation deck of Burj Khalifa in Dubai, I expected to see the Palm Jumeirah artificial islands off in the distance. I did, but barely. Its distinctive, palm-like shape was hazy and mostly indistinct off in the distance. So I decided a few days later to get a better look, though not quite like the images seen from space, such as one from the International Space Station.
For a view closer to the surface of the Earth, but not too close, you go to the observation deck of the Palm Tower, which rises nearly 790 feet above the Nakheel Mall at a mid-point on the stem of the Palm Jumeriah. “The View at the Palm,” the place is called in English. I took in the view on March 2.
Access to the elevators, beyond the ticket desk, includes a room with photos and brief text about the building of the Palm Jumeirah. The briefest version: a lot of rocks and sand were dumped into the Persian Gulf – which the UAE calls the Arabian Gulf – and artfully engineered to create dry land, at least for our generation. I’m sticking with the Persian Gulf; there is already an Arabian Sea, which is bigger anyway, but maybe they’re both envious of India, which gets an entire ocean.
At one point on the tower’s lower floor, you pass through a colorful tunnel featuring a painting of colorful undersea life. Maybe it evokes the bottom of the Persian Gulf near Dubai? In a sort of colorful cartoon way?
The elevator whisks you up to a busy observation deck.
Busy for a reason, namely the fine 360-degree view. Once I could work my way through the other vista-takers, I started with the view out to the end of the Palm.
There at the end is Atlantis Dubai. Actually, the structure with the Arabic dome outline is only part of the Atlantis Dubai resort: Atlantis The Palm.
A little further down the shore is Atlantis: The Royal, “the most ultra-luxury experiential resort in the world,” asserts the web site copy. No doubt it is ultra, but just looking at the design, I couldn’t help thinking of some of the rectangular cuboid building blocks I played with as a small child, stacking them something like that.
I checked, and in theory one can get a rack-rate room at Atlantis: The Palm on some days for around $330 a night, but of course such a number is merely a starting point of a price escalation. As for The Royal, the rate is some hundreds more, thence to the stratosphere.
Views of the palm fronds.
Impressive rows of real estate, especially considering that it was created ex nihilo only in this century. So it isn’t quite true that they aren’t making more real estate. But I guess it is true that no one is making cheap real estate, since I doubt that would be economically feasible, even for oil states.
Ever the curious sort, I checked some of the hotel rates at the properties closer to the Palm Tower, and they are in the same league, roughly, as upper midscale or upscale properties in the United States (my hotel near the airport counted as midscale, I think).
Of course, only some of these views include hotels. There are plenty of apartments and condos too, and I’m sure their price points are mostly elevated as well.
The 360-degree panorama includes a look back at mainland Dubai.
You’d think this would be downtown, but no.
Dubai has a number of building clusters sizable enough to be called downtown elsewhere. But in Dubai, they are just more Dubai. Off in the distance is an equally large cluster that includes (in the midground) the sail-like Burj Al-Arab and (somewhere in the background) the Burj Khalifa.
The creation of Palm Jumeirah also meant the creation of beaches, and from my tourist perch at The View, I could see a large group of moving dots – they must have been children, considering their movements – down below.
I expect it was some kind of resort babysitting (ahem, curated activity), allowing the dots to scamper around while their parents and older relatives drank under large umbrellas. I couldn’t help thinking of Harry Lime’s evil ruminations in The Third Man.
Good thing I’m not, and most people are not, the murdering sort, for fun or profit.
Part of the inspiration to visit India was the book City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi (1993) by the admirable Scottish writer William Dalrymple, which I’ve known about for years but only got around to reading late last year. Timing is important in one’s travels, even before going anywhere, and I happened to be reading that book as we discussed going to Japan in the coming winter. In a typical train of thought for me, I figured if we’re already in Japan, how much more effort would it take to go on to India? Some, as it turned out, mostly after we arrived, but worth the effort.
One memorable passage in City of Djinns involved Dalrymple’s visit to Jama Masjid in Delhi, during the end of Ramadan one year. A mass swirl of humanity came to the mosque on that occasion.
When we were there in February on an ordinary non-Friday, humanity was mostly represented by tourists, contributing our little bit to the upkeep — a reasonable $3.50 or so each at that moment in February. Plus another $1 or so baksheesh each to the young man watching your shoes.
As well we should visit. Extraordinary in its grandness, the place also reminds a North American just how far he is from home.
At the entrance of the prayer hall.
That hints at a history of video crews making, or trying to make, their works on the sly. Equipment doesn’t need to as large as it used to be.
Up.
Once again, what would modern India be without reminders of Mughal power and prestige? The mosque is the work of Shah Jahan I (d. 1666), fifth Mughal emperor, or rather the 5,000 workers hired for the job and supervised by his Grand Vizier. “Indians, Arabs, Persians, Turks, and Europeans” were among the workers, according to Wiki.
The mosque commands a hill in Old Delhi, rising on the edge of the marketplace maze that is Chandni Chowk. Its minarets rise 135 feet.
I didn’t have the urge to make a video at the Jama Masjid of Delhi, but I can see its omnidirectional visual appeal. The Mughal talent for architectural grandness shows up in pretty much every direction.
