Poverty Point World Heritage Site

Posted on April 25, 2021 by admin

West from Vicksburg and a little north of I-20 on US 65 is Transylvania, Louisiana, pop. scant. Now I can say I’ve been to Transylvania. I missed a turn, and realized it after a few miles, by which time I was near a school that needs roof repairs. Or an abandoned school building. I pulled over within sight of the structure to consult my maps.

Soon I was headed by the correct small roads to Poverty Point World Heritage Site, which has an address in Epps, Louisiana, but that’s just the nearest currently inhabited town. The site is firmly in the countryside.

Its signs stress the World Heritage status accorded the site a few years ago. Poverty Point also happens to be a U.S. National Monument.

On this site, in the second millennium BC, the people who dwelled here spent centuries building enormous mounds and ridges of earth by hand. The thought of that conjures up a past so remote that our image of them is one of shades, whispering in a language we can’t comprehend, pushing this collective building goal forward for reasons we cannot possibly know.

What you see close after the beginning of the third millennium AD is wide green fields, modestly undulating. Off in the distance are copses of trees, more fields and other natural land contour. The day was pleasantly warm.

“Hand by hand and basketful by basketful, men and women shaped nearly 2 million cubic yards of soil into stunning landscapes,” the site’s web site says. “The result was a massive 72-foot-tall mound, enormous concentric half-circles and related earthworks that dwarfed every other earthen monument site for 2,200 years.”

Mound B beats them all. The largest ever built by a hunter-gatherer population.

A further estimate on a sign near the mound says it would have taken 15.5 million loads of earth to build this single mound.

It’s a brain bender. Imagine a time and place when virtually everything you know, or have seen, or believed, wouldn’t exist for thousands of years.

Vicksburg National Military Park

Posted on April 22, 2021 by admin

Had my second shot today. Now George Soros is controlling my brain. Or is it Bill Gates? Hard to keep all these kaleidoscopic alt-realities straight, you know.

Over the years I’ve bypassed Vicksburg, the city and the battlefield, a number of times, so I made a point of visiting this time. I arrived at Vicksburg National Military Park just after noon on April 11, pausing to eat lunch in my car in the parking lot.

At more than 2,500 acres, it’s a large park, but actually smaller than most of the other national military parks, such as Chickamauga (9,500+ acres), Shiloh (9,300+ acres), Fredericksburg (8,400+ acres) or Gettysburg (6,000+ acres). Takes a lot of land to wage near-modern war, after all.

Still, with its winding roads, thick woods, open fields, and monuments of all sizes and descriptions, the place feels expansive. And lush. Full spring had come to Mississippi, along with a pleasant warmth in the air that must have been blazing hot by the time the siege happened in the summer.

Everywhere you look, a few more cannons. According to Wiki, there are 144 emplaced cannons in the park.

Only fitting, since the event was largely a duel of artillery. Also according to Wiki, the park includes 1,325 historic monuments and markers, 20 miles of trenches and earthworks, a 16-mile tour road, a 12.5-mile walking trail, two antebellum homes, and the restored gunboat USS Cairo, the luckless Brown Water Navy vessel that became first ship ever sunk by a remotely detonated mine.

Each state on both sides that sent men to the campaign has a sizable memorial — as many as 117,000 soldiers took part — but it looks like none is more sizable than Illinois.

“The design was by W. L. B. Jenney and sculptor was Charles J. Mulligan. Jenney served with distinction as a major in the Union Army during the Civil War as an engineer,” says the National Park Service.

“Stone Mountain (GA) granite forms the base and stairway. Above the base is Georgia white marble. There are forty-seven steps in the long stairway, one for each day of the Siege of Vicksburg.

“Modeled after the Roman Pantheon, the monument has sixty unique bronze tablets lining its interior walls, naming all 36,325 Illinois soldiers who participated in the Vicksburg campaign. Atop the memorial sits a bronze bald eagle sculpted by Frederick C. Hibbard of Chicago, who would also sculpt the statue of General Ulysses S. Grant in the park.”

Near the Illinois memorial is one of the aforementioned antebellum homes, the well-restored Shirley House, which survived 1863 against all odds.

As it is now.

As it was then.

Just down the road from the Shirley House is a statue of Gen. John Logan, who commanded the 3rd Division of the XVII Corps of the Union Army in this area, and who ought to be better known for a number of reasons, such as fostering Memorial Day and for his change of heart about black people during the war.

“But what of JOHN A. LOGAN? I will tell you. If there is any statesman on this continent, now in public life, to whose courage, justice and fidelity, I would more fully and unreservedly trust the cause of the colored people of this country, or the cause of any other people, I do not know him. Since [Charles] Sumner and [Oliver. P.] Morton, no man has been bolder and truer to the cause of the colored man and to the country, than has JOHN A. LOGAN. There is no nonsense about him. I endorse him to you with all my might, mind, and strength, and without a single shadow of doubt.”

— Frederick Douglass’ endorsement of John Logan during the 1884 presidential election.

Because of heavy rains (I assume) some of the roads were closed, including the one to Grant’s headquarters, where his equestrian statue is, so I didn’t see that.

Moving along, I came to another impressive state memorial: Mississippi. The home team, so to speak.

Wisconsin. That’s no mere eagle on top, but Old Abe.

Missouri, which is dedicated to combatants on both sides.

Besides the state memorials, there was an array of statues and stones and plaques honoring other men and groups of men, or detailing movements during the siege.

The USS Cairo, partly protected from the elements. Its visitor center was closed, not for Sunday but still for the pandemic.

The view from Fort Hill.

I’m glad I got around to Vicksburg. Also glad to report a fair number of other visitors, most clearly tourists from other places, though some people were out jogging or walking their dogs. Best of all, I spotted some people with their kids (or grandkids) in tow. Maybe being the weekend had something to do with that, or that the city of Vicksburg is fair-sized. Even so, I remember how few other people I saw on the summer day I visited Shiloh — and only one or two families with children.

Clarksdale and Vicksburg Walkabouts

Posted on April 21, 2021 by admin

No question about it, Clarksdale, Mississippi, is a poor Delta town. The median household income in Coahoma County, of which Clarksdale is the seat and only town of any size, is $29,121 as of 2019, according to the Census Bureau, and over 38% of the population lives below the federal poverty level. For all of Mississippi — by household income the poorest state in the union — median household income is just over $45,000, and 19.6% of the population lives in poverty. (The U.S. figures are about $68,700 for median household income, with 10.5% living below the poverty level.)

Coahoma County is also majority black, 77.6%, compared with 37.8% for Mississippi as a whole. Since 2010, the county has lost 15.4% of its population; Mississippi has managed to eke out a 0.3% gain over the same period.

By contrast, Warren County, whose seat is Vicksburg, Mississippi, is considerably more prosperous by the same metrics, though it too lost population in the 2010s: down 6.9%. Median household income is $45,113, just over the state median, and about 20% of the population officially lives in poverty. Black and white are more evenly divided in Warren County, at 49.3% and 48.4%, respectively.

I took a walk around the downtowns of both Clarksdale and Vicksburg on the same day, Sunday, April 11, fairly early in the morning for the former, and late in the afternoon for the latter.

Poor it may be, Clarksdale is distinct as the hub of the Delta blues, a fact that the town very much plays up in the early 21st century, with a museum, music venues, plaques, public artwork and more. Funny, I have a hunch that the city fathers in segregationist Clarksdale a century or so ago didn’t give a fig for the music that the black population was creating and exporting to Chicago and other places.

Few other people were about on that Sunday morning. The first thing that caught my attention was a large mural.

That’s the back wall of the Ground Zero Blues Club, and the mural must be of recent vintage, since a Streetview image from September 2019 shows a few smaller murals, but mostly a blank wall.

That’s hardly the only public artwork in downtown Clarksdale.

The town sports a lot of interesting old buildings in various conditions, some music oriented, some ordinary commercial structures.

One of the music businesses is a place called Deak’s Mississippi Saxophones and Blues Emporium. Not something you’re likely to see anywhere else.

Late that day, I took a walkabout of similar duration in Vicksburg, after visiting the local battlefield.

It’s a larger town with larger buildings, such as The Vicksburg, formerly the Hotel Vicksburg, which I’ve read is the tallest building in town and in recent years an apartment building. Next to it are the Strand Theatre and the B.B. Club, formerly the B’nai B’rith Literary Association building, and now an event venue.

Some smaller structures grace downtown Vicksburg as well, of course.

The city is mostly on a loess bluff overlooking the Mississippi.

Old Man River.

The damage that Old Man River can do, when he’s in the mood. There’s no doubt that 1927 is the one to beat, and not just in Louisiana, though 2011 was a whopper too.

That’s on the river-facing side of the modern floodwall system protecting Vicksburg. On the town-facing side are a lot of different murals. Some details:

My own favorite, “President McKinley Visits the Land of Cotton,” is based on a photo of an arch built from cotton bales to greet the president, who visited for a little less than two hours on May 1, 1901, not long before his date with Death in Buffalo.

If possible, I like to see a presidential site on each trip. That counts as one for the trip.

West Tennessee Dash

Posted on April 20, 2021 by admin

On April 10, after leaving Illinois via a white-knuckle, two-lane bridge across the Mississippi into the state of Missouri, I headed south to catch the ferry back across the river at Hickman, Kentucky (green arrow). The point of this exercise was to continue from Hickman on small roads to the Kentucky Bend, marked here with a pink arrow.

There’s nothing distinctive about the Kentucky Bend except its odd status as an exclave of the commonwealth of Kentucky. I’d planned to snap a picture of whatever sign was at the Tennessee-Kentucky border at that point, and maybe visit the small cemetery just inside the bend.

It wasn’t to be. When I got to the ferry, the Mississippi looked a mite testy, swollen from the storms the night before, and probably other spring rains. A phone call confirmed that the ferry wasn’t running.

Without the ferry crossing, visiting the Kentucky Bend would have meant considerable backtracking, so I blew it off, and continued southward in Missouri. I got a glimpse of the bend from the riverfront at New Madrid, but I didn’t linger because I needed to find a bathroom.

Later I crossed into Tennessee on I-155 and soon connected with U.S. 51, which goes straight into Memphis. Despite the years I lived in Tennessee once upon a time, it was a part of the state I’d never seen, except for Memphis itself.

I didn’t quite make the straight shot into the city. Not far from U.S. 51 is Fort Pillow State Historic Park, site of the Battle of Fort Pillow, also known as the Fort Pillow Massacre, on bluffs overlooking the Mississippi. It’s been a state park for 50 years now. The day was as brilliant and warm as a spring day could be by that time, a contrast from the cool rain and less lush conditions further north.

I only spent a little while at the museum and visitor center, but got the impression that the bloody history of Fort Pillow isn’t emphasized. Be that as it may, I was keen to see whatever was left of the fort, or what had been rebuilt. Signs pointed the way.

An longer interpretive sign at this clearing said Nathan Bedford Forrest set up his command there.

On the trail went.

It would have been nice had the FORT –> signs said how far was left to go. Also, I couldn’t quite follow the track I was taking, as compared to the map I acquired at the visitors center, which was a little unusual. Anyway, I climbed another couple of rises and came to a spot where I could just barely see the river.

I figured surely there must be earthworks or something at such a high point, but I didn’t see anything. Then I noticed another FORT –> sign pointing me down another staircase. That meant I’d have to go up again somewhere, because forts aren’t built in lower places. Then to return, I’d have go down and then up again. I didn’t have the energy for all that, I decided, so I made my way back. Still, I had a good walk. By the end of the day, I’d walked about two and a half miles.

Besides, I wanted to get to Memphis. When I arrived about an hour later, I found a spot in Mud Island Park with a view of the skyline.

The Hernando de Soto Bridge. More bridges ought to be named after explorers.

Back on the mainland, I found the Memphis Pyramid. It wasn’t hard to spot.

Or more formally, Bass Pro Shops at the Pyramid.

Taller than the Pyramid of the Sun in Mexico, according to this source, but somehow that ancient Mesoamerican structure has much more of a presence. The Memphis Pyramid has been standing for 30 years now, and seems to be making it as a retail store, after failing as a municipal arena.

The blue-lit structure is an elevator to a view from the top of the pyramid.

Probably worth the price, but the line was long, so I headed for the exit. But I couldn’t leave without buying something to support the Memphis Pyramid, so I bought a box of Moon Pies.

Southern Illinois Going and Coming Back

Posted on April 19, 2021 by admin

I spent the first 24 hours of my recent trip, as well as the last 18 hours or so, in southern Illinois. Not far from Carbondale, in Shawnee National Forest, is Pomona Natural Bridge, which is the first place I went after a drive down from metro Chicago.

The official trail is a short loop from the parking lot to the natural bridge.

The trail goes over the top of the bridge.

Which looks like this from another angle. You can climb steps down to under the bridge, and that’s what I did.

Though a short trail, the drop to under the bridge is a little steep, and I navigated it carefully, testing my new hiking shoes and walking stick in the field. They proved useful.

The road to the natural bridge passes some farms, complete with an array of rusting equipment, available any time for spare parts.

This building, forgotten by time, stood next to a crossroads.

The next morning, April 10, I drove south, eventually passing through the ruin that is Cairo, Illinois, pop. 2,000 or so, a town that never became St. Louis or Cincinnati or even Cape Girardeau or Quincy, despite its location. One hundred years ago, more than 15,000 people lived there.

Sure, it’s still technically a functioning municipality, and the houses off the main street show that people still call Cairo home, but the main street was like a little piece of the early ’80s Bronx had landed here in low-lying southern Illinois: a parade of empty lots, rubble, recently burned structures, and otherwise vacant buildings, with a scattering of intact buildings, mostly part of one level of government or another, including the handsome public library. Mine was the only moving car, and I saw only two pedestrians.

I acquainted myself with a number of small towns on this trip, also including New Madrid, Mo., Clarksdale and Vicksburg, Miss., Paris, Tex., Van Buren, Ark., and Belleville, Ill., all at least a little more prosperous than the forlorn Cairo.

At the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers is the 191-acre Fort Defiance State Park, known as Camp Defiance during the war. When I passed by, the park was closed by high water. Too bad. I wanted to see the confluence.

On the night of April 17, I arrived in Belleville, my last stop before returning home. The next morning I strolled along the town’s well-to-do main street, which is populated by restaurants, one-off retailers, and law and other professional offices. No one else was around.

Before leaving town, I stopped at the Cathedral of St. Peter.

The original church was completed in 1866, but in 1912 the building nearly burned to the ground. Rebuilding gave it a Gothic style patterned after the Exeter Cathedral in Devon, though its vaulted ceiling isn’t as elaborate.

A few miles away is the National Shrine of Our Lady of the Snows, a complex featuring not only a large shrine, but also a church, Lordes-style grotto, gardens, conference center, gift shop, residence hall, restaurant and hotel.

The shrine as seen from the slope in front of it.

The design screams 1960 and sure enough, there’s a cornerstone with that date on it. Construction began in 1958 and finished that year, with a design by one Richard Cummings, a 1952 Washington University graduate who worked at the St. Louis firm of Maguolo & Quick at the time.

“It is easily the most Space Age-fabulous building in the region,” asserts Built St. Louis. “Seated at the bottom of a hill that forms a natural amphitheater, the main shrine of Our Lady of the Snows is a complex arrangement of curved forms and overlapping, intertwined spaces, a sort of High Googie architectural style.”

At the back of the shrine are some fine mosaics. Always good to find mosaics.

At the top of the slope is Millennium Spire, a work installed in 1998.

The shrine is a project of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, whom I’ve run across before in San Antonio, location of their school of theology. No Space Age-fabulous structures there that I recall.

Southern Loop ’21

Posted on April 18, 2021 by admin

Just returned today from a series of long drives totaling 2,610 miles that took me down the length of Illinois and through parts of Missouri, Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas. Dallas was the prime destination, where I visited Jay for the first time in well over a year.

I drove on crowded Interstates, nearly empty Interstates, U.S. highways, state and county roads, and urban streets, and logged a lot of miles on roads through farmland, forests and small towns. I crossed the Mississippi more than once, including on a bridge that felt so narrow that moving the slightest bit out of your lane would crash you into the side of the bridge or oncoming traffic. Rain poured sometimes, drizzle was common and there was plenty of evidence of a wet spring in the ubiquitous puddles and the lush greenery of the South.

On I-20 east of Shreveport, I spotted a small truck carrying mattresses that had stopped on the right shoulder ahead of me. Then I spotted the mattress he’d dropped in the middle of the road, a few seconds ahead of me. The truck was 50 feet or so further than the mattress; he’d probably stopped to pick it up, but fortunately hadn’t got out of his truck yet. To my left another car was just behind me, so I threaded the needle to the right of the mattress and left of the truck, missing both.

I left metro Chicago mid-morning on April 9, making my way to Carbondale in southern Illinois, and took a short afternoon hike to the Pomona Natural Bridge in Shawnee National Forest. Overnight an enormous thunderstorm passed over that part of the state, and intermittent rain continued the next day as I drove through the southernmost tip of Illinois, a slice of Missouri, the length of West Tennessee and into Mississippi, arriving in Clarksdale after dark.

En route I’d stopped for a couple of hours at Fort Pillow State Park and about half that long in downtown Memphis. Dinner that night was Chinese food from a Clarksdale takeout joint called Rice Bowl.

On the morning of April 11, I took a walk in downtown Clarksdale, then drove south — stopping to mail postcards in Alligator, Mississippi — and spent most of the afternoon at Vicksburg National Military Park.

As the afternoon grew late, I walked around downtown Vicksburg and one of its historic cemeteries. The next day I headed west across the Mississippi River into Louisiana, where I stopped at Poverty Point World Heritage Site, locale of an ancient Indian settlement much older than Cahokia, or the pyramids outside Mexico City for that matter.

I stayed in Dallas from the evening of April 12 to the morning of the 16th, mostly at Jay’s house, though I did visit my nephew Sam and his family, meeting their delightful two-year-old daughter, my grandniece, for the first time.

On the 16th I drove north from Dallas, spending a little time in Paris, Texas. In Oklahoma I headed on small roads to the Talimena Scenic Drive through Winding Stair Mountain National Recreation Area, where I followed its winding (as the name says), up and down two-lane path through near-mountainous terrain. In a thick fog. That was excitement enough for one day, but that didn’t stop me from visiting Heavener Runestone Park toward the end of the afternoon. I spent the night just outside Fort Smith, Arkansas.

The next morning I headed toward Fort Smith and chanced across the picturesque Main Street of Van Buren, a large suburb of Fort Smith, or maybe its mate in a small twin cities. I also looked around the Crawford County Courthouse before crossing the Arkansas River to Fort Smith proper, spending an hour or so at Fort Smith National Historic Site. From there a long and tiring drive took me to Belleville, Illinois for the last night of the trip, stopping only for gas, food and a quick look at the Mildred B. Cooper Memorial Chapel.

The place I stayed in Belleville last night was an inexpensive motel at the end of the town’s downtown shopping and restaurant street. Up earlier than usual this morning, around 7, I took a walk in area’s handsome, near-empty streets and sidewalks. Before leaving town I stopped at the Cathedral of Saint Peter, and a few miles away, Our Lady of the Snows shrine.

That ought to be enough for any trip, I thought, till I saw that the world’s largest catsup bottle in nearby Collinsville as a point of interest on my paper map (I now use both paper and electronic, which complement each other). So I went to see that. Later heading north on I-55, I thought, that ought to be enough for any trip, till I saw the pink elephant.

That is, the Pink Elephant Antique Mall northeast of St. Louis, which I’ve driven by many times over the years, but never stopped at. This time I did and it became the cherry on the sundae of the trip.

Springdale Cemetery

Posted on April 7, 2021 by admin

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Nearby were more modest, but still compelling stones. About 78,000 people lie in Springdale.

A gorgeous place, all in all. One that would be worth seeing during the seasons other than spring, I believe.

West Moss Avenue, Peoria

Posted on April 6, 2021 by admin

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.

The lawns are smaller on the other side, but the houses just as pleasant.

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.

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.

“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

Posted on April 6, 2021 by admin

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.

“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.She 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.
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.

Chestnut Park

Posted on March 31, 2021 by admin

According to Google Reviews, or at least one reviewer, Chestnut Park, which is part of the Hoffman Estates Park District, is a good place to fish. Nice to know, though I don’t plan on fishing there. The other day I stopped by for a look at the park. Why? Because I’ve been driving by it for years — nearly 18 years — and never had done so.

It’s a pleasant pocket park, surrounded by houses and probably put in by the subdivider 50-odd years ago, with the fishing pond as the central feature. Maybe we can detect the hand of Jack Hoffman himself in the configuration of the park, or least one of his draftsmen.

Note that the grass has turned green. That seems to happen overnight around this time of year, sometimes in early April, but this year in late March.

As I was leaving, I noticed a plaque on a rock. I’d never noticed that before, either.

One of the large genre of sad plaques. It isn’t hard to learn what happened to Meghan. Not even 15 years old, she was killed crossing a major street near the park.

Not long afterward, the Illinois House passed a resolution honoring the girl, promising to build pedestrian overpasses at the major roads near Hoffman Estates High School, to prevent such a thing happening again. I drive by that location often, and I have to report that the Meghan Krueger Overpasses were never built here in chronically cash-starved Illinois.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Been There