Jelke Creek Bird Sanctuary

Posted on March 29, 2021 by admin

One thing leads to another, especially on the Internet, and yesterday I found myself curious about the township as a unit of government. That led to a document published by the Census Bureau, which tells me (p. 80) that there are 1,431 township governments in Illinois, at least as of 2012. There are townships in one form or another in 20 of the several states, and in Illinois, 85 of the state’s 102 counties have townships within their borders.

I looked into townships when I found out that Jelke Creek Bird Sanctuary is a township park, not part of the Forest Preserve District of Kane County. Specifically, the sanctuary is overseen by Dundee Township, which occupies almost 36 square miles in the northeast corner of Kane County.

Last weekend was another divided one, at least as far as the weather was concerned. Saturday was pleasant and warm, while Sunday proved blustery and chilly. So on Saturday we headed mostly west and took a walk at Jelke Creek Bird Sanctuary. We took a loop through the property that didn’t happen to pass by Jelke Creek, which is a tributary of the Fox River and, of course, ultimately the mighty Mississippi.

Why there? I found it by one of my usual techniques: scanning Google Maps.

The sanctuary is fairly new as a public space. “This open space site was formerly owned by Chicago Elmhurst Stone and the Schuetz family,” the township explains. “The property was purchased as two separate parcels in 2000 and 2001 with grants from IDNR’s Open Lands Trust program at a cost of $4,128,709. The site’s 244 acres are partially protected by an IDNR easement.”

Saturday was a good day for a walk there. Summer would be less pleasant, since there isn’t a lot of shade along most of the trails.

There are some water features. Mid-sized and small ponds. A few spots along the trails were muddy, but mostly they were dry.

Not too many people were around, though at one point we did see four horses and riders. Not the Four Horsemen, fortunately.

All together, we walked about a mile and a half, I’d say. The dog seemed to enjoy the walk too, including the opportunity to lap up a little muddy water. She wisely stayed clear of the horses.

As for birds in the bird sanctuary, we heard some singing, but didn’t see more than a few sparrows and red-winged blackbirds. We passed by one small marshy spot and heard the croaking of frogs, which I took to be males in search of females for springtime action. As we got closer to the spot, the croaking tapered off. Maybe the frogs don’t like large animals eavesdropping on them. More likely, they’re as wary as small animals tend to be at the approach of something bigger.

Old Blanco County Courthouse

Posted on March 28, 2021 by admin

While I was footloose in the Texas Hill Country five years ago this month, I paid another visit to the Old Blanco County Courthouse in Blanco. I’d been there the year before, when Jay and I were in search of the Central Texas Bat Trail. It’s a fine old building, restored in recent decades.
Around back.

Blanco isn’t the county seat of Blanco County and hasn’t been for more than 130 years; Johnson City is. So for decades the old courthouse was one thing and another, and now has an interesting little local museum on the ground floor, and office space as well.

The State of Texas recognizes the structure as historic, and the building wears the distinctive Texas Historical Commission medallion.

I remember seeing those medallions for almost as long as I can remember, especially the one on St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in San Antonio, which I found oddly fascinating as a kid. Who knows, that very one might have planted the seed for my later interest in the sort of markers, plaques, medallions and minor memorials that the world tends to stroll by without a glance.

South Suburban Vax Thursday

Posted on March 25, 2021 by admin

Today was fairly chilly, and wind and rain is forecast for the evening. But I’m glad to see croci in the back yard.

The main event today, after filing a couple of stories, was a drive to the south suburbs for my first Covid-19 vaccination (until a few weeks ago, my publication’s style was COVID-19, which was too much like screaming). The site was an ordinary chain drug store. I found the appointment via a non-official web site that tracks drug store-based vaccinations that was set up, as far as I can tell, by Some Guy.

That’s the American way, I suppose. Government action for a big thing, ad hoc initiative to fill in the details. Sometimes that works well enough, sometimes less so.

The process wasn’t quite as efficient as that run by the 101st Airborne, but I didn’t have to wait too long after my appointment time. The injection itself took only a moment, of course, and I was rewarded with my own CDC card, which is sure to be a vaguely remembered relic someday, like ration books.

One jab down, five to go for this household. Three of those are scheduled.

I was far enough south to stop here, at the Chicago Southland Lincoln Oasis on I-80, not far from the Indiana line. On that most congested of metro Chicago highways, especially with trucks.

Here are some of the trucks, resting temporarily from the role as part of the congestion.

The other day I spotted an abandoned booklet in a public park. Even at some distance I could tell the content was religious, so I picked it up, hoping for the strange fascination of a Jack Chick work. I assume that his work has continued, even though the man himself might have died and gone to —

Anyway, it wasn’t a Jack Chick, but another brand by an organization I’d never heard of based in… it doesn’t say, and mostly it offers text, with a only scattering of pictures to illustrate the thing. The booklet is, however, trilingual: English, Spanish and Korean, so I’ve picked up some interesting phrases in Spanish.

Life is short! ¡La vida es corta!

Man is a sinner. El humano es pacador.

The wages of sin is death. Las paga del pecado es la muerte.

One more thing. A web site devoted to an incredibly obscure aspect of popular entertainment.

Maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Catholic Church, Bourbonnais

Posted on March 24, 2021 by admin

While visiting Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais on Sunday afternoon, I spotted a church building from a distance that I took to be the campus chapel or the like. I decided to drive over to its parking lot for a closer look.I was wrong. It was Maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Catholic Church, which is decidedly not part of ONU, though adjacent to it for historic reasons that I will get into.“The original Maternity BVM Catholic Church, a 110-foot-by-50-foot wood-framed structure, had burned to the ground in September 1853,” Jack Klasey wrote in the Daily Journal, a local paper. “The frame church had been built in 1847 to replace the settlement’s first Catholic house of worship, a small log structure known as the church of St. Leo. The log church had been erected in 1841.

“Like many of his parishioners, [Rev. Isadore Lebel] had been born in Canada. The plan that he brought to Bourbonnais Grove reflected the church architecture of his native Quebec province. It is believed to be based upon a church in Cap-St.-Ignace, located on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River, a short distance downstream from Quebec City… Construction work was probably begun some time in 1855 or 1856 and not completed until 1858.”

I was certain the building would be locked (as it was, too bad), but I got out the car for a look anyway. Then I noticed a patch of land next to and behind the church that seemed worth investigating.
A grotto.

Maternity BVM has an informative walking tour on its web site for downloading. The centerpiece of the grotto, it tells me, is a shrine built to Our Lady of Lourdes.

“Br. John Koelzer, a Viatorian brother, began building the grotto just over 100 years ago, in 1915. It took three years to complete [and] is fashioned (using stones carved by local residents) in the image of Our Lady of Lourdes, when she appeared to young Bernadette.

“Over the years, she has interceded for the safety of soldiers as far back as World War I, as well as countless school children, bridal couples, rosary groups and worshippers of all ages who have sought her protection.”

The Viatorians — another group I’d never heard of till I researched a place I’d been — are “an international Roman Catholic religious congregation comprised of priests, brothers and lay associates, headquartered in Arlington Heights, IL. Collectively, the congregation is known as the Viatorian Community.”

“Fr. Louis Querbes (1793-1859) founded the congregation in Vourles, France in the 19th century during the years following the French Revolution. Realizing the need to provide education for youth, Fr. Querbes’ vision was to send religious brothers and lay catechists of deep faith and competent learning to parish schools in the countryside.

“As patron saint of the congregation, Fr. Querbes chose St. Viator, a young, 4th century catechist-lector of the cathedral church of Lyons, France.”

True to their education focus, the Viatorians who found their way to Bourbonnais from Canada set up a school that became St. Viator College in 1868. The Depression put an end to the school, however, and the site was sold to Olivet Nazarene University.

The church and the grotto remain. As does a cemetery on the grounds. I wasn’t expecting that.

“Now take a look around the cemetery/grotto and you will also notice several headstones scattered throughout the space,” the tour says. “The cemetery was opened near St. Leo’s Chapel in 1842. By 1884, the old graveyard had no more empty spaces as hundreds are buried here. Many of the grave markers have deteriorated over the years, but there are approximately 30 headstones that still exist and have legible engravings. The earliest legible burial was David Spink, 1848.”

Deteriorated indeed.
Elsewhere on the grounds is a sundial.

When I stood in front of the sundial, it was about 3:30 CDT, or 2:30 by the sun, a time I could have indeed told by the shadow. The sundial was a gift from the St. Viator College Class of 1917, dedicated on June 13 of that year. Eleven members of that class are listed on the sundial plaque, including the class treasurer, Fulton J. Sheen. He had quite a career ahead of him, with influence in unexpected places.

Near the entrance of the grounds is a boulder with a plaque askew.

The plaque has been in place almost exactly 100 years, having been dedicated on Decoration Day, 1921. It honors the aforementioned “sturdy Viatorian pioneers” (the plaque’s term) who founded St. Viator College.

Just as we were about to leave — I was already back in the car — I spotted yet another plaque, one considerably harder to see, under a bush. In spring or summer, it might be impossible to see.
“I have to see one more thing,” I told my family. They’re used to that kind of thing. But I knew if I ignored it, I’d wonder about it later. I was well rewarded by my curiosity, since the plaque made me smile. It wasn’t anything remotely like I expected.
A home plate memorial. Listen closely on moonless nights, maybe, and you can hear the faint cheers of late 19th-century Catholic collegians playing base ball.

Olivet Nazarene University

Posted on March 23, 2021 by admin

College campuses usually offer pleasant places to stroll on warm days, or even when it isn’t so warm, so with that in mind I wanted to take a walk around the 250-acre Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais, Illinois, on Sunday. Since we’d just taken a walk at Kankakee River State Park, the rest of the family was less enthusiastic about the idea. They waited in the car while I took a 10-minute amble.

I’d heard of the Strickler Planetarium. I imagined it would be a little larger, but no doubt it’s a good facility.

Nice clock tower.

“The Thomas H. Milby Memorial Clock Tower is provided by the J. Harlan Milby Family to remind us that during his student days in 1956, Tom walked these paths on his way to heaven,” the university says. There are carillon bells up there, but I wasn’t around long enough to hear them.

Not far away is a smokestack. As far as I know, it isn’t named in honor of anyone. For a suitable donation, I’ll bet it could be arranged.

I’d call it the Old ONU Stack. Or maybe not so old. If what I read here is correct, it had to be rebuilt after a tornado knocked it down in 1963.

ONU, as the name says, is a Nazarene university. The school’s roots go back to 1907, around the time that various Pentecostal and Holiness groups started merging to form the modern Nazarenes, a process entirely too complicated to summarize here.

ONU itself got started in a wide place in the road called Olivet, Illinois, not far south of Danville, and was originally Illinois Holiness University, a name I believe I would have kept. The school mascot could have been the Rollers, for instance. Or maybe the Fighting Wesleyans.

Be that as it may, the school took the name of the town, no doubt for its association with the Mount of Olives, and kept the name when it moved to Bourbonnais in 1940 after a fire destroyed its main building in Olivet.

Even the small details harken to the school’s early time. Such as on the manhole covers.

Nice design. Features the seal of the school, noting its 1907 origin. One of the many manhole covers of the world that receive little attention, but which are actually pretty cool.

Kankakee River State Park

Posted on March 22, 2021 by admin

Late Sunday morning we headed south once more, dog and all, to walk on paths under clear skies and through warm air. March has provided some good weekends so far.

But first we had lunch in the car at a small park in Bourbonnais, Illinois, bought from the drive-thru of a delightful place called Niro’s Gyros, across the road from Olivet Nazarene University. We would have eaten at the park shelter, but it was warm enough for al fresco to be pleasant only out in sun, not in the shade.

Nero’s Gyros would be funnier, but I guess the owner’s name is Niro or something like it. I ate a gyro, and Niro does right by them. Yuriko had a Philly cheesesteak and Ann some Italian sausage, and were well satisfied too.

Then we went to Kankakee River State Park, a few miles away. I first went there in the late ’80s, but we visited most recently — not that recent, really — when Ann was small enough to play on the swing set like this.
So it’s been a while. Most of the 4,000-acre park includes both banks of the Kankakee for 11 miles or so, but not quite all of it. Yesterday we picked a part of the park that doesn’t follow the Kankakee River, but rather a tributary called Rock Creek.

That part of the park has one thing to recommend it: a trail that follows the creek, then loops around through the forest back to the parking lot. One source puts it at two miles, but it didn’t feel that long. It might be two combined with another loop trail to the north, but never mind. We had a good walk.

When I said the trail follows Rock Creek, what I meant was that it follows a bluff about 30 feet above the creek. There were paths to climb down to the creek, but we didn’t bother with anything more than taking in some of the views.

It’s one of the wider trails I’ve been on lately, at least the part paralleling the creek.

At one point is a view of a waterfall.

Niagara it ain’t, or even some of the wonderful falls in the UP, but as I told Ann, who knows, in 50,000 years it might be a mighty waterfall.

The trail, as mentioned, looped away from the creek and passed through wooded territory back to the start. Nice and smooth, with most of the mud dry. Very pleasant.

The only curiosities along the way were manmade. Sunglasses.

A shoe.

I can see some one dropping the sunglasses, and someone else putting them on the sign. But the shoe? A nice-looking one, too. Put there just to make passersby wonder why it was put there? If so, it succeeded momentarily.

Bottle Cap Alley

Posted on March 21, 2021 by admin

My brother Jay and I had lunch at the Dixie Chicken in College Station, Texas, while visiting Texas A&M in the spring of ’14. It isn’t far from campus. I wanted to visit A&M because I’d heard about it all my life. My grandfather was an Aggie, Class of 1916, and I knew people my age who went there, but I’m certain I’d have heard about it anyway, growing up in Texas.

I’d never heard of Bottle Cap Alley, which is next to Dixie Chicken. Soon I learned about the place.
It’s the kind of place that tends to be shunted off into the “quirky attractions” ghetto. I don’t care much for that word, with its slight whiff of condescension. Maybe that’s just my take, but anyway I’d prefer to call Bottle Cap Alley odd or peculiar.

Underfoot were bottle caps. Lots of bottle caps (and cigarette butts and leaves, but never mind). A peculiar feeling, walking on bottle caps.

Bottle caps and I go back a long way. During grade school, I was an assiduous collector, accumulating a mass of them in a box that had once held a television — back when TVs were serious pieces of furniture. From that mass, I found examples of all sorts of caps and glued them to large pieces of cardboard, a couple of hundred at least, including some prized examples that Jay picked up for me in Europe in the summer of ’72.

I lost interest later, around junior high, as one does. The mass in the box are long gone, maybe delivered to a recycler. But the caps on the boards are still in a closet in the house where my mother used to live, and where my brother Jim now lives. I might retrieve them someday or, just for the fun of thinking about it, leave them for my heirs to find even further in the future, unexplained.

Pine Removal

Posted on March 18, 2021 by admin

Not long ago, I noticed that a tall pine tree in a neighboring yard was dead all the way up. It had long been one of those pines whose lower branches died off, but whose top branches were still green year-round. No longer.

Our neighbor must have noticed this too, because one fine morning recently at about 8, the noise of tree removal started. I heard that, of course, but what really got me out of bed was our dog, who took a loud interest in the goings-on. I was thus up, so I figured I might as well take a few pictures.

By the time I got around to that, the crew has stripped off the lower branches of the tree and feed them to a chipper. That was the real source of the noise, not the cutting of the branches.Rather than remove the top limps, the pro tree-climber got into position —— to cut off the whole top. Repeat until the whole tree was gone. But I didn’t stick around for that, breakfast was calling.

Cemeteries Along Archer Avenue

Posted on March 17, 2021 by admin

First of all, just about any search for information about Resurrection Catholic Cemetery & Mausoleums in Justice, Illinois, is going to turn up a reference to Resurrection Mary, a ghost purported to hitch rides along Archer Avenue, or in one version I read, go dancing with a living man at a dance hall that used to be on that road. Afterward, he gives her a ride back to her home — which turns out to be Resurrection, as the poor lass had died in a car crash at some earlier time.

The vanishing hitchhiker story, in other words. So well known that that’s the title of Jan Harold Brunvand’s book on urban legends, The Vanishing Hitchhiker, which I read in the ’80s, along with a lot of other people. If I remember right, the story has been attested back to the 19th century, when it involved a horse-drawn wagon rather than an automobile, and I suspect — with their high-quality roads, wagons and belief in spooks — the Romans must have told a similar story.

What’s the enduring appeal? Can’t say. Also can’t say that I take it any more seriously than it deserves, which isn’t much, though it is an element in Resurrection’s sense of place, so that’s something.

I arrived at Resurrection early in the afternoon on Saturday. At once I noticed that it was a busy place. Maybe the busiest cemetery I’ve been to since we went to Arlington National in ’11. I counted no fewer than six funerals going on during the hour or so I was there, plus a lot of other people simply visiting graves. It was a good day for a visit.

It’s an expansive Catholic cemetery founded in 1904, with about 190,000 permanent residents resting across 400 acres, so I was able to stay at a distance from everyone else. Not particularly for health reasons, but because as a cemetery tourist it’s important not to bother people during more somber visits. Usually it isn’t much of any issue.

Resurrection is a curious mix of a cemetery. Parts of it are thick with upright stones, while other parts feature mostly include flush-to-the-ground plaques, though memorials of both kinds can be found in every section. The cemetery has a scattering of trees and is almost completely flat, except for undeveloped places where piles of soil exist as a byproduct of large landscaping efforts.

There is still a fair amount of unpopulated land, since the Catholic Church is nothing if not an organization that plans centuries ahead. There is also a sizable belt of wetlands near the edge of the property, full of reeds, that I suspect will never be developed, and which probably counts as the cemetery’s effort to be green.

The cemetery’s indoor mausoleum features the world’s largest stained glass window, at least according to Roadside America, with 2,448 panels telling Bible stories. That surely would have been a sight to see.

As soon as I parked next to the building, however, I noticed a line of cars snaking along the road I had just driven to get there. Sure enough, it was a funeral procession headed for the mausoleum, so I made myself scarce and didn’t make it back later. Another time, maybe, since the place does look to be a midcentury tour-de-force.

Instead I spent some time at one of the outdoor mausoleum complexes.

No stained glass, but there are mosaics of Biblical scenes on some of the walls of niches. I’d never seen anything quite like that.

Though not thick with funerary art like some grand old rural cemeteries, there is some at Resurrection. New-looking works especially, the likes of which can probably be ordered online. Yep.

This statue marks a small section devoted to the Sisters of Saint Joseph of the Third Order of Saint Francis, a group I’d never heard of. They’re still around.

One large work of art, a bronze of St. John Paul II, has its own Roadside America entry, which — in typical RA style — calls it the “20-Foot-Tall Pope.”
“In 1969 and again in 1976, before he became Pope John Paul II, Karol Cardinal Wojtyla, the Archbishop of Kracow [sic], walked the grounds of Resurrection Cemetery in Justice, Illinois,” the cemetery web site notes. “In 1969, the Cardinal visited Resurrection Cemetery to see and bless the Polish Millennium Shrine honoring the 1000th anniversary (966 – 1966) of Christianity in Poland.

“On Memorial Day, May 30th, 2016, Archbishop Cupich blessed a 20 foot tall bronze statue of Saint Pope John Paul II that’s placed on an eight foot tall American black granite base located in Resurrection Cemetery directly behind the cemetery’s office building.

“Commissioned by the Catholic Cemeteries of the Archdiocese of Chicago in 2013 and designed by Teresa Clark of Clark Design[, the] statue weighs approximately 8,000 pounds and rests upon a black granite base of 86,000 pounds.”

Good to take note of monumental things at a cemetery, but also to pay attention to some of the more human-sized stories that the stones and other memorials clearly allude to.

Such as recent bereavement. Not far from John Paul.

In the thick of other stones.

Found on the grounds of the outdoor mausoleum.

Resurrection wasn’t the only cemetery on Archer Avenue I saw on Saturday. Next to it is another large burial ground, Bethania, which is nonsectarian, and looked crowded with upright stones. I didn’t have the energy for it.

I did take a drive through the rolling terrain of Fairmount-Willow Hills Memorial Park, which is also on Archer Avenue, though in the village of Willow Hills. Most of its memorials are flush to the ground, though there are upright ones. Overall, that gives an impression of large open spaces.

On a sizable hill is a sizable clock tower, with niches around the base (and maybe inside; it was locked).
I noticed that its clockface (not visible in my picture) wasn’t telling the right time, but as I visited the tower chimed the correct hour. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a clock tower at a cemetery, but somehow it belongs. Reminds us of that thing, time, that we will all run out of someday.

Red Gate Woods, The Dawn of the Atomic Age & Ray Cats

Posted on March 16, 2021 by admin

At about 15,000 acres, the Palos Preserves form the largest concentration of land in the Forest Preserve District of Cook County. Names pour out from the map, if you bother to look: Willow Springs Woods, Paw Paw Woods Nature Preserve, Wolf Road Woods, Saganashkee Slough Woods, McMahon Woods, Spears Woods, White Oak Woods, Crooked Creek Woods, Cap Sauers Holding Nature Preserve, and Swallow Cliff Woods North.

The preserves include Camp Bullfrog Lake, Tomahawk Slough, Maple Lake, Longjohn Slough, Crawdad Slough, Joe’s Pond, Horsetail Lake, Laughing Squaw Sloughs, Camp Kiwanis Equestrian Staging Area, and the Little Red Schoolhouse Nature Center. About 50 miles of trails cross this arboreal kingdom in southwest Cook County.

Red Gate Woods is much like the other sections, but with a singular distinction. It includes the burial site of the world’s first nuclear reactor, the famed CP-1, which was originally at the University of Chicago but soon rebuilt at Red Gate as CP-2 since, you know, nuclear research in a densely populated urban area was understood to be a risky proposition even in the early 1940s.

I’d known about Red Gate for a while, but never gotten around to visiting the site. Pleasantly warm Saturday was the time to do so, I decided.

The entrance to Red Gate is on Archer Avenue very near St. James at Sag Bridge. A sign at the edge of the Red Gate parking lot describes how to get to the burial site, so off I went along an unpaved and still somewhat muddy trail. Soon that connects with a paved trail, which made the going easier.

The hills weren’t that steep, but there were slopes along the way.

I almost missed the site. It’s actually on a spur off the main trail, out in an open field. It is the open field.

The stone includes some informal editing. Do I believe the area is dangerous? No, I do not. Not to someone who spends five minutes there.

The burial area, the stone says, is marked by six corner markers 100 feet from the stone (presumably, in six directions). So I went looking for one of the markers. It wasn’t hard to find. I spotted most of the rest of them as well.

Saw this as well. A well.

Maybe it is dangerous to dig there, but I couldn’t say for how long. Another century? A thousand years? More? Does Red Gate need a long-time nuclear waste warning? I’m not smart enough to know, but it would be interesting if the forest preserve district installed one.

And turn a few special cats loose in the area. Eh? Mental Floss mentions a plan — who knows how serious — to warn distant posterity of radioactive hazards using specially bred cats.

“But the strangest suggestion by far came from two German linguists. They argued that governments around the world should breed cats that turn colors when exposed to radiation. These so-called ‘ray cats’ could then be immortalized in song and legend, so that even after the scientific knowledge of radiation had been lost to the sands of time, folklore would tell of their supernatural power to change their fur in the presence of extreme danger.”

In song and legend. Someone has already written the song.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Been There