Walnut Hill Cemetery, Baraboo

Posted on June 23, 2020 by admin

We finished our hiking at Devil’s Lake SP at about 3 in the afternoon and headed into Baraboo for something to eat. Not so long ago, that would have meant parking ourselves at a restaurant for a meal. Though there are no restrictions on indoor dining in Wisconsin now — the whole kit and kaboodle was thrown out — we thought better of it, and ordered takeout.

That left us about 20 minutes to wait for the food. Rather than wait in the car in the restaurant parking lot, I consulted Google maps and found a nearby place to go: the 52-acre Walnut Hill Cemetery, which has about 11,500 permanent residents. Baraboo, the Census Bureau tells me, has a shade over 12,100 living residents.

It’s a pleasant cemetery.

I hadn’t come to see any specific grave, but I had to investigate one of the few mausoleums I saw, there on a small rise.

It turned out to be the resting place of Al. Ringling (1852-1916), the eldest of the circus family, and his wife Lou. Makes sense. Baraboo was a circus town, after all.

Later I read that some of the other circus brothers are buried at Walnut Hill as well, but I didn’t spot them. I did see another intriguing stone.

JOHN DUCKENS
Born a slave in Kentucky
Died in Baraboo, Wi 1894
Aged 75 years

A new-looking stone at that. It’s a replacement for a weather-worn original, put there only in 2011 by the Sauk County Historical Society, which published a sketch of his life — probably all that’s possible — as a Sauk County Notable.

Devil’s Lake State Park

Posted on June 22, 2020 by admin

Over the weekend we visited Devil’s Lake State Park in Sauk County, Wisconsin. We drove up one evening, spent the night at a motel in Madison, and then the next morning continued on to the park, which is about 45 minutes to the northwest of the capital. After spending most of the day in the park, we drove home from there.

The closest town is Baraboo, which we last saw in 2007 — home of the delightful Circus World Museum. This time we drove by the museum. Even if we’d wanted to go again, which we didn’t, that wouldn’t have been possible. At least it’s still there. I hope Circus World manages to reopen sometime.

Devil’s Lake is a pleasant-looking, 360-acre lake with a couple of beaches and other lakeshore amenities, but those aren’t the main draw. What makes it the most popular Wisconsin state park are the Quartzite bluffs on two sides of the lake, east and west, relics of the most recent ice age. Rising to as high as 500 feet, they offer quite a view.

First, of course, you have to follow a trail that takes you up to those views. We picked the one on the east side of the lake, the fittingly named East Bluff Trail.
Up it goes.
I wondered what the people ahead of us were carrying on their backs — note the black and green rectangular packs. They turned out to be crash pads. For the sport, or activity, of bouldering. That is, climbing boulders. I knew people climb rock faces, but that was a variation I’d never heard of. Guess the people ahead of us were out for a day of bouldering. Takes all kinds.

I’ll bet Devil’s Lake SP is a good place for that. There are many, many boulders.

Like some other recent uphill hikes, it took me longer than the rest of the family. Rests were necessary. But I made it to various vistas.

There are a couple of named rock formations near the East Bluff Trail. One is the impressive Devil’s Doorway.

Looks solid, but surely the formation doesn’t have long to exist in geologic terms. Fleeting as a firefly on that scale. So is the whole bluff, come to think of it.

To provide a sense of scale.

Near Devil’s Door, the East Bluff Trail meets the East Bluff Woods Trail, which has a much gentler slope. We returned via that trail.

In June, the trail passes through a lush forest in the first flush of a septentrional summer. Past occasional fern fields.

Do ferns consider flowering plants a pack of johnny-come-latelies? That’s the kind of deep-time thing I wonder about when wandering through a forest, dog-tired from climbing a Holocene-vintage bluff.

The National Museum of Denmark

Posted on June 21, 2020 by admin

Another example of somewhere I visited but don’t really remember: The National Museum of Denmark (Nationalmuseet). You could say that’s because I was there 37 years ago this month, which is a long time ago, but at roughly the same time, I visited the Carlsburg Brewery and Tivoli — the same day in the case of Tivoli — and I remember those fairly well.

Memory’s a slippery character. Here’s what I wrote at the time.

June 18, 1983

Walked [after breakfast] to the National Museum and spent a lot of time in the early Danish collections, a fine assortment of artifacts from pre-farmers (4000 BC) to the Vikings. They had a lot — tools, weapons, pots, clothes, ornaments, more. I noticed that much of the collection — seemed like nearly all of it — survived because it was buried with people.

Then I spent a long time ogling the coin collection, mostly the Roman ones. The museum had at least one example of every emperor and plenty of usurpers and others. I didn’t take as much time in the rest of the museum, but walked through. It is vast. Rooms and rooms and rooms of exhibits.

I left to eat lunch at a Chinese place, spring rolls with sauce and a heap of rice. After lunch I bought chocolate: Toblerone and Ritter Sport.

Those sound like ordinary chocolate purchases, and maybe they are now, but in those days Toblerone wasn’t available in every shop from here to East Jesus and my traveling companions and I had never heard of Ritter Sport. It was an important discovery for us that summer, somewhere in Germany a few weeks earlier. If you’re walking around all day, chocolate’s a good thing to have. Even better, it’s good to snack on high-quality choco like Ritter Sport. Best of all, it’s chocolate that I’ve enjoyed ever since it became available in the U.S. sometime in the late ’80s.

A Summer Thursday

Posted on June 18, 2020 by admin

Tomorrow is Juneteenth, which I’ve thought should be a holiday for years. I still do. Odds are it might be in some soon year.

Summer pic: a trumpeter swan family, who can be found at a pond near where I live.

Dame Vera Lynn has died at 103. I didn’t know she was still alive. I might not have known about her before I first saw this, many years ago, but I certainly did afterward.

Dundee Township East Cemetery

Posted on June 15, 2020 by admin

At the intersection of Dundee Ave. and Higgins Road (Illinois 25 and 72) is the 48-acre Dundee Township East Cemetery, owned by the township of that name, but also entirely within the village of West Dundee in Kane County. There’s no fencing or anything else to separate it from those fairly busy roads.

We — that is, Ann and I — visited briefly on Saturday when we were out that way, which is northwest from where we live.

The cemetery dates from the 1890s, no doubt long before those adjacent roads were paved, though it’s possible that part of the future Illinois 72 had planks, since I understand much of its route follows the old Galena-Chicago Stagecoach Trail. These enthusiasts drove the trail’s modern-equivalent roads on a motorcycle. Not for me, but I’d consider using a car.

It’s a pleasant cemetery in the summer.

In an older section, there were a fair number of German names, and some German-language script on the stones. Here’s a fine German name: Schneidewendt, whose stone memorializes burials in the early 20th century.

Not many mausoleums that I noticed, but there were a few. I expect a lot of the population in Dundee Township a century and some years ago were prosperous farmers, but not that prosperous.
Whoever The Family of Theodore Kunke were — that’s the text over the door — they had the scratch for a simple edifice.

Wat Phra That Hariphunchai

Posted on June 14, 2020 by admin

You’d think I’d remember Wat Phra That Hariphunchai in northern Thailand, near Chang Mai, better than I do. But after a quarter-century and then some, I don’t remember much, not like I recall the Wat Phra Kaew, home of the Emerald Buddha, in Bangkok.

But we were there in June ’94, during the few days when we stayed in Chang Mai, and took a few pictures. Such as of me, dwarfed by the main chedi.
Wat Phra That Hariphunchai Below, the part of the temple known as Viharn Phra Chao Thunjai, according to this site, which has much more about the temple grounds, whose original stupa goes back to the 9th century, with a major expansions in the 11th and later centuries.The bell tower.

For whatever reason, we didn’t make an image of the temple’s distinctive, pyramid-shaped Pathumvadi Chedi, or the Ho Trai, which houses Buddhist scriptures.

Thursday Jumble

Posted on June 11, 2020 by admin

Intermittent rain and thunder on Tuesday and Wednesday, and some vigorous warm winds. Enough to randomize the arrangement of our deck chairs but not, fortunately, to move the cast iron deck table. Mostly, though, recent days have been clear and agreeably summerlike.

They’ve aged remarkably well.

Last weekend, we made it back to Spring Valley to see the Peony Field, now in full bloom.

Also noticed a Little Lending Library at Spring Valley. I think that’s new. It encourages one and all to Be a Good Human Today.Not as full as the one on my street, but it had a few items, including a stack of booklets whose subject is Baha’i prayers. I took one for a look-see. In each are prayers for various occasions and situations, such as Aid and Assistance, Children, The Departed, Healing, Morning, Parents, Tests and Difficulties, and so on.

Later in the week, we got takeout from an Indian restaurant we visited, and liked, a few years ago. Been buying takeout locally ever other week or so since sit-down restaurants closed.

We feasted on sang paneer, malai kofta, paneer bhurji, lamb bhoona — that was mine — along with garlic naanm, roti and jeera rice. All good.

Thiruvalluvar in the Suburbs

Posted on June 8, 2020 by admin

It’s been a few years since we visited the Chicago Athenaeum International Scupture Park, though more recently than 10 years ago. We went on Saturday toward the end of daytime, taking the dog along for the walk.

All of the same sculptures are still there, but with one recent addition.
The upper plaque has some Tamil script and then English:

Thiruvalluvar (31 B.C.)
Poet & Philosopher Who Wrote the Immortal Thirukural

I wasn’t previously familiar with Thiruvalluvar, being woefully ignorant of most things Tamil, so I did a little reading. Now I’m slightly less ignorant, having learned that he is held in high esteem by the Tamil. Also, that specific date — same as, far away on the Eurasian landmass, the Battle of Actium — is the first year of the Tamil calendar, as determined by the government of Tamil Nadu and various scholars.

The lower plaque says:

Commemorating 10th World Tamil Research Conference
Keezhadi Nam Thaai Madi
July 4-7, 2019, Schaumburg IL
Jointly organized by
Federation of Tamil Sangams of North America,
International Association of Tamil Research &
Chicago Tamil Sangam
Statue Donated by VGP World Tamil Sangam

A sangam is an assembly of Tamil scholars, which seems to have a specific meaning when it comes to assemblies in ancient times, but clearly a modern usage as well.

Never heard about any of that before. I despair sometimes about how much I don’t know about the world. But I also never know when the world will reach out to teach me something — in this case, a brief lesson in the form of a recent northwest suburban statue.

Postcards To Ed

Posted on June 7, 2020 by admin

It’s been almost four years since my old friend Ed passed. His bequest to me was many postcards, including some of those that I’d sent to him over the years. I spent some time looking at them the other day. Odd to see something you dashed off, never expecting to see it again.

A selection.

June 16, 2008

Dear Ed,
Welcome back from Mongolia, etc. I’m expecting a letter. You will soon receive cards from Tennessee or NC or maybe even SC.

Dees

***

June 25, 2009

Dear Ed,
From the last batch of cards I bought. I didn’t expect a planetarium at LBL [Land Between the Lakes]. The show wasn’t all that interesting, however.

Dees

***

Sept. 22, 2010

Dear Ed,
Now this was worth driving to Milwaukee to see: a piece of the 1893 world’s fair. If only I had that time machine —

Dees

***

April 26, 2011

Dear Ed,
Bet it’s been a while since you’ve rec’d a stretch postcard — the gift shop at this museum was practically giving them away, so I got several. I have to like a museum that’s still proud of its dioramas. Until holodecks come along, they will have to do.

Dees

***

April 6, 2012

Dear Ed,
I’ve been remiss is sending cards lately, so here’s one from Yerkes. In case you don’t have enough pictures of Einstein. Nice pics of Africa, by the way [that he sent me].

Dees

Spring Valley Flowers, June ’20

Posted on June 3, 2020 by admin

After dinner yesterday, we went to Spring Valley (in full, Spring Valley Nature Center & Heritage Farm). Temps had been about 90 during the afternoon, but were down by early evening. Our goal was the peony field. It blooms only for a few days.

Plenty of other flora along the walk to the field. No surprise this time of year.We arrived at the field to find not many peonies blooming just yet. But there were some in front of the nearby cabin.
We saw many more buds ahead of a full bloom.Guess the ants get some sustenance from the flower, without bothering it too much.