Another card among those I bought recently has a postmark date of June 6, 1958, and an image of Mt. Sopris in western Colorado, but it was mailed from Richmond, Calif. Postcards are now 2 cents — but not for much longer — and the postmark says in big block letters, PRAY FOR PEACE.
Monday
Hi Folks!
Well we finally made it to California Saturday P.M. Sure glad to get here kind of tired of riding. Think I’ll go to San Francisco tomorrow. I’m in San Pablo, Calif.
Love, Wanda
Twenty years ago we visited Windsor Castle and the nearby grounds of Eton. Wish I could say that I remembered more about it, but memory fails. Maybe I’d seen too many palaces and other monumental edifices in the weeks and months before.
That December was relatively warm, which might help account for the greenness of the lawn.
But it wasn’t so warm that we didn’t need coats.
The ducks and geese in the Thames. 
I do remember looking into one of the rooms of the castle that had been completely blackened by the fire in 1992 (renovations wouldn’t be finished until later in the decade). But I don’t remember whether we were looking across a roped off area from the inside, or looking in through a window from the outside. Or maybe it was both. The fire had clearly done a lot of damage.
I don’t ever remember getting off from school on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, but this year both girls are off tomorrow. Yuriko has to work, and I have things to do too. But it seems like a good day to knock off posting. Back on November 30 or so.
The ground is frozen and ice has already almost slipped me up. Last winter started like this, and about at the same time, and we all know how that turned out. Harsh enough to contribute to a temporary contraction of the US economy. But at least we didn’t have a Year Without a Summer to follow it up.
The eruption of Mt. Tambora’s credited with making 1816 so cold, or at least contributing mightily to the condition. Which reminds me of a book I saw in my elementary school library that had a graphic illustration of volcanic eruptions. The larger the drawing of the volcano and its plume of gas, the bigger the eruption.
Various famous eruptions were charted, including Vesuvius (Pompeii fascinated me in the fifth or sixth grade) and Krakatoa, which I heard of because of bad TV. Tambora was bigger than all of those, but Mt. Toba was the enormous monster of the page. Something like this illustration.
Nobody had ever heard Tambora or Toba, and information about them was hard to come by, at least in a pre-Internet elementary school library. That only added to the allure of the events: that much bigger than Krakatoa? Wow.
This is Jay holding a panoramic of the officers of 309th Engineers of the U.S. Army at Camp Zachary Taylor, taken on May 4, 1918.
Our grandfather is in the back row. Later, he went to France.
Time for another fall break. Just because. Back to posting around Sunday, November 16, the day that I briefly believed, 17 years ago, was going to be the birthday of my eldest child. But no, that was just Braxton Hicks contractions or something.
Actually, I’m going to set something to post automatically on at 11 a.m. on November 11, because I can’t miss that. I’m not sure why I’m sentimental about Armistice Day, a day that my generation never knew, but I am.
Firstworldwar.com, “a multimedia history of World War I,” has a searchable day-by-day history of the war, and the entry for November 11, 1914, tells me the following.
Western Front
Ypres: Some British trenches penetrated by the Prussian Guard, but recovered.
Southern Front
Serbia: The Serbians in retreat; their headquarters moved from Valyevo to Kraguyevats.
Asiatic and Egyptian Theatres
Mesopotamia: British outposts attacked at Saniya.
Naval and Overseas Operations
H.M.S. Niger sunk by German submarine.
Political, etc.
Great Britain: Parliament opened; the King’s Speech
It’s probably just as well that the participants couldn’t know that they still had four more years to go.
I went to St. Charles on Sunday to see live music at the Arcada Theater, which is on Main St.
Al Stewart again, with right-hand man Dave Nachmanoff. I hope Al has more years as a touring musician, but he’s 69, so there’s no guarantee. I won’t drive to, say, Saskatoon to see him, but if he plays nearby, I’ll make the effort. No one else in the house was interested, so I went by myself.
The Arcada Theater is a mid-sized venue, seating about 900 and dating from the 1920s when it was built as a movie house and vaudeville stage. Lester Norris – that’s the husband of Dellora Norris – developed the place. According to Wiki at least (I’m not going to chase down another source), the act at the grand opening in 1926 was Fibber McGee and Molly, which would have been when they were known locally in Chicago as radio players.
These days, a fellow named Ron Onesti, president of the Onesti Entertainment Corp., owns the theater. He’s a hands-on kind of impresario, to judge by his talkative, enthusiastic introduction of the act, and the give-away of tickets by random drawing during the intermission that he presided over, asking the audience questions such as who came here from the furthest? (Someone claimed to be from England.)
He’s got a niche: shows for people roughly my age (10 years either side, I’d say). Note some of the upcoming acts: Asia, Gary Wright, the Fifth Dimension, Tommy James and the Shondells, Kansas, BJ Thomas, America, Little River Band. Onesti was also out in the lobby after the show, talking to patrons. “Good show,” I told him.
I talked for a moment to Dave Nachmanoff, for that matter, before the show. He was standing next to a table of his CDs, and another table of Al Stewart merchandise. I told him I’d seen him a number of times, and enjoyed the shows. He seemed to appreciate the sentiment.
Al Stewart was in fine form, expertly playing his guitar and singing with pretty much the same voice as 40 years ago. I doubt that I’ll have half that much energy, should I survive to his age. The set list was mostly mid-period Al, with numbers from Past, Present and Future, Modern Times, Year of the Cat and Time Passages, but also some later songs, such as the especially good “Night Train to Munich” and “House of Clocks.” Not much this time from his early records, if anything, and nothing from Last Days of the Century.
No “Roads to Moscow” either, which is one I’ve yet to hear him play live, and would like to. Of course, it clocks in at more than eight minutes, so maybe he doesn’t play it often. Truth is, the man has a large opus. He could stitch together three or four entirely different set lists and they’d be just as good.
Essential to his show is the patter between the songs, and he didn’t disappoint, either telling stories about swinging ’60s London or the historical context of a particular song or something autobiographical.
For instance: “I decided when I was 11 or 12 that I wanted to play guitar and write songs. But I realized something when I left school at 17. Although I loved rock ’n’ roll, Little Richard and Elvis Presley and the Everly Brothers and Jerry Lee Lewis and Eddie Cochran – I loved Eddie Cochran – I realized when I started trying to do it, I couldn’t do it. I can’t explain how terrible that was. The only thing I loved in the world, and I couldn’t do it. It was a tricky period. Then Bob Dylan came along. He couldn’t play or sing either. [enormous laughter] But he sounded like he’d swallowed a dictionary. [more laughs] That was it. That was my ticket, right there.”
Introducing his song “Warren Harding”: “Pretty much everything went wrong while he was in office, and he followed the cleverest president, Woodrow Wilson, who was fiercely intellectual, and the most idealist president – he believed in world peace, and that he alone could sort out all the troubles in the world after World War I, and it killed him. None of the things he wanted actually happened. Warren Harding: Hey, let’s party! He stayed up drinking with the press corps and playing cards. He was the anti-Wilson. Who was best? Actually, neither of them.”
Al mentioned at point that he was sorry the Bears lost that day. “He follows American football,” Dave said.
“I do, actually,” Al answered.
“He doesn’t care a whit for soccer.”
“I can’t support any game played for 90 minutes, where the score is nothing-nothing. [laughter, applause] That’s not sport, that’s torture.”
Remarkable summer-like weekend just passed, but unlike the previous weekends, we didn’t go anywhere. Spent a fair amount of time on the deck reading. Seemingly overnight, some neighborhood trees have turned yellow.
The other day I picked up Striking Change: The Great Artistic Collaboration of Theodore Roosevelt and Augustus Saint-Gaudens by Michael F. Moran (2007) at Half-Priced Books. Looks good. Presidential history and numismatics: a winning combo for sure. I hope to get around to it soon, but then again I have Illegal Tender: Gold, Greed, and the Mystery of the Lost 1933 Double Eagle, by David Tripp, and I haven’t gotten around to reading it yet.
Anyway, TR thought US coinage of the time was uninspired at best, particularly the gold coins, and set about to change them. A lesser-known effort than busting trusts or digging the Panama Canal, but one certainly worthy of TR’s attention. So was born the well-admired Augustus Saint-Gaudens coins.
But there seems to be more to the book than that story. Q. David Bowers writes in Coinbooks.com: “The text is particularly valuable in showcasing the sculptor’s activities with important numismatic projects beyond the famous 1907 coinage. While the story of the coins has been told in depth in several places, including in Renaissance of American Coinage 1906–1908 (Burdette, 2007) and United States Gold Coins: An Illustrated History (Bowers,1982), treatment of the important medals has ranged from scarcely anything to light sketches. Striking Change ends that.
“Further, the author gives a comprehensive look at the design competition for new United States coins in 1891. This involved quite a bit of effort at the time, but ultimately ended as a non-event, as outside artists consulted in the competition did not seem to have created motifs that anyone liked—and Chief Engraver Charles E. Barber of the United States Mint ended up creating new motifs for the dime, quarter, and half dollar.”
The third church on the CAF bus tour last Saturday was St. Adalbert Catholic Church, named for another saint I knew little about. That only goes to show I’m not up on my hagiography, since he seems to be a fairly big-wheel saint of the 10th century. He’s the patron of Bohemia, Poland, Hungary and Prussia, and a martyr. The story is that pagans up around the Baltic Sea – whom he was trying to Christianize — offed him for cutting down their sacred oak.
According to Wiki, at least, he’s well remembered, even in our time: “April 1997 was the thousandth anniversary of Saint Adalbert’s martyrdom. It was commemorated in the Czech Republic, Poland, Germany, Russia and other countries. Representatives of Catholic, Greek Orthodox, and Evangelical churches pilgrimaged to Gniezno, to the saint’s tomb. John Paul II visited Gniezno and held a ceremonial divine service in which heads of seven European states and about a million believers took part.”
In Chicago, St. Adalbert is at 1650 W. 17th St., and currently has some structural issues.
That’s some of the largest scaffolding I’ve ever seen. Apparently the church’s twin towers are losing their will to resist gravity, and need renovation. Naturally, there isn’t enough money for that, and a cheaper option is to shorten them. That seems like a damn shame. I looked around for a box to drop a dollar in for the cause of saving the towers, but I didn’t see one.
St. Adalbert is the newest of the churches we saw, completed in 1914. Chicago Poles hired Henry Schlacks, who was renowned for his church work in Chicago, to design the structure. It’s done in Italian Renaissance style, and it reminded me of some of the churches I saw in Italy, though I couldn’t say quite which (it’s been more than 30 years, after all).
In its early days, the church was Polish through-and-through. Above the altar is a mural depicting events in the saga of Poland, such as the wedding of Queen Jadwiga of Poland and Prince Jagiello of Lithuania, and (I think) the frustration by Charles X of Sweden’s designs on Poland, for which Our Lady of Czestochowa seems to get some credit. Also, the Polish in the arch over the altar is the opening words of “Hymn of the Motherland.” In more recent times, shrines to Our Lady of Guadalupe and Our Lady of San Juan de los Lagos have been added, a reflection of more recent demographics.
The church features an excellent collection of stained glass, some of which tell the story of Adalbert and his efforts to convert the heathen up near the Baltic Sea. Others are episodes from the New Testament.
There’s even a large Tiffany dome far above the altar.
It’s almost hidden away from casual inspection, peeking out like a moon in the clouds.
On Saturday just after 10 a.m., Yuriko and I found ourselves at First Immanuel Lutheran Church, 1124 S. Ashland Ave. in Chicago. The predicted rain hadn’t happened yet, and the morning was warming up, unlike most of the fall-like days last week.
Note the top sliver of bus in front of the church. We’d come by bus, as participants in the Chicago Architecture Foundation Churches by Bus tour. Five busloads of people spent part of Saturday morning and afternoon, in an tour organized by the foundation, at five different churches on the West Side and in the Pilsen neighborhood. Each bus had a different route, so that only one at a time was at any given church. Our bus, #4, went to First Immanuel first. All of the churches were worth a look, and most had some extraordinary features.
These days First Immanuel is near the sprawling Illinois Medical District, anchored by enormous hospitals — Rush, UIC, Cook County Stroger, and Jesse Brown VA — and including a lot of other healthcare facilities. All that was in future when construction started on the church in 1888. The congregation dates back to 1854, as a daughter church of a Lutheran church in the city. The area was suburban in the 1850s, and a lot of Germans were settling there. An architect with a suitably German-sounding name of Frederick Ahlschlager did the Gothic Revival design.
In the church’s early days, it wasn’t far from West Side Park, where the pre-Wrigley Cubs played. The church’s web site asserts that parishioners were able to watch the Cubs from the tower on their way to winning the World Series in 1909, but maybe they simply got the date wrong, since the last time the Cubs won the championship was 1908. By the 1930s, the docent pointed out, the church was ahead of its time in making a conscious effort to include all races, and officially integrated in the 1950s. In 1966, Martin Luther King Jr. spoke at the church.
The interior’s not overly ornate, but it’s decidedly churchly.
The church’s organist happened to be present, and he treated us with a few minutes’ playing. The organ is new, only installed a few years ago. It’s got 4,000 pipes and a powerful sound. We got a close look at it after the organist finished, which isn’t something you often get to do. Seemed like a forest of pipes in there.
The Logan Square Preservation House & Garden Walk on Saturday didn’t start at a house or a garden, but at Old Holy Resurrection Serbian Orthodox Church on Palmer Square. I’d never been in a Serbian Orthodox church before. Russian, yes, Greek, certainly (in Chicago), even a Japanese Orthodox church, Nikolai-do in Tokyo.
Looking at the outside, it’s a little hard to discern anything Serbian, except for the flag, or even anything in a traditional Orthodox style.
It’s a handsome Gothic building with Arts and Crafts overtones, I’ve read, though my eye isn’t keen enough to pick out the overtones. Like much of the neighborhood, the property dates from the 1910s – 1910, in fact – and it was designed by Lowe and Bollenbacher, a firm active in Chicago and Bloomington, Ind., a century ago. Apparently they did a lot of work in both places.
It wasn’t built for a Serbian congregation, but an Anglican one. So it remained until a fire destroyed almost all of the interior in 1968. By then, the number of Episcopalians in Chicago was falling, but the number of Orthodox Serbs was on the rise, so the old congregation sold the ruin to the Serbs. They’ve been remodeling the interior in Orthodox style ever since, complete with an ornate iconostasis, bright frescoes on a still partly-white wall, a brilliant chandelier (not sure if it counts as a polyeleos), and a lot of standing room. This isn’t a particularly sharp image, but it gives some idea of the interior. One Filip Subotic did a lot of the frescoes.
I have no Serbian Cyrillic, and my understanding of saint symbolism isn’t all it could be, so I didn’t recognize a lot of the saints floating up on the white wall, in their blues and reds and gold-leaf nimbi. But I did know St. George. Who else is going to slay that dragon from atop his steed?
