Buses on I-57

Posted on August 22, 2016 by admin

Cool over the weekend, at least for August, so actually fairly pleasant. Last week I started noticing peewee football players practicing in the park. Summer’s dwindling.

Last Thursday I needed to be back home by early evening after driving to Champaign, so I didn’t spend quite as much time looking around there as I wanted. For instance, very near campus is the Mount Hope Cemetery, which was a burying ground before Illinois established any kind of higher education in the area. I drove by it, but didn’t stop. This time.

On the way back, I noticed two buses of interest. Here’s the Mark Kirk campaign bus.

Kirk is in a tight race against Tammy Duckworth to retain his U.S. Senate seat. That’s the important race in Illinois this year, since the next race for governor won’t be for two years, and there’s no doubt that the state will vote for Clinton for president. I checked, and the Kirk campaign bus had been in Champaign that day.

At the rest stop north of Kankakee, I took note of a parked bus, the likes of which I’d seen only a few months ago.

Another Megabus. Been a long time since I’ve ridden an intercity bus, but maybe I will again sometime, just to see how Megabus compares with the Greyhounds I used to take sometimes.

Lilly Goes to College

Posted on August 18, 2016 by admin

Lilly’s now a student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. From now on, August 18, 2016 will be the day she went to college. My own such day, August 25, 1979, is a little hazy, since it was long enough ago that I flew Braniff to Nashville get there.

A little more recently, on August 18, 2003, I wrote, “More importantly this morning, I dropped by Lilly’s soon-to-be elementary school to register her for kindergarten. A brick edifice probably built at about the same time as the neighborhood in mid- to late-1960s, the school had that elementary school feel to it, as if it were too small for you, an adult, even though you had no trouble walking in the door.”

UIUC isn’t that far away. I drove her down in the early morning and came back in the late afternoon, covering about 350 miles all together. It was a hot day in Champaign — her dorm is on the Champaign side of campus — for moving stuff into rooms.
Saw some odd things going in, such as four 36-bottle cases of drinking water, and some decadent items no dorm room should have, such as a large-screen TV. But on the whole, the process went smoothly.

This is her dorm.

It has that 1960s vibe, not in any countercultural sense, but in that it looks like it was built then. So it was, in about 1960.

Here’s a detail I like, on top of the roof.

I told Lilly the speaker was to wake up the dorm at 5 a.m. for morning exercises on the parade ground and a few minutes of revering Fearless Leader. She’s heard ideas like that all her life.

It occurred to me that going away to school isn’t quite what it used to be, besides big TVs. There seem to be fewer surprises now, for one thing. Lilly had already met her roommate, another girl from the Chicago suburbs. When I got to my room, I opened the door and there was another lad in the room — I didn’t even know his name before I met him. Maybe I could have asked beforehand by mail, but it never would have occurred to me to do that.

There’s also more connectivity these days. It’s easy for these students to connect to their past, either family or friends. Less so in 1979. I can’t remember how often I called home. Once a month? I wrote a letter or two a month as well, and I’m certain some (most) kids didn’t even do that. But I told Lilly there was no need for constant updates. This is no time to start helicoptering.

Lilly in her room. Note the walls of the room are cinderblock.

I was glad to see that. A mark of austerity. That’s the way a dorm should be.

The Ulysses S. Grant Memorial Highway & Lundy Lundgren

Posted on April 20, 2016 by admin

If you have time, US 20 is the best way between metro Chicago and Rockford. I-90 is faster but not as interesting, and a toll road besides. We went to Rockford on the Interstate for speed, but returned at our leisure on the US highway, which is sometimes four lanes, sometimes two, along that stretch.

US 20 is also known as the Ulysses S. Grant Memorial Highway in Illinois, honoring Gen. Grant, who spent some time in western Illinois. In fact, the highway runs by his house in Galena. (US 20 itself runs cross-country, from Boston to Newport, Ore., or vice versa.)

The honorary designation has been in place since 1955, but most of the original signs were lost or fell apart. In 2007, the Illinois DOT started replacing them with brown-lettered signs that include a portrait of Grant. The route passes very close to where I live in the northwest suburbs, and I remember starting to see the signs appear nearly 10 years ago. I thought the designation was new as well, but now I know better.

One of the places on US 20 between Rockford and the northwestern suburbs is Marengo, a burg of about 7,500 in McHenry County. Oddly, it seems to be named after the battle of that name, which did so much to solidify Napoleon’s top-dog status, at least until Waterloo. Maybe some of the town founders included Bonapartist sympathizers, but well after the fact, since it was established in the 1840s.

For years, I’ve been driving by a sign that points to a historical marker just off US 20 in Marengo. High time I took a look, I thought this time. The marker is a few blocks north of US 20 on N. East St. This is what I saw.

Carl Leonard Lundgren (1880-1934) hailed from Marengo, and behind the sign is the very field where he perfected his pitching skills, at least according to the sign. As a young man, Lundy Lundgren pitched for the Cubs from 1902 to ’09, and in fact pitched for the team during its most recent appearances in the World Series — 1907 and ’08.

He’s buried in the Marengo City Cemetery across the street from the plaque.

I took a look at the place from the street, but didn’t venture in. Most of it’s modern-looking, or at least 20th century, but there’s a small section whose stones look very old, older even than Lundgren’s, wherever it is. That bears further investigation someday.

A Little More Rockford

Posted on April 19, 2016 by admin

The gardens outside the Nicholas Conservatory in Rockford would be worth a trip back in a month or two, when they’re in full flower. On Saturday, the floral exuberance of spring was just beginning. Even so, there were a few other things to see, such as a statue of a man taking a picture.And, at that moment, an actual man taking pictures.

The statue, by the way, is by Seward Johnson, whose work I’ve seen elsewhere. This one is called “Sight Seeing,” and dates from 1991. The camera depicted would have been old fashioned even then. I have an inkling that Johnson isn’t popular among art theory specialists, for being shockingly derivative, or not smashing any paradigms, or something.

After the conservatory, we repaired to the Stockholm Inn, an enormous restaurant in Rockford. Word is — relayed by the Internet — that it too is very popular, though its offering of superb yet standard Swedish food at reasonable prices might put off some foodies.
After all, the place doesn’t offer farm-to-table fair-traded locally sourced artisanal Swede-tastic regional cuisine, guaranteed to be authentic, massaged and sublimated to gastro-perfection. Try the Nordic fusion gravlax tacos; they’re to die for.

No, the thing to order — the thing that I ordered — are the Swedish pancakes, a close cousin of the humble crêpe, infused with butter, vivified by syrup. Thin, smooth, sweet, wonderful. What they had for breakfast in the mead halls of yore, since one has to eat as well as drink.

Rockford Flora

Posted on April 18, 2016 by admin

Like any good conservatory, the Nicholas Conservatory near the banks of the Rock River in Rockford, Ill., is lush with greenery, and complete with winding paths and a water feature.

Some of the greenery vaults toward the glass ceiling.

That tall specimen, incidentally, is a Carpoxylon Palm (Carpoxylon macrospermum), which is indigenous to the Vanuatu archipelago. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen anything native to Vanuatu before.

Other palms reach out in all directions with their enormous ears.

Naturally, there are also plenty of flowing plants.

The conservatory featured a wall of orchids that was a particularly popular place to take people’s pictures.

I took a few myself.

The Nicholas Conservatory & Gardens

Posted on April 17, 2016 by admin

As a destination from the northwestern suburbs of Chicago, Rockford has a number of advantages. For one thing, it isn’t that far. It’s easy to drive there, visit one place at least, maybe eat a meal, and then come home. But it’s far enough not to be in the northwestern suburbs. There are still wide-open farm fields between here and there, and some smaller towns. Someday metro Chicago and metro Rockford might well conurb, to make up a verb, but that hasn’t happened yet.

None of that would matter if there weren’t a few interesting places to see in Rockford, but there are. Such as the Klehm Arboretum, a fine warm-weather destination, or the Anderson Gardens. The Rock River is also worth a look, with its various pedestrian-oriented amenities.

I wrote in 2003 about our visit to the riverside, “We drove a short ways north of downtown, looking for a more expansive park at which to finish off the afternoon. We found it on the other (west) bank of the Rock River, at the Sinnissippi Gardens and Park, which had a greenhouse that was already closed…”

These days, the greenhouse is permanently closed. It was replaced by the Nicholas Conservatory, which opened in 2011. I’d read about its development and opening, but didn’t get around to taking a look at it until Saturday, when we drove to Rockford exactly for that reason. Saturday, April 16, 2016 here in northern Illinois was as warm and pleasant as a spring day can be, the complete opposite of only a week earlier, the miserable cold April 9. That was an impetus to go.

We weren’t disappointed by views of the Rock River (more lyrically, the Sinnissippi River) from near the new conservatory. People were out along the riverside trail, but not a throng of them.

Waterfowl were out too.
A stone’s throw from the river — if you’re inclined toward that kind of mischief — is the conservatory.
The facility’s web site is a little thin on facts, but it does say that it’s “the third largest conservatory in Illinois, offering an 11,000-square-foot plant exhibition area complete with water features, seating areas, and sculptures, all in a tropical plant setting.”

I’d guess that the Lincoln Park Conservatory and the Garfield Park Conservatory, both in Chicago, are both larger — I’m fairly certain of that — but whatever its relative size, the Nicholas Conservatory is an elegant construction, and LEED Gold besides. More about its creation here.

The University of Illinois During the 2016 Spring Break

Posted on March 28, 2016 by admin

On the afternoon of March 18, Lilly and I drove down to Champaign-Urbana, and on the next day, we took a look at the University of Illinois flagship campus, which happens to sprawl across both of those small towns. Since our visit, Lilly has decided to attend there in the fall. She’d been leaning toward it anyway. We’d only been there once before, briefly, during our return from the Downstate towns of Arthur and Arcola in the spring of 2007. So it was as if we’d never been there before, especially for her.

Spring break had just started at the university. That meant only a handful of students were around, including some who were clearly leaving. On one street on campus, buses were lined up and ready to take students to specifically marked destinations, mostly in the Chicago area. Spring break also meant, happily, that parking was free and easy.

Even so, we spent a lot of time on foot. Without much of a plan: sometimes new places call for the old random walkabout. Lilly will certainly learn all she needs to know about the place and more in the fullness of time. The campus has a lot of fine buildings, especially fronting the Main Quad, and I was especially taken with Foellinger Auditorium and its green dome at one end of that quad, though I didn’t quite get an image of its full domed glory.

The building dates from 1907 and was designed by Clarence H. Blackall, a Boston architect who did a lot of theaters, and if you read a list of them, very many didn’t survive the great age (that is, regrettable age) of knocking down old stuff, whose apogee came in the 1960s. The Foellinger has clearly endured, though I’ve read that it wasn’t up to stuff acoustically at first, and needed a lot more work. We didn’t pop inside for a look. Next time, maybe.

Not far away was the 185-foot McFarland Carillon, which dates only from 2009.
A Missouri firm called Peckham, Guyton, Albers & Viets, which seems to do a lot of higher ed work, designed the tower, which has 49 bells. We noticed bells ringing at half hours and quarter hours, sometimes, but I’m not sure it was the carillon.

Elsewhere we peeked inside the chapel at St. John’s Catholic Newman Center, which is part of a complex that includes Newman Hall and the Institute of Catholic Thought, and is the largest Newman Center in the country, according to Wiki. Dating from 1926, the chapel has a splendid interior. I explained to Lilly that it was named after Cardinal Newman, not Alfred E., but she didn’t know either of them.

Nearby is the Episcopal Chapel of Saint John the Devine, also a part of a campus ministry. I wanted to take a look in there too, but it was closed for the day.

Heading back to our parking space, we encountered one of the many pieces of public art on campus.There was no plaque nearby that I saw, but information is online. It’s full title is “Tree of Life Fantasy: Synopsis of the Book of Questions Concerning the World Order and/or the Order of Worlds,” by Alice Aycock. As we approached it, I figured it might be a massive sundial, as I’ve seen recently, but no.

This description lacquers on the art-ese pretty well, but it does rhetorically ask, “can we not comprehend the sculpture solely as an interesting, if baffling, assemblage of disparate elements?” Yes, we can. Interesting, but in my amateur opinion not baffling, because it’s mainly an interesting assemblage of disparate elements, though I’d say an interesting “combination of shapes,” since disparate is a ten-dollar word best saved for special occasions.

Black Hawk & John Deere 2003

Posted on April 19, 2015 by admin

In April 2003, we took a short trip to north-central Illinois. We made a stop at the Black Hawk statue, whose formal name is “The Eternal Indian,” by Lorado Taft in Lowden State Park in Ogle County.

As I wrote then, “the statue, made of concrete, is about 50 feet high and stands on a bluff overlooking the Rock River and some of the town of Oregon. The head and neck represent an Indian, looking pensively off into the distance. His arms are folded in front of his chest, and from there on down the statue is less representational, but is clearly a human form.”

We also took a look at the John Deere Historic Site in Grand Detour, featuring a blacksmith demonstration.

“The re-created smithy was… the exact size of John Deere’s original Grand Detour shop, not including a latter addition, and presumably the original didn’t devote about a fifth of its space to a railed-in section where tourists stood. Otherwise, it was an evocative re-creation. A lot of iron & steel tools and implements on shelves, hanging on pegs, scattered around on various tables and benches. A bellows and a coal-burning furnace, which was glowing. A real anvil and some mean-looking, anvil-beating tools at hand.”

The Rock Island National Cemetery & Confederate Cemetery

Posted on April 7, 2015 by admin

These days, visiting the Rock Island National Cemetery means crossing over to Arsenal Island (formerly Rock Island) in the Mississippi River, which is located smack in between all four of the Quad Cities. The island is occupied by a U.S. Army facility, and has been the site of one kind of military installation or another for about two centuries. You pass through a checkpoint where a soldier looks at your driver’s license and asks your business, and then it’s a short drive the cemetery.

It was a quiet place on the morning of March 28, a Saturday. It’s probably quiet most of the time.

The entrance to the Rock Island National Cemetery used to be marked by this piece of ironwork.

These days, the historic gate marks the entrance to the cemetery’s Memorial Walkway, which features about 30 memorials to various branches of the armed forces, or groups related to them, such as Pearl Harbor survivors, Mexican War veterans, female veterans, Gold Star Mothers, and local veterans organizations. I was glad to see that the Seabees have a stone there.

Not that I have a special connection to the Seabees, though I used to work with a fellow who said that his brother, who had died in Vietnam, had been a Seabee. It’s nice to see lesser-known battalions get their due.

The walkway leads to the grave of Thomas J. Rodman and his wife, Martha Ann. The NPS says that “Brigadier General Rodman, the ‘Father of Rock Island Arsenal,’ was an officer during the Civil War and was the arsenal’s commanding officer from 1865 to 1871…

“Rodman invented the construction method used in producing [Rodman guns], which involved casting the cannon barrels around an air- or water-cooled core, ensuring that the barrel cooled and hardened first. This allowed the cannon to withstand higher pressures, making them stronger, safer, and more reliable, while also greatly increasing the lifespan of the cannon.”

Not far from the Rock Island National Cemetery is the Rock Island Confederate Cemetery, “final resting place for nearly 2,000 prisoners of war who died in captivity from disease and the poor living conditions of the camp,” the NPS says.

It’s a much simpler cemetery, with only one memorial besides the gravestones, a six-foot obelisk erected only in 2003. (Some work around it seems to be under way now.) It says:

In memory of the Confederate veterans who died at the Rock Island Confederate Prison Camp. May they never be forgotten. Let no man asperse the memory of our sacred dead. They were men who died for a cause they believed was worth fighting for, and made the ultimate sacrifice.

Erected by the Seven Confederate Knights Chapter #2625 and the Daughters of the Confederacy.

The Rock Island prison camp, incidentally, is where Margaret Mitchell put character Ashley Wilkes after his capture in the service of the CSA. So by a peculiar circumstance, he’s better known for being there than any of the actual prisoners.

Quad Cities-Iowa City ’15

Posted on March 29, 2015 by admin

Or, back to visit Herbert Hoover. Not that President Hoover’s a particular favorite, but we were out that way. It started late Thursday afternoon, when all of us got in the car and headed westward, eventually putting up for the night in Moline, Illinois, one of the Quad Cities, our first of two nights there.

On Friday morning, we made our way to Iowa City — not following the most direct route, exactly, but getting there in the early afternoon for a look-see around the University of Iowa. It’s among the places Lilly is considering for her continued education. Late March being unpredictable, the air wasn’t very warm, but the sun was out and it wasn’t cold enough to discourage a walkabout on campus, or the nearby college-town business district, or a visit to the former state capitol. A re-visit for most of us, though it’s been quite a few years.

On our way back to Moline that afternoon, we stopped in West Branch, Iowa, birthplace and burial site of the 31st President of the United States. This time I insisted that everyone get out of the car and take a look. Lilly took my picture, so now I have a Manus Hand-style photo with a dead president. It’s the only one of that kind that I have.

On Saturday morning, I was up earlier than the rest of my family, taking the opportunity to visit the Rock Island National Cemetery, along with the nearby Confederate Cemetery, burial ground for CSA POWs on Rock Island. On the way back, I toyed with the idea of wandering through the John Deere Pavilion, but left it for another time.

In the late morning, we visited the Figge Art Museum in Davenport, Iowa, the successor entity to the Davenport Museum of Art that’s been open about 10 years. Interesting collection, not overwhelmingly large, and including something I’d never seen before: a section devoted to Haitian art.

That was it for this 48-hour quickie. Except for a few minutes’ drive through Le Claire, Iowa, where we stopped for gas. Notable as the birthplace of Buffalo Bill Cody, and home to a museum devoted to the showman. We left that for another time as well.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: US: Illinois