Category Archives: Suburban Chicago

Fabbrini Park

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Yesterday after dinner we headed over to Joseph L. Fabbrini Park for a walk around its large ponds. As part of the Hoffman Estates Park District, it isn’t that far from where we live, but even so we go there only about once a year.

When the girls were smaller, we took them to this park more often, for its extensive playground equipment. It was known as Highpoint Park back then. When was the name changed? Who was Fabbrini? A plaque on a boulder near the park entrance, facing away from the setting sun when I saw it, told me: 2015 to answer the first question; a founder of the park district for the second.
Fabbrini Park
Besides the playgrounds and a walking/running path around the water features, the park also features a soccer field and a softball field, a place for volleyball, and tennis courts and pickleball courts. Lilly pointed out the pickleball courts. It isn’t anything I’ve ever played, or was more than vaguely aware of, but she played it in school.

Naturally, I had to look it up later. I didn’t get much further than this site. It tells us — breathlessly — that “as the fastest growing sport in the United States and gaining momentum around the world, you’ve either become hooked on Pickleball or are about to be!”

Nah. Beyond the sports facilities are nice views of the ponds.Fabbrini Park

Fabbrini Park

Fabbrini Park
As the path takes you around. We walked a total of about 1.8 miles around both ponds.
Fabbrini Park
Enormous trees tower over the ponds in some places. Willows, especially.
Fabbrini Park
The dog was more interested in flora closer to the ground.
Fabbrini Park
A light snack for her.

A Summer Thursday

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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.

Cherry Pickers for Rent

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While walking the dog yesterday, we noticed a cherry picker parked on a neighboring street. A rental cherry picker. Big letters on the side said RENT ME, and provided an 800 number to call.

If I’d thought about it beforehand, I would have realized that rental cherry pickers existed. Of course they do. All kinds of equipment is for rent. Still, I thought it was a little funny. I’d only ever seen them in official use, such as by a city or town for needful repairs or tree-trimming along roads.

How about renting a cherry picker, not to do anything useful with it, but just to ride up and down and get a look around from treetop level? I mused out loud. Have your cousin Bob drive you around while you’re up top.

Lilly suggested that might be illegal. I allowed that it probably would be, besides being exceptionally dangerous. Something Florida Man might do, I continued, while good and drunk. And naked.

Thursday Jumble

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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.Spring Valley Little Lending LibraryNot 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.
New Delhi Restaurant Schaumburg
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

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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.
ThiruvalluvarThe 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

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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

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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.Spring Valley PeonyGuess the ants get some sustenance from the flower, without bothering it too much.

Logistics on Our Street

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Remember generic products? I do. They showed up in grocery stores in the 1980s. I bought some only occasionally. A lot of people probably could say that, so those black-and-white boxes didn’t endure.

Today, a generic truck showed up on our street to deliver something to a nearby house.

I didn’t see anything large taken out of it to justify the truck as a delivery vehicle. But maybe it carries large and small items. Anyway, it’s fittingly named: a unit of a vast, always-moving, always-changing logistics network stretching from here to China, literally.

Deer Grove Forest Preserve

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Another weekend, another forest preserve path where the problems of a wounded nation seem remote. The last day of May was clear and a little cool this year, good for a walk in the woods. Unlike last week, the path we took through Deer Grove Forest Preserve in Palatine, Ill., headed into a forest.Deer Grove Forest PreserveDeer Grove Forest PreserveDeer Grove Forest PreserveDeer Grove includes about 2,000 acres just south of the border between Cook and Lake counties — note Lake-Cook Road running along its northeastern edge.
Deer Grove Forest PreserveWe parked near the Camp Alphonse entrance, which I’ve marked with a small red dot. We walked roughly to the blue dot and came back the same way — a mile and a half, more or less.

The origin of the name Camp Alphonse isn’t readily available, but there’s also a nearby entrance called Camp Reinberg. This site at least lists Camp Reinberg as a temporary WWI camp, of which there many nationwide that left little trace. My guess would be that Camp Alphonse was one as well.

The woods were alive with spring greenery and lots of wildflowers.
Deer Grove Forest PreserveAn elegant spider web.
Deer Grove Forest PreserveA few dead trees still lording over the living ones.
Deer Grove Forest PreserveThe dog had a good time too.
Deer Grove Forest PreserveSnacking on leafy greens the entire way.

RIP, Hecky Powell

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I didn’t know Hecky Powell, who died recently at 71 of COVID-19. But I sure knew his ribs, and especially his rib tips. He owned Hecky’s Barbecue, a longstanding rib joint in Evanston, a small place shoehorned into a building at Green Bay Road and Emerson St.

“Explaining his rib methodology, he told the Sun-Times it went like this: Apply a dry rub — based on his mother’s secret recipe — and follow that with 24 to 48 hours of grilling in a smoker. Then, he’d heat the sauce and slather it on.”

Whatever he did, he produced wonderful ribs and rib tips. A former Northwestern student I knew in the late ’80s introduced me to the place. Since Evanston’s a slog of a drive from where we are now, we’ve visited Hecky’s — carryout only — only about once or twice a year in more recent decades.

Still, just by thinking about it, I can picture, and taste, the pound of rib tips we’d usually get. Marvelous. A marvel of the barbecue arts.