Chicago Riverside Stroll

Intense periods of rain marked the day and into the night, with snow ahead. A nonsticking April sort of snow, but still carried by stiff unpleasant winds. A rearguard winter wind, and winter winds blow only in one direction. In your face.

It was merely chilly Saturday before last when we strolled down Wacker Drive and Michigan Avenue in the evening in downtown Chicago, partly along the Chicago River. Some old favorites rise in that area, such as Marina City.

Idly curious, I looked up some listings for condos in the building. For less than $300,000, one can buy a 500-square foot unit, listed as zero beds, one bath. I wonder what that means in context: a Murphy bed? Not like some utilitarian job you might have found in the Kramdens’ apartment, but maybe something a little more upmarket. Are there upscale Murphy beds? Of course there are.

At more than 60 years old, Marina City doesn’t count as the newest and poshest, but it has historic appeal, and has any other residential complex seen a fast-moving auto pitched out of its parking garage into a river? Such happened for The Hunter (1980), the last Steve McQueen movie. A bad guy’s fate, if I remember right.

The Wrigley Building, legacy of a chewing gum fortune. What more to say about the masterpiece on the Chicago, open now these last 100 years?Wrigley Building 2024 Wrigley Building 2024

The courtyard north of the building is formally the Plaza of the Americas, which I’m sure only tour guides call it. On windy days the flags of the OAS fly over the plaza. Does the actual flag of the OAS also? Its design: Let’s wheel all the national flags together. It’s a recognized way to organize flags, but on a flag? 

At the west end of the plaza is a bronze Benito Juárez, a gift of Mexico to the city of Chicago in 1999, with one Julian Martinez listed as the artist (not this artist). At night, Juárez doesn’t catch the light very well.Benito Juarez Chicago

These golden wings are a newer addition to the plaza, 2022, and supposedly temporary. Another of the pairs of wings that have sprouted worldwide, though these are sculpted, not painted.Wings of Mexico

“Wings of Mexico” by Jorge Marin. A little digging around, and I see that he did “El Ángel de la Seguridad Social,” which we spotted in Mexico City.

Spring Valley Farm Oddities

Sunday wasn’t quite as warm as yesterday, or today, whose unseasonably high temps came to a crashing end amid thunder and lightning and wind. The condition at about 7:30 pm. Sirens wailed from before then till 7:45.

A very spring-like event. Glad it’s over.

But it was warm enough Sunday to stroll a while at one of our default walking places, Spring Valley. We made it to the former farm, where no animals were to be seen. Pigs, cows, chickens, nowhere, though the barnyard odor lingered. No oinks or moos or the flapping of chickens. On vacation? I mused out loud. Off to a meat processing facility? I mused to myself. Kidding, but best not vocalized.

But my quest to see new things, even in very familiar places, and on a granular level, kept me busy. Or if not new things, a new look a them. Such as the wagons.Spring Valley

These look like work wagons. That can lead to a number of musings, such as, what a damn lot of work was involved in running a 19th-century farm. The vehicles are labor-saving devices in their own way, of course, but only so much labor.

It’s not so remarkable that the elderly in our time are in better shape than previous generations, a fact noted from AARP to ZDNET. Nutrition and healthcare are decidedly better now, but the long and short of it is that much work wore people out.

I’m sure I’d seen this bit of farm equipment before. But I’m not sure I’d looked at it. The more I looked, the odder it got.Spring Valley Spring Valley

Someone knows what that is. Locally, maybe someone at the park district. Further away, farmers. Or maybe it’s obvious, and I’m dense. Maybe, but it’s still a puzzler.

I fed the image into TinEye, a reserve image search engine. The results: TinEye searched over 65.7 billion images but didn’t find any matches for your search image. That’s probably because we have yet to crawl any pages where this image appears.

I also took a look at the windmill. Their artistry underappreciated, I believe.Spring Valley

Something was different. Whatever you call that part – the blades? They’d vanished. I was sure of it, and sure enough, when I looked at the picture I took of it in 2012, the difference was clear.

Out for repairs? Stolen for scrap or by a slightly demented collector? Blown down on windy day and wrecked beyond repair? We get those gusts sometimes, see above.

This is February?

This doesn’t happen often, at least at the tail end of February.

That was the local temp today at 3 pm. Alas, it is also a Monday, meaning I couldn’t sit outside as much as I wanted during the warm hours, though I was able to sip tea on the deck for a few warmth-on-my-face minutes. Out of idle curiosity, I checked the temps at about the same time in Miami.

Huh. What about Fairbanks?

Well, at least that’s seasonal.

Blue Marble, Green Shoots

When I had a few moments today, which weren’t that many, I sat under the blue-marble skies out on the deck.Mr Blue Sky

In some comfort, since temps nearly, or did, reach 60° F., and the air was still. Another oddly mild day in this oddly mild February.

In a few places, spots of green underfoot.

The dog sat outside with me for a while as well. That must have been a tonic for her weakness, since her appetite, gone for about a day, returned shortly afterward. That might count as post hoc ergo propter hoc, but I doubt the dog knows anything about logic.

After All, It Is SUPER

Most of the January snow is gone, melted by rain late last week and temps above freezing most of the time since then. More above-freezing temps are forecast for the forecastable future, or another week or so. An odd thing for winter stasis, which is usually a run of days consistently below freezing, but I’m not complaining — and will be glad to be rid of January, as usual.

Another press release that isn’t in my wheelhouse came today, not even within shouting distance of my wheelhouse, unless you count the very occasional times I’ve written about stadium development. Namely, it’s about sports. Rarefied sports: The Super Bowl.

I extracted the following table from it, which reports info from a company that tracks secondary sports ticket sales. These are average ticket prices (so far) for the upcoming Super Bowl and the final averages five games before it.

2024 (49ers vs. Chiefs): $10,408

2023 (Eagles vs. Chiefs): $7,672

2022 (Rams vs. Bengals): $8,347

2021 (Bucs vs. Chiefs): $7,738

2020 (49ers vs. Chiefs): $6,705

2019 (Rams vs. Patriots): $5,629

Italics added, though I could have added them to each and every price listed, to denote how nuts I believe the figures are. Of course, ten grand isn’t what it used to be – can’t even get half of a new car for that, nor (maybe) a decent cruise to Antarctica.

Still, it’s no small sum to devote to parking yourself at football game that only occasionally lives up to its hype. At least, that’s what I hear. Somehow over the years I’ve forgotten to watch the game on TV. That might happen again if I’m not careful.

Summertime in W.A. ’92

Rumor has it that a glowing orb might appear in the sky tomorrow. If so, almost the first time in this odd-weather start of the year. Still, whatever else has happened, overcast skies have been the norm. Last Thursday, according to the NWS, it was fog from here to the Gulf Coast.

Australia Day has come and gone. For the occasion, I wanted to scan a 1989 uncirculated set of Australian coins, but the coins themselves, encased in plastic, don’t lend themselves to it. Details are indistinct and the lighting of coins seems weird no matter what angle, though not when you’re looking at them with your eyes. In that case, they have the shiny look of uncirculated coins.

Pretty to look at, but not especially valuable. That’s what you should expect, since there’s not a lick of silver in the whole set. I bought it a few years ago, as a kind of retroactive souvenir, since those were the kinds of coins in circulation when I was there.

The envelope theme: ‘roos in the hot sun.

In early January 1992, I sent a card to my brother Jim and mother from Perth.

“Plenty of strange plants & birds to see,” I wrote, becoming the nth person in history to notice that about Australia, a very high number. Still, that’s a marvel of the place. All you have to do is look around. The flora gets weirder the longer you look at it, and helps you appreciate just how far you’ve come to see their oddities. Damn, I’m at the other end of the Earth, you think.

Vast, empty spaces were indeed ahead on the road from Perth to Adelaide to Sydney. My only regret on that bus epic across the continent was that it was dark when we crossed the Nullarbor Plain.

Then again, aside from the species that make up the scrub brush, a ride across Nullarbor doesn’t look that different from a ride across West Texas, and I’ve done that in the daylight.

Getting Through Various Januaries

The near-zero and subzero days eased off late last week, enough that I completed the task that no one else wants, storing Christmas decorations in the garage. Also, moving snow out of the way on our sidewalks and driveway, though Yuriko did some of that as well. Deep chill was back on Saturday and some today, or at least it felt that way when I rolled the garbage cans out to the curb this evening.

Overcast skies meant there wasn’t even the consolation of constellations, bright in the clear winter night. Some other time, Orion.

Haven’t bothered taking many pictures lately. The bleak mid-winter doesn’t inspire camera-in-hand forays near or far. The back yard pretty much looks like this image from January 2015, except the dog isn’t nearly as vigorous in crossing the powdery flats as she used to be. In fact, just getting her out the door is a process that can take a few minutes, as is getting her back in.

Back even further, she romps through the snow of January 2014. As if there were that much difference.

On Saturday especially we cleaned house, especially in the kitchen the adjacent spaces – the food handling zones of the house. Always needs some attention. January has a way of pressing in on the walls of the house, focusing one’s attention on immediate surroundings. At least, that’s how I feel it.

I did such a January cleaning in 2014 – does that year really correspond to 10 years ago? There goes time, flying again, flapping its wings just a little louder every year. Ten years ago, ours was a house with children. Who spent a fair amount of time on the living room couch.

One day I moved the couch to clean behind it.

For some reason I decided to document it. Was I mad at my daughters? I don’t think I was, but I did show it to them. What with prying the couch from its position, this was a job for Dad.

In January 2006, we visited a showing of snow sculptures in the northwest suburbs.

Nice, but I don’t think I’ve had the urge to seek out any more snow sculpture events since then.

A Tale of Two Kentucky Distilleries

Oh, boy.

Winter’s been pretty easy on us so far, but that’s almost over. We’re headed for the pit of winter now, maybe a little earlier than it usual comes (end of January, beginning of February, I always thought). It might be a long narrow pit that will be hard to climb out of.

Even so, I will enjoy Monday off, including all professional and nonprofessional writing. Back to posting on January 16.

Though not a drinking couple, we figured we couldn’t visit Bardstown, Kentucky, and not drop in on a distillery. Think of all the marketing dollars spent by the Kentucky Distillers’ Association, and the distilleries themselves, that have gone into making this part of the commonwealth a bourbon destination. Toward that end, the KDA established a “Bourbon Trail” in 1999, focusing on Kentucky, but also including operations in Indiana, Ohio and Tennessee.

First we drove to the gates of the Barton 1792 Distillery, which is in town and had a most industrial aspect to it. Also, the gates had a sign saying the place was closed to the public, in spite of what other information had told us.

So we headed out to another distillery on the map, Heaven Hill, on the outskirts of town. It’s a big operation. Off in the distance from the visitor center parking lot are clusters of enormous HH buildings – rickhouses, they’re called, a term used industrywide – to store barrels of the distillery’s products while they’re aging.

“Heaven Hill’s main campus [in Bardstown] holds 499,973 barrels and was also the site of the famous 1996 fire,” the HH web site says. “Fueled by 75 mph winds, the fire ultimately destroyed seven rickhouses and over 90,000 barrels of Bourbon, which was two percent if the world’s Bourbon at the time.”

Bacchus wept. His wheelhouse is wine, but surely he takes an interest in hard liquor too.

Wonder why the HH rickhouse designers didn’t add space for 27 more barrels, so the total would come in at an even half-million. Anyway, that’s a lot of hooch. As for the fire, I must have heard about it at the time, but have no memory of it. I understand that occasionally rickhouses collapse, too. Bad luck for any poor fool inside, who’d be victim of a freak accident. Alcohol kills a lot of people, but not many that way.

Heaven Hill was swarming with visitors, and all tours were sold out on the drizzly afternoon of December 29. We spent a little time at the visitors center looking at some of the exhibits, including about the fire, but also about the family that has run the distillery for many years, the Shipiras – originally successful Jewish merchants in Kentucky – and the original master distiller, Joseph L. Beam, who was Jim Beam’s first cousin.

Soon we went to the Willett Distillery, up the road a piece from Heaven Hill. It isn’t as large an operation, but it too is a family-run business, by descendants of John David Willett (d. 1914) and a Norwegian who showed up in America in the 1960s at a young age and eventually married into the family. Importantly for our purposes, spots were available on the last tour of the day.Willett Distillery

Our guide was a voluble woman in her 50s, who perhaps has a sign in her house that says It’s 5 O’Clock Somewhere. She was informative about distilled spirits, and herself, so we learned that she’s a widow with grown children and some grandchildren, and not originally from Kentucky. Or a bourbon drinker.

“I used to be a clear spirits gal, but since I’ve worked here, I’ve learned to love bourbon more,” she said.Willett Distillery

I might not drink bourbon, but I appreciate the fact that distilleries have a lot of cool-looking equipment. Willett certainly does.Willett Distillery Willett Distillery Willett Distillery

Best of all, we went into one of the Willett rickhouses.Willett Distillery Willett Distillery

Willett is small compared to Heaven Hill, with all of its barrels able to fit into one HH rickhouse, according to our guide. She said that more than once. But she also played it as a virtue, hinting — since it would be impolitic to say it outright — that the neighboring distillery was entirely too big for its britches.

Return From Seattle

Ann’s back from Seattle, where she went last Thursday for a visit with her sister. I picked her up at O’Hare this evening. Heavy snow in the Chicago area today, the heaviest of the winter so far but which tapered off late in the afternoon, delayed her for a few hours at her layover point in Denver after an early start this morning.

She said she’d never been so glad to leave a place as the Denver airport. Just wait, I said, there will be even longer travel days eventually. At least I hope so; airport purgatory is one of the mild prices one pays to see distant things in the modern age.

While in Seattle, she enjoyed some of the cultural richness of that city.

That’s at a place called Archie McPhee’s Rubber Chicken Museum. Can’t believe I’d never heard of it. Only open since 2018, though. Like the Chihuly Museum, a place I must see next visit to Seattle. Of course, it’s really a novelty shop. Ann bought me some stickers there, sporting rubber chickens, and I was happy to get them.

Charcoal Inferno

Warmish by day, chilly at night, though not quite freezing most of the time. Today was clear and, since our deck has a southern exposure, it was warm enough out there to eat lunch in some comfort.

On Friday, which wasn’t quite as warm, I got started on building a back-yard fire a little later than planned, as the daylight ebbed away. At first it didn’t catch, but eventually it did. I’ve documented fires out back before, but not the charcoal chimney in use.

Doing my (very) little bit to release carbon into the atmosphere.

Eventually, all the charcoal caught fire.

A small inferno? Can infernos be small?

It was hot enough to cook brats, at least, once I tumped over the charcoal chimney (carefully) and put on the grill. The last outdoor cooking this year, and probably the last until April or May.