Tumbledown Cemeteries Near Downtown San Antonio

Posted on February 23, 2015 by admin

Cemetery tourism isn’t what it used to be. I’m pretty sure that most San Antonio tourist literature either ignores or gives scant mention to the Eastside Cemeteries Historic District, as the city calls it.

Too bad. I’d call it a fascinating agglomeration of old graveyards amazingly close to downtown San Antonio. Officially 31 separate cemeteries over 103 acres, and even better, as unkempt as old burying grounds sometimes are.

City Cemetery No. 1, fittingly, is the oldest in the district, dating from the 1850s. Even a mild climate like San Antonio’s will wear stones down eventually.

Here lie Aug. and Georgiana Ohnescorce, both of whom passed their lives in the 19th century. Their stones are still legible, but you have to look at them pretty closely.

I didn’t seek out well-known permanent residents of the Eastside Cemeteries Historic District, though the San Antonio city site cited above tells us there are a number of them, including mayors, prosperous local businessmen, German pioneer families, 19th-century soldiers (some of them Buffalo soldiers), the woman who led the fight to preserve the Alamo in the first decade of the 20th century — Clara Driscoll — and the man who designed and advocated the San Antonio Riverwalk, Robert H.H. Hugman.

This is Cemetery No. 6, not quite as tumbledown as No. 1.

According to the city, the Confederate Cemetery is separate from Cemetery No. 6, but that’s hard to tell when you’re there. In any case, the Confederate Cemetery sports the Stars and Bars.

The cemetery’s historical markers says that there were over 900 burials in the cemetery, including former CSA soldiers, but also their dependents, some later descendants, and some vets from WWI and WWII as well.

Then there’s the Hermann Sons Cemetery, also enjoyably frowzy.

The first Texas lodge of Ordens der Hermanns-Söhne was founded in San Antonio, and the organization is no thing of the past.

South Texas in February

Posted on February 22, 2015 by admin

My most recent trip to Texas lasted eight days, most of them in San Antonio, though there was a foray into the Hill Country. One fine thing about South Texas in February is that it isn’t northern Illinois in February. There’s nothing quite like arriving at the airport and stepping out into night air that’s about 40 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the septentrional place you left. Not that it isn’t winter in both places, just that a South Texas winter isn’t going to be consistently cold, like an Illinois summer isn’t going to be consistently hot.

It’s also green in South Texas. Or greenish. The grass isn’t hiding under a coat of white, and there’s been enough rain this year to make it green. Some bushes have leaves, but most trees still do not. A few flowers, the early spring pioneers of the area, are budding. Despite occasional outbursts of cold weather, snow is just a rumor, rather than an active nuisance.

Most of the time I visited family or worked. But I did get out to see a few new things, and no matter how familiar you think you are with a place, there’s always something new. Such as a cluster of unkempt cemeteries east of downtown San Antonio, or a 26-foot copper-roofed gazebo designed by Jalisco architect Salvador de Alba Martina, or a bat roost in Kendall County, or a small state park I’d never heard of — Old Tunnel SP, only a park in recent decades.

Also, I saw a few things I’ve seen before, sometimes uncountably often, but gave them new thought. Such as the Sunset Ridge shopping center neon sign.

At about 110,000 square feet, Sunset Ridge dates from the development of its part of San Antonio in the 1950s. Or so I think, because it looks like it’s from that period, it’s historically plausible, and I myself remember it almost that far back: 1968 (and my brothers remember it even earlier that decade). Sunset Ridge, which is within walking distance of my mother’s house, has many old associations for me. Such as the Winn’s that used to be there. It was a Five & Dime, part of a well-known chain in this part of the country, but now long gone, so long ago that it wasn’t even Walmart that killed it off.

I’d never given the sign much thought. It was simply the Sunset Ridge sign. When I looked at the sign during this visit, I thought mid-century commercial neon, a holdover from an increasingly remote time, and increasingly rare.

Pet Peeve Opposites

Posted on February 11, 2015 by admin

Time for a winter hiatus. Back to posting on February 22 or so, when there will still be plenty enough winter to go. At least we haven’t had the kind of wall-to-wall snow that Boston’s experienced lately.

Pet peeve for the day: postings, especially those containing business or economic data, that have no date, nor any way to figure out when they were posted. Worse than useless. I ran across two of them yesterday. Want to be cited in an article? Don’t do that.

But I don’t want to rattle on about pet peeves. Is there an opposite term for pet peeve? A small thing that consistently brings pleasure. One of life’s “itty-bitties,” as my Old Testament professor called them, though they could be good or bad. Finding money you didn’t know you had; a doughnut with a bit more cream filling than usual; a new understanding of a lyric or a plot point or a concept that suddenly occurs to you.

There has to be a term for that. Something just as pithy as pet peeve, that is. I haven’t been able to think of one, or spend any time looking. Finding such a phrase would, in fact, be an anti-pet peeve, considering the pleasure a pithy new phrase brings, so I’ll have to work on it. Besides the Internet – not everything is there yet – I’ll take a look in delightful books like They Have a Word for It and Lost Beauties of the English Language. When I have time; that can be the best little pleasure of all.

Phil Plait at the Cernan Center

Posted on February 10, 2015 by admin

On Saturday evening, we – all of us but Lilly, who had other things to do – went to the Cernan Earth & Space Center to see “Bad Astronomy,” a show mostly narrated by Phil Plait. It pretty much encapsulated what he has to say: there’s a lot of bad astronomy in movies, astrology is nonsense, of course men went to the Moon, and so on.

Not much new for me, though Ann probably got something out of it. In fact, she said she did, but also that she already knew there’s no sound in space. Not many movies or TV shows set in space bother with that, usually for sensible dramatic reasons – imagine the Enterprise passing by without that swoosh — though I can think of a few exceptions: 2001, Firefly.

Plait also mentioned in passing, without naming it, that there’s a place on the Moon where the Sun (almost) always shines. Never heard of that before, and it intrigued me. He must have been talking about the Peak of Eternal Light, which besides sounding like a cult, is an actual place near the south pole of the Moon.

We also got Ann a shirt from the small gift shop (which has no postcards): a map of the constellations.

Happy Turn Rice Crackers

Posted on February 9, 2015 by admin

Yuriko bought some Happy Turn rice crackers (senbei) recently. They’re oval crackers with a light sweet-soy flavor. Happy Turn is the name — or rather, the English rendering of the katakana name, ハッピーターン. A product of Kameda Seika Confectionery.

They’re very popular in Japan with both adults and children, and they didn’t last long in our house. I prefer Bonchi rice snacks myself, which are shaped like small bowls and are a bit saltier, but I’m fond of these too. Been a while since we’d had any.

Execution of Justice

Posted on February 8, 2015 by admin

Execution of Justice was the first play I saw in Chicago after moving here in 1987. I’d seen a number of plays in the city before, such as Vicious, Rap Master Ronnie, and All My Sons, because it was a good thing to do when visiting town. Chicago’s got first-rate theater. Once I came to live there, I went to the theater every other month or so.

The play, by Emily Mann, is about the trial of Dan White, assassin of George Moscone and Harvey Milk, and the reaction to his absurdly light sentence. White had been in the news again not too much earlier, in late 1985, for committing suicide.

The “Twinkie defense” was part of the play, but I don’t remember if it was treated as the myth it is or not. As Scopes puts it, “better to believe the jury was hoodwinked by some pseudo-scientific nonsense about junk food than to acknowledge the fact that our legal system sometimes absolves defendants of responsibility for the most heinous of crimes.”

I best remember the depiction of the White Night riots, with a dark, quiet stage suddenly exploding with light and noise and the motion of actors. You could tell the audience was startled.

Divers* Notes on an Ordinary Thursday

Posted on February 5, 2015 by admin

Maybe it’s time to go on another literary bender. Lately I’ve been reading The Dog of the South, which I’m enjoying, so maybe Charles Portis is just the thing. Since I read True Grit not that long ago, that only leaves three more novels of his left to read. The man’s got a gift for understated humor. Sometimes that’s the best kind.

Got one of a mass email from the principal of Quincy Adams Wagstaff Elementary School recently – an email of the times: “In light of the recent news regarding measles at a Palatine child care facility, District π is sharing with all families this Measles Fact Sheet from the Cook County Department of Public Health. At this time there have been no reported cases of measles in District π. Should there be a case of measles at your child’s school; [sic] parents/guardians would be notified.

“Measles is a highly contagious disease. However, more than 99% of our students are vaccinated against this disease and the measles vaccine is highly effective.”

What he didn’t say, but I wouldn’t have minded if he did: “We’re glad there aren’t a lot of anti-vax morons in our district.”

The usual suspects were over to celebrate Ann’s birthday last week.

A close up of the cake. It’s the same kind as seven years ago, at Ann’s request. (She didn’t remember having it before, but was impressed when she saw it, and wanted it.)

To quote myself: “[The cake is] very dark and very round, heavy as a manhole, rich as Bill Gates. Among chocolate cakes, it’s a Union Pacific steam locomotive.”

* For some reason, I’ve long been fond of the archaic form of diverse “divers.” According to Grammarist: “The archaic adjective divers means various or many. Diverse means having great variety. For instance, a group of three can be called diverse if all three elements differ from one another, but we wouldn’t call the group divers because three are not many. Still, divers (usually pronounced DIE-verz) has given way to diverse in the sense meaning various, and in the many sense it gives way to other synonyms. The word has not been widely used in over a century, and even in the 19th century it was mainly a poeticism.”

Friday in the Park With Geof

Posted on February 4, 2015 by admin

The last time I went to the Garfield Park Conservatory, about a year and a half ago, I took a good many pictures (such as these and these and these). This time around, which was on last Friday, not so many. On the other hand, my old friend Geof Huth, who was visiting from New York state, snapped up a storm. Many of his images ended up on Facebook.

I didn’t remember seeing this before, though I probably have.

A nearby sign says: “This fountain is a gift from Chicago’s Sister City of Casablanca, Morocco to the people of Chicago. It is covered with special hand-cut terra-cotta tiles called “zellij” … the round patterns on the front of our fountain are intended to represent flowers. The zellji technique was developed in the 10th century in North Africa and Andalusia and has been faithfully practiced up to the present day.”

The Oak Park Love Locks

Posted on February 3, 2015 by admin

Lilly sometimes studies at the other desk in my office. This evening the object of her studies was various bones, for her anatomy class (I’m pretty sure that subject wasn’t offered at my bronze-age high school). I suggested that she can learn bones listening to “Dry Bones.” She’s used to this kind of suggestion.

On Friday, I was briefly in Oak Park. But long enough to take a look at the Oak Park Love Locks.

They are at the Metra and El line underpass on Oak Park Ave. They’re a little thin on this side of the underpass (the south side), but thicker on the north side, where there was also a lot less light.

A helpful sign posted by the Oak Park Area Arts Council says, in part: “On a bridge over the river Seine in Paris, lovers write their names and dates on padlocks, attach them to the rails, and throw the padlock key into the river to symbolize their commitment. The locks form a colorful, metallic tapestry that testifies to the power of undying love.

“As part of The Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park’s Hemingway Birthday Celebration, we are bringing this part of Paris to Oak Park and inviting the community to create its own statement of romance.”

Something about this cries out to be mocked. According to some sources, Parisians aren’t particularly fond of this practice, which isn’t very old either — certainly nothing Hemingway had anything to do with. And while bridges on the Seine might inspire romance, a dimly lit concrete-and-steel underpass in suburban Chicago doesn’t have any of that vibe. Also — just to note — the thing is sponsored by a major padlock maker. Bet they have romance in their corporate heart.

If the Arts Council really wants to bring some of Hemingway’s Paris to the 21st century Midwest, I have a few suggestions: cafes and zinc bars with subsidized drinks, so they’re cheap like Paris in the ’20s; a bookstore that looks exactly like Shakespeare and Company; and a statue of the gentlemen who invented pharmacy.

Sort of a Blizzard ’15

Posted on February 2, 2015 by admin

Going into yesterday’s snow event, it was simply going to be a winter storm. At some point during the storm, officialdom started calling it a blizzard. I’m skeptical. A lot of snow fell, but it took all night and day, and some wind blew, but it wasn’t a howling fury. That’s what a blizzard is to me: howling fury. Like in ’99 or ’11.

I went outside twice yesterday and once this morning for snow removal. So it the pain-in-the-butt, risk-your-heart sense, I guess it was a blizzard. The Tribune tells me that “As of about 7 a.m. Monday, O’Hare International Airport had a total of 19.3 inches of snow, making it the fifth-largest multiday storm on record, according to the National Weather Service.”

The snow certainly made mighty piles. On my deck, some of them.

Also, the ornamental bridge is just as buried this time as in 2011. (Has it really be four years since that happened? Four years to the day, in fact, before the latest storm?)

The wind sculpted some odd forms. On the other side of our roof, there wasn’t much snow cover at all.

It looks like you can’t open the door with our hitting the snow lip, but it’s hanging far enough away that the door doesn’t touch it.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling