Back to posting on September 4, after Labor Day. You’d think a holiday of that name would be time for “Joe Hill” or the like, though May Day’s really the time. Time to lounge around on the deck out back, provided it isn’t raining, which it has been a lot lately.
Actually, it’s the dog who uses the deck for its fullest lounging potential.
Use the deck while you can. Soon enough it’s just going to be a snow and ice collector.
The Edinburgh Fringe Festival was pretty much out of the question this year — and it’s probably a logistics hassle of the first order, even of you’re already in the UK — so I went to the Chicago Fringe Festival for a few hours on Sunday afternoon. Though not a trans-Atlantic proposition, it did involve driving into the city, which has its own small hassles.
Naturally I left home later than I wanted to, so I caught only two performances, more-or-less picked at random: With the Weight of Her Fate on Her Shoulders and Jeff Fort and Fred Hampton: A Revolutionary Love Story. Per Fringe rules, each ran for an hour or less, with the latter taking nearly the whole 60 minutes, the former not quite so much.
The festival, now in its eighth year, is in the Jefferson Park neighborhood of the Northwest Side. One of the selling points of the festival is that all of the venues were within easy walking distance of each other, and they were. Despite all the years I’ve lived in northern Illinois, it was yet another unfamiliar neighborhood, so I spent some time walking around between the shows as well.
Jefferson Park is a pleasant strolling neighborhood, even in the fairly high heat of late summer, with its residential and commercial thoroughfares (Milwaukee and Lawrence) very much in the Chicago pattern: leafy small streets lined with small apartments, plus blocks of shops along the larger streets. In our time, Jefferson Park is heavily Polish. So Polish, in fact, that the Copernicus Center is there, at 5216 W. Lawrence Ave.
The center includes the Mitchell P. Kobelinski Theater — formerly Gateway Theatre, the first movie palace in Chicago for talkies. That by itself would be worth seeing, but over Labor Day weekend, the center holds its Taste of Polonia festival, which was in full swing Sunday afternoon. So the place was jumping, having attracted more people than the Fringe could ever dream of, and making a lot more noise. As I passed, a band was playing “Come on Eileen,” sounding like the Save Ferris version.
I wasn’t in the mood for a festival, but I did walk by the entrance and took a look at the outside of the building, including the sweeping tower atop the building. That was added in the 1980s and is said to resemble the tower of the Royal Castle in Warsaw, or at least its post-WWII reconstruction.
The Fringe venues were more modest, but I was surprised to learn that three of them were actual theater spaces: the Gift Theatre, Jefferson Park Playhouse and Windy City Music Theatre Blackbox Studio. Jefferson Park, in other words, has a theater scene. Other performances were held in spaces provided by the Congregational Church of Jefferson Park.
With the Weight of Her Fate on Her Shoulders was at Gift Theatre, a 50-seat slice of space with three rows of seats, black walls and a small performance area under a modicum of lights. You can’t get any more basic than that for a theater space, so everything depends on the strength of the writing and the skill of the actors.
Weight wasn’t bad, but not that good. The three young actors certainly had some acting chops. The tight space of the theater fit the setting of a cramped refuge from unseen but definitely heard urban combat going on outside. It also fit what the play seemed to be about: war is hell, it will drive you mad, and then probably kill you. Also, words are weapons. What? One of the characters seemed to talk — verbally harass — another into a violent death. Or was that supposed to be a stray bullet coming into the room?
As earnest as it all was, the short play was something of a muddle. I couldn’t quite bring myself to care whether the characters survived, because I wasn’t quite sure what kind of danger they faced. At times I felt like dozing off, but forced myself to stay awake, like you do during a hard patch of long-distance driving. There’s no risk of causing a traffic accident sitting in a theater, but snoring during a live show would be embarrassing.
I had no such problems with Jeff Fort and Fred Hampton: A Revolutionary Love Story, a fine work of historical fiction, done in the Congregational church’s meeting hall. The thing was engaging. I wanted it to last longer than its hour. The acting was strong, especially the two leads, and while it would have been easy for the playwright — Steven Long — to stray into the tendentious, he avoided that trap, portraying the leads as human beings rather than talking points.
The story was straightforward, depicting meetings between Black Panther leader Fred Hampton, during the year before the authorities murdered him, and Jeff Fort, a major gang leader in Chicago at the time. Hampton spent considerable energy trying to persuade Fort to give up his criminal enterprise and join him in revolution, which he believed would be along Marxist, not racial, lines. Fort was less impressed by the idea of revolution.
As depicted, the two were in a kind of courtship: Hampton doing his best to persuade Fort, who resisted his pleas, along with spells of mutual admiration, quarrels that almost turned violent, and a sense of foreboding. Aptly so, since both men were doomed in their own ways. A short life for Hampton and a long one for Fort. Even now, the real Jeff Fort, aged 70, is at the federal supermax prison in Florence, Colo., where he will surely be until he dies.
After the play, Steven Long came out and asked the audience, about 25 of us in all, to mention it on social media. That’s the first time I’ve ever heard that, but probably not the last. For my part, I’m mentioning it and the festival here.
My attendance at the Fringe this year was as much an exploratory run as anything else, to see whether it might be worth committing more time and energy to in future years. I’d say yes.
I thought of “Manmade Things in the Chicago Botanic Garden” as a title, but in a real sense everything in a highly cultivated garden is manmade, even if the raw materials of the displays are descended from naturally occurring plants. Artificial selection invented the tea rose, after all.
The Chicago Botanic Garden includes many things besides plants. Such as this sculpture in the Heritage Garden.
It’s instantly recognizable as a Robert Berks bubble-gum statue, in this case dating from 1982. Based on a casual search, his statues seem to be esteemed these days, especially now that he’s dead, but I’m with the art critics who were upset about the Einstein statue in DC when it was new. They’re ugly. That’s my two-word critique.
Anyway, the subject is fitting for a garden, since it’s Carolus Linnæus. In fact, I’ve seen his carved face before in such a place, but a long way from metro Chicago.
That’s Linnæus at the Adelaide Botanic Garden in 1991. A much more conventional bust, certainly, and maybe not that interesting. But at least it isn’t ugly. More about the Chicago-area Linnæus statue is at the always delightful Public Art in Chicago.
This is “Boy Gardener” in the Rose Garden.
By an Oak Park sculptor, Margot Mcmahon. Straightforward, unpretentious.
In the Japanese Garden, a yukimi lantern.
Supposedly it looks elegant covered with snow, and I’ll bet it does. I don’t think I’ll visit the gardens in winter to confirm that, though.
Also in the Japanese Garden, the Zigzag Bridge, with a selfie in progress, and a woman taking pictures of carp.
The explanation for its shape is that evil spirits can only travel in straight lines, and thus can’t follow you onto the island. What is it about evil spirits? They’re scared of noise, can’t follow a slight zigzag, and seem to have a lot of other handicaps to keep them from their malevolent work.
Here’s one of the bridges between the main part of the garden and Evening Island. Not so distinctive by itself, but it is shaded by enormous willows.
The other bridge to Evening Island has a name, the Serpentine, for obvious reasons. With more willows.
On Evening Island itself, there’s this structure rising from the flora.
The Theodore C. Butz Memorial Carillon, to give its formal name, installed in 1986. A sign at the base of the structure says, “Crafted in Holland, the Garden’s carillon is one of a few hand-played carillons in the United States. The cast bronze bells have a range of four octaves, and are played using a large keyboard. The smallest of the 48 bells weighs 24 pounds, and the largest weighs two and a half tons.”
No carillonneur seemed to be on duty, but we did hear it ring the hour, so I guess it can be set for automatic as well as manual.
The Chicago Botanic Garden is actually in Glenco, Illinois, but it would be nitpicky to insist that it be called the Greater Chicago Botanic Garden, or even the Chicagoland Botanic Garden, though that has a ring to it. Glenco is a northern suburb, as far north as you can get in Cook County. The road that leads to the garden’s entrance is in fact Lake-Cook Road, more or less the border between Lake and Cook counties.
All of the gardens’ 385 acres are south of that road, and are property of the Forest Preserve District of Cook County (just like Bachelor’s Grove Cemetery, but far away geographically and otherwise). On Saturday, Yuriko and I went to the garden because we’ve long been fond of it, because it was a warm, pleasant day, and because we couldn’t remember the last time we went. So long ago, I think, that we pushed Ann around in a stroller (later than 2004, maybe, but not much). This time Ann stayed home.
It’s a large garden, offering a multitude of plants in a variety of settings, including 27 display gardens, such as the Crescent Garden.
And the three-acre Rose Garden, whose flowers surround a popular lawn.
“The Rose Garden — one of the most popular spots at the Chicago Botanic Garden — also gives context and history to the storied flowers, while celebrating the best among them,” the garden’s web site asserts. “Consider the old garden roses (also called antique or heirloom roses), which were cultivated before 1867… The History of Roses Bed, which tracks the development of the rose from the earliest wild rose to the modern hybrids, also provides context. And, for inspiration, the Rose Garden features All-America Rose Selections winners, along with the best rose varieties for Midwest gardens.”
Is 1867 particularly important in the history of roses? Turns out it is. Again, I quote from the Chicago Botanic Garden, which has a brief history of roses on its site. “To bring order to the wild world of roses, the American Rose Society has classified all roses into two major categories: old garden roses (sometimes called antique or heirloom roses) and modern roses. The old roses are those that were cultivated in distinct classes prior to 1867, and the modern roses are those that followed. The year 1867 is an important one in rose history, since it marks the debut of the hybrid tea rose.” Ah. Just another thing we inherited from the corybantic 19th century.
Among the many blooms evident even in September at the Chicago Botanic Garden:
Bourbon Rose
Rosa Champlain
And one of those thoroughly modern hybrid tea roses (Rosa Medallion) 
Elsewhere in the garden is the shady Waterfall Garden, whose centerpiece is a 45-foot cascade.
The Japanese Garden could stand alone as a destination. Part of it is an inaccessible island (at least to casual visitors) called Horaijima, or the Island of Everlasting Happiness. It’s fitting that no one can go there.
Another part of the Japanese Garden includes a Shoin (書院) House, patterned after the studies of priests and scholars, with antecedents as far back as the Muromachi era (ca. 1336 to 1573), though this particular house was finished in 1982.
Among many other plants, the Evening Island sports enormous grass.
“Evening Island is an example of the New American Garden style of landscape design, which features vast naturalistic sweeps of low-maintenance grasses, perennials, and roses to create a living tapestry,” the garden says. “The garden is sited, appropriately, between the formality of the English Walled Garden and the wildness of the native Prairie.”
The English Walled Garden was the site of a wedding on the afternoon of September 3, so it was closed to other visitors. I remember that it’s a lovely place, though.
We wandered through a number of other sites at the garden as well, such as the Sensory Garden, Spider Island, the Circle Garden, and bonsai collection and the greenhouses. We didn’t see many other places. It’s like a major art museum in that way: too much for any single visit.
I did start taking notes of some of the plant names that interested me. With a digital camera and a lot of signs identifying plants, that was easy. Some examples of common names, not scientific names, just to keep things simpler: Siberian Bugloss, Virginia Waterleaf, Mountain Bluet, Columbine Meadowrue, Southern Blue Monkshood, Fairy Bells, Chocolate Dragon Smartweed [sounds like something you can buy in a shop in Seattle], Black Adder Hyssop, Cranberry Cotoneaster, Venice Masterwort, Purple Rain Jacob’s Ladder, Floss Flower, and Art Deco Zinnia.
I have to publish a picture of that last one.
Wish I had a memory for plant names and characteristics.
We came to be in eastern Iowa in early September 2001 — Labor Day weekend, in fact — because in February of that year, we’d taken a short trip to the same region, staying at a motel whose indoor pool turned out to be inoperable. I must have written a complaint letter about it, because the motel offered us another stay for no charge.
September’s definitely a more pleasant month to visit eastern Iowa than February, so we made our way back. We spent most of one day in the pleasant college town of Iowa City. The 2000s, it turned out, wasn’t a good decade for the town — a tornado hit one year, and the Iowa River flooded some of the town two years later. Before any of that, a historic structure burned.
That would be this historic structure: the Old State Capitol. Iowa City was a territorial and early state capital, and the building, with its gold leaf dome, was a relic of that time. (Iowa seems to have a thing for gold leaf on its capitol domes.) After the state government moved to Des Moines in 1857, the building became property of the University of Iowa, which it remains to this day.
We had a look at that early September 2001. Some renovation work was under way at the time.
A little more than two months later, workmen accidentally set the dome on fire and the fire consumed it, though not the rest of the building, which suffered water damage. I’m happy to report that a new gold leaf-covered dome was put on the building about two years later.
As we were leaving Iowa on that trip, we headed south a short distance from Iowa City and visited the Kalona Historical Village, an open-air museum heavy on farm structures and farm equipment, as you’d expect, plus a lot of Mennonite artifacts. Then we headed east and drove through Riverside, a small town. I only paused long enough, not even getting out of the car, to see the “USS Riverside” in a small park. At some point, the town fathers had decided that Riverside was the future birthplace of Capt. Kirk.
While I was eating lunch on my deck today — the opportunities for that will be rarer as the weeks ahead pass — the dog took a sudden interest in one of my lower pant legs, sniffing and snorting with gusto. I noticed a small black ant crawling on it. The dog had too. In a moment, she’d eaten the ant.
I’ve seen her chase flies and bees (and lucky for her, never catch any), but this was a first. It didn’t seem to be a biting kind of ant. Ants on the hoof, snack food for dogs.
Did some gadding about in Chicago over Labor Day weekend. On Saturday, Yuriko and Ann and I went to the city and met my nephew Dees, his girlfriend Eden, and an old friend of theirs, and eventually ended up at Millennium Park. Dees and Eden were visiting from Texas, staying with friends here. That reminded me a bit of the Labor Day weekends of my youth, when I usually went out of town — to Chicago (before I lived there), New York, Boston, and Washington DC — though one year (’85) my old friends came to me, and we gadded around Nashville.
There’s a new face near Michigan Ave.
It’s called “Looking Into My Dreams, Awilda,” by Jaume Plensa, the Spaniard who did Crown Fountain, the twin towers of alternating faces that spit water in the warm months, which isn’t far from the new sculpture. The Tribune says that “Awilda is 39 feet tall, made of marble and resin; the internal frame is fiberglass. She arrived from Spain in 15 pieces, then was bolted together.” It’ll be there until the end of 2015.
The Bean was as popular as ever.
We spent a while at the Chicago Jazz Festival at Pritzker Pavilion. The last time I went to the Chicago Jazz Festival was – 1996? Maybe. This time we left fairly early, but were around long enough to hear Ari Brown, Chicago sax man of long standing. At 70, the man can blow.
Still hot in the late afternoon, and a bit humid, but it was a good place to sit and listen. It helped not to get rained on, which was a distinct risk over the weekend.
Behind the stage rise the skyscrapers of the East Loop. I’ve always liked the view.
I found Burmese Days at a bookstore not long ago. Once I finish rereading Homage to Catalona, which I’m close to doing, I’ll read that for the first time. It’s a wonder that George Orwell escaped Spain with his life in 1937. How close the world came to never having Nineteen Eighty-Four, Animal Farm and the rest.
What have we missed because antibiotics weren’t quite good enough yet to save Orwell in 1950? The man might have written for another 30 or more years. To modify a line of Tom Lehrer’s, it’s a sobering thought to realize that when Orwell was my age, he’d been dead six years.
Actually, I’m taking a detour from Orwell to read a book I chanced on at the library the other day and couldn’t resist, Storm of the Century: The Labor Day Hurricane of 1935, by Willie Drye (2002). I’m pretty sure I first heard about that storm watching Key Largo. Lionel Barrymore’s character mentioned it, at a time when the hurricane would have been still fairly fresh in memory, as Katrina is for us.
“On Labor Day in 1935, a hurricane that produced the record low barometric pressure reading of 26.35 inches hit Florida’s upper Keys, destroying virtually everything in its path,” the Publishers Weekly blurb cited by Amazon says. “In his meticulously researched work, Drye gives a vivid, detailed account of the storm’s approach and impact when it made landfall. Drye was drawn to the story of the unnamed hurricane not only because of its intensity, but also because it killed nearly 260 World War I veterans who were building a highway as part of a federal construction program.”
So far it’s pretty good. The book even has occasional funny asides, something you wouldn’t expect. For instance, Key West as a modern tourist destination was largely invented during the 1930s, to help it recover from the Depression but also the contraction of the area’s ship salvaging and natural sponge businesses earlier in the century. The Florida Emergency Relief Administration led the effort to clean up the town and its attractions, hiring a PR man named E.M. Gilfond to handle publicity.
“Gilford and his staff, which included talented graphic artists, launched a nationwide advertising campaign to lure tourists to Key West,” writes Drye. “When the visitors arrived they were given a booklet published by the Florida ERA that included a map of the city’s attractions.
“The effort was a rousing success. About 40,000 tourists visited Key West during the 1934-35 season, and the city’s income from tourism increased by about 43 percent…
“No one had bothered to confer with Ernest Hemingway before putting his house on the maps handed out to visitors. The author’s home was listed as attraction number 18, and a fair number of those 40,000 tourists tramped onto his property and peered into the windows of his home or gawked at him from the sidewalk as he tried to relax on his porch with a drink and a cigar. One especially bold visitor opened the front door of Hemingway’s home and marched into his living room as though he were walking into a museum.”
