Tag Archives: Lilly

The Ann Arbor-Toledo Overnighter

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I can now, with complete confidence, tell the world I’ve been to Toledo. The one in Ohio, that is. As we crossed the Michigan-Ohio border late on Saturday morning, and the signs for Toledo were abundant, Lilly asked me about the name. It sounded familar, she said. I said it was the same as the city in Spain, except for pronunciation.

Ah, she answered with sudden recognition. We studied about places in Spain in Spanish class, and that was one of them, she said. Why is this town named after that one? Was there some connection?

None that I knew about, I answered. Someone in the settlement’s early days thought it would be a good name, and it stuck. There are North American towns with even less connection to their name-givers, such as every Canton. (According to the Canton, Ill. C of C, for instance, “the city was founded by Isaac Swan in 1825, he named it thus, from a notion he entertained that its location was the antipodes of Canton, China.”)

On Friday morning, Lilly and I set out for Ann Arbor, Mich. She’s entertaining the notion of applying to the University of Michigan, so we both thought this would a good thing to do. Since Ann Arbor is roughly five hours’ drive from metro Chicago, if traffic isn’t too bad, there and back on the same day wasn’t a reasonable option.

So we timed the drive to get a look at campus and environs on Friday afternoon, both on foot and in the car. The central campus is large and pleasantly collegiate. Sidewalks and green grass repose under mature trees in full summer green, and among buildings mostly dating from before modernism. Ivy on some of the walls inspired a discussion about just exactly what people talk about when they talk about the Ivy League. Any school can grow ivy, I told Lilly, but only a few are in the Ivy League (most of which I could name, but not all). Yet there are plenty of other schools just as good as the Ivies.

The campus wasn’t overly crowded, it being summer, but it was well enough populated. I’d been there before, but it was more than 10 years ago, maybe as long ago as 1999, to attend a real estate conference that the university holds every fall. I went at least twice, but digging through my papers to figure out just when is more trouble that I care to take.

One on of those visits, I got a good look at campus, including the of U-M Museum of Art, which had the virtue of being open and being free. Nice collection, too, as I dimly recall. I’ve read that the museum’s expanded significantly in more recent years. We arrived too late to see that or the intriguing-sounding Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, the Stearns Collection of Musical Instruments (which has the first commercial Moog synthesizer, among other things), or the Matthaei Botanical Gardens. Actually we were too tired for that last one, open till sunset, which is quite late this time of the year in the western part of the Eastern Time Zone.

What’s Toledo got to do with this? Toledo’s only a short drive south of Ann Arbor, and I determined that it was barely out of our way in returning home. So as trip organizer, I tacked on a few hours in Toledo on Saturday. Why did I want to go? It’s a distinctive place I’d never been — not counting driving by a few times — yet not really that far away. That’s almost all the encouragement I needed, since that’s the way I think. Also, I’d read that the Toledo Museum of Art is first-rate. And so it is, accessible for a nominal fee: $5 to park. Otherwise, no admission. Behemoth art museums in certain larger cities could learn a thing or two from that.

Coins from Way Down South

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Hard to believe Canada Day’s rolled around again. Time to honor our neighbors up north by watching one of their major cultural achievements. Other episodes are also available on YouTube.

Lilly brought us souvenirs from her trip to Latin America — omiyagi, to use the Japanese term, which means souvenirs specially obtained for people who didn’t make the trip. It’s a custom we follow.

She got me three things, all showing that she knows her dad pretty well: coins, postcards and Ecuadorean chocolate. As it happens, both Ecuador and Panama are dollarized economies. No currency exchange was necessary; she took greenback cash and also withdrew funds, in dollars, from an ATM.

The small change is each country’s own. This is 50 centavos from Ecuador, obverse.

50 centavos, EcuadorIt features the face of one José Eloy Alfaro Delgado (1842-1912), who was president of Ecuador from 1895 to 1901 and from 1906 to 1911, and had the distinction of being assassinated by anti-secularizers, since he introduced the likes of civil marriage and divorce, and secular eduction, to his nation. He also oversaw the construction of the Ferrocarril Transandino (Trans-Andean Railroad) connecting Guayaquil and Quito.

The reserve.

50 centavos, EcuadorThe steel Ecuadorean coins are made at mints in Canada and Mexico. Other denominations include 25c, 10c, 5c, and (supposedly) 1c. Lilly brought back the first three of that list, and along with the 50c piece, I checked their sizes. They’re exactly the same size as their respective U.S. coins.

Apparently Ecuador doesn’t issue dollar coins. Lilly said that U.S. dollar coins are in circulation there much more than they are in the United States. If we’d known that, I’d have given her a roll or two of dollar coins to take with her.

Panama, on the other hand, does have its own dollar-equivalent coin, the bimetallic balboa, which Lilly tells me circulates with U.S. dollar coins.

one balboaWho else to put on the balboa than Balboa? The man who lost his head over Panama. Here’s something I didn’t know: there’s a crater on the Moon named for him. He might have made it to the Pacific, but I’m pretty sure he didn’t get that far.

The reverse.

balboaIt’s hard to see, but the coat of arms of Panama includes a depiction of the isthmus, a sword, rifle, shovel, hoe, and more. The eagle is specifically — according to recent Panamanian law — a harpy eagle (Harpia harpyja), the national bird. The impossible-to-read motto is Pro Mundi Beneficio, for the benefit of the world.

Lilly in Panama

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What was that? The flicker of fireflies. I saw the first of them around here late last week. Harbingers of high summer, they are.

After a week in Ecuador, Lilly and her school group went to Panama for a few days. One thing you do there, I hear, is go see the big dig. In their case, at the Milaflores Lock, which apparently has a newish visitor center — dated 2000, right after the canal was finally Panamanian.

Panama, June 2015The cost to get in (Lilly has the ticket): $10. Once in, you get a view of the lock, and perhaps a ship passing through TR’s handiwork.

Panama, June 22, 2015As it happened, the United Banner was passing through. It’s easy to look up in our time: the vessel is a Greek tanker, built in 2007, at 42,010 gross tonnage, and more than 228 meters long. According to marinetraffic.com, it’s currently at anchor just off Colon. Maybe the ship’s waiting for the situation in Greece to sort itself out.

That wasn’t all she got to do in Panama — I’ve heard bits about a boat ride, time at a monkey reserve, a visit to a rain forest, more open air markets, and so on — but the pictures peter out in Panama. I understand completely. I let her take my camera, which isn’t a pocket-sized smartphone gizmo, so there are times when you don’t want to carry the damn thing around.

Lilly in Ecuador

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I don’t have any comments to offer here on the jurisprudence of Justice Scalia, but I do crack a smile at his florid prose, as pointed out again recently by endless commentators (and wags who have fun with him). Such writing comes from having no editor to answer to, and a taste for it. I’ve run across most of his terms before — everyone ought to know “argle-bargle” and “applesauce” (in the way he meant it) for instance — but “jiggery-pokery” was a new one on me.

Or rather, an old-sounding new one. It’s a term of abuse that sounds like it might have come up in a London coffee shop argument about the Bangorian Controversy. I was glad to learn it.

Earlier this month, Lilly went to Ecuador and Panama on a Spanish Club trip. It was a big wheel, little wheel trip — one major destination (Ecuador for a week), one lesser one (Panama for three days).

That’s further than I ever got to go on any school trips, though taking a bus to Stevens Point, Wis., from San Antonio for the Mu Alpha Theta National Convention was its own kind of epic, and Amarillo seemed almost as far (Latin Club trip). It was the luck of the draw for her; some years the club goes to Spain, others Costa Rica. All those sound good to me, but Ecuador especially. South America. I’ve never even been close.

Most of her pictures weren’t selfies. She’s outgrowing a need for excessive self-images, I think. Here’s a view overlooking Quito.

The next pics illustrate her taking after her father, unconsciously I bet, in taking pictures of statues and public art. This particular figure is Francisco de Orellana, explorer of the Amazon. As Wiki puts it, “in one of the most improbably successful voyages in known history, Orellana managed to sail the length of the Amazon, arriving at the river’s mouth on 24 August 1542.”
Quito June 2015Some roadside art.
Quito June 2015Plaza de la Independencia.

She was also impressed by the fact that she could see a volcano from Quito, which I believe is Pichincha. Alexander von Humboldt was the first European to climb it. I hear tell it’s still active.
Quito 2015Of course there were many more places. She visited the tourist Equator — how could you not? — Plaza Santa Domingo, a couple of art museums, open markets, grocery stores, churches, a school (technically they took a few Spanish lessons), the neighborhood in which she stayed with an Ecuadorean family, even the outside of the Ecuadorean presidential palace. All in all, it sounded like a fine trip. I’d need no persuasion to go myself.

Pi ’15

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Pi Day 2015 has come and gone. Word was this one was distinctive in that 3.1415 could also be taken to stand for March 14, ’15, something that happens once a century. A Saturday this year, meaning we were mostly at home doing nothing related to pi. Which would have been the case any other day of the week, come to think of it. But it’s one of those days that’s good to note in passing.

Lilly had a shirt for the occasion, sold for a not-too-outrageous cost by the high school math club or some such.

Lilly March 14, 2015An aggressive Pi, that one. Pushy Pi. Here are other representations of everyone’s favorite irrational number. Too bad for e, always second banana to pi. E Day would be Feb 7, but that’ll never catch on.

Upclose Ornaments

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Today I wasted spent a few minutes taking pictures of Christmas tree ornaments in situ, and then more posting them. Such as the ever-popular Michelin Man.

Ornament 2014It would seem to violate my guidelines about commercial ornaments, and it does. But it’s the Michelin Man. I’ll make an exception.

Ornament 2014We have four of these, acquired who knows where in the last 15 years. Lilly said this year that these were favorites of hers. I had no idea. They are pretty baubles.

Ornament 2014We have two pickles on the tree. One of Ann’s friends saw it almost immediately and wanted to know, with some urgency, why there were pickles on the tree. All I can say to that is Why Not?

Ornaments 2014Not bad for tin and plastic. It’s a “UFO” ornament, acquired many years ago. In theory, they rest on top of lights and glow (the one here is perpendicular to the ground, rather than horizontal). In practice, they never fit very well on any lights, especially the newer LEDs. So we just hang them any old way.

Finally, one with a presidential connection.

Ornaments 2014Well, vice presidential connection. About 10 years ago, I visited the Evanston Historical Society, which happens to be in the former mansion of Vice President Charles Dawes. They were giving away these thin metal ornaments, and so here it is.

A Simple Cake for 17

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This year for Lilly’s recent birthday, we didn’t buy her a cake. Her mother made her one. OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAPear slices on top, creme inside. Most delicious. Want candles, or at least a candle? I asked. The answer: No, that would just be birthday frippery. But she didn’t use that word; she might not know it. Would be good to know for the ACT and its ilk, so I’ll ask her about it.

Maundy Thursday ’14

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Back to posting again around May 4. A pleasant Easter to all.

It’s my spring break time, now that it’s actually more-or-less spring. Not that I won’t be working during the next two weeks. It isn’t that kind of spring break. No one older than about 22 gets that kind of spring break.

Today Lilly and I were out before noon and she wanted to take some pictures of the flowers that bloom in the spring (tra la). So I took a picture of her taking a picture. I think she sent some of her images immediately to friends, as youth does.

Lilly 4.17.2014They bloomed on a small island in the large parking lot at St. Matthew Parish, a Catholic church on Schaumburg Rd. in Schaumburg, Illinois. We didn’t go there to see flowers, though that was nice. Instead, I wanted to take a look at the Stations of the Cross on the grounds. Seemed like a good thing to do on Maundy Thursday, especially when it was almost warm again.

The stations form a semi-circle around a catchment, and are backed by the woods of the Spring Valley Nature Preserve.

St Matthew, Schaumburg 4.17.14 - 1Plaques fixed to a short agglomeration of stones illustrate each station. This is the first one, with Jesus and Pilate.

St. Matthew Schaumburg 4.17.14 - 2There isn’t much information about this particular Stations of the Cross on the St. Matthew wed site, so I don’t know if they were custom made for the parish, or you can get them ready made. Along the way, there’s also a grotto.

St Matthew Grotto, April 17, 2014Like I’ve said before, if you find a grotto, no matter how humble, take a picture. And then pause for a moment.

March Snows

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Snow, melt, snow — repeat. Bitter winter doesn’t quite want to give up, so the tug-of-war with spring is on. The dog’s enjoying the mud. The rest of us, not so much.

March snow isn’t that strange this far north. Here’s a picture I took on March 3, 2002, in Westmont, Ill. Lilly, 4, was making the most of the snow.

Lilly3.3.02That was a winter that didn’t want to give up, either. Even in May — when we were planning to go to Montreal — it was still uncomfortably cool most of the time, until just before we left. I have a feeling we’re going to get another one of those miserable springs again this year.

Turn 16, Eat Fish

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Back again around December 1. There are things to do and things to eat between now and then. This year we might not bother with a separate Thanksgiving dessert, because a fair amount of Lilly’s birthday cake is still around. I can’t resist a half sheet when the time comes, so it always takes a while to get through it all.

As for the main ingredients of the feast — or really, just a large meal, since it won’t be boisterous enough to rise to the level of a feast — it’ll be some variety of large bird. It will not be expertly prepared raw fish. We had that for Lilly’s birthday meal.

I’m pretty sure that isn’t what I ate when I turned 16. But those were slightly different times.