Tag Archives: pleasant weather

Summer Sky ’19

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No chance of seeing the Perseids this year from northern Illinois: overcast skies for the last few days. Not that seeing the light streaks is that impressive here in the light-washed suburbs, anyway.

But some days, the summer sky at dusk makes up for all that. Such as a few weeks ago.

Not all the glory of seeing with your eyes, but some of it. The glow was exceptionally ephemeral. I walked outside and noticed the color. I happened to have a camera in my pocket. About five minutes later, after I finished my outside business — taking out the trash —  the glow was almost gone.

Champaign Stroll & Digressions From Kung Fu to the Match King

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After visiting the University of Illinois Arboretum on Easter, we returned to Lilly’s apartment briefly and took a walk from there a few blocks to the UIUC campus. Blocks heavy with businesses supported by students. Along the way everyone else went into one of them, Kung Fu Tea, for bubble tea to go, while I waited outside with the dog.

Kung Fu Tea is a chain I’d never heard of. Lilly didn’t understand why I was amused by the name. But she’s unable to imagine the following variation on an old TV narrative.

“Grasshopper, when you can take the tapioca pearl from my hand, it will be time for you to leave.”

I just found out that Kung Fu is available on Amazon for no extra charge. I was an intermittent viewer when the show was originally on the air, which was 45 years ago anyway, so I might give it another go.

From Kung Fu Tea, it was a short walk to Altgeld Hall, which I’ve seen before, but not from this vantage.

On we went. A fine day for a walk. The sunny warmth had drawn a number of students to the Main Quad, where they parked themselves on the grass. That’s the Illini Union in the distance.
Some students lolled in hammocks. That’s something I don’t ever remember seeing at any of the green fields of Vanderbilt.

We circled back around the other side of Altgeld Hall and happened across this statue.
That’s the goddess Diana.
A nearby plaque says: The Diana Fountain is a creation of the Swedish sculptor, Carl Milles. It was designed for the court of a building at 540 North Michigan Avenue, Chicago, where it remained from 1930 until it was generously presented by Time Incorporated to the University of Illinois at the request of the Class of 1921.

The Fountain was dedicated here on October 23, 1971, as a class memorial, at the Fiftieth Anniversary Reunion of the Class of 1921.

Then there’s a list of “members and friends” of the Class of ’21, all of whom presumably ponied up some money for moving the statue, as well as the site work and installation. It’s a long alphabetical list from Allman to Zimmer: eight columns of 35 names each. More, actually, since some of the names represent married couples.

Fifty years plus nearly 50 more. Safe to assume all of the Class of ’21 have shuffled off this mortal coil. As has Carl Milles (d. 1955).

Here’s a digression. Another Diana Fountain by Milles is in Stockholm, at a place called the Matchstick Palace. Who built the Matchstick Palace?

The Match King, Ivar Kreuger, that’s who. I ran across him years ago in the wonderful Webster’s New Biographical Dictionary. Wiki gives a fuller description of his activities. His is an astonishing story.

Snow Melts, Dog Guards Her Territory, Ants March and Die

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Sure enough, the inches of snow got busy melting this morning. By noon, it was warm enough for me to stand on my deck in my socks — on the parts where the snow was already gone — without any discomfort. Felt good, actually.

As the meltwater trickled from the roof into the rain gutter, it sounded like this.

The dog has spent a lot of time lately out on the deck, or on the ground near the deck, sniffing and pawing. Even when the snow was thick. My guess is that another animal has taken up residence under the deck. Strategies to block the holes leading under the deck never work from year to year.

Probably a new family of possums. Or raccoons. But not a skunk. I think we would have found that out already.

Speaking of wildlife invasions, little black ants were on the march this weekend, especially around the kitchen sink. I deployed ant bait. By this morning, they were gone, except those that died in the trap. Even so, it could be that Earth is the realm of ants, and they’re merely tolerating us vertebrates.

Theologian Rendered in Bubble Gum

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Saturday felt like the actual first day of spring around here. Warm, partly cloudy, birds atwitter, no coat or even jackets necessary for human comfort.

We spent much of the day in the mid-sized western Chicago suburb of Elmhurst, a pleasant place we briefly considered while shopping for a house more than 20 years ago. We’ve spent some time there since, but not recently, and Saturday was a fine day for walking through some of Elmhurst’s soon-to-be-leafy, soon-to-be-green spaces.

Elmhurst is also home to Elmhurst College, a private liberal arts school that looks every bit like you’d think, with handsome buildings, mature trees, lawns crossed by paved footpaths and students here and there on a warm Saturday.
Some years ago, I took Lilly to a few sessions of the Elmhurst College Jazz Festival, whose high school and college performers play at the college’s at Hammerschmidt Chapel.
Elmhurst College dates from the 1870s, founded roughly at the same time as Vanderbilt, though it doesn’t seem to have evolved into the same sort of academic leviathan. I’m glad some institutions still eschew the upgrade to university and call themselves colleges. I suspect that Elmhurst charges about the same stratospheric tuition as Vanderbilt, however, and there’s no excuse for either of them in that regard.

These days, the college is affiliated with the United Church of Christ. It was founded by the German Evangelical Synod of North America, or the Deutsche Evangelische Synode von Nord-Amerika, one of the 19th-century predecessor denominations of the UCC.

Here’s Old Main. Or the Hauptgebaude, which remarkably has its own Wiki page. One of the more handsome structures on campus, I’d say. The front.
And the back.
The college has a gazebo. Minor, but still a gazebo. All colleges should.

What’s this? I noticed a statue not far from Old Main, standing in its own plaza-like spot.
A founding bishop with “Knowledge is Good” carved on the base in German? I’m not sure the denomination had bishops; probably not, but never mind.

No. It’s a statue of Reinhold Niebuhr in an animated pose.
I didn’t expect that. My own ignorance was at work. Niebuhr did his undergraduate work at Elmhurst College, class of 1910. His brother H. Richard, also a theologian, likewise went to Elmhurst.

In 1997, Niebuhr was honored with this regrettable chewing-gum statue, the work of the late Robert Berks, who is better known for his bubble-gum Einstein in Washington, DC, though I’ve also encountered his Carolus Linnæus statue at the Chicago Botanical Gardens. Carved on one of the white blocks is the Serenity Prayer, which is widely attributed to Niebuhr.

Sad to say, most of what I learned about Niebuhr at Vanderbilt — and I’m pretty sure I learned something — has evaporated after nearly 40 years. He was a U.S. public intellectual in any case, informed by his theology. Is there such a thing any more?

Hercules Mulligan, Patriot

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I had ramen at home for lunch on Friday. Unremarkable, except I ate my ramen sitting out on the deck. No coat necessary to keep warm. The setting made the tasty noodles, vegetables and broth that much better.

The warmth didn’t last. It couldn’t. By the evening, drizzle. By Saturday, a late winter chill that hasn’t gone away even yet. Today came the bonus of wind gusts blowing the only way wind blows in cold weather: in your face.

Croci and a few weeds and a purple flower or two now poke out of the ground to tease us about spring. Maybe that counts as cruel. But April is also the month when, suddenly, the grass will be green again.

A couple of weeks ago, I decided it was time to read Ron Chernow’s biography of Alexander Hamilton, which has been on my shelf for quite a while. I don’t regret it. It’s a weighty book, as befits a weighty subject, but also a lively read that illuminates Hamilton’s character and ideas.

There are also plenty of interesting and sometimes entertaining supporting characters. My favorite so far: Hercules Mulligan, only partly for the name. Hamilton met him not long after coming to New York, just before the Revolution.

“[Hamilton] had all the magnetic power of a mysterious foreigner and soon made his first friend: a fashionable tailor with the splendid name of Hercules Mulligan….” Chernow writes. “Born in Ireland in 1740, the colorful, garrulous Mulligan was one of the few tradesmen Hamilton ever befriended. He had a shop and home on Water Street, and Hamilton may have boarded with him briefly…

“Later, during the British occupation of wartime New York, Mulligan was to dabble in freelance espionage for George Washington, discretely pumping his foppish clients, mostly Tories and British officers, for strategic information as he taped their measurements.”

Later, regarding the events associated with Evacuation Day in New York — November 25, 1783 — Chernow relates the following: “The morning after he entered New York, Washington breakfasted with the loquacious tailor, Hercules Mulligan… To wipe away any doubts about Mulligan’s true loyalties, Washington pronounced him ‘a true friend of liberty.’ ”

Mulligan ought to have a plaque somewhere on Water Street. He’s buried in Trinity churchyard in Lower Manhattan. If I’d known that last year, I might have looked for him.

As for Evacuation Day, New York holidays aren’t any of my business, but that’s one that ought to be brought back, even if it’s more-or-less at the same time as Thanksgiving.

Christmas &c

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Only a few days after Christmas, I started seeing Christmas trees chucked out by the curb, as I do every year. And as I do every year, I think that’s too soon. Done right, the run up to the holidays should begin around December 21 and not peter out until after January 6. Our tree’s still up. So are the outdoor lights.

We opened our presents on the 21st this year. The next day, Yuriko and Lilly were off to Japan, returning on the 3rd.

For Ann and I, the holidays were mostly quiet and relaxing. Food, reading, electronic entertainment, as usual. One day Ann even persuaded me to watch Elf with her, which I’d never seen, but which she’s seen a number of times with her sister. It was a lot better than I thought it was going to be.

The weather even cooperated for the most part. Some recent days have been cold, a handful warmish for this time of the year, but no polar vortex events have struck. Some rain, making back yard mud for the dog to investigate. A little snow, but it all melted after a few days.

Made it into the city a few times, including on Boxing Day. Wandered around looking at downtown decorations. The holiday windows at the former Marshall Field’s were again uninspired (unlike a few years ago), but I’m glad to report that Union Station’s Grand Hall was done up well this year.

At the Chicago Cultural Center, we spent some time at an exhibit about South Side nightclubs of the Jazz Age, and a little later. Included was a telephone you could dial to listen to songs of the period.

It’s important somehow, I don’t know why, that she appreciate the operation of a rotary dial.

October Scene

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Yesterday and today were unseasonably warm. They were also a Monday and Tuesday, so I didn’t have a lot of time to lounge around on the deck outside and enjoy it. In theory, I could take my computer outside and work there, but the charms of a warm afternoon are distracting when there’s laptop work to be done, and the screen can be hard to see.

But I did have a few minutes in the afternoon to look up at the sky.

That’s to the southeast. The puffy mass was moving fast and left my view pretty quickly, replaced by grayer clouds that dropped some rain about 30 minutes later.

Does the dog care about the weather?

Who can say? But when the wind is up, she does sniff vigorously.

Early October Debris

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We acquired some pumpkins today.
For now they’ll be on the deck, at risk of squirrel attack. I suppose we’re aspiring to jack-o-lanterns, but the way things go, we might not do any cutting until October 30.

A recent press release I received said, in part: “_____ chewables are refreshing… tablets that ward off fatigue, foggy head and nausea.

“Using Japanese _____, an ancient detox extract with hangover prevention properties and anti-inflammatory effects, _____ also contains potent antioxidants that replenish lost electrolytes. They boost immune support, hydration and give your liver much needed love.”

That should be “much-needed love,” but I’m nit picking. Yet it’s true, we just don’t love our livers enough in this country. Think of all that the liver does for us, and what do we do to it (some of us, anyway)? Lacquer our livers with alcohol.

Even so, I decided to opt out of more mail from that source. I get a lot of email as it is.

The camera does odd things sometimes.
That or I accidentally recorded the dog receiving a telepathic message from her home planet. It’s well known that such messages generate a fleeting green glow at the back of the eyeball.

A recent dusk.

Not long ago I saw a rainbow at about the same time of day. I was able to tell Ann, “Rainbow at night, sailor’s delight, rainbow at morning, sailor take warning.” She’d never heard that. Modern education is pretty much a failure when it comes to weather proverbs. Or is it “red sky”? Both versions exist, as far as I can tell.

The Rain of October 1

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After dark yesterday, I heard the mild rumble of thunder off in the distance. Had rain been forecast? I hadn’t checked. Turned out, it was, and soon we got heavy rain that lasted an hour or so. Not much more thunder, though.

At about 9:30 I parked myself on the couch in the living room and listened to the pleasant rainfall. I had my audio recording device handy.

Then it occurred to me that my roof and walls were muffling the robustness of the falling water. So I got up — it was an effort — and stood just outside the front door for a short time.

The best version of rain-sound is between those two, achieved by opening a window during a heavy rain and listening from somewhere a little removed from the window. But I didn’t test this idea last night. Instead, I went back to the couch for a leisurely while.

Recent Sounds

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I take my digital audio recorder some places that I go — I’m resisting the temptation to call it a “tape recorder” — and sometimes to step outside the door and record the ambient sounds.

Such as outside my mother’s house in San Antonio last month. The birds were a lot livelier than in the cold Illinois I’d left, and the selection of birdsong somewhat different, though I can’t pinpoint the exact differences.

In Marathon, Texas, late last month the wind blew much of the night and into the morning one day. I captured 20 seconds of it, but it went on without much pause for hours.

The spring rainstorms in northern Illinois have been numerous and loud recently. This is what I heard from my front porch about 24 hours ago.

The rain had stopped by the morning and the sun dried up a lot of the puddles today. But not everywhere. The back yard is still marshy.