Tag Archives: unpleasant weather

Fatehpur Sikri, Uttar Pradesh

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Here we are, in a cold May. Cold and today, rainy. Cold in April is one thing, but in May? Not wintertime freezing cold, of course, but nearly refrigerator chilly. Too cold to lounge around on the deck, which is pretty much my definition of atmospheric chill.

The cold came after considerable warmth last week, even a day that felt hot, during which a dust storm blew through northern Illinois. We didn’t feel the brunt of the storm, just a gusty and dusty edge of it. In all the years I’ve been here, I don’t remember any other Chicagoland-spanning dust storms. Odd.

Out of curiosity, I checked temps in Agra and Jaipur today. At about 2 am IST – the middle of the night – it was 90° F. in Agra. Tomorrow: Abundant sunshine. Hazy. High 106° F. Winds light and variable. As for Jaipur, middle of the night temp, 93° F. Tomorrow: Sunny, along with a few afternoon clouds. Hazy. High 112° F. Winds WNW at 10 to 15 mph.

Zounds. Between Agra and Jaipur, on National Highway 21, is the border of Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. This is what it looked like, leaving Uttar Pradesh, headed for Jaipur.

Behold, the National Highway system of India. Infrastructure, by the looks of it, that is reaping enormous economic benefits. The roads were renumbered in 2010. News of that didn’t reach my part of North America, or if it did, it was a squib of an item, lost in the news churn. Under the new(ish) numbering scheme in India, east-west highways are numbered odd, while north-south ones are even, the opposite of the U.S. Interstate system. The numbers increase as you go west or south. Again, the opposite.

Imagine the government committee meetings, the endless, hours-long committee meetings, that must have gone into renumbering the roads. Was there a bureaucratic faction that pushed not to be like the Interstate system, as a matter of national pride?

Near the border along NH 21, but still in Uttar Pradesh, is Fatehpur Sikri, which Akbar, the third Mughal emperor, made his capital for a little more than a decade in the 16th century. A short-time capital it might have been, but Akbar didn’t think small when it came to developing Fatehpur Sikri – Mughal potentates never thought small, it seems – and so left behind some World Heritage-class sites (and indeed, it is on the UNESCO list).

When we arrived, temps were nowhere near 100+ F. Maybe 80° F. or so, which I count as pleasant.Fatehpur Sikri Fatehpur Sikri Fatehpur Sikri

Turn up the heat another 20° or so, and those broad stone courtyards wouldn’t be that pleasant for tourists or touts.Fatehpur Sikri Fatehpur Sikri

The stonemasons, as usual, did wonders with red sandstone.Fatehpur Sikri Fatehpur Sikri Fatehpur Sikri

Unlike any other big-deal historic site we visited in India in February, roving vendors were allowed inside the complex at Fatehpur Sikri. The vendors tend to swarm, especially if you buy anything from anyone at any moment – as I did, a necklace for Yuriko. I might as well have painted a DayGlo rupee symbol (₹) on my back.

Never mind, Fatehpur Sikri was up to high Mughal standards: a splendor. In one courtyard, an array of Mughal tombs caught my attention, marking resting places on a less grand scale than the likes of the Taj or the Baby Taj.

Royalty gets royal treatment after death, but so many other people were involved in running a court, and they deserved dignified entombments, too. Such as, for example, the overseer of the royal flyswatters. (Servant jobs were very specific in those days.)

I hope our guide for a couple of hours at Fatehpur Sikri got a cut, one way or another, of what we paid to hire the car and driver, on top of the tip we gave him directly. He told us a good many interesting things about the town and its history, but nothing quite as interesting as how an uptick in tourism — mostly domestic tourists, I bet — had allowed him enough money to buy a motorcycle a few years earlier. “Changed our lives completely,” was how he put the impact on his family.

His brother had a souvenir stall near the historic sites, and a clubfoot. We drank tea with them, and in lieu of buying something, I gave him a tip as well. Could be he’s saving for a motorcycle, too, or needs gas money if he’s got one already.

Late Fall Fabbrini

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Tonight’s weather, per the Weather Underground: Windy with partly cloudy skies. Low 11F. Winds NW at 20 to 30 mph. Winds could occasionally gust over 40 mph.

As early as 6 pm, we were getting gusts, but the temps weren’t as low as they would be later. Regardless of temperature, a good time to stay home and hope your 21st-century infrastructure – and I’m glad to say our heater is this century’s vintage – fails you not. Also, that your trees stand up to the gusts.

The weekend before Thanksgiving, when it wasn’t exactly warm, but warm enough for a stroll around a pond, we went to the always-pleasant Fabbrini Park. I also like that name. I picture one of those giant posters advertising the Great Fabbrini, whose giant face, a mustache a yard long, glares from the poster – a caped, top-hatted box-office draw for Vaudeville. He was in some movies and had a short career in early live TV.

Autumn was winding down that day.Fabbrini Park Fabbrini Park Fabbrini Park

Sustenance for the winter. For some animals, that is.Fabbrini Park

A new crop of small memorials at newly planted trees.Fabbrini Park Fabbrini Park Fabbrini Park

Also on the grounds, pickleball. With a pickleball flag?

Pickleballers?

Now it’s too cold for pickleball, or at least I assume that. Maybe nothing less than a blizzard will stop true p’ballers. More likely, the sport continues in warmer places. For all I know, Sopchoppy, Florida is even now evolving into a major pickleball hub.

Winter Preview

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We’re at the front edge of the first winterish event since last spring. A pretty mild event, as November tends to dish out. Come to think of it, winterish is one of the kinds of days you get in November, with others including gray and damp, and ones that are more pleasant than expected. Sunday was one of those latter kind, an excellent day for a cemetery stroll.

Today and tomorrow (11/20-21) amounts to a mild winter preview. The graph to the right barely needs values, since it captures the downward slide well enough without them. Still, the straight blue line is freezing: 32° F., with the gray lines marking 10-degree differences. Red line: Temps. Green line: Dew point. Purple line: “Feels like.”

Dew point is one of those concepts that I need to look up whenever I think about it, which isn’t that often. It’s not as if anyone will ever say to you, “How about that dew point last night? Man!”

Still, it’s good to know things, but for whatever reason, some things have little traction for me when it comes to being remembered or understood; and dew point is one of those. Just another small reason I’m not a scientist.

This afternoon the wind was brisk and some light snow fell. Nothing serious enough to interfere with errands. One of those took me to the vicinity of the Schaumburg Township Library. There has been a vacant lot across the street from the library for as long as I’ve known about the spot – more than 20 years. Signs have come and gone, promising this or that development, then nothing.

Now something has appeared. Or is in the process of appearing, via new construction.

Hopscotch Beer, Bar and Kitchen. A little looking around makes me think it’s not part of a chain. Usually that’s easy enough to find out. This place doesn’t seem to be affiliated with HopScotch Beer and Whiskey Bar in Franklin Park, just south of O’Hare, which still has a Facebook page but seems otherwise to be defunct. Or related to a standalone place called Hopscotch Kitchen & Bar in Oklahoma City, which seems to be in business.

The Facebook page of Level Construction, which is building the site in Schaumburg, says the restaurant will feature “a vibrant gaming area ?, an energetic dance floor ?? and indoor golfing and sports simulators ⛳?.” It included exactly those emojis.

Emojis are no extra charge, I hope.

RIP, Janan Hanna

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Yesterday afternoon was hot and windy, something like a baby sirocco, kicking dust from the baseball field in the park behind our house. Eventually a smattering of rain came, and the wind died down. Not enough rain to soak anything, but toward the end of the day, enough to produce a large, vivid rainbow to the southeast.

Images naturally do its vividness no justice, but I made a few images anyway.rainbow rainbow

Also yesterday I thought about someone I don’t think much about, someone I hadn’t spoken to in over 15 years, when we were both at the funeral of a former coworker we had in common. When the person you think about is a journalist (among other things), it’s easy enough to check to see what she’s written lately, as I occasionally have done over the years. But not in the last two years at least. I know that because, to my shock, I found out she had died in August 2022 at only 59.

Her name was Janan Hanna, and we were close, once upon a time. Throughout 1989, to be specific, just before I left for Japan. RIP, Janan.

Summertime in W.A. ’92

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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

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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

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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

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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.

A Ship of Fools Sailing On

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The first chill of fall is on. Not freezing, not even in the wee hours, so mild in the grand scheme of the year. A warm day in December, brought forward.

More than a tinge of yellow and brown in the trees, but green is still dominant. For maybe a week. Bright colored leaves will soon detach themselves and find their way to the ground, where they will be pushed around and crackling underfoot: a sound of the season universally experienced but less often mentioned. (But not never.)

Not long ago, I watched the video of “Everybody Have Fun Tonight,” which dates from 1986, a vaguely remembered curiosity. I remember the song being OK, even fun – it’s in the title – but not liking the video, which jump cuts like there’s no tomorrow.

That’s an inventive band name, Wang Chung, who hailed from London, and were not the least bit Chinese. “Yellow Bell” in Chinese, Wiki tells me. A foundational term in Chinese music, Music Educators Journal tells me, but my grasp of music theory – Western, much less Chinese – is a flimsy thing, so I can’t pretend to understand it.

After I watched the video once, I watched it again. And a few more times over the course of a week.

The jumpy visual structure bothered me less and less. I was even a touch mesmerized. Soon I began to appreciate the method to its particular madness. It emphasizes the musicians as their parts begin and end against a spare background, especially the two lead members of the band, whose images are sometimes effectively fused as they sing together. But the supporting musicians get their due. It’s really quite remarkable, this video.

I also paid attention to the lyrics. I’m sure I never did, even when the song was on the radio; that was a time of my declining interest in the radio, for one thing. It’s easy enough not to pay attention, which means you hear the refrain, which is smooth as cold beer and seemingly meaningless. Silly, too. Self-referential. Everybody have fun tonight! Everybody Wang Chung tonight!

Though a line or two of lyric hint at seriousness early in the song, if you’re paying attention that is, the lead singer, one Jack Hues, belts out four serious lines at about 2:30, or half way through, that seem to drop from out of nowhere. (Jack Hues is a stage name for Jeremy Ryder, supposedly picked since it sounds like j’accuse. This just keeps getting better.) Hues sings:

On the edge of oblivion
All the world is Babylon
And all the love and everyone
A ship of fools sailing on

We all feel that way sometimes, don’t we? No? Anyway, that’s peppy pessimism.

Those Lazy, Hazy, Crazy Days of Summer. Especially Hazy.

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Tuesday should have been a fine summer day, but it turned out to be our turn. For Canadian smoke, that is. I had a busy day at the word-processing table and didn’t notice anything besides increasing overcast skies as the day progressed. By late afternoon, I saw how strange the overcast was. Like light fog near the ground, but much thicker fog skyward.

When I went out at about 6 p.m., I thought I smelled a hint of wood smoke, but later, around 8 p.m., I couldn’t smell anything, and Yuriko couldn’t either. Acclimated by that time? Maybe.

From the NWS:

From 11:19 AM (CDT), June 27, until 12:00 AM (CDT), June 29

…AIR QUALITY ALERT IN EFFECT UNTIL MIDNIGHT CDT WEDNESDAY NIGHT…

The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency forecasts Unhealthy (U) for fine particulate matter for the Chicago Metropolitan and Rockford regions on Tuesday June 27th. In addition, the Agency forecasts Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups (USG) for fine particulate matter statewide for Wednesday June 28th. Smoke from wildfires in Canada is moving into the region, pushing air quality into the unhealthy or worse categories.

Because of my work, I have unlimited access to three major East Coast newspapers (NYT, WSJ and the Washington Post), so last night I checked them all. You might remember early in June when New York and environs was blanketed with Canadian smoke. That was a BIG NATIONAL STORY! When it happens to Chicago and environs? Of regional interest, way down the page, to go with the heat wave currently gripping Texas.

Today wasn’t as smoky as yesterday, though a light haze lingered. No distinct smell either. Could be that the smoke was worse in the city. Do cities capture smoke, or at least delay its movement more than suburbs? Could be.

It’s been a strange month for weather anyway. Early this month in Los Angeles (more about which later, maybe) instead of balmy summer days, it was in the 60s and misty most of the time. Las Vegas was very warm during the day, but not the blazing heat I expected. Back in northern Illinois, we had a run of about three days cool enough to be April or October in mid-June, and for the entire month, there hasn’t been much rain.