Tag Archives: unpleasant weather

Frog in the Snow & Other February Sights

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Here we are, partway through paradoxical February, which is the shortest and yet the longest month.

Much of the snow has melted, but it will be back. Out in the front yard, near the front door, our metal frog peeps further out of the snow cover.frog in the snow

Elsewhere in the northwest suburbs, machines stand ready to deal with more frozen precipitation.snow plow

I’ve seen flags to warn, or assure, passersby about the solidity of ice, usually green or red for go or no go. But I’ve never seen one that hedges its bets. Red = no ice use. Yellow = own risk.hoffman estates

It’s theoretical for me anyway. I’m not about to walk out on any ice.

Spouting Off Thursday

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Compare and contrast, as my English teachers used to say.

Dusk on February 1.

Dusk on February 2.

For comparison, about the same framing — the view from my back door — but a whole lot of contrast. We caught the edge of the aforementioned winter storm on Wednesday morning. Not a huge amount of snow, just enough to be the usual pain in the ass.

Speaking of which, wankers are on the loose. They always are. Taken at a NW suburban gas station recently. No doubt posted by a true believer, unwittingly on behalf of the listed grifters.

One objection to the Covid-19 vaccine I find particularly irksome — one quasi-rational objection, that is, as opposed to the microchip ‘n’ such crackpot ones — is that it was developed too quickly.

True enough, it was developed much more quickly than any vaccine in history. Know what I’d call that? Progress. You’d be mistaken in believing Progress can cure all of mankind’s many ills, but it does a pretty good job in treating a lot of literal ills.

The other day I read about a woman who favored certain famous quack treatments for a relative dying of Covid-19, and who pestered his no doubt overburdened health care workers about it. One commentator on the situation said that the woman had attended the Dunning-Kruger School of Advanced Medicine.

Next, something a little lighter. Some time ago I was watching a video of “Puff the Magic Dragon,” sung in by Peter, Paul and Mary in 1986. At 2:53, the camera points toward a fellow in the audience, the one with dark curly hair — and instantly I recognized him.

That’s Dave, an old friend of mine I met in in the mid-80s Nashville, where he was from. Later we hung out in Chicago, since he went to graduate school there. These days he lives in Minnesota and teaches art. According to his Facebook page, he’s also a fellow at the Center for Residual Knowledge, Division of Other Things.

Bet I could get a fellowship there.

I didn’t realize the Winter Olympics were starting today until I saw it mentioned online. Upcoming events, according to the site, include figure skating, freestyle skiing, ice hockey, snowboarding, curling, bobsled and Uyghur internment, which is special to these Games.

Genocide aside, and that’s a big aside, I can’t muster much interest in the Games, except maybe for luge and skeleton, the events most likely to inspire spectacular accidents.

Bare Tree

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Sunny winter Sunday today, following snow last night, though only about two or three inches. Not enough to slow anything down. In the afternoon the back yard the sky looked about like this.Bare Tree

But I have to say that I took that picture four years ago in January. Pretty much all the Januaries here in metro Chicago have melded into a chilly gray blur. Still, the days are getting longer, which puts me in mind of days on the deck and distant roads.

Main Street, Bloomington

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Seems like the pit of winter has arrived. That’s not necessarily a time of blizzards or ice storms, though it can be. Mainly the pit is unrelenting cold, and some years the pit is deeper than others — more unrelenting, that is.

So far this year, winter has been bleak-midwinter-ish enough, but not viciously so in my neck of North America. There’s still time enough for northern Illinois winter to turn more vicious, of course.

Ann returned to ISU on Sunday, facilitated by me driving her there. It’s a task I don’t mind at all. We had a good conversation en route and listened to music we both like. I won’t go into the details of that right now, but there is a Venn diagram that includes some intersection. Larger than one might think.

Just before I returned her to her dorm and drove home, we visited part of Main Street in Bloomington. It’s an impressive block. Bloomington should be glad it has survived down to the present.Main Street, Bloomington Ill Main Street, Bloomington Ill Main Street, Bloomington Ill

Not only survived, but the buildings are home to one kind of shop or another, mostly nonchain specialty retailers. In fact, all nonchain as far as I could see.Main Street, Bloomington Ill Main Street, Bloomington Ill Main Street, Bloomington Ill

The 400 block of Main between Market and Monroe Sts. has the strongest concentration of late 19th-century commercial structures, with facades looking well-maintained in our time.Main Street, Bloomington Ill Main Street, Bloomington Ill

Featuring artwork from our time as well.Main Street, Bloomington Ill Main Street, Bloomington Ill Main Street, Bloomington Ill

Not a lot of plaques that I saw, but I did spot one.
Main Street, Bloomington Ill

An organization that’s still very much around, but these days, the Harber Building is home to Illinois Tattoo. Ralph Smedley lived quite a long time (1878-1965), mostly in California, where the organization really took off.

Over a storefront occupied by Ayurveda for Healing, which promises a “holistic path for wellness and optimal health,” there’s a remarkable set of metal figures.Main Street, Bloomington Ill

Detail.Main Street, Bloomington Ill

Ayurveda for Healing, which I assume takes its inspiration from South Asian practices, has three locations, including this one in Bloomington, along with Chicago and Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Just a block over, the 500 block of Main isn’t what it used to be. This is what it used to be, in an image borrowed from the McLean County Museum of History.Bloomington IL Main Street ca 1930

This is what I saw, let’s say roughly 90-odd years later.Main Street, Bloomington Ill Main Street, Bloomington Ill

To take that image of the mural, I was standing in a parking lot where a Montgomery Ward store used to be. Too bad for what has been lost, but fragments are mostly what we have of the past anyway, and it’s good to spot them.

Icy Weekend

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Just when the sidewalks were mostly clear of ice, along (on Saturday) comes freezing drizzle. Just after dark that day, Ann and a friend wanted to pick up a pizza, always a good goal, but I suggested that I drive, since I have a fair amount of experience with icy conditions.

The driving went as expected, a bit slick on the small roads, better traction on the larger ones. The first pizza joint we went to — which offers industrial pies for a fixed price (higher than it was last time, some moons ago) — was completely lighted but locked up. Odd for a Saturday night, but maybe that’s the labor shortage for you. Not actually a labor shortage, I suspect, but a wage shortage. Pay more and those workers will mysteriously reappear.

Would I be willing to pay even more for the pizzas as a result? Maybe. Then again, it’s completely mediocre pizza, best modified with additional toppings at home, to make it slightly better mediocre pizza. So maybe not.

We went to a more expensive place afterward. High mediocre, I’d say. It was open, but a sign at the door managed expectations by saying the place was short-handed, and the order did take longer than usual. I waited in the car while the girls waited inside, and I saw a parade of people come and go. Whatever the labor situation, the demand for high-mediocre pizza is certainly still there.

I saw another customer take a fall on the ice. She was walking in full view of me, and suddenly she wasn’t. But she got up and carried on, seemingly young and uninjured.

When we got home, I tested the surface just outside my car door. No traction at all. So I had Ann and her friend take the food in, and then spread the salt I keep outside, next to the front door, around the car to facilitate me getting into the house without a slip. I made it.

The sun was out today but temps weren’t warm enough to melt to ice, so I was out spreading more salt around. Now there’s traction, but even so, it was slow going taking the trash out this evening. But now it’s out and I’m inside, determined to stay a while.

Most of the Thoughts I’m Ever Likely To Have on Pickleball

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Strong winds last night and into the morning. Strong enough that when I got up, I noticed that our sizable trash and recycle containers were both on their sides. I’d left them upright, ready for collection, the night before. I put on my coat and went out to stand them upright. An hour later, I noticed they were on their sides again. I set them up again and then quit watching.

Strong winds ushering in subfreezing temps, I should add. But no ice on the ground. That’s about all I ask from winter.

Received the following in an email today: “The Margaritaville USA Pickleball National Championships presented by Pickleball Central is USA Pickleball’s premiere event and features about 2,500 of the nation’s best pickleball athletes, including top players Tyson McGuffin, Matt Wright, Lucy Kovalova, Anna Leigh Waters and more…

“If you are interested in attending Media Day on Wednesday, or getting in touch with us for a future story, please see below.”

I wouldn’t mind writing about pickleball, at least occasionally, though I’m afraid it isn’t on my beat. Also, I wouldn’t mind being in Indian Wells, California, site of the event, about now. I didn’t know that anyone keeps track of the nation’s best pickleball athletes, but I do now. The thought of Media Day at the pickleball championships is also intriguing. Wonder how many journalists cover pickleball, even part time?

(Very) Late Summer Debris

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Cool nights, but not that cool, and warm days — at least through the weekend, according to forecasts. It’s that time of the year when summer ebbs away anyway.

As for Fairbanks, I don’t know whether dips below freezing count as the leading edge of winter, or merely a chilly fall. Anyway, summer’s done.

The crickets are still chirping by night hereabouts. But I find that if I leave the window open a crack to fall asleep to them, which I like to do, I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night sneezing. Not because of the crickets — I’m pretty sure — but damned lingering ragweed.

That happened more than once last night, despite a decongestant I took at about 2, and despite closing the window after the first time. I woke up tired this morning. I managed to get my morning work done, took a siesta in the early afternoon, and felt better after that, well enough to finish the day’s work. Such are weekdays sometimes.

When visiting Wisconsin recently, we wondered whether the dog would want to go swimming.
Egg HarborShe did not, though a walk on the beach was fine.

Spotted at a shopping center parking lot recently.

The charging station appeared sometime recently, not sure when. Eventually, they might be so common that no one will comment on them, but I don’t think we’ve reached that point yet.

The Washington Post reported on September 14: “Automakers are betting tens of billions of dollars on the expanding adoption of electric vehicles in the U.S. But a big hurdle for some consumers is the much longer time it takes to charge an EV than it does to refuel a gasoline-powered car. Buc-ee’s Inc., a Texas-based chain of gas-station convenience stores that’s expanding rapidly in the Southeast, could have the answer.”

The gist of the story (for those who can’t access it) is that Buc-ee’s will make — has made — itself so interesting that people won’t mind spending extra time there to charge their cars. Could be. Or it might be the next step for Buc-ee’s toward world domination.

Skeptical? The article also says: “The chain’s origins and most of its locations are in Texas, but they’ve recently added two locations each in Georgia, Alabama and Florida, with new locations under construction in South Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky and Mississippi.”

Juneteenth ’21

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What do you know, Juneteenth’s a federal holiday. I have to say that I made a correct prediction on that score. But it wasn’t really that hard to guess. Anyway, I welcome it, and in fact have tomorrow off.

August-like heat has returned here in northern Illinois, though it looks like next week will cool off a bit after possible rain, as summers tend to do in the North. We could use the rain.

So far much of June has been more like summer down South: early and sustained heat, though not quite as bad as all that, since we haven’t hit 100 F yet. The high was supposedly 90 F today, and it felt like that outside. I had a simple lunch of a sandwich and a banana today out on the deck, make tolerable by the deck umbrella, which cut at least 10 degrees out of that high for me.

An HVAC tech, who has been looking after our air conditioning and heating for years now — I don’t remember how I found his company, it’s been so long — came by the other day for the annual check of the AC. Our antediluvian AC, whose mechanicals were assembled in the 20th century.

It’s a miracle it’s still running, the tech said (I’m paraphrasing). Got my fingers crossed that this won’t be the summer it gives up the mechanical ghost. We shall see. Years ago we bought a central AC unit for our small, postwar-vintage house in the western suburbs, not because the old one failed, but because the house didn’t have one. Imagine taking a new house to market these days without AC. Bet that’s a nonstarter even in a place like Fairbanks.

St. James at Sag Bridge Catholic Church and Cemetery

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Saturday was warm and pleasant, Sunday raw and unpleasant, and today — Ides of March Snow. If Rome had had a few inches that day, Caesar might have stayed home, since the rarity of snow would surely have been a warning not to do any official business. Oh, well.

Except for scattered dirty piles in parking lots, all of the massive February snows had melted by March 14. The March 15 snow will last a few days at most, due to a warming trend predicted for later in the week.

Illinois has a few hills, typically relics of ancient glacial movements. Built on top of one of them, in the village of Lemont, is St. James at Sag Bridge Catholic Church, which got its start in historic times — but still quite a while ago, in the 1830s.

On the slope of the hill is the church cemetery.St. James at Sag Bridge Catholic Church St. James at Sag Bridge Catholic Church St. James at Sag Bridge Catholic Church St. James at Sag Bridge Catholic ChurchOne side of the hill — maybe better to call it a ridge — is quite steep, yet still sports stones.St. James at Sag Bridge Catholic Church St. James at Sag Bridge Catholic Church

The rest of the family had other things to do during the day on Saturday, which as mentioned turned out to be clear and warm, so I headed south for a look around the suburban stretch of Archer Avenue (Illinois 171) between Lemont and the village of Justice.

The urban section of Archer Avenue, “Archey Road,” was the haunt of Mr. Dooley once upon a time, but that’s a matter best left for others to describe (if you feel like paying for access).

In our time, suburban Archer Avenue is a thoroughfare featuring independent and chain restaurants, small office buildings, auto repair shops, liquor stores, churches, schools, municipal facilities, and vast cemeteries. The surrounding forest preserve lands are even larger, the further out you go.

St. James at Sag Bridge is near the junction of Archer Avenue and the north-south Illinois 83, which (to the north) is one of the main transit spines of DuPage County. St. James’ hill also rises near the triple waterways of the Des Plaines River, the manmade Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, and an older manmade leftover of the 19th-century canal-building boom, the tiny-by-comparison Illinois & Michigan Canal.

To the south of the church and cemetery is yet another artificial waterway, the early 20th century Calumet Sag Channel, which gives the area its name, Sag Bridge, for a predecessor bridge of the one that now carries 171/83 across the channel. The Calumet Sag connects the Calumet River system with the Sanitary and Ship Canal, which it joins just to the west of the church. It’s a complicated bit of geography that I was only vaguely aware of before I decided to examine this part of Archer Avenue.

Sag? I wondered about that as well. The full name of the canal is the Calumet-Saganashkee Channel. I didn’t know that either, but learning it generated another question, as is often the case. Saganashkee?

Named after a local feature with a modified Indian name, it seems: Saganashkee Slough, which is a lake on forest preserve land in the area.

“A case in point is Saganashkee Slough,” the Chicago Tribune reported in 1994. “It was formerly a huge swamp that extended from west of 104th Avenue to the limits of Blue Island, and its original name, Ausaganashkee, is a Potawatomi Indian word that means ‘slush of the earth,’ wrote former Forest Preserve District general superintendent Cap Sauer in a historical account written in the late 1940s.

“During the construction of the I&M Canal in the 1830s, a feeder ditch was dug in the swamp that helped supply additional water to the canal. The slough was almost destroyed in the 1920s by blasting during the construction of the Cal-Sag Channel. Saganashkee was reconstructed by the forest preserve district, although in much smaller form, Berg said. At 325 acres, it is still, however, one of the largest bodies of water in the district.”

As for St. James, the church was founded to serve workers, mostly Irishmen, who were building the Illinois and Michigan Canal, with the current structure completed in the 1850s. A place to go Sunday morning after Saturday night revels, and sometimes donnybrooks, at least according to Irish stereotypes. I suspect the congregation is a good deal more diverse these days.St. James at Sag Bridge Catholic Church

St. James at Sag Bridge Catholic ChurchIt’s a handsome limestone building, built from material from nearby Lemont-Sag quarries, which provided stone for Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago and the Chicago Water Tower besides. I understand the St. James interior is quite beautiful, but it was locked when I visited.

The Our Lady of the Forest grotto on the grounds was, of course, open for a look.
St. James at Sag Bridge Catholic Church - Our Lady of the Forest
Compared with the church building, the grotto is new, built in 1998 for the for the 165th anniversary of the parish. See grottos when you can.

(Very) Local Snow Scenes

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After shoveling snow yesterday, I went around outside the house and took pictures. It looks like you’d expect.

Out the back, looking southwest and then south.A lot of damned snow


Nothing we haven’t seen before, but still impressive.

Our driveway.

The plume of snow over our neighbor’s fence is the result of him using his snow blower on his backyard patio. I partially dug out my car, in case I had to go somewhere during the day. I didn’t, so it remains mostly covered.

The view down the driveway to the street, looking north.

Like ours, almost all of the other driveways on the block are still covered a half-inch or so of snow. But yesterday afternoon I spotted one near neighbor using a leaf blower to try to clear that last coat of snow. Whatever, buddy.

Front yard, looking west. Life goes on. It isn’t fully visible in the picture, but the person in blue down the street was walking her dog.

The ridge of snow is next to the driveway. Considerable effort has gone into building it, including our shoveling and then snowfall. It comes up to about my mid-chest.

Now what we need is a string of sunny days just above freezing to slowly wear down the piles. A long string. Not a few really warm days in March marked by rain.