No excuses...

Damn! But it's been a long, long time between updates.

I have lots of news and some nice pictures to post, but hey--I'm lazy, okay? It's a fact of life.

Since I'm grabbing time to post in the midst of a storm of pages here at work, I figure I will be brief now and more loquacious later.

Anyway... here's something I've been pondering since last Friday: Jeff and I stopped at Buffalo Joe's in downtown Evanston on the way home from work to get wings and chips to take home for dinner. As we were walking back to the car, toting our bag of spicy goodness, I looked down at the brick sidewalk for a moment and was struck by how familiar it was. How it just spoke the word home to me. And in an instant that thought took me back fifteen years or so to my last year in San Francisco. One evening as I was walking down Post Street to the Montgomery Muni station after my writing group, feeling so alone and sorry for myself amid the mix of quaint old businesses and soaring skyscrapers... I glanced down and noticed that the sidewalk was sparkling! Whatever components went into the mixing of the concrete for that sidewalk, one of them was catching the light and glistening like tiny pieces of mica--or gold--at my feet.

Not sure what the lesson is in that recollection--if there is any. But I was as struck then as I was last week, just by glancing down at the sidewalk.

Part Two of the Street Fair Stuff

A week after Custer's Last Stand (scroll down a couple of posts if you need a refresher), Evanston holds its Fountain Square Art Festival. Fountain Square is right in the heart of downtown Evanston, and the art festival is one of the jewels in Evanston's street fair crown. I wrote up last year's festival--you can find it in the archives--and this year I headed there on the last Saturday in June to take it all in.

But first, just for my pal Barb...
Ah, the Funnel Cake. Staple of street fairs the nation over--maybe even the WORLD over. But I am proud to say that I withstood temptation and refused to partake of the sugar-dusted confection.

There were a variety of arts and crafts that spanned the spectrum from incredibly expensive original oil paintings to fun stuff to hang in a window on a patio. Here are some "tree earrings" I thought were sufficiently sparkly to whet my magpie's appetite.
I love the autumn hues.

My favorite stuff, though, was, as last year, the guy who made funky creatures and busts out of old found household objects. Here's the tent:

And here are a few closer glimpses of his handiwork:
Some masks,

some cool heads,

and these strange creatures. How I would love to purchase some of his work! Maybe one day. Maybe next year!

This year I picked up a card from his tent, so I can reveal that this funky finery is the brainchild of Steve Meadows of S. D. Meadows Folk Art Gallery in Palestine, Illinois.

I made one purchase at the festival, and that was this woodblock print from Marvin and Wendy Hill that I have coveted since last year:

A few years ago, I purchased a very cool piece from Marvin and Wendy at this self-same show. Since then, though, Marvin has passed away. His wife Wendy is keeping his art and his memory alive, though, by continuing to print, color, mat, and frame his woodblocks. I just love his stuff!

And look what else was at the art festival:
The soft-serve ice cream booth! Yay and yum!

Alas, just as with the fair at Main and Custer the previous week, the weather stepped in to wreak havoc. About a half hour after I returned home, there was a scary blast of wind followed by an intense thunderstorm. But the wind--I've never experienced anything like it. According to news reports, it was 65 miles an hour. And it wasn't just a quick, intense whoosh. It lasted for fifteen seconds or more and it sounded like freight train, with doppler effect and everything. It tore limbs off the trees all up and down our street (a major thoroughfare), and it apparently devastated a large part of the Fountain Square Art Festival. Here's a entry from an eyewitness's blog. I only hope that the artists who lost so much were adequately insured. Still, it's hard to lose work that represents so much imagination, effort, and time.

Next Evanston fair up is not really a street fair at all, but the Evanston Ethnic Arts Festival in Dawes Park. That's next week. I love this fair. I hope we can make it this year. If we do, and if the weather cooperates, I'll provide some pictures and commentary!

Summer's Here and the Time Is Right...

For art fairs in the streets!


Which of course mean lots of food vendors. This picture is expressly for Barb, and she knows why!

Because we live so close to Evanston, almost all of our street fair-going of a summer takes place up there. At the end of June, we hoofed it up to Main Street and Custer for Custer's Last Stand. It's not so much an art fair as a boisterous street fair with lots of arts, crafts, and geegaw vendors:


Oh yeah. And food vendors galore!

See, Barb? EVERYONE had funnel cakes for sale!

We opted for less ostentatious fare--Jeff got some satay from a Thai food vendor, and I indulged my inner Cajun fille with some red beans and rice from these good folks:


Among the food stalls, this incongruity caught my eye:

The sacred flag of the Old Dominion, flying proudly over an Illinois street fair! And the vendor wasn't even selling ham biscuits. The stall purveyed Pan-Asian vegan food! Go figure.

After strolling around and perusing the wares,

(Hubba, hubba! Spicy, indeed!) we gave in to the siren song of the soft-serve booth.


Alas, one cannot always control the weather, for that very afternoon (once we had made our way safely and mostly dryly home) the skies opened.


And they spewed forth dime-sized hail!


I know it's nothing at all like the hailstorm my cyberpal Anne Marie experienced several months ago--we didn't have to replace the roof, for example!--but it was not the kind of weather anyone would want to be caught in strolling around or manning a booth at a street fair!

This is getting kinda long, so I'll save the pictures of the following week's street fair for the next post. See you there!

IKEA, Oprah, and a Possible Mirage

Tonight is random night... just some recent incidents, thoughts, and such...

First, IKEA. Now, I like to go to IKEA occasionally. I like their candles and their kitchen gadgets, and I live in hope of finding a duvet cover in a pattern I like. I don't like it enough to go on the weekends. It's a zoo there most of the time, but weekends are impossible. Since I'm really just biding my time at work, using my office as a staging center for my job hunt, AND since IKEA is having sale, yesterday I decided to take off right after lunch and drive through the half-hour or so of suburban sprawl to get there.

I grabbed a cart and started filling it, but sparingly. Since I was alone, I had to make sure I could carry everything to the car by myself in one trip. Those of you who are IKEA veterans know that you cannot take carts to the parking lot. And there is no system to guard your cart if you have to leave it on the dock to bring your car around.

So anyway, I got some candles, some picture frames, some glass jars with airtight lids, some wooden hangers, a big tote bag to use at the farmers' market...I'm sure there were a few more items. After about an hour of shopping, I headed to checkout where the only real option was the self-serve kiosks. The lines for a cashier were ridiculous, and I had just shy of 15 (smallish) items, so self-serve it was for me. Except the scanner at my kiosk was for shit. I don't know if it's IKEA's self-checkout system in general, or if it was just the kiosk I got stuck with, but the scanner rang almost everything in twice. And you can't just delete the double ring yourself--you have to wait for an attendant to come and key in his or her code. Annoying, but simple, Right? Except that there were nowhere NEAR enough attendants working the self-serve lanes. Each time I double-rung something, it took longer for an attendant to acknowledge the blinking red light that summoned him or her to the problem kiosk. After the fourth double ring, I waited a full ten minutes for an attendant to show up, at which point I just gave up and left all the stuff at the kiosk, half checked out.

And then drove empty-handed back to work. At least a gallon or so of gas wasted... which really sucks nowadays.

Sheesh.

I wonder how long it will be before I venture back there again? Maybe never.

Now to Oprah.

I was "working from home" today, so I decided to do something I very seldom do: watch Oprah. Today was a summer version of her big "favorite things" show where she talks about great products and gives the audience piles and piles of merchandise. When the studio audience found out that this was a giveaway show, they went completely NUTS! The elation! The prayerful, upturned faces mouthing "Thank you, Jesus!" The middle-aged ladies jumping for joy as if they were high-school cheerleaders! The greed was palpable, just oozing out through the TV. It was raw and unfettered. It was so ugly. And all this for stuff I'll bet most of them never, ever use.

The big ticket item was a Weber grill. Audience members received it so that they could grill the to-die-for turkey burger Oprah wants them all to taste made from a recipe from Donald Trump's Palm Beach resort. Other stuff included (and this is not an exhaustive list), a tank top with spandex built in to smooth the torso, "Fit Flops" (a kind of Earth-Shoe-like flip flop), a wheelie weekender bag with a Garvin GPS system and a $200 hotel chain gift card tucked within, lots of make up, a cookbook, a self-help book, a CD of some lady singer...I'm sure there was more, but I don't recall it all.

My point is, how much of this stuff will those lucky ladies (and the handful of men) in the audience ever use? Maybe it's my situation (like, facing the possibility of having to tighten the belt in the fairly near future) that made me find this display of conspicuous consumption and raw greed to be, well, disgusting.

And finally...I walked up into Evanston this afternoon for a little stretch of the legs, and as I returned to Chicago along the lakefront curve, I noticed that I could see downtown, crystal clear. There was the John Hancock building. There was the Sears Tower. And the condo highrises all along the lakefront, marching row upon row all the way down to the Loop. It was beautiful! I wished I had my camera. But it was weird, because I've walked and jogged that stretch a hundred times before and NEVER seen downtown from there.

Later, when Jeff came home from work, we decided to walk up to Evanston again to eat at Cross Rhodes,a small Greek restaurant we like. I grabbed my camera, because I thought that the city would look GREAT in the waning light.

Alas, when we rounded the curve on our way home, the scene was as it always was: lake and more lake. No towering buildings glimmering in the distance.

And now I wonder... did I see a mirage?

A Winter Walk and Other Random Thoughts

This afternoon the temperatures climbed into the thirties (heat wave!), so Jeff and I decided to take a long walk up into Evanston to visit the comic book store (where I discovered in a book about the worst places to live in America that I had actually lived in TWO of them--Allston, MA, and Syracuse, NY) and to take in the Irish session at Nevin's Pub.

The lake was just beautiful. As you can see, it's been a cold winter so far. The shore has really iced up. The photo above is of our little neighborhood beach--the northernmost beach in Chicago.

Here's a view of the lake just about at the Evanston border:



Check out the "icebergs"!

One of the most interesting parts of the walk around the lakefront curve was realizing just how shallow the water has become. When we first moved to Rogers Park eight and a half years ago, the tops of the tallest of these pilings were mostly underwater.



The walk was invigorating, the temperature above freezing, and the sidewalks had been cleared (well, most of them), so we made pretty good time. Once we got to Nevin's though, we had worked up big appetites. Usually, we only opt for a couple of beers and maybe an order of chips and gravy or "harp strings" (fried onion tendrils) to split. Today, though, it was fish and chips for Jeff and bangers and mash for me. Except for the order included EIGHT bangers! Yikes! But you know, I was hungry. Weight Watchers be damned, I ate them all. I'll go back to counting points in the morning.

Alas, when we left Nevin's, the temperature had dropped considerably. At least, it felt like it had. We hoofed it home, though, making better time than we did on the way up to Evanston because we were just so daggone cold!

A nice way to spend a not-all-that-cold Sunday afternoon. Well, not all that cold for a while, at least.

Other random thoughts:

Last night we finished watching The Cranes Are Flying, the fifties Soviet classic about love torn asunder by World War II. I first saw this movie YEARS ago, when I was a college freshman studying Russian. The professor brought this film and several others (Ivan the Terrible, anyone?) to class for us to watch. I remember loving the movie and crying my eyes out. It was a ten-tissue tearjerker, and no mistake. I have owned the Criterion Collection DVD for a couple of years now, but we just never got around to watching it until this weekend. What a wonderful film. It still holds up, after all these years. I cried my eyes out. But the most fascinating thing about the film is the glimpse it gives into Soviet life during the war--the terrible sacrifices, the horrific losses. We pride ourselves on having won that war, but without the involvement of the Soviet Union, Allied victory would have been impossible. Anyway... check it out if you get the chance.

I have a new printer!! My old one died a couple of weeks ago, so I purchased a new one that scans and copies as well. The first thing I printed? The first 100 pages of the novel so that Jeff could start reading and commenting. He gets first dibs! Scary, though.

It's snowing again, although "they" claim it will turn to rain by morning. I am tired of snow. But the idea of rain ON snow. Ugh.

Fall at the Farmers' Market

Even though it's 80+ degrees outside, it's still officially autumn, and--alas!--in only a few more weeks the Evanston Farmers' Market will be but a memory. Until next spring, that is.

This summer we have been almost religious about including the farmers' market in our round of Saturday errands. We try to get as much of our produce there as possible. It's all very fresh, reasonably priced, and delicious.

This year, our biggest discovery has been the fingerling potatoes:



These are about the yummiest potatoes I've ever tasted, thanks to Jeff's deft culinary abilities.

First, he carefully selects the spuds:



As you can see, there are several varieties available.

Then he chops them up, sprinkles some salt and a healthy dose of Old World Central Street spice blend from the Spice House on them, and fries them up in some canola oil. Heaven!

Now that we've gotten hooked on these buttery and wondrous taters, we were a bit worried about how we'd get through the winter without them. However, we are happy to report that our local Jewel has them--for more than those at the market, and not as fresh, certainly, but they have them! Yea!--so we will not have to forego them. Ever. Whew.

For now, we're just availing ourselves of the autumn harvest and basking in the sunshine...

A Bittersweet Fourth

Being a great lover of sparkly things, I try never to miss the Fourth of July fireworks up in Evanston, our neighbor to the north. I know that the Chicago fireworks (always on July 3) are world-class... I just don't do crowds well, and literally millions of people cram themselves into Grant Park and onto Navy Pier for those things. Not for me. And Evanston does some mighty fine fireworks, as you will see.

Usually Jeff and I walk to downtown Evanston and grab dinner at one of their fine restaurants before we head over to Dawes Park for the annual conflagration and patriotic band concert, but this year we had all kinds of things to do (like, um, hooking up our new DVD player/recorder thingy--purchased because the old player stopped playing discs all the way through)... things that kept Jeff busy well into the dark hours of Independence Day. But it takes more than a recalcitrant piece of electronics to keep me from fireworks, so, after dinner, I hoofed it up the lakefront for the display.

Along the way, I passed several parks full of families having cookouts, playing frisbee and badminton and volleyball, just lolling around. In addition to English, these families were speaking in Russian, Chinese, Spanish, Arabic, Japanese, Polish, and a host of other languages, and I thought how wonderful and welcoming the place I live is. 'Cause all these folks were out to celebrate the birth of this great nation. As were all the folks who, like me, were starting to gather along the lakefront for the big show.



I got to the band concert about 2/3rds of the way through, but I easily found a place along the edge of the big fountain by which the band was playing (as you can see, the spray of the fountain had been turned off for the evening).



All around the fountain's pond, kids and dogs were playing, adults were lounging and listening, vendors were selling all kinds of flashy gear and glowsticks. The weather report called for thunderstorms, but over Dawes Park it was clear and pleasant.



People were waving American flags here and there in time to the music, which included a fair amount of Sousa (as you might expect). These kids clearly do not have the flag etiquette thing down, though:



It was when the band played "America, the Beautiful," and the director asked everyone to sing along, that the day lost some of its festive edge for me. I kept thinking about the words--especially the verse about patriot dreams and alabaster cities--and I couldn't help but wonder if we are seeing the end of our nation. The Bush administration is so corrupt and grasping. It has worked so relentlessy to strip our constitution of any power the Founders gave it... I used to think that the Founders had crafted the perfect document. A plan for a government that established certain rights as sacred, but that was able to change over time as times and circumstances required. Throughout it all, each branch of government would keep the others in line if they tried to take too much power for themselves. But now, now we have an executive branch that wants the powers of a monarch--no, of an emperor. And the handlers of our puppet leader (a puppet leader his handlers pulled all kinds of strings to put in power) have now rigged the highest echelon of the judicial branch to do their bidding. The only hope is the legislative branch, but they have, so far, been hesitant and cowardly in dealing with the threat of the unitary executive. I once thought we could recover from the presidency of Bush, fils, once he was out of office. Now I wonder if he will ever leave. All it would take is a well-timed, cleverly orchestrated "terrorist" attack, say, a week or so before the next general election... I worry. I really do. And, yes, once I would have chided myself for such thoughts and told myself to go fashion a shiny tinfoil tricorn. But not this Fourth of July.

Well... at least the fireworks were able to lift my spirits a bit--bread and circuses are effective, you know!

After the band's big finale (more Sousa!), people started to move from the fountain to gather on the rocks that separated the park from the beach:



Out on the lake, boats gathered in the darkening twilight to get a front-row vantange on the display. (I hope they show up in this very dark picture!)



And we waited. And waited. And waited. Then a lovely white and red explosion blossomed in the sky! It was beginning!

But no. More waiting... until everyone was getting a tad antsy.

Finally, it began for real, and we were treated to some quite lovely bombs bursting in air. Enjoy!











As the last cascade of sparks faded in the sky, I allowed myself to hope that the worst is nearly past, and that we can (and, indeed, must) rescue ourselves from the traitors who are intent on claiming our freedoms in the name of some specious guarantee of "safety."



Sic semper tyrannis.

The Arts in Evanston

Last weekend was the Fountain Square Arts Festival in Evanston, our very near neighbor to the north (as in four doors and a cemetery north). The main downtown intersection of Sherman and Church is blocked off, and a host of artists show up to sell their work. It's a nice show (although I really do think that Waynesboro's Fall Foliage Festival Art Show has more variety and just as high quality--see posts for October 2006 for more info), but I really think they have too many photographers touting Kodachrome enlargements of Chicagoland points of interest. There was a lot of other stuff, too, but too many "local interest" photos on offer.

I snapped pictures of a couple of my favorite booths; you can see a detail of one of Aberant Art's works to the left, in all its Willendorfian splendor. This artist takes images from popular culture and art masterpieces and throws them together in amusing collages. Here's another one:



Some of the highlights of the show were the photographer with ultra-saturated photos of Chinese landscapes; the cool and rather creepy woodcuts of the late Marvin Hill (I bought one of his woodcut prints, Trinity of the Sea, several years ago at this self-same show); and the very cool Weener Ware, tiny pop culture images behind clear resin framed in bottle caps and made into jewelry. But the best in show for me were these whimisical objets d'art, fashioned from discarded "objets":



Aren't they cool?

Here are some more for your admiration:



And my favorite...



I just love the color; the flat, yet fluted "hat;" and, above all, the red shades. Alas, too much for my rather thin wallet.

And while we're on the subject of art and art shows, I never got around to posting a picture of the painting I bought at the Fall Foliage Festival show last October... and I promised to. Here it is, a lovely watercolor by Patsy Spilman:



I love the colors, and it reminds me of the banks of the little brooks one finds in my faraway Blue Ridge Mountains. It now hangs in the dining room, opposite the china cabinet and over the sideboard.

Evanston has lots of great festivals over the summer--coming up are the Ethnic Arts Festival in July, which I hope we can make, and the Lakeshore Arts Festival in August, which we will not make this year because we'll be in Marfa for Rachel and Chase's big ass party. And, of course, there are the fireworks on July 4th--just a few days away!

I'll close this post with another picture of the found objets. Look! One of them is waving! Or rising...

Song of the Cicadas

Here in northern Illinois, we're in the midst of the emergence and relatively short life-cycle of the 17-year periodic cicadas, and all I can say is... DAMN! They are LOUD!

None (or too few to make any kind of impact) emerged in my neighborhood in the city, nor, it seems, along the Evanston lakefront, to our north. At least, I have not seen or, more to the point, heard, any in my recent perambulations. But in Glenview where I work?

Close your eyes and imagine the modulated clash of a hundred Theramins, turned to 11. Or, if you are a '50s creature feature buff, imagine the noise of the ants in Them, multiplied, say, a hundred times. You can hear them through the plate glass windows!

It's kind of scary and kind of fascinating and I think if I had to put up with it day and night it probably would be more than kind of crazy making. But you know, I'm going to miss it when those slow-moving bumbly bugs are gone!