Scraps of Mid-September

Sept 13, 2012

Some rain, some sun, hot some days, cool others. After dryness and more heat than usual, this September is turning out to be fairly ordinary, at in terms of the weather outside my door.

The gas bill came today. For the period August 10 to September 10, the charge for the natural gas itself was $7.50 – 19.22 therms at 39 cents each. The FAQ section at the U.S. Energy Information Agency reminds me, because I’d forgotten, that a therm equals 100,000 Btus. So we used nearly 2M Btus over 30 days to heat our water and cook some food. For some reason, the thought of using a few million of anything makes me smile.

That’s not the majority of the bill, however. Delivery charges were $14.40, or nearly twice as much as the gas charge. Guess it’s worth it. Natural gas would be a little tricky to pick up and take home yourself.

On the Wednesday before Labor Day weekend, I had jury duty. I have a receipt now to prove that I showed up, as summoned, at the downtown location of the Circuit Court of Cook County on August 29, 2012, and received $17.20 for my trouble. (Almost enough to pay the gas bill.) And what did I do? I read a book and worked on an article on my laptop.

I got a panel number and sat in the non-TV side of the large waiting room and waited. As the morning stretched on, other panel numbers were called and people left the room to report to their judges, but my number wasn’t called. I read 1493 by Charles Mann, an engrossing book about the Columbian Exchange. I worked on my monthly CRE tech article. I waited.

Lunch came and went – there’s a really good pita place, aptly called Pita Express, in the food court of the State of Illinois building (Thompson Center) – and by about 3, only a few of us were left uncalled. The woman in charge of the room then said, “You’ve done your jury duty, come collect your checks.” That was that.

A quote from The New York Times a little while ago, in the obit for actor William Windom:

“While stationed in Frankfurt, during the postwar Allied occupation, [Windom] enrolled in the new Biarritz American University in France and became involved in drama there. ‘To be honest, I signed up because I thought it would be an easy touch,’ he told The New York Times in an interview for this obituary in 2009, ‘and we had heard that actresses had round heels.’ ”

Round heels. There’s some slang you don’t see often any more. Maybe that's just as well, but I still enjoy running across old slang in new articles.

Clark Street Bridge

No more posting until after Labor Day. Maybe I'll see a thing or two between now and then. It's been known to happen.

This is the Clark Street Bridge in downtown Chicago, as it appeared very recently.
 

This is the Clark Street Bridge, rising into the air. Sure, it's pivoting on its fulcrum, but still. An engineering marvel.

Today I also learned that Carl Sandburg wrote a poem called "Clark Street Bridge." He must have been inspired by the older one on the site, since the bascule bridge pictured here was built in 1929, while the poem dates from the 1910s.

DUST of the feet
And dust of the wheels,
Wagons and people going,
All day feet and wheels.

Now. . .
. . Only stars and mist
A lonely policeman,
Two cabaret dancers,
Stars and mist again,
No more feet or wheels,
No more dust and wagons.
     Voices of dollars
     And drops of blood
     . . . . .
     Voices of broken hearts,
     . . Voices singing, singing,
     . . Silver voices, singing,
     Softer than the stars,
     Softer than the mist.

Gem of the Lakes © 1990

There’s a plaque at the foot of the larger-than-life bronze sculpture in the Winter Garden at 311 S. Wacker in downtown Chicago, which is also part of a fountain. The plaque says: GEM OF THE LAKES © 1990 Raymond Kaskey.

Kaskey is best known as the “principal artist” -- the detail man, in other words -- of the World War II Memorial in Washington DC, designing the bronze eagles, the wreathes, the many bas-reliefs, the haunting bronze star field on the Wall of Valor, even the flagpoles. As such, I’d say he did a fine job. It was the overall design by architect Fredrich St. Florian that didn’t greatly impress me.

I thought that © was odd, right there permanently on the bronze plaque. But then I read about another statue by Kaskey in Portland, Ore., called “Portlandia” (1985). Joseph Streckert writes in Not For Tourists, “Downtown Portland's Fifth Avenue transit mall has a lot of what you would expect -- buses, trains, and commuters, for instance. Look up, though, and you might notice a giant woman holding a trident.

“Sitting on the ledge of Michael Grave's postmodern Portland Building is 'Portlandia,' a symbol of Portland that never took root...  Most of this can be attributed to artist Raymond Kaskey's retention of 'Portlandia's' copyright. Kaskey never allowed his work to be put on key chains, t-shirts, shot glasses, or calendars. Portlandia was to be in the (not very good) Madonna film Body of Evidence, but Kaskey sued Paramount and had footage of his statue removed from the final cut.”

So the © is in character. If Kaskey feels that strongly about it, I won’t publish any pictures of his statue here, fair use though it may be, and it will just another (incredibly minor) step on the way to future obscurity for him and his work, despite the high visibility of the WWII Memorial. It’s a moot point anyway, since the light wasn’t right for good pictures, especially of the face. But of course other people have published images: Google Images reveals some, including the statue wearing a Blackhawks jersey, which must have been after that team won the Stanley Cup.

Emporis, at least, describes the work this way: “It depicts a large Neptunian figure drying himself over a seashell fountain.” I’ll go along with that. A buff dude with a long beard. And still very green after 20+ years, so building management must keep him nice and clean.

311 S. Wacker

The event I attended yesterday was at the Winter Garden, a six-story indoor space at 311 S. Wacker, one of Chicago’s taller skyscrapers. Seventh-tallest in the city, in fact, which I didn’t know till I looked it up. According to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, the killjoys who took the tallest-building title away from the Sears Tower once upon a time, 311 S. Wacker is the 74th tallest building in the world. I didn’t know that either, but why would I?

A little more on 311 S. Wacker: It’s a Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates design, about 1.4 million square feet in 65 floors. I remember it under construction in the late ’80s – it’s a very late ’80s building, if you asked me – but didn’t get to see it complete until later, since I was out of the country by the time it was finished in 1990.

It stands pretty close to the Sears Tower, across the street in fact, so 25-words-or-fewer architecture tour guides can point to the Sears Tower and say, “That’s the modern one.” And then to 311 S. Wacker: “That’s the postmodern one.”

So there I was in the 74th tallest building in the world, looking up at the ceiling of the Winter Garden. The floor is below ground level, but the glass ceiling is well above it. (See yesterday for a picture of the floor.)

I couldn’t say for sure, but I think those palms are embalmed. Not like people are, but like large plants can be for public spaces exactly like this.

Gas For Less

Not long ago the girls and I went into the city on a hot Saturday afternoon. We ate lunch at Elly's Pancake House, which is a busy place at the corner of North and Clark -- something else used to be there, but I can't remember what. Then, to escape the heat, we went across the street to the Chicago History Museum, which I still think of as the Chicago Historical Society.

I wasn't in a picture-taking, note-taking mood.



So the only picture I took inside the museum was of a neon sign that caught my eye. It was pretty hard to miss.

Irish Pipes

One pretty good way to start your weekend is with some bagpipes.



These happen to be the Shannon Rovers of Chicago, playing in downtown Chicago at a real estate event I attended toward the end of last week. They played -- I don't remember, but they were bagpipe-y tunes, skillfully done.

As the name suggests, the Shannon Rovers are an Irish pipe band. A history of the organization is here, stating that the early goals of the club were, "for the promotion of Irish music and to help members who are in distress; to run dances and social affairs; to finance these objectives." Unstated is the opportunity to drink, but I won't dwell on old Irish stereotypes.

The 2012 Transit of Venus

I did a quick check about Copernicus yesterday and found out a few things. I hadn't realized that element 112 had been named "Copernicium" about two years ago. Or that Copernicus and Kepler have a feast day (May 23) in the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church. A full facsimile version of De Revolutionibus is available on line, but my meager learning isn't up to anything more than glancing at it.

Also, there's this from the National Science Foundation. One of the survey questions is, Does the Earth go around the Sun, or does the Sun go around the Earth? It looks like about 70 percent of Americans go along with heliocentrism; which means that 30 percent do not. What? How is that possible? And somehow I don't think that 30 percent objected to the question based on the fact that the orbit of the Earth is an ellipse with the Sun at one of the two foci.

Anyway, on the grounds of the Alder on June 5, not far from the statue of Copernicus, a transit enthusiast had set up a large pair of binoculars mounted on a frame so that they swiveled up and down. The instrument was fitted with a solar lens and people were lined up to look through it. I joined the line at once. Next to me were a couple of youngish fellows, one from near Chicago, the other passing through (I think he was a Korean student living in St. Louis, but I didn't get all the details). We talked about the transit, and they told me Venus was at about 1 o'clock on the disk of the Sun.

So I looked again through my eclipse glasses and after a few moments I saw a round dot on the Sun, a little faint but there at roughly 1 o'clock. A few minutes later I saw the transit again through the binoculars, and after that through a larger telescope, but I first saw it with my (nearly) naked eyes at about 5:30 CDT under clear blue Chicago skies.

Point Venus, Chicago

To reach the Adler Planetarium, our Point Venus for the June 5 transit, I took a train downtown, arriving just before 5 pm. Yuriko, the girls and Lilly's friends were already there, and I was going to meet them. I walked part of the way, but broke down and hailed a cab on Michigan Ave. for the rest of the trip.

At first the cabbie was one for small talk, in Middle Eastern-flavored English, and I mentioned the transit to him. I'm not sure what he made of it. I also said there was an important election going on in Wisconsin, and I'm sure what he made of that, either. But he must have been eager to please his fare, since he found a news station on the radio to listen to while we were stuck in traffic, which was a lot. It was rush hour, after all.

On one station a couple of goofballs were talking about the transit, something along the lines of this can't possibly be interesting because it isn't a CGI three-ring circus. But they did confirm that the transit was under way. So I took out my pair of eclipse glasses and looked at the Sun through the cab window. I could tell the cabbie was trying to see what his odd passenger was up to, but I didn't explain.

I also didn't see anything on the disk of the Sun which, through the glasses, looks like a pale traffic light. But then again the cab soon moved and I lost my view. Traffic on Solidarity Drive, which leads right up to the Adler, was achingly slow, so I paid my fare and walked the rest of the way to find a better vantage point. But first I noticed this statue in front of the planetarium.




It's none other than Copernicus. At that moment, in fact, it was a statue of Copernicus watching the Transit of Venus, something the man Copernicus never got to do.

Passing by the Beasties

Everyone has a Beastie Boys story, don't they? No? It's never good when anyone only 47 dies of cancer, but I have to say that the band left a very light impression on me. Except for the time I rode in the same El car as a number of Beastie Boys fans. It was a fairly crowded car, but they stood out. How do I know they were Beastie Boys fans? They weren't shy about it.

No property damage or fights occurred during their ride, but they sounded like they were up for either. After a few minutes of noise, the lads got off to see the band at the Aragon Ballroom, which is on the North Side of Chicago, within sight of the El. I did some looking around, and that must have been during the Beasties' infamous 1987 tour.

Stephen Thomas Erlewine writes in Allmusic: "In fact, Licensed to Ill became the biggest-selling rap album of the '80s, which generated much criticism from certain hip-hop fans who believed that the Beasties were merely cultural pirates. On the other side of the coin, the group was being attacked from the right, who claimed the Beasties' lyrics were violent and sexist and that their concerts -- which featured female audience members dancing in go-go cages and a giant inflatable penis, similar to what the Stones used in their mid-70s concerts -- caused even more outrage. Throughout their 1987 tour, they were plagued with arrests and lawsuits, and were accused of inciting crime."

Remarkably, I'm able to pin it down: They played the Aragon on Friday, March 13, 1987, according to this fellow, who claims to have documented the many concerts he's been to. I'll go along with that. I don't have any record of what I did that night, but I was out doing something, and it's what I think of on those rare occasions when I hear about the band, such as this week.

Two Aprils Colder Than March

My old colleague Peter -- back from when we worked for the same publishing company that produced paper-based products -- e-mailed me and the rest of his family and friends today to tell us that he'd had a question published in Ask Tom Why. That's a daily column in the paper and electronic versions of the Chicago Tribune in which Tom Skilling, the local Duns Scotus of weather, fields weather-related questions. That is, he deals in catnip for weather nerds, and boy did he deliver today, discussing the odd cool April we've had this year, following the warm March.

 Peter wrote: "First, here is the question I asked Mr. Skilling: 

"Dear Tom, 'Could you elaborate on the spring of 1907? As you say, it was the other time April ended up colder than March. But in that case it was a slightly mild March followed by a brutally cold April. And if that wasn't enough, that May was also among the coldest ever. We might be farther ahead with spring foliage now, than the end of May/start of June that year.' 

"He cut short the question, but answered it well enough: 

"Dear Tom, 'Could you elaborate on the spring of 1907, when the only April other than the current one ended up colder than the preceding March?' 

"Dear Pete, 'March 1907, averaging 42.6 degrees, was nothing like our historically warm March 2012, which averaged 53.5 degrees. March 1907 was cool through the 20th, with the highest reading only reaching 63 degrees. The end of the month turned considerably warmer, with five days in the 70s and the month's high of 80 on March 23. April (average temperature 39.8 degrees) and May (51.6 degrees) were both very chilly and well below normal. April's highest temperature was just 70, and May -- which notched a lone 80 -- even logged a 1.3-inch snowfall on the 3rd. The summer that followed was cool with all three months averaging below normal. There were only four 90-degree days and the season's highest reading was just 92, recorded on Aug. 11 and Sept. 1.'

Did You See Jackie Robinson Hit That Ball Near Block 37?

One more curiosity from my downtown wanderings this week. I saw this on State Street, just outside the entrance to the Block 37 retail shops.


Or rather, I saw and heard this array of (I assume) little lamps on small poles, because a speaker in the flowerbed played a song, namely, "Did You See Jackie Robinson Hit That Ball?"

A nearby sign explained:

HEAR THE SOUNDS OF AMERICA'S PASTIME

From all-American hits to the roar of the crowd, baseball season has come to Lightscape: A Multisensory Experience on State Street.

ChiLights.com

The Tamale Spaceship Truck

During my recent visit downtown, I also caught sight of the Tamale Spaceship truck.

On the side of the silvery vehicle is this figure.

According to the Tamale Spaceship's web site, "We are a catering-food truck company based in Chicago area featuring the authenticity of Mexican cuisine. We are inspired by Luchadores (Mexican Wrestlers) with a mission to bring to the streets homemade tamales with authentic regional dishes and classic moles from all over Mexico."

Still, I wonder. Does that creature help sell tamales? Maybe it does. I might have bought one myself, if I hadn't had lunch already, and if the driver had been around.

Lower Wacker Drive, Spring '12

I was downtown today, and my route took me past this view of Lower Wacker Drive, which is under reconstruction. It's unusual because the fence around the work is usually hard to see through.

I stood just outside the entrance to the Sears Tower and watched the excavator in the lower right do some excavating. As far as I know, it didn't uncover anything as interesting as a forgotten bomb shelter.

The Schiller Park Greyhound Track

While coming home from an event in Rosemont on Tuesday, I stopped for a light at the intersection of Lawrence Ave. and Mannheim Road (US 12), which is on the eastern edge of O'Hare International Airport and (I think) happens to be in the small suburb of Schiller Park. I noticed a sign I'd never noticed before, and I happened to have a camera handy. Normally I'd take such a picture for reference only, but it turned out reasonably well, considering it was taken on an overcast day through a car windshield. So here it is.

Former Site of Dog Track • Raced Greyhounds • Schiller Park Historical Commission (Bullet points added.)

So a dog track used to be here. O'Hare was built in the 1950s, so it must have been before that. Maybe on clear, moonless nights when the traffic isn't so heavy, you can stand near the sign and hear the faint baying of ghostly hounds, forever rounding the track to the cheers of Depression-era working men.

Curiously, according to testimony heard by the U.S. Senate Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce in 1950, "During the heyday of Al Capone, the Capone syndicate was in control of dog tracks in virtually every part of the country... The Capone syndicate czar of dog racing during that period was Edward J. O'Hare, who was killed in gang warfare in Chicago on November 9, 1939."

Edward "Easy Eddie" O'Hare testified against Capone in the early '30s and for that, we can be sure, he eventually bought the farm. He was also father of the fighter pilot Edward "Butch" O'Hare, for whom the airport is named, and who didn't live much longer than his dad, since he was killed in action in the Pacific in late 1943.

It seems likely that the Schiller Park dog track would have been in the orbit of the elder O'Hare. For all I know, the track might have been small potatoes to him, but he surely must have visited on occasion. I doubt that he could ever imagined something so important in the area would someday have the same name as him, though honoring his son.

201 W. Madison, the Poetry Garage

Snow tonight, the kind we usually get often from December through February, not just on scattered days during the winter. The entire day was cloudy, with some drizzle. In the early afternoon, I looked out the window and saw light rain and large snowflakes falling together -- almost straight down, since there was little wind. There was no reason to go out today, so I didn't.

Yesterday I needed to be downtown for a few hours. On the way back to my train, I noticed that the parking garage at 201 W. Madison now calls itself the Poetry Garage. I used to pass by that structure often, but never noticed that it had a floor-remembering scheme. I've seen other such memory schemes, of course, including one featuring a different Chicago sports team for each floor at the long-term parking garage at O'Hare. But this is the first one I've ever noticed, and may be the only one anywhere, that uses poets or any literary figure toward that end.

"Each level will be represented by a culturally significant poet from various historical periods and poetic genres," says the facility's web site. "Sights and sounds of poetry will entertain parkers and enable each guest to remember where to find their car. With a facade designed by Lucien LaGrange, this architecturally significant parking garage was designed to exceed the stringent and evolving city aesthetic code requirements for parking garages."

I'd be surprised if the city's "aesthetic code requirements for parking garages" is actually that strict, but never mind. Good idea, Lucien, if that was your idea (he's an architect I've met a few times). The poets and their floors are as follows:

2nd Level: Billy Collins, "Forgetfulness."
3rd Level: Ernest L. Thayer, "Casey at the Bat."
4th Level: Emily Dickinson, "Success is Counted Sweetest."
5th Level: W.H. Auden, "The More Loving One."
6th Level: Alberto Rios, "The Cities Inside Us."
7th Level: Kay Ryan," A Hundred Bolts of Satin."
8th Level: Carl Sandburg, "Languages."
9th Level: Langston Hughes, "Harlem."
10th Level: Robert Frost, "Mending Wall."

Italian Sausage & A Visit to the Expo

Over the weekend we visited our old haunts in the western suburbs, and had a fine supper at a place called Phillies in Willowbrook, Illinois. "Old Fashioned Thin Crust Pizza is Our Specialty," its card says. The girls had some pizza, and it was a good thin-crust pie all right. I had a first-rate Italian sausage sandwich.

Good food is important, but Phillies has something else no other restaurant I've ever been to has: an entire room dedicated to the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893. Dozens and dozens of framed photos of the world's fair hang on the walls of that room, with some other pics scattered around the rest of the restaurant. Buildings, interior shots, pictures of people attending the fair, machines on display, the first Ferris wheel, and more -- including two rows of photos of denizens of the Midway Plaisance in native costume. It was a marvelous exhibit.

This list gives a good idea of the variety to be found on the Midway during the fair, and these photos include some of those on the wall at Phillies, especially the individuals posed in their native garb. As we were leaving, I made sure we all looked around the room. "As soon as I get my time machine," I told the girls, "I know where I'm going."

Christkindlmarket Chicago '11

I visited at the Christkindlmarket Chicago on Friday as an appendage to a longer visit downtown, as during previous years, since it isn't something I would make a special trip just to see. The ornaments are pretty and all, but not so dazzling that I'd drive to a Metra station, ride an hour on a train, and walk six or seven city blocks just to gaze upon them.

Nice baubles.

It might be a misapprehension, but it seemed like there were more food vendors at the market this year than before. Such as this purveyor of pretzels.

It was a fairly cold day, though not actually freezing -- been a strange December that way so far, with little snow or ice. But it was cold enough for pigeons on Daley Plaza, site of the Christkindlmarket, to seek out warmth wherever they could.

That's Daley Plaza's Eternal Flame, dating from 1972, whose plaque says, Eternal flame in memory of the men and women who have served in our armed forces. Army, Marines, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard, National Guard, Reserves and Merchant Marines. In Pigeon, it might be called "the Warm Place Always."

Norma Jeane and the Robot King

In the summer of 1978, I took some summer school classes and one day happened to be at the school library after class when two fellows I knew, Lester and Trey, brought in an odd-looking piece of equipment and took it to one of the library's audio-visual rooms, where they fooled around with the thing, connecting it to a television. It was an Apple II.

Whose machine it was or where they got the money for it, I don't know. I joined them for a while, but soon decided it wasn't my kind of hobby. A lot of other people felt differently and, eventually, I also came around to an admiration for Apple products. RIP, Mr. Jobs.

After poking around the Lurie Garden downtown on Sunday, we walked northward on Michigan Ave. until we reached the giant statue of Marilyn Monroe near the Tribune Tower. It's the work of J. Seward Johnson, the same fellow who did the play on "American Gothic" a couple of years ago. That statue, I liked. Johnson added a fillip to the icon, the suitcase with the travel stickers. By contrast, the 26-foot "Forever Marilyn" statue had no extra touches to make it interesting. It's a straightforward reproduction of the publicity images for The Seven Year Itch, and shows exactly zero imagination on the artist's part.

Marilyn Monroe needs to be left to rest in peace anyway. Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley and Buddy Holly and James Dean; enough already. Next summer's going to be the 50th anniversary of her death, and I'm sure we'll hear all about it for days.

How about a giant statue of Jane Russell and a pistol, if the subject is to be a mid-20th-century sex symbol? But if the statute must be Marilyn Monroe, what about a giant figure based on this photo? A fetching brunette holding a propeller. Call it "Norma Jeane and the Propeller." Now that would be different. People might be shocked to see her brown hair.

At the southeast corner of Michigan Ave. and Wacker Dr., we saw the "Robot King" doing some busking.

He did his robot dance. A nearby sign said that he's from Miami, but other than that, I haven't found out anything else about him. This little-watched video gives some idea of his act. I thought he was more interesting than the overblown pop icon not far away on Michigan Ave.

Urbs in Horto at the Lurie Garden

It's warm again. Today's small pleasure was lunch on the deck. Only a few more of those kinds of days left in '11.

Even in early October, the Lurie Garden in Millennium Park is still fairly verdant. But late in the afternoon on Sunday, it was hard to capture that lushness with a basic digital camera.

Measuring about five acres, the garden is sandwiched between the Pritzker Pavilion and the Art Institute, but hidden by a 15-foot hedge. The Lurie Garden web site claims that the hedge is a symbolic "shoulder," as in the City of Big Shoulders, but that seems like a contorted effort to squeeze a symbol out of a physical presence.

The garden, designed by Gustafson Guthrie Nichols Ltd., Piet Oudolf and Robert Israel, features perennials and bulbs, grasses, shrubs and trees in great profusion. The web site lists them, and I was glad to see that the designers weren't native-plant purists, though the majority are from some part of North America. Species from Europe and Asia seem to be well represented as well. If you insisted on native plants only, what would that be -- a vacant lot with weeds?

The Lurie Garden is also noteworthy because it's essentially a rooftop garden, since parking garages are below. It's been called the largest green roof in the world, though you'd never know that just walking around.

Chinatown Details

It's been a while since we visited Chicago's Chinatown. Lately we've had an urge for the kind of dim sum that Chinatown provides, but rain and other things delayed our visit for a few weeks. Sunday was clear and not very cold, so we drove to Oak Park, stashed the car in a conveniently free parking garage (free Sundays only) and rode the El to Chinatown -- Green Line to Roosevelt, transfer to Red Line for Chinatown.

On the sidewalk near the corner of Archer Ave. and Cermak Road, which is near the edge of Chinatown, Ann spotted a face on the sidewalk and pointed it out to me. Maybe the work of a guerrilla graphic designer. Not a Toynbee Tile, but it'll do.

We ate at Phoenix on Archer Ave., which serves up pretty good dim sum, though mysteriously at first the dim sum wagon ladies only would offer us "chicken feet with homemade sauce" and other items we didn't want. Actually, I would have gone for the chicken feet, but no one else wanted any. Eventually we obtained shrimp rolls, barbecue port turnovers, noh mai gai (sticky rice in lotus leaves), ha gao (shrimp dumpling), chui chow dumpling, pan fried vegetable & meat bun, mango pudding and sesame balls.

Then we wandered around the neighborhood. Mostly I was interested in talking pictures of details. Such as a dragon lamp.

And wall details on Wentworth Ave.

I noticed a lot more RPC flags hanging from buildings in Chinatown than even a few years ago, for whatever it's worth. But I also noticed that there will be a parade in Chinatown this Saturday to celebrate the 100th anniversary of overthrow of the Qing Dynasty -- Double 10 Day (even though Saturday is the 8th) -- which I understand is celebrated in Taiwan rather than the mainland.