Item From the Past: Arlington National Cemetery

I took a lot of pictures at Arlington Nat'l Cemetery this time last year. Such as the memorial to the sailors lost on the Maine, built using one of the masts of their ship.

The Confederate Memorial is in a quiet corner of the cemetery, away from the tour bus route.

Pretty much by chance, I saw the graves of some noteworthy people. Such as Robert Fechner, director of the CCC for most of its existence.

Oscar York, a Tuskegee Airman.

Also, the two memorials to the lost Shuttles. First, Challenger. The lost crew should have a memorial – but one with bronze astronaut faces that all grin like jack o’ lanterns?

The Columbia memorial, with its flight-patch in bronze, is near Challenger. Much more dignified, I thought.

Footprint on the Square

Woodstock, Ill., has a pleasant town square, with greenery, walkways, benches and a statue memorializing the fallen originally erected by the GAR. Unlike some small towns, the business district surrounding the square seems fairly healthy, or at least without a lot of empty properties. Fixed to the sidewalk near I forget which business is this plaque.

Groundhog Day was largely filmed in Woodstock, and that spot is where Phil Connors (Bill Murray) stepped in an icy puddle a few times. If I remember right, he quickly learned to avoid stepping in it, once he understood he was trapped in a time loop. Chuck Peterson and family must have been mightily entertained by the scene.

Austin Gardens Park, Oak Park

Austin Gardens Park in west suburban Oak Park is a pleasant green interlude. This was one of the entrances to the park's wildflower area late last month, when it shouldn't have been so green.

The park also includes, per square foot, the most memorial plaques I've seen in any non-cemetery green space: plaques near trees, on benches, on stones here and there. Mostly, as you'd expect, they're remembrances to individuals who have preceded the rest of us into the great beyond. Such as:

Dedicated on May 17, 2009
In Memory of a Wonderful
Friend and Fellow Artist
TERRY HARRISON
By the
West Suburban Artists Guild

In Loving Memory of
Susan L. Walsh, RN
She Loved the Outdoors

Celebrating
1st Sgt. JAMES
THEODORE
Korea 1952 – 1954
1928 – 2001

There are many others. One large item standing in the park, a work of sculpture, did not have an informational plaque nearby that I could see.

Interesting piece, but it would be nice to know who the artist is. I see that I'm not the only person to notice the essential anonymousness of the sculpture. Someone at the Oak Park Park District knows, probably. But no one's paying me to find out, so I'll let it lie. Besides, it's not a terrible thing to run across mysterious public art now and then.

This piece of sculpture, just outside the park's fence, is not so mysterious. It's Oak Park's favorite local man made good in architecture after he ran off with a client's wife, Frank Lloyd Wright. It's in the head-stuck-on-rock style of memorial.

A plaque says that it's the work of Egon Weiner, who also did "Pillar of Fire," the piece on the spot that the Chicago Fire started (I'm going to have to go see that one of these days). I've absorbed too much bad science fiction in my life, so I can't help thinking that FLW's going to shoot some kind of rays out of those sinister eye sockets, maybe mind-control beams that will change people's taste in design to match the Master's own.

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."

Set in Stone

Busy day. Little time to ponder the gathering autumn, or any of mankind's most persistent questions, such as, "What's that plaque doing on that rock?"

When I see one, I feel the urge to document it. The more obscure, the better. This one's perfect in that regard, found in Lords Park in Elgin, Illinois. "LILACS Gift of Elgin Better Gardens Club October 1939."

Or this one, at Oakton Park in Skokie, Illinois.

"These trees were planted by the children, parents, faculty & friends of Kenton School, District 69, in honor of its 23 years of service to the community. September, 1955 to June, 1978 Marjorie Wedell, principal"

Salt Creek Trail, Mile 0

I forget now who described meeting Eleanor Mondale, but he was a fellow in my high school English (?) class (senior year? That would put it in '78 or '79), and he was a casual, only-in-class acquaintance. I got the impression from what he said that their meeting didn't quite rise to the level of a "date," perhaps because of a persistent Secret Service presence. I don't remember the exact circumstances of the meeting, though if I had to guess I would say that his parents were locally important donors to the Democratic Party -- even in Alamo Heights, there must have been a few such.

Anyway, that's my Eleanor Mondale story, tenuous as it is. Hadn't heard anything about her in years, but it's never good news when you hear about someone dying at only 51 -- someone, in theory, you could have gone to school with.

It was finally warm again on Saturday, so I made my way to the Ned Brown Forest Preserve (Busse Woods) for some walking. But on pleasant Saturdays at Busse Woods, a walker like me shares the trail with a lot of people who have taken to their bicycles. I can't begrudge them space on the trail, but bicyclists whizzing by every other minute or so makes for a less relaxing stroll. So I walked down the Salt Creek Trail, which connects with the main trail at the Salt Creek Trail's Mile 0, but which doesn't attract nearly as many bike riders.

The scenery's pretty much the same as on the more crowded trail. This time of the year, that means a still-summer green tinged with goldenrod. The much-maligned goldenrod, taking the rap for ragweed pollen.

In some spots, a lot of goldenrod.

But that's not all. I don't know this species, but I like its looks.

Also, a few manmade items. Such as one of the more obscure plaques anywhere in the Chicago area.

Actually, the rock and its plaque aren't on the Salt Creek Trail, but on the main Busse Woods trail, very near the Mile 0 sign. The plaque bears the shield of the American Society of Civil Engineers, and says:

Illinois Section Outstanding Civil Engineering Achievement - 1986

Upper Salt Creek Watershed Floodwater Management Plan

I'm sure it was the crowning achievement of someone's career.

Remembrance

Schaumburg had a remembrance ceremony this afternoon at Veterans Gateway Park, including an invocation and a laying of wreathes. I stood a few feet away from the VFW member who played Taps, a gentleman of advanced age (Korea? An older soldier in Vietnam?). Age didn't hold him back. He played the melancholy notes flawlessly.

It didn't seem right to take any pictures during the ceremony. But afterward I took a few. This is the Schaumburg Fire and Police Color Guard, right after the ceremony.

The park is at the junction of two major thoroughfares, Schaumburg Road and Roselle Road. It features is a tall brick clock tower ringed by memorials to the armed services. The four wreathes -- one for each hijacked flight and its victims -- were at the base of the clock tower.

Arlington National Cemetery

I quote from the Arlington National Cemetery web site at some length because it's a flawless description of what we saw in the early afternoon of August 15, 2011, while standing on the balcony above the Tomb of the Unknowns, also known as the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, though there's more than one set of remains there.

"An impeccably uniformed relief commander appears on the plaza to announce the Changing of the Guard," the site explains. "Soon the new sentinel leaves the Quarters and unlocks the bolt of his or her M-14 rifle to signal to the relief commander to start the ceremony. The relief commander walks out to the Tomb and salutes, then faces the spectators and asks them to stand and stay silent during the ceremony."

Everyone did so.

"The relief commander conducts a detailed white-glove inspection of the weapon, checking each part of the rifle once. Then, the relief commander and the relieving sentinel meet the retiring sentinel at the center of the matted path in front of the Tomb. All three salute the Unknowns who have been symbolically given the Medal of Honor.

"Then the relief commander orders the relieved sentinel, 'Pass on your orders.' The current sentinel commands, 'Post and orders, remain as directed.' The newly posted sentinel replies, 'Orders acknowledged,' and steps into position on the black mat. When the relief commander passes by, the new sentinel begins walking at a cadence of 90 steps per minute.

"The Tomb Guard marches 21 steps down the black mat behind the Tomb, turns, faces east for 21 seconds, turns and faces north for 21 seconds, then takes 21 steps down the mat and repeats the process. After the turn, the sentinel executes a sharp 'shoulder-arms' movement to place the weapon on the shoulder closest to the visitors to signify that the sentinel stands between the Tomb and any possible threat."

More on the impressive ceremony and guards is here. They guard the Tomb all the time, which made me wonder whether their duty is suspended during a major emergency -- such as Hurricane Irene, which is at the gates of Washington even now. Turns out there's a recent precedent, Hurricane Isabel in 2003. Snopes says that "a contingency plan had been established that if winds reached 120 mph the guards could retreat from their usual exposed-to-the-elements posts in the tomb plaza to take up positions in the trophy room, which is above the tomb plaza and has a clear view of the sepulcher. This plan was not put into effect."

I added the italics above. To show my amazement. Winds of 100 mph? No problem. 110? Still no problem. But you might want to consider coming in out of the wind at 120 mph.

I'd expected to come to Arlington alone, because cemetery tends to be off-putting for the rest of my family, but somehow I persuaded them how important this place is. It was a clear, hot day, so we decided to ride the tourmobile that makes three stops in the cemetery. First is at the Kennedy graves; then the cemetery's amphitheater, which includes the Tomb of the Unknowns; and then to Arlington House, also called the Custis-Lee Mansion. Since the tourmobiles come by each stop every 15 minutes or so, and you can board one when you please, we didn't have to hurry along at the stops. In fact, I insisted that we linger in some places.

The Kennedys still draw a crowd.

President Kennedy is there, of course, but so is Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and a son and daughter of theirs who did not live long, on either side of their parents. Not far away are Robert and Edward Kennedy.

In a section down the hill from the Kennedys are a number of Supreme Court justices. I spied Oliver Wendall Holmes Jr., Thurgood Marshall and William Rehnquist. I later found out that they are in Section 5, which also includes William O. Douglas, Potter Stewart, Warren Burger, William Brennan and Harry Blackmum. All together eight of the 12 members of the high court interred at the cemetery are in Section 5. Why it's popular among prominent jurists, I couldn't say.

The Kennedys have a nice view. Uphill is Arlington House, while downhill looks toward the Washington Monument on the other side of the Potomac.

There are a lot of fine vistas at Arlington National Cemetery, somber and beautifully landscaped at the same time, as the best cemeteries are.

After the seeing Changing of the Guard near the amphitheater, we made our deepest foray into the cemetery, and were well rewarded for our efforts. Among other things, we saw the mast from the USS Maine that's the centerpiece of a memorial to the sailors who died on her in 1898. The remains of 228 of the 266 men who died on the Maine are near the memorial. Remember the Maine, I say. Not as an example of Spanish perfidy, but because history isn't bunk.

From there we made our way to the Confederate Memorial, which isn't a legacy of the Civil War, but of sectional reconciliation in the early 1900s. It's an elaborate work by Moses Ezekiel, a prolific artist who had the distinction early in life of being the first Jewish cadet at Virginia Military Institute and a participant, as a VMI cadet, in the Battle of New Market (May 15, 1864). He's buried next to the memorial.

While at the Confederate Memorial, we witnessed a funeral procession go by on a nearby road. I could tell that the deceased had been in the Air Force. The band passed by, then his horse-drawn caisson.

Arlington House has a terrific view of Washington. In the midground is the tomb of Pierre Charles L'Enfant, designer of Washington DC, who died in 1825 but wasn't interred here until 1909. In the background, the Washington Monument again. It's visible from a lot of places, as I'm sure it was planned to be.

The mansion is undergoing restoration, but you can still walk through it. I spent some time talking with one of the docents about an exhibit in the mansion depicting the early 19th-century family relations of the Lees, Custises and Fitzhughes, and more generally the First Families of Virginia. It isn't something I know a lot about, except that I'm descended from a Taliaferro. Countless thousands of North Americans can probably say the same.

While my family cooled themselves at the cemetery's visitors center, I had one more place to see, near the main gate, before I left: the grave of William Howard Taft. President and Mrs. Taft have a tall stone in a shady spot, along with markers bearing their initials only.

Unlike at the Kennedy grave site, no one else was there but me. Until a family of Germans ambled up to look at the grave, that is.

A New Generation of DC Memorials

Washington DC felt an earthquake today and we missed it? A shaking but non-deadly sort of earthquake? Dang. I would have like to have been there for that.

Ah, well. One reason to visit DC, for me anyway, was to see its "new" memorials, though some of them aren't that new anymore, since it's been more than 16 years since my last visit. Still, a lot has happened in those recent years, such as the transformation of the Rainbow Pool -- I don't remember that name, but I do remember walking past it, there between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial -- into the National World War II Memorial, dedicated in 2004.

I'm not lacking in admiration for the critical part the United States played in defeating fascism, nor for the men and women who fought for that purpose, but I wasn't all together taken with the memorial. It's a pleasant plaza with a fine water feature, but the ring of columns seemed a little odd. They number 56, each with a 1945 U.S. state or territory name inscribed on it. Could be that's supposed to evoke the idea that soldiers from every part of the nation fought, but why is that fact so overwhelmingly emphasized? Seldom has the United States been so united as during World War II. The war required, and got, the blood and treasure of one nation, not a loose collective of 56 entities.

Maybe I was underwhelmed because I'd seen a different World War II memorial recently that I liked very much, namely the one at Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield, Ill. Compared to the memorial in Washington, the Springfield one is simple, but it still conveys the worldwide scope of the war by naming the major battles in which Americans participated and pinpointing them on a globe. The Illinois memorial encapsulates the geography of the war and places American fighting men where they fought, thus managing to be a testament to the individual men as well as the Herculean effort of the entire U.S. armed forces and the nation that sent them to such far-flung locations.

Still, the National World War II Memorial was worth a visit. Among all its various elements, I was struck most by a wall marked by thousands of gold stars -- 4,048, I later learned -- with each star representing 100 Americans who died in the war, or more than 400,000 out of a population of about 132 million (using the 1940 Census). The equivalent proportion of the current U.S. population (2010 Census) would be more than 930,000 war dead.

We entered the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial from the fourth "room" end, at what might be considered the end of the memorial. It took me a while to figure that out, but once I did, I began to like the work. Rather than concentrate the memorial in one structure, designer Lawrence Halprin, a landscape architect who died about two years ago, made the memorial an outdoor, horizontal array of stones, waterfalls and other features. It's roughly organized into four "rooms," each corresponding to one of FDR's terms in office, and each with a broadly appropriate theme, such as the president's death in the fourth "room" (since he really didn't get much of a fourth term) and the New Deal vs. the continuing misery of the Depression during his second term.

One of the sculptures in the second "room" in particular caught my attention, "The Breadline" by George Segal.

Behind the bread-line men in this image is "Rural Couple" by the same artist, which is a grim portrait of rural poverty of the time. Nearby is "The Fireside Chat," also a work by George Segal, which depicts a fellow clearly listening to his radio, supposedly to a Fireside Chat. But I thought, how do we know he really isn't listening to Amos 'n' Andy?

The third "room" includes a nine-foot statue of FDR by Neil Estern. Note that countless visitors have, since the memorial's opening in 1997, worn the president's index finger shiny. We did our little part to keep it shiny.

Next to FDR is Fala. I was glad to see he hasn't been forgotten, and very likely he's the only presidential dog represented at a presidential memorial (though a stuffed Liberty might be at the Ford Museum; I forget). Looks like people have been petting the bronze Fala.

Eleanor Roosevelt has her own bronze in the fourth "room," complete with symbols of her association with the United Nations. Nowhere in the memorial itself is there a statue of FDR in a visible wheelchair, though one was added near the entrance in 2001 after money was privately raised for that purpose. I was a little disappointed that I saw no bronzed depiction of Mr. Roosevelt holding a smoke in a long, aristocratic cigarette holder. He was careful not to be photographed in his wheelchair, but had no qualms about holding a cig for all the world to see. Time flies, things change.

A discussion of the various "rooms" is here. At the memorial's web site, the National Park Service answers the question, "What's with all the water?" in a FAQ section. "Water was an important aspect of President Roosevelt's life," it says. "As a young man growing up along New York State's Hudson River, he enjoyed swimming and sailing. During the First World War, he served as Assistant Secretary of the United States Navy. Following his polio diagnosis, he established the Warm Springs Institute in Georgia to help rehabilitate others combating the same disease. As president, FDR pushed for the creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority and supported other water power projects. So this theme was incorporated into his memorial."

On the north edge of the Tidal Basin is the site of the spanking-new Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial. Draw a line from the Lincoln Memorial to the Jefferson Memorial and MLK is right on that line, about halfway between them. When we walked by last week, a fence still blocked access to the almost-complete memorial, so we couldn't get a really good look at it. We missed its opening by a few days. In fact, I read that the memorial opened to the public just yesterday, with the dedication slated for Sunday, the 48th anniversary of the "I Have a Dream" speech.

I was able to capture an image through the fence: A Determined MLK Jr. and an Orange Traffic Cone. I expect the cones have all been removed by now.

Two women were looking through the fence at the same time we were, talking about coming back for the dedication. They might be among the half-million or so who do. "He's got some prime real estate," one of the women said. Yes, indeed.

Here a Memorial, There a Memorial

The best map of Washington DC that I found during our trip -- unfortunately late in the game, on the second-to-last day -- was a federal government folding map called "Seeing the Nation's Capital." It's a National Park Service publication (GPO: 2011 365-615/80616) with distinctive black borders, a detailed map of central Washington on one side and some historic notes on the other. I enjoy just looking at it. Besides streets, railroad lines and bodies of water, the map features government buildings of all kinds, including the Smithsonian museums, greenspace and parks, easy-to-read street names, Metro stops in their precise locations, and of course memorials.

Washington is lousy with memorials. It's also one of the few places in this country where memorials get their due. Or at least the major ones do in the peak summer tourist season, though I recall a fair amount of tourist interest even during previous visits in November.

The ride to the top of the Washington Monument is so popular in the summertime that early in the morning the Park Service runs out of the free tickets it allots for each day. We stood at the base of the monument in the gathering dusk last week -- a literal and figurative golden time to do so -- and admired the 555-plus-foot obelisk, the tallest stone structure on Earth, but couldn't get in. A lot of other people were doing the same.

"Can I touch it?" Lilly asked when we arrived at the base of the monument. "Of course you can," I said.

Lilly thought of and executed that gag shot. I'm reminded of a photo I saw recently of three or four people posing for photos to look like they're holding up the Leaning Tower of Pisa, except that the photographer caught them at a completely different angle, so it looked like they were simply holding out their arms at random.

After dark, the Lincoln Memorial glows with soft light from the interior spilling out past the columns. Daniel Chester French's giant Lincoln looks down from his chair, as he always does. People look up at him. More people course up and down the steps. Even more people sit on the steps or wander around the front of the memorial. Under the main level of the memorial is a lower-level museum. A lot of people were there as well. I suppose the crowds thin out during the wee-est of the wee hours, but how many other memorials anywhere attract visitors well past the dinner hour?

Here's the crowd at the foot of Lincoln. It's a blurry image, but the best one I took. So let's call it my Hipstamatic shot of the Lincoln Memorial crowd, even though I don't have that app -- that way the picture's technical shortcomings are really just part of its retro charm.

Around the banks of the Tidal Basin, the most visible structure is the Jefferson Memorial. I walked up to it in the summer of 2011 trying to remember whether I had, in fact, visited before. You'd think I'd remember something like that, but no. It wasn't as crowded as any of the memorials on the National Mall, but still hosted a healthy contingent of sightseers, seen here admiring the central bronze statue of Jefferson, towering figure of the Enlightenment, or reading his words inscribed on the walls.

The 19-foot figure of Jefferson, I was interested to learn, wasn't present at the memorial's dedication on April 13, 1943, the bicentennial of his birth. It weighs about five tons, and not even a project so strongly supported by President Roosevelt could get that much bronze in the face of wartime restrictions. The statue, by Rudulph Evans, was finally installed in 1947.

John Russell Pope, who designed the memorial, apparently took inspiration from the Pantheon and, appropriately, the Jefferson-designed Rotunda at the University of Virginia and maybe Monticello too. Some sources (besides Wiki) note that when the memorial was new, its neoclassical design wasn't popular among critics besotted with modernism, but I shutter to imagine some modernist excrescence on the site instead.

I liked the fact that the Jefferson Memorial is open on all sides, which allowed a cooling breeze to waft in. The Lincoln Memorial, open only on one side, had no such amenity, and in fact felt extra stuffy during our summer-night visit, probably because of all the bodies generating heat.

Item From the Past: Admiral Jung Bal and I

This is the only image I have of myself, and in fact the only image I have at all, from the week I spent in South Korea in early June 1990.

That I have it at all is peculiar. I was once the kind of tourist who didn't carry a camera, and so I was then. But I met a fellow on the boat from Osaka to Pusan who had a camera, and after we arrived in Pusan we spent part of the first day walking around together. He took this picture of me at the base of a distinctly martial statue somewhere in Pusan. Before we parted we exchanged addresses, and a month or two later the print arrived in the mail.

The more I think about that, the more I'm glad I didn't grow up in a world in which such an image could have been, and probably would have been, instantly uploaded to the cloud for all the world to see, or maybe e-mailed to me a few hours later. Something about the lag, and the complications of sending a physical object rather than bytes through space, adds to my experience of looking at the image, even 20-odd years later.

When I got it, I thumbtacked it to my wall in my apartment in Osaka, and left it hanging for a few years -- thus the circle with the pinpoint mark through it in the upper left corner. Until recently, I never bothered to find out just whose statue I'd stood under. On those rare occasions (maybe twice) when someone would ask, I would say it's the "gentleman who invented kimchi."

After scanning the image, however, I got a little curious, and figured that the world of 2011 might be able to provide me information that the world of 1990 could not. Sure enough, there are a few other images of the statue on line, so I've been able to identify it as Admiral Jong Bal (also spelled Jung Bal), whose exploits are scantily attested in English on the Web. But I like the text that goes with this photo. It's not technically correct English, but it's sure got heart.

"Admiral Jung Bal of Busan lived in 1553-1592, the Busaness braveman who lead volunteers to fight Jappaness aggressor until end of last blood droop. Their sacrifice is unforgetable of Busan people."

The One & Only Shabbona's Rock

On the way to Starved Rock State Park, we made an impulsive stop at the LaSalle County Historical Society & Museum in Utica, Illinois. That's the kind of impulse I get, anyway. It's a fine little museum, replete with artifacts of local interest, such as items from the clock manufacturer that used to be in Utica, and 19th-century buttons made from shells found in the nearby Illinois River. The museum also sported the kinds of items people, or their heirs, give to such museums, such as a genuine Japanese rifle and bayonet picked up at some point during the Pacific War and brought back to the heart of the Midwest.

The museum building is a handsomely restored sandstone structure that was once a granary and warehouse along the Illinois & Michigan Canal. The building is still on the canal, of course, and as inviting as a stroll along the banks of the canal looked, we didn't do that. I didn't take a picture of the building, either. Instead, I pointed my camera at a large rock in the museum garden.

It's none other than Shabbona's Rock. Only so many rocks have proper names, and this is one. Profoundly obscure, but that's all the more reason to like it. Everybody's heard of Plymouth Rock, the Blarney Stone, the Stone of Scone and so on, but only a select few know Shabbona's Rock.

A plaque near the rock says, in full: This large stone was a favorite resting place of the Indian chief Shabbona, who was renowned as the white man's friend. It was originally located in Ophir Township on the property of Abner Westgate. Chief Shabbona would visit the Westgate homestead for two or three days at a time, but he always stayed out-of-doors. He preferred to eat the food which was offered to him while seated on this rock. After being moved from the Westgate property, this rock was relocated twice more before being donated to the LaSalle County Historical Society in 1969 by Westgate family heirs.

Returning from Starved Rock, I couldn't resist a brief stop at the "Agricultural Crash Monument," which is a few miles outside the town of Norway, Illinois.

It's a vintage '40s passenger plane, from the looks of it, beaten up, positioned nose down, and missing its tail. A helpful sign in front of the pseudo-wreck says, in full: Dedicated to all farmers and ag-related business folks that have lived thru the "Agricultural Crash" of the 1980's. Mervin & Phyllis Eastwold, Norwegian Impl. Co. Nearby there's also a more standard sign, quite weatherworn, advertising the Norwegian Implement Co., which appears to be a going concern in Marseilles, Illinois.

Oak Ridge Cemetery War Memorials

At some distance from the Lincoln tomb in Oak Ridge Cemetery are a number of large Illinois war memorials. The World War II Illinois Veterans Memorial intrigued me most, maybe because it featured a large white globe as its centerpiece. Two wings of black granite -- two short walls, really -- extend outward from the globe. One wing is devoted to the European theater, the other to the Asian theater.

Major battles and other events are carved into each granite wing in chronological order, with the earlier events further away from the concrete white globe and the later ones closer to it. Each battle or event is lettered and numbered, like so: ... Cherborg E15; Saint Lo E16; Southern France E17... and ... Leyte Gulf P22; Luzon P23; Manila P24 ...

On the globe, which is a sizable 12 feet in diameter, metal buttons are fixed to the locations of all of the events listed on the wings, each marked with the relevant letter and number. Button E17, for instance, really is in southern France on this globe. As you'd expect, the buttons can be found in quite a few places and at far distances from each other. It really was a world war.

At first I thought the Illinois Korean War Memorial was merely in the shape of a bell, with bronze servicemen poised on four sides of it. Then I learned it is a bell, or rather a carillon, because it started playing "The Marine's Hymn" in bells and then "Anchor's Aweigh." I didn't stay long enough, but I expect "The Army Goes Rolling Along" and "The Air Force Song" and maybe even "Semper Paratus" (Coast Guard) got their due.

All those songs, and lesser-known military service songs, can be heard at this Navy Band web site. I didn't know the Seabees had their own song -- the aptly named "Song of the Seabees" (link plays the song when opened).

The War Dog Memorial of Streamwood, Ill.

The early 21st century has seen a proliferation of police dog and war dog memorials. This page by the Connecticut Police Work Dog Association illustrates the trend, with the most recent unveiling only last October. Most of the memorials are in the United States, including Guam -- dogs helped liberate the island from the Japanese -- but there are also examples in Canada, the UK (all animals in war), Australia, even southern Africa. Both individual dogs and all police or war dogs are honored, as well as their handlers, depending on the memorial. There are two memorials to the single police dog, Sirius, that died on September 11, 2001, at the World Trade Center.

Last week, during an unexpected period of free time, I found something unexpected, because I didn't know about the dog memorial trend. Namely, "Guardians," a war dog memorial in Streamwood, Illinois. It's a bronze dog and handler by Anthony Quickle, a sculptor based in Brunswick, Ga.

Among war dog monuments, Streamwood's is one of the older ones, dedicated on Memorial Day 2001. It isn't there by itself. As the Jacksonville Times-Union noted at the time, "Quickle's bronze, which was cast at the Inferno Foundry in Atlanta, was installed in a memorial park in the Village of Streamwood, a suburb of Chicago. Quickle's life-sized bronze of a kneeling Vietnam-era soldier and his German Shepherd will be the latest monument in a park set aside by the Village of Streamwood to honor America's military past...

"The Village of Streamwood... established its memorial park in 1990 and has been, for the last decade, adding monoliths honoring all branches of the service and noting America's military past."

"Guardians" is part of the memorial park, but off to the side under some pine trees. The main circle of monoliths features one for each branches of the service, with appropriate flags nearby; a little further away is one for US POWs; and another for women in the military. Smaller round stones denote conflicts that the United States has been in, arrayed chronologically. It's a good place for reflection, if you're alone, but it also has a plaza feel to it, for larger events.

The expansion of service memorials in the suburbs has also been a trend in recent years. I'm always interested to see how a particular place approaches its memorial, especially if I find something I've never run across before, such as the war dog memorial.

Back in 2005, at Little Bighorn in Montana, I saw a war horse memorial -- specifically, the horses that were with Custer's men that didn't survive either -- but that's not quite the same.

Sens. Durbin & Douglas

Sen. Dick Durbin may be distinguished as a Senator but I'm afraid his countenance isn't all that distinctive. Put him in a board room or mid- to upper-level manager's office in just about any kind of business that uses offices, and he'd fit right in. But his business happens to be governing, and I'd say he's reached upper management -- he is the Majority Whip, after all.

I'm not the sort of man who will ever have an office littered with awards and decorated by photos of me with various luminaries. For one thing, the most recent award I won was in 1983. For another, if a luminary is at hand, I'm more inclined to take a picture rather than be in it. This is Sen. Durbin and Joanna, the PR woman who invited me to the breakfast at the Halsted Pershing Business Center.

The property is on the South Side of Chicago, near the site of the former Union Stockyards. When mapping out my route to the place (no GPS for me), I noticed that the Stephen A. Douglas Tomb and Memorial wasn't all that far away. So after shaking hands with one US Senator from Illinois, I went to pay my respects to another, one with a more distinctive look about him. Or maybe that's just the 19th-century tailoring and hairstyle.

The tomb sits on a square of land right at the end of 35th Street, or perhaps the beginning. When the street plays out, a footbridge crosses Metra commuter rail lines and Lake Shore Drive to the parkland along Lake Michigan. If it had been a little warmer, I might have crossed the bridge, but a chilly wind had followed the rain, so I took a look at the tomb. This is its base, looking about as 19th century as Sen. Douglas.

There's a statue of the Little Giant atop the tomb, but it's impossible to get a good look at it without binoculars. "A larger-than-life bronze figure perches ninety-six feet in the air surveying Lake Michigan -- or preparing to dive in, according to more than one critic," says the AIA Guide to Chicago. "To offset the height, sculptor [Leonard] Volk placed allegorical figures on freestanding plinths around the vault that contains Douglas's sarcophagus. The grounds were intended for Douglas's own elegant home."

To take a picture of the upper part of the monument, I had to leave the grounds and go across the street, but it's still a distant figure. I also wondered why Sen. Douglas faces east, considering his advocacy of westward expansion. Then again, maybe he's having second thoughts about the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

Item From the Past: St. Louis 1990

Twenty years ago, I broke my life in half; into before I moved to Japan and after I did so. In February 1990, I was still on the ragged edge of the break. February 2 was my last day at work in Chicago, and shortly afterward I headed for Dallas with a load of possessions, to store them at my brother and sister-in-law's house.

On the 13th, I headed back toward Chicago to pick up the rest of my possessions, making it as far as a cheap, independent motel in Rolla, Missouri. I must have paid no attention to TV weather forecasts that night, since the next day I didn't try to beat the winter storm that was headed for central Illinois.

Instead, I decided to spend a few hours in St. Louis. I'd never been to the Gateway Arch, so I wanted to do that. The view from the base of the thing, curving up as it does impossibly into the sky, struck me as more impressive than the view through small windows at the top, or at least it did on that gray winter day. But I was amused by oddity of the enclosed tram pods that take you upward inside the Arch and to the top. Mork came to Earth in a pod something like that.

Afterward I visited the Basilica of St. Louis, King of France (the Old Cathedral), which is practically underneath the Arch -- or rather, the Arch was built a stone's throw away from the church. It's a fine Greek Revival church building, dating from the 1830s, and well worth seeing inside and outside. As I was leaving, one of the staff (I think) said, "If you liked this, you should see the New Cathedral." New in that it had been completed in 1914. He gave me directions.

The New Cathedral is actually the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis (just the Cathedral of St. Louis in 1990). I didn't know anything about it, but I took the tip and I'm glad I did. It's one of the most astonishingly beautiful churches I've ever seen. I'm a sucker for mosaics.

A few years later I wrote a squib about the New Cathedral for a newsletter, which I'm quoting here in its entirety: "It isn't necessary to cross oceans to savor the majesty of large-scale mosaic art, vaultingly expressed in a cathedral. You only need to visit the Cathedral of Saint Louis, about 10 minutes west of that city's well-known Arch. Composed of millions of tesserae -- tiles of stone or glass -- the mosaics of the cathedral dome and walls offer visitors a pageantry of Christian saints, symbols and stories rendered in hundreds of subtle hues. The architecture is deeply reminiscent of the great Byzantine cathedrals of Italy and points East."

After seeing the New Cathedral, I drove northward toward to Chicago and hit an ice storm. But I'm not sorry I tarried in St. Louis that day.

No Go Snow

Snow! Around noon today, it started snowing in earnest. Then it stopped. At about 3, it looked like it was going to do more than flurry. But it didn't. The ground is still bare of the season's first white coating.

Actually, the reaction to the first snow of the season around here is more like, hm, snow. Slush and then ice can't be far behind.

After more than a decade of householding here in the North, I've at least worked out a way to deal with ice on my sidewalks, namely tube sand. A tube of it is handy near the door and I scatter it on when ice forms for that all-important traction. You never really appreciate foot-to-ground traction till you don't have it suddenly. I actually have a new tube of sand ready this year, acquired last week, instead of waiting for ice to appear as I usually do.

Even without snow, Orion tipped me off that it is now in fact winter. Just after 11 pm on Monday, the last hour of November, I remembered to take out the trash. The air was crisp and clear, and there he was to the south-southwest, lording over his slice of the sky.

One more pic from Phillips Park in Aurora, last week.

At the base of a large flagpole near the park's ornamental waterfall, which is dry, was this plaque, dedicated to Daniel Wedge, a Civil War veteran who died in 1947. Every plaque tells a story, don't it?

Phillips Park and Zoo, Aurora, Illinois

Last Saturday had the distinction of being warm, or at least not cold, so we planned an outdoor expedition. By “planned” I mean “why don’t we go somewhere?” and by “expedition” I mean a short drive involving minimal logistics. But where?

Phillips Park and the Phillips Park Zoo in Aurora, Illinois. Remarkably, we’d never been there before. The last time we were in Aurora, we went without children to see Max Raabe. This time, we went with children to see birds, mammals and reptiles. It’s a small, free zoo, one you can walk through in about 30 minutes, with a collection of mostly North American creatures – river otters, elk, eagles, a mountain lion, peafowl (well, introduced to North America and now wild in Florida), a turkey and others. Some of the reptiles were from far away, though. I’m pretty sure we don’t have any wild pythons on this continent, unless released pets have taken up residence in Florida.

The reptile house also sported some alligators, and in the next tank over, some crocodiles, for an exercise in compare and contrast for those of us who can’t distinguish them by sight. That would include me. But then again I haven’t had that much interface with either species, which is a good thing since I don't aspire to be another Steve Irwin.

The zoo is part of a large, well-wooded park created in 1915. Various improvements to the park have been made over the years, some by the WPA, and in the 1930s workers started turning up mastodon bones in the park. These are on exhibit at the visitors center. Cool, but not that photogenic, at least with my camera. More photogenic is the sculpture outside the visitor, depicting a mastodon rambling across Pleistocene Illinois.

On the other side of the building there’s a sculpture of a WPA worker digging up the bones.