Arborcide

At about 11 this morning, men from a tree-removal service hired by the village came and cut down some trees on my block. Including the one in front of my house, as woefully promised earlier this summer. This is what the tree looked like in the last few minutes of whatever existence trees have.

By this time, the ash tree wasn't actually providing much shade, so thin were its leaves, and it was a wan shadow of its pre-emerald ash borer self. Then came the man and his large chain saw, to cut a triangular notch in the trunk, in the direction it was to fall.

Soon, he started the main cut.

And then it fell. I was standing just outside my front door, taking pictures. At this point, he didn't yell timber! You know, just for the sake of tradition. Was that ever a real thing? If so, the time to yell would have been before the tree started to fall, while there was still time to get out of the way.

In a few moments, the tree was on the street, soon to be cut up and chipped, in the case of the smaller branches. The larger logs were picked up and put on a truck.

It took the crew about 20 minutes. The stump is still there. If I have the energy, I might go see if I can count the rings.

Summer Flora

Clouds keep promising more rain, but then not following through. So it's still dry. But some flowers are blooming all the same.

All of these shots were taken recently at the still-lush Spring Valley, deep in the heart of the northwest suburbs.

The Conveyor Belt Kingdom

As you enter the UPS Chicago Area Consolidated Hub -- which our guide called CACH -- at first it just seems like a really large industrial building, not too loud, with the ceiling and walls stretching off into the gray distance. But go up a flight of steel stairs and down a walkway and you're soon in awe of the awesome complexity of the place.

Below are conveyor belts coming from large doors, with three of them merging into one larger belt moving directly below you. Then you notice more groups of belts to the left and right, and then an entire floor of more belts below the one you're looking at. Turn around, and there are belts left, right and center. Most of them are moving. Packages of various sizes and descriptions are moving along. The place is an enormous 3D puzzle of belted motion.

A bit of data: CACH, not counting the parking lots, land, etc. measures about 1.5 million square feet. It handles 1.3 million to 1.5 million packages a day, and 2.5 million around the Christmas holidays (UPS adds workers then, though most of the time about 5,700 people work at CACH). If the buildings, which are mostly horizontal, were stacked vertically, the aggregate structure would be twice as tall as the Sears Tower. And my favorite stat: the place sports 65 miles of conveyor belts.

Our guide explained that when the packages were unloaded from the trucks to a particular conveyor belt, they went under a scanner that read the destination information. The the package would travel along the belt until flip, a device that looked exactly like the flipper on a pinball machine, only much larger, knocked the package off the side of the belt, into a shoot, where (I assume) it went downward to another belt that took it further toward where it needed to be. Flip, pause, flip, pause, pause, flip -- these flippers were moving at intermittent intervals all up and down the belts that we could see, and no doubt hundreds upon thousands of them were busy elsewhere pushing packages along, out of our sight.

We also saw another raft of conveyor belts devoted to moving around smaller packages. Instead of a pinball flipper-like device, each belt featured gizmos that somehow flipped the packages up, and then over, to waiting bags. Once the bags were full, employees would take them to where they needed to go (trucks, I assume: everything was organized by bar code-like data).

At truck bays, employees filled trucks with packages manually (over 70 lbs. and more than one worker is supposed to lift together). The packages aren't uniform, so it becomes a task of stacking them like Tetris pieces so that there's the least possible empty space. Hard because lifting is involved, but even harder because not everyone can stack so precisely. The guy we saw, who was handling three or four trucks at the same time, looked like he had a talent for it.

That might have been one of the harder jobs, but what's the best-paid non-executive position at UPS CACH? Our guide mentioned it: mechanics to keep the systems going. I believe it.

A marvel of our age, this place. Ingenuous in the extreme, but simply devoted to moving stuff from Point A to Point B.

Green Spots Among the Brown

It might be dry, but in some spots it's still green. It helps to have a pond handy. This is a view of the pond at the Ruth Macintyre Conservation Area in Schaumburg on Sunday.

Thirty-six acres, but if you didn't know it was tucked away among the houses, you'd miss it even from nearby side streets. Still green, as I said, but I did notice that the water level is down, exposing a few mud flats in places.

Damned Bugs

Intense heat today, nearly 100° F., and after a brief rainstorm in the late afternoon, tropical humidity. August has arrived early. Yesterday I got a handwritten note near my front door from the village engineering department. The tree next to the street in front of my house -- on village land -- is going to be removed. As in, cut down. The problem: the dread emerald ash borer.

Damn. It isn't a favorite tree of mine, but it's a tree in a spot where there needs to be a tree. The note added that a replacement would be "discussed at a later time."

Damn again. Fine, a little tree is going to go there. Will I even be here long enough to enjoy it as a full, shady tree? Probably not.

But the note did make me take a closer look at the tree that will be destroyed. It looks ill. Here in the fullness of June, it doesn't have nearly as many leaves as it should. The village has more about the problem here, including the awful lines that "... history and research has indicated that the village can expect a vast increase in mortality rates this summer. The EAB Management Plan assumes the loss of the majority of ash trees from this infestation..."

Yuriko and I took a walk late yesterday afternoon and noted the mark of death, a red spot painted on the trees, facing the street. At least a half-dozen trees on our street are slated for removal (but not all of them). I lost count of the other red spots on other streets; the infestation must be bad. I also came to think that decades ago, when this subdivision was new, someone planted a lot of ash trees. Maybe they were cheap, and the concept of biodiversity hadn't been invented, or at least popularized, yet.

RIP, Other Joe Montana

Yes, I would say spring is here. No doubt about it. My gas bill came today and it wasn't that high.

And there's all that greenery out there. I saw a fair amount on a drive I had to take toward Chicago today, but not actually into the city. East on Irving Park Road, skirting O'Hare's south end to an event in Rosemont, the little burg nestled like a truffle next to O'Hare; then home, westward by way of Touhy and some other streets that run north of the airport. So I drove an elongated loop around one of the busiest airports in the world, seeing a fair number of planes arriving and departing.

Driving in, I saw two separate marquees mentioning Joe Montana. One said, "We'll miss you, Joe Montana." The other, "Joseph Montana," with a birth year I didn't catch and a death year of 2012.

I thought, the football player is dead? I hadn't heard. But that's the kind of thing I'm likely to miss. Interesting that two organizations with marquees -- a business and the Schiller Park Village Hall -- wanted to memorialize the man that way. Later, I remembered to check, and the football player is not dead.

From the Franklin Park Herald-Journal: "Leyden Township Trustee Joseph Montana, 74, husband of Schiller Park Mayor Anna Montana for 49 years, died Monday. Joseph Montana also was a member of the Schiller Park Village Health Board.

“ 'The village’s most heartfelt and sincere condolences go out to Mayor Montana and her family during this difficult time,' said Kenneth Kollar of the Franklin Park/Schiller Park Chamber of Commerce."

The Lion Bridge

During our walk on Sunday at the Poplar Creek Forest Preserve, we came across the Lion Bridge.
 

I'd never seen it before. But this was a new part of the winding trail for me, passing close to the intersection of Sutton and Golf roads. Just south of the intersection, Sutton crosses Popular Creek, and so does the Lion Bridge, though it's positioned parallel to Sutton, not far to the east. This makes me think that before the modern road was built, an older version of Sutton -- probably a dirt road -- crossed Popular Creek via this bridge. Now the hiking-horse trail crosses via the bridge, with the bicycle trail crossing next to the modern road.

A fine site, HistoricBridges.org, tells me that "Very little is known about the history of this bridge. The designer and contractor is unknown, nor is it known why such elaborate decorative design was applied to this bridge. Nothing about the location of the bridge stands out as reason for the decorative design, which is more like a bridge that would be found in a large city park rather than the relatively open and undeveloped location in which this bridge is located. Constructed in 1906, the bridge is a very early surviving example of a reinforced concrete bridge."

I got as close as I could with my primitive camera, to take a shot of one of the lions.

And of course, we walked across it. Been a while since I was able to walk across a new (to me) bridge.

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.'

The Big Red Grill

Late last week I had lunch at a Weber Grill here in the greater northwestern suburbs. Instead of a bovine-based meal, I picked the crabcake sandwich and was well rewarded for my choice. I also went back to my car and fetched the camera, just so I could have a picture of the big red grill outside the restaurant.

 

There aren't quite as many Weber Grill locations as I'd thought. In fact, there's only four: the one in Schaumburg, another in Chicago that I visited some years ago, one in west suburban Lombard, and one in Indianapolis. The one Chicago has a large grill hanging over the entrance and a bronze statue of a griller and his Weber just inside the door. I didn't notice any art of that kind at the Schaumburg location.

"Watch our chefs masterfully prepare steaks, burgers, chops and chicken to your desired level of doneness on real Weber kettles grills," the restaurant web site says. "The grills are very similar to the Weber Ranch Kettle, but modified slightly for indoor restaurant use. (Notice they are not porcelain coated since it doesn’t rain indoors.)... that’s real charcoal they’re piling into those grills, heating them up to about 1500° F. Our chefs heat up about 2000 pounds of coal per day, using a genuine Weber Chimney Starter just like you would at home."

Not just like me. I don't have a real Weber, just a generic ovoid grill, and I haven't gotten around to getting a chimney starter, though I've seen them at work.

The Schaumburg Municipal Helistop

On Friday I chanced on the Schaumburg Municipal Helistop -- a helicopter landing site, that is, complete with a large H painted on the concrete. I don't think I've ever seen one except at hospital complexes, but then again I never travel in helicopters (and when it comes to hospitals, never hope to).

The sign at the helistop says Elevation 729 feet, and there's a red windsock. There wasn't much wind on Friday, so it was flaccid. Nearby was a large parking lot, a vacant lot, and the backs of retailers on Golf Road. I've been driving by an intersection about a half-block from the Schaumburg Municipal Helistop for years now and had no inkling it was there. That just goes to show -- something, maybe just that I'm unobservant.

Now that I know about it, I have half a mind to show it to the kids, and tell them it's the final resting place of Hubert, the famous circus elephant. Ann might believe it for a while, but Lilly will probably be skeptical.

An Unusual March at the Buffalo Creek Forest Preserve

Happy Easter to all. Back on Monday.

Till then, an image from almost two weeks ago: crazy green for March.

Taken at the Buffalo Creek Forest Preserve in Lake County, Illinois. But just barely in Lake County, since just beyond the horizon is the aptly named Lake-Cook Road, more-or-less the border between the counties.

"Most of this property was previously owned by the Popp family, who since early settlement times had farmed the rich land," says Lake County Forest Preserves. "The Popps initially had a dairy farm, and then converted to grain crops such as soybeans, wheat and corn. Acquisition of this land by the Lake County Forest Preserves took place in several purchases between 1978 and 1987...

"Prior to European settlement, this land supported a tallgrass prairie dotted with a few small wetlands. Restoration of that prairie has been underway since the 1980s. Though the land has been drastically altered, first by farming and later during reservoir construction, a surprising diversity of grassland birds uses the preserve, including bobolinks and eastern meadowlarks."

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.

Fermilab Sights

We didn't get to go inside the Lederman Science Center at Fermilab a week and a half ago, but we did spend some time on the grounds outside. Clearly the architect was influenced by the Prairie School.

Much of Fermilab is undeveloped and -- I read, since we didn't see them -- there's a small herd of buffalo residing on the grounds. We took a short walk that took us past scenes such as these, taken from a small pedestrian bridge over a creek.

The rush to spring is all of a month early this year, including the throaty sounds of frogs looking for mates.

Fermilab's Analemmatic Sundial

There's a sundial on the grounds of the Lederman Science Center at Fermilab. Not a (literal) garden-variety sundial, but an analemmatic sundial, which in this case is a horseshoe-shaped structure large enough to stand on. When the sun is out, you stand in the right place on the structure and your shadow will point to one of a semicircle of stones in the ground, telling you (roughly) the non-daylight savings time hour.

The following is my shadow, pointing to the 3 pm stone -- the third stone to the right of a stone marked "12." I was there with Ann on the afternoon of March 24, 2012. According to the clock in my cell phone, the only timepiece I carry around, the time was 4 pm, but of course that was a daylight savings time reading. I was glad to see that the shadow of my head exactly touched the stone.

Ann is pictured here standing on one of the squares on top of the structure: same one that I did, MARCH. There are 12 squares. Each has the name of one of the months carved on it. Stand on the correct month and you'll get the correct hour, provided the sun in shinning and you account for the change in the clocks.

Waymarking tells me that the sundial is at N 41° 50.363 W 088° 16.013. The formal name of Fermilab is the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, which is easy to visit if you happen to be in Batavia, Illinois. We didn't arrive in time to go inside the Lederman Science Center, but we did manage to see the sundial and a few other things, more about which tomorrow.

West Branch Forest Preserve

It was warm enough on Sunday to do this.

To do it comfortably, that is. Actually, it's been warm enough for an entire memorable, un-March-like week.

We visited the West Branch Forest Preserve in Bartlett, Illinois. The body of water that Ann stood next to was descriptively named Deep Quarry Lake.

Good for two things: fishin' and walking nearby. We did some walking.

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.

Volkening Heritage Farm

We also visited the Volkening Heritage Farm on Saturday. Been there before, of course, but not lately. The residents were up and about to greet us.

"On a visit to Volkening Heritage Farm, you can help with seasonal farm chores, participate in family activities and games of the 1880s or simply visit the livestock and soak in the quiet," the park district's web site says, without adding that you can soak in the smells, too. We opted for the quiet and the smells.

Supposedly the place is closed to casual visitors until March 1, but the days have been so warm(ish) recently that someone at the park district must have decided to leave the gate near the parking lot open. Besides cows and horses, the farm's collection of chickens were out -- we watched numerous hens harassing one that had a bit of food it was trying to eat -- and so were the farm's surviving pigs. Sometime earlier in the winter, the pigs were thinned out to become 1880s-style meat.

From the look of things, new spring piglets will be coming soon (and calves, too). This is the pig shack, though in good weather they're usually taking in the mud next to this structure.

I've always liked this windmill.

Halladay Standard, it says. The U.S. Wind Engine and Pump Co. of Batavia, Ill., used to make these, and the Batavia Historical Society says that "by 1881, the company was called the largest institution of its kind in the world." Why the wind engine -- what a fine alternative term for windmill -- also says, "U.S. Supply Co. Omaha Neb.," I don't know and don't have the energy to track it down.

"Spirit of the Prairie" by David Alan Clark

Schaumburg Square here in the northwest suburbs is mostly retail -- a grocery store, some small in-line shops, a freestanding ice cream parlor and a restaurant. It also includes the Schaumburg Township Library and a pond with a fountain that sprays in the warm months. Near the pond (and the ice cream shop) is "Spirit of the Prairie," a bronze pair by David Alan Clark installed in 2002.

Saturday's warmish weather encouraged me to take a close look at it.

The Wyoming-based Clark's web site says that he specializes in "public monuments, portraits, wildlife and historic themes." I'm glad to see that he's done a statue of John Wesley Powell, located at the Sweetwater County Museum in Green River, Wyo. The Schaumburg Square statue counts as an historic theme. Schaumburg used to be a farming town, after all.

Now it's the Retail Capital of the Universe. That's my nickname for it, anyway. In the background above is the square's clock tower, fuzzily documenting the fact that the picture was taken at about 3:10 p.m.

Mild Winter Walk

It wasn't exactly warm on Saturday, but it was above freezing and sunny. Compared to what February could be, and usually is, a fine day for a walk. My route took me within sight of Busse Lake, which is part of the Ned Brown Forest Preserve.

The white on the blue is ice. In more normal winters, ice fishing happens on the lake. I doubt that there's been any at all this year.

It's still very much winter, though. The trees are still waiting. A warm winter isn't enough to get them to leaf.

Winter hasn't been harsh, but spring won't be any less welcome for all that.

Incident at Ranger Pond

The car-in-pond incident yesterday was unusual enough to merit a short article in today's Daily Herald. According to the paper, it was a one-car accident. That's not what a store employee outside for a cig told me yesterday -- he said two cars -- but I think I'll go along with the newspaper in this case.

"A woman was treated for mild hypothermia after driving her vehicle about 40 feet into a Hanover Park pond early Monday evening, according to fire department officials," Paul Biasco wrote. "Rescue crews responded to Ranger Pond, located just off Barrington Road about two blocks north of Irving Park Road at 5:30 p.m. and fond [sic] the small passenger vehicle in the middle of the pond, said Hanover Park Fire District Batallion Chief Eric Fors.

"The driver, who is in her 30s, was driving north on Barrington Road when her car left the roadway and ended up in the pond, according to Hanover Park Police Deputy Chief Tom Cortese. The vehicle was about 40 to 50 feet from the shoreline, fire department officials said."

That's what it looked like to me -- right in the middle of the pond. Since the pond is so shallow, I guess it was possible for her car to drive along the bottom until flooding caused engine failure.

I like that phrasing: "her car left the roadway." What was the driver doing at the time? The newspaper account mentioned mild hypothermia, but maybe she has worse medical problems than that, the kind that cause blackouts. Or maybe she wanted to end it all, in which case she needed a colder day and a deeper pond. At least she didn't take out another car or some pedestrians.

Ranger Pond? I never knew it had a name.