I like the festive shades of a summer street. During much of the year, our downtown streets have a drab, utilitarian, uninviting feel. So it was refreshing to look out from the landing of the elevated station, to see busy old Wabash bathed in pastel shades, awnings and lintels bright like something out of a…
Pictures for dessert
Visitors browse the art in a cavernous lounge at the Union League Club, where pictures are stacked up on its walls.
The farthest pond
Three years ago, the South Pond, one of the ponds in Lincoln Park (just south of the children’s zoo), was renovated. The pond was emptied. Its bottom and banks were regraded, new boardwalks were built, new plantings put in. The pond had fallen into sluggishness and disuse. The revitalization has been a great popular success. …
Captives of the Pride
Located in the sliver of Lakeview bounded by Sheridan, Diversey, Belmont, and the Inner Drive, our neighborhood is paralyzed annually by the Pride Parade. If we don’t go out of town, we must choose between staying in all day, or going out all day, because once you leave the neighborhood in a car, bus, or…
Back in place
It was good to be back on my commute yesterday. Chicago! Yes!
Shopgirl
Waiting for her next customer at Water Tower Place.
Love bug
I’m finally back from my niece’s wedding, a foretaste of what this summer will be. We’re slated to attend three more weddings before October, and in between I’ll be helping with my parents’ move. In short, it’s a summer of beginnings, a prospect that thrills!
They lived with their dead
Several historic homes we visited in New England offered reminders of the omnipresence of death in earlier times. In one house, a large marble bust of a young man stood in the corner of the living room, the likeness of a son, age 19, who had gone upstairs after dinner and died. The same family…
Travel endows
Our vacation house in Michigan contains a dangerously irregular set of stairs, which I fantasize about having rebuilt one day. My brother tells me that only smart craftsmen can build good stairs because of the complex calculations involved. This staircase, which I saw during my trip, inspires, not only by being beautiful and well-proportioned, but…
Massachusetts Magic: The Stanley Cup
At the end of our first day in the Berkshires, we turned on Game 6 of the Stanley Cup final, just in time to see our home team’s last-minute comeback over the Bruins to clinch the trophy. “You can put it to rest,” I kept saying to the set while Chicago trailed. “It’ll all be…
A living dream
There was a time when I crossed Massachusetts often by train. When passing through the western part of the state and admiring its rugged yet picturesque scenery, I would promise myself to visit it one day. Finally, today, the occasion came. Twilight found us in the Berkshires, where it treated us to this splendid…
The Bushel ‘n Peck
This morning, the wedding over, my family left Concord, where we’d been staying. Some of us headed to the airport, others out to Worcester for a final visit with my sister. She took us to a locally famous deli, the Bushel ‘n Peck, where we bought sandwiches and said our good-byes. My parents and younger…
