The time for holiday baking is late at night: when the baker is tired but the house is quiet. Last night I made ambrosia macaroons from a recipe I’d never made before. In truth, I had never made a macaroon, and I was fascinated to learn that they contain no flour. They contain butter, sugar,…
Celia Redesign
Folks, please consider giving feedback on the design elements of my blog. Celia is going to be getting a facelift. Do you find the current design friendly to photo-viewing, reading, and commenting? How do you think it could be improved? Do you like or dislike the pinterest-like theme? I really like the compactness of the…
Art adventure
The Caillebotte at the Art Institute. There are rumors of what happens if you get too close . . .
Uncertainty
We all have our struggles. I struggle with uncertainty. I struggle with it because I don’t think I have to be this way, yet I’ve been this way my whole life, I believe. There are legitimate grounds for being uncertain, but too much uncertainty cramps a personality. Under certain circumstances, uncertainty can impede the sufferer…
Store your treasure
A storage facility makes its pitch as we whiz by on the Dan Ryan. There is always something inconclusive about these encounters.
The magic hedge
The magic hedge is one of Chicago’s great natural treasures. The fenced-off land juts out into Lake Michigan, capping a promontory in a large lakefront park. The magic hedge is a secret place—a seemingly neglected, hidden-away treasure crisscrossed by a network of hard-beaten paths. In reality a mature bird sanctuary, it’s a place where birds…
Even the parking lots look different
I was looking through my iPhoto albums this morning for inspiration and realized that on this day a couple of years ago I was traveling through the Cascade Mountains by train. The view out the window was absorbing, because, once beyond the bounds of a familiar region, everything was subtly different: the fields, the land,…
Twilight spectrum
Twilight sets in as I wait for the bus outside the Bulgari store. I know I should be jaded (and not post too much that’s merely pretty) but it’s hard not to be touched by the sheer complex beauty of this one familiar city. The papers are full of the corruption, corroding poverty, and other…
Volumes and margins
The margin between land and lake is a wonderful and precarious space. The particularities of our earthly existence come smack up against something that is bigger and more bountiful but also more unnerving and vague. Click on image to enlarge.
Empty harbor
Belmont Harbor is finally empty of boats. Even the most reluctant have had to admit that the palmy days of escaping onto the lake are over. Boats and boaters alike are landbound, shut away, awaiting spring. This photo has been given a film-grain effect.
Summer on lockdown
Summer stranded on the no-man’s-land of a hi-rise balcony. Elegiac reminders of the easy hours gone: a capsized cocktail table, chairs clumped in mute fraternity, bicycles that want to jump but can’t. Cold grills. A last few vigorous patio plants awaiting death . . . . enlarge it if you can bear to.
The cozy side of modern
Beyond the Calder lies a peaceful way, threading between Mies’s modern creations, past stony old skyscrapers rendered cheerful by illumination and the cloak of night. Walk far enough, and you will travel back a century to the old el station at Quincy. Dull enough by day, the buildings glow and turn festive, their bright dots…
