NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE CHICAGO IL 1216 AM CDT TUE MAY 8 2012 ...DENSE FOG ESPECIALLY NEAR LAKE MICHIGAN TONIGHT... .LIGHT WINDS AND CLEARING SKIES HAVE ALLOWED DENSE FOG TO DEVELOP ACROSS MUCH OF NORTHEAST ILLINOIS AND NORTHWEST INDIANA...WITH DENSE FOG ALSO PUSHING INLAND FROM LAKE MICHIGAN. DENSE FOG WILL CONTINUE THROUGH MUCH OF THE OVERNIGHT BUT VISIBILITY MAY START TO IMPROVE FROM WEST TO EAST BY AROUND DAYBREAK AS WESTERLY WINDS INCREASE SLIGHTLY. ILZ006-014-INZ001-002-081300- /O.CON.KLOT.FG.Y.0013.000000T0000Z-120508T1300Z/ LAKE IL-COOK-LAKE IN-PORTER- INCLUDING THE CITIES OF...WAUKEGAN...CHICAGO...GARY...VALPARAISO 1216 AM CDT TUE MAY 8 2012 ...DENSE FOG ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 8 AM CDT THIS MORNING... * VISIBILITY...LESS THAN A QUARTER MILE IN SOME LOCATIONS ESPECIALLY NEAR LAKE MICHIGAN. * IMPACTS...VISIBILITY MAY CHANGE RAPIDLY OVER SHORT DISTANCES MAKING TRAVEL HAZARDOUS. VISIBILITY MAY BE NEAR ZERO AT TIMES ALONG THE LAKE MICHIGAN SHORE. PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS... A DENSE FOG ADVISORY MEANS VISIBILITIES WILL FREQUENTLY BE REDUCED TO LESS THAN ONE QUARTER MILE. IF DRIVING...SLOW DOWN... USE YOUR HEADLIGHTS...AND LEAVE PLENTY OF DISTANCE AHEAD OF YOU.
Road Blog: Sidewalk Sharpener
Late last Thursday morning, I went walking up Western Avenue from my sister’s place. Ultimate destination: the long-term-care/assisted-living facility (a.k.a. “nursing home”) where our dad landed after his most recent hospitalization for pneumonia. Secondary destination: Starbucks, for the coffee I hadn’t yet had.
On the way north, just across Touhy Avenue, I encountered the gentleman pictured above, sharpening scissors outside a beauty salon. I passed, went about 10 paces, thought “I don’t see that every day,” then doubled back.
His name is Richard Johnson. He was sharpening scissors for the salon workers engaged in the beauty trade. The open-air contraption he was using, he said, “was designed by a genius” — meaning himself. He’s an engineer by training and said that back in the ’60s he worked on ballistic missiles stationed at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. His sharpening contraption consists of what looks like an emery belt and a polisher that he runs off an electrical outlet. The cord snaked across the sidewalk into the salon. It was his first time at this particular establishment.
“Mostly I work at pet groomers. They’re always dropping their scissors and clippers.”
“The clients aren’t as cooperative as here,” I said.
“Yes–they always blame the dogs.”
The most urgent task he was facing the morning I met him was reconditioning some “texturizing” scissors for a woman who already had a client in the chair. He worked on them, tested the sharpness on his arm hairs, then worked on them a little more. Then he brought them into the shop. Looking inside, I could see the beautician making a few preliminary snips. Then Richard came back out with the scissors.
“They let them get rusty and dull, and then they expect miracles,” he said.
Friday Night (Chicago) Ferry
I’m not in the Bay Area to do our Friday night ferry ritual. So the next best thing was to do a Friday evening boat trip in Chicago. Ann (my sister) and Ingrid (my niece) and I drove downtown and caught a Wendella cruise from a dock just beneath the Michigan Avenue bridge over the Chicago River. The first third of the 90-minute cruise heads west to the South Branch of the river, heads down a little way, and turns around when it’s just below Sears (Willis) Tower. Then it head back out to the lake, goes through the Chicago River lock out to the lake (there’s a two-foot elevation difference between the lake and engineered river), then a short spin north from the mouth of the river, then south toward the planetarium and aquarium, then back into the river.
Yesterday featured shockingly fine mid-spring weather. It was a not-overly-humid 85 with a what we in the Bay Area call an offshore wind–the breeze was coming from the southwest and blowing out over the water, meaning the cooling influence of Lake Michigan was felt (and then only slightly) immediately along the shore. That beautiful day ended in a long evening of lightning, thunder, and pounding rain, and by mid-morning today the wind had turned around and was coming from the northeast, off the lake. The high here today was about 60. And on the boat this evening, it was quite cool. But as long as we were on the river, well below street level, there was hardly any wind. But I noticed that as soon as we headed out toward the lake, the tour guide who had been filling us in on the architectural scene along the river grabbed her gear and headed for the downstairs cabin. “I’ll be back,” she told me. “But the wind is blowing so hard out here you won’t be able to hear me.” The U.S. and Army Corps of Engineers flags flying at the western end of the lock were standing straight out in the breeze as we approached. I saw in the paper today that the lake’s surface temperature is 43 degrees near shore, and as soon as we got out into that wind, it felt–well, pretty cold.
Then we turned around and came out of the tempest, back through the lock, back down the river. The scene above: the new Trump Building (second tallest in Chicago, a sign at its base boasts), with the Wrigley Building at right (decked in blue as part of a commemoration of fallen Chicago Police Department officers).
Air Blog: To Chicago
I managed to miss my scheduled flight earlier today by attempting one too many last-minute tasks before I headed out the door to the airport (including the daily Last Task Before Leaving, walking The Dog). I took BART out to SFO and knew I was kind of cutting it close and got to the baggage counter to check my bag about five minutes after they’d stopped taking luggage for my flight. Since they want you to be on the same plane as your baggage (think about why that is), both I and my bag got moved onto the next flight about an hour later. That was fine by me (though I might have emoted more if the delay had been four or five hours). My substitute flight was late, and for some reason the trip seemed much longer than the three and a half hours it was.
But all that’s ancient history. I’m up on the North Side now, at my sister and bro-in-law’s place in West Rogers Park. It’s one of those perfect nights in Chicago, springtime or anytime: warm until well after midnight, but not humid enough that you feel like the warmth is hanging on you. It’s calm and a little hazy but clear enough to see the brightest stars.
Preflight Vision
Off to Chicago today on a family visit. The top item on the agenda: visiting my dad, who’s in a rehab facility/nursing home on the North Side of Chicago after two bouts of pneumonia over the past couple of months (and a more general cognitive and physical decline that’s goes back much further). He’s on oxygen now, is quite weak, and really needs round-the-clock care. My sister, Ann, was visiting him yesterday and put him on the phone. He sounded tired and small. But still Dad. I’m both looking forward to seeing him and feeling a little apprehensive about it.
But first, I have a flight to catch. I always look forward to that and feel a little apprehensive about it, too. I don’t like the whole airport process. (Enough said.) I love the view of the Earth from above, even if the look you get from 35,000 feet and 550 mph tends to obscure details and prevents lingering over anything you find interesting. The shot above is from my trip with Kate to New York last August. I’m always on the lookout for geographic features, natural or manmade, to orient me–mountain ranges, rivers, cities, highways. Here, we’re passing just north of Omaha, looking south across the city’s airport, Eppley Airfield, (here’s an overhead view from Google Maps). The water there is the Missouri River, which if you remember was very high late in the spring and throughout the summer. Council Bluffs, Iowa, is across the river on the left (east), Omaha is to the right (west). That’s Interstate 680 at the bottom, built right across the flood plain. It was closed in June and essentially destroyed by the high water. The I-680 junction with I-29 is at the lower left; I-29 was also closed and needed extensive repairs. (Click the picture for larger versions.)
Malcolm
In West Oakland for a news story yesterday (our state senator was promoting her bill to create a statewide mattress recycling system–there are a lot of them left on the streets there), the strong secondary attraction was the graffiti wall running south from 25th and Willow streets. This is a small detail. But a good one.
Where Nobody Lives
“There’s a house on my block that’s abandoned and cold,
The folks moved out of it a long time ago,
And they took all their things and they never came back,
It looks like it’s haunted with the windows all black,
Everybody calls it the house, the house where nobody lives.“Once it held laughter,
Once it held dreams.
Did they throw them away,
Did they know what it means?
Did someone’s heart break,
Or did someone do somebody wrong?“The paint is all cracked, it was peeled off of the wood.
The papers were stacked on the porch where I stood.
The weeds had grown up just as high as the door.
There were birds in the chimney, an old chest of drawers.
It looks like no one will ever come back
To the house where nobody lives.“Once it held laughter,
Once it held dreams.
Did they throw them away,
Did they know what it means?
Did someone’s heart break,
Or did someone do somebody wrong?“So if you find someone, someone to have, someone to hold,
Don’t trade it for silver, oh don’t trade it for gold.
Because I have all of life’s treasures, and they’re fine and they’re good,
They remind me that houses are just made of wood.
What makes a house grand oh it ain’t the roof or the doors,
If there’s love in a house, it’s a palace for sure.
Without love it ain’t nothin’ but a house, a house where nobody lives.”—Tom Waits, “House Where Nobody Lives” (from “The Mule Variations”)
Sunset
Mount Tamalpais from Cesar Chavez Park (also known as Berkeley’s lovely reclaimed old garbarge dump). We wound up there the other night after walking the dog in our neighborhood. It looked like the sunset would be a show, and I said that to Kate when we got home. She said, “Let’s go down to the marina.” It was a great spontaneous moment, and we did it.
Coffee
I have my coffee in the morning with a little half-and-half in it. I’ll almost always drink more than a cup. I’ll almost always leave a cup with maybe an inch of coffee in the bottom. I’ll walked away and forget it as I get ready to walk the dog or begin my very roundabout preparationsto leave for work. I’ll throw the cold coffee in the sink, rinse it away, and put the cup in the dishwasher. But occasionally, before I do that, I’ll notice a pattern on the cold coffee’s surface. The fat I’ve poured into the liquid (mostly fat, anyway), has arrayed itself into something of a star shape or maybe a coffee flower — spokes radiating from a center. I feel certain that someone in some physics lab somewhere (or maybe someplace more humble, like a high school chemistry class) has explained this. I guess I need to go find that someone.
Maple
The neighboring maple. That’s a mess of seeds waiting to helicopter down a little later in the year. In the background, the sky is a rain-scrubbed blue. The forecasters say the weather this week will turn warm (quite warm–in the upper 80s and 90s if you’re well south and inland from the Bay Area). Our front-yard weed patch is just loving these conditions.