January words & reads

Sunshine and shadow last fall in Chicago’s McKinley Park. I’m hoping it counter-balances our ninth day of gray clouds.

Here we are, one month into a new year and a new decade and I have not cleaned out one closet, de-cluttered one drawer or reorganized my pantry. Perhaps more egregiously, I have not chosen my word or words for the year. Do you do that? Do you look for a word or phrase to guide you? It’s a charming idea, but hard for me to narrow down. There are just too many words. However, I did get a start with my mantra in December.

Do you remember when I said in a December post that my new mantra was “Have the party, buy the dress, take the trip and always, always eat dessert.” They are hardly unique or life-changing words, really just a promise I made to myself to operate more in the present. Life is short enough. Let’s skip the regrets.

After the mantra, I went on to “When in doubt, go old school.” When I wrote this (here) I was referring to falling back on old recipes, pigs-in-a-blanket, mac and cheese — the comfort food our mothers served until we all got a bit (or a lot) trendier. But then I reconsidered “old school” and I thought of a few more ways that it matters: hand-written thank you notes, please and thank you, wear the little black dress, and take a casserole. These were the rules my mother and my aunts relied on.

I know good manners never fell out of favor, but let’s be honest. Unless you have been hunkered down under a rock, we have all been living in a polarized and often isolated time. Everyone is a little angrier, the middle ground is harder to see, and sometimes life’s simple niceties are left at the curb. Perhaps it’s time we smooth off some of our rough edges.

First reads of the new year

Save Me the Plums by Ruth Reichl has been on my list since it came out. The memoir of Reichl’s decade as the editor of Gourmet Magazine was the perfect Christmas gift from my husband and an engrossing read. Reichl was a food editor in Los Angeles and then a restaurant critic for the New York Times, before going to Gourmet. If you think this is just about publishing or food, think again.

This is the story so many of us could write about carving out a career while balancing home and family, finding the right niche for our passions, and working in a high-stakes corporate world. There is a lot about food and its evolving tastes and trends. But Reichl also talks about the impact of the internet on more traditional communications. For a former editor like me, it’s an inside look at the angst behind magazines — the stories, photos, advertisers, and deadlines. The specialized trade publications I edited don’t come close to Gourmet, but the components are there.

And — she includes recipes! You have to love a book with recipes.

I’ve also been binge-reading Louise Penny’s Inspecter Gamache series of mysteries set in Canada’s Quebec province. I shared my introduction to Armand Gamache here. After the holidays and some admittedly heavier reads, I was happy to return to Three Pines and Penny’s intriguing cast of returning and new characters. I had already read the first three books, so I settled into the fourth book, A Rule Against Murder. I finished it late one evening and promptly downloaded the electronic version of the next. (I know, some people shop for shoes on a sleepless night, I download books!).

I’ve been trying to put my finger on the attraction to these mysteries. They are clever and quirky, but not too gruesome or scare-y. The continuing characters are likable or at least intriguing, and Penny weaves threads of their evolution from book to book. Plus, they dress nicely, eat well, and say please and thank you! There are about a dozen more to read, and frankly I could easily spend these gray winter days binge-reading all of them! Caution: If you decide to jump into the series, you need to read them in order. Start with Still Life. The stories and characters build on each other.

What about you? How would you describe your first month of the new year/new decade? I’d love to hear from you!

Thanks for stopping by. See you next time!

Wishing you Christmas wonder and magic!

My daughter texted her brother, asking what was on her 6-year-old nephew’s list beside the kitten, puppy and penguin already discussed and discarded. Good luck, said my son, he’s added a reindeer to the list.

This is what I love about Christmas. Impractical, improbable, a sleigh flying thru the night loaded with presents. I always check the sky, for a sleigh with Santa or the special star announcing Jesus’s birth to the shepherds. It’s magic and wonder and I think we all need that. And I think we are nourished by both faith and fun.

This year I have tried to simplify, making more room for wonder and magic. I limited my decorating to the tree in the living room, the table in the dining room and the mantel in the family room, accompanied by some special pieces like this Santa and my collection of putz houses and bottle brush trees. And candles, lots of candles because I think they contribute to the magic and wonder.

Don’t you love the rakish tilt to the steeple?

I also got out some old Christmas photos, including this one of my Grandparents with a war-time Christmas tree. I can’t imagine how difficult those holidays must have been.

Last year we celebrated a simpler, quieter holiday. My husband was recovering from surgery in mid-December for Stage 1 lung cancer. He needed to rest and stay away from everyone’s Christmas cold. And truth be told, we were still reeling from the diagnosis and wrapping our heads around how fortunate we were to find this early and what additional treatment may be ahead. It was a good holiday, good to be with family and friends, good to be getting well.

Fast forward a year, past chemo, recovery, and clean scans, and I think we are Christmas-ing with a simpler but more festive attitude. And I have a new mantra: buy the dress, take the trip and always, always eat dessert.

Wishing you a joyous holiday season, full of wonder and magic and, perhaps, even a reindeer under the tree.

See you next time!

In praise of wonky imperfection

My daughter-in-law recently told me about a PTA presentation that covered, among other things, the quest for “perfection” among children. This is especially daunting for children who are gifted and/or talented. They hear “Perfect!” or “That would be perfect if…” Cue the stress. I’ve been thinking about the quest for perfection. We do this to our kids, ourselves and the adults around us. A lot.

Where does good perfection end and bad perfection start?

There are times when perfection matters: Don’t misspell words on your resume. Then there are times when it’s overrated.

I think the triggers or influences that drive perfectionism can be subtle or not, and they’re probably pretty personal. My dad (who otherwise was pretty perfect) used to say, “If you’re going to do something, do it right or don’t do it at all.” But I wonder how any times that quest for perfection kept me from attempting something or attempting it again after a less than perfect effort. (Maybe I would have stuck with golf a little longer.)

Pie-making perfection

My grandma was a legendary pie maker. Her lemon meringue was the right mix of sweet and tart, with perfectly browned peaks that never “wept.” Her apple pie was as American as, well, you know. And when she delivered one of them to the church bake sale, they were top sellers.

Grandma baked pies at lightning speed, her rolling pin banging on the table as she rolled out the crust. (Really, when I got older I realized we all backed away when she got the rolling pin out.) Although my earliest cooking memories are of making pies with her, using my own child-sized pie pans and left over bits of dough that I rolled and re-rolled and played with until it was genuinely grimey, I had no interest in learning how to actually make the crust and the fillings until I had my own family and became the holiday cook. By then, Grandma was gone and I was left to learn on my own. Mostly, I just made a mess of flour in the kitchen that resulted in patched-together crusts that led to store-bought pies. Problem solved.

But my pie-making ineptitude nagged at me. I wanted pie perfection.

And so, I hit the books. Ina Garden is usually my go-to, so I began practicing her crust. She uses the food processor, really cold butter and shortening. And I practiced pie dough. I told myself it was only flour, butter and shortening. And I think I’m beginning to get it. It’s not perfect, but it’s not patched together, it browns nicely and it tastes good.

I am reminded of a conversation I had with Marjorie Taylor of The Cook’s Atelier when I attended my second cooking session. We were discussing what I had tried cooking at home and I noted that my souffles rose and browned unevenly.

How did they taste?

Wonderful!

Well, she said, who cares if they look a little wonky.

What wonderful advice. Maybe “a little wonky” is something we should all accept from time to time.

The old neighborhood

Technically, since the city annexed O’Hare Airport, the geographic center of the city has changed, but not for most Chicagoans.

If you grew up in Chicago or have lived here for any length of time you know that the city is a collection of neighborhoods: Hyde Park, Ravenswood, Lincoln Park, and Pilsen to name a few. And when you ask a Chicagoan where they’re from, it’s often a neighborhood they refer to.

My Chicago neighborhood is McKinley Park on the city’s southwest side, named for the park it embraces (Which was actually named for the 25th US president.). The neighborhood is centered on the triangle bounded by 35th Street and Archer and Ashland Avenues, but extends as far south as the southern boundary of the park on Pershing Road and to the old Canal and Interstate 55 on the north.

I should start by saying I never lived in the McKinley Park neighborhood.

But my maternal grandpa grew up there, he and my grandma were married there and raised a family there. He lived there until he was in his late eighties. My dad’s family also has its roots in the neighborhood, and I’ve always felt rooted here too. It’s from this neighborhood that so many of the family stories come, where I spent holidays and enjoyed Sunday dinners. I was not at all surprised when my daughter, who is more than a bit of an historian, took a walking tour of the McKinley Park area (Although I may be pushing the point; she’s done at least a half-dozen other such neighborhood walks since moving back to Chicago.) I couldn’t go with her on the first tour, so she took me on my own a few weeks ago.

In the past my grandparents house was painted red, like most of its neighbors, and it had tall windows in front, now replaced with this picture window. If you look closely, you can still see the shadow of the old windows and their stone trim.

We began here.

My grandparents lived in this little workman’s cottage, one of a dozen on their short block and countless others in the neighborhood. This was the brick house built for the masses after the Chicago fire. They were small, but must have seemed palatial to people who had come from tenements and boarding houses. (There aren’t many Chicago bungalows here; they came later.)

We took a walk down 35th Street, the commercial heart of the neighborhood. The William McKinley Legion Post (my grandfather was a founding member) is still active.

Another workman’s cottage, in 1910 the house had no bay window or sliding glass doors, and my grandparents were likely boarders in one or two rooms.

Our other destination on this street was a house we think my father’s parents lived in, at least for a short time. Maggie found them listed on a 1910 census at this address. (Like I said, she is an historian.) The next census finds them just a few blocks away on Honore Street. However, when we rounded the corner to look for it, those houses had been replaced by Nathaniel Greene School!

Since this area was first settled in 1836, it has been a working class neighborhood. The first settlers worked on the Illinois and Michigan Canal. Then came railroads, steel plants, and meat packing. There are new brick row houses and townhouses in-filling empty lots. Several buildings have been converted into condos, including St. Philippus Church where my grandparents and parents were married.

My re-cycler’s heart loves that the church, no longer able to support a congregation, was spared the wrecking ball to provide housing.

The new school, houses and condo conversions are understandable; the McKinley Park neighborhood has experienced an increase in population since the 1990’s. And that’s hardly surprising since it’s still supported by a healthy manufacturing area nearby and outstanding transportation, including Metra’s new (to me at least) Orange Line. The old housing stock is well cared for, and some original landmarks continue to serve the community, including a funeral home and St. Maurice Church.

This is an example of the mix of old and new housing stock.

Finally, we got to McKinley Park, 69 acres of green in the midst of the city, with a lagoon where my mom and uncle ice skated, a field house, and so many ball fields where Dad and my uncle spent a significant part of their lives. In fact, they met there and played ball, sometimes together and sometimes against each other, long before Mom and Dad met. It’s still a leafy oasis, popular with runners and walkers. On this September Saturday, there were soccer and baseball games. It’s still the magnet it always was.

We sometimes think of “old neighborhoods” as falling into serious disrepair or, conversely, becoming gentrified and even chic. Not so in McKinley Park. This “old neighborhood” never had the panache of the North Shore or the leafy, residential vibe of the suburbs. It has always been sturdy, a bit hard-scrabble, largely populated in my grandparents’ day by first- and second-generation German and Irish immigrants. Today it retains this sturdy, working class character, and the immigrant mix includes Hispanic and Asian residents.

It has adapted more than it changed. That’s what intrigued me as Maggie and I walked down one street and up another, peering down gangways and admiring pocket gardens. My daughter shared the architectural background gleaned from her walk, while I was filling in the anecdotal from my memories. I’m glad my daughter and I did this, but I must admit that for me it was a bit bittersweet. There are few family members left from that era to share this, to tell them the house on Damen is painted blue (!) and the Legion Hall has hardly changed.

So, I’m especially glad you came along with me on this “second” walk in the old neighborhood. See you again soon!

The truth about my summer

This is the “finished” side of our basement. If you look at the floor in the corner of the closet on the left, you can see how the perimeter of cement has been re-done for new drainage. Those boxes holding tools are up-ended cabinets that were under the wall-mounted wine racks. Wallboard was removed to make way for water proofing.

As I write this my husband is banging around in the basement, re-constructing our finished space there which was de-constructed to make way for a french drain (a fancy name for a trench around the entire inside perimeter of the house which is excavated with jack hammers and then lined with gravel, drain pipe and fresh cement) to replace the failed drainage tiles around the exterior of our foundation.

Are you following this? Because I can hardly follow it and I’ve lived it this summer.

But this very expensive hole in the basement has pretty much been the story of our summer. Really. Bigger than two weeks at the beach (where we escaped once we had implemented our remediation plan), more time-consuming than the yard and garden, and more worrisome than the stock market.

It started with not one, not two, but three heavy rains and subsequently a repeatedly wet basement in May and June. Not ankle-deep flooding, just puddles in the utility room. And then squishy carpet in the finished portion. And it kept happening. Where is this coming from? The hunt was on. Pull back carpet, have the restoration company out and set up their industrial fans. (They can dry anything. Really.) Move things off the floor, out of the way, into the garage. Move more stuff. Call water-proofing companies. Wait for their estimates (It was a very wet season all over Chicago and the suburbs and these guys were really busy!), wait for a building permit (the city gets involved here) and then wait for the new cement to dry.

Now it’s September. I think we’re on the down-side of this, looking at putting things back together in the next month or so. I hope. My husband has been storing nine cases of wine in the dining room. (Not a bad thing. It makes the good stuff more accessible.) I can’t even remember all that I carried out to my “holding pen” in the garage. And I have no idea where my so-called “fall decor” is.

There is an upside. We have done a remarkable job of culling the stuff stashed in our basement. And while I was driving loads to Goodwill, I also cleared a lot from the closets and happily delivered several boxes of miscellaneous school memorabilia to my son in Ohio. I would hardly compare this clean-up to Marie Kondo, but it feels good.

Choosing your words

And since I didn’t want to close on a whine-y note about my basement, I thought I would share some well-chosen words. As many of you know, Instagram is my social media weakness. I think of it as a daily shelter magazine of pretty rooms and gardens (because those are pretty much the only feeds I follow). But some how in the last week or so I have come across the most wonderful words there, witty and wise.

First, this made me laugh out loud, and is so much like me. (And why do women of a certain age seem to tip so easily?)

This, I think, is excellent advice.

Finally, from Aibileen Clark, one of so many unforgettable characters in The Help. I wish I’d had these words to repeat to my kids every day as they went off to school.

Thank you so much for stopping by. I look forward to seeing you soon!

Looks, cooks and books in August

My looks this month can be summed up in three words: Charleston window boxes. They are charming, creative, and put a welcome face on homes and businesses across this charming and historic city.

I think of window boxes as decorating/gardening details, the kind of exclamation point Charlestonians always add and the rest of us wish we had thought of. I love them all and I can’t stop taking pictures of them when I’m in Charleston.

When I assembled the photos I most recently took, I noticed that most of these boxes featured far more greenery than flowers, perhaps a nod to Charleston’s steamy summer weather? I also think a lot of people replant the boxes with the seasons. However, look at the color and texture they get without flowers!

I am a fan of ferns, so this box caught my eye right away.

And I thought this box mixed a lot of color although it uses limited flowering plants.

This one also used colorful caladiums as well as some substantial traling plants. Here they pretty much reach the sidewalk!

This box was at a business.

And I loved this against the brick.

What I’ve been reading

We have a new, independent book store in our neighborhood. That alone is good news, but it gets better: the staff is friendly, low-key and eager to help you find something you are going to love reading. In my case it was Cooking for Picasso by Camille Aubray. This was my beach read, light but lots of fun. This is a dual story that moves between a modern American woman grappling with a family crisis and her French grandmother who cooked and eventually modeled for Picasso during his stay in Juan les Pins in 1936.

This sounds contrived and it was. But we actually stayed in Juan les Pins while in France last fall. Picasso and his artistic contemporaries are inescapable there as well as in Antibes and Nice. We visited the Picasso Museum in the former Chateau Grimaldi, which also makes an appearance in the novel. We loved this part of our trip, so it was really fun to read a novel in that setting.

After Picasso, I needed to read Where the Crawdads Sing for my morning book group. Everyone is reading this, it has been on the best seller list for dozens of weeks, selling more than a million copies since its release last year. It was also something of an unusual choice for AM Lit. We don’t typically pick something that current; on the other hand, we assumed we would all be reading it, so why not read it together?

Author Delia Owens tells the story of Kya’s survival as a child essentially alone in a remote marsh of North Carolina. Kya’s story is both disturbing in that she is left alone to fend for herself and inspiring in the way she handles it with the help of just a few others. Owens alternates telling Kya’s story with relating the events surrounding a mysterious death several years later.

Crawdads generated a lively discussion. This book raises so many questions, not the least of which for me is the role of a celebrity recommendation. In this case Reese Witherspoon chose Crawdads for her book club. How much does that shape a book’s popularity and recognition with both critics and readers in general?

Then our discussion leader for this month pointed us to a recent article in Slate which detailed Owens’ role related to another murder. (And no, she is not a suspect.) If you have read the book, read this. It’s interesting to consider how this real life murder may have shaped the mystery in the novel. If not, wait until another time since the Slate article includes a spoiler about the book’s quirky ending.

Finally, I just finished The Last Romantics by Tara Conklin. And guess what? This is also a story told in two different time frames, but with an interesting catch. It begins in 2079 when the narrator and the youngest of the Skinner siblings is 102. I was totally unprepared for this opening, but quickly got caught up in the story. The plot is somewhat familiar: it centers on a group of four siblings who are forced to raise themselves after their father dies unexpectedly in 1981 and their mother takes to her bed for two years. They later refer to this as “The Pause.” Their bond is remarkable and the role each assumes in the family is unique. This engaging story caught me completely off-guard. I didn’t always like the characters, but I couldn’t put the book down.

What’s next on my list? My grandson has pointed out that I’ve fallen behind on my Harry Potter reading, so The Prisoner of Azkaban is next.

One quick cook

If you have not heard of sheet pain suppers, where everything is essentially roasted together on a standard sheet pan, you’re missing out on some delicious, easy cooking and clean up. Although a lot of these recipes are geared to larger families, I have easily modified them for the two of us. And it’s also easy to tweak the main ingredients to your preferences. My latest effort starred smoked sausage (my husband’s request) which I paired with halved cherry tomatoes, sliced peppers and slices of polenta. Despite the fact that the cherry tomatoes pretty much cooked down to nothing (I think I might try halved or quartered romas next time), we really enjoyed this. We had never tried polenta this way, but it roasted beautifully. The peppers were delicious, and I would add more next time.

That’s it lately. Pretty quiet actually, but that’s fine with me. Thanks for stopping by.

See you next time!

I’m skipping Christmas in July

I’m not sure who came up with the idea of Christmas in July, but I am not buying into it. Not the Hallmark movies, not the Christmas in July decorating blog posts, and definitely not the pre-, pre-season sale on artificial trees. And I have my reasons.

July is the heart of the summer. It’s the long, sweet stretch between school years. It should be celebrated with more than picnics and fireworks on the 4th, but with entire days spent at the pool or popsicles for lunch. July is long and luxurious, reading a book in front of a fan. Yes it’s hot and sticky (especially this year!) and sometimes stormy. And even if you can’t get away to the mountains or the beach, there’s always the hose. (On the hottest days, I always “need” to hose down the patio.)

And then there’s the food: sliced, salted tomatoes straight from the garden, sweet corn, cold shrimp or chicken for supper, the best watermelon. This is all the stuff that’s so out of place at Christmas, when we’re thinking hot chocolate and fancy cookies.

Christmas should be savored in its own season.

Christmas is sacred and special. If we preview it six months ahead of time, we risk watering it down. The holiday season is its own, magical, list-making, secret-sharing time. Christmas (and for that matter Hanukah and Kwanza) are nothing like July. It’s about the Christ Child, angels and three wise men, not to mention shorter days, holiday lights, and hoping for snow.

Of course, it’s a busy time and we need to prepare. The smartest among us do just that. But I think the best of us do so quietly, so the holiday season opens with us ready to enjoy the celebration. Otherwise we risk being talked-out and tired of it before the first bells jingle. And don’t tell me you haven’t bemoaned the appearance of holiday goods in stores as soon as the school supplies are sold out.

If you rush Christmas, you could miss something good. I really don’t want to miss back-to-school, falling leaves and Halloween. I want to enjoy decorating with pumpkins and gourds. I do not want to miss Thanksgiving.

I speak from experience

Back in the dark ages, in my twenty-something career before having a family, I was a buyer for a gift catalog. Christmas was our bread and butter. We worked on it all year, literally. In February and March we made the rounds of the gift, toy and holiday shows where we selected items for consideration in the holiday catalogs. In May and June we finalized the merchandise, designed the pages and wrote the copy. In July we delivered it to the printer and signed off on the proofs so the catalog could mail in September. (The print industry runs well-ahead of the calendar.)

By the time Christmas rolled around, we’d already “been there, done that” and were scheduling ahead to start again in February. I used to say I was getting twice as old in half the time. When I left that industry, I was anxious to reset the calendar and live in the present. I haven’t looked back.

Go ahead and savor Christmas in July if you must. I’m fortunate to be writing this from the beach in South Carolina, where life is sandy and salty. And there is no way I’m going to rush the season!

Thanks for stopping by. See you again soon!

It’s good to be a girl & other July musings

My daughter and I at Chicago Shakespeare this spring. I just need to brag about her a bit below.

Actually, it’s good to be a woman. “Woman” is more politically correct, but “girl” suits my copywriter’s alliterative habits. So, why is it good? Have you followed the news this week?

Congratulations to fifteen-year old Cori “Coco” Grauff for beating Venus Williams in her opening round at Wimbledon. She is the youngest player ever to qualify for the legendary tournament and credits Williams with inspiring her to pick up her first racket. And, she’s continued to win! It would be easy to call this a Cinderella story, but you don’t get to Wimbledon without talent and a lifetime of hard work. And when you continue to win, you’re on your game!

Then there is the U. S. Women’s Soccer Team. I must admit I am not a huge soccer fan. Back in the day, when my kids played, I never really understood the game and I still have not acquired a real appreciation for its finer points. (I had to give up soccer for volleyball and football!). But I am overwhelmed by the athleticism and competitive drive of this team. They play hard every minute of every game. And they play together. And it shows.

Sometimes Mom just has to brag

My daughter Maggie is a photographer by avocation and regularly shares her photos on Instagram. (In fact, after she got me going on this blog, she nudged me onto IG too!) Thanks to IG, she’s been invited to share her work at an upcoming Chicago showcase. How cool is that! Here’s a sample of her shots around the city.

My IG view of the Fourth

I’ve spent a little (or a lot?) of time lately, sitting on our shaded porch and cruising through Instagram, enjoying a variety of takes on red, white and blue in honor of the 4th of July. Here are a few favorites.

First, I love this display of a beloved family flag.

I’m sure if I looked in the right folder I would find the original shot of this wall-mounted flag. I know I tore this from a magazine. I love everything about it: the flag (of course), the bench below it, the open landing and that beautiful railing. Isn’t it amazing how a single magazine page can come back to us so many years years later and its appeal is as fresh as ever?

The flags here are a nice, subtle salute to the season, but what I really love about this image is the cabinetry. I want those shelves and their neat, glass-paned doors.

Shirley is a fabulous flower arranger, so it’s no surprise that she can turn a handful of flags into a bouquet in blue and white. She even arranged them in moss! The result is crisp and summery and perfect for the entire season.

So, how is your holiday weekend shaping up? It’s warm and summery here, the garden is flourishing, and we’re off to the beach soon. Yes, it is July!

Thanks for stopping by. See you next time?

Lately: Baseball, architecture and how my garden grows

So what do you think there are more of, leaves on the trees or blades of grass?

That was my eight-year-old grandson’s intriguing question as we drove home from one of his ballgames this weekend. Since the answer would take lots of Google-ing and probably some math, I left that to his dad and Grandpa. But I think Jack unwittingly summed up June. It’s just so green, so lush, so full of promise.

Trip #1

Speaking of grandsons and baseball, Steve and I spent the weekend in Ohio carrying our folding chairs from game to game, following the five-year-old and his T-ball team and the eight-year-old and his coach pitch team (who seem like pro’s after watching T-ball).

These games have not changed in 30 years. Players wave to parents from the field, play in the dirt, forget where they’re at to watch a low-flying plane overhead and are happily surprised when they get a solid hit or make the play at first or second base. Forget marching bands and flag-waving patriots, this is America.

Trip #2

Before heading to Ohio, I joined a friend on a “field trip” into the city to take the Chicago Architecture Foundation Center cruise along the Chicago River. If you are a history or architecture fan (and even if you are not), the “Great Chicago Fire” led to a building renaissance in Chicago. And what started after the fire in 1871, continues today.

The Chicago skyline, looking west on the river.

The river cruises are led by volunteer docents from the Foundation. I know they have a common script that follows the boat route and they are well-trained to answer questions, but I believe you could do this cruise again and again and still learn something new, because each docent puts his or her own spin on the material. Maureen and I were part of a much larger group of Chicagoans, so this could have been a challenge to the volunteer. After all, we’ve all seen these buildings before and heard the stories behind them, and we have worked/shopped/visited them. Many of us had taken the tour before. But her passion for and knowledge of Chicago history and architecture was so palpable that she kept all of us totally engaged.

Separating history from architecture from the Chicago River is virtually impossible. Fort Dearborn, Chicago’s first settlement, was along the river. The engineers who worked with the architects solved the design issues, reversed the flow of the Chicago River, built more than a dozen movable bridges over the river so the city and industry could grow north and south. They replaced cast iron with steel and glass. The building and engineering continue to evolve. It’s a great story filled by the likes of Daniel Burnham, Louis Sullivan, and Mies van der Rohe and populated by buildings as diverse as the Tribune Tower and the Willis (Sears) Tower. You don’t need to love architecture or history to respect the vision, engineering and problem solving that goes into each structure.

My garden is a little different every day

If you follow me on Instagram (you can do that here), you know I am a little obsessed with my garden, what I can cut or cook from it, other gardens, and so on. One of the great pleasures of a garden is that it’s a living, breathing entity and as such changes a bit every day. Something new is in bloom, there’s a weed invasion where there was nothing two days ago, I’ve solved the problem of rabbits eating the hostas but they’ve moved on to tulips, the daylilies have totally overgrown their space, or, this week, the shasta daisies seem stunted.

I tour the flower and herb beds most mornings, thinking about what I should do next. I pester other gardeners about how they treat various plant emergencies. My husband’s tomato plants have doubled in the last week. The daylilies in the garden are a sea of buds waiting for one or two more days to open.

In this photo, right, is an all white bed I planted about four years ago. I wanted to try a theme. It’s all about texture; I plan to add some Lamb’s Ears and Artemesia near the bottom of this photo. Beyond this bed, daylilies and Russian Sage are getting close to blooming. My Limelight hydrangeas, behind them, bloom later.

To have a garden is to happily anticipate the next bud, bloom, or fruit.

I hope the sun is shining and the gardens are growing wherever you are! Thanks for stopping by. See you next time.

Normandy & the D-Day beaches

With the 75th anniversary of the D-Day invasion this week, I wanted to share our tour there when Steve and I traveled to France last fall. Normandy was at the top of our list of places we wanted to visit if we returned to France. We had missed it on previous trips, but, as I wrote in a short blog post here, “If I had a bucket list, the D-Day beaches would be on it. This is a piece of the American experience that I wish everyone could share.”

Our geographic base for this leg of the journey was Bayeux. On the way we stopped in Arromanches, where the Allies assembled a temporary, artificial harbor immediately after D-Day. I consider this one of those remarkable feats of military engineering. The Allies needed a place to unload tons of heavy equipment after the initial invasion, so they built one!

Arromaches was close to the D-Day beaches, but spared the heavy June 6th fighting. The British built huge concrete floating caissons which they then towed into place and assembled as the walls and piers of the artificial port known as Mulberry Harbor. Floating pontoons linked it to the land. According to Wikipedia, by June 12, 1944 — less than a week after the invasion — more than 300,000 men, 54,000 vehicles, and 104,000 tons of supplies had been landed. During 100 days of operation of the port 2.5 million men, 500,000 vehicles, and 4 million tons of material were landed.

We visited the museum here that detailed all of this engineering and advance planning. My husband knew some of this; I must admit I was clueless before I saw it all diagrammed. (I’m not sure, do boys of a certain generation just know this stuff and the rest of us learn it later?) Arromaches gave us a taste of both how lovely these beaches are, but also how formidable.

The next day we were up early and walked the half-block our so from our hotel to the departure point for the various D-Day tour operators. Ours was a small group tour, maybe 12 of us in a van. The guide was a young man from Wales who told us he’d become fascinated by all aspects of WWII as a young boy when his grandfather began taking him to some sights. His knowledge was encyclopedic; clearly he was a very good student.

Our first stop on the tour was the German cemetery. (Yes, kind of a surprise!) As our guide pointed out, the German soldiers were not that different from the Allies. They were draftees called to serve. They weren’t all Nazis or particularly political. They were doing their job. And they died in battle, far from home, just like the Allied soldiers.

We stopped next at Angoville-au-Plain one of the tiny towns behind the beaches where paratroopers landed during the night before the invasion. Terrible weather meant hundreds of soldiers were dropped off course, totally missing their targets. Two of these paratroopers were young medics, 19 and 20 years old. Robert E. Wright and Kenneth J. Moore had been given two weeks of medical training. They jumped carrying packs of first aid supplies which they lost when they landed off course in swampy fields flooded by the Germans.

Undeterred, they made their way to the 11th Century church at Angoville-au-Plain. Using medical supplies they had recovered along the way, they hung a Red Cross flag on the door and worked for 72 hours straight on 82 patients, Allied and German, and lost only two men. They had only one rule: weapons must be left outside the church.

Their story really resonates with me. (I originally wrote about it here.) It says everything about soldiers doing their job, handling adversity, never giving up.

Utah Beach, Sainte Mere Eglise, & Pointe du Hoc

Utah Beach was the first actual landing site we stopped at. On a cool, windy fall day but with sun and clear blue skies, the broad beach seemed quiet, despite a number of small groups visiting. I think there is a sense of awe, knowing what happened here, and it doesn’t take much to imagine the beach and water teeming with men and equipment. And noise, it must have been deafening.

This was especially meaningful for Steve and me. My uncle had been assigned to a Patrol Craft, bobbing around in that rough water on Utah Beach, their job to pull injured soldiers out of the water. One of the few times Bill talked about it, he told us that at day break, the water was thick with all kinds of boats. Then the assault and the fighting began. He said that hours later, when they finally had a chance to look around again, the boats that had been on either sided of them, and many of the other vessels, were gone. “Just gone,” Bill said.

I stared out at that water for a long time.

Sainte Mere Eglise is the tiny village in the middle of the route Germans would have likely used counterattacking the Allied troops landing on Utah and Omaha beaches. In the early morning of June 6th mixed units of the 82nd Airborne and 101st Airborne occupied the town, making it one of the first towns liberated in the invasion. The events that unfolded, including one in which one paratrooper was caught on the church spire and forced to hang limply as though dead, were dramatically (though not accurately according to our guide) portrayed in The Longest Day.

St. Mere Eglise, where American paratroopers landed.

Lunch was a quick sandwich and coffee stop at a crossroads cafe that had once served Allied soldiers, as well as decades of French locals before that. The stop kept us “in 1944.”

Pointe du Hoc was the highest point along the coast between the Omaha and Utah landing beaches. In 1943 Germans troops built an extensive battery here using six French WWI artillery guns and early in 1944 began adding to the battery. D-Day plans included an assault by specially trained Army Rangers to breach the steep cliffs and disable the guns. The cliffs are formidable here and the ground atop them is pock-marked by bombings and gun placements. It’s rough to walk today, particularly in a sharp wind, and impossible to imagine how challenging it was on D-Day.

The pockmarked ground remains decades after the battle at Pointe du Hoc.

The American Cemetery & Omaha Beach

Our guide timed our visit to the American Cemetery for the hour when the flag is lowered at the end of the day. Walking to the cemetery I was tired. Despite lovely clear skies and fair weather, it was a very windy day, and we had already walked a lot. But I think I was also feeling emotionally spent. It’s not possible to walk these roads and towns without thinking of the people who came before. And not just the soldiers. But the brave French citizens who loved their communities and way of life, who were totally upended by the German invaders, many of them risking their lives working with the French underground, and who in the end so gratefully welcomed the Allies.

If you have been to the American cemetery, you know it is a heart-stopping sight. As a friend advised before we left, I walked down several rows of crosses. So often the men buried there would have died on the same day, or within days, and then there would be a few who died much later but whose families had chosen to bury them with fellow soldiers. If it hurts your heart to see so many losses, it also warms your heart to see them buried with their comrades.

We ended the day at Omaha Beach, and our guide took the time here to diagram, using a stick in the sand, exactly how the landings unfolded and how they fit into the great scheme of the entire D-Day invasion. (Again, he was just so knowledgeable!)

This tied things together for me. D-Day was a huge, complicated effort. A lot of things went wrong, but when that happened the soldiers on the ground readjusted and pushed on. That’s the story that stays with me.

I know this is a long post, but I honestly couldn’t figure out how to make it shorter. Thanks for reading through to the end. See you next time?