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We’re now approaching the finish-line of the holiday season, which for many clans, mine included, is the season of much feasting (see post from 12/22/2014). Our family’s final feast of the season was the annual day-after-Christmas reunion of Tom’s side of the family, which our branch always hosts. We ate.  Sometimes it just feels right in the kitchen.  Then we sat around and talked or played:  Then we ate some more. Then the relatives left and we munched on left-overs while we cleaned up. And munched again after we cleaned up. So it was all good and ran pretty much according to the standard operating procedure for the typical day-after-Christmas feast. Except for one detail: I didn’t do any cooking. I had the whole thing catered by Olive Garden. If this does not initially sound earth-shaking to you, understand that planning, cooking, and presenting - with ample help, of course, and weeks of advance preparation - lavish buffet-style meals with a dozen different savories and again as many sweets for 20, 30, 50 (at Tom’s 60th birthday party), even 100 ( at Theresa’s wedding reception) has become part of my persona. Birthday parties, team dinners, graduations, showers, wedding receptions, you name it, I’ve cooked and baked for it. Sometimes when people hear about the number of guests I’m cooking for they tsk-tsk that I’ll never be able to do it, that I’ve surely bitten off more than I can chew. To which I tut-tut right back that of course I can do it. And I always have. I’ve never used the services of a caterer – all right, except for one time when I thought I’d try sneaking in a batch of Noodles ‘n Company pasta which quite frankly did not pass muster, everyone found it decidedly second rate, so I went back to serving my own angel hair pasta with tomatoes, garlic, and olive oil. When I’m not being advised that I should quit trying to cook for such large crowds I’m being told that I should totally open my own catering or dessert business. So for me to hand over the day-after-Christmas feast to The Olive Garden was, in fact, cataclysmic. Not to mention shocking for the guests, to whom I’d given not a clue beforehand that the spread to be laid out before them would not be my own. But for the first time ever it wasn’t my own. And here’s why: At 12:30 am the Saturday before Christmas I sprang up in bed in the middle of a brain storm. I don’t mean a brain storm in the sense of a productive whirling of good ideas, but a storm of stress and anxiety in my brain caused by the fact that this holiday, for the first time ever I bit off more than I could chew. All the warnings over the years of the naysayers had finally come home to roost: I couldn’t do it! I’d planned too many meals, too many guests, too much work without regard for the fact that this year with my all my children - my primary source of labor in assembling feasts - out of town, busy with their jobs or with children of their own, for the first time I would have no one to help me put together the requisite - at least in my mind - mountains of party food. Nor did I feel that I could recruit Tom to help with the food as he always has his work cut out for him with the house-cleaning and last-minute logistical details. And so now I’d hit the wall, unprepared, in the middle of the night a few days before all the days of feasting were to begin: Sunday night: dinner for 11 Christmas Eve: dinner for 24 Christmas Day: a big special brunch for 7 Day after Christmas: lunch for 12 Not to mention all the breakfasts, lunches, and dinners between the party meals. As I sat in bed stressing and sighing Tom finally rolled over and asked me what was wrong. “I can’t do it!” I moaned. “Can’t do what?” he asked. “The holidays! All the cooking! All the food shopping! I just can’t do it!” “So we’ll cancel all the company,” Tom said calmly. With the petulant logic of a three-year-old I wailed, “But I don’t want to!!” “Then why don’t you just have all the parties catered? Order all the food out.” “What?! ...Order the food?...out?!” “Yeah. Why not?” “Why not?! ...Because, because….how expensive would that be?” “Who cares?” “But... I’d have no idea where to order from.” “There’s gotta be a hundred restaurants in Gahanna.” Finally I got down to the meat and potatoes of the matter: “But everybody expects me to cook. They all look forward to my meals. They’d be horrified and disappointed if I served restaurant food.” “They won’t care,” said Tom. “Order the food out. And by the way, I’ll fix dinner tomorrow night so you don’t have to worry about it. Spaghetti okay with you?” “Yeah,” I replied in wonder at the prospect of the yoke of cooking being suddenly lifted from my overly tense shoulders, “spaghetti would be awesome.” It took me a few moments to accept that it might actually be acceptable for me to order out food for our company. But only a few moments. In fact, so freeing was the knowledge that I didn’t have to cook that by the next day my brain had ceased storming and I was able to calmly think through what was left to do for the upcoming feasts and come to the realizations that: 1. It was mostly in my mind that I was behind the eight-ball. In actuality I already had much of the food preparation done, and 2. in spite of their work, child-care and house-cleaning duties, the rest of the family who were in town were able and willing to jump in help me with the food-prep duties. All I’d needed to do was make my need known. And finally: 3. The Sunday night, Christmas Eve, and Christmas day meals were actually already pretty well prepped and ready to go. The only meal I’d need to order out was the 12-person day-after-Christmas one. And so I looked around at the local offerings and settled on ordering the Day-After-Christmas Feast from the Gahanna Olive Garden. OMG, it was sooooo easy! A couple of clicks to the online menu and, voila, an Olive Garden feast for 12 was promised to be ready for pick-up and payment on the exact day and time of my choosing. I chose to pick-up on December 26 at 11:40 am: 12 servings of salad and breadsticks for 12 6 servings of Chicken Marsala with potatoes and carrots 6 servings of Beef and Tortellini 12 servings of lasagna  Everything was waiting at the gahanna Olive Garden, hot, bagged up and ready to go at the appointed time. My bill, with a tip, came to $199, about $16.50 per person, except that the order they gave us included more food than twelve people could possibly eat - there were mountains of salad and breadsticks! - and so we ended up with sufficient left-overs to give some to Tommy to take home and also to hold the rest of us over in meals until yesterday morning when we all left for Los Angeles, where Tom and I are staying for the week. So how did the Olive Garden food go over with the relatives once they recovered from the initial shock that I’d had the day-after-Christmas feast catered? “Delicious!” “Great food!” “Awesome idea!” And so ran the comments on the catered meal. Sometimes we overestimate our indispensability. 
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(See yesterday's post)
Last night, Christmas night, I had the opportunity to be among the millions who watched "The Interview" thanks to the decision of Sony Pictures to release the movie on youtube pay-per-view and a few other online venues starting on Christmas Eve, the day before the movie opened in a few hundred independent theaters across the country. So I paid $5.99 to Youtube, linked my laptop screen to the TV screen, and my daughter, son, and son-in-law and I settled onto the family room couch with unmuted excitement to watch the movie of the moment. As it turned out, my daughter had been spot-on in the less-than-glowing assessment she'd given the movie the day before. (See the last line of yesterday's post). Granted, there were some funny moments in "the Interview," but they were only moments. The movie, as a whole, didn't snap, crackle, or pop. But then the point of watching "The Interview" last night was never to enjoy a quality movie experience. It was to be part of something, an event, a moment of American solidarity, part of a counterstroke against a dictator who thought he could oppress our right free speech and artistic expression by threats and intimidation. And regardless of the quality of the movie it was neat to be watching it and feeling in solidarity not only with the millions who, like us, were watching it online, but with those who'd stood in lines that snaked around blocks to buy up every last ticket from the sold-out theaters. We were all of us making a statement together. A hands-across-cyber-space kind of thing. It did feel kind of surreal, though, watching this comedy about Kim Jong Un who in real life was behaving the same way as the character in the film because of the film. It kind of felt like a movie within a movie. It would seem that someone now needs to make a movie about this movie. One thing I will say on behalf of "the Interview" - and if you haven't yet seen it and are planning to you might want to stop here because this might be a bit of a spoiler - It had a good plot-turn at a moment when one of the characters pointed out that the CIA has been getting it wrong all these years: that the way to bring down an iron-fisted dictator isn't to assassinate him - he'll only be replaced by the next henchman in line - but to make him look really silly in front of his people. Maybe there's some truth to this thesis. Maybe that's why "The Interview" stirred up such hostility in Kim Jong Un. Maybe it jabbed him in his Achilles Heel. I was as outraged and demoralized as everyone else in this country last week when Sony Pictures announced that it was pulling its Christmas Day release of "The Interview", a Seth Rogan comedy that makes fun of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, because of a cyber attack on the company followed by a threat from North Korea that a terror attack would be carried out against any theater that dared to show the film. Sony's capitulation to North Korea's threats felt like surrender, subservience, and suppression of the one thing that we as Americans, for all our many and deep differences, hold dear to our hearts: our freedom of speech and expression. Half of us may absolutely hate what the other half has to say, but our right to publicly say whatever we want runs deep in the marrow of our bones. But here we were now cowering in fear and compliance because of the threats of a malevolent dictator 6,300 miles away. And so when the news broke the day before yesterday that Sony had announced that the owners of 200 independent movie theaters in this country had stepped forward and proclaimed that they would not be shut up or shut down by North Korea, that they in fact would show "the Interview" as scheduled Christmas day, I for one received the news with a rush of gladness and a surge of pride and my heart gave a patriotic cheer. This morning during our Christmas family brunch I was discoursing on the fact that these 200 theaters thumbing their nose at a tyrannical power that attempted to bully our country was a victory for freedom and justice. I said I believed that this was good news for a Christmas day, or any day. I added that we should be proud that two independent theaters in Columbus, The Gateway Film Center and The Grandview Theatre, are among the venues that would be showing "The Interview." "Think about it," I said, "today our country is going to win a victory without a war." My daughter sighed, "And all because of a sh**ty Seth Rogan movie." Christmas morning brunch, expanded with left-overs from Our Christmas Eve feast and carol-singing : scrambled eggs with onions and tomatoes, sausage, steak fries, Justin's special broccoli, stuffed mushrooms, shrimp, rolls, fruit salad, left-over Christmas Eve desserts Tommy setting out the Christmas Eve Feast (see post from 12/23/2014)  Merry Christmas, everyone!
 Last week one of my Facebook friends wrote a post to the effect that the closer we get to Christmas the grouchier and more rude some people in her workplace have been behaving and that this workplace behavior has been getting her down, especially as we think of Christmas a a season that calls for goodness and peace. My own prognosis for this social behavioral unpleasantness is that people are getting stressed out over the demands of the holidays. Furthermore, I now confess that I made that prognosis based on personal experience, having suffered a couple of stress-induced "Grinch moments" myself over the past few days. Thankfully, they've mostly happened in the middle of the night as I've lain in bed wide awake wondering how I'm going to manage to get everything done that needs to be done to pull off all the holiday activities that were no one's idea but mine to undertake. ( I do have this propensity for grand plans). Last night in the middle of the night I had one of those Grinch moments. My visiting 18-month-old teething, still jet-lagging grandbaby began wailing and would not stop. And so as I was just lying awake in bed stressing and Grinching away anyway I figured I might as well get up and give my exhausted daughter and son-in-law a break by taking over crying baby duty. I wrapped up my little wailer in a warm blanket and brought her downstairs the began walking the floor, which calmed her. Then I settled us into the rocker in the family room and began rocking while surveying the state of affairs in the family room, which supposedly would be full of company the following night:  The whole downstairs was in pretty much the same state as the family room. And besides the mega-mess that would have to be cleaned up I had a day's worth of cooking to do. Then I looked into the little round face of my granddaughter, her eyes fluttering the way babies' eyes do when they're almost asleep. I looked back up at the mess around me. Then the thought came to me: This is a gift. All of it. The mess, the work, the friends and family I'm fortunate enough to have coming over on Christmas Eve to share gifts of food and music, and above all the sweet baby now sleeping peacefully in my arms, who along with her 3-year- old sister, was the author of my currently messy house. But at that moment the mess didn't matter. Because I was awash in the realization that it's a blessing to have a purpose-filled day, work to do and people to do it for. And today will be a busy, purpose-filled day. (see yesterday's blog). One of my several gargantuan shopping orders over the past week in preparation for the Christmas feasts to come.  1. First feast: Last Sunday night, dinner for 11. Menu: Oven-fried chicken Cheese potato casserole Green Beans Almondine Fresh-baked rolls Apple pie Christmas Cookies Ice cream We ate the Sunday night feast, then waddled like stuffed Christmas geese over to the piano and sang Christmas carols and Hannukkah songs. P.S. to all piano students: acquiring the ability to play holiday carols and songs is a good enough reason as any to take lessons.  2. Second Feast: Christmas Eve, dinner for 23. Menu: Stuffed mushrooms Shrimp Veggies and dip Guacamole Dip and chips Hot turkey and hot roast beef sandwiches on fresh-baked rolls Mini-Nathan's hot-dogs, Chicago-style Mashed potatos Justin's famous broccoli Coleslaw Pie Mini-cupcakes Cookies The mushrooms, preparing to be stuffed for Christmas Eve.  After the Christmas Eve Feast the plan is that we will again waddle over to the piano and sing yet more Hannukkah songs and Christmas Carols. (We all just like to sing).
3. The Third Feast: Christmas Day, breakfast for 9. Menu: Scrambled eggs. Sausage Tater tots Toast Fruit salad Cinnamon rolls 4. The Fourth Feast: Day After Christmas, lunch for 14. Menu: A monumental surprise, to be announced. It's December 23, 10:53 am. Time to get back to Krogers. It's now been a year since I started writing "Ailantha". My first post was Friday, December 20, 2013. Here's what I wrote in that first post, in which I explained the title of my blog: Ailanthus Altissima, called either Tree of Heaven or Slum Palm, is a tree that thrives in places where no respectable plant would grow: in vacant lots, between the broken glass in alleys, up through rubble and cracks in the sidewalk. It is widely considered an urban blight, an ugly invasive eye sore, and because of its tenacity, campaigns to rip it from the face of the planet are ongoing and expensive. But there are others out there who praise the Ailanthus for standing up to the asphalt and concrete and bringing a bit of welcome shade and greenery, a little oasis for passersby. So what is Ailanthus? Occasional oasis or tenacious blight? And which will its spin-off Ailantha be? For the first month I published a post every day but then cut back to five days a week. Over the year I've missed two days, once because I was traveling and didn't have access to WIFI, and the second time was on Thanksgiving, when I ended up having to throw in the towel and accept that I wasn't going to get my blog out. It was just one of those days. Last Friday was also one of those days that almost got away before I got my blog posted. I did finally get it out, though about 8 hours later than usual. That could happen again, especially over the coming holidays. There were a few other days when I almost didn't get my post out, times when I stayed up until well after 1 am in the morning spinning my wheels, producing only awful writing. And yet every time when I woke up the following morning and re-read what I'd written, it always read better than it had in the wee hours the night before and so I'd do a little polishing on what I'd written, send it out, and remind myself that in the end if my writing wasn't the best on the planet it didn't really matter, that all I'm really doing is sharing a few details of or observations on life that maybe a few of my fellow human beings can connect with. My average post is 600-800 words and each post typically takes me four hours to write. I don't have time to read books anymore and my Netflix-watching has been cut back to a minimum. I'm not sure what else I used to do with the rest of the time I now spend blogging each day. I guess I'm proof of that truism that work expands to fill the time allotted. So I'm not a fast writer, nor does writing come easily for me. Still I feel like I'm a writer first and foremost, even though I've never been able to make a living at it and it's not even what I'm best at. I believe I'm better at teaching piano than at writing. And yet I feel more like a writer than a piano teacher. I've got Salieri Syndrome (see post from 1/16/2014), a term I made up for when you're good at what you believe your true life's vocation is, but not good enough to make a living at it. So you do something else for a living, something that you're better at than what you believe your calling is. Which begs the question of whether what you believe your true calling to be actually is your true calling. Anyway, my resolutions for the coming year are: 1. to only write my blog on the days when I have something to write about and 2. to never again stay up past 1 am working on the following day's post. For the past year there's never been a day when I haven't had something to write about. In fact, I have over twenty titles of drafts that I ended up not even using, there's been so much to write about. As I finish up this post it's December Monday, 22, 12:42 am. I'm already feeling a squishy about keeping my second resolution. 
Continued from yesterday... Night was falling on Michigan Avenue when Tom and I decided to walk the four blocks from Michigan and Illinois out to the Navy Pier on Lake Michigan.  The Navy Pier was lit up outside:  ...and inside:   ...though the view from the pier was far nicer outside:   After walking around the pier for a while we decided to head back to town and, what luck, we were able to catch the Navy Pier holiday trolley, a free fancy trolly that transports people back and forth from Michigan Avenue to the Navy Pier:  When we got off the trolley at Michigan Avenue we decided to walk back to the loop so as to enjoy the Christmas lights one last time.    We walked all the way back to the Kristkindlesmarket again.  ....from where we took the el and then the bus back to Bucktown, by which time it was time to eat again so we went to an Asian noodle restaurant down the street from our hostel called Penny's. That's right, an Asian noddle restaurant called Penny's, 
 Tom ordered beef and red peppers over rice and a beer,   ...and I ordered beef noodle soup:  Tom liked what her ordered well enough, though we both agreed that my soup - which was really tasty and delicious - was the better of the two dishes. I guess the moral of the story is that if you go to a noodle restaurant you should probably stick with the noodles, right? After dinner at Penny's we started walking back to the hostel, but Stan's Donuts was on the way so of course we couldn't pass by without stopping in.   Evidently everybody else had the same idea. Stan's seems to be the place to be on Saturday night in Bucktown. After our farewell-to-Chicago doughnuts we headed back to the IHSP hostel with its twisty, turny hallways, 
 It was our last night, we'd be back on the Megabus back to Columbus early Sunday morning.
As we were walking down the hallway to our room we passed a nice Australian girl we'd met. "Uh-oh," she teased, "here come the grown-ups!" Only on the outside, thought I. ...Continued from yesterday On Saturday morning Claire had to work, so Miguel swung by and picked us up at our hostel and we drove to nearby Logan Square for brunch at a restaurant we like called The Revolution Brewery that has a "Workers of the World Unite!" theme:   ...the beer taps are shaped like raised fists. Tom and I ordered my usual, two sunny-side up eggs, served with sides of home fries, the warmest, freshest fluffiest biscuit that ever accompanied two sunny-side up eggs and, the optional substitution for bacon, spinach.  The spinach was very tasty and worked amazingly well as a side to the eggs. Miguel ordered sunny-side up eggs over pork hash, which he said was also very good.  After breakfast Miguel dropped us back at our hostel from whence we decided o head back downtown. Since the elevated train (the el) stop closest to our hostel was closed for repairs, we walked about a mile to the next el stop. We rode the el to The Loop, got off at Monroe Street and from there made our way to Michigan Avenue. As we passed the Chicago Cultural Center we decided to pop back in and have another look around  
 After the Cultural Center we headed north on Michigan Avenue and started walking. And walking. And walking. Millennium Park   By the time we crossed the Chicago River, the gateway to The Magnificent Mile, we were moving through a dense sea of people, shoppers and tourists like us out for a Saturday afternoon in December.     We stopped to admire the beautiful architecture of the Fourth Presbyterian Church:   ...and we wanted to go inside but there was a wedding, so we crossed the street to Water Tower Place and strolled around inside the shopping mall where we stopped to admire the beautiful architecture of some awesome-looking cupcakes!  ...which reminded us that it was almost lunchtime. So we hopped a bus headed back down Michigan Avenue towards the Loop, where we'd decided to seek out some lunch. Once again we began zigzagging the streets off Michigan Avenue, but this time on the very first zig, and without even looking for it, we ran smack into....a Chicago-Style hot-dog place! (See yesterday's post).  The name of this hot-dog place was American Dog and it was tucked away in the one square inch of The Loop that we must have overlooked yesterday when we were scouring around for a hot-dog. Anyway, the dogs here were good (Note the requisite "coupla two, tree, sport peppers" [See yesterday's post]),  ...as were the fries.  In fact, I'd say the food was slightly more photogenic than yesterday's fare (see yesterday; post). Still, I noticed that the relish on this dog lacked the distinctive bright green hue of the relish on yesterday's dog, the relish that is, according to Miguel, the hallmark of an authentic Chicago-style dog. So maybe it was the ordinary-looking relish, or maybe it was the fact that this was our second Chicago hot dog and so lacked the bright shining thrill of our first the day before, but I'd say the Gold Coast dogs had a slight edge over the American Dog dogs. But then again, maybe no dog will ever be as good as that first dog. Anyway, after lunch we walked back to Michigan Avenue and were basically at the same spot we'd started out at, near the Chicago Cultural Center. So once again, we turned north on Michigan and started re-walking the same route towards the Magnificent Mile. 
 One exasperated-looking young lady shopper standing next to me remarked, "It's okay if they want to demonstrate, but why'd they have to do it in front of Nordstroms?!" We moved on, and by now the sun was setting and the lights were beautifully twinkling above the crowd.   We decided to walk out to the lake.
To be continued.... ...Continued From yesterday: It was Friday afternoon in downtown Chicago, well past lunch time, and Tom and I had decided that what we wanted was a real Chicago-style hot dog. Now, we'd seen hot dog joints galore, like this one, while walking around Bucktown,  But now we were downtown. So we turned off Michigan Avenue and started walking, searching for a hot dog spot. We walked up one street and down another,     …we passed two Potbellys, two Paneras, three Dunkin' Donuts and who knows how many Starbucks, but we could not find a hot-dog place. Which led us to conclude that Chicagoans love their coffee more than their hot dogs. When we’d zig-zagged our way almost to Union Station - which is about a mile from Michigan Avenue if you walk a straight line - I came up with the idea of looking inside Union Station for a hot dog stand. After all, I reasoned, the train station would be perennially full of tourists who’d want to try a real Chicago hot dog, right? So we continued on to Union Station,  ...walked around a bit, turned a corner, and struck gold!:  A real Chicago-style hot dog stand! Or, we figured, as close as you could get at a train station food court. No matter, at that point whatever they had was close enough for us, we were famished. So we both ordered a Chicago-style hot dog combo for $7.59 and were each given a jumbo-sized dog topped with tomato, onions, a dill pickle spear, spicy green peppers, mustard, celery seed, and some amazingly bright green relish, accompanied by a drink and a pile of hot fries.  Was it a good dog? Well, you know when you’ve got a hankering for something and when you finally get it it hits the spot so sublimely that you are saturated in satisfaction afterwards? That’s how Tom and I felt after our Chicago-style hot-dog and French fry luncheon in Union Station.  
The next morning during breakfast with Miguel (Claire had to work), the conversation turned to Tom’s and my nearly fruitless quest the day before for a Chicago-style hot dog.
When we told Miguel how we'd finally found a Chicago dog at Gold Coast Dogs in Union Station he was skeptical as to whether a dog sold at a stand in Union Station could be the real Chicago deal. He asked us what was on our dogs and I listed the ingredients: tomato, onion, peppers, a pickle slice, mustard, relish, and celery seed with a celery seed bun. Miguel conceded that those were indeed the proper ingredients, but he asked me to describe the relish. I told him that the relish was, as a matter of fact, this strange shade of bright Kelly green, a color I’d never before seen on relish nor too often anywhere else in nature. But Miguel said that the bright green relish is, in fact, a hallmark of a real Chicago dog. I asked him why the relish was bright green. He didn’t know why. He, like all Chicagoans, just knew it had to be. Finally he asked me about the peppers, which I described as sort of light olive drab green in color and bullet shaped. This was also the correct pepper, called the sport pepper by Chicagoans, as in (according to Miguel using the authentic Chicago patois), “Yeah. Lemme get a coupla two tree sport peppers on dat der, guy." (Sigh). Those were sure some good dogs. ...Continued from Friday: Tom and I started off Friday with breakfast at The Bongo Room, a popular crowded Bucktown breakfast place down the block from our hostel.  I ordered what I invariably order when eating breakfast out, two sunny-side up eggs with whole wheat toast and some variation of home fried potato, and Tom ordered the same. Now, when one always orders the same breakfast, as I always do, it can be hard to rate one restaurant's fare over another. I mean, in general an egg is an egg is an egg and while some toast slices have it over others, what really makes one sunny-side egg breakfast rise above the others is the potatoes on the side. And I've said it before and I'll say it again: The Bong Room has the absolutely best side-potatoes on the planet: And they give you a boatload of them!  So we asked the waitress how do they make these awesome potatoes and she gave away the secret recipe, which I will share with you: They use redskins, which they first boil, then cut up into good-sized chunks then roll in olive oil, grilled onions and spices. Then they grill the potatoes. So that's the secret: boil, roll, grill. I'm definitely going to try it using the oven broiler for the grilling. Should work, right? Next we walked around Bucktown, full of boutiques and trendy little restaurants:       Then we took the bus and the train downtown to The Loop. We started out at the Kriskindlesmarket, an outdoor German crafts and food fair that takes place in Daley Square every year at Christmas time and is modeled after the Kristkindlesmarket in Neuremburg, Germany:   The Kriskindlesmarket was crowded as it always is and the air was fragrant with the delicious-smelling food and gluewein, the hot spiced wine that's sold in festive little mugs. Several of the world's religions are represented at the front entrance of the Kriskindlesmarket. Along with an almost life-sized nativity scene,  ...there is a towering menorah,  ...an "A" honoring Atheism,   And a greeting from the Freedom From Religion Foundation.  A lesser-known claim-to-fame of the Chicago Kristkindlesmarket is that is has the second best porta-potties on the planet. (The best porta-potty is a pay porta-potty on a sidewalk in Burgos, Spain. For a complete description of that high-tech state-of-the-art porta-potty see the 10/8/2013 post from my blog "Tighten Your Boots" at pattiliszkay.weebly.com). Anyway, the Kristkindlesmarket porta-potties were free and located inside a big heated tent. The potties were lined up inside the tent like private bathroom stalls and they were clean and plentiful.  But the best feature of this porta-potty complex was that there was a porta-sink that you worked with a foot pedal and which offered liquid soap and paper towels so that you could properly wash and dry your hands.  So, though still not quite up to the porta-potty in Burgos, all this made for a quality porta-potty experience. From the Kriskindlesmarket we walked over to the Macy's on Washington Street and looked at the store's decorations.   Then we walked along Michigan Avenue and saw: The Bean, of course,  ...and the Exploding Bean.  We visited the Chicago Cultural Center at the corner of Michigan Avenue and Randolph Street, a wonderful free art museum and community center  ...housed in a magnificent 19th century building that at one time housed the Grand Army of the Republic (a Civil War Union Army veterans' group) at one end of the building and the first Chicago main branch library at the other.
 The building has two beautiful Tiffany dome ceilings:
 ...and several rooms of art exhibits:
 Tom and me, looking at the art.   By the time we finished our tour of the Chicago Cultural Center it was time for lunch. We'd decided that for lunch we wanted something that, of all the times we'd been in Chicago, we hadn't yet sampled: a real Chicago-style hot dog. We figured we'd just wander around The Loop until we found a hot dog joint. After all, how far should we have to go to find a Chicago hot dog in downtown Chicago? As it turned out, pretty far. To be continued.... |
"Tropical Depression"
by Patti Liszkay Buy it on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BTPN7NYY Archives
July 2025
I am a traveler just visiting this planet and reporting various and sundry observations,
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