The Big City

I must first apologize for my lack of posting of late. Good intentions don't always result in words on the page, or screen.

As I said in my last post, there's something about a big city. We spent that long weekend in Chicago recently, and have spent other times there since our son moved there in 2003. His connection to the University of Chicago puts us mostly in the university environs, but then enjoying activities all over the city.

Twice we attended the Publishers Row Lit Fest in June, once the Taste of Chicago. Twice we saw the belly dancers in the Turkish restaurant on the Northside. Try finding that in Bella Vista, Arkansas. One year we were there for the Hyde Park art fair. Everything was priced way more than we could afford, and we weren't in need of any art, but it was good to see it all. Someday I may even develop an appreciation for the visual arts.

Of course in the big city you have a wider choice of restaurants. You have bookstores, ice cream shops, places to buy candy, clothing stores out the wazoo. All of them are different than what we find in the exurbs. You have architectural wonders to view, and some to tour.

At the U of C, there's the campus to wander, maybe to find a coffee shop, buy some regular or designer coffee and sit and read something, pretend you're back in college, but with your 61 year old brain. I mentioned in my last post that the U of C has much construction going on, and I was intending in this post to talk about some of the new buildings and those being built. But I'm in St. Louis and don't have all the information with me, so that will have to wait till another post.

Ah, St. Louis! A city I often drive through but where I've spent very little time. This is the first time I've ever stayed in downtown St. Louis. Out my hotel window I can see the south leg of the arch. A very nice, older building is off to the right. I attend the three days of the conference (well, two of them are 1/2 days), and it includes a Cardinals game at Busch Stadium. That will be my third major league park to visit.

But back to Chicago. One interesting aspect of going there is looking at the buildings, even the simple residences. In older portions of the city there are no subdivisions. Houses are wedged onto small lots. Everything is on more than one level. Many parts of the city developed before everyone had an automobile, so there is no place to garage a car, and parking is tight. Yet even in the midst of this, the neighborhoods are often pleasant. People have found a way to add trees and other plants, or vegetable, herb, and flower gardens. Walk down a Hyde Park neighborhood street and it seems pleasant.

I grew up in the big city. Well, some might not think a Cranston RI location as the big city. It's in the Providence metro area, and our house was two stone throws from the Providence border. To me it seemed like the big city. Then for most of the next 16 years I was in the big city in three different locations. The big cities in the Arabian Peninsula were different than American big cities, or course, but they were still big cities. I've now lived in the exurbs or northwest Arkansas for over twenty years. I like both. I still remember what it's like to live in the city, and to live in the exurbs/suburbs. I find both to be satisfactory place.

I remember a job interview my senior year in college. The interviewer asked, "Are you willing to relocate?" I said yes, and he asked, "Even to New York City?" That was an easy yes. "Even to Biloxi Mississippi?" That was a harder yes. If he had asked me, "Even to Kansas farm country?" that would probably have been a no. Now? Almost anywhere in the world would be a yes. I can see myself going back to the big city, and maybe will at some point (if Oklahoma City qualifies as a big city). Plop me down somewhere and give me a place for my books, an Internet hook-up, some paper and pens, and I'm good to go.

Quick Thoughts on a Trip

On Friday August 30 Lynda and I drove to Chicago to spend the Labor Day weekend with our son, Charles, and his partner. I come away from that trip with several observations that I wanted to share.

Of course, no one is interested in reading a travel log. The roads we went on, the ease of driving the bypass around St. Louis, the surprisingly light traffic, the bad traffic jam as we approached Chicago, etc. Those are all memorable from my perspective, but you've already read more about that than you probably care to.

So let me just give a few bulleted items of other types of observations. I may come back and flesh some of these out in future posts.

• The University of Chicago is an amazing institution. Since both our son and his partner work there, we spent some time on campus and saw a number of new buildings, buildings under construction, and development plans. I could write much about this, and may.
• There's something to be said about a big city. There's so much to do in Chicago, so many interesting sights to see and places to go. We really never got out of the Hyde Park and Woodlawn neighborhoods, yet it seemed like our time was fully occupied, our bodies worked, and our minds engaged.
• The Lake Michigan shore is nicely developed for recreation. I'm sure the tax dollars flowed heavily, but it seems to be a great amenity.
• Sherlock Holmes was an amazing creation of Arthur Conan Doyle. I know: You're reading this and that seems to come out of the blue. We watched the two seasons of the BBC show as well as the 2009 Robert Downey Jr. movie. I haven't read much of Doyle—just four of the Holmes short stories, I think—though I've picked up a complete two-volume set of the Homes canon. I really need to work this into my reading schedule, as well as finish the Doyle letters book I'm reading.

That's if for now. As I said, I hope to come back and flesh this out over the next several posts.

Home Again, Home Again

We returned last night from our road trip to Chicago via Oklahoma City, driving through two severe thunderstorms in Missouri, with tonado watches and warnings all around us. We arrived in Bella Vista to find it dry, hot, and muggy; it looked like no rain fell yesterday.

About 10:30 PM that changed, as the lightning and thunder came, quickly followed by wind and rain. When I went to bed about midnight the storm was still raging. When I woke at 5:45 AM all was quite. I saw little storm damage on the commute, so perhaps it sounded worse than it did.

I have many impressions from our trip to write about, and would like to get at it. Unfortunately, my employer calls me to put in a full day. And I have some blogs to review. And e-mails to read. And two writing related tasks I must complete today. So stay tuned. I will be posting daily this week, perhaps even twice daily at times.

Random Road Trip Thoughts

That's random thoughts from a road trip, not thoughts on a random road trip, by the way. We returned yesterday after 3,700 plus miles, going to Oklahoma City (for grandson Ephraim's first birthday party) by way of Rhode Island (for nephew Chris' wedding). Here are some thoughts as I think of them.

- Arkansas has the most road kill per mile, by far. I say this even though only about 50 miles of the trip were in Arkansas.

- Gas prices are fairly equal from Oklahoma to New England. The lowest I saw was $1.779 per gallon around the Tulsa area. The most $2.099 in Rhode Island. That's only an 18 percent difference. In 1990-91, when we made a couple of similar road trips between North Carolina and Arkansas, the price varied by more than 50 percent.

- Many New England towns are quaint and pleasant to drive through. The area between Worcester MA and Woonsocket RI is filled with towns such as Grafton, Upton, Uxbridge, Milford, and Sutton that have some type of central core (not so much a village green as a downtown, but different than the downtowns in the midwest) that is full of old buildings--churches, government offices, retail, residential--that are pleasant to drive by and observe. At several places I would have loved to have had the time to stop and wander around on foot.

- Rhode Island has the worst roads of any state we drove in. The Interstate highways were fine, but the roads a notch below that, the state highways, left much to be desires, and the city streets were generally awful.

- Pennsylvania may just be the most beautiful state in the nation. I know other states have higher mountains, more magnificent rivers, and mixtures of landscape and climate. But I love to drive I-80 across Pennsylvania. This is the Allegheny mountains much of the way, and pretty good sized hills for the rest. You don't go through any towns or cities until the far eastern end, which we bypassed this time. Many times the road is on high bridges that tower above a river or stream below. Frequently the east-bound and west-bound lanes are on different grades, and you seem to be on a one way road. We took this in daylight both directions, and I enjoyed the 10 hours thoroughly.

- Judging by the truck traffic, the economic depression is not too deep. Except, the traffic is down on weekends and at nights compared to previous road trips I've taken. So while many trucks still transport their cargo on our Interstate highways, they are not pushing as hard as the did previously. Perhaps I'll be proved wrong about being in a depression that will last approximately eight years. But I'm not throwing in the towel on that yet.

- It's good to get off the Interstates some. We did so at Toledo, where we spent a night, and went on state highways to Fort Wayne. Aside from being confused by the place names (in rapid succession we passed through or saw signs for Waterville--also a Vermont town we know--Grand Rapids--Ohio, not Michigan--Texas, Florida, Antwerp, and three or four similar well-known places not expected in northwest Ohio), and besides fighting rain, we enjoyed the brief chance to drive at slower speeds and see a new part of the country up close. Even being slowed down to pass through the towns was not all that bad.

- The genealogy section in the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, Indiana, is all it is cracked up to be. What a fantastic collection! I planned to spend an hour there, doing the small bit of research needed for my article, and wound up spending nearly six hours, as Lynda had some work to do there for renewing her nursing license. Since I hadn't planned for that much time I was not well prepared for it, but hopefully used it well to search for one elusive line of ancestors and find more information on one of my well-studied ones.

This post is long enough already. I'll have more to day in another post or two.