A wet snow fell overnight on Monday and stuck to everything but pavement. I took this photo on Braeburn Road on my way to work. I’ve been taking this basic route for about 17 years now and I’ve never stopped being thankful that I live in Chicagoland and my rush hour drive looks like this.
On the day after the 15-inch November snow storm, I took these photos out my study window.
I threw some bird seed on the small section of roof just outside my study window. Goldfinches (below), Juncos (bottom), Chickadees and House Sparrows came regularly. The next morning, an American Tree Sparrow joined them.
Every year at Christmastime we visit downtown Chicago to see the decorations. One of our annual stops is the Walnut Room at Macy’s where a giant tree is set up in the middle of the dining room (a tradition left over from when the store was Marshall Fields). We stand by the railing and look down on all the people eating in the restaurant.
Last year I decided that this year I would take my wife to the Walnut Room to eat. On five or six occasions over the past 10 months, I tried to make reservations but kept getting the message that it wasn’t time yet. Finally, in September I think, I got in, only to discover that there were very few slots remaining. I settled for 2:45 p.m. on a Thursday afternoon before Thanksgiving. I couldn’t find much information, but based on what I could discover from past years, I thought the tree would be up by that time.
We headed downtown on the train and walked to Macy’s, arriving about an hour before our reservations. This gave us time to view the Christmas window displays outside. The theme this year had something vaguely to do with planets.
And two on the end that featured Peanuts.
As we rode the escalator up through Macy’s, I saw a sign for Santa’s Wonderland. We hesitated before going in, but the woman at the entrance assured us it was OK. Once we got in, they tried, halfheartedly, to get us to have our picture taken with Santa, but we declined.
We got to the Walnut Room about 15 minutes early and saw that it was perhaps 25% full. We were seated immediately, in the main section about 20 feet from the tree. In other words, there was no reason to make reservations on this day.
The light patterns on the ceiling and walls moved, and the theme changed through four designs while we ate.
We ordered a cheese plate and chicken pot pies (the specialty). Both were OK, nothing special.
The Frango Mint cheesecake we shared for dessert was very good.
Three young women dressed as fairies were walking around the dining room visiting tables. One came up to us and gave us her fairy name and a long, involved story about how she works for Santa’s P.R. department and got him the role in Miracle on 34th Street. She seemed to be expecting us to be really impressed by this. She told us to watch for her name in the credits next time we watched the movie.
She waved her wand over my wife’s head to grant a wish and then went her fairy way.
Another fairy who frequently broke out in song came by a few minutes later, but when we told her we’d already been visited, she went away. A third one then stopped by. I told her we’d already had our wishes granted and didn’t want to be greedy.
She complimented us on this, but then launched into her fairy story — something about being Jack Frost’s daughter — but I distracted her by talking about the writing on the ceiling and she soon left.
It was a bit bizarre. I suppose they’re there to interact with kids, and when there are no tables with kids, they visit people like us. But I wasn’t really sure what the purpose was. My wife saw diners at another table put some money in a bag the singing fairy was carrying. But none of them was carrying a bag when they visited us, and I didn’t pick up any hints of wanting money. Nor am I sure what, exactly, I would have been giving them money for.
We went up a floor and looked down on the dining room from the balcony. As you can see, it was empty by this time. I asked and was told that reservations aren’t really needed before Thanksgiving.
We stopped at the Frango store and bought some mints.
And wandered about the store. It’s all crass consumerism, of course, but they do it well.
And that was it. We walked back to the station and caught the train home. We had a very good time, and will probably do it again, but without the reservations and without the cheese plate.
Fort Vancouver was a U.S. Army post from 1849 until 2011 when many of the barracks and other buildings became part of the National Park. In 1849, construction began on a row of houses on the ridge above the fort. These houses, used by Army officers, are still there, not part of the park proper, but included in a National Historic Reserve. Most of them are occupied by local businesses and organizations.
The Howard House was built in 1878 for General Oliver Otis Howard who was Commander of the Department of the Columbia (covering Oregon, Washington, Alaska and parts of Idaho).
The Grant House was built in 1849 and is the oldest remaining building on the post. It is named for Ulysses S. Grant, who was stationed here in 1852 as a Brevet Captain, but he never lived in the house. The house is now a restaurant, and I stopped in for lunch.
My cheeseburger and chips were excellent, although I didn’t tarry long because I always feel a bit odd eating by myself at a fancy sit-down restaurant.
A short way up the street is the Marshall House, built in 1886. It replaced the Howard House as the residence of the Commander. The first resident was General John Gibbon, who rose to fame during the Civil War as the brigadier who led the Iron Brigade. He was also first on the scene after the Battle of the Little Big Horn.
Its most famous resident was General George C. Marshall who lived here with his wife Katherine and their daughter from 1936 to 1938. He was commanding a brigade at the fort and supervising the CCC camps in the region.
The first floor of the house is open for tours on the rare days when it isn’t rented out for a business meeting or wedding. An older gentleman met me at the door and took me about for free.
All the fixtures in the house are original, but only two dining room chairs and some smaller pieces of furniture belonged to the Marshalls.
Marshall’s study (below). The room behind my guide is a bathroom. It was installed in what was once a closet when Madeleine Albright was Secretary of State. She visited the area and announced that she wanted to stay in the house. The bedrooms upstairs have all been turned into offices rented by local businesses, so they had to turn Marshall’s study into a bedroom. And then the Secret Service informed whoever owns the house that Albright had to have her own bathroom. So they scrambled and had one installed in the closet. That’s a degree of power and conceit that is foreign to me.
The two chairs on either side of the desk belong to Marshall. (Not the rolling desk chair.)
This picture was given to Marshall by the Japanese after World War II in appreciation for the Marshall Plan which enabled them to rebuild their country. The gold is gold flakes and the red is ruby flakes. The picture has its own alarm system.
This was Marshall’s hat when he was a cadet at the Virginia Military Institute. He’s wearing it in the photo below (third from the left in the front row).
Me holding the helmet Marshall wore during World War I.
junco hyemalis thurberi
Thursday, November 5, 2015
Fort Vancouver National Historic Site — Vancouver, Washington
There is a large English-style garden in front of the Hudson’s Bay stockade in the National Park. As I walked along the path that led past this garden, five or six Oregon Juncos were foraging in the grass and perching on the rails of the fence. At least two of them were males with dark heads that contrasted sharply with the pinkish-brown backs and sides.
I only had my cell phone with me, and so my photos are awful, but for the sake of documentation …
