Dandelion. Dent-de-lion. Lion's tooth. What a heavy name for an ethereal weed. If only one could swing on its many parachutes and float away into some magic world, as Disney characters very often do. If only they didn't make the back of the throat itch.
There were thousands of white gossamer dandelion seeds in the air this surprisingly summer-like weekend, floating silently and gracefully like first snow flakes of winter.
"They cause allergies," S frowned and warned her son and me to steer clear.
"Here, blow it," six years old T brought me a seed-head in the park this morning, while his mother was away. He watched me blow it with delight. Then he took the stalk from me, ran with it like it was a live cracker, and threw it away in the air some distance away.
Sun dappled shade in the park, inquisitive chipmunks and sparrows for company, a friendship sealed with a gift of dandelion...heaven!
S lives in Oak Park, a western suburb of Chicago, established in 1902. Unlike the seriously New England-ish Evanston I visited last weekend, Oak Park, to quote S, is "eclectic". It has a mish-mash of building styles--red brick buildings jostling with gray stone buildings, lovely cottage-like houses interspersed occasionally with simply utilitarian apartment complexes, and maple-lined residential avenues giving way to paved pathways of a cheerful downtown.
Well, it has to be, since it has the largest number of homes designed by Frank Lloyd Wright (including his own) in the world. He apparently spent 20 years of his career in Oak Park. It also is the birthplace of Ernst Hemingway.
When I set out for Oak Park last evening, it wasn't very promising. Remainder clouds from Thursday's thunderstorm were still hanging low in the skies. It was cold at the Lake Cook Road Metra station. Nothing of Chicago RTA's glam here--just a functional station like the NJ Transit stations. Depressing. The little station building smelt strongly of smelly cheese. The ticket counter was closed.
The train was half-an hour late. Metra is a double-deck train supervised by conductors who look plucked out of the 1920s. Especially the one who stood outside our compartment, with his little mustache, round blue metal-tipped conductor hat and blue button-down coat. The thing is, he didn't do anything conductorly. I traveled ticket-less to my destination.
The train sped through some industrial suburbs and some quaint neighborhoods, the cutest being the Village of Golf, Est. 1928. But none of them were as barren and intimidating as the station I got down. Gray Land station had uneven platforms, barbed wire fences, and heavily graffiti-ed shelters. A factory with serious silos loomed on my side of the tracks. A straggly, characterless brick building stood mutely on the other.
Two Hispanic youths in low slung jeans and a quantity of chains were sitting in the shelter across the tracks. They gave me the eye and resumed their conversation. On my side, at a distance, a young Hispanic couple were either having a loving conversation or a fight. An old lady in a shocking pink coat stood, undecided, at the top of the stairs leading down to the measly parking lot on the street level on my side. Then she walked past me with a cheerful hello, crossed the tracks, had a brief conversation with the eye-giving youth and walked back. Sporadic shouts of some bacchanalian group could be heard from the street level on the other side of the tracks.
Time stood still.
Fortunately, S reached before it all could play out into a scene from one of those stark, violent movies from South America I watched at the MAMI festival.
After some Wii and a glass of sweet wine, we went to a Thai restaurant in the evening. The ambiance was cozy, the waitresses (or rather one of them) were pretty, the clientele was mostly families, and the food was delicious. Except that my sea food soup was spicy. Not that there is anything wrong with it, but my always-on-the-go nose and eyes started flowing and made a spectacle of me, making the pretty waitress furrow her pretty eyebrows in distress. "Oh is it too spicy for you?" she asked with genuine concern. Which could be only a good thing, right?
Anyway, all four of us enjoyed the meal thoroughly. We got back, had more wine, and talked into the night. This morning, which dawned bright and cheerful, S made us all yummy upma (garnished with nylon sev - never tried that combination before) and chocolate-chip pancakes. Fortified with all this goodness, T and I spent some quality time together. We read books, played with his cars, and did some sums.
In the afternoon, S and I sauntered towards Oak Park downtown. Alas, she had done similar shopping with me at Boston, so she knew exactly the kind of things I will find irresistible. I almost bought an 100$ linen top. I did buy probably overpriced costume jewelry probably made in India from a shop that boasted of being an NGO helping poor artisans in poor countries.
Then she took me to the "fiercely independent" Book Table. It reminded me of the City Light bookstore and Anarchist Book Archive in San Francisco. In Barnes & Noble, Borders, and Crossword, you might find one interesting book among fifty worthless trash. In the indie bookstores, away from the "corporotization" of reading, chances are that every other book you see is interesting. Filled with deliciously subversive literature, right from old-trusted Noam Chomsky to the unedited first version of Little Women (which was a vampire story allegedly), to a coffee table book on India opening with the line "Love it or loath it", the place was an absolute delight. I bought "Idiot America: How stupidity became a virtue in the land of the free". (Review in a later post.)
T and his dad came to pick us up. We hopped and skipped to a picnic at the Scoville Park, right outside the Oak Park public library. We had pizza, pop corn, chips, and sprite. T did some somersaults for my benefit. Intrepid (and probably trained) chipmunks scurried close to us and stood begging on their hind legs, their noses trembling. T ran into a couple of his friends and went away to play with his dad. S and I played throw ball in a most lethargic manner. A large group of all-white protesters went by in a procession, holding signs that read "US Stop Funding the War in Israel", "Stop Isreali Occupation of Gaza", and "Justice Starts With Peace".
We visited the public library. Seeing its fantastic collection of books and DVDs, I wondered why I never visited a public library before. I have resolved to visit the Deerfield one ASAP. Our idyllic day ended with ice cream for all. Unfortunately, the guy at the counter misheard me and gave me some kind of vanilla-malt-cookie smoothie which was barf inducing. Oh well, small matter on such a glorious weekend.
P.S.: I think the Gods of Gastronomy heard my rant about food, because this week has been delightful, food wise. I also checked out a near by Greek restaurant going by the name Demetri with an ex-colleague. Suffice to say that the food was lip smacking. Except that the chef's platter had too much octopus. The chocolate martini was out of the world.
There were thousands of white gossamer dandelion seeds in the air this surprisingly summer-like weekend, floating silently and gracefully like first snow flakes of winter.
"They cause allergies," S frowned and warned her son and me to steer clear.
"Here, blow it," six years old T brought me a seed-head in the park this morning, while his mother was away. He watched me blow it with delight. Then he took the stalk from me, ran with it like it was a live cracker, and threw it away in the air some distance away.
Sun dappled shade in the park, inquisitive chipmunks and sparrows for company, a friendship sealed with a gift of dandelion...heaven!
S lives in Oak Park, a western suburb of Chicago, established in 1902. Unlike the seriously New England-ish Evanston I visited last weekend, Oak Park, to quote S, is "eclectic". It has a mish-mash of building styles--red brick buildings jostling with gray stone buildings, lovely cottage-like houses interspersed occasionally with simply utilitarian apartment complexes, and maple-lined residential avenues giving way to paved pathways of a cheerful downtown.
Well, it has to be, since it has the largest number of homes designed by Frank Lloyd Wright (including his own) in the world. He apparently spent 20 years of his career in Oak Park. It also is the birthplace of Ernst Hemingway.
When I set out for Oak Park last evening, it wasn't very promising. Remainder clouds from Thursday's thunderstorm were still hanging low in the skies. It was cold at the Lake Cook Road Metra station. Nothing of Chicago RTA's glam here--just a functional station like the NJ Transit stations. Depressing. The little station building smelt strongly of smelly cheese. The ticket counter was closed.
The train was half-an hour late. Metra is a double-deck train supervised by conductors who look plucked out of the 1920s. Especially the one who stood outside our compartment, with his little mustache, round blue metal-tipped conductor hat and blue button-down coat. The thing is, he didn't do anything conductorly. I traveled ticket-less to my destination.
The train sped through some industrial suburbs and some quaint neighborhoods, the cutest being the Village of Golf, Est. 1928. But none of them were as barren and intimidating as the station I got down. Gray Land station had uneven platforms, barbed wire fences, and heavily graffiti-ed shelters. A factory with serious silos loomed on my side of the tracks. A straggly, characterless brick building stood mutely on the other.
Two Hispanic youths in low slung jeans and a quantity of chains were sitting in the shelter across the tracks. They gave me the eye and resumed their conversation. On my side, at a distance, a young Hispanic couple were either having a loving conversation or a fight. An old lady in a shocking pink coat stood, undecided, at the top of the stairs leading down to the measly parking lot on the street level on my side. Then she walked past me with a cheerful hello, crossed the tracks, had a brief conversation with the eye-giving youth and walked back. Sporadic shouts of some bacchanalian group could be heard from the street level on the other side of the tracks.
Time stood still.
Fortunately, S reached before it all could play out into a scene from one of those stark, violent movies from South America I watched at the MAMI festival.
After some Wii and a glass of sweet wine, we went to a Thai restaurant in the evening. The ambiance was cozy, the waitresses (or rather one of them) were pretty, the clientele was mostly families, and the food was delicious. Except that my sea food soup was spicy. Not that there is anything wrong with it, but my always-on-the-go nose and eyes started flowing and made a spectacle of me, making the pretty waitress furrow her pretty eyebrows in distress. "Oh is it too spicy for you?" she asked with genuine concern. Which could be only a good thing, right?
Anyway, all four of us enjoyed the meal thoroughly. We got back, had more wine, and talked into the night. This morning, which dawned bright and cheerful, S made us all yummy upma (garnished with nylon sev - never tried that combination before) and chocolate-chip pancakes. Fortified with all this goodness, T and I spent some quality time together. We read books, played with his cars, and did some sums.
In the afternoon, S and I sauntered towards Oak Park downtown. Alas, she had done similar shopping with me at Boston, so she knew exactly the kind of things I will find irresistible. I almost bought an 100$ linen top. I did buy probably overpriced costume jewelry probably made in India from a shop that boasted of being an NGO helping poor artisans in poor countries.
Then she took me to the "fiercely independent" Book Table. It reminded me of the City Light bookstore and Anarchist Book Archive in San Francisco. In Barnes & Noble, Borders, and Crossword, you might find one interesting book among fifty worthless trash. In the indie bookstores, away from the "corporotization" of reading, chances are that every other book you see is interesting. Filled with deliciously subversive literature, right from old-trusted Noam Chomsky to the unedited first version of Little Women (which was a vampire story allegedly), to a coffee table book on India opening with the line "Love it or loath it", the place was an absolute delight. I bought "Idiot America: How stupidity became a virtue in the land of the free". (Review in a later post.)
T and his dad came to pick us up. We hopped and skipped to a picnic at the Scoville Park, right outside the Oak Park public library. We had pizza, pop corn, chips, and sprite. T did some somersaults for my benefit. Intrepid (and probably trained) chipmunks scurried close to us and stood begging on their hind legs, their noses trembling. T ran into a couple of his friends and went away to play with his dad. S and I played throw ball in a most lethargic manner. A large group of all-white protesters went by in a procession, holding signs that read "US Stop Funding the War in Israel", "Stop Isreali Occupation of Gaza", and "Justice Starts With Peace".
We visited the public library. Seeing its fantastic collection of books and DVDs, I wondered why I never visited a public library before. I have resolved to visit the Deerfield one ASAP. Our idyllic day ended with ice cream for all. Unfortunately, the guy at the counter misheard me and gave me some kind of vanilla-malt-cookie smoothie which was barf inducing. Oh well, small matter on such a glorious weekend.
P.S.: I think the Gods of Gastronomy heard my rant about food, because this week has been delightful, food wise. I also checked out a near by Greek restaurant going by the name Demetri with an ex-colleague. Suffice to say that the food was lip smacking. Except that the chef's platter had too much octopus. The chocolate martini was out of the world.
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