Riddle Wrapped in Enigma Shrouded in Mystery, Part 2

Swinging girl.

 

 

When pigs fly in the alley.

 

 

Altar station on Corpus Christi Sunday put up by Holy Trinity Mission Church

at busy intersection (Division/Asland/Milwaukee, near Polish Triangle).

Before the processsion.

 

 

One of many wooden sculptures I've seen around town attached to abandoned or unused storefronts.

This was between 2 buildings.

 

Sorry, sideways parking bumper.

 

Giant hanger scultpture at the MCA.

Riddle Wrapped in Enigma Shrouded in Mystery, Part 1

 

I came across this photograph and had to ask family to help puzzle out where it came from. 

Daughter Wisteria's hands, encased in over sized leather gloves, gingerly holding sharp clawed tortoise home during school break.  Warming lights add pink glow. 

Tortoise ate lots of lettuce and other greens.

 

Title above is attributed to Winston Churchill speaking about Russian nation.

gift from the dirt under my feet, blue bottle

 I was in the basement when I saw a small, round reflective shape poking  through the packed earth floor.  I got curious and alternately gently dug around  with a sharp plastic implement and

swept around brushing away the loosed soil kinda like an archaeologist on a dig.

 

The photos in the background are color photocopies of photos from my parents' album. 

Underneath I wrote stories from their lives.  These 4 are part of a 12-pieces series.

Project was inspired by Tony Mendoza, a Cuban American photographer, who paired moving stories and photographs about his family and going back to visit Cuba. 

 

I was tickled and delighted to find this intact bromide medicine bottle. 

I remember reading that people buried their own trash on their own properties. 

 

 As a child I found marbles in my mother's garden left behind by the children who live there.

 

Another time several years ago I found a larger, light blue bottle neck sticking

 up out of the soil on a site that houses had been torn down. 

The neck was broken on that one.

 

The little clothes pin girl hanging from the light cord is wearing a crocheted dress.

 

 

It must have had a bottle stopper at one time. I like the shape of the mouth.  It washed up pretty well the first time. The encrusted soil on the inside came out after additional soaking and suds. 

The little outdent (opposite of indent) is a droplet of water hanging out.

Holding it different ways in a attempt to read the raised printing.

Pretty hard to make out from the photos: the lettering says

 BROMO-SELZER

EMERSON

DRUG CO.

BALTIMORE, MD

 

http://www.ehow.com/about_5461048_much-bromo-seltzer-bottle-worth.html

 

According to information in the article above it was made prior to 1915 when the Maryland Glass Company started making threaded necks for metal caps to screw on.

So happy to get a treasure from the past.   And cobalt blue too!  Jinkies! 

 

Also found a vintage porcelain glazed wash basin (white with a black rim),

 aqua tool box or cash box, and mail box. 

Not underground but in piles left in a "junk" room.

 

Thank you to the unknown people from the past for leaving traces and treasures behind.

Pre-Thanksgiving Halloween recap

Welcome Great Pumpkin.  Winners in front. Losers cowering in back.

 

Last year when Wisteria asked me what she liked best about Halloween, I guessed candy. 

She told me it was the people.  Meeting people.

This year even though it was not so warm outside, quite a few dressed up grownups sat out on their stoops parceling out candy.  Snow White and Captain America made a cute couple.

 

 Light hearted welcome, except for the evil clown.

 

 Knock, knock, I know you're in there.  I can see the lights.

 

The rust makes me think this is a permanent fixture. My mother had a washtub like this.  Rolled it out from a corner of the kitchen, filled with hot water through a hose to do the towels first, increasingly darker, dirtier clothes in the same sudsy water.  Eventually it ended up in the summer kitchen of the basement.  Each load was wrung near dry, watch your fingers, please, then rinsed in 2 cold rinses in the 2 sections of the cement sink, wrung out by hand, hard twists, hung out to dry on clothesline outside in fair weather in the basement in inclement weather, sometimes switching between both places as the weather changed. That kind of drove me crazy.  Now I am of 2 minds, if my laundry gets rained on when I'm away, I leave it up. It will dry soon enough.  If I'm home, I'll bolt out of bed in the middle of the night to get it laundry in before it gets soaked. High winds that usher in rains wake me like no alarm clock can. Don't want our clothes and favorite clothes pins to get blowed away.

 Golden hour.

 

Golden leaves.

 

 The Green Lantern soldiers on.

 

 Moderne spook shrugs.

 

 

 

Will o' wisps.

Good night.  Sweet dreams. Or are they? Hmmm...

 

 

 

 

Forward with an exclamation point

The President was re-elected. 

"Relaxed, having fun, talking trash on the basketball court,"
Arnie Duncan, Secretary of Education talking about mood of President earlier in the day.
"I'm so happy for the President. I'm so happy for the country," his reaction to the re-election.

I hope Clement can finally settle down and fall asleep after all the watching and waiting on pins and needles.

nothing soup

As I child I read variations of a folktale: stone soup, nail soup, or nothing soup.  The idea was that people pooled what little they had and came up with a soup that sustained a whole village. I love the idea of making something from what is on hand. For our little household, I made soup from semi random stuff from the fridge.

As the base I used meaty bones from a free barrel at Kurowski Deli on Milwaukee Ave in Logan Square. Kurowski's is definitely worth a trip for the homemade garlicky kabanos (thin smoky sausage), many different varieties of fresh and smoked sausages and deli meats, imported chocolate covered plums, fruit syrups, teas, pates, cheese, and any and everything else. If you buy anything there, you can get soup bones from the barrel at no charge.  I commend the store management for offering up the bones/scraps rather than having them go to waste. The barrel is located at the end of their long meat and cheese counter.  It is lined in plastic with slippery tongs on the edge.  The free sign is in Polish. I filled up a couple of bags with foot long ribby or spiny looking pieces.  I gave up on the tongs and use my hand (encased in one of the plastic bags.) OK, this bone part wasn't random.  I very deliberately remembered to pick out the prime soup making ingredient.  Not marked beef or pork, but after tasting the cooked meat I believe it was pork.

At home I rinsed the bones and forcefully crammed them in my biggest pot with onions, garlic, a bagful of semi old "baby" carrots, onions, dried white beans, cut up Swiss chard, and a yellow zucchini.  The pot simmered for hours.  After it cooled, I was pleasantly surprised at how much meat I was able to pluck off and kind of irked that the long solid seeming sections of bone had separated into big and small individual bones. The cartilage must have melted?  I dunno. I fished out the bony pieces as best I could and warned people to not bite hard.  A few slipped through. No broken teeth. Maybe next time I'll make the broth separately, strain, then add the beans and vegetable. The soup was not just rich and delicious, but super fragrant and super delicious; so full of flavor I couldn't stop raving and savoring each mouthful.  Often I don't repeat "recipes"  but this simple one I will be revisiting soon.

This is what it looked like after I poured off the soup into my favorite wide mouthed storage jars.  They were reused, previously housing sun dried tomatoes.

Smacznego!