About town

We've been very fortunate with the weather here in Champaign-Urbana lately. It's been sunny and cool, with low humidity, for a number of days in a row. The trees are starting to change color, but we haven't really had a killing frost here in town. We took advantage with a trip to the University of Illinois Arboretum, the Idea Garden (sponsored by the Master Gardeners' program), and Homer Lake, part of the Forest Preserve District.

In the afternoon on Sunday we enjoyed some time indoors in the sunny lovely space of the Urbana library, listening to Mean Lids' delightful performance of Irish music for the violin and flute. Then in the evening, we went to hear a group called "The Music of Django Reinhardt" at the Iron Post.

We have enjoyed this group before, several times. The composition of the band is pretty fluid. One time there was a super trumpet player and a clarinet player and a drummer. Another time a fantastic stride piano player named Paul Asaro joined the group for the evening. Often Ben Smith (also in Mean Lids) plays fiddle. Tonight a guy from Nashville, Paul Kramer, was in town with his fiddle. Jordan Kaye on guitar and Josh Houchin on bass seem to be the regulars.

What kind of music do they play? Well, it's always spirited, often nostalgic or poignant, and frequently toe-tapping. Jean "Django" Reinhardt was a Gypsy jazz guitarist who started playing jazz in Paris in the 1930s. Despite playing with two fingers as a result of an injury in a fire, he was an incredible guitarist and a formidable composer. He teamed up with Stephane Grappelli on violin for quite a while and the music was amazing. His influence has been considerable, both on jazz musicians of the past and present and on a number of musicians who don't primarily play jazz.

The local band plays a lot of Django originals, of course, but also some good old songs from the thirties and forties, such as "Stardust" and "Sweet Georgia Brown" and so on. There was a pretty good sized audience there, many with white hair, who knew these tunes pretty well. We had a fine time.

I took several photos, but I'm having some upload problems right now in Blogger. Maybe I can add the other pics later. Tomorrow night, we go to hear Bate Calado, a Brazilian samba group.

Big Night Out on Campus

Saturday night on campus ... and David and Susan were there! At the Courtyard Cafe in the Illini Union, two great bands were playing: Desafinado for Brazilian samba and Sandunga for guajira and Cuban son. Here's the fascinating backstory:

Despite the fact that David and I both spent an embarrassingly major portion of our adult lives on the campus of the University of Illinois (as graduate students and academic staff in various jobs over the years), we were no longer in the habit of going up to campus very often. Frankly, things on campus had changed a bit since I came to Champaign-Urbana in 1963 (what a surprise!).

Time was, for example, when I had taken or taught a class in almost every building around. French was actually a popular language in U.S. universities once and before the Foreign Language Building was erected (during my two-year absence teaching at Drake in Iowa), the classrooms were spread all over. Since then the demand for la belle langue has, regretfully, diminished considerably, and the campus has expanded and spread out very far in all directions with tons of brand-new science and technology labs that I have never had occasion to set foot in!

Campus town, the area of stores, restaurants, bars, and apartments near the student union, has changed as well. It used to be a couple of blocks of one- and two-storey places serving some typical campus needs -- a malt shop, bookstore, barber, florist, and a few bars. In the sixties, there were coffeehouses, import boutiques, and head shops. Now it looks like just another chunk of suburban Chicago: towering high rise apartments, ethnic fast-food chains of all sorts, fitness centers, hair salons, tatoo and piercing parlors, smoothie stands, and tons of bars.

The automobile traffic has quadrupled in the past twenty years alone (ah! the perspective of age ... maybe the only good thing about it?). Believe it or not, students didn't used to be allowed (imagine a word like that even!) to have cars on campus; freshman couldn't live in apartments rather than dorms (which had curfews and rules and weren't coed!). Now every apartment with four students includes four cars, as well as numerous and sundry other vehicles: bikes of all types, skateboards, rollerblades, scooters, etc. It requires grim concentration on the part of conscientious drivers to survive in campus town these days. Meanwhile, the pedestrians are usually concentrating too -- on their phones, texting, iPods, etc. as they cross the street totally clueless of traffic.

If the traffic sounds bad, consider the parking options. Okay, getting back to our own story a bit too, we were running late (a regular occurrence for us). I was afraid we wouldn't be able to still get tickets, figuring they might be sold out in advance. We tried to find a handicapped spot near the Illini Union Building but couldn't find any. There was a metered place, however, that cost a quarter for every 20 minutes. But it was enforced 24/7 with a two-hour limit (it wasn't yet eight o'clock and the concert went until eleven), so that didn't work either. Finally, we found a free handicapped parking place several blocks away in a municipal lot. I got my four-wheeled rollator/walker out of the van and we headed through the crowds of scantily clad girls and boisterous boys with backward baseball caps.

We were nearly all the way to the student union when we decided to sit for a minute on a bench at the intersection to catch our breath. A young man came up to me and made an unusual request: it was his birthday, he said, and he had to have a birthday spanking and wanted me to provide it. I ascertained that nothing more was involved than giving him a quick slap on each buttock while his girlfriend took a digital photo. Then she asked to stand in a slow-dance pose with my white-haired and bearded 69-year-old husband while her boyfriend took another photo. They seemed immensely pleased that we had cooperated. I suppose somebody's Facebook wall will display the results of this odd encounter!

Next was a quick stop with the bored ticket taker on her laptop doing homework; she had to charge us eight bucks instead of four because we were no longer students or staff and were retired from the university, but the sponsoring student organization hadn't given her any change. Fortunately, I found eight ones in my wallet.

We were the first to buy tickets that night. And, except for a table of friends of the bands, we were amazingly the only audience! It's a nice venue with a raised stage, good lighting, plenty of tables and chairs, and a coffee place nearby. I think there were a lot of events going on that night and maybe the student group sponsoring the show didn't get the word out as well as they might have. That must have been the explanation for the poor turnout. We've been following the first band, Desafinado, for about 10 years now, and they are truly terrific -- all extremely good musicians who play wonderful, interesting, and upbeat music from Brazil. They really play together, compose original pieces, and seem to enjoy what they are doing.

But, from our point of view, it was pretty great to be sitting right up front and feeling as though the concert was being performed especially for us. The group was terrific. Elis Artz, the singer from Brazil, is phenomenal. She is lovely and lively and radiant, with a tremendous voice filled with emotion that comes across big time, despite my inability to understand the literal meaning of  the Portuguese lyrics.

Greg Jahiel on guitar also sings in Portuguese in beautifully harmonized duets with Elis and provides fantastic guitar accompaniement to all the numbers. He's a talented composer as well; one of his originals was performed that night -- a song so poignant it brings tears to the eyes.

Giraldo Rosales keeps that wonderful conga beat going that is so important to the Latin jazz, samba, bossa nova, and MPB sound. It makes me play my hands on the table in time to his drumming. Joel Caracci is new on percussion, replacing Matt Plaskota, who replaced Chad Dunn. (According to the old spoof movie, Spinal Tap, drummers change about often because they are victims of spontaneous combustion!)

Tom Paynter is well-known in a number of local bands as a musician extraordinaire. I'm not sure if there are any instruments in a band or orchestra that he can't play. And he plays several "things" that are certainly musical but maybe not officially instruments. He is an extremely talented composer and pianist and wild maniac with a synthesizer, but in this group he plays an amazing flute (maybe a separate blog post about that in the future -- there's quite a story there) as well as a melodica, sort of a "wind-powered piano/accordion in a package" kind of instrument. He is able to create the most beautiful and surprising sounds from these instruments that lend so much atmosphere to the music.

We all miss Connie Johnson, one of the founders of the band, and her delightful vibraphone work and compositions. She recently moved to the West Coast, but her hit number "Sea Breeze" was performed at the concert. Sitting in tonight was Karim Yengsep, a musician from Almaty, Kazakhstan, on electric bass.

After a great performance by Desafinado, there was a short break during which I discovered that a huge tango dancing contest of some sort was going on the large ballroom down the hall. There were interestingly costumed dancers standing in the hall catching their breath as I rolled by in my walker on the way to the restrooms.

The next group was Sandunga, a band that has been around these parts a long time but which we heard for the first time only a few weeks ago at an Urbana jazz club.  They play Cuban son and guajira music, and it's a lot of fun. The two lead vocalists and players of guitar and other interesting Cuban string instruments are William Hope and Julian Norato. They sing in Spanish (of course) and harmonize beautifully with each other. Their virtuosity with the guitar and laud and tres (Cuban string instruments) is something to see and hear!

Tina Hope sings as well and keeps a terrific beat with an intriguing instrument involving a wooden rod hit against another piece of wood. I've also heard her play a cool drawing and scratching kind of instrument that's hard to describe but provides just the right sound.

Adam Walton kept the beat as well with three great congas. Later in the set, he was joined by a terrific bongo player whose name (I think) is Andrew Miller. He also plays a bell-type instrument and shakers.

When they played in Urbana, there was also an electric bass player named Eduardo Herrera, but he wasn't with the group on Saturday. The music is lively and infectious. Like Desafinado, they are all very clearly accomplished musicians and friends and they play with a sense of genuine joy that the audience can't resist. Even though there were still very few other people in the room, one of the young women was dancing, which was fun to see. Again, a superior performance by an excellent band.

On our way out of the student union, we passed through the South Lounge area of this massive Georgian Colonial building and I stopped to wait for David to use the restroom. There was a grand piano at the end of the vast room near a gas fire in a lovely marble fireplace. A sofa was next to the fire and a young man who looked very intent on what he was doing was working through some incredible pieces of Beethoven. He was probably a graduate student in the famous school of music here and he was clearly practicing. It was thrilling. We sat and listened for another half hour or more.

Unfortunately, David had forgotten his padded flannel shirt jacket on the back of the chair in the concert room. We hope it will show up at the lost and found tomorrow, but maybe not ... On the way to the car, Zorbas the gyros place was still open and we stopped for a quick bite. We made it through the throngs of students still milling about after midnight, some clearly intoxicated by now, and reached quiet southeast Urbana safely after our big night out on campus. What fun!

Annual Finale

We had a frost advisory the past two nights in east central Illinois, even though there wasn't frost in our yard here in tree-protected southeast Urbana. But it was a sure sign of things to come. We've taken in the houseplants now (much to the dismay of kitties who had gotten used to stretching out on the empty plant tables), and the neighborhood trees are starting to show early signs of leaf color. It's getting darker sooner now that the autumn equinox has passed, of course, and the angle of the sunlight has changed and yellowed. So far, there haven't been the usual fall rains, however, and some of these sunny cool days are quite a delight.

It's always interesting this time of year to see which annuals faired the best and the longest over a particular summer. So I thought I'd take a finale set of photos. The marigolds weren't as full-flowering this year as they have been in the past, so I was surprised to find them looking good this late.

The Victoria blue salvia, on the other hand, have been blooming their hearts out all summer long and show no signs of stopping anytime soon. Some annuals do keep going after the first light frosts. As far as the first to succumb, surely it will be the impatiens, but they've had a good long and full run this time, much to my surprise -- as long as they're watered faithfully, they can evidentally take a lot of heat.

The lantanas often take their time blooming well and don't really reach their full potential here, but this year they loved the heat advisories and high humidity. That reminded me that they were basically perennials (and almost weeds!) in my mother's garden in Tampa, Florida, years ago. There are so many nice two-tone varieties now -- very cheerful.

But it is the red salvia that have truly outdone themselves this year. I think I just put in one six-pack, three in each of the containers at the head of the front walk, but they look like a jungle of fire!

And yet another salvia, the blue and black from Brazil, has grown a lot from one small start in April, and its charming and unusual flowers continue attracting hummingbirds.

The easy and reliable "wave" petunias are still holding their own too, especially here in a slightly cooler and shadier area than the front pots.

There are still some perennials blooming too, although this isn't really a peak time for them. Sedums are undemanding and reliable plants that propagate easily from a single leaf, and they bloom and hold their color well as the nights cool. Here's a nice one:

The fall-blooming Japanese anemones are a lovely bunch. There are pink and white ones and a few doubles as well. They are tall and can spread a bit, but I like them anyway.

I don't happen to have any chrysanthemums (can never remember the "new" name for them) this year, but I have been enjoying the huge colorful pots of them at the local grocery stores. Besides mums and pumpkins, how could it be fall without fall asters?

There are a few other perennials on right now, including the toad lilies in the north yard, the purple dwarf butterfly bush, and some pink hydrangeas. But blue perennials aren't common in the fall, so I especially like the little leadwort with the long name, Cerastostigma plumbaginoides.

Well, that's about it for now. Next stop will probably be photos of fall leaf color around town ... and then snow pics! Had to happen ... What's still blooming in your yard?

New Article Published

I've just had a new article published on Handmade Spark all about bead buying tips. Enjoy!
http://www.handmadespark.com/blog/bead-buying-tips/

A Few Recommendations

These cooler autumnal evenings (now that the equinox is past) are perfect for enjoying books and movies, so here are a few recommendations based on my recent experiences.

Two books: a book of short stories called Something Is Out There by Richard Bausch. They are separate stories about a range of characters, but each and every one pulls you in from the very beginning and they seem more like novels in terms of engagement with the characters and their situation. These are contemporary tales of interpersonal nuance, told with the keenest of psychological insights. I've read many stories and novels by Bausch and always admired his style, his directness, and his intelligence. He and his brother Robert (also an excellent novelist) are twins, perhaps the only twin novelists??

Also: a historical novel (not my usual) by Melissa Jones, sister of Sadie Jones, whose two novels I enjoyed thoroughly and discussed in an earlier post here. This one is called Emily Hudson. It's based somewhat on the life of Mary "Minnie" Temple, the cousin of Henry James. The book is partially told in letters and the rest in third-person narrative and is very well done and engrossing. Emily is a thoroughly admirable young woman of her time and very brave. The cousin character that presumably is Henry James is a cruel, despicable, and arrogant individual indeed.

Movies: two DVDs this weekend of a very different nature but both good and worthwhile. Crazy Heart, with Jeff Bridges (I still remember his dad, Lloyd, from Sea Hunt), Maggie Gyllenhall, Robert Duvall, and Colin Farrell. It's the perfectly hearbreaking story of a worn-down hard-drinking country singer-songwriter and his attempt to save his own life. The music is fun as well, of course, even though country music isn't my top choice most of the time.

Second film is Adoration by the Armenian-Canadian director Atom Egoyan. This was probably one of the best movies I've seen in a while in terms of serious cinema. It's a deep and complex exploration of a family's issues and their extension into global issues of terrorism and fear, the role of new technology in self-expression, self-discovery, and the pursuit of truth ... and many more serious and fascinating themes, beautifully filmed and wonderfully acted.

I rarely get comments on these blogs posts (too bad ... I would enjoy them), but if you have read or seen something good lately, please share that here. Thanks.

Bead Buying Trip

What fun! We went on a one-day bead buying trip on Friday. Our good friend Bob drove us down to Collinsville Gateway Center for the International Gem and Jewelry Show exhibition and sale. The day started earlier than I'm used to and I was excited about the prospect of great new beads, so I overenthused on my morning stretches and managed to somehow pull that muscle in my lower back and buttocks that I hadn't pulled for a long time. Eek! I had a hard time just getting from the house to the car and getting out at Perkins for a quick omelet to get us started. But my back was resting on the trip down in the car of course.

It is about a 2 1/2 hour trip with a short rest area stop. It was beautiful weather, with blue sky and sunshine all the way. The traffic was pretty heavy and we went via interstate, but it was still great to get out in the country a bit. Many of the corn and soybean fields were already harvested (early this year?) and some were being taken down as we drove past. Once we got down past Effingham, our familiar flat landscape developed into a rolling terrain as we moved toward the Mississippi River valley. It was more wooded too, and you could see the beginnings of autumn adding a yellowish cast to the deciduous leaves. The quality of the light is different too in the fall, falling at a lower angle and with more yellow in the light itself.

We got to the show about 1 o'clock and Bob dropped us off until 5. I had my four-wheel rollator so that my back was supported and I had a seat to sit in, which helped immensely. David was pulling our handy two-wheeled tapestry tote bag for the bead purchases, so we were ready to roll.

The show was really crowded this time! We headed for the wholesale room first and one particular vendor at the back end who had terrific bargains. The tables were so mobbed with people that I had to wait to get my rollator into a small spot where I could see and look over the goods! But I found great deals on bags of plated pewter trim elements, strands of sparkling crystal, tiny glass pearls, and interestingly patterned stone. It was even a long wait in line to pay.

I found some neat striped stone in thin discs and ovals with matching small rounds at a booth in the retail section while David rested at one of the tables filled with bored husbands reading newspapers or dozing off while their overexcited wives had a blast looking at beads. Probably the opposite of a hardware or power tool show, as Bob remarked later.

To my delight, a vendor I had bought from at prior shows was there, with lots of new and intricate lampwork beads sold by the strand. It's hard work choosing and a great deal of fun as well! It's a big show, and there are lots of booths that I can skip, thank goodness, or I'd be totally exhausted within an hour! The whole center of the main room is booths with finished commercial jewelry like diamond rings, watches, etc. There are some booths with non-jewelry and non-bead items such as handbags, scarves, sheets, curios, etc. as well.

I also located some very nice twisted swirl glass discs in several colors that had been faceted so that they sparkled like crystal. This was the first time I had come across this particular bead and, of course, I had to get a number of strands, one in each color.

As I hovered over a booth, carefully deciding and inspecting each strand I chose, David sat nearby patiently waiting for me and taking care of the bag with our purchases already in it. Unfortunately, near the end of the time we were supposed to be out front waiting for Bob's car, we got our signals crossed a bit, and I returned to find that David wasn't in the chair I left him in. I panicked a bit and wound up walking all over the place while he was walking all over looking for me and Bob was waiting in the drop-off spot wondering what was going on!

We all found each other at last, although by then I had really messed up that back muscle (ouch!). We ate quickly at the nearby barbeque place and took off on the return trip. We had about one-third of the trip before dark, so another chance to enjoy scenery, and then dark the rest of the way.

Once we got home, we immediately fed the cats, who were ravenous. They had missed their 5 o'clock meal by about 4 hours, so they got two cans instead of one (they had two cans in the morning early) for the four of them and the rest of his one can to our boy who has prescription food. That calmed things down enough that I could sit with a microwave hot pad on my back while we looked over our purchases briefly before falling into bed.

Then last night I took the photos and we started the process of cutting apart the strands and figuring out which compartments to put which beads in -- always a fun thing to do. Today I will need to "reorganize" some bead trays, combining some beads, to make room for the rest of the new beads! It's an addiction, for sure, but at least it's not one that harms anybody. Now I'm looking forward to designing earrings with the new beads and putting them up on the website. I am thinking about writing any article for Handmade Spark about some tips for buying beads based on my own experiences over the years.

From May to September

Remember the line from that old song . . . "it's a long long way, from May to September"? Well, now it's officially September, and despite blasting days of seemingly endless heat and humidity, we had to shut the windows tonight (and not because the air-conditioning is on). Yup, down to 45 F it is predicted. Of course, it will warm up again before the summer's totally over, but, hey, this is Labor Day weekend after all -- end of the park district pools, the summer camps, the festivals and outdoor activities for the most part.

So it's also a time when the garden is slowing down. Hopefully, the weeds are slowing down too. And the gardeners are starting to take stock. It's been a tough year for a lot of plants: heavy spring rains, amazing heat stress, continuing bouts of high humidity. Some plants like to be treated like that, but many do not.

So what do we still have in bloom? Well, some of the die-hard annuals in pots are going strong: red vinca, red salvia, petunias, blue salvia, lantanas, and impatiens in enough shade. The front row of pots looks a bit overgrown and exhausted, but there are these bright spots of continuing color!

Some of the petunias in the front containers in full sun have given up the ship by now, so to speak, but those planted later in a less sunny location seem to be coming into their own on both sides of the garden statue that I still have from my grandmother's garden long ago.

The barrels behind the glider with the double impatiens and dwarf hostas survived the heat too, thanks to my husband's faithful watering.

Although I would have thought that this would be a bad year for impatiens of any kind, it turned out not to be true. They can and do take the heat as long as they are in shade and kept watered. I had the doubles and singles in containers, a single in a basket, and a couple of new guineas in barrels, and they all look pretty good. I wasn't sure about putting bright red and yellow-orange ones together in the pots alongside the old metal glider sofa, but the brightness is certainly welcome now when everything else around it has turned to  green -- and the green is starting to have that exhausted yellow tinge :)

Back in the shady shady north yard, there isn't much color and the overgrown elderberries I didn't plant are busy fruiting while they smother the viburnum, hydrangea, and dwarf lilac. We've got to get them out of there! But the white impatiens in pots near the north seating area did very well and are so clear and cool looking.

The white picks up again behind them in the lacy panicles of the Hydrangea paniculata "Tardiva" (meaning late-blooming, like "tardy"), whose blooms have lasted a long time this year!

Not many perennials are in bloom right now, although the fall-blooming anemones are in bud I noticed. But a new planting of a dwarf buddleia is doing nicely.

Of course, there are always surprises in a garden, even late in the season. I had gotten a start of bright red annual begonia from supergardener Frank Cooper, who had kept it over the winter in his greenhouse. But it just didn't want to start growing ... all summer long it just sat there looking forlorn -- all stem and no leaves or blooms! But on my garden rounds this afternoon I re-discovered it. It's not huge and it won't withstand a frost (in October?), but it is blooming and it's a lovely color.

As for the project to "rehabilitate" the garden and make big changes for easier maintenance in the future, well, you know what they say about the best-laid plans of mice, men, and gardeners . . . We did make some progress despite all the rain and all the heat advisory days, however. And three of the four raised beds on the east side were cleared of weeds (although some have already grown back!) and mulched and we got the paths cleared (a big step!) and mulched. That will make it easier to get around and see what else can and can't be accomplished before the season is completely over. More on that later ... Enjoy your late-summer/early-fall gardens while you can!