Tourism in C-U

I was told by someone today that 35,000 people had come into town this weekend from elsewhere. It was an interesting intersection of various events: the Illini Marathon, the Roger Ebert Film Festival, and the Artists against AIDS exhibition.

East central Illinois is not ordinarily the tourist target represented by places like Paris, Rome, Bali, or New York (not to mention Chicago 150 miles north). It's a wonderful place to live in many ways, but there are no mountains, lakes, oceans, colonial history, mangrove swamps, etc. to be found anywhere around here.

Most of the "tourism" in our particular town is usually seasonal and university-related. So folks come for football weekends, engineering open house, high school state basketball, the occasional concert, circus, or skating extravaganza, etc. At various times of year, a handful of folks are here for conferences on campus, of course, but they aren't numerous enough to tie up traffic or cause long lines at the local restaurants.

So this weekend was unusual. The Illinois Marathon isn't something I know much about except a lot of people were running in the blocked off streets while I was sleeping very late and finally going out to brunch around 2 pm. It wasn't raining for a change, although it was windy, but I don't know if that helped or hurt the runners.

The Roger Ebert Film Festival is a yearly event (for 13 years now, I think). Roger is a well-known movie critic, of course, but you may not know that he was a University of Illinois student long ago. He wrote for the campus paper, The Daily Illini, which used to be an award-winning rag (these days, it's just a rag). A series of movies are shown and various speakers provide discussions and so on. The movies are chosen by Ebert and represent selections on a continuum that goes from excellent films I like and have seen but that some people might consider arty or weird or something ... to films that are just a little bit too weird or arty or something even for me. Hah!

The Artists against AIDS is probably more of a community event than a draw for outside tourists, but it added to the traffic snarl and crowded restaurants, especially in downtown Champaign. Artists exhibit their works and a portion of the proceeds goes to local AIDS help groups. I had some jewelry in the show a number of years ago and have attended sometimes in the more recent past. Desafinado, my favorite Brazilian band, played there today, in fact.

But we kept a pretty low profile, going to the Urbana library for a bit after brunch and then spending the evening at home. We saw an excellent film on DVD called Endgame about the talks in the U.K. that resulted in the negotiations between the African National Congress and the South African government that led to the release of Nelson Mandela and the formal end of apartheid.

Of course, like any place we have "tourist" offerings here year round: the campus, local parks, libraries, a few museums, live jazz from time to time, animals on the University farms, and ... umm ... well, chain restaurants, shopping malls, Christmas tree farms, and frozen custard stands. Okay, it's not Tuscany, but you can come visit anytime!

On Another Blog Today

My millefiore earrings are featured in the treasury that is shown on the Starry Starry Night Studios blog today. Check it out!

In a Treasury

People on Etsy make what's called "treasuries" from time to time. They are lovely displays that include photos from various shops that match with some sort of theme. Here's a nice new one that is about starry starry nights and includes a pair of millefiore earrings from Beaded Jewelry by Susan. Check it out!

Spring Is Sprung!

Despite some roller coaster temps and rainy spells, I think we can safely say that spring has finally sprung here in Champaign-Urbana.

The small early spring bulbs have finished for the most part now, but the daffodils are still around. These yellow trumpet kinds are very cheerful and they stand up to the rain pretty well.

This small cup and white perianth (the outer petals) belong to Fragrant Rose, a lovely daffodil that I have planted in a circle around the base of the crabapple tree.

One of my very favorite daffodils is the narcissus called "Thalia." It's pure white and the clustering kind, with "reflexed" perianths (i.e., the petals are turned backward a bit and the cups hang downward). It's a small flower compared to some daffs, but it is so elegant.

Just in time for Easter is the so-called Pasque flower, Pulsatilla vulgaris. The stems are covered with a soft downy white "fur" and the purplish-blue petals are filled with fluffy yellow insides with a black center.

Another Easter favorite is the Lenten Rose, Helleborus orientalis. These long-lived perennials start blooming quite early and continue through the whole spring. Some are white, others reddish or purple, and there are new expensive hybrid strains that are red and white spotted. They take a while to establish and spread and prefer moist soil in shade.

The earliest of the little spring bulbs, the snowdrops Galanthus nivalis, are finished now, but the taller and later summer snowflakes Leucojum aestivus are blooming their heads off. These charmers return year after year without any special treatment. The white bells have tiny green dots on the end and are really sweet.

Many of the tiny, delicate species tulips (from which the well-known hybrids were all derived) are early bloomers and most are finished already. But the "tardy" little Tulipa tarda is making its show right now and it is spectacular.

The big cousins of the species tulips are displaying their bold colors and huge flowers all over town now as well as in our yard.

Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis) is a woodland wild flower that blooms for just a short while in the spring. Native Americans used the root of this plant as a dye. There is a rare double form as well and a pink one, but I love the simple native variety shown here with a yellow anemone at its side.

Our bed under the ash tree has quite a lovely display right now that includes lots of the yellow anemones Anemone ranunculoides, some blue Anemone blanda, both white and the purple-checkered Fritillaria meleagris, and a yellow "pagoda" Erythronium.

 One of the joys of driving around town running various errands in the spring is the opportunity to see blooms in people's front yards. This place displayed not only tulips and daffodils but a nice line of cute little blue grape hyacinths.

 If you look in the blog archives, you'll see a post last spring about our discovery of a number of amazing weeping Japanese cherry trees. They are out in force once again this year, blooming like mad. Now we're seeing more and more of them in residential areas all over Urbana and Champaign. The above is a sweet close-up of the charming flowers.

 Here are a couple of examples (with a lovely PJM rhodendron at the left in the first photo) of weeping cherries in Urbana.

 The flowering quince are colorful and full this year too. I don't like their thorns and they aren't much to look at the rest of the year, but they are glorious for now.

The saucer magnolias are truly spectacular all over town. They are very full this year and just wonderful. I hope you like these spring pics. What's blooming in your area now?

Odds and Ends

We're getting into that in-between time now when it's spring one day and late winter the next and then back again. It's an odd time of year, but one that promises some future excitement. We've had the folks who work on our yard get things rolling now and I'm eagerly waiting for the stores to set out their annuals.

We have daffodils, both full-sized and miniatures, blooming now, along with squill in the lawn and anemone blanda and ranunculoides in the ash bed, pink corydalis and white bloodroot and hellebores, a pale pink-flowered pulmonaria, vinca, turkestanica, kaufmaniana, and praestans fusilier species tulips, a few hyacinths, and rue anemone.

I finally got my new camera set up with a charged battery and a memory card and hope to add some spring garden pics to the next blog post.

It's also the time for birds to start migrating. We took a trip with our friend Bob over to Heron Park in Danville last week. It turned out to be colder and much windier than we'd expected, but we enjoyed getting out and we saw quite a few birds on the water from the boardwalk: Canada geese courting and nesting and being very vocal; Northern Shovelers, the pretty colored ducks with the big bills for sieving food out of the water sideways; Blue Winged Teal, small, quick ducks with a pretty white crescent on the males' heads; a couple of coots with their funny way of moving forward and their pale silver bills; white egrets floating seemingly without effort from tree top to tree top; and a couple of shorebirds (maybe Greater Yellowlegs?).

We stopped for ribs on the way back at the Possum Trot, not health food by any means, of course, but plenty tasty.

Not a good week for backs, however. I'm still struggling to get my pulled back muscle to stop torturing me and now David's old disc problem reemerged. I called his chiropractor, whom he hadn't visited in many years, to discover that he had just retired three months ago. That's a problem for people our age -- not only do your friends retire, which is nice because you can get together more easily -- but so do your doctors, dentists, etc. Fortunately, we got David set up with another chiropractor and he's feeling somewhat better already.

Last weekend we had a great time once again with the monthy Sandunga gig at the Iron Post. The place was packed and the dancing started almost from the first number and kept on the whole time. What fun! This time Eduardo was with them on electric bass, Will's father dropped by to visit, it was Matt Turrino's birthday, and Cody Jensen sat in with bongos. The music was terrific and a good time was had by all. Next month is their CD release party, which promises to be another great evening.

Warmer days and chances for rain seem to be in the offing for all of next week. It'll be a busy week for us too, with various doctor and dentist appointments and the Dance for PD class at the end of the week.

This 'n' That

Various odds and ends of things going on lately ... What a funny week weatherwise, huh? Wednesday afternoon we go for a late lunch after getting the car serviced and we eat outside for the first time this year. Since it's spring break on campus, it is possible to park, so we go to the place with the great French onion soup.

 The outside tables are set up, and so here we are, eating and looking up at a blue blue sky and fluffy white clouds. After we eat, we run a couple of errands and an hour later we're heading home when ... the wind picks, the sky turns gray and large black clouds appear, the air smells different, and the temperature drops drastically. Yup, ol' winter came back for one more round right at that moment. Maybe the cold will keep the daffodils from finishing up too soon (a few days of heat finished off the early reticulata irises).

Spent the later part of the week finishing Joyce Carol Oates's new memoir A Widow's Story. It would be very difficult to have read ALL of JCO's books because she is so enormously prolific and wide-ranging, but I have read a good number of the novels and would say I am a fan. I don't usually go for memoirs, but I made an exception in this case. What an amazing book! So intensely personal and yet so accessible, so universal in its poignancy, its very intimacy. She lets the reader inside her mind, her heart, and her marriage in a heartrending way.

Now I've started Susan Vreeland's Clara and Mr. Tiffany, historical fiction set in NYC at the turn of the century in the famous stained glass studio where a crew of women artists are creating the masterpieces that will be shown at the Chicago exposition and introduce the world of amazing Tiffany glass art.

By Saturday night, we had to wear winter coats and hats and nearly froze coming out from the Mean Lids gig at 8:30!

Mean Lids refers to the cool hats that these guys like to wear at each gig. We had seem Miriam Larson and Ben Smith at a library concert a while back when Matt Turino couldn't join them. And we knew Ben Smith's wonderful violin performances when he played the Stephan Grappelli parts in the Music of Django Reinhardt (we miss him there!). But we had not heard the three all playing together and it was a real treat!

Ben is a prodigious talent with both the fiddle and the banjo! Matt plays a mean guitar indeed and fiddle as well. Miriam loves to switch instruments from her incredible flute to kazoo, Jew's harp, train whistle, washboard, and any number of other amazing devices. All three sing wonderfully well too! And what kind of music do they play? It's a bit hard to define, but it's an intriguing mix, all skillfully done and a joy to hear. There's a fair amount of Irish folk music, some haunting waltzes, old-timey swing tunes, even a Patsy Cline song, and lots of astonishingly good originals composed by the members of the band. They are not only consumate musicians and laid-back and entertaining performers, but admirable composers as well.

There was a good sized crowd and it was nice to see a handsome and graceful couple who not only knew how to do swing dancing par excellence but who could also waltz! A dance and a type of music with a long and noble history that isn't over yet!

They say it could snow tonight, but it doesn't look like it's gonna happen here anyway. Next week is my birthday, so I'm hoping spring will return just in time! We've got the crew from LetUsGetDirtyForYou coming on Monday to  begin the garden clean-up, put out the chairs and benches, and get the pots ready for this year's annuals. It's my favorite time of year!

Triple Music Weekend

As I've said before in this blog, Champaign-Urbana is a great town for live music, and this weekend was another example. We went to three different gigs, each very different and each very enjoyable.

Desafinado
On Saturday night we went to the Iron Post for Desafinado, our favorite Brazilian samba group. The group has changed its membership a bit recently because of some folks moving away and others being busy with family things. This time the group included Elis Artz on vocals, George Turner on guitar, Tom Paynter on piano, flute, and melodica, Giraldo Gonzales on congas, Karim Yengsep on bass, and Luciano Tosta on mandolin, guitar, and various percussion instruments.

Desafinado is experimenting with some new tunes, as well as continuing with well-known Brazilian favorites such as "The Girl from Ipanema," sambas by Antonio Carlos Jobim, the theme from the film Black Orpheus, and Aquarelles de Brasil. They played two sets and we loved all of the songs!

 Elis sings in Portuguese in a most expressive and spirited way, so the meaning of the songs comes across even if you don't speak the language. Her performance just keeps getting better and better. She says she had a few voice lessons last year in Portugal and a few here in town (she was a total novice to performance when she started with this band) and the results really show! Her voice is stronger and her range is greater (and she's more confident as well). But the beauty of the singing is how totally natural it is and how perfectly it expresses her feelings for the songs she is singing.

The rhythms of the Brazilian beat are, of course, part of the magic too. And there was plenty of variety in the musical sounds coming out of the group. The foundation of the infectious beat itself is the conga. Giraldo has three congas and he certainly knows just what to do with them. It's an essential part of what makes you keep time on your tabletop, just like they do in Rio or Sao Paulo ...

Many of these pieces have beautiful and intricate melodies that are perfect for leading into George Turner's expert guitar improvisations. I was so happy to see George playing his acoustic this time and Karim Yengsep his acoustic bass (including some lovely bow work). I've heard them use the electric instruments well too, but to me this music is best acoustic.

Tom Paynter is an incomparable musical talent, and he really had a chance to let loose and show it at Saturday's gig. He had use of a genuine grand piano for a chance, a Baldwin, as well as his flute (and a wooden or bamboo flute for one number) and his melodica (a sort of combination of accordion, keyboard, and harmonica with a unique sound). He manages to play all three at the most appropriate times in hauntingly lovely ways.

A couple of the new numbers were songs from the Northeast of Brazil, from Paraiba where Elis and Luciano are from. The sound of this regional music is very distinctive and really interesting. Luciano adds to the range of sounds with his mandolin, small electric guitar, and lots of cool percussion such as triangle, wind chimes, gourds, whistles, shakers, and bongers (is that a word?)

Karim plays with such intensity and passion on the acoustic bass that you can't help feeling the deeper tones within the songs. The wonderful thing about this group is the way they really do play together, their "esprit de corps," as the French say: the spirit, the sense of connection and being totally immersed together (including the audience) in the music and culture being expressed.

Of course, the evening was great fun most of all because of the best company at my table, my sweet husband David.

Bossa Nuevo
The next afternoon, on Sunday, we went to the Urbana Free Library to hear Bossa Nuevo play.

In the past, this group has performed some of the same Brazilian tunes as Desafinado, but since their singer, Holly Holmes, has gone to Brazil to study, the band decided to expand their repertoire to include tangos and other interesting arrangements of lesser-known compositions by modern composers. There is some overlap in the membership with other bands we enjoy. George Turner (on electric guitar this time) is also in this group, as well as Karim Yengsep on bass.

 Behind George, hopefully you can spot the beautiful and talented jazz pianist Lara Driscoll. We used to hear Lara play with a number of local musicians at V. Picasso, which sadly is closed now. She also plays in some other groups, including with Mikael Templeton, who graced Bossa Nuevo with sterling performances on four horns: alto and tenor sax, clarinet, and flute.

The beat is entirely different for these Argentian tango pieces and quite interesting.

Cody Jensen on percussion, a new musician to us, did a great job and was playing with Andy Miller on bongos, whose virtuosity we've enjoyed regularly in the Cuban guahira son band called Sandunga.

I especially liked the tangos by composer Astor Pizzarelli. There was one long modern piece that was a bit different in tone from the rest of the concert, but the other musical numbers were definitely in the realm of Latin jazz.

The Music of Django Reinhardt
The third gig of the weekend was Sunday evening at the Iron Post with the regular once-a-month appearance of a band called The Music of Django Reinhardt. This group's membership is pretty fluid too and various musicians sit in if they're in town. But the music is always great and lots of fun for those of us who recognize songs that are seventy years old!

The two "regulars" are the leader of the band Jordan Kaye, guitarist par excellence and a guy with an enormous sense of humor, and his happy sidekick and terrific bass player Josh Houchin.

A nice surprise tonight was the goofy but delightful singing that Josh and Jordan did (evidently they always sing when they play with the Prairie Dogs and do bluegrass and country). Also, Chris Reyman was there for the second set with his wild and lively accordion.

But Paul Asaro's amazing performance on the Baldwin was not to be missed! Paul is not always with the group because he tours nationally, currently with Leon Redbone. He is a master of stride jazz piano, an incredible technique requiring extreme two-handed dexterity to say the least, and he seems to know every early jazz piece ever written. Most of the songs that Django played were from the forties, often performed by jazz bands in occupied Paris.

This group does some standards from the time that are well-known and much-loved, such as "Stardust," "Honeysuckle Rose," and "Ain't Misbehavin,'" but they also perform some Django originals such as "Nuages" and "Manoir de Reve" (Django's Castle).

It was a small audience because of U of I spring break and a warm evening with lots of folks probably out riding bikes and kicking soccer balls, but the show was much appreciated. What a great town for live music!