Lens-Artists: My Favorite Things

My Favorite Things is the subject of Lens-Artists’ photo challenge this week. I love cats, especially my sweet tortie Hazel. I love flowers and enjoy taking good photos of them. There is plenty of this subject matter at Chicago Botanic Gardens! This is their May foxglove display. My favorite thing in the world is traveling, […]

Journey to Egypt, Part 11: Luxor – Lunch, a Ferry Ride, & Dinner with a Local Family

December 27, 2018 A Walk to Lunch Back in the city of Luxor (about 850,000 population), our bus driver dropped us off in the vicinity of the place where we would have lunch. The restaurant was a few blocks away down dusty streets, and we had to walk. I was glad for this because as […]

Thursday Doors: Sigma Alpha Epsilon National Headquarters (OHC 2018)

During Open House Chicago 2018, we visited several sites in Evanston, including the national headquarters of the fraternity Sigma Alpha Epsilon. Regardless of my personal opinion of this fraternity’s history of hazing (for which it has been disciplined at least nine times) as well as of fraternities in general, the headquarters building is an austere […]

Thursday Doors: Lake Street Church (OHC 2018, Part 7)

During the weekend of Open House Chicago (Oct. 13-14, 2018), we visited another of the Evanston sites, Lake Street Church. Although founded as Evanston Baptist Church in 1858, according to their welcome brochure, Lake Street Church is now a “progressive community of spiritual seekers from across multiple denominations” and is “rooted in the free-church tradition,” […]

Open House Chicago 2018-Part 2

This post continues our brief tour of Open House Chicago 2018. The second building we toured was right across the street from the Gunder House. It is the Conway House, now the property of Sacred Heart Schools as the Driehaus Center. The home was designed by the architect William Carbys Zimmerman in the Tudor-Revival style, […]

Open House Chicago 2018-Part 1

Open House Chicago is an annual event – on a weekend in mid-October, about 250 buildings in the Chicago area are open to visitors. Each has a few volunteers who can tell you about the building. It is sometimes called the “architecture tour” because many of these buildings were built 100+ years ago and some […]

Thursday Doors: The Richards House B&B

The Richards House is a Bed and Breakfast lodging in Dubuque, Iowa. I reserved online in advance and had no idea what it would look like, but I guess I imagined a sunny white or yellow house with a fancy sign out front. Instead, when we arrived at the address at dusk, my heart sank. […]

CFFC: Light and Lime Green

Cee’s Fun Photo Challenge right now is a color series; this week is light green or lime green. Hibiscus buds Young maple leaves – most of the maples around here have a fungus on their leaves called “maple tar spot,” supposedly caused by wet weather so that the leaves never have a chance to dry […]

Treehouse: Oddball Thursday Doors

When I saw this tree, I thought of the stories of my childhood, where families of rabbits or squirrels wearing human clothing, lived. I discovered it on one of my walks on a local walking path, which passes a couple of private homes. Someone has used the contours and scars of this tree trunk to […]

Getting Our Kicks in Santa Fe (Route 66 Day 6, Pt. 1): Cathedral and Burro Alley

June 12, 2018 We spent the morning in Santa Fe before hitting the road toward Amarillo. First, we went back to the Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi to see the interior. The cathedral was built by Archbishop Jean Baptiste Lamy between 1869 and 1886. There had been two previous churches on the same site, […]