2024:It's All About the Parakeets. Taken on Ave. J and Ewing in Chicago.
The Skyway is kind of cool – but that is not what Mony is looking at or what we drove to see. There is a large colony of Monk Parakeets that roost under the Skyway, and we visted them on the South Side after going to Steelworkers Park and before heading over to Big Marsh Park. Monk Parakeets are highly adaptable. They are from South America, but we have seen them on all of our travels: in Aguascalientes, in Maui, in Barcelona – and now in Chicago. We love watching them even though they are colonizers.
2020: We Can Still Hang a Banner. Taken at the Home Ave bridge over the Eisenhower Expressway in Oak Park, IL. Indivisible Western Front decided that we could still hang a banner reminding everyone to vote -- and also exercise “social distancing”. :2018: Cleaning up. Taken on Broadway just north of Melrose in Chicago. On my way to Unabridged Books when I took this.2016: Lots of style on the High Line. Taken on the High Line hear 30th St in NYC, NY. I took a lot of photos in NYC between 46st Street and the West Village. The amount of construction and money in Manhattan is unbelievable -- especially on the West side where the High Line is. The most telling story of the day I didn’t capture in a photo. I didn’t even see the speakers as I listened to them. I was in the Chelsea market which is so hip -- I was lucky that let me in. There was a small not very good bookstore there, but I went in anyhow. There was an older man there asking the hip clerk if they had any sports books. The clerk said that they had a book about rock climbing. The customer then said he was looking for an outdoors book and they both chuckled that you couldn’t get more outdoors than rock climbing but that was not what he was looking for. The clerk then told him he could check out the new Bryson book. The older man then lowered his voice and said that he was really looking for a book about hunting but he knew that it might not be so good to ask about that. Well, needless to say, there was no book about hunting in the Chelsea Market. But in this time of great political divides and NYC’s tale of two cities which is evident everywhere -- it just illustrated one other way we are a fractured country. I couldn’t help but laugh that the guy thought you could buy a hunting book in the Chelsea Market -- at the Strand maybe. And me -- I proceeded to buy my $10 pastrami sandwich made with naturally raised beef and apricot chutney, chedder, and fancy mustard on grilled multi-grain bread -- and it was delicious. And then I returned to the real world. 2012: Kind of like monkey bars. Taken on upper Randolph east of Michigan Ave.
