Sweltering in September

Posted on September 23, 2017 by Richard Koerner

The moment feels as if I am reliving the heat found in ‘The Cat on the Hot Tin Roof.’

I walked outside to check the skunk trap this morning only to find nothing changed, but the weather was such that although it was just about seventy degrees, it felt as if there was absolutely no escaping more than one shower in this day.

The haze is present and there is little wind.

Is this really September? Is the world crashing down upon us? Poor Mexico is reeling from a nasty earthquake, Maria the hurricane has devastated Puerto Rico, and there are more tropical storms waiting to attack.

The older of the two grandchildren with us has a cold and is cranky; we are just plain cranky from the humidity that makes you feel like peeling your skin off.

There is no air movement and the rest of the week is high eighties and nineties. Once again I put it out there, “Global Warming?”

As a perfect way to spend the ‘swelter,’ we accompanied our little charges to the Deerfield Spraygarden. We didn’t even realize that it was open. It is directly adjacent to the pool, which has already been closed for some time. Somehow, it seems so wrong that we have this intense heat, approaching the 90s and with heavy humidity, and to not be able to go in the pool.

We had a great time, even saw our other grandkids, who came with their mom, and then brought the kids home for a quick lunch before a nap.

We made the best of the heat.

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Posted in Grandkids, Life in general, Summer Heat, Thoughts and philosophy | Leave a comment

Poison Ivy on the North Shore

Posted on September 22, 2017 by Richard Koerner

Dying poison ivy is near the window.

Irma is in the air.

They had promised rain and the sky is looking gray. Tired and weak Irma is in Illinois and we started the day out with fog. It is somewhat cool and the weather looks rainy.

Stewie and I took a walk and now, of course, my plant finding eyes are noticing everything that is in ‘leaves of three.’

Yesterday, I saw our new neighbor and I told him to be on the lookout for poison ivy. His back yard pretty much has nothing but lawn so he is okay. I did tell him that I poisoned a poison ivy plant in his yard as I was shooting mine down. Mine are pretty much in the shriveling up mode, at this time, which is the way I want them to be. The only good poison ivy is dead and withered poison ivy.

As Stewie and I walked around the block, I noticed that right next to the sidewalk on the next street is a healthy poison ivy plant and now I am wary as I don’t want Stewie near it. He will not be affected, since dogs are not, but he can carry it on his fur and inflict it unknowingly on humans. That is decidedly not cool.

I was talking to a participant in the ESL conversation hour the other day and was telling her about poison ivy. It is so deadly that burning it is perhaps pretty much the worst thing you can do since the smoke will carry some of the oils and it would get into your lungs. That is not a pretty thought.

This was a little segment of the summer I was not expecting. Over a month and I still have remnants of that nasty rash, pretty much completely gone, but yet not. Who would have thought?

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Posted in Life in general, Plants, Poison Ivy, Thoughts and philosophy | Leave a comment

A film screening of MacBeth

Posted on September 21, 2017 by Richard Koerner

As a member of the Chicago Associates of the Stratford Festival, I am privy to their goings on and events that are happening in the Chicago area. One of the events is the screening of one of the Stratford plays, Macbeth. If you are interested in attending this event, please contact me as tickets are going fast.

The Music Box Theatre

Tuesday, October 10, at 7 p.m.

3733 N Southport Ave, Chicago

Hailed as “a brilliant, terrifying show” that leaves people “gasping in the dark”

(Chicago Tribune), this 2016 production stars Ian Lake in “a galvanizing performance as
an unusually young and sexually magnetic Macbeth” (New York Times). This gripping film
will haunt your dreams and leave you tingling. All hail Macbeth!

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Posted in Stratford, Theatre, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Cleaning the playhouse

Posted on September 21, 2017 by Richard Koerner

Fall seems to be in the air and with it the omnipresent webs that the spiders keep weaving.

Everywhere I look, the webs seem to crop up overnight. It is that time of the year.

We have had an amazing outdoor season. So many years there are times at the end of the summer when we have to run indoors due to the nastiness of the yellow jacket wasps.

For some reason, as I was thinking about all that, I realized that the playhouse was ‘webbed’ and needed my attention. I took some rags and went inside and took some beeswax polish to clean up the little teak-nesting table that now works as a kid table. It fits way better in the playhouse than the Little Tikes one I often store in there.

I wiped out all of the cobwebs, polished the wood framework with the beeswax, which also makes everything smell really good with a lemon scent, and then I vacuumed off anything left. There was a little sand from the adjacent sandbox and some dirt here and there. I then sprayed some cleaning spray on the tiles and wiped them down. The playhouse looks great now.

The two older grandgirls are arachnophobic, at least enough to keep them from spending any time in the playhouse. The youngest two are the ones who have consistently spent time in there. With a wall that is a painted with chalkboard paint, a real painting of the Little Prince, a French weatherboard, and two windows as well as a door, it is a fun place to be.

Let’s face it, our yard is just a kid friendly kind of place, exactly what we expect of it. Now let’s just get rid of that creepy poison ivy, which is luckily in the last are of our yard where anyone would go.

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Posted in Grandchildcare, Grandkids, Le Petit Prince, Life in general, Thoughts and philosophy | Leave a comment

Feeling bad about our good weather

Posted on September 20, 2017 by Richard Koerner

The weather is frightfully nice, that is, in the Chicago area.

I feel bad though, that south of us, the weather test of a century is happening to an entire state and spreading, as we speak, to others.

It brings to mind, the stupidity of the politicians who are in denial about climate change. Perhaps Irma is not climate change, but given predictions and the fact that Irma was preceded in a short time by Harvey and followed quickly by Jose, it looks as if the writing is on the wall.

I am in shock that there are people who deny what the scientists are saying. Massive pieces of ice are breaking in Antarctica and glaciers are disappearing faster than we thought possible, and people we supposedly elected are saying that it is all poppycock?

The people are suffering. The people who continue to suffer the most are people forced to live in areas where the cost is lower and the housing substandard. I somehow don’t have the feeling that affluent people in Houston were living in the areas that flooded. I have not done a lot of research into it but I am sensing that it is the lower income group that is paying the heaviest price for the current weather.

Let’s say, just for conjecture, that the scientists are off on the thought that Global Warming is happening sooner than it is. Does it make sense to continually abuse Mother Nature and not try to keep our natural resources clean so that future generations can live without total fear of being damaged by our carelessness?

So here we are in the Chicago area and enjoying our good fortune while down south, they are in meteorological misery that will only get worse when it is over.

Could we possibly learn something from this?

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Posted in Life in general, Meteorology, Thoughts and philosophy | Leave a comment