Dear Everyone,
I may write a short letter next weekend; we are travelling
to Malta a week from Tuesday. Of course,
we are going as tourists, but we have also slotted some time to spend with real
estate agents. Becoming an ex-pat (or,
at least, getting a European residency visa) increasingly looks like a
necessary escape hatch, especially looking at the idiotic and dangerous
hyperbole on the right and the left (but mostly the right) this week after the
lone wolf assassination of Charlie Kirk over a week ago. I have to say that I had no idea who this
beloved saint of the right wing was before this incident. I expect to see a memorial put up to him
rivalling MLK, and perhaps a national holiday.
On a less scary note, at the invitation of the Wetlands Initiative, I and
Joel Greenberg went out to the Lake Calumet area (specifically Big
Marsh Park) to see what had been happening with Square Marsh (also known as
Harborside
Marsh) and Indian Ridge Marsh. Money
from the sale of 1261 was given to TWI to begin reclamation of these areas. Beyond burning and clearing invasive species
from around the edges of Square Marsh, the big news was the installation of a
water control device leading from the marsh to the adjacent Lake Calumet. The plan, once all of the dominoes are in
place, is to drain the marsh, wipe out all of the invasive carp, get dredged
soil from the Illinois River (from the US Army Corps of Engineers), sculpt the
marsh bottom, reseed it with vegetation, reflood it, stock it with predatory
fish (to keep the carp population down), and then use the water control device
to make a seasonal ebb and flow of the water system to mimic natural processes. They have done something similar at Indian
Ridge, which looks pretty reclaimed. If all goes well, TWI could do this in the
fall of 2026, otherwise they would probably need to wait until fall of 2027. Other
plans are to extend bike trails around the marsh to hook up with Big Marsh Park
and Indian Ridge, and perhaps some day hook up to the Cal-Sag bike trail. Joining
on the tour (led by Paul Botts, the executive director) were some TWI
naturalists, herpetologists from the Shedd Aquarium, some of the officers of
TWI, and other interested donors like me. We were also joined by Dale Bowman,
the outdoors editor of the Sun Times, who wrote a nice
article about what the TWI is doing here.
I’m sure Barbara would be happy with this progress!
Last weekend I went to a party sponsored by my old partners
at Midwest Diagnostic Pathology. I was
invited by my ‘work niece’, Aimee Kwak as her ‘plus one’. Aimee, her husband, Bryant (an orthopedic
surgeon), and her two small children (Noah, 4 and Ava, 2) recently moved to
Hinsdale from Clarendon Hills, the village just west of us. They had a perfectly adequate house, but a
couple of years ago they bought a property in Hinsdale (a couple of blocks from
the library), demolished the old house, and built a 6000-7000 sq foot mansion
on the property. They have a basement (a
giant gym for Bryant) with a sub-basement that has a half-basketball court /
pickleball court, a first floor with kitchen/dining/living space, bedrooms with
ensuite bathrooms and offices on the second floor, and additional play space on
the third floor. They have laundry
machines on the basement, first, and second floors, and two dishwashers in the
large kitchen. The house could easily
sleep over 12 people in the zombie apocalypse.
Aimee drove the two of us to Second City, where we watched
the current troop do improv, and also some prepared skits that highlighted pathology
jokes. It was pretty funny, partly
because the comedians often had no idea what they were talking about.
Earlier this week Cindy and I went to a matinee of the movie
The Roses, a
remake of The
War of the Roses. It had some great
lines, especially since they were voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia
Colman - - English actors are great at being being pithy, dry, and
sarcastic. The movie was over by 3:30,
so we went to the nearby Alter
Brewery to have some beer and snacks.
At home, we just finished watching the second season of Wednesday. I enjoyed the acting, but I had a lot of
trouble remembering the plot from one episode to the next. Two books I have read lately that I enjoyed
were Dengue
Boy, a futuristic absurdist anti-capitalist satire, and the Good
Soldier, which is more or less a rewrite of the Good Soldier
Svejk set in the far future. It’s an absurdist anti-authoritarian,
anti-military satire.
Love, H
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