Spotted during a short visit to Black Partridge Woods near Lemont, Illinois. Seen but not heard. Yet. Presumably the famous Brood XIII. I wish I had more and better photos, but I was being swarmed by another insect — mosquitoes.
Cicadas, Brood XIII
Brood XIII is on the merge of emerging. Although I don’t expect to see them in my Chicago neighborhood, I’m ready with cicada postcards and a new “Love is in the Air” cicada t-shirt from Christopher Arndt. Then a co-worker alerted me to this video from the Forest Preserve District of DuPage County explaining the life cycle of the 17-year cicada. Enjoy.
Total solar eclipse over Hamburg, New York, gets USPS postmark
The ZIP CodeTM of my childhood.
Fog blowing west from Lake Michigan into downtown Chicago
UNIT and redshirts
It’s hard to tell who will have the shorter career — a UNIT soldier or a redshirt on Kirk’s Enterprise.
Me
Rare visible winter sunrise over Lake Michigan
During most of the winter in Chicago, the sky is a uniform leaden gray. Today, however, there was a moment of sunrise with some defined clouds. Right under the sunrise are the steel mills of Indiana with their plumes. During summer, the sun will rise over the Chicago Park District field house to your left.
Third day of sea smoke on Lake Michigan
January sea smoke on Lake Michigan at -7°F
January sea smoke on Lake Michigan at -9°F
More January sea smoke on Lake Michigan. See this article by Catherine Schmitt for the science behind sea smoke.
Ernest Poole on the “Road,” machines, labor, and poverty in America
So much for the forces that help to jar men and boys loose, forces that have doubled in the last twenty years and are still increasing: New labor-saving machines, throwing more men out of work, new machines to make use of child labor, new machines to speed up the American pace and so turn out more cripples; rush and slack seasons, demanding more and more armies of surplus labor; the swift growth of industry, bringing to America millions of immigrants, over half of them young men who come alone; and most of all, the railroads, demanding increasing throngs of nomadic camp workers; the railroads, “the real hot circus,’’ tempting boys to the Road and giving to all kinds of hoboes easy and free means of travel. Lastly, the huge tenement hives, where year by year people are packed in tighter, where year by year life grows more nervous and tense and restless. And deep under all these conditions, responding to the chances they offer, the old human love of the Road that lies deep down in the souls of men — the “wanderlust” of humanity.
Poole, Ernest. “A Clearing-House for Tramps.” Everybody’s Magazine, vol. XVIII, no. 5, May 1908, p. 657.