I love “Home Alone!”

While I suppose it’s really more a Winnetka movie than a Chicago movie, this holiday classic is full of local flavor. Both the Chicago and Paris airport scenes were filmed at O’Hare International Airport, with some additional runway footage shot at Meigs Field, so while most of the locations were in Winnetka, Willmette, Evanston, and Oak Park, there are indeed some parts of the movie shot within the Chicago city limits. Furthermore, the vast majority of the special effects in this movie were done by hand in a Chicago basement by a man named Kevin Nordine.

Here are a few stills that highlight the strong sense of place in “Home Alone.”

These screen grabs show Kevin beneath the Chicago flag, the interior of Grace Episcopal Church, the Hubbard Woods Metra, and the United Airlines terminal at O’Hare, respectively. If you have a favorite or one you’d like to add, please share a photo or link!

I love Sandburg’s Chicago Poems.

Everybody knows the famous “city of the big shoulders” poem. What you may not know is that Carl Sandburg wrote not just a poem, but an entire book of poems, about this city. A defining work of the Chicago Renaissance, the book is a perfect example of what literary scholars now call modern poetry. Concerned with the people and places he saw every day rather than mythology and other classical topics, Sandburg and other poets of the Chicago Renaissance wrote about the particular scenery, dialects, smells, and characters they encountered on the city streets. Chicago Poems is more than a pleasure to read as a book of poetry; it is a document of what Chicago was like in 1916. The poems have a delightfully populist bent to them, and some are even political, but there are also poems that are just plain fun.

Rather than overrun this blog with poetry, I’ll just post two that I think are often overlooked and that are particular favorites of mine.

The first, “To Beachey, 1912,” describes a flight of Lincoln Beachey, widely considered America’s first great stunt pilot. Beachey set an altitude record in Grant Park during August of 1911, according to The Chicago Daily News Almanac and Year Book. About 75,000 people sat in bleachers along the lakeshore to watch him (and others) at the  1911 Chicago International Aviation Meet, and Sandburg may have been among them. Sandburg may have also watched Beachey fly at the 1912 International Aviation Meet, where Beachey dressed in comical drag and performed numerous stunts as “Madam Lavasseur.”

Source: aerodacious.com

Enough exposition! Here is the poem:

RIDING against the east,
A veering, steady shadow
Purrs the motor-call
Of the man-bird
Ready with the death-laughter
In his throat
And in his heart always
The love of the big blue beyond.

Only a man,
A far fleck of shadow on the east
Sitting at ease
With his hands on a wheel
And around him the large gray wings.
Hold him, great soft wings,
Keep and deal kindly, O wings,
With the cool, calm shadow at the wheel.

The other poem is “Clark Street Bridge.” In it, Sandburg describes the site of the  Eastland disaster. Beautiful and haunting, its lyricism is as striking as its imagery. Interestingly, the bridge Sandburg would have crossed while going from River North to the Loop was the second bridge at this location–the bridge there today was completed in 1929, and the first one saw Chicago’s first civil disturbance, a beer riot, unfold. Still, I think these evocative words can yet catch in the hearts of those walking through the city on a misty, lonesome night.

DUST of the feet
And dust of the wheels,
Wagons and people going,
All day feet and wheels.

Now. . .
. . Only stars and mist
A lonely policeman,
Two cabaret dancers,
Stars and mist again,
No more feet or wheels,
No more dust and wagons.

     Voices of dollars
And drops of blood
. . . . .
Voices of broken hearts,
. . Voices singing, singing,
. . Silver voices, singing,
Softer than the stars,
Softer than the mist.

You can read the rest of Sandburg’s Chicago Poems right here, if you like.

I love Northerly Island.

Northerly Island is actually a peninsula, created as part of the Burnham Plan of Chicago. You can reach it by following the road past the sculpture garden outside of Adler Planetarium. It was once the site of Meigs Field, but the second Mayor Daley controversially sent bulldozers to the runways of that small airport in 2003. Some claim it was a horrible abuse of power. Others claim it was a good security move. Aviation aficionados miss having a lakefront airport; 99 Percenters decry having a whole peninsula dedicated for wealthy executives to fly their private planes to work. In any case, there is no airport there now.

The foaming at the mouth that occurs when some Chicagoans discuss Meigs Field evokes this promotional image for the film “Cujo.”

Instead, there is a gorgeous expanse of restored prairie and bird habitat, along with a field house where you can learn about nature, and an outpost of Flint Creek Wildlife Rehabilitation focusing on helping migrating birds who strike the windows of downtown skyscrapers. The Charter One Pavilion, a concert venue now slated for expansion, will host bands like Phish and Ben Folds Five this summer.

A view from the “island” courtesy of the Chicago Park District.

In the summer, 12th Street Beach is one of the less crowded beaches in the city because of its secluded location. There is open water swimming here, rather than the limited-depth swimming at other beaches. You can also enjoy public restrooms that are a bit cleaner than at some other beaches and skip long lines at the concession stand. There is typically only one  lifeguard, so be aware of your little swimmers. Amusingly, there is no 12th Street here (it’s now called Roosevelt Road).

In spring and fall, this is an excellent place to birdwatch. In particular, many Purple Martins nest here, and you may see some warblers passing through who are only in the Chicago area for a few weeks or even days per year.

In the winter, Northerly Island has hosted dog sled demonstrations and the Polar Adventure Days.  You can rent snowshoes or cross country skis in snowy weather, as well.

There is also talk of building an artificial reef off the shore here, providing habitat for struggling Lake Michigan fish. This is just one of many ecology-minded projects under discussion for Northerly Island, keeping true to Burnham’s motto, “Make no small plans.” I, for one, am eager to see what actually comes to fruition.