The day after

Word of the day 'incongruous'

Today, I mainly messed around with my sister, brother and niece...and my mom. We went letterboxing (not my mom) in the morning and after a few false starts found a box in a rather incongruous spot...a Peace Plaza commemorating some sister city relationships just on the side of a busy road near some strip malls. We first went to some other incongruous war memorials in a big grassy area by the side of a busy road near the city hall of Loves Park. We fooled around there trying to make the clues work until we realized these were all WAR memorials and we were looking for a PEACE Plaza. Anyway, this whole place is so darn midwestern in kind of a stolid dull but functional way.

I still marvel how Rockford seems to have no cultural context. During the past week or so, I've asked people in Seattle if they had ever heard of Rockford IL and in what context. Several people came up with the Rockford Files ( a TV show ) but that's the character's name. Nope, nothing. My sister, who lives in Indiana, says that it's known as an industrial center. Rockford IS the second largest city in Illinois. Plus she came up with one of her incongruous facts "Besides", she says, "the Hindenburg crashed here" What? I said, as the big sister, "The Hindenburg didn't crash here, it crashed in New Jersey, it was supposed to go across the ocean" How did I know that? I have no idea. But big sisters know that kind of thing. She allowed maybe it wasn't the Hindenburg, something else crashed here.

That's about as good as we can do regarding Rockford. I go home tomorrow. It's been nice today but some nasty storm with freezing rain and snow is supposed to come in tomorrow. I really hope that it doesn't disrupt the air traffic out of OHare. I know, the traffic at OHare gets disrupted ALL THE TIME

Also some of the pictures that I took of the bat mitzvah and related came out very well. I will post some as soon as I can get them in a smaller format.