BOXES 210-212: La Crosse, Chicago, Hawai'i 4, Sheboygan.

These drawbridges are on the North Branch of the Chicago River--to be really precise, they're the Kinzie Street Bridge and adjoining railroad bridge. I like this photo that I took in May 1998 even though it's grainy and faded in color, and I'd tilted the camera somewhat--in fact, those defects may benefit the geometry of the shot, with its contrast of the hard lines of the cityscape and the softness of the tree and river curve.

I was with a group of UW-Sheboygan students on a weekend visit to Chicago. I'll show more photos from that trip, and also from one to Hawai'i Anne and I took that summer, plus shots of her brother Jim's visit to Sheboygan soon after. But first let's look at an earlier event in spring 1998, when a bar mitzvah for the son of our friends Bob and Maureen Freedland was held in La Crosse, WI, on the other side of the state from Sheboygan. Warning to those who mainly come to this "travel blog" for the locations: this post features people rather more than places.

After the ceremony at the synagogue Bob and Maureen had arranged for a lunch/boat-tour on the Mississippi River for all the guests. Here we are onboard--that's Bob with the mustache, in the back middle:

This whole roll of slides turned out to be grainy and somewhat faded--maybe a photography expert could explain why. Anyhow, here are the other photos of that occasion: (1) the cabin with Anne on the right, a guy named Tom behind her, and a friend named Duncan on the left; (2) Duncan taking a picture of a bridge we're passing by; (3) Maureen;(4) her daughter Celia (with her hand on the chair) helping to celebrate another girl's birthday; (5) folks photographing each other, with Ben, the bar mitzvah boy, in the blue shirt; and (6) a view of the river:

The river shot takes us back to the Chicago River and our campus trip. Like our much grander trip to Canterbury (see the two preceding posts), it was part of our dean's efforts to beef up enrollments. On this occasion there were seven students, led by myself, Anne, and Mary Ann Searle (Student Services Director). We drove down to Chicago in the school van and stayed at the Ohio House Motel, at LaSalle and Ohio, so we could walk everywhere; and the weekend included a visit to the Art Institute, a play at Steppenwolf and an architectural walking tour. Here are the students posing near the River: I can name Mark Hermann in the upper left and Helen Casper, with the white hair, in the middle; I think the student on the right was named Dean.

Here are (from the right) Mary Ann, Anne and me with Dean and another student at the Buckingham Fountain:

. . . and a closer view:

We took the students to some "exotic" restaurants as part of the Chicago experience, including a favorite Greek restaurant of Anne and mine called Papagus. My interior photos are pretty poor, but I'll include them for the record:

Even worse are a couple taken at other indoor venues. I think the one where we're standing was the Rainforest Cafe:

Marginally better is this one in front of Blues Chicago, where we spent an evening:

The Chicago Architecture Foundation gives a great boat tour on the Chicago River, and we made sure to include it in our weekend. As with the rest of the weekend I took more photos of the group (maybe to help publicize trips planned for the future) than of the sights themselves:

That summer Anne and I went on our fourth trip to Hawai'i. I have many fewer photos from that trip than previous ones, and a lot of the ones I did take document one particular place, the Waipahu Plantation Village in a town just west of Pearl Harbor.

There was once a substantial sugar cane plantation on that site, back in the days when sugar was the chief export product of the Islands and the main reason for immigration from China, Japan, the Philippines, Korea, Portugal and Puerto Rico in the later 19th and early 20th Centuries. The Waipahu Plantation Village contains workers' cottages and other buildings that would have been found near the cane fields. Some the the buildings are the restored originals, others recreated, with each ethnic group represented by one cottage, furnished with appropriate antiques.

Both Anne and I were studying and writing about local Hawai'i literature, often set on such plantations or in times when the decline of the sugar industry severely affected the economy--so we were especially interested in seeing Waipahu and taking pictures for classroom use. In the first photo below you get a sense of how the various cottages were clustered in a "model village." (In real life there were segregated districts for each ethnic group.)

Here are closer views of several cottages and their front porches:

And here are some interiors. Some look relatively 'upscale' compared to others.

There were also public buildings in the village, such as a health clinic, a school and religious buildings. The next photo shows perhaps a barn or workshed; next to it is one showing a warning sign in the clinic in several languages:

The next photo shows a saimin stand and what I think is a general store. Saimin is a ramen-like noodle soup, still popular in Hawai'i (for many years McDonald's had it on their menu).

I was negligent in not labeling these slides--for example, I don't remember the purpose of the room or objects in the next photo, though at least the pic following has information provided by the site:

Nor do I remember why I took this photo of a worker's bag and token--maybe both items figured in a story I'd read about plantation life. Anyhow, the next slide clearly shows the entrance to a Shinto temple:

And here is the largest building in the complex, the Chinese Society Building, which had meeting rooms and other spaces for public gatherings:

I see that I took a photo of a taro patch--I'm slightly surprised to see it, since taro was mainly grown by Native Hawaiians, who mostly did not work on the plantations. I also took a shot of some foliage, maybe just because I liked the look of the light on the leaves:

Other shots include one of some stairs going down from the Chinese Society Building, and one of an original plantation train, with what looks like the shut-down processing plant in the background:

Somewhere near the Village was this ruined building:

But our 1998 trip wasn't all historical/educational. I see that we went to Waimea Beach on the North Shore one day. Though the beach famed for its big surfing waves in the winter, the water's usually pretty calm in summer, as you see here. In the distance is the big rock outcrop perfect for jumping off, if you dare:

And we had great dinners back at Bob and Tripit's:

I can't tell you what the soup is (or maybe it's some kind of seafood stew), but it looks like dessert was a raspberry cheesecake:

Another day we visited Malaekahana Beach, where you can walk out to Goat Island (if you have footwear tp deal with the sharp rocks). These next photos were taken at the beach and on the island. I see we were with another couple but I don't remember them:

And those are all I have to show you from that trip. Back in Sheboygan I see that my friend Mike Reano was visiting from Chicago, where he was living at the time. He swears he was perfectly sober when Anne took this pic:

A more extended visit was from Anne's brother Jim, who had moved back from Hawai'i to Sacramento, with his two sons, Eric and Adam. You met the kids in my posts of our 1996 Hawai'i visit; now here they are posing as cowboys on our front porch, Adam in blue, Eric in red, by themselves and with Michelle and Jim:

And here are the other pics from that visit, some or maybe all taken by Anne. It looks like Jim shaved off his mustache and beard after the evening of the porch photo:

My last pic from this slide box, no doubt taken to use up the roll, shows our backyard flower garden. My next post will take us back to Canterbury, January 1999, on our second campus tour abroad.