the wettest month

I read in the newspaper not all that long ago that August is usually the wettest month of the year in Chicago. This year is proving not to be an exception, and if we haven't hit our monthly average yet, last night, today, and tonight will help a good bit. It's odd that things wake me in the night, so soundly do I sleep, but the rain against the windows last night roused me. And at various times today I've been glad to be in the car or in a building looking out.

I won't call these stellar pieces of photographic artistry by any means, but they do convey the downpour around lunchtime when we set out to take Conrad's mother to the airport in Milwaukee.






Milwaukee was not so wet. It looked as though it had rained a little but by the time we'd seen Conrad's mother off and then headed into the city to shop at the Spice House, things were dry. Gloomy, grey, cool. But dry.

I like Milwaukee. When I was set to move to Chicago, friends in Montreal asked me why I was moving to the Midwest. As I told Conrad today, I think that Milwaukee (and other Midwest cities - Minneapolis comes to mind) is underappreciated. We spent only a little time there today, down in the Third Ward district, but I always enjoy visiting. The shots, alas, are more of the taken-from-the-car-while-passing-through genre, so they don't flatter the city, but at least, for those who don't know it beyond Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley, they put a face on the place.