And Then It Rained

January 12, 2024

I had a cheery little post all planned but then I saw that Lonesome Larry of the WHIP has gone into hospice. As I said to a friend, I don’t know why some are harder than others but this one is hard. He and Lori have done so much for music lovers in this town. Fucking cancer.

I am sending all my love to him and to Lori.

The Buddhists have it right, life is pain.

I know this kind of pain is the price we pay for the gift of caring and love, but damn, damn, damn.

I’m glad I still have the light of my Christmas tree as I sit here with my ancient cat on my lap on this bleak and rainy day.

I’ve been burying myself in rabbit holes trying to find information on a house in Alton that I fell madly in love with the other day. The most I have found, other than the fact that their taxes were $695 last year, and that a tree company operates, or operated out of the house, is a reference in the National Register application for the nearby Guertler House. It says, “Another c. 1850 stone structure, smaller and less rich in detail can be seen to the Northwest and across the Little Piasa in a dense woods is a primitive c. 1835 stone cottage.” I can’t quite tell from their language whether my new little friend is the c. 1850 building, or the c. 1835 building. Either way, I love it.

Here is an older, but undated picture

And here is its much more famous cousin, the Bruch-Guertler House. We’d taken a picture of it last year but because of light and traffic, we didn’t get a picture of the north side (I believe). Then I came home and rooted around online, saw the windows and told Ernie, “Oh, we’re going back.”

Here are the pictures from last fall.

And the ones from the other day.

And here is an older picture of it, before it lost some of itself. I believe it’s from the 1970’s.

Now I’m going take my sad little self into the other room and find something trashy, but pleasurable, to watch on tv.

If you’re interested, I’ve revamped my About page to better reflect why I write this. I also updated the payment tiers. Take a look. Oh, and don’t forget to leave me comments.

Onward.

Love,
Cynthia