Community: June 2008 Archives

Potluck wishes to extend a big shout out to Stuart Meyer, who has an exhibit of downtown Naperville photography opening Saturday. "Portraits of Downtown" will be on display through July 28 at Art and Frame Naperville, 702 W. Fifth Ave. Admission is free and open to the public. Ten percent of exhibit-related sales proceeds will be donated to the Naperville Art League.

Meyer is creator of the World of Naperville blog, www.naperville.wordpress.com, and he writes about his town as the Naperville Examiner on Examiner.com

A reception for the "Portraits of Downtown" opening takes place from 5 to 8 p.m. Saturday at Art and Frame Naperville, www.artandframenaperville.com.

Check out his pictures, and you'll see that despite all the changes and new construction in downtown Naperville there are still some fine examples of late-19th and early 20th century architecture to be found.

What's your favorite example of architecture in Naperville? The old city hall-turned-La Sorella di Francesca? Buildings at the corner of Jefferson & Washington? Maybe you like more modern fare, outside of downtown (not featured in the exhibit), like the "N" building by the tollway. Hey, even the Riverwalk counts as architecture. Maybe there's a private residence you particularly admire. Tell us about it, and why you like it.

Naperville Mayor A. George Pradel and others addressed the Naperville Area Homeowners Confederation Saturday about encouraging residents to visit local attractions instead of heading out of town, what with today's gas prices.

You can read the story here in The Sun:

http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/napervillesun/news/1018997,6_1_NA23_NAHC_S1.article

With festivals, concerts and destinations like Centennial Beach, the DuPage Children's Museum and Naper Settlement, there is a lot to do in town. What's your favorite summertime event/activity/destination in Naperville?

We're in one of those stormy cycles, where just about every day it seems there are new reports of high winds, heavy rains and damage in our area.

People love to talk about the weather. How well do you think local authorities give notice about approaching severe weather? How about the aftermath--how well do the city, townships and other agencies handle the cleanup of branches, etc.

How do you find out about severe weather--TV, Internet, radio, sirens, personal digital devices? What's your worst storm experience?

Tuesday's Sun features an account about the debate over hanging laundry out to dry. In this era of going green, it's the trendy thing to do to be environmentally friendly and save money on energy costs, too. (It's ironic that something so traditional as air-drying laundry would be called trendy...)

While there's no ordinance that prohibits the practice in Naperville, many subdivisions have policies that ban outdoor laundry drying for being unsightly. Again, the trendy thing to do is to forget aesthetics, repeal the bans and let the wind and sun dry our clothes and sheets. (They smell better, anyway). Even the tony Hamptons in New York has repealed its outdoor laundry ban, and they're like Naperville on steroids over there.

What do you think? If you lived in a subdivision where the homeowners association prohibits air-drying laundry, what would you do? Encourage the board to repeal the ban? Or do you think laundry is unsightly, and you favor banning it? Let's hear what you think.

Since Memorial Day, vandals have damaged at least five sculptures on display in downtown Naperville this summer as part of a United Way fundraiser. Signs are stolen from some and parts are snapped off of others.

Keep in mind these sculptures are raffled off at the end of the summer and are a major source of revenue for the Naperville United Way, a benevolent organization that does good throughout the community.

So, what's going on here? Bored youth, ignorant of the purpose of these sculptures? Drunk, young adults, stumbling out of Naperville watering holes in the wee hours and grabbing onto sculptures to steady themselves and having frog tongues snap off in their hands?

Has the idea of displaying and auctioning sculptures run its course? Is it time for United Way to come up with some other idea to raise funds? Some concept less prone to vandalism?