Grab some baked goods at Hewn (in Evanston), visit the Bahai temple, and then walk across the street to Gillson Park to wander the Lake Michigan shore and eat your goods from Hewn.
The easternmost portion of Northwestern's campus also has a nice walking/biking path along the lakeshore with a great view looking back towards the Chicago skyline.
If you're a tourist, know that you can take the Purple Line elevated train from downtown Chicago. At the end of the train line, it is about 0.5 KM east, along a lovely tree-lined street with sidewalks. The street turns into cobblestones after a short distance; it is a very wealthy area.
Take off your sandals, and soak your toes in that crisp clear water, but only a little past your ankles or the moment will have spoiled by the crackle of the beach nazis on atvs, "No SWIMMING! GET OUT OF THE WATER".
That's a shame. I recall last summer seeing some dedicated and well-wetsuited people swimming much closer to town, along the concrete shoreline to the north of Ohio Street Beach.
Swimming in the Great Lakes is not dangerous at all. They account for 14 drowning deaths per year out of 4500 across the country. That's a quarter of the annual U.S. drownings in the Atlantic despite having more U.S. coastline.
I agree. Other than the many beautiful homes and beaches, there are not a lot of things to see in Wilmette. Unlike other large buildings, mainly in the Northwestern (Evanston) campus area to the south, the Baha'i Temple is truly majestic and elegant that blends in well with the surrounding neighborhood.
For those not familiar with Baha’i temples or houses of worship, lmk. I’m a Baha’i in case anyone has questions. Fun fact… do you know who introduced Steve Jobs to Wozniak was a Baha’i? It’s the only tech related thing I could think of when I wrote this. But Baha’is are pretty progressive towards tech.
heh, i didn't know that. more well known is actually this quote by Shoghi Effendi written in 1936 predicting the internet:
A mechanism of world inter-communication will be devised, embracing the whole planet, freed from national hindrances and restrictions, and functioning with marvelous swiftness and perfect regularity.
Every other value system on Earth must be evaluated by its relationship with tech, whether they see technology as a net positive or net negative force.
This is not 100% correct. Baha’is have many groups that hate them and write dismissive articles such as these. Take a look at what Baha’is have done in countries fighting for human rights — and that is every right
Well, in Iran the Islamic Republic feels threatened by Baha'is. Most people that hate Baha'is is because they feel threatened by them. For example, Baha'is have no clergy. So all clergy will naturally feel treated as the Baha'i population grows -- that's just an example
People need beauty. When people are put in an ugly environment and situated in a culture of ugliness, this need will be expressed in destructive ways. In such an environment, the female body will become increasingly the sole focus of male interest as it becomes the only source of beauty in that environment. And that kind of intensity, which would otherwise would sublimated in the richness of a beautiful environment, is now directed entirely toward the female body. This doesn't bode well for either men or women.
Beauty is not a luxury. It is essential to humanity. Deprive us of beauty, fill our world with ugly architecture and ugly art, with ugly human culture, and you will breed misery.
So according to this theory to accentuate romance between a man and woman, the woman needs to make sure she’s placed in the most hideous settings possible to magnify her allure to her prospective mate?
Fascinating. All those romantic restaurants and locales really have screwed up their marketing.
Nobody truly hates beauty, but some people view most other people as cattle, and they don't want to invest a ton of money in making the barn beautiful. Especially because they rarely / never have to lay eyes on the barn. But their own homes? Yeah, they'll make those beautiful.
well, until earlier this century the focus was on getting one house of worship for each continent or continental region. but in 2017 the first local or national house has been built and since then 4 more have been completed, two are under construction and 3 more in planning. that means soon in just a short time their number will have more than doubled. and i am pretty sure it won't stop there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bah%C3%A1%CA%BC%C3%AD_House_of...
In other news and by contrast, Scientology opened a massive, ugly storefront across from UT on Guadalupe St. in Austin, TX. (Look at this celebration of stupidity.[0]) I guess they couldn't get sucker enough tech people in Mountain View, CA on Castro St., so they had to try again in a different market preying on naive young people, influenced by TikTok and/or evangelical Christianity, who aren't as cosmopolitan.
If you're going to pitch people magical thinking, don't steal from them and don't fill them with awful ideas like ethnoreligious nationalism, suicide bombing, external locus-of-control, denial of science, "infallible" messiahs, excessive generosity harming individual survival, or shunning "infidels".
When I used to live in Chicago and bike race, this was one of the local sprint finish points on weekend group rides. A long flat road into a short climb and some of my favorite memories.
There's also a beautiful cobbled street on the other side of it.
The exterior of the Baha'i temple in Wilmette is beautiful but the interior is very plain. I'm not sure if this is intentional and reflective of some tenet of the faith.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bah%C3%A1%CA%BC%C3%AD_House_of...