VFYW: Yo Atrium!

For contest #329, our champion had a special connection to this city during Covid.

(For this week’s View From Your Window contest, the post exceeds the content limit for Substack’s email service, so to ensure that you see the full results, click the headline above.)

The submitter of last week’s photo in Evanston, Illinois, who’s also our Russian-American sleuth, writes:

I am so proud of myself for contributing this picture! The resulting post is superb! I am going to print it out, frame it, and put it on the wall in my office!

Another sleuth is also psyched:

I grew up on Lake Street in Evanston! As soon as I saw the subject of the VFYW email, it all fell into place. I have been so conditioned to NOT know where the weekly answer is, it never occurred to me that it would be my old home. Indeed,  “To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.”

Yet another small-world moment from last week comes from this sleuth:

I was so excited to see this view because it is a block away from my condo in Evanston! Even though it’s so close, I would never have been able to identify the location based on the photo. Some of the Dishhead sleuths are truly amazing.

You might possibly recall that about 10 years ago, on December 21, 2011, you published the photo I sent of the view from that condo in Evanston, across from Raymond Park (identified in the image you posted last week showing all the buildings clustered together). In that 2011 post, you can see the same church with the green spire!

When I submitted that photo, I was feeling very melancholy, looking out at that park, because my parents were both seriously ill and the weather was dreary — typical for Evanston/Chicago. I loved that after you posted my view, another Dishhead wrote a touching comment that he recognized the park from having taken his mom there in her wheelchair. I guessed he felt melancholy too, and I loved that connection with a stranger through The Dish.

I’m feeling a bit melancholy myself this week, because I’m down in The Villages in Florida helping my dad out of the hospital after a major stroke. He’s doing much better, but it’s going to be a long road to regain his speech. It’s also the same week my grandmother in Minneapolis is entering hospice. And I just turned 40. Life happens fast sometimes!

But Andrew and I, and another friend and Bowie, slowed things down in West Virginia last weekend:

Moving on to this week’s view, here’s our Coloradan sleuth in NJ:

VFYW 329: STUMPED

You got me, Chris. This week was super hard. I think it is somewhere in New England, but I’ve run out of time and resources. But I say it’s good to fail from time to time. Keeps it interesting, and the successes more satisfying!

Another sleuth has “no idea”:

Feels like a college near water. My first guess was Yale, but I couldn’t find the steeple.

From our LA sleuth in Eagle Rock:

I’m just gonna send a pre-emptive “bite me” to Chini this week.

That’s it; that’s my entry.

The grand-champ especially deserves scoffing this week, because he sent his entry almost as an afterthought: “Woops, totally forget about getting last week’s view in. Here ya go Chris!”

This next sleuth names the right continent: