More From the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania

Posted on April 16, 2023 by admin

Our most recent trip took us to fully 25% of the nation’s commonwealths, to celebrate a famed example of a distinction without a difference.

It wasn’t quite full spring in Pennsylvania last month, but warm enough most of time.

We drove the National Road (U.S. 40) in Pennsylvania, from where it crosses the border near Wheeling, through to Uniontown, and later drove the segment that goes into Maryland.

Didn’t quite make it to the eastern terminus, in Cumberland, Maryland. Once upon a time, maybe a small detour during a late ’90s return from Dallas, we saw the western terminus in Vandalia, Illinois.

One minor landmark along the way.

Searight’s Tollhouse, built in 1835 by the commonwealth of Pennsylvania to collect tolls, since the federal government had turned the road over to its various states that year. The structure, near Uniontown, is one of two surviving tollhouses, out of the six built. No tolls have been collected there since the 1870s.

The structure was built near the tavern of William Searight, the state commissioner in charge of the roadway, per Wiki.

Barman and toll collector. There’s an idea for a Western revival limited series on streaming: Will Searight, Frontier Toll Collector. I’m thinking a comedy, in the same Shakespearean writing style as Deadwood, but no one gets killed.

A church on the National Road, east of Uniontown: Mount Washington Presbyterian, founded in 1842.

The church cemetery provides a view of the National Road.

In Uniontown itself, I stopped by briefly at Oak Grove Cemetery, originally the Union Cemetery of Fayette County, which has been accepting permanent residents since 1867.

Famed permanent residents? I checked with Find-A-Grave (just now), and the pickings are slim: mostly forgotten members of the U.S. Congress, though there is a Civil War officer, Silas Milton Bailey (d. 1900). I just made his acquaintance. Quite a story. Uniontown jeweler in civilian life; solider that didn’t let getting shot in the face keep him from action for long.

Fort Necessity is just off U.S. 40 and thus the National Road. Something I noticed there, featured on a park service educational sign. Of course. How could they not be involved?

The camp, Pennsylvania SP-12, existed from 1935 to ’37, with about 800 men, planting trees and laying out trails and roads. This is the first time I’ve seen the CCC seal depicted at any of its sites, though of course the men sometimes rate bronze recognition. There is evidence that the seal dates back to the active period of the corps.

Just as we left Pennsylvania for the last time, I was able to stop at the border with Maryland on U.S. 219, just south of Salisbury, Pa. Not just any border, but the Mason-Dixon Line. It’s one thing to cross it, as I have who knows how often. It’s another thing, according to my eccentric lights, to stand on it.

Yuriko had never heard of it. I explained a little about its history and its wider but not quite literal meaning as a line between free and slave, North and South, but she didn’t find it all that impressive.

Ohio Timbits

Posted on April 13, 2023 by admin

Finally, a string of warm days here in northern Illinois, as in 80s in the afternoons. The grass is green and some bushes are coloring up, too. Trees are a little more hesitant, but it won’t be long. Of course, come Saturday, weather from up north will end our balmy run.

One thing I was glad to learn during our recent trip east was that Tim Hortons territory in the U.S. extends as far as Columbus, Ohio.

What is it about TH doughnuts that is so good, even in small form? The excellence of the dough, presumably, but that doesn’t really answer the question.

Another ahead-of-the-road-foodies discovery: Tudor’s Biscuit World. From a recipe dating back to the kitchens of Hampton Court Palace in the time of Henry VIII?

Of course not. The 20th-century founders were named Tudor. Though there’s a scattering of Biscuit Worlds in Ohio and Kentucky, and an outlier in Panama City, Florida, it’s largely a West Virginia operation. As we drove south through that state, we kept seeing them along the way. That inspired me, the next morning, to visit one and buy breakfast sandwiches for us.

Its sandwiches are much like McDonald’s breakfasts, the best thing that fast-food giant makes, except more variety, and Biscuit World’s various sandwiches were larger. Pretty much the same high quality. I can see why they can compete with McD’s.

The Basilica and National Shrine of Our Lady of Consolation rises over the small-town streets of Carey, Ohio (pop. 3,500). I spotted it as a point of interest on one of my road atlases.

I’ve read that a lot of people show up for Assumption Day, but in mid-March, only a few other people were in the basilica.

The next day, we saw St. Nicholas Catholic Church in Zanesville, Ohio, a handsome church that needs a grander setting, one not hemmed in by busy streets.

Zanesville is known for its Y Bridge, and I have to say driving over the thing was less interesting than driving down any of the other streets in Zanesville. As Wiki states: “It has received criticism for a tunnel-like effect due to its solid railings, providing hardly any view of the scenery.”

I agree. I know public budgets are tight in a place like Zanesville, median household income, $26,642. Still, there has to be a way that’s not too expensive to make experiencing the bridge genuinely distinctive, like the Tridge in Midland, Mich., except with vehicular traffic.

(Chin up, Zanesville. The Midwest is going to rise again, with its cooler temps and access to water. You or I might not live to see it, but still.)

West of Zanesville – where you can find the National Road & Zane Grey Museum – you can also stand in front of this pleasant house in New Concord, Ohio.

Behind the white picket fence, the John and Annie Glenn Museum.

Then.

Now.

Leaving that early sign outside is a nice touch. Not every artifact needs to be behind glass.

Both the Glenns and Zane Grey were closed for the season. I didn’t need a museum to tell me that we were partly following the route of the National Road as we drove on U.S. 40 in Ohio and more so in Pennsylvania.

Route 66 has had better publicity, but the National Road – the original stab at an interstate – now that’s a traveler’s road, a route to seek glimpses of a past remote and tough. Well, from the vantage of today’s macadamized roads.

A mile marker on U.S. 40 in Ohio, but only 25 miles from Wheeling, West Virginia – as the marker tells us, and the fact that Zanesville is 50 miles west.

At the courthouse square in Newark, Ohio, bronze Mark Twain can be found looking Mark-Twainy except – no cigar. Come now, he even smoked cigars when he made an appearance on Star Trek: The Next Generation. Or maybe this is the reformed Mark Twain, who promised to give up cigars after the 1910 arrival of Haley’s Comet. No, that’s not it. I made that last part up. But he did in fact give up cigars that year.

Outside the Ohio Statehouse, a couple danced and was photographed. For reasons, presumably. A spot of romantic whimsy, I hope.

The capitol grounds are well populated with bronzes, including from just after the Great War.

And a little earlier, historically speaking. Quite a bit, actually: Columbus, as in the Admiral of the Ocean Sea, in a 1892 work.

See him, and reflect on the vicissitudes of history.

Columbus (the city) has a good skyline, at least from the capitol grounds.

We had lunch that day in the Columbus neighborhood of German Village, or maybe more formally, German Village Historic District, which has the hallmarks of fairly far along gentrifying, an old ethnic neighborhood revived some years after its ethnicity melted into the population.

We got takeout from a small-chain chicken wing joint, which was packed with a youngish crowd at the brunch hour on Sunday, and ate with gusto in our car, out of the wind and collecting enough sunlight to warm the inside of the car.

Across the street was a sizable park.

After eating, I took a look around. Schiller is honored in German Village. Check.

Then there’s Umbrella Girl, a fixture in a fountain still dry for the season.

Instructions.

I’d say bilingual, but I don’t see that dogs have a lingua, as expressive as they can be.

The Ohio Statehouse

Posted on April 12, 2023 by admin

Through much of 1999, I visited a fair number of Midwestern cities on editorial business of one kind or another. At some point, that included Columbus, Ohio. I was staying downtown, so during a lull, I popped over to the Ohio Statehouse, which occupies a prominent 10-acre block.

I went in and looked around back then, but thinking about it last month, what I remembered most was the statue of William McKinley near the street. He’s still there, of course.

With verbiage about the immortal memory of President McKinley. That’s what I remembered, how memorials speak to those who already remember, at least among Americans. Later generations do not remember, or much care, except in certain lightning-rod cases. I suppose that isn’t a good thing, but there is the upside of mostly forgetting to hold historical grudges.

The president isn’t alone at that part of the capitol grounds, with some bronze allegories to keep him company.

The back entrance.

We’re used to seeing a dome on such a structure, but state capitols mostly started using that form, patterned after the current shape of the U.S. capitol, after that building took shape in the 1860s. The Ohio Statehouse is older than that.

We arrived late in the morning of March 25, the last day of the trip, after spending the night in suburban Columbus. I would have similar shots of the front, but as innocently spring-like as the pictures seem to be, there was a wicked strong wind blowing. Not terribly cold, just incessant and sometimes so energetic that you could feel yourself tipping one way or another, especially as a gust passed without warning.

Much calmer inside. Under the rotunda.

Nice detail work. I’m impressed by the Spirograph floor. The Spirograph-ish spirit of democracy, maybe.

The design is much less spare than in West Virginia, but not the work of any single designer. It’s the Greek Revival creation of a series of architects beginning in the 1830s and not finished until 1861, just as the nation fell apart.

Perry, hero of Lake Erie, isn’t forgotten. Not at least on the wall.

Nor Vicksburg. Many Ohioans were there.

Nor Cleisthenes, ancient democratic reformer.

I can’t say I’ve ever seen him at a capitol before, and he isn’t known as a native of Ohio, but it’s a good choice. No less than Herodotus called him “the man who introduced the tribes and the democracy” to Athens, “tribes” being the 10 groups organized by residence in Attica, rather than clan or other kinship.

The seal of Ohio in glass.

The visitor entrance, and the information desk, closed gift store and some museum exhibits, are in the basement, itself fairly handsome.

I didn’t know who founded the 4-H Program. Now I do, but sadly I am likely to forget.

I like this a lot: the counties of Ohio, each in a different stone.

Finally, words of wisdom –

Not because Lincoln had a special connection to Ohio or the building. Just, I think, on general principles.

The West Virginia State Capitol

Posted on April 11, 2023 by admin

But for an unfortunate fire a little more than 100 years ago, you might see this when you visit the West Virginia Capitol in Charleston.

In history as it was, there was a fire, and West Virginia needed a new capitol, which was completed by 1932. Nice job. Design by none other than Cass Gilbert, whose body of work is astonishing.

“Like the predecessor capitols Gilbert designed for Minnesota and Arkansas, the West Virginia capitol is dominated by its dome, which rises 292 feet above a colonnaded drum, and is embossed with gold leaf,” says the Cass Gilbert Society.

“The design was inspired by that of the Pantheon in Paris. The main entrances to the building are through monumental pedimented Corinthian porticos, set below the dome. Shallow domes at the ends of the main capitol block mark the location of the legislative chambers. The interior walls are faced with Vermont marble. The floor of the rotunda below the main dome is of Italian and Vermont marble.”

We stopped in Charleston on our way out of West Virginia on March 24. The warm, sunny weather of the day before had disappeared into rain and cold wind, as happens in the spring. So a walkabout outside the capitol wouldn’t have been pleasant. As I pointed my camera at the capitol, I had to brush water off.

Inside was another matter, nice and dry. A spare but impressive design, owing more than a little to Greek temples.

Gold leaf outside the dome. Inside, coal black. At least, that’s what I see. Incidentally, the neoclassical West Virginia capitol dome is the last of its kind among U.S. capitols — or, put another way, the most recent one.

The West Virginia House of Delegates.

The seats were roped off, but you can get close enough to some of the backbenches – literally at the back – to take in some interesting detail. Nothing surprising is a U.S. flag or a cross or even a Don’t Tread On Me flag or what I take to be some coal – but what’s that earth-colored disk?

Does that particular delegate sympathize with flat-earthers? Seems unlikely. Also, if you look carefully at the wider shot of the House of Delegates, those blue disks seem to be on some, but not all of the desks. A sizable minority of the delegates are flat-earthers? No, I won’t assume it. People believe the damnedest things, or say they do, but even now that would be too far around the bend. Still, I wonder what that disk is supposed to mean, in its pride of place on the desks.

There isn’t a lot of statuary, but West Virginia could hardly forget Sen. Byrd, here in a Solonian pose.

Or that western Virginian, Stonewall Jackson. He didn’t quite live long enough to hear about the formation of West Virginia, though the estrangement of western Virginia was well underway in his lifetime. He probably had other things on his mind, anyway.

He doesn’t have a statue, but JFK rates a memorial.

A president, paying attention to West Virginia! Of course, it probably helped that the state was solidly Democratic in those days, but with a political history of more swinging than most of the states to its south.

Like many capitols, portraits of old ‘n’ moldy governors hang on the walls (and sometimes not so old). Here’s the first governor of West Virginia, Arthur I. Boreman, with that distinctly mid-century vibe (mid-19th century, that is), and Lincolnesque beard. Probably no accident.

Boreman pushed for the establishment of West Virginia, which by itself ought to be better known. After all, it was the only successful secession of the Civil War era.

Another gov: number three, William E. Stevenson, another member of the founding generation of West Virginians, which aligned with his pro-Union and anti-slavery convictions.

That’s a striking portrait, unusual among governors long gone but still hanging on the wall. Wonder if the artist took liberties, or whether the governor actually had movie-star good looks well before anyone saw any movies.

Fayetteville, West Virginia

Posted on April 10, 2023 by admin

Unlike the near-ghost town of Thurmond, the town of Fayetteville, West Virginia (pop. 2,700 or so), is alive and looks reasonably well. One thing to know is that you can get some delightful rice bowls (rice, protein, vegetables) for lunch there, at a place generically called The Take Out.

We didn’t take it far. The day was Thursday, March 23, clear and in the low 70s F., and so ideal for taking our food to the picnic table outside The Take Out.

The fellow who prepared the bowls, with an exaltation of light curly hair on his head and looking unbelievably young, came out to chat for a few moments and try to make friends with the dog. The restaurant is a post-pandemic venture, opening only a year ago, he told us. Rice bowls of that kind are fairly recent to North America (I think), which shows the speed at which food innovation spreads in our time. Next thing you know, Korean corndogs will make an appearance in small-town West Virginia.

Signs on the highway promised an historic downtown in Fayetteville, and I’d say the place delivered. At the very least, there’s a handsome courthouse, since the town is the seat of Fayette County. This shot is complete with an attorney (a safe assumption) talking with someone.

A number of repurposed buildings are near the courthouse, including a bank turned town hall. Not the first time I’ve seen that.

Actually not an ex-bank. Still a bank.

Plus history on plaques and signs.

The Battle of Fayetteville was part of the Kanawha Valley Campaign, which has to count as a lesser-known incident in that sprawling war, unless you’re in Fayetteville.

Eastern Virginia got most of the attention then, as now. Whether part of the Old Dominion or not, western Virginia has a long history of being ignored.

Which might account for the enduring popularity of “Take Me Home, Country Roads” in West Virginia. Here was a song that actually paid attention to the state, with “West Virginia” being the third and fourth words of the lyrics. The first two words made an arguably bigger impact, however.

That display of West Virginia regional pride was at an odd angle next to a building across from the courthouse, neither in the sidewalk nor on the wall. Odd for a slogan, as I forget which comedian pointed out: you mean Heaven is only a little bit better than West Virginia? Or maybe the joke went like this: you mean Heaven is only a little bit better than West Virginia?

Thurmond, West Virginia

Posted on April 9, 2023 by admin

I was thinking ghost town, but the data says otherwise. Someone lives in Thurmond, West Virginia — five people as of the 2020 Census. They must be in the few houses perched on the enormous slope over the historic core of the town, which is formed by a string of commercial buildings and railroad structures at a flat place next to the New River.

Thurmond was a small railroad town at a waystation, back when that meant coal-burning giants among locomotives, which came to pick up shipments of coal, or acquire coal, water and sand for their own use. Maybe the shades of long-gone people wander Thurmond, if you believe that sort of thing, and if so, the rattle of pouring coal, the venting of steam, the screech of metal on metal, are echoing on as well.

What does every railroad town need?

The National Bank of Thurmond failed in 1931, but there were successor banking entities of some kind in the building into in the 1950s, when the town essentially shut down. The fact that the last bank paid 3 percent reminds me of a shorthand for the way mid-century savings and loans did their business: 3-5-3. Pay 3 percent to depositors, charge borrowers 5 percent interest, and close up to go play golf at 3 pm.

Other commercial buildings fronting the tracks, with the river just a little beyond them.

The mostly hidden ruins of a grand hotel on the slope. Burned down.

The bridge that brings trains and motor vehicles to Thurmond over the New River. One track, one lane.

The station. I thought it was merely for tourist use now, but no: it’s an active Amtrak station, reportedly the second-least used, after one in West Texas. So not that active.

The steam went out of Thurmond pretty much when the steam went out of Thurmond. That is, coal-fired steam locomotives disappeared, replaced by diesel, and the contracting coal industry as natural gas gained a foothold nationally probably didn’t help either.

Trains still transit Thurmond, but the land around — most of it, anyway, as boundaries are invisible — belongs to the national park. The star of modern Thurmond, I believe, is the ruin of the coaling tower.

Near the coaling tower. Maybe where the crew boss stayed, and members of the crew when no trains were in town.

Both are full of the ravages of time, but still standing. Barely? I’m not engineer enough to make an assessment, but my layman’s opinion is that chunks of stone drop off the tower now and then, so watch out.

A selection of graffiti.

Bleak, O.G. Bleak.

New River Gorge National Park and Preserve: The Vistas

Posted on April 6, 2023 by admin

Late morning on our first full day in West Virginia, we found ourselves at the Endless Wall Trail. It’s not only a place for horizontal walking motion across the landscape, but the vertical motion of rock climbing too, as the park sign points out.

How we got there (that is, besides driving in our car to the trail head) is best characterized as a misreading or misunderstanding of a map on my part. So the trail wasn’t the one we’d been looking for, but it seemed like a good trail, so we headed in, with a place called Diamond Point as the goal.

Not a particularly difficult trail, for the most part, though there were roots and rocks and mud patches, but they never rose past the level of sometime annoyance. Nowhere was it steep, but the trail rose slowly in elevation much of the time.

It takes a fairly healthy old man about 30 minutes to get to Diamond Head. I mean, Diamond Point. Odd the things you think about sometimes, such as a land form in the tropics while tramping through some temperate zone mud, just because of a coincidental name.

Close to the destination.

Some of the glories that were Diamond Point.

There isn’t agreement on the exact age of New River among scientists, but it is measured in the hundreds of millions of years. Guess it was worth climbing a slope to take a look into deep time.

But you don’t need to walk that far to see a sweeping vista at Grandview, in a part of the park that’s some miles south-southeast of Diamond Point. We went there toward the end of the same pleasantly warm day, driving on local roads through Beckley, as well as short stretches of I-64 and West Virginia 9, to get to a large NPS parking lot, playground and ball field, occupied that day by small groups of parents and kids.

A walk of five minutes or so led from the play area to Grandview overlook. It is.

Nothing like a horseshoe bend, large or small.

New River Gorge National Park and Preserve: The Bridges

Posted on April 5, 2023 by admin

I didn’t appreciate the New River Gorge Bridge in West Virginia until I’d driven across it more than once, and more importantly, seen it from a distance.

A handsome design for a magnificent setting. Elegant. Sturdy. Spanning the gorge spider-web like. Imagine a species of large, intelligent arachnids that can extrude metal and spin webs of steel across the many gorges on their forested planet. Artful shapes like the New Gorge River Bridge, maybe.

Even better, such an artful shape was made by us clever apes here on Earth. Within my lifetime, completed in October 1977. If I’d been in that part of West Virginia then, I could have driven across the newly minted bridge carrying my newly minted drivers license, obtained in some haste that summer to take a girl I’d recently met on dates. But I wasn’t anywhere near the bridge in my South Texas adolescent driving days, and never heard of it till much later.

“The bridge reduced a 40-minute drive down narrow mountain roads and across one of North America’s oldest rivers to less than a minute,” the park service says. “When it comes to road construction, mountains do pose a challenge. In the case of the New River Gorge Bridge, challenge was transformed into a work of structural art — the longest steel span in the Western Hemisphere and the third-highest in the United States.

“The West Virginia Division of Highways chose the Michael Baker Co. as the designer, and the construction contract was awarded to the American Bridge Division of U.S. Steel. In June 1974, the first steel was positioned over the gorge by trolleys running on three-inch diameter cables. The cables were strung 3,500 feet between two matching towers. Cor-ten steel, with a rust-like appearance that never needs painting, was used in construction.”

Good to know, but if anything, the experience of driving across the bridge is too detached from the sense that you’re passing over an 800-foot void. The opaque fences along the edges of the bridge obscure the drop, though you do get a glimpse of the far-away cliffs of the gorge.

The bridge transits New River Gorge National Park and Preserve land on either side. A few minutes walk from the park’s visitor center takes you to a view of the bridge, which we saw on the morning of March 23, the brightest, warmest day of the trip.

The gorge, looking away from the bridge.

The old way to cross the gorge by vehicle involved spending 40 minutes or more on small roads that switchbacked their way down into the gorge, to just a few feet above the river, where there’s a much shorter bridge.

Stop there and you see the postcard-Instagram view of the New River Gorge Bridge in all its glory.

We drove down to the river the morning of March 24, the day after we’d seen the bridge from near the visitors center. Cold rain fell periodically and clouds clung to the side of the gorge.

A small aside. I saw that a number of things are named after Sen. Byrd in West Virginia, and I’m sure if I’d stayed longer, I’d have seen more. Why not this grandest of Mountaineer State bridges? Than again, maybe the thought of it being the “Byrd Bridge” has given policymakers second thoughts on a renaming.

The bridge down near the banks, where a few generations of West Virginians before 1977 made the crossing, does have a name: Tunny Hunsaker Bridge.

I had to look him up. I thought, local politico? A local man who didn’t return from a war? No, he was a prizefighter who later was police chief of nearby Fayetteville, West Virginia (d. 2005). I’m not up on the history of boxing. Now I’ve read that Muhammad Ali’s first professional win, in 1960, was against Hunsaker.

The current bridge dates from 1997, built to replace an earlier iteration. You can’t walk across the New River Gorge Bridge (except on Bridge Day), but you can walk across Tunny Hunsaker any time. So we did in turn. When you can cross an interesting bridge in an epic setting, you should.

The Flight 93 National Memorial

Posted on April 4, 2023 by admin

I don’t remember the first time I heard of Fallingwater or Fort Necessity or even the Hare Krishnas, to name a few examples. I do remember the first time I heard of United 93, though probably not by its flight number. Listening to the radio in my downtown Chicago office on the morning of September 11, 2001, I heard, along with countless other listeners, simply that a fourth airplane had crashed, this one in rural Pennsylvania and not into a building.

Twenty-one and a half years later, roughly, we arrived at the site, now the Flight 93 National Memorial. Rural it still is, and far enough out of our way that I considered not going. But when Wednesday came, there in the middle of our trip, I knew we should. How often were we going to be out this way? I didn’t want to think later, we could have gone to pay our respects, but didn’t.

The memorial is as expansive as its rural location allows it to be. Its parts are variously horizontal, irregularly diagonal and vertical, and at some distance from each other. Come to think of it, the plane went from a high altitude into a ragged and sharp descent, to pulverization on the level ground. The features of the memorial’s inner circle are within eyeshot of each other, but seemingly far in the distance, and not imposing themselves much on the sloping earth or the big sky.

At first, it’s a little hard to visualize the various parts. The NPS brochure is helpful in that regard. The cut-off arrow says “Flight Path.”

Near the entrance is the Tower of Voices, the most recent part of the memorial, a 93-foot structure with 40 wind chimes, which were installed in 2020. Ninety-three feet for the flight, 40 chimes for the number murdered.

The chimes are supposed to sound in the wind. There was a little wind, and sound, as we stood under the tower, but not much.

Further on is the visitor center and museum, formed by concrete structures. A few busloads of high school students were visiting.

When they cleared out about 15 minutes after we arrived, that left only a trickle of visitors at the memorial on a cool but not cold weekday.

The black granite walkway isn’t a random placement, but reflects the path of Flight 93 in its last moments. At the level of the visitor center, it passes through the concrete structures and to an overlook.

Looking back at the structures.

Looking forward, over the overlook.

Within view is the actual crash site, now fronted by the Memorial Plaza and the Wall of Names, way at the down end of a brown slope. Brown for now. I’ve seen images of the place ablaze with flowers.

From the visitors center-museum-overlook, you can walk to near the crash site, on foot on a circular path, called The Allée, which is lined with Sunset Red maple trees; or drive on a circular road. We elected to drive, though I’m sure a walk in the fullness of summer, the colors of fall, or even through a snowy winter landscape, would be richly rewarding.

The first thing to see at the Memorial Plaza. The main thing.

No dogs allowed on the sidewalk leading to the Wall of Names, so we took turns. I went first.

The Wall of Names: each of the crew and passengers, except of course for the murderers, gets a white granite panel with his or her name inscribed, alphabetically left to right, beginning with Christian Adams and through to Deborah Jacobs Welsh.

Until I went to the museum, I hadn’t known that a Japanese national was among the dead: Toshiya Kuge. Yuriko noticed that as well.

Kuge was a student, and at 20, one of the youngest people on board, returning to Japan by way of San Francisco that morning. His mother visits the memorial every year.

The flight path walkway picks up again next to the Wall of Names and goes to a gate.

The ceremonial gate is hemlock beams, with 40 angles cut into it. The gate is ceremonially closed to us, the living.

Beyond that is a closed field that was point of impact, now featuring a boulder standing by itself to honor the dead. The ground also is a field of internment for the victims.

When I returned, it was Yuriko’s turn to walk to the Wall of Names while I waited in the car with the dog. The walk takes at least 20 minutes, if you’re going to spend any time at all at the wall. About five minutes later, she came back.

“You’re back,” I said.

“It was too sad,” she said.

The Palace of Gold

Posted on April 3, 2023 by admin

What do you know, today’s the 141st anniversary of the assassination of Jesse James by the coward Robert Ford. We happened to watch the movie of that name over the weekend, and found it slow-moving but impressive. Nothing like a high-verisimilitude work of historical fiction to take you into the past, especially if there are no outrageous anachronisms.

Frank Lloyd Wright on Monday, Hare Krishnas on Tuesday. That’s possible in southwestern Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

Some years ago, I was poring over a road map in anticipation of a road trip that didn’t happen. Looking roughly where we eventually did go last month, I noticed the Palace of Gold at a spot in rural West Virginia, in the odd northern panhandle of that state. Such a thing cannot go un-looked up, so I found out that it is part of a complex run by the International Society for Krishna Consciousness.

We’d been to ISKCON Chicago. Time to drop by the Palace of Gold, I thought, as long as we were in the neighborhood. The palace is part of a larger settlement known as New Vrindaban, which was founded during the heady early days of the Hare Krishna movement in the New World, namely 1968. You know, when the Beatles were hanging out with sect founder His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda, or vice versa.

This isn’t the Palace of Gold, but it is a major part of the New Vrindaban complex, Sri Sri Radha Vrindaban Chandra Temple (RVC Temple).

ISKCON had a lean period after its counterculture heyday, but someone is paying for the vigorous reconstruction at the temple, as well as plans to restore the Palace of Gold.

Maybe Alfred Ford kicked in some dosh. I didn’t know till our visit that a great-grandson of Henry Ford, also known as Ambarish Das, is a member of ISKCON, and is a major donor for a major project in India.

You can’t go too far in the temple without encountering Swami Prabhupāda.

Many depictions of Krishna and his flute.

The centerpiece. At least, that’s what I assume; it was front and center.

I heard the story of the founding of the ISKCON from two different Anglo monks, two of about 200 people who live in the settlement, one young and at the visitors center, the other old and at the Palace itself. Their stories had a mythical quality to them, emphasizing the travail of the founder of the sect, especially his sea voyage from India to New York by cargo steamer, under hardscrabble circumstances, age nearly 70, to bring Krishna consciousness to the West.

Swami Prabhupāda thus brought one of the many branches of the massive flowering tree that is Hinduism to America, and at an auspicious time – 1965. Not only had U.S. immigration laws just been loosened, one of the periodic effusions of bohemianism was just then under way in the West, making for a receptive audience. Double good fortune for the swami, or perhaps the timely intervention of Lord Krishna, made exponentially greater when he caught the attention what we would now call influencers.

The founder did not, however, live to see New Vrindaban come to full fruition, since he died in 1977 – cast off his body for another, presumably – and his followers took up the task of developing the place. As you’d expect with a new religion, any religion really, not all went smoothly. Violence, murder plots, a racketeering conviction. New Vrindaban spent a period in the late 20th century excommunicated from ISKCON, but it is back in the fold now.

The grounds of New Vrindaban are extensive, including a pond and other structures, such as a dorm and cabins for monks and visitors. And a concrete elephant and cattle.

Krishna consciousness gazebos, by golly.

These are Gaura and Nitai, I‘ve read, but I can’t pretend I understand their function or which is which. The one on the left, recently refurbished. The one on the right, awaiting new paint.

The Palace of Gold itself is on a slope overlooking the rest of the complex, and looks to be on one of the higher points in this part of West Virginia, surrounded by the sect’s roughly 1,200 acres. Why West Virginia? Cheap land would be my guess. The monks had a story about that, too, formalized in its details as much as the story of the swami’s passage to America. Something about answering a random ad in a newspaper. Anyway, here it stands.

“Palace of Gold Leaf” might be more accurate, but also an exercise in literalism.

Nice detail.

A sign at the entrance says that restoration will soon be underway. The palace needs it.

We did our little part for the restoration, each taking an $8 tour in turn. No one else was on either of our tours, since even at New Vrindaban, mid-March would be the slow season, though a few other people were visiting at the same time as we did, including a sizable, multi-generational South Asian family.

The interior is as ornate as the exterior, even more so, with crystal chandeliers, mirrored ceilings, marble floors, stained-glass windows and plenty of gold leaf and semi-precious stone accents. Not bad for a structure that is entirely nonprofessional architecture.

No photography inside, except I took some pictures in the lobby waiting for the tour.

“I’m old enough to remember Hare Krishnas at the airport,” I told my guide when he asked whether I knew anything about ISKCON.

“Yes, we used to do that,” he said with what I took to be a wistful smile.

My guide was an old hippie. That’s probably unfair to the fellow, a lanky gentleman perhaps in his early to mid-70s, dressed in the Hare Krishna robes we’re all familiar with, head mostly shaven. Who would want to be described by stereotypical youthful attributes more than 50 years out of date?

Still, as he told me about his wanderings as a young man in the late ’60s, and his discovery of ISKCON – he was happy to say that he’d taken classes from Swami Prabhupāda himself – the thought kept occurring to me.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Monthly Archives: April 2023