Along the Rock River, Janesville

Posted on July 24, 2023 by admin

On the first two days of July, we spent some time in southern Wisconsin, staying the night at a hotel near the Rock River in Janesville, a burg of about 65,000 and seat of Rock County.

Late on the afternoon of the 1st, I took a stroll along the river in downtown Janesville. As urban riversides go, it’s drab, an echo of a time when cities generally ignored their rivers, except for purposes of commerce.

Even Rockford, Illinois, downriver from Janesville on the Rock, has a more pleasant downtown riverside, so small industrial-decline Midwestern cities can refurbish their riverwalks. So can the likes of Waco, Texas. The Rock, incidentally, is a direct tributary of the Mississippi, meeting that river at Rock Island, Illinois.

Still, the riverside isn’t completely without its interests. A fairly new pedestrian-bicycle bridge crosses near an equally newish riverside plaza, or at least an open space.

The bridge sports a boulder, too. It’s hard to see, but there’s an inscription on it: The Mick & Jane Blain Gilbertson Family Heritage Bridge.

Jane Blain Gilbertson is CEO of Blain’s Farm & Fleet, a big box chain with 44 stores in the upper Midwest and headquartered in Janesville. The stores carry, among many other things, agricultural supplies and equipment. I remember visiting the one in Montgomery, Illinois, years ago to see what there was to see inside.

Downtown Janesville was eerily empty that late Saturday afternoon. There were a few kids – and I mean junior high or high school kids – hanging out near the bridge, making giggly noises. A small party of adults was having a cookout in the yard of one of the apartment buildings near the river. A few cars passed through the area, but not many. Then there was me.

Every town has one of these. Oddly, it was tucked away in a cul-de-sac.

Why visit Janesville? Why stay there? I’d passed by many times, but not spent any time in the town. I guess when it comes to Wisconsin, I’m something of a completist.

Janesville has some handsome older buildings within a few blocks of the river, most still occupied, but some not, such as a one-time First National Bank.

The McVicar Bros. and Helms buildings. Part of a larger block.

Other buildings.

Evidence of a more robust downtown life in the past: an old Kresge building. Kresge, of course, was the ancestor of Kmart, and a mighty retail chain. Once upon a time.

I had to check: As of more than a year ago, there were only three U.S. Kmarts still open.

That means that this 1987 reference in Calvin & Hobbes will be lost to time. Is already lost to time. I’m sure if I mentioned “blue light special” to either of my daughters, it wouldn’t register.

Calvin: Dad, how do people make babies?

Calvin’s Dad: Most people just go to Sears, buy the kit, and follow the assembly instructions.

Calvin: I came from Sears??

Calvin’s Dad: No, you were a blue light special at Kmart. Almost as good, and a lot cheaper.

I never went to Kmart much, but I did go occasionally, and I remember being in one once, probably in Nashville in the mid-80s, during a blue light special. I heard “Attention, Kmart shoppers!” They did say that. I didn’t buy whatever it was.

That’s the kind of thing that came to mind wandering the empty streets of Janesville.

Delavan, Wisconsin

Posted on July 23, 2023 by admin

On Friday, a week after the Bastille Day Lightning Strike — certain things in one’s life just need their own names, such as that or the long-ago Mirabella Incident, when I was the focus of an Italian town’s attention for a few minutes — I opened the deck umbrella to shield myself from the noonday sun, which is pretty much the only thing the umbrella is good for.

I have a conversation piece for anyone who visits my deck in the summer.

Early in July, we passed through Delevan, Wisconsin, pop. 8,500.

“During the second half of the 1800s, as many as two dozen circuses flocked to the Walworth County town of Delavan to winter their horses, elephants and other big tent critters,” said the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in a 2011 article.

“The famed P.T. Barnum Circus was organized in Delavan in 1871… The Mabie brothers, who ran the U.S. Olympic Circus — during its time the largest traveling show in the country — quartered their animals during the off-season at the site of the Lake Lawn Resort on Delavan Lake because of its abundant pastures and water.

“Alas, the last circus closed its winter digs in 1894, and within 25 years, the huge ring barns and other landmarks were gone.”

So Baraboo isn’t Wisconsin’s only circus town, though it is the one with the Circus World circus museum. Baraboo claims the Ringling Bros. circus. Delevan, which is in southeastern Wisconsin only a few miles northwest of Lake Geneva, claims P.T. Barnum’s circus, as this Walldogs mural attests.

Barnum’s circus – mainly, he lent his name and financial backing – later merged with Bailey’s circus, and that entity was eventually bought by Ringling Bros. So I suppose Baraboo prevailed in that sense, though the combined circus skedaddled to Florida in the early 20th century anyway.

We stopped for a look around and possibly lunch, which we ended up eating in Elkhorn, a few miles away. Delevan has a pleasant main street, Walworth Ave., marked by century-old (at least) buildings.

Note the street bricks. They are apparently distinctive enough to be on the National Register of Historic Places as Delavan’s Vitrified Brick Street. So we trod on historic ground, very literally.

The mural isn’t the only reminder of the town’s circus past.

Those figures are in the aptly named Tower Park. A water tower emblazoned with the town name dwarfs them.

Unlike many water towers, you can stand right under the one in Delevan.

Maybe I should take more pictures of water towers, though of course I’ve taken a few other images over the years.

Kansasville Wisconsin Veterans Memorial Wayside Park

Posted on July 20, 2023 by admin

A run of sunny days lately. The early cicadas are bleating and the early crickets are singing, and while the firefly population has been slender this year, they’ve made their high-summer presence known at dusk recently. Much of the nation is hot, we are warm by day, cool at night.

Kansasville, Wisconsin is an unincorporated community in the Town of Dover, in the southeast part of the state, not to be confused with the Village of Dover, which is not too far away, but still in a different county.

Along the highway Wisconsin 11 a few miles east of Burlington is the Kansasville Wisconsin Veterans Memorial Wayside Park. A nearby VFW post, Gifford-Larsen Post No. 7924, maintains the park.

“Post 7924 is named in honor of Master Sergeant Elmer (Bill) Gifford who was killed in action on 19 February 1944 and Sergeant Einar Larson Jr. who was killed in action on 15 January 1945 at Halten, France,” says the post’s minimal Facebook page.

A tank astride the corn.

“Initially produced in 1960, over 15,000 M60s were built by Chrysler and first saw service in 1961,” says the Federation of American Scientists Military Analysis Network. “Production ended in 1983, but 5,400 older models were converted to the M60A3 variant ending in 1990.”

Looks like this particular tank’s last stop before resting on wayside park concrete was the Wisconsin National Guard, once upon a time.

Chrysler, incidentally, sold sold Chrysler Defense to General Dynamics over 40 years ago, and as General Dynamics Land Systems, the entity makes tanks even now in Ohio.

40 mm anti-aircraft guns.

I’m not as keen to look up its details, but I will say that it is pointing the wrong direction if there’s an attack from Illinois, whose border is only a few miles to the south.

A bit of rust, a hint of impermanence.

A handsome piece of mobile artillery.

“To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.” — President George Washington, First Address to a Joint Session of Congress (State of the Union), 1790.

Burlington, Wisconsin: Liar Liar

Posted on July 17, 2023 by admin

If, in downtown Burlington, Wisconsin – not a very large place, since the entire town’s population is about 11,000 – you pay attention to your surroundings, you’ll start noticing plaques.

They honor winners of a contest put on at the end of every year by the Burlington Liar’s Club. I’ve read that the contest is for tellers of tall tales, submitted by entrants nationwide, but looking at this list of winners, I’d say only some of them count as “tall tales,” along the lines of a watermelon vine dragging a boy in its wake.

The rest are jokes. In the 1978 example, pretty much like one Johnny Carson would have told.

Newspapermen of nearly 100 years ago made up the Burlington Liar’s Club, but the thing achieved a life of its own, quickly evolving into the overseer of a not-very-serious contest with entrants from around the nation. No doubt the contest is unique in the nation, like the Nenana Ice Classic or the Sopchoppy Worm Gruntin’ Festival.

“The club started in 1929 as a joke,” the club website says. “A Burlington newspaper reporter wrote a story to the effect that these ‘old timers’ got together each New Year’s day at the police station, and lied for the championship of the city…

“… city editors, with an eye for interesting features, ‘put it on the wire,’ and the following December the Associated Press and other news agencies began phoning Burlington to find out if the city’s annual contest would be repeated…

“Letters began to trickle in from the four corners of the country commenting on the ‘contest.’ They furnished the inspiration for a real contest instead of a phony one, national in scope, and the Burlington Liar’s Club was formed to carry it on.”

Just the kind of thing to notice during a small-town walkabout. I was delighted. Who isn’t fond of the oddities in Wisconsin? The fiberglass fields and pyramids and Forevertrons.

One Sunday late in June, I took Ann to the southern Wisconsin camp she where is working as a counselor for the summer, and after I dropped her off, spent a little time looking around Burlington and environs.

The small downtown of Burlington, which at this point in history counts as exurban Milwaukee, is a handsome place, with most of its storefronts occupied.

That is, some handsome old buildings with modern tenants.

Nothing like a sturdy pre-FDIC bank building. Completed in 1909; that makes it pre-Fed as well.

I couldn’t not look it up. The Bank of Burlington in Wisconsin existed in various forms since the mid-19th century; it was prospering in 1916, according to this article from that year, posted by AccessGeneaolgy. A bank in some form or other was in the building until 2021, which Chase closed its office there. That hints that Chase was the last of a string of banks swallowing other banks in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Also: C.B. McCanna. That would be Charles B. McCanna (d. 1913), who organized the McCanna Cheese and Butter Manufacturing Co., and operated about 20 factories in the area. He was also president of the Bank of Burlington in his later years.

“In 1893, the company was reorganized as McCanna and Fraser, with McCanna serving as president until his death,” says the Wisconsin Historical Society. “In 1898 he founded the Wisconsin Condensed Milk Co., which soon became one of the largest producers of condensed milk in Wisconsin and operated branch factories in Pecatonica and Grayslake, Ill.”

You’ve heard of Wisconsin beer barons. Here we have a cheese baron.

I enjoy the old-fashioned approach of a 1916 article about McCanna, another article accessible via Access Genealogy. Of course, it wasn’t old-fashioned at the time, just standard practice in lauding business men:

“Dairying and the industries which are allied thereto have ever constituted an important source of the wealth and prosperity of Racine County, and among the most enterprising and progressive business men of the district are those who have turned to that line of labor as a source of their business development. One of the well known, successful and highly respected representatives of the business in Racine County was Charles B. McCanna, who became an influential citizen of Burlington and one whose activities constituted not only a source of individual success but also constituted one of the strong elements in the advancement of public prosperity.”

Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale, California

Posted on July 13, 2023 by admin

Not long ago, I refreshed my memory about what a hilly cemetery can look like.

Those are images of the Woodland Cemetery & Arboretum in Dayton, Ohio. Been a while since I was there (2016), but it’s still a favorite of mine.

I thought about Woodland and some of the other park-like cemeteries of the nation while on the slopes of Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California last month. The Forest Lawn slopes are arrayed with stones flush to the ground, to facilitate lawn care.

Such beauty in its hills and landscape – and such a missed opportunity for a beautiful cemetery. There are spots of beauty, but still. Flush stones, with their numbing sameness, don’t enhance a hill the way a wide variety of standing stones do. Not at all. Not only that, traces of individuality are regularly removed, as a crew is doing in the second picture above.

Even so, Forest Lawn is an interesting place. For one thing, it’s the cemetery that inspired Evelyn Waugh to produce The Loved One, his sharp satire of the American way of death, or maybe just the California way of death. I read the book about 35 years ago, I think, and don’t remember much. I saw the awful movie based on it at some point, and am glad I don’t remember much about it except, vaguely, Jonathan Winters hamming it up, as he usually did.

Looking at the trailer, I realize now how solid the cast is. I’m surprised how much talent went to waste in that movie.

“When Evelyn Waugh came to Hollywood in 1947 to discuss the film rights for Brideshead Revisited, he visited a graveyard: Forest Lawn Memorial Park,” notes Crisis Magazine. “He had heard it praised as a place unsurpassed in beauty, taste, and sensitivity; a place where ‘faith and consolation, religion and art had been brought to their highest possible association.’ But Mr. Waugh found the cemetery dripping with saccharine sentimentality, edged with macabre memorials, and repellent with cuteness.”

I don’t know about all that; I might have a higher tolerance for sentimentality or the macabre or even cuteness than the author, though I have to say that Forest Lawn doesn’t really trade in the macabre, unless you consider cemeteries by definition macabre, which I do not. If anything, it could use just a touch of macabre to tone its memorial-park lightness down a notch.

The park is expansive, its map full of named places: Inspiration Slope, Garden of Ascension, Haven of Peace, Memory Slope, Triumphant Faith Gardens, Gardens of Remembrance, Columbarium of the Christus, Court of David, Court of Freedom, Garden of Honor, Garden of Everlasting Peace, Garden of the Mystery of Life, Gardens of Contemplation, Dawn of Tomorrow Wall Crypts, Vale of Faith, Resurrection Slope, Rest Haven, Graceland, Vesperland, Slumberland, Lullabyland and Babyland, among others.

One thing not on the map is any mention of any of the movie stars buried in the cemetery, or any hint about where they might be. There are many. That’s an odd lacuna, I think, considering this is southern California and that Hollywood Forever makes a point of highlighting the famous, and does it so well with a detailed map.

A handful of famed names appeared on Google Maps at specific points in the cemetery, including Humphrey Bogart. I wasn’t far away, so I went looking for him. I wanted to pay my respects to Bogart. (I’ve seen his hand- and footprints, too.)

Soon I determined that Bogie’s ashes are behind this door to the Columbarium of Eternal Light.

A locked door. No casual admission to see one of the great actors of his time. Or Bacall, who joined him not so long ago. “Golden Key of Memory”?

I had to content myself with stones and niches of random folk.

There’s also an art museum on the grounds, which was closed when I visited, so I had to content myself with some of the freestanding public art on the grounds. There’s quite a bit of that.

A version of the Christus.

The Court of Freedom, which has a patriotic theme, is ringed with artwork. Such as the Declaration of Independence mural.

George Washington.

The chain in front of him tells a story I’d never heard.

A version of “The Republic” by Daniel Chester French.

I don’t count the statue of Washington as a presidential site for this trip, but there was one at the cemetery I did see: the Wee Kirk o’ the Heather, a lovely spot.

Couples are frequently married at the Wee Kirk, as you’d image. In early 1940, Ronald Reagan and Jane Wyman were married there.

Dublin, Barcelona, Then Venice

Posted on July 9, 2023 by admin

After a mostly dry June here in northern Illinois, early July saw some rain, but not quite enough to end the dry spell. Out beyond the grass and gardens of the suburbs, it’s a “stressful time for corn and soybeans.”

June 25, mid-day, at a cornfield in southern Wisconsin, which is suffering a drought as well. Moderate drought for the county that includes this field, at least as of the end of June.

The field looked healthy to my untrained eye, but for all I know that’s what a stressed crop looks like a few weeks into a drought. I might be up that way again next weekend or the next, and I’ll stop by for a look at the same field if so.

I had the opportunity to spend most of a weekend in Los Angeles in early June, so naturally I did. To visit some of the places that I considered but didn’t have time for in pre-pandemic 2020, because that’s how I think, though I didn’t make it to La Brea Tar Pits this time or earlier. Like the Cloisters on the other coast, it’s a place that still eludes me.

On the other hand, I made a point of going to the Los Angeles neighborhood of Venice this time.

Though named for the place in Italy, Venice has a distinctly American history, invented as it was ex nihilo by a real estate developer looking to reference the Old World in the newest part of the New World, namely California. Not just any developer, but one Abbot Kinney, whose career was circuitous and strange, the way business men could be in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Not only that, the arc of history in Venice is very much American: an initial flowering, subsequent decline, much demolition and disfigurement in the name of modernization, years of scraping along the bottom, an effort to save its meager remnants, gentrification and insane property values – all within the span of about a century, specifically within the 20th, though spilling into the 21st. Which is an affluent time for Venice of America.

“When it opened on July 4, 1905, Venice of America boasted seven distinct canals arranged in an irregular grid pattern, as seen… in Kinney’s master plan for the community,” KCET says. “Totaling nearly two miles and dredged out of former saltwater marshlands, the canals encircled four islands, including the tiny triangular United States Island. The widest of them, appropriately named Grand Canal, terminated at a large saltwater lagoon. Three of the smaller canals referred to celestial bodies: Aldebaran, Venus, and Altair.

“Soon, a second set of canals appeared just south of Kinney’s. Linking up with the existing network through the Grand Canal, these Short Line canals (named after the interurban Venice Short Line) were apparently built to capitalize on the success of Kinney’s development. Their origins are uncertain, but work started soon after Venice of America’s 1905 grand opening, and by 1910 real estate promoters Strong & Dickinson and Robert Marsh were selling lots in what they named the Venice Canal Subdivision. Built almost as an afterthought, these six watercourses are the only Venice canals that survive today.”

The rest, the originals in their irregular grid and with their celestial names, were long ago filled in and paved over – that would be the demolition and disfigurement.

I arrived in the neighborhood fairly early in the morning, early enough – I realized later – to park on Venice Blvd. within walking distance of both the canals and the beach, which is more difficult later in the day. Venice Blvd., near the ocean at least, also happens to be the locus of a handful of residents living in parked RVs and, for those who can’t swing that, tents in the boulevard median.

The canals form a neighborhood unlike any I’ve seen and, I have to say, flat-out gorgeous in our time.

Public sidewalks run between front yards and the canals, with occasional footbridges crossing the canals. This arrangement, I’ve read, is the result of renovation that occurred in the early 1990s. The only vehicular street running through the neighborhood is Dell Ave., which connects with alleys behind the houses with the wide expanse of LA streets. The way residents drive in and out of the area, that is.

The yards are lush, at least they were in June. Temps weren’t that warm the day I visited, and the skies fully overcast and sometimes drizzly, since southern California seems to be in some kind of weird weather bubble these days. Made for a good walking environment, though.

Hard to believe the area spent much of the 20th century as a slum; a quick look at Zillow’s estimates puts no property along the canals at much less than $2 million, and many a good deal more, with a scattering of new houses under way as well. Such is real estate across the decades.

Barcelona Scraps

Posted on June 29, 2023 by admin

One of these days, we might have a string of holidays and quasi-holidays from Juneteenth to July 4, the warm equivalent of Christmas to New Year’s Day. Anyway, back on July 9 or so.

Not as much smoke today, though it is still an air pollution action day, according to the NWS. Curious term. You’d think it would be an inaction day, at least as far as outdoors activity is concerned.

Barcelona city trucks. Specifically, neteja (cleaning).

The Temple d’August, which is tucked away on a narrow street in the Gothic Quarter.

The only Roman ruins we saw on the trip. Toyed with the idea of going to Tarragona to visit its extensive ruins, but that didn’t happen.

“The uniform columns of the Temple of Augustus inside are 9 metres tall and comprise an imposing relic of one of the temples from Barcelona’s Forum, which stood on a corner site at the rear,” Visit Barcelona says. “The temple was built in the 1st century BC and, as its name suggests, it was dedicated to the worship of Emperor Augustus…. The temple was reconstructed by the architect Puig i Cadafalch in the early 20th century.”

La Rambla, near one end. The end near the ocean.

Columbus still looks out to sea at that point, as he has done since 1888. Monument a Colom, the maps call it, and efforts to take it down have been unsuccessful so far.

There was also a lot of construction in the area, with blocked off sections. I can’t see a sign like that in Spain and not be reminded of no pasarán!

The context is just a little different in this case, however. “Do not pass,” the dictionaries tell me, as opposed the more emphatic will not pass!

I expected to see fast food in Barcelona, but Five Guys was nevertheless a surprise, across the street from Sagrada Familia. Five Guys’ web site tells me that there are currently seven locations in the city, and 28 in Spain all together, with 13 of those in greater Madrid.

Model of Jesus’ head, on display in the small museum in the basement of Sagrada Família.

Cava sangria.

“This variation of sangria called Sangria de Cava in Spanish is made with the sparkling wine Cava, which can be white or rosé,” says Allrecipes. “The name Cava is a protected designation of origin in the European Union, which means that only sparkling wine produced in certain areas of Spain may be sold under that name. To make Cava Sangria, you can use another sparkling white wine instead. The rest of the ingredients is pretty similar to sangria. Cava Sangria often includes orange liqueur.”

Stickers on a wall in Barcelona. A common thing to see. No Buc-ee’s sticker. Not yet.

I took a picture of someone taking a picture of seemingly uninterested musicians, in Parc de la Ciutadella.

Sometimes you’d see the independence flag. Not that often, however. The latest effort at independence fizzled, after all.

Near Palau Güell, you can find the Gaudi Supermercat, Art Gaudi Souvenirs, and the Hotel Gaudi.

Not everything in the area had Gaudi’s name slapped on it. If we’d been hungry, we might have bought kebabs from this fellow.

Elsewhere, more Barcelona flowers.

Finally, manhole covers. Like Dublin, Barcelona had some good manhole covers.

Which is tapa de clavegueram in Catalan, at least according to automated online translation. Now you know.

Basilica of Montserrat

Posted on June 26, 2023 by admin

On our way to the Basilica of Montserrat last month, I was pretty sure I’d found evidence of a Spanish post office nearby.

The post office wasn’t on the same level as this bronze lion, but up the stairs next to the lion, then to the right. I got lucky, arriving 15 or so minutes before closing. I knew the word for postage stamp (segell) and some numbers, and encountered one of the few retail clerks on our trip who knew little English, but we soon worked things out, helped along (I think) by her good mood at being so near to quitting time, or at least office-closing time, and my good mood at being at the site of a centuries-old abbey in the mountains of Catalonia.

Also, I’d already addressed the cards, so it was easy for her to see where they were going. Soon the cards were winging their way to Texas, Illinois, New York and Tennessee. I wonder whether you can still send a telegram. My guess would be no.

The basilica’s front entrance.

Visitor tip: if you didn’t make a reservation ahead of time, you need to go back downhill to the tourist information office, where you can pick your package and times. Our Monday strategy – that is, not visiting Montserrat on the weekend, but Monday – worked in our favor, I believe, since we didn’t have to wait long to get into the basilica proper, or the sanctuary where the Virgin of Montserrat, or Our Lady of Montserrat, resides.

The entrance leads to a resplendent courtyard. Resplendent pretty much describes to the entirety of the basilica, which is mostly a 19th-century reconstruction of the earlier structure burned by some of Napoleon’s soldiers.

Interiors.

Access to Our Lady of Montserrat is via a staircase that leads to a hallway that curves behind, and above, the altar. A small window shows the statue in its sanctuary and, as they come and go, visitors to the statue.

We took our turn visiting the statue. It is behind glass now, but otherwise we saw what countless others have for centuries.

From 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica: “Nuestra Señora de Montserrat, Patrona de Cataluña (Our Lady of Montserrat, Patron Saint of Catalonia), is one of the most celebrated images in Spain, and her church is visited annually by more than 60,000 pilgrims. The image is small, black, and carved of wood, but possesses magnificent robes and jewels.

“In September 1881 it was solemnly crowned by Leo XIII., who sent a crown from Rome for that purpose. As the celebrity and sanctity of Montserrat increased, so did the number of devotees. Ignatius Loyola (1491–1556) laid his sword upon the altar of the Virgin, and, placing himself under her protection, started from Montserrat to begin his new life.”

Montserrat: Camí dels Degotalls

Posted on June 25, 2023 by admin

Serrated mountain. Yes, we could see that. And by that, I mean understand why Montserrat is called that. Actually seeing the serrated peaks rising over the Santa Maria de Montserrat, a Benedictine abbey some 30 miles northwest of Barcelona, was a little difficult on late morning of May 22.

Seeing the countryside below was no mean feat either.

Still, the abbey complex was visible enough. Besides, the clouds burned off as the day went on.

During our look around, we made an acquaintance with these figures.

We found a path, more-or-less level, that wound away from the complex. Along with the clouds were cool temps, a little below 20 C., making for a pleasant extended walk. With views.

Even better, almost no one else was on the path, unlike the fairly crowded abbey complex. After barely any time at all, the path takes you to a memorial to two famed Catalans. I won’t pretend I didn’t had to look them up: Josep Rodoreda and Jacinto Verdaguer. Each had a distinguished career as a composer and a poet, respectively.

They collaborated on a piece called “Virolai de la Virgen de Montserrat” (1880); music by Rodoreda, lyrics by Verdaguer.

Soon, depictions of the Madonna and Child were to be found on the mountain side of the path, at regular intervals.

Tile embedded in stone. Quite a variety. A small sample:

The path, and the Madonnas, keep going for quite a ways.

Eventually, the Virgins petered out. At some point, the path had left the grounds of the abbey, which are quite extensive, and entered Montserrat Nature Park. Or maybe we didn’t get that far, but anyway we turned around about a half-hour in, so that made a full hour.

I didn’t know, until after we’d returned from Spain, that we’d taken a walk on a part of the Camí dels Degotalls. From what I can piece together, it is the starting link in one of the feeder trails into the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route. How about that. We had no idea that we’d hit the pilgrim trail, though an hour on the trail might better be called a micropilgrimage.

I enjoyed one particular paragraph from a machine translation I got (Catalan to English) for this page.

The itinerary is available to everyone. The Paseo de los Degotalls is very close to the walls that collapse from the plans of the trinity, located 200 meters above the path. Below, with the Pyrenees in the background, the plain boils with vitality.

Recinte Modernista Sant Pau

Posted on June 22, 2023 by admin

And this is?

You guessed it, a former hospital. More specifically, the entrance building to Recinte Modernista Sant Pau in Barcelona (as its web site seems to style it in Catalan). Formerly, Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau. I defer to the succinct article about the place in Atlas Obscura.

“In the late 19th century, Barcelona was expanding beyond its old city walls, and beyond the Hospital de la Santa Creuwhich had served the city since the early 1400s. In 1896 a wealthy Catalan banker named Pau Gil i Serra died, leaving behind a will that requested his estate be used for a new hospital that would utilize the newest available medical technology.

“Catalan architect Lluís Domènech i Montaner designed the site, which would represent the merging of six of Barcelona’s hospitals… Sixteen of the structures were built in the Modernist style and, though guidebooks and tourists often overlook the site, make up the largest Art Nouveau site in the world.”

“The Hospital de Sant Pau was fully functioning until 2009, when a new building, erected in the northern half of the complex, took over the duties. Several of the historic buildings were refurbished over the next several years. The site, designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997, reopened to the public in 2014.”

A few details.

Not to neglect the detail underfoot.

Murals and mosaics.

In its time as a healthcare campus, each building had a specialty, or set of specialties. The buildings opened onto gardened plazas; windows provided natural light to the building interiors. Many more modern hospitals are still playing catchup in those regards. Restoration work began in 2009 and is ongoing.

Some of the interiors are exhibits, such as a recreation of an early 20th-century hospital room, when the facility was new.

Some wards are unrestored, and there’s scaffolding on some of their outsides.

Other buildings house various international NGOs associated with health, such as the Barcelona office of Eurorids, Rare Diseases Europe.

The front building is event space.

Gobsmacked, I was. The place made me smack my gob. Amazingly unlike any notion I have of a hospital. Guess I have to revise my notions of what hospitals can look like.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: History