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.

Fort Necessity National Battlefield

Posted on April 2, 2023 by admin

I walked about a quarter-mile from a parking lot to get to the reconstructed log palisade on the site of one hastily built by men under the command of Lt. Col. George Washington, age 22. Fort Necessity, he called it. These days, the site is called Fort Necessity National Battlefield.

It is the only battlefield associated with the French and Indian War preserved by the National Park Service.

By the time I got there, I’d worked myself into a counterfactual frame of mind. Just what didn’t happen here — that easily could have – that proved so important for the future course of events in North America? Affected the fate of the unborn United States in unknowable but profound ways?

Those are the kind of Big Thoughts you get alone, under a pleasant late afternoon sun, in a meadow amid the rolling hills of rural southwest Pennsylvania, with nothing but a paved footpath and the palisade ahead. I do, anyway.

Consider: Washington and his men had surprise-attacked a French force at nearby Jomonville Glen a few weeks before the battle at Fort Necessity, defeating them and resulting in the death the French commander, Joseph Coulon de Jumonville. Washington was well aware that the French weren’t going to let that incident go unanswered, so he ordered the completion of Fort Necessity to prepare for the counterattack.

Louis Coulon de Villiers, who was Joseph’s brother, led the French response and besieged Fort Necessity from an advantageous position and with a larger force. Many British — mostly members of the Virginia Militia — were cut down, dying in the mud from recent rain. It seems likely that the French could have killed most, if not all of Washington’s command, but Coulon asked for parley and ultimately gave Washington generous surrender terms. Essentially, get out of here, and promise not to come back for a while.

Would a man of a different temperament more aggressively ground the British to defeat, perhaps to the point of seeing its commander dead with his men? Washington, that is. Dead at 22. You can see how this line of thinking puts some counterfactual ideas in your head.

What motivated Louis Coulon to do what he did? Motive’s a hard thing to pin down even in someone alive today, much less a French military commander of the 18th century. From what I’ve read, he was under orders not to massacre the British, and his men were tired and low on ammunition even though the defenders of Fort Necessity were in much worse shape. Those seem like fairly compelling reasons. Still, a more aggressive or ruthless commander could have continued the fight, not really held back in the wilderness by mere orders. This was the force that had killed his brother, after all.

On the other hand, young Washington had a number of near-death experiences as he was surveying in the Ohio Valley before the war. What’s one more?

So many questions. Big history pivoting on small fulcrums. I got closer.

Inside the palisade.

The site isn’t just that. Worn earthworks linger nearby.

Maybe Coulon was intensely proud to be under French arms, which were magnificently powerful in those days, even at such a far-flung place, and wasn’t about to dishonor his command with a massacre. Or maybe he didn’t like his brother that much, and was inclined to be philosophical about his fate. C’est la guerre, dear brother.

Down the road from Fort Necessity, U.S. 40 that is, is the grave of Major Gen. Edward Braddock.

I won’t go into details about why he’s there, except that it’s only indirectly related to the battle of Fort Necessity. He’d been sent with a much larger British force to confront the French the year after that battle. Things didn’t go well for him, and he ended up buried under the military road he had had built as part of his campaign to take the Ohio Valley from the French.

The wooden beams mark the course of the road.

The monument was erected in the early 20th century. He’s probably under it, but we can’t quite be certain.

This plaque adds an extra layer of poignancy.

Nineteen-thirteen. It’s probably just as well that the officers of the Coldstream Guards didn’t know what was coming.

Fallingwater

Posted on March 29, 2023 by admin

On the grounds of Fallingwater, there is a path with signs that lead you to The View. That’s what the signs call it. When you get there, The View is there for you.

Search for “Fallingwater” in Google Images, and the vast majority of the images look something like the above. For good reason: it’s arresting. I will give Frank Lloyd Wright his due on that. The placement of the house was a stroke of genius from The Genius.

Originally the idea had been to build a house with a view of the falls, but he made it part of the view. Had the original idea prevailed, people might still visit if the house still existed — it would be a FLW design, after all — but it wouldn’t be nearly as distinctive as it is.

Before we visited Fallingwater, I wondered what other views there were of the famed FLW creation in rural Pennsylvania. The answer is, any number you care to see.

We arrived on the morning of March 20, the vernal equinox, though as far as I know that fact didn’t affect our experience in any way. The low season of March, on the other hand, definitely added to the experience. Guided tours, the only way for ordinary folk to visit Fallingwater, had begun for 2023 only nine days earlier.

We might not have seen the place clothed with the greens of summer or the multicolors of fall, but we did enjoy how few people were around. For a few minutes at The View, for instance, I had the place to myself, because you don’t actually visit it as part of the tour. That comes afterward, when you amble down there yourself.

If you’re so inclined, of course, there’s really more than one view even at The View. For instance, straight up. You’d never know you’re on the grounds of a World Heritage Site at that angle.

We took turns touring the house, while the other waited with the dog. Originally I’d scheduled a 10:30 tour and one at 2:30, with the idea that we’d have lunch in between. But not all of the tours in between were fully booked – as I’d think they are in the summer and fall – so after I went on the 10:30 tour, Yuriko was able to move up to the one starting at 11:30 without any issue.

Signs greet you in front of the visitors center.

It’s a short walk from the visitor center to the house, but enough to get a sense of the surrounding Laurel Highlands.

Amazingly, the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, which has owned the property since 1963, allows photography inside Fallingwater. Actually, only in the first-floor living room, but still. That’s one of the few FLW properties I’ve visited that does so.

Once upon a time, owning a successful urban department store (in Pittsburgh, in this case) meant that you could hire a starchitect to design your summer house in the woods, even as the Depression lingered. After quarrels with said starchitect and vast cost overruns, naturally, Fallingwater was completed in the late 1930s, including the main house, but also adjacent guest quarters.

A portrait of the original owner, Edgar Jonas Kaufmann (1885-1955), looks out into the living room, but as a young man – before Fallingwater ever came to be.

Because Kaufmann’s son, Edgar Jonas Kaufmann Jr. (1915-89), oversaw the transition from family summer home to house museum in the early ’60s, the family’s furnishings and artwork are largely still there, another novelty for a FLW house.

I was happy to see an orrery. It’s actually a Trippensee Planetarium, a brand that vanished with the 20th century.

From the main balcony, you get a view of The View. That is, you can see the spot downstream on Bear Run creek where people stand to see The View.

Note the people gathered down at The View, looking up. They’re hard to see in the image, but they are there.

At that moment, for them anyway, I was part of The View.

The Little Bank and the Big Basket of Newark, Ohio

Posted on March 28, 2023 by admin

If you happen to find yourself in Newark, Ohio, I recommend a look at the Licking County courthouse, a Second Empire structure from the grand age of U.S. courthouses, which was between the wars (that is, the Civil War and WWI).

Even though our visit coincided with exterior construction that mars its appearance temporarily, and a wicked cold wind, I knew I had to park the car and get out for a look.

Impressive. The visit to Newark was a digression. The most direct route from Columbus, Ohio to Uniontown, Pa. doesn’t pass through Newark, which is maybe 20 miles north of I-70 and U.S. 40 both. But we had a sight in mind there, so we made the detour, arriving in that large town (pop. 50,000) on the morning of March 19. As you’d think, the main road into town leads directly to the courthouse square.

Some county seats have intriguing buildings facing their courthouses, some don’t. Licking County, Ohio does.

A closer look at that last one.

Wow, an unexpected trove of details.

We’d stumbled upon the Home Building Association Co. bank building (with nickname The Old Home right above the door), a work by Chicago School patriarch Louis Sullivan, dating from 1914. The exterior has been nicely restored, but I could see peering through the windows that work is still underway inside. I understand that the building now belongs to the Licking County Foundation, and will eventually house the county’s convention and visitors bureau.

Notes Wiki: “The ornamentation included a winged lion quite similar to the ones to be found in Cedar Rapids, Grinnell and Sidney. Little mention is made in the literature about Sullivan as to why these creatures populate his banks. Also unique is the presence of Sullivan’s name in the tile mosaic over the front door.”

Yep, there it is. I didn’t notice when I was standing out in the cold.

Underfoot detail at the courthouse square speaks of a time of stronger faith in progress. Or at least when slogans had that faith.

Even so, Newark seems to abide, economically speaking. The U.S. industrial economy contracted, but it didn’t disappear. A sizably lighting products maker and a glass manufacturer run operations here, as do a welter of smaller factories across the county. Regional offices of larger banking and insurance companies are here, and OSU has a large regional campus in Newark as well.

About a block away from the square is the former sheriff’s residence and county jail, in a suitably sturdy Richardson Romanesque edifice. One Joseph W. Yost designed it.

A plaque outside the building told a story of mob violence – against an officer of the law, no less – from the early 20th century. The plaque’s a good deal newer than that, however. RIP, Deputy Marshal Etherington.

The backs of nearby buildings – mostly facing the square – feature history-themed murals in places that would otherwise be drab parking lots. Nice civic touch, Newark.

As interesting as downtown Newark turned out to be, that wasn’t actually the reason we came to town. This building was.

On the outskirts of Newark stands the seven-story former headquarters of the Longaberger Co., which used to make baskets whose look inspired the look of the building, and not in any abstract sense. They were sold via a multi-level marketing scheme.

The building opened in 1997 and is the sort of place that has articles written about it. For obvious reasons. In our time, the grounds and its large parking lot are freely open to passersby.

Company sales peaked at $1 billion in 2000, but it was downhill from there. Maybe its baskets, while handsome enough, were the kinds of possessions that eventually ended up in garages, and one was enough for most households.

The company folded in the late 2010s and the building emptied out, remaining vacant to this day. Another company owns the rights to the baskets and other products, but the operation isn’t here. For a time, redevelopment plans called for a boutique hotel, but that didn’t happen, and at last report the building was the subject of an ownership dispute.

Warren G. Harding, Favorite Son of Marion

Posted on March 27, 2023 by admin

Marion, Ohio, a burg about 36,000 residents 50 miles north of Columbus, happens to be along the route we took south from Michigan on the second day of our trip, March 18. It also happens to be the hometown of Warren G. Harding, which pretty much guaranteed a stop there by us.

After his sudden and unexpected death in office almost 100 years ago, the nation’s grief for its popular president allowed for the construction of an impressive memorial, finished in 1927 and, as Wiki points out correctly, the last of the big presidential memorials (at least so far). Donations paid for it, including pennies from schoolchildren, back when a penny could actually buy something small rather than nothing at all.

We arrived at the memorial in the afternoon. It was cold and very windy. The structure is whiter than I’d think it would be considering its 90-plus years in the elements, but I suppose the good people of Marion keep it maintained. Warren G.’s the only president they’re ever like to produce, after all.

Its marble Doric columns rise to support an entablature, but not a roof. Harding reportedly wanted to be buried under an open sky, and this was architect Henry Hornbostel and his partners’ way to honor that request.

Warren and Florence Harding are indeed buried within, and under the open sky.

A few miles away is the Harding house, built in the 1890s at the time of the Hardings’ marriage, when he was a newspaper editor and publisher and she a wealthy divorcee. The Marion Star, his paper, is still around, though it’s a Gannett asset these days.

We arrived too late to tour the house, but you can wander around the grounds. Yuriko and the dog had enough sense to stay in the car while I did this, in a wind that felt like it was going to freeze my face off.

Still, I got the satisfaction of standing on the very porch where Harding ran his front porch campaign for president beginning in the summer of 1920, briefly reviving the late 19th-century practice. He would be the last president to do so (as yet, unless you count the zoom campaigning of Joe Biden exactly a century later).

Marion will probably never have a summer, or any other season, like it again. The world came to Marion in 1920, including delegations from groups nationwide to offer their greetings to candidate Harding, and presumably many other people who showed up to hear the speeches he gave on the porch or otherwise join the festivities.

Speaking from the porch didn’t mean a lack of attention elsewhere in the country. The Harding campaign had a small house built on the grounds, which still stands, for the use of the press covering him.

Behind the main house is the Warren G. Harding Presidential Library & Museum which, as any presidential museum does, tries to put a good face on its president and administration. I will give the place credit for mentioning the various scandals the period is known for, such as Teapot Dome.

It’s also forward in acknowledging that his mistress Nan Britton had a daughter with Harding, Elizabeth Ann Blaesing, who died only in 2005. As well it should, since DNA evidence in the 21st century has fingered then-Sen. Harding as the baby daddy.

As for his other known mistress, the married Carrie Fulton Phillips, the museum notes, “when she appeared at Harding’s front porch campaign, Republican party members paid for the Phillipses to take a lengthy trip abroad.”

Still, a triumphant Harding is in evidence. At least while in campaign mode. Not bad for a compromise candidate picked by the 1920 Republican National Convention.

Events could have gone another way. Leonard Wood could have been the nominee in 1920 and gone on to the presidency. Or Frank Lowden might have been tapped. Or, had TR lived a little longer (d. 1919), he might have captured the prize and returned to office (at my age, TR had been dead more than a year).

Harding might merely be an obscure senator buried in a more modest plot in Marion, rather than an increasingly obscure president in a grand tomb the likes of which is completely out of style. But that isn’t how it happened.

Historians roundly deride Harding, and I believe there’s some basis for it, but my own estimation of the man himself inched up a notch or two when I read, per the museum, that Harding and his wife were avid travelers well before they occupied the White House. That was part of the impetus for the famed long trip that he took as president in 1923, and which was interrupted by his death.

I didn’t know that Harding called it “The Voyage of Understanding.” Quite a route.

Some of the museum’s artifacts are odder than others, including this one from the Voyage.

That’s a papier-mache potato, about a yard long, that the citizens of Idaho Falls, Idaho gave to President Harding when he passed through in 1923.

Tri-State Appalachian Equinox Road Trip

Posted on March 26, 2023 by admin

Old Chinese proverb, I’ve heard: even a journey of 1,000 leagues begins by backing out of the driveway. That we did on Friday, March 17. We pulled back into the driveway on Saturday, March 25. In between we traveled 2,219 miles, using the ragged marvel that is the system of roads in the United States.

My fanciful name for the trip refers to three states that were the focus: Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. We actually passed through seven states, also including Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and very briefly, Maryland.

We saw a lot of places, but two in particular motivated the trip as a whole. One was Fallingwater, the Frank Lloyd Wright sculpture – I mean, house – perched over an irregular drop on Bear Run, a creek in rural Pennsylvania. Visiting Fallingwater had long been an ambition of Yuriko’s, maybe since before she lived in this country, since FLW is known far and wide; but I needed no persuasion to go myself.

The other was New River Gorge National Park and Preserve in eastern-ish West Virginia. This was my suggestion, since I keep up on national parks. But I’ve wanted to go there a good while, long before Congress promoted it to national park, which only happened in 2020. Besides, it was high time I spent a little more than a few minutes in West Virginia which, for whatever else it has, is known for its surpassing scenery. This reputation, I can confirm, is deserved.

Weather-wise, spring travel is a crap shoot. The day we left a cold, unpleasant wind blew in Illinois, Indiana and Michigan, and it followed us under the same gray skies and at temps barely above freezing the next day, into central Ohio.

By last Monday, in southwest Pennsylvania, temps had moderated with the appearance of the sun, and each day was more pleasant than the last as we headed south into West Virginia, where the grass had greened and some bushes had too, though most trees were at the barely budding stage. Thursday, March 23 proved best of all, with sunny skies and temps in the 70s, allowing us to enjoy the best meal of our trip — ricebowl meals — at a picnic table in Fayetteville, W.Va.

A cold rain came calling on Friday as we headed from West Virginia back to Ohio. On Saturday, again in central Ohio, it wasn’t bitterly cold, but the wind was so strong at times that it jostled my car as I drove and my body as I walked. Rain squalls came and went, with a spell of sleet I actually enjoyed, sitting in our parked car listening, knowing that the ice was too small to do any damage. Returning home yesterday, Illinois was pretty much as we’d left it, chilly and not-quite-spring.

The upshot of it all is to pack for the weather variety you’re going to encounter, and I was more than glad – as I returned to the car in a stiff wind, crossing a green field in small-town Ohio, feeling wind chill that must have been around zero (and I mean Fahrenheit) – that I’d brought the coat I use most of the winter.

We brought the dog. We don’t want to leave her at a kennel any more, and no one was at home to mind her. Having your dog along is something like traveling with a small child you can’t take into restaurants or a lot of other places, but we don’t regret a bit of it. Long drives in the car don’t faze her at all, since after the first few minutes, that’s like lying around the house and, as the comedian said, a dog’s job is lying around the house.

She had her energetic moments too, more than you’d think for an ancient dog, such as walking the trail to Diamond Point overlooking the New River Gorge, with its smooth straightaways through forests giving way to patches of mud, large rocks or tightly packed tree roots underfoot, sometimes all of those in a single stretch. Our reward for the sometime-slog was a vista of rare beauty. Her reward? I don’t think it was anything so visual. Maybe following the pack is its own reward for her.

Companion dogs also mean you acquaint yourself with the look and feel of the front office and main entrance of limited-service hotels during the empty early a.m. hours, well lit as a Broadway stage but without any players. Except maybe for the night clerk, just outside the door, who is peering into his phone, cigarette in other hand. Probably our dog, as any dog, could be trained to pee on a disposable rug in the room during the small hours, but somehow we’ve never wanted to do that. There’s something appealing somehow about the ritual of dressing as simply as possible a few minutes after waking at 2:30 or 3, or 25 or 6 to 4, hitching a leash to the dog’s collar and repairing to the first patch of green, or pebbles ringed by a curb, outside the hotel door

Take me home, country roads. I’ll say this for West Virginia, it’s got some crazy-ass serpentine roads through its ancient and forested mountains. The Laurel Highlands in southwest Pennsylvania was no piker in that regard, either. You need to keep an intense focus on the road as it winds this way and that, rises and falls, and passes ever so close to boulder walls, massive trees and wicked ditches. If you don’t mind thinking about your mortality every now and then, that’s some good driving.

Mostly good driving. There are moments when a red sedan, or a black pickup truck, decides that tailgating you at roughly the speed limit as you wind around and navigate switchbacks, is a good idea, and blasts around you at the first marginal opportunity, double solid stripes be damned.

Yet I only got the smallest sampling of the twisty roads. No roads without pavement this trip, though plenty enough didn’t bother with details such as guardrails. Another, entirely unpaved and mostly unregulated network of roads and tracks, many perhaps pre-New Deal, must exist in West Virginia. Out away from the nearest town, while we were parked a national park site on a small paved road, three ATVs buzzed past, each with two people. They were headed toward town after emerging from the woods, their vehicles streaked with mud. I was just close enough to see in their faces they’d had a fine time out in the unpaved network.

Also, if you really wanted to get home to West Virginia, wouldn’t you take the Interstate?

We made stops in Ohio going and coming.

On Saturday, March 18 we made our way south from Ann Arbor, where we’d spent the first night, to Columbus, Ohio, to spent the second. On the way is the Basilica and National Shrine of Our Lady of Consolation, a Byzantine edifice rising in a small town, which we visited, but also sites associated with Warren G. Harding: his memorial and burial site, and also his home, in the large town of Marion, Ohio.

Our return home, beginning on Friday, March 24, took us back through Ohio, to Columbus for the last night of the trip. Saturday morning, after takeout breakfast at Tim Horton’s – for that part of Ohio is in the Tim Horton’s orb, we were glad to learn – we visited downtown Columbus and the Ohio Statehouse in a howling cool wind. Ate lunch, Korean-style chicken and salad, sitting in the car in a clearly gentrified neighborhood, the bricked-streeted German Village. We spent the rest of Saturday driving back, via Indianapolis.

On the morning of Sunday, March 19, we left Columbus and made our way east through the remarkable town of Newark, Ohio, then Wheeling and Moundsville, West Virginia and from there to Uniontown, Pennsylvania, a mid-sized far outer suburb of Pittsburgh. Or at least it will be in a few years.

On Monday, we paid our visit to Fallingwater, taking turns on tours, after which we had lunch in a low-season tourist town and took an impediment-rich hike in Ohiopyle State Park, along the rocky shore of the Youghiogheny River, at that point boasting a highly picturesque waterfall. That was enough for one day for Yuriko, who napped in the car (along with the dog) as I walked the much shorter and smoother path to Fort Necessity National Battlefield late that afternoon.

On Tuesday, we made our way back west a short distance, to visit the Palace of Gold in rural West Virginia, in the peculiar north panhandle of the state (which I’ve long thought of as a conning tower). We returned that day to Uniontown by way of Moundsville, W. Va., home of an ancient mound of remarkable height, a former penitentiary of remarkable solidity, and a bridge across the Ohio River of remarkable elegance. Those things, and some tasty if not remarkable barbecue.

The next day, we left for West Virginia, but not by the most direct route, because I wanted to see the Flight 93 National Memorial in deep rural Pennsylvania. Progressively smaller roads lead there, including – as we traveled it, which I figured would be the quickest route – a short stretch of I-68 through the oddity that is the Maryland panhandle. Late that day, Wednesday, we arrived in Beckley, W. Va.

We spent almost all of Thursday at the national park, at one sight or another, driving and hiking and pondering historic and sometimes crumbled structures. But that wasn’t quite enough. On Friday morning, before we left for Ohio, we went back to the park. Around noon, we headed west, passing through Charleston long enough to visit the West Virginia State Capitol and eat Chinese takeout, though not at the same time. A little north of Charleston, we crossed back into Ohio after gassing up near the small town of Ripley, West Virginia. Believe it or not.

One other thing: this was a vacation from the news, which following is part of my job. Except for the briefest snippets on the radio, when sometimes I didn’t change stations out of habit for some seconds, I ignored the news of the world, or even smaller parts of it. I think that’s a good thing to do.

But of course, a few things got through. I heard the opening bars of The Dick Van Dyke Show theme on a news program one day, and I jumped to the conclusion that he had died. That isn’t a big jump, since he’s 97. But no, merely a one-car accident.

Image being that well regarded, that your minor auto accident as a nonagenarian is national news. Anyway, glad not to say, RIP, Dick Van Dyke.

Hot Springs NP, 2007

Posted on March 12, 2023 by admin

Even though it was a digital camera, and a fairly good one when I acquired it ca. 2001, my Nikon Coolpix 4300 had its limits. Mainly, memory. At least compared to the vast memories of current devices.

So that might account for the fact that I only have one image at Hot Springs National Park in March 2007. Or maybe I wasn’t much in the mood for using a camera there. It’s good to put the camera down for a while sometimes, no matter how photogenic the place you find yourself.

This is it, the Hernando de Soto statue at Fordyce Bathhouse. The image itself is only passable.

The sculpture is in the former men’s bath hall and was a centerpiece of a fountain.

The Fordyce Bathhouse is a building of exceptional beauty in its public spaces and state-of-the-art health and fitness equipment of the roaring ’20s in its bath spaces.

“The Fordyce is now the park’s visitor center, and offers tours of its elaborate facilities – self-guided, but at a good price, free,” I wrote at the time. “The building style, Spanish Renaissance Revival, is supposed to pay tribute to Hernando de Soto, who supposedly came this way. No fancy bath houses were necessary for passing Spaniards, Indians or other early visitors, however, who apparently soaked in pools fed by the springs wherever they found them.”

That That Nation Myglue is All Together Sitting

Posted on March 9, 2023 by admin

Sometimes I use an automated transcription service. I feed it an audio recording – say, of an interview – and it spits out a transcript. The service touts the power of its AI. All the rage these days.

I found a reading of the Gettysburg Address by Orson Welles on YouTube. Obviously, it’s an analog recording with some imperfections. I recorded it as I would a phone conversation – producing a tape that isn’t high fidelity, but easily understandable for an English speaker. Then I let the transcription service have it.

Started out OK, then…

Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated.
We met on a great faculty have
come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who hear, feed their lives, that that nation myglue
is all together sitting, we should do this.
In a larger sense,
we cannot dedicate,
we cannot consecrate
we cannot tell
the brave men living and
consecrated far above our power to add or detract.
The world will little note nor long remember what we say here.
I can never forget
it is for us, the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which failed here.
far so nobly advanced.
It is shrouded for us to be here dedicated to the great past remaining before us.
Honored
to take increased devotion for that was
the last measure of devotion.
We hired to resolve
these debts from outside in
this nation
shall have a new freedom
government
by the people,
for the people

Still a few bugs in the system, looks like.

To be fair, when I did this test again, but with the service transcribing the speech as it “listened” to the video play, the results were much better. Not flawless, but not bad.

1 Dollar, Singapore

Posted on February 23, 2023 by admin

Every time I woke last night, which was a few times, I could hear drizzle, but not the tip-tip-tip of frozen drops hitting hard surfaces. I must have slept through the wind gusts, which were reportedly strong in the wee hours. While out late this afternoon, I noticed a number of large tree branches that had been knocked down, as well as a tree completely uprooted and on its side, about a half mile from where we live.

The day was windy and raw, but we had no precipitation after dawn, liquid or otherwise, and the tree and bush branches were no longer tinged with ice. This NWS map from this morning shows how we in northern Illinois dodged the worst of the snowstorm.

What does it all mean? Its snows in the North in winter. Except when it doesn’t.

One more banknote for now. This one does have some Roman letters, prominently featured, and is worth more than a few U.S. mills or cents: the Singapore dollar. The languages on the note include English, Chinese, Malay and Tamil, the four most common ones spoken there.

Also, it’s one that I picked up myself in 1992 or ’94, since these notes – part of the “ship series” – were current at the time, and worth about 60 U.S. cents. These days, I understand that S$1 trades for about 75 U.S. cents, so my note has gained some value, at least in nominal terms. That is, if it can be used as currency at all, since the city-state phased out dollar notes in favor of coins more than 20 years ago.

The ship on the obverse is a junk, common in the waters around Singapore and its predecessor settlements once upon a time. In the ship series, the larger the denomination, the larger the ship, beginning at S$1 and up to the S$10,000 note featuring a general bulk carrier, Neptune Canopus (that note has also been discontinued).

The S$1 reverse features Singapore’s national flower, the Vanda Miss Joaquim, and the Sentosa Satellite Earth Station.

The flower is also known as the Papilionanthe Miss Joaquim, or the Singapore orchid, and apparently there is a Singaporean drag queen called Vanda Miss Joaquim, which I have to say is a pretty good name for a drag queen.

As for the Earth station on Sentosa, that was the city-state’s first one, operational since 1971. Sentosa is a two-square-mile island just off the southern shore of the main island of Singapore. Formerly a military facility – under the British and then the Singaporeans after independence – the island is better known these days for its recreation, development of which began about 50 years ago.

Back in ’92, I took a cable car over to Sentosa for a look around, though the Earth station wasn’t among the things I saw. Unlike the facility at Tidbinbilla near Canberra, I don’t think it was open to the public.

Sentosa wasn’t nearly developed then as it seems to be now.

Universal Studios Singapore, for instance, didn’t open until 2010, and S.E.A. Aquarium (South East Asia Aquarium) not until 2012. Even the Sentosa Merlion wasn’t there in ’92, since it was completed three years later – and taken down in 2019.

The cable car offered nice views of the island, which isn’t really captured in my snapshots.

I believe this dragon-fountain was fairly near the cable car station on Sentosa, but I haven’t been able to confirm its continued existence, though this is a more recent image.

I walked over the Fort Siloso, a former coastal artillery battery.

I also visited the Sentosa Wax Museum that day, mostly I believe to get out of the heat. Most of the wax figures had to do with the history of the city-state (I think), including figures showing two surrenders: the British to the Japanese in 1942 and the Japanese to the Allies in 1945. Not something you’re likely to see anywhere else.

There’s a Madame Tussauds on the island now, so I suspect the old wax museum was replaced by it. The current wax museum’s web site says the place has an “Images of Singapore” exhibit, but I suspect the real action is at the “Marvel Universe 4D” and the “Ultimate Film Star Experience,” and the “K-Wave” zone. Exactly something you’re likely to see somewhere else.

Obviously I haven’t been Madame Tussauds Singapore, but I did pay money, entirely too many pounds sterling, to see the one in London. The place wrote the book on tourist traps. That isn’t to say that wax museums can’t be interesting; the one included in the admission to Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen was charming indeed, even a little surreal sometimes, such as the setup in which wax Einstein was playing chess with wax Hitler.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: History