GTT 2016

Posted on July 10, 2016 by admin

On June 23, Ann and I left the Chicago area and headed south, returning earlier today. I’m calling the trip GTT 2016, as in Gone to Texas, but also Gone to Tennessee, another destination. Our route took us south to through Indiana and Kentucky and then to Nasvhille; west through West Tennessee and Arkansas and on to Dallas; and south again to Austin and San Antonio. The return was via Dallas and through Oklahoma and Missouri. All together, from backing out of my driveway to coming back to it, I put exactly 3,005 miles on my car, mostly on Interstates and US routes, but also a fair amount on the streets of Nashville, Austin and San Antonio.

None of the routes or places were new to me, except maybe Texarkana, where I’d never stopped before, and it’s been a long time since I’d traveled US 281 north of Johnson City, Texas, or on US 67 on to Dallas. But no matter how familiar the place or the route, you can always find new things.

In central Kentucky, near Elizabethtown, we visited Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park, which features a granite and marble monumental building with a not-really-Lincoln’s log cabin inside. Near Mammoth Cave NP, we walked through Diamond Caverns, an unrelated show cave.

By the time we got to Nashville, the heat was on — in the 90s at least every day, which made stomping around outside less pleasant, especially for Ann, but I did manage to take her to the Nashville Parthenon, which she didn’t remember seeing in 2008. The more important thing we did in Nashville was spend time with old friends Stephanie and Wendall, and pay a visit to Mike Johnson’s widow, Betra.

In Memphis, we saw the Peabody Hotel ducks and the National Civil Rights Museum. In Texarkana, we drove down State Line Road and stopped at the only post office in the nation in two states. In Little Rock, I visited Mt. Holly Cemetery in the morning just before the heat of the day and then the Clinton Library (in full, the William J. Clinton Presidential Center and Park) and, just before we left town, the Arkansas State Capitol.

Dallas was mostly given over to visiting my brother Jay and working. Jay joined us for our few days in Austin, including the Fourth of July, and for a few more days in San Antonio. In Austin on July 2, Ann went to RTX 2016 at the Austin Convention Center, a sizable event held by the media company called Rooster Teeth; I was her chaperon. We visited my old friend Tom Jones the next day, and on Independence Day, saw both the Baylor Street Art Wall and municipal fireworks over Lady Bird Lake. San Antonio was mostly about visiting my mother and brother Jim, and (for me) holing up in a cool place with Wifi and doing more work.

Naturally, the trip involved long stretches of driving. I want to do that while I still want to do that. Because of my obstinance in not getting Sirius or the like, terrestrial radio helps fill the yawning spaces between destinations. The trip was bookended by two news events whose coverage was limitless, even when there was no new information beyond speculation: Brexit near the beginning, and the murder of Dallas policemen toward the end. I also listened to more religious radio more than usual, mostly only minutes at a time, except for the erudite Alistair Begg, whom I will listen to until his show’s over or the signal fades.

The selection of music was mostly what you’d expect, drawn from the rigid genres created by the radio business, though there were a few oddities, such as the Mesquite Independent School District radio station (KEOM) in metro Dallas that played teacher and student shows, besides a selection of completely conventional ’70s music. On I-40 between Nashville and Memphis — the Music Highway, according to official signs along the way — I picked up an oldies station whose playlist was a little older and odder than usual. I heard it play “Waterloo” (Stonewall Jackson), “Ahab the Arab,” “and “Running Bear and Little White Dove,” the last two I haven’t heard in years.

We stayed in a nondescript chain motel in Elizabethtown; in Stephanie and Wendall’s fine guest rooms in Nashville; in another, less nondescript motel in Little Rock; with Jay in Dallas; in the Austin Motel on South Congress in Austin, an updated version of a tourist court that’s been there since 1938; and in an updated former company hotel (vintage 1914) in San Antonio, the Havana Hotel, since there were too many of us to be comfortable at my mother’s house.

During the return home, we stayed at the Munger Moss Motel in Lebanon, Mo., last night, because of course we did.

It’s the same as it was in 2009 and two years ago. Except (maybe) a couple of signs like this were added to the grounds.

Motel co-owner Ramona Lehman was selling Gasconade River Bridge postcards, sales of which help support the restoration of the bridge, a structure about 15 miles east of Munger Moss on the former US 66. I bought one. I didn’t stop to look at the bridge — this time — but it’s visible from I-44 if you know when to look, and I did.

Western Ohio &c

Posted on June 8, 2016 by admin

We arrived in downtown Dayton late on a Friday afternoon, May 27, and from the look of things, Dayton isn’t an 18-hour city just yet. Municipal planners probably aspire to that: there’s been some nice infrastructure work at Riverscape Metro Park and Five Rivers Metro Park downtown, including walkways, an elegant garden, a pavilion and other public spaces that look fairly new. As for the private sector, I also spotted a few new apartment projects downtown.

But as a tertiary market, Dayton’s downtown still seems to close up at 5 pm. That’s almost old fashioned now, as the way things were in most smaller downtowns in the last third of the 20th century. Only a handful of people were out and about in the late afternoon/early evening of a warm late spring/early summer day in downtown Dayton, some at the riverfront, others outside the Schuster Center, an event venue.

The main river along downtown is the Great Miami River, which eventually flows into the Ohio. A tributary that meets the Great Miami near downtown Dayton is the Mad River. I like that name. Later, I drove by Mad River Junior High. Now that’s a name for your school.

Less amusing to learn about was the Great Dayton Flood of 1913 (part of the Great Flood of 1913), which is memorialized along the Great Miami. The Dayton flood spurred the creation of the Miami Conservancy District, established in Ohio by the Vonderheide Conservancy Act of 1914, which authorized levees and dams and such to prevent another monster flood. It was a great age of civil engineering, after all. So far, it seems to have worked.

Of course, no matter how obvious the public good, someone’s going to be against it.

Also downtown: Fifth Third Field, where the Dayton Dragons minor league team plays. In the plaza near field are large concrete baseballs. On these Ann proved herself to be more limber than the rest of us.

At the Woodland Cemetery and Arboretum, I happened across Lookout Point, the highest elevation in Dayton. This is the view from there.
In 2010, the cemetery completed a tower and columbarium on the hill, along with landscaping all around. It’s a lovely spot.

The cemetery also put in a time capsule at Lookout Point, to be opened in 2141, the year of the cemetery’s tricentennial. Guess 2041 wasn’t far enough in the future.

One famed burial I didn’t see at Woodland: copperhead Clement Vallandigham. In reading a bit about him, I found out about his death in 1871, when he was working as a defense attorney after unsuccessful attempts to return to office.

“Vallandigham’s political career ended with his untimely death on June 17, 1871,” notes Ohio History Central. “While preparing the defense of an accused murderer, Vallandigham enacted his view of what occurred at the crime scene. Thinking that a pistol that he was using as a prop was unloaded, Vallandigham pointed it at himself and pulled the trigger. The gun discharged, and Vallandigham was mortally wounded.”

At least his client was acquitted. That’s further even than Perry Mason would go to get a not guilty verdict.

On the way home, we stopped in Wapakoneta, Ohio, a town south of Lima and hometown of moonwalker Neil Armstrong. Just off I-75 is the Armstrong Air and Space Museum. I’ve read the design is supposed to evoke a future Moon base. Maybe the sort of Moon base Chesley Bonestell would put in the background of a lunar landscape.

The museum’s probably interesting enough, with Armstrong artifacts and other items related to space exploration. The Gemini VIII capsule is there, in which Armstrong and Scott almost bought the farm. But Ann wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about the place, and we wanted to press on to Ft. Wayne for lunch, so ultimately the admission fee we didn’t spend went toward that lunch. I did buy some postcards at the museum.

The Armstrong Air and Space Museum’s web site stresses: “The museum is owned by the State of Ohio, is part of the Ohio History Connection’s statewide system of historic sites and museums, and is operated by the local Armstrong Air and Space Museum Association. Neil Armstrong was never involved in the management of the museum nor benefited from it in any way.”

Before leaving Wapakoneta, I wanted to find Armstrong’s boyhood home. It wasn’t hard; the town is small. The house is privately owned by non-Armstrongs, so the thing not to do is venture too close. No doubt occasional oafs do just that, though probably fewer as time passes and fewer oafs remember his achievements.

Another good-looking small town in western Ohio is Troy. We stopped there to obtain doughnuts at the local Tim Hortons. That part of Ohio is within the Tim Hortons realm; our part of Illinois is not. Troy has a handsome main street and a fine courthouse.

Finally, with this trip, I’m glad to report that I’ve been to Neptune. Neptune, Ohio, that is, an insubstantial burg in Mercer County along US 33. Far from the ocean, and far from the planet of that name, though no further (roughly) than anywhere else on Earth.

Curiosity made me ~~waste~~ spend a little time at the USGC Geographic Names Information System, and I discovered that there are five populated U.S. places called “Neptune,” not counting variants like Neptune Beach, Fla. Besides Ohio, they are in Iowa, Tennessee, West Virginia and Wisconsin. Someday maybe I’ll look up the other planets.

The Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park

Posted on June 7, 2016 by admin

In 2003, close to the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Wrights’ first flight at Kitty Hawk, NC, Patrick Jonsson noted in the Christian Science Monitor that “the choice of location unwittingly sparked a quarrel over the genesis of manned flight: Was this barrier island near the town of Kitty Hawk merely a stepping-off point for an idea hatched in Ohio — or part of the very inspiration of flight?

“For its part, North Carolina boldly stated its claim a few years ago with license plates that boasted ‘First in Flight.’ It was followed by Ohio’s ‘Birthplace of Aviation’ claim a few years later. And in the late 1990s, North Carolina again moved first to put the flyer on its state quarter, taking a lot of oomph out of Ohio’s ‘Pioneers of Flight’ motto.

“But in the 100th year of flight both states have put rivalry aside, realizing the skies could not have been cleaved without the benefits of both locales.

” ‘In Dayton, they proved that powered flight was practical; at Kitty Hawk, they proved that it was possible,’ says Bob Petersen, a park ranger at the Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park.”

The national historical park is scattered around greater Dayton, including a Wright Brothers-Paul Dunbar museum (pictured below) along with one of the brothers’ bicycle shops; the Huffman Prairie Flying Field; an aviation exhibit at a open air museum in Dayton; Paul Laurence Dunbar’s house; and Orville’s mansion after aviation made him wealthy. We only had time and energy for the Wright-Dunbar museum and the Wright bicycle shop, which are on Williams St. west of downtown Dayton.
The focus of the museum, at least when it comes to the Wrights, is less about them as aviators, and more about their pre-Flyer lives growing up in Dayton, including other members of their family that aren’t well known, such as sister Katharine and brother Lorin.

Paul Laurence Dunbar’s exhibits were interesting mainly because I didn’t know much about him. Seems like he had a fine ear for verse, and literary success in spite of the misery of being a black man in the 1890s. He’s also called an influence on Langston Hughes. I’m no expert, but after reading some of Dunbar’s poems, I can see the point.

This is the debt I pay
Just for one riotous day,
Years of regret and grief,
Sorrow without relief.

Pay it I will to the end
Until the grave, my friend,
Gives me a true release
Gives me the clasp of peace.

Slight was the thing I bought,
Small was the debt I thought,
Poor was the loan at best
God! but the interest!

— “The Debt,” by Paul Laurence Dunbar

The museum also features exhibits about the Wright printing business and then their bicycle shops. Lest we forget, the nation was in the grip of a bicycle craze in the 1890s, and for good reason: in a world of horse-drawn vehicles, it was a great new way to get around.

The re-created bicycle shop is next to the Wright-Dunbar museum, in the original building, which just barely escaped demolition.
It’s the only Wright bicycle shop location left in Dayton. Another one — they operated more than one over their career in bicycles — is now at Greenfield Village in Michigan, and the sites of one or two more have been demolished in the last 100-plus years.

Inside are artifacts such as bicycles and a lot of bicycle parts, photos, and more. Remarkable how familiar an early safety bicycle looks. Basic bike design hasn’t changed that much.

Things That Go Boom (Or, Nookular Combat Toe-to-Toe With the Rooskies)

Posted on June 2, 2016 by admin

As previously mentioned, models of Little Boy and Fat Man were nestled under one of the wings of the B-29 Bockscar at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force near Dayton.

I guess Little Boy was there for the sake of comparison. I’ve known about the difference for the a long time. When I was young, maybe even in junior high, I picked up a paperback copy of The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945 (1970), by John Toland, and read the chapter about Hiroshima and Nagasaki with considerable interest.

In the museum’s post-WWII galleries, I started noticing the nuclear weapons casings. Some of them were hard to miss, such as this Mark 41, with a helpful illustration behind it.

Designed to be carried by B-47s, B-52s, or B-70s, it was in the megaton range. Or about five times as powerful as Fat Man.

Most of the bomb casings were tucked away under the wings of some of the aircraft that carried them. Such as this sizable Mark 17.

A Mark 6 on the right (not sure what the other one is).

A Mark 7.

And some Mark 28s, also known as B28s.
A cul-de-sac off of the Cold War gallery, a silo-like structure 140 feet high, houses the museum’s missile collection. It’s a dandy collection, too, with Jupiter, Minuteman, Thor, Atlas, Titan and Peacekeeper missiles.
Also included are more warhead casings, such as the W53, a version of B53 that the Titan II ICBM could carry. At nine megatons, it was a monster among monsters, now gone.
Remember MIRV? All the rage in arms control discussions in the 1970s and ’80s.
Ten warheads, count ’em, designed to be loaded on Peacekeeper missiles, all with different targets.

The National Museum of the U.S. Air Force

Posted on June 1, 2016 by admin

Before we went, I was sure the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force would be packed with other visitors. After all, more than a million people visit every year, according to the Air Force; airplanes are popular. The museum is free. Or at least, no extra charge beyond taxation. And while Dayton isn’t the largest of places, it isn’t in the middle of nowhere either.

So I’ll bet attendance was high on Memorial Day weekend Saturday. But the place didn’t feel crowded, except maybe in the gift shop. The museum soaks up people like the best of sponges. Its current three buildings — enormous hangers — total about 750,000 square feet and house more than 360 aerospace vehicles and missiles.

The exhibits are organized chronologically, beginning with the first aeroplane that the Wrights sold to the U.S. Army, the Wright 1909 Flyer, and ending in a hall of ballistic missiles. Not all of the aircraft are American made or were even in the service of the United States. Among the early airplanes are those from all the nations that fielded warplanes in WWI, such as a Sopwith Camel, Nieuport 28, Curtiss Jenny, Caproni, and a Fokker Dr. I triplane, which the museum is careful to point out is associated with Rittmeister Manfred von Richthofen, though the one on display is a replica, since none survive.

I’d never seen most of those planes before. Or a Caquot observation balloon. The museum has the only one in existence. “The hydrogen-filled balloon could lift two passengers in its basket, along with charting and communications equipment, plus the weight of its mooring cable, to a height of about 4,000 feet in good weather,” notes the museum.

Hydrogen filled. The Western Front Association says of the balloons: “That the jobs of the balloon commander and observer were hazardous in the extreme is self-evident, and casualties were correspondingly high.” I believe it. The picture above doesn’t show the open gondola hanging from the balloon. The gondola of death, it was.

Not all of the artifacts are aircraft. Equipment associated with airplanes, and the wars they fought in, is also plentiful at the museum. One particularly amusing item in the early aircraft gallery was a Model T ambulance.

Not because ambulances are funny, but because of the “Gunga Din” parody about the vehicle, which is quoted on a sign near the artifact. The full poem is here.

Yes, Tin, Tin, Tin!
You exasperating puzzle, Hunka Tin!
I’ve abused you and I’ve flayed you
But by Henry Ford who made you,
You are better than a Packard, Hunka Tin!

The difference between the WWI-era (and interwar) aircraft and WWII-era aircraft is astounding. That isn’t a revelation, but when you walk from one display to the other, the difference strikes you. The 1909 Flyer evolved into the likes of a B-29 Superfortress in only about 35 years. Think of the ingenuity.

The WWII gallery includes all kinds of interesting planes. Nothing like a modern war to spur the creation of weapons. Such as a Curtiss P-40, this one painted to represent one of the Flying Tigers that fought in China.

A B17-G, the Shoo Shoo Baby, which I understand will eventually be moved to the Smithsonian. The famed Memphis Belle, currently under restoration, will take its place as the museum’s prime B-17.

A B-24D Liberator, the Strawberry Bitch. The same kind of plane as Lady Be Good, which vanished in 1943 only to be found as wreckage in 1958 in the Libyan Desert.
And of course, Bockscar. The Smithsonian got Enola Gay, the NMUSAF got Bockscar. Nearby were models of Little Boy and Fat Man, sitting beside each other. The nicknames were apt.
Those are only some of the larger WWII planes. Also on exhibit were plenty of others, such as more bombers and fighters, transports, trainers, and so on, including some enemy aircraft, notably a Zero and a Nazi jet fighter, built by Messerschmitt too late in the war to do the Germans much good. I’m pretty sure I saw a Zero at the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, but the jet was a new one for me.

Ann was interested to learn about the artwork on the aircraft and the squadron patches. These were ways of individualizing something mass produced, I told her. Besides the Strawberry Bitch — which has a painting of a redheaded woman on one side — many of the other airplanes sported drawings for her to inspect. There was also a display case devoted to squadron patches, including many designed by the animators at Disney, who were doing their bit for the war effort, along with sending Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck et al. off in cartoons to flight the Axis.

Apparently the patches were quite popular among airmen. Then again, I suppose most of them had grown up during the heyday of Disney cartoon shorts. My own favorite patch shows Donald Duck hoisting a cartoon bomb, the round sort with a fuse that cartoon anarchists used to hoist.

The next hangers featured aircraft and other items from the Korean War, Vietnam, and the Cold War. We went through these a little more quickly than WWI or WWII, since the vastness of it all was beginning to wear us down. Even so, these galleries had a lot to recommend them, such as in the Korean collection: a vast Douglas C-124 cargo plane; a B-29 (“Command Decision”) that you can walk through; and a MiG.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a MiG, so famed in air-combat lore. A North Korean pilot took this one out on a mission and used it as a handy way to defect.

One hallway featured an exhibit about the Berlin Airlift. I was amused to see this.
It’s the work of TS Jake Schuffert, who did cartooning for the Airlift Times. I didn’t know the airlift had its own paper, but apparently so. Noted as niche cartoonist, he died in 1998.

Dayton ’16

Posted on May 31, 2016 by admin

Not long before Memorial Day weekend this year, my professional duties took me to AAA’s web site, and a press release there told me that among American travelers, “the top destinations this Memorial Day weekend, based on AAA.com and AAA travel agency sales, are: Orlando, Myrtle Beach, Washington, DC, New York, Miami, San Francisco, Boston, Honolulu, Los Angeles and South Padre Island.”

We didn’t go to any of those destinations last weekend, as interesting as they all are. (I’ll bet Myrtle Beach has its charms; it’s the only one on the list I’ve never been to.) Instead, we went to Dayton as the primary destination, with shorter stops in Wapakoneta, also in Ohio, along with Indianapolis and Fort Wayne — the last two for meals. So it was a western Ohio trip.

Ohio, land of the curious swallowtail flag. The Ohio Burgee, it’s called.
Or maybe we took an aerospace-themed trip, since we spent the better part of Saturday at the sprawling, extraordinary National Museum of the U.S. Air Force just outside of Dayton, on the grounds of the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. It has a reputation as one of the best aviation museums in the country, often mentioned in the company of the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum. Now that I’ve been there, I can see why.

The Wright brothers were from Dayton, and the Wright sister too. Four boys and a girl survived to adulthood, and all but the eldest brother were ultimately involved in the business of flying machines. These days, the city features the Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park. Part of the park includes a museum dedicated to the Wrights — and, curiously enough, to Ohioan poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, who did have a remarkable life. After lunch on Saturday, we took in the Wright-Dunbar exhibits, despite our tired feet.

On Sunday morning, as my family lolled in our room, I went to the Woodland Cemetery and Arboretum in Dayton. Covering 200 hilly, wooded acres, Woodland is a fitting name and most aesthetic burying ground I’ve seen since Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.

We came by way of I-65 to Indianapolis and then I-70 to Dayton. I didn’t want to return the same way, so we headed north on I-75 to Wapakoneta, boyhood home of Neil Armstrong, and current location of a spaceflight museum. From there, US 27/33 took us to Fort Wayne, a city I’d never visited, despite its relative proximity.

I also wanted to drive US 30 from Ft. Wayne across Indiana. It turned out to be a fairly fast way to traverse the state, something like the Trans-Canada Highway out in Saskatchewan or Manitoba; that is, as a divided highway, but not limited access one.

Maxine’s Chicken & Waffles in Indianapolis offered the best meal of the trip, so good and filling that we barely needed to eat the rest of the day after stopping there at about 4 EDT on Friday (but still 3 CDT according to our stomachs). Chicken and pancakes were on the menu, which I had this time around.

When we came out of Maxine’s, I saw something I’d only ever heard about: a Megabus.The bus on the Chicago-Indianapolis run. I suppose there on N. East St., toward the eastern edge of downtown, is where it picks up its budget-minded passengers. According to the web site, the price for Chicago-Indianapolis is “from $25.” I’m not sure how much that really would be, but at least the bus offers wifi. They know their market.

The DuPage Society of Model Engineers’ Labor of Love, in the Basement

Posted on May 4, 2016 by admin

In the basement of the DuPage County Historical Museum is something you don’t see in too many local museums. Or too many places, though the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago has an enormous one: a model railroad display. The DuPage County model railroad isn’t as large as Science and Industry’s, but it’s plenty big enough: over 2,000 feet of HO track and train cars, and seemingly countless model buildings and vehicles and trees and people and animals, all visible at closer and further range behind a series of windows.

The DuPage Society of Model Engineers created the display 50 years ago as a clear labor of love, and it was ready for the public to see when the museum opened in 1967. I read that a model of this size and complexity isn’t ever really complete, so I imagine there have been a lot of changes over the years as enthusiasts come and go. Members of the society are on hand on the 3rd and 5th Saturdays of the month to oversee its operation, so we got to see three middle-aged gentlemen operating the display, including replacing one of the trains on the track when it derailed.

Supposedly the display highlights some of DuPage County’s railroads and landmarks, but it’s really a blend of actual places (such as the Adams Library) and more fanciful re-creations of the American landscape between about 1900 and 1950. Three HO scale trains were running, one freight train and two interurbans. One of the interurbans featured a sleek art deco engine and cars, something like the Pioneer Zephyr, though not quite the same (the actual Pioneer Zephyr, long since retired, is at Science and Industry).

“That an Amtrak train?” Yuriko asked.

“No, Amtrak doesn’t have that much style,” I answered.

We also saw, in no particular order, train yards, train sheds, a roundabout, water tanks, depots, stations, small factories, storage sheds, bridges, stores, houses, churches, cars, trucks, signs, horses, dogs, cats and tiny figures of people doing innumerable things: walking, riding bikes and motorcycles, working, playing, lying around, even hang gliding. There was a biker gang and a haunted house in the style of 1313 Mockingbird Ln. If I’d looked longer, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were hobos.

The detail was incredible. Beside many of the tracks were extra ties or random pieces of lumber. The coal yards seemed to sport little lumps of coal. Inside a sewing machine shop were two customers and a sewing machine with the minuscule letters SINGER on it. As I mentioned, most of the display evokes the first half of the 20th century, so horse and buggies were in one place, and chrome-heavy cars another. The billboard and window ads were mostly period as well. My own favorite: a sign for Carter’s Little Liver Pills.

The DuPage County Historical Museum

Posted on May 3, 2016 by admin

The DuPage County Historical Museum is housed in the former Adams Memorial Library at the corner of Main St. and Wesley St. in Wheaton, Ill. It’s a handsome structure, done in what’s known as the Richardsonian Romanesque style, and easy to admire on a clear day, though we didn’t have that luxury on Saturday.

The library was named in honor of Marilla Phipps Adams, the wife of John Quincy Adams, a New Englander who prospered in 19th-century DuPage County. Apparently he was a somewhat distant cousin of the president of the same name, but in any case he gave the money to build the library.

Charles Sumner Frost (1856-1931) designed the building, which was completed in 1891. Frost is better known for designing Navy Pier in Chicago, but also did a lot of railroad stations and terminals and depots, including the old Chicago and North Western Terminal (1911), which didn’t survive the 20th century. More about his work on the Adams Library is here.

The library went to a new building in the mid-1960s, and its old building became a museum in 1967. It isn’t a particularly large museum, but it has a nice collection, with rooms for a permanent display and a temporary display on the first floor, plus more in the basement and two items on the second floor.

The first-floor rooms covered DuPage County history (in the permanent gallery) and a history of wedding gowns and other traditions (temporary gallery). I enjoy local history displays of this kind, with their photos and documents and household items and ephemera of various sorts. I was particularly taken by some of the photos in the permanent exhibit, such as members of the Wheaton High School basketball team posed for a portrait taken in 1907.

Though it’s not a favorite movie of mine, the faces in the photo reminded me of lines from Dead Poets Society, as the teacher ruminates to his class on a similarly old portrait picture.

“They’re not that different from you, are they? Full of hormones, just like you. Invincible, just like you feel. The world is their oyster. They believe they’re destined for great things, just like many of you, their eyes are full of hope, just like you.

“Did they wait until it was too late to make from their lives even one iota of what they were capable? Because, you see gentlemen, these boys are now fertilizing daffodils. But if you listen real close, you can hear them whisper their legacy to you.”

The second floor of museum is a large, well-appointed room with a small stage. There are only two artifacts on that floor, but they’re good ones. Hanging high on the wall is the 36th Illinois Infantry Regiment National Colors, which was taken with the boys in blue to Pea Ridge, Perryville, Stone River, Chickamauga, Mission Ridge, Resaca, Kennesaw Mountain, Atlanta, Franklin and Nashville, among other places.

“Made of painted silk, this flag was brought back to Springfield after the war,” the museum’s web site says. “Recently professionally conserved with intensive cleaning and precise repair of the fabric, the restoration of the flag has ensured that it will be an educational tool for generations to come… The National Colors will remain at the DuPage County Historical Museum through July 2018, on loan from the Illinois State Military Museum.”

Also on loan from the Illinois State Military Museum is the 8th Illinois Cavalry Guidon. The museum notes that, “beginning in early 1862, the 8th Illinois was stationed in Washington D.C. and attached to the Army of the Potomac, fighting in their first battle at Williamsburg. The unit also fought in a number of engagements, including Mechanicsville (Seven Days Battle), Hanover Court House, Seven Pines, Brandy Station, Middleburg, Upperville, and Gettysburg.” More on the flags, along with pictures of them, is here.

The Krannert Art Museum

Posted on March 29, 2016 by admin

Time to praise university art museums: generally unpretentious, inexpensive and not so large that you can’t have a good look-see in a short time. One of the places Lilly and I visited at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign was the Krannert Art Museum, which has ten galleries and art ranging from ancient Egypt and Pre-Columbian to much more recent items.

One so recent that it was created using an iPhone: “A Lexicon of Dusk.”
Over the last six years, a Houston artist named Ruth Robbins took her iPhone out and took pictures at dusk. From these, she made a series of 26 different postcards, copies of which were on a long shelf at the gallery. That’s the artwork.

“Printed as postcards for the viewer to take away — a distributed work of art in line with conceptual art practices — the images show richly colored ambiguous skies and whatever else she happened to have seen at the time: lights low on the horizon, an electricity pole, a snow-covered landscape, an equestrian statue,” the sign near the cards says. “Longitude and latitude coordinates are documented on each image…” That, and an exact date and time when the image was made.

The best part? Postcards are free to take, adds the sign. I took one of each. I’ve already mailed a few.

In the room adjoining the postcard exhibit was an amusing series called “The First and Last of the Modernists,” by Lorraine O’Grady, pairing images of Baudelaire with Michael Jackson.

I’ve had a soft spot for Baudelaire since an entertaining acquaintance of mine recited “Be Drunk” — I think it was this translation — at a party at our house late in my college years, ca. 1982. As for the King of Pop, I can’t claim to be a fan, but I respect his reach. I heard his songs walking down the streets of the 10 European countries I visited in the summer of ’83, even East Germany, but maybe not the Vatican City, and even then I might have heard something from a transistor radio someone was carrying at the Piazza San Pietro.

Another room sported some African art. Not just pre-Scramble works from lost states and misty kingdoms, but more modern items. These are two of a particularly striking series, “Seven Lines From Djwartou” by Yelimane Fall.

I appreciated these visually, not as someone who can read Arabic. The artist-calligrapher hails from Senegal, and is a devotee of one Sheikh Amadou Bamba, founder of the Sufi brotherhood Mourides in that country, and who wrote the poem “Djawartou” in the early 20th century, among many other things.

As the BBC notes, “Senegal’s most powerful men are not politicians, but the leaders of the country’s Islamic Sufi brotherhoods, to which a very large proportion of Senegalese belong, and whose influence pervades every aspect of Senegalese life.”

Seems that the Mourides are a very big deal in their corner of the world and, from what I can tell from a brief look, eschew the poisons of Wahhabism, and stress hard work among their members (work hard, make money, support the sect). And there are enclaves of them elsewhere. According to Religion News, “Their dictum, ‘pray as if you will die tomorrow and work as if you will live for ever,’ has brought the Mourides economic success wherever they have settled. In New York, the Mourides established their own community, Little Senegal, and July 28 has officially been designated Sheikh Amadou Bamba day.”

Remarkable the things that go into making an image on the wall. I never knew any of that. I don’t expect to make a detailed study of Senegal, but it’s good to be reminded that there are whole other worlds here on Earth yet beyond one’s experience.

Denman Estate Park

Posted on March 22, 2016 by admin

Last year I was looking at a Google Maps map of San Antonio and noticed an odd green blob tucked away in a neighborhood just northwest of the junction of I-10 and Loop 410, an area not too far from where I grew up, but not within my usual orbits. Higher resolution revealed that it was called Denman Estate Park. What?

“The City of San Antonio purchased 12.52 acres of land from the estate of philanthropist Gilbert Denman Jr. in 2007 at a cost of $2,561,081,” the city’s web site says, with a cost-precision sometimes found in public documents. “An adjacent 7.70 acres were purchased by the University of [the] Incarnate Word. In 2010, Gilbert Denman Jr. Estate Park, 7735 Mockingbird Lane, opened as a jointly used park and a retreat center for UIW.

“Park amenities include a 0.5-mile walking trail, labyrinth, picnic benches and tables, parking, fencing and lighting. It also features a monument hand-built in Gwangju, Korea, by Korean craftsmen and artists who traveled to San Antonio to assemble it. The City and UIW entered into a joint use agreement in which UIW maintains the property and uses the buildings as a retreat center.”

I knew had to take a look at that. I finally did so when I had a few free hours in San Antonio during my most recent visit. I arrived in the early afternoon, parked my car, and found the short path to the park’s small pond, which also has a path all the way around it. The hand-built “monument,” on the banks of the pond, is a striking little structure — especially for being in South Texas — in a nice setting.

“Pavilion” is a better word for it in English, and in fact that’s the word a nearby plaque uses.

“This pavilion is a replica of the traditional Korean pavilion style of the southern provinces,” the plaque says. “The pavilion, traditionally used as a place of reflection and reception by scholars and gentlemen, embodies the beauty and harmony created by nature and structure.

“It is hoped that this ‘Pavilion of Gwangju’ will offer many opportunities to strengthen the friendly relationship between Gwangju and San Antonio, as well as inspire an in-depth understanding of Korean culture and traditions by the American public.”

A noble sentiment, but I have a feeling K-pop reaches more Americans than other kinds of Korean culture and traditions. The pavilion seems to have been a gift from Gwangju to San Antonio. It isn’t clear whether Gilbert Denman himself had anything to do with its placement, since the structure was dedicated in 2010, six years after his death.

The pond was partly ringed with cypress trees with a vast number of cypress “knees” — the woody bumps that emerge near the base of the trees — a term I just learned.

Elsewhere on the property is the former Denman manse (I assume), which is closed to casual visitors. No doubt the university uses for events and rents it for weddings and the like.

Not far from the house is “AMA Maria,” a mermaid sculpture with strategically placed flowing hair, a fish tail, and human legs.

Oddly enough, the plaque on the base of the statue also includes its latitude and longitude to six decimal places: LAT. 29.467831 LON. -98.467490. Turns out there are a fair number of these statues in various parts of the world, including three others in Texas. It was something I’d absolutely never heard of before.

A site called mermaidsofearth.com tells us that “the Amaryllis Art for Charity project is placing AMA mermaid statues all over the world, with each mermaid statue uniquely made and customized for its location… The statues are for sale, with about one third of the proceeds dedicated to a charity jointly chosen by the project organizers and the local sponsors.”

It isn’t clear from that whether the statues are for sale in situ or whether they’re bought and put in places like Denham Estate Park. Never mind, there’s one there now. More about it is here.

Finally, who was Gilbert Denman Jr. (1921-2004)? A handy obit published by the Porter-Loring Funeral Home in San Antonio offers a few details about his charmed life, which included being born to a wealthy family and presumably doing well himself as a prominent attorney in San Antonio. Like Robert L.B. Tobin, he was also a notable local philanthropist.

One of his many acts of philanthropy, according to the obit, involved donating “his extensive collection of Greek and Roman artifacts to the San Antonio Museum of Art. The collection, among the finest of its type in the nation, is housed in the Denman Gallery of the Ewing Halsell Wing at the museum.”

The good people of San Antonio are clearly better for his Antiquities collection. I will be better for it, once I get around to visiting the San Antonio Museum of Art again sometime. It’s been a long time since I’ve been there, since the late ’80s at the latest, before the creation of the Denman Gallery in 1990. The big deal exhibit the last time I remember being there was Nelson Rockefeller’s large collection of Latin American folk art, which arrived as a permanent part of the museum’s collection in the mid-80s.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Museums