Kek Lok Si Temple, Penang

Posted on July 12, 2020 by admin

In July 1994 we spent a pleasant, and sweaty, few days in Panang. In George Town, that is. To avoid confusion: Panang is one of the 13 states of the federation of Malaysia, consisting of Penang Island in the Straits of Malacca, and a mainland component called Seberang Perai. George Town is capital of the state, located on Penang Island. UNESCO tapped its historic core — long after we visited — as a World Heritage Site, along with Malacca. I just thought it was a charming old dump.

“Georgetown turned out to be a low-rise, whitewashed, somewhat seedy town, good for walking after the heat of the day died down, and early in the morning,” I wrote about the visit. “I took a couple of good walks before Yuriko woke. Over the next few days [we] took in Ft. Cornwallis (nice clock tower), wandered around the Komtar Mall, saw the Kek Lok Sri [sic] temple, climbing its pagoda, swam at Batu Ferringhi beach, and rode the cable railway up Penang Hill.”

Here’s the view of George Town from Kek Lok Si, which is on a high hill in the suburb of Air Itam.

I’m surprised I didn’t take a picture from below, but that’s the way things were in those days — limited film, as opposed to the practical infinity of digital images.

“Ayer Itam’s most recognizable landmark is the Kek Lok Si temple. Also known as the Temple of Supreme Bliss, it is the largest Buddhist temple in Malaysia,” says Penang 500 Early Postcards. “The founder of KLS was Abbot Beow Lean (1844-1907), from the Kushan Abbey in Fujian, China… The KLS, sited at the foot of the Penang hills, consists of many prayer halls, pavilions, carved pillars, tortoise and fish ponds, and flower gardens linked by winding and ascending pathways.”

Along with a pagoda in a mix of styles: Chinese, Thai and Burmese. It’s behind Yuriko here.

And what’s a Buddhist temple without some Buddharūpa?

This monumental statue, depicting Guanyin, didn’t exist — or at least wasn’t in its present physical form — when we visited. As I understand it, Guanyin is a bodhisattva associated with compassion. Sounds like a good fellow to have around.

Wat Phra That Hariphunchai

Posted on June 14, 2020 by admin

You’d think I’d remember Wat Phra That Hariphunchai in northern Thailand, near Chang Mai, better than I do. But after a quarter-century and then some, I don’t remember much, not like I recall the Wat Phra Kaew, home of the Emerald Buddha, in Bangkok.

But we were there in June ’94, during the few days when we stayed in Chang Mai, and took a few pictures. Such as of me, dwarfed by the main chedi.
Wat Phra That Hariphunchai Below, the part of the temple known as Viharn Phra Chao Thunjai, according to this site, which has much more about the temple grounds, whose original stupa goes back to the 9th century, with a major expansions in the 11th and later centuries.The bell tower.

For whatever reason, we didn’t make an image of the temple’s distinctive, pyramid-shaped Pathumvadi Chedi, or the Ho Trai, which houses Buddhist scriptures.

Easy Day in Palm Springs

Posted on March 10, 2020 by admin

My recent visit to Southern California involved a lot of motion, by car and light rail and on foot. By the time I got to Palm Springs, I was ready for an easier time. Steve and Jack’s hospitality made that possible for me from late afternoon on February 24, when I arrived, to the morning of the 26th, when I left.

If you have the means, Palm Springs is a good town for taking it easy, especially in the winter, which is like a pleasant springtime in a lot of other places. The full day I was in town involved getting up late — a necessary part of any easy day — looking around Palm Spring’s main shopping street and some of its neighborhoods, including visits to a few shops, then lunch and a drive out to the town of Indio to see its main tourist attraction.

If I’d been in full-tourist mode, I might have taken a closer look at some of the town’s modernist houses, or visited its art museum, or taken a hike in the hills, or ridden the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway. If I were another person all together, I would have played golf. I hear a lot of people do that in wintertime Palm Springs, and maybe that’s why Gerald Ford spent a lot of time there.

I took in a few sights. Such as the view across the street from Steve and Jack’s.
We took a stroll down Palm Canyon Dr., which includes restaurants, tony shops, tourist shops, design showcases — modernism is the thing, an aesthetic fully occupying a number of shops — and more.
More, as in stars in the sidewalk, featuring celebrities who lived in Palm Springs at least part of the time. Such as good old Adam West.
Sonny Bono rates a bronze on the street, maybe for his efforts in Congress to ensure that his distant descendants retain the copyright to his songs.
Lucy has a bronze, too. Here’s Steve with Lucy.
Lunch, at Steve’s suggestion, was at the Haus of Poké just off Palm Canyon. The small chain’s web site tells us that “poké/poukei is a raw fish salad served as an appetizer in Hawaiian cuisine, and sometimes as an entree. Poké is the Hawaiian verb for ‘section’ or ‘to slice or cut.’ Typical forms are aku (an oily tuna) and he’e (octopus).”

Haus of Poké is on the Chipotle model — seems like a long time ago that that was novel — in which you pick a series of ingredients for your meal from a limited selection. Step 1, size. Step 2, base: brown rice, white rice, chips or salad. Step 3, protein: octopus, tofu, ahi tuna, salmon, yellowtail or shrimp. Step 4, mix-ins: edamame, cucumber, red onion, green onion or mango. Step 5, a selection of sauces.

I can’t remember exactly what I had now, though it involved white rice and salmon and other things, and it was delicious combo. I can see why Steve’s a regular.

Also not far off Palm Canyon: The Church of St. Paul in the Desert, Episcopal. Unfortunately closed.
That afternoon, we went to Shields, a date farm that’s also a tourist attraction in Indio, California. The sign has been a fixture of the road since the 1950s.
We stayed for a short film — Romance & Sex Life of the Date — which was something like a film you (I) might have seen in elementary school, and at times a little hard to stay awake for. But I can’t say I didn’t learn anything about date agriculture. I didn’t know, for instance, that about 90% of U.S. date cultivation is in the Coachella Valley (Wiki says more than 95%, but I’m citing the movie.)

Steve said that Shields used to offer a selection of date samples on a table, as many as you cared to eat, but we didn’t see that. Turns out you have to ask for a sample now, which includes two dates. Is a new private equity owner clamping down on the freebies?

We bought two date shakes, which were good, and looked around a bit. You can’t wander around the date-growing grounds any more, either, Steve said. Used to be able to. The best view of the Shields date trees turned out to be from the edge of the parking lot.
After Shields, we returned to Steve’s house to loaf around (now there’s a verb we shouldn’t let die). I wasn’t completely idle, however, since I spent time writing postcards. In the evening, we had a pleasant dinner and then sat around and talked and watched TV. The Food Network, I have to say, is a whole other world I knew little about.

Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels &c

Posted on March 4, 2020 by admin

Another place that still under construction the last time I visited Los Angeles, in 2001: the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, the seat of the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Los Angeles.

The 1994 Northridge earthquake so badly damaged the previous seat, the 1870s Cathedral of Saint Vibiana, that the archdiocese wanted to tear it down and build another cathedral on the site. Preservationists, led by the Los Angeles Conservancy, fought against that, and so eventually a deal was struck allowing the city to take possession of the former cathedral, and the archdiocese to build a new building on downtown land given to it by the city.

These days the former cathedral is an event center — which I didn’t see — and the new cathedral, completed in 2002, looks like this.Not everyone loves the design by Rafael Moneo, which I’ve seen called deconstructivist or postmodern, but which looks pretty brutal to me. I wasn’t all that fond of it myself, though it is interesting.

Does it say sacred space to me? Not particularly. You could argue that most of us have been conditioned by traditional forms to feel that way. Or you could argue that of course sacred space should be beautiful, not brutal. Take your pick. My goal when I’m somewhere is to see what’s there.

Besides, the interior is less brutal somehow.
The light fixtures and the natural light help soften the space, I think. Also note that people use the space. While I lurked around the back of the cathedral, a couple named George and Florence were getting married up front. People probably get married there every Saturday except during lent.

At the back is the Ezcaray Reredos, an intricate work of carved black walnut.
It dates from 17th-century Spain. More information about how it came to be in modern California is here, though I will say it left Spain during an impoverished period in the 20th century. The sign in front of the reredos is incorrect, however, when it says that the chapel attached to Saint Philip Neri at Ezcaray, original home of the work, “was dismantled in 1925 after being damaged in the Spanish Civil War…”

On the cathedral’s lower level is a mausoleum.
Most of the spaces are yet to be occupied. I later read that Gregory Peck is interred there, but I didn’t see him. I did spot California Chief Justice Malcom Millar Lucas (d. 2016), who had the distinction earlier in his judicial career of presiding over the trial of Charles Manson.

The relics of Saint Vibiana are in the mausoleum as well. She was a 3rd-century martyr.
Atlas Obscura: “Her time in the public eye began in 1853 when her tomb was excavated from the catacombs of San Sisto in Rome. Unlike many of the so-called ‘catacomb saints’ who didn’t even have names, the inscription on Vibiana’s tomb gave her name, the day of her death (August 31), the symbolic laurel wreath of martyrdom, and indicated she was ‘innocent and pure.’

“The following year Bl. Pope Pius IX gave her relics — blood, tomb inscription, and body — to Thaddeus Amat, the newly appointed Bishop of Monterrey, California….”

After a time in Santa Barbara, and then many years at the former cathedral in Los Angeles, Vibiana eventually came to where she is now. Interesting that a saint migrated to California like everyone else.

The cathedral isn’t the only church I managed to visit in Los Angeles. Not far away is Our Lady Queen of Angels Catholic Church, an historic parish church.
I rested a while inside. The name really should be rendered as La Iglesia de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles, since all of its masses are in Spanish. The historic marker outside, in English and Spanish, says (in English) that the church “was dedicated on December 8, 1822 during California’s Mexican era. Originally known as La Iglesia de Nuestra Senora de Los Angeles, the church was the only Catholic church for the pueblo. Today it primarily serves the Hispanic population of Los Angeles.”

On Sunday morning, as I headed through Koreatown, I spotted St. James’ Episcopal Church, or St. James’ in-the-City, on Wilshire Blvd.
I attended part of the service that was going on at the time. The church dates from the 1920s, done in a more traditional Gothic Revival by a San Francisco architect, Benjamin McDougall. Most notable about the design: a lot of fine stained glass.

Immanuel Presbyterian Church isn’t far away on Wilshire Blvd.
Unlike St. James’, it wasn’t open when I came by. Still, I got a good look from the across the street.

Chicago Chinatown ’20

Posted on February 3, 2020 by admin

One of these days, I might pop into the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Museum on S. Wentworth Ave. in Chinatown. It has to count as one of the more obscure museums in metro Chicago, and that adds some interest right there.

But when we went to Chinatown on Saturday, we took a pass on Sun Yat-Sen and had lunch next door instead, at a newish-looking place called Slurp-Slurp. Had some tasty noodle soups there.
Chinatown wasn’t the main destination that day, but it was more-or-less on the way, and always a dependable place to find something good to eat, and things to see. Even if there isn’t a parade.

We arrived at the Cermak-Chinatown El Station and saw something fairly new, visible from the stairs leading to the ground.
Done in hand-made ceramic tile by Indira Freitas Johnson, installed in 2015.

“The centerpiece of the upper panel features Fook (Fú in Mandarin), the symbol of good fortune or happiness,” the CTA says. “According to custom, the symbol is placed upside down and against a diamond-shaped background. Within the context of the stairway Fook (Fú) may be translated as ‘good fortune arrives.’ ”

Not far from the station is a screen wall.

It looks like there had once been a small sign in front of the wall to explain it, but that’s now completely blank. Not to worry, a very short amount of Googling tells me that it’s a Nine-Dragon Wall, a miniature version of such a wall in Beihai Park, Beijing (the Winter Palace).

Wiki tells us that there are various other walls of this style, including one at the Forbidden City that I have no recollection of seeing. Then again, it’s a large place. There’s also one at the Mississauga Chinese Centre in the Toronto suburb of that name.

Besides lunch, we did a short walk on Wentworth Ave., since the weather wasn’t too bad for the pit of winter. Not pit of winter-ish at all, with temps above freezing, though sometimes winds would kick up. Wentworth is the original hub of Chicago’s Chinatown.

There’s evidence of continuing cross-cultural pollination.

About a half block off Wentworth is St. Therese Chinese Catholic Church. Unfortunately, the sanctuary was closed.
Some distinctive Chinese features are visible outside.
Later I learned that the church had been built just after the turn of the 20th century as Santa Maria Incoronata, to serve an Italian congregation. By the 1960s, the demographics of the neighborhood had changed enough for it to become St. Therese, serving a Chinese congregation.

Divers Southern Indiana Courthouses &c

Posted on January 12, 2020 by admin

Bloomington is the county seat of Monroe County, Indiana, and sports an impressive downtown courthouse, a 1908 Beaux Arts design by Hoosier architects Wing & Mahurin.

The building was closed for the weekend, but I took a look at the exterior just before dusk. While I stood there, strings of lights lit up.
What’s a county courthouse without some allegories?
Or a war memorial? At first glance, it looks like a Civil War memorial only, but it specifically honors veterans of the war with Mexico, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War and World War I.
While in Nashville, Indiana, I took a quick look at the more modest, but also handsome Brown County Courthouse, a structure from the 1870s.
Nashville has some other interesting buildings as well, such as the Nashville United Methodist Church.

This looks to be a former Masonic building, though I’ve only looked into the matter enough to know that the Nashville, Indiana, Masonic Lodge #135 isn’t in that building, but a newer-looking one. But the older building does say LODGE on the front facade in large letters, along with Masonic symbols on either side.

Nashville isn’t a very large town, but there are streets away from the main tourist drag, Van Buren St. On just such a street we happened across a tree-carving studio.
Besides Elvis and a bear, you can also find Willie Nelson in wood there.
And one of the popular ideas of a space alien.
One more courthouse: a good-looking structure in Paoli, Indiana, county seat of Orange County. We passed through town on the way to West Baden Springs, but didn’t stop in the intense rain. Even so, the courthouse caught our attention.

Yellow Hat in Indiana

Posted on January 7, 2020 by admin

That the Tibetan Mongolian Buddhist Cultural Center is on the outskirts of Bloomington, Indiana, seems like it ought to be a surprise. But no. Diasporas of all stripes come to North America to enrich our tapestry.

But why Bloomington? More than 50 years ago, Thubten Jigme Norbu (d. 2008), the Dalai Lama’s brother and also an exile, accepted a position at Indiana University, founding one of the United States’ first Tibetan Studies programs.

“In 1978, a donation of 108 acres of land in southeast Bloomington enabled Norbu to found the Tibetan Cultural Center…” Bloom Magazine says. “With the help of volunteers and donations, multiple structures have been built over time, among them the only stupa (religious monument) dedicated to the more than one million Tibetans who have died since the beginning of the Chinese occupation of Tibet in 1950, as well as other structures rarely found outside of the Himalayan region, including a mani korlo (prayer wheel house).”

We arrived at the TMBCC on the morning of December 28. There’s more than one stupa on the grounds.
The prayer wheel house. It reminded me of the Gandantegchinlen (Gandan) Monastery in Mongolia.

The grounds wind through wooded land and eventually you come to the Kumbum Chamtse Ling Monastery.
Behind the monastery is another structure — and a lot of prayer flags.
While inside the monastery, we were told that a fire puja ceremony was in the offing behind the building. I’ve read about them since, but find the concept hard to get my head around, so I’ll leave the details for others to explain.

I just know what I saw and heard. Monks chanted, built a fire and burned a variety of materials, such as grain and flowers. Under a tent to one side, more monks chanted. People watched from another tent, and under yet another stood a table arrayed with the items to be burned.

Not quite sure how long we watched and listened to the chanting. I didn’t understand a lick of it, yet somehow it was mesmerizing.

Southern Indiana at the End of the 2010s

Posted on January 5, 2020 by admin

A new decade is underway, and don’t let nitpickers tell you otherwise. At midnight as 2020 began — the beginning of the 2020s — I stepped outside for a listen, as I do most years. Pop-pop-pop went the fireworks in the freezing air.

If you know where to look in southern Indiana, about 50 miles southwest of Indianapolis, you’ll find yourself standing near a Tibetan stupa. I did that myself ahead of the New Year.
We wanted to take a trip between Christmas and New Year’s, but nowhere too far or expensive. In that case, weather is the main variable. A blizzard, or even heavy snow or subzero temps, would have kept us home. But post-Christmas forecasts called for mild temps until December 30 throughout our part of the Midwest.

So on December 27, we drove to southern Indiana by way of Lafayette and Indianapolis, stopping in the former but not the latter. We arrived in Lafayette just in time to visit the Haan Mansion Museum of Indiana Art, and take a look at the sculpture garden and nature walk behind it.

That evening we arrived in Bloomington, Indiana, where we spent the next three nights. Bloomington is home of the largest branch of Indiana University, one boasting nearly 50,000 students and the Kinsey Institute besides. But just after Christmas, the place is practically deserted. A ghost university.

On December 28, we spent much of the morning at the Tibetan Mongolian Buddhist Cultural Center, which is out on the edge of Bloomington. We saw the stupas and the prayer wheels and flags and the Kumbum Chamtse Ling Monastery. We also happened to be there in time to see a fire puja ceremony.

We spent most of the afternoon that day in rural Brown County at the T.C. Steele State Historic Site, hilltop home and studio of the landscape painter of that name in the early 20th century. We also popped over to Nashville, Indiana, where we’d been in 2002. Instead of artwork, we bought lunch there this time.

The day was good for walking around outside — nearly 60 degrees F. and cloudy, but no rain. About as pleasant as you’re going to get in late December. The next day was nearly as warm, but rain fell on and off all day, sometimes heavily.

A good day for indoor sites. On the morning of the 29th, we headed south, deep into the rolling hills of southern Indiana, to visit the striking West Baden Springs Hotel, a grand hotel of the past revived only in recent years, along with its former rival and current sister property, the French Lick Springs Hotel, one-time home of Pluto Water.

After a lunch stop in Paoli, Indiana, we went to Marengo Cave, a limestone show cave under the small town of Marengo, and spent more than an hour among the stalagmites and -tites and flowstone. Near the cave’s entrance, a bonus site: a 19th-century Hoosier cemetery, whose weather-beaten stores were picturesquely wet with the most recent weather.

The 30th proved to be cold, though not quite cold enough for snow or ice. We drove home in the morning, stopping only for gas and rest stops. Strong winds blew. Sometimes strong enough to push the car slightly to the side. I white-knuckled the steering wheel a few times as a result.

The wind gusts also captured flags and pulled them straight. Here is Indiana’s flag at a rest stop. Better than those with a state seal slapped on: a golden torch and 19 stars, to symbolize Hoosier enlightenment and the state’s place as 19th to join the union.

GeGeGe and Many Torii

Posted on December 4, 2019 by admin

Other places that Yuriko visited during her recent stay in Japan included Mizuki Shigeru Road in Sakaiminato, Tottori Prefecture, and Fushimi Inari-taisha, a Shinto shrine in Kyoto.

Mizuki Shigeru Road sports more than 100 statues depicting characters created by Shigeru Mizuki (1922-2015), a manga artist best known for a series called GeGeGe no Kitarō. I’m not a manga aficionado, or even very interested, but his characters are so widely known in Japan that even I recognized some of them, by sight if not by name.
Most of them I don’t recognize. But they are interesting.
I understand that Mizuki drew much of his inspiration from yōkai, a broad class of monsters, spirits and demons in Japanese folklore. I believe it.
Yuriko said that she hadn’t visited Sakaiminato before (though we did go to another part of Tottori once together) and that the statues are fairly new.

I recognized another place she visited, however: Fushimi Inari-taisha, a shrine whose precincts feature many, many torii. And almost as many steps.

I’m pretty sure, but not absolutely sure, that I visited Fushimi a good many years ago — nearly 30 — and climbed many steps through many orange torii.

Christ the King & Trinity United Methodist

Posted on November 6, 2019 by admin

Our visits during the 2019 Open House Chicago event on October 19 weren’t only to churches — just mostly. The opportunity was there.

In the mid-afternoon, we headed down to the Beverly neighborhood on the Southwest Side. Next year, no long drives between neighborhoods — we spent too much time jammed on the Kennedy Expressway, then the Dan Ryan Expressway. I should have known better. But the sites were worth it.

Eventually, we got to Beverly. First stop, Christ the King.

Midcentury Modern, with distinctive brass and glass, completed in 1955. Design by Fox & Fox, who are still in business.
The King of Kings indeed. Painted to look like a mosaic from the floor.
Some blocks to the south is Trinity United Methodist, designed by Ralph E. Stotzel and Edward F. Jansen.
“The present building is its 5th location, begun with the construction of the community house — the northern portion of the current building — in 1924. Construction of the Gothic sanctuary was delayed by the Great Depression, but it was completed in 1940,” says Open House.

The church also has a fine organ.

We heard it in action. According to the church, it is a Möller Pipe Organ, opus 8240, with three manuals and 26 ranks, installed in 1951. Apparently the M.P. Möller Organ Co. of Hagerstown, Md., was a busy organ-maker in its day.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Religious Sites