The Lesson: Go Look at the Elephant Yourself

Posted on October 10, 2023 by admin

“Shop epic deals influencers love,” says an ad I saw today, one associated with an online retail behemoth oddly named for a major tropical river. Instantly I found a use for that Reagan-era phrase: just say no.

Influencers would be about as useful for finding worthwhile goods as the blind men in describing the elephant.

I didn’t know until today that the inestimable Natalie Merchant set the poem “The Blind Men and the Elephant” to music. That comes of rummaging around the Internet about blind men and elephants. She might have sung it at Ravinia in 2012, since the recording would have been fairly new then, but I don’t remember.

The poem by John Godfrey Saxe is much older, of Victorian vintage. I didn’t know much about the poet, so I looked into some of his other work. His rhymes tend not to be dense with complex images, as far as I can tell. One begins:

Come, listen all unto my song;
It is no silly fable;
‘Tis all about the mighty cord
They call the Atlantic Cable.

That’s from “How Cyrus Laid the Cable.” I have to like a poem about early communications infrastructure, though I don’t think Natalie has set it to music.

The parable of the blind men and the elephant is much older than the 19th century, of course, a dash of ancient wisdom from the Subcontinent. I might have first heard about it in one of my Eastern religion classes. Or perhaps when I bought the record Waist Deep in the Big Muddy and Other Love Songs in the mid-80s, the disk that kicked my admiration for Pete Seeger into high gear. On that record, he performs a comic spoken version of the parable — the second spoken interlude during a song called “Seek and You Shall Find.”

I like all of the stories. Especially the first one, which is about boiling all the world’s wisdom down into one book, then one sentence, then one word. A re-telling for our time wouldn’t involve a king and wise men, but perhaps a tech mogul and his AI specialists. Eventually, sophisticated AI boils all the world’s wisdom down into a single word, and the result is the same. Maybe.

Fort Sheridan Water Tower

Posted on October 3, 2023 by admin

Where are those copy editors, anyway? A Washington Post correction from today.

Much of the former Fort Sheridan in Lake County, Illinois, is now a residential neighborhood, which is only reasonable. Even when it was an Army base, it was mostly residential. The officers’ houses are now refurbished single-family houses and the enlisted men’s quarters are now refurbished multifamily.

Time was short on Saturday, so I didn’t have all the time I wanted to look around the post-military neighborhood, but we did take a stroll on the former parade ground, which is now green space looped by Leonard Wood Ave.
Leonard Wood. Ask people driving on Leonard Wood who that might have been and his obscurity would assert itself in the form of blank stares and wild guesses.

I don’t know the details of all of his lengthy military career, but I do know that TR theoretically reported to him in Cuba in ’98 and that, in some alternate reality, Wood captured the Republican nomination for president in 1920 and went on to be 29th President of the United States, rather than the office going to a newspaper publisher from Ohio.

In that case, Wood would surely be remembered. Maybe about as much as Harding. Which might not be that much.

We spotted the fort’s former water tower on the other side of the grounds.

I had to see that up close, so we stopped by before we headed south for our lunch appointment.

Impressive. A design by noted Chicago architectural firm Holabird and Roche, who did many of the fort’s buildings.
Per Wiki: “Built from 1889 to 1891, the tower was among the first structures completed in the fort. It was built with bricks made from Lake Bluff clay and designed to resemble St. Mark’s Campanile in Venice.”

Remember the Alamo. In This Case, As It Was In 2018

Posted on October 1, 2023 by admin

A summerish weekend to kick off October, and we were out and about in the warmth. Soon temps will be more in line with the usual Octobers of northern Illinois.

Some trees are changing, but most still are holding their green. That too is bound to change soon.

Five years ago in October, I spent some time in San Antonio after the passing of my mother. That included a walk around downtown. I was persuaded that my mother wouldn’t have wanted me to mope around the house, but rather do what I would have done anyway. That is, go out and see things.

Even in very familiar places.

San Antonio tends toward pleasant weather that time of the year, and so it was that day. A lot of people were visiting the Alamo, taking in some of the demonstrations on the grounds. Such as the firing of period firearms.

Not, I think, using actual ammunition. But everything else seemed authentic, especially the loud bang!

Plymouth Church, Milwaukee

Posted on September 27, 2023 by admin

Tucked away on a side street northeast of downtown Milwaukee, and not far from Lake Michigan to the east and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee to the west, is Plymouth Church. I arrived there on Saturday afternoon as the last place on my Doors Open visit.

It is United Church of Christ, one of whose confessional predecessors were New England Congregationalists. Puritans and Separatists, if you go back far enough.

“Alexander Eschweiler, who designed many prominent houses and buildings throughout Milwaukee, served as the architect of the original building,” notes Historic Milwaukee. “His design harkened back to an older pastoral age, replicating the image of an old English church. The beautiful sanctuary is notable for its nine Tiffany windows.”

Maybe eight. A volunteer at the church entrance – a little old church lady (really) – told me that one of the windows was unsigned. It sure enough looks like a Tiffany, but without the lettering, you can only be 99.44% or some other high percentage sure of its pedigree.

I spent a good while looking at the windows, dedicated more than a century ago to a number of early congregants.

Long looks are highly recommended.

Toward the front entrance. At that moment, the afternoon sun obscured the church’s rose window, which rises over the choir balcony.

Obscured unless you got up close. Then it is a thing of wonder.

The window was installed in 1917. Let Bobby Tanzilo, writing in OnMilwaukee, take it from here: “ ‘The window, a large Tiffany art glass, was presented to the church by Mrs. C. W. Noyes in honor of her mother, Marcia Wells, wife of Daniel Wells, who built the Wells Building and for whom Wells Street was named,’ wrote the Sentinel in June 1917.

“The window represents an angel figure bestowing the benediction of peace. This is the seventh memorial window in Plymouth Church.”

1917. How many of the congregation prayed ardently for Peace that upheaval year? For the American men headed for war? For Victory? All in a single breath?

Tanzilo also discusses the artist who did the rose window, and quite possibly the other windows, while working for Tiffany: Clara Burd (d. 1933). That despite the fact that Tiffany didn’t name the artists that worked on its projects.

“Clara Burd was – along with others including Agnes Northrop who designed the 1917 Hartwell Memorial Window that’s at Art Institute of Chicago, Clara Driscoll and others – one of the so-called ‘Tiffany Girls,’ talented women responsible for designing stunning works of art in glass (not only windows, but also lamps and other objects),” Tanzilo wrote.

She did a lot else besides. Such as book illustrations. “The Returning Prodigal” (1911).

The full article is worth a read, and has a full set of pictures of the windows of the church.

Calvary Cemetery, Milwaukee

Posted on September 26, 2023 by admin

Head west on Bluemound Road in Milwaukee – once an Indian trace, later an early paved road – and before long you arrive at Calvary Cemetery. The entrance is easy to spot, though my shot is from inside.

It’s Milwaukee’s oldest Catholic cemetery, counting as a rural cemetery, as it was outside the young city in the 1850s. About 80,000 people repose there these days, including the first mayor of Milwaukee, Solomon Juneau.

I didn’t see his grave. But there were a lot of others, varying in style, age, condition and carved sentiment. The ground has contour and the trees are mature. Everything you need for a picturesque cemetery.

Including some sizable art and a handful of mausoleums.

That’s the stone of the Jung family, early Milwaukee brewers. What was it Jung said about beer being the royal road to the unconscious? No, that was that other Milwaukee brewer, Ziggy Freud. I believe they were rivals.

A good number of priests are buried at Calvary, including some fairly recent internments, such as this long row of Jesuits.

More Jesuits. A wall of Jesuits, with room for a few more.

The cemetery was unusually busy for a cemetery, because it was on the Doors Open Milwaukee list. Not for the grounds or stones, but for the chapel atop the fittingly named Chapel Hill.

“This cream brick Romanesque style chapel was designed by architect Erhard Brielmaier and built in 1899,” says Historic Milwaukee. “A noted designer of Catholic churches around the country, Brielmaier also designed the famous St. Josaphat on the city’s south side, under construction at the same time. The chapel is located on one of the highest elevations in the city with impressive views of Story Hill, Miller Park and the downtown skyline.”

A nonprofit, the Friends of Calvary Cemetery, is overseeing the long and expensive restoration of the chapel. Some decades ago, the Archdiocese had planned to tear it down, but fortunately preservationists prevailed. Members of the Friends showed visitors around the inside on Saturday. We had to sign a waver in case a piece of it fell on us.

The crypt was dark and crypt-like.

“Originally built intended for services, prayers, private contemplation, and as a mausoleum for clergy, only one clergy member was ever buried at the site,” Historic Milwaukee continues. “The structure has two levels: the upper level features the chapel, with its raised sanctuary and high altar, side altars recessed in twin apses, lofty vaulted ceilings, soaring arches and central dome; the lower level is the bi-level mausoleum containing 45 crypts. Reposing directly beneath the main altar is the body of Reverend Idziego Tarasiewicza, interred in 1903.”

Why just him? The authoritative answer seems to be, dunno. Go figure.

Ollie & Whitman

Posted on September 5, 2023 by admin

Just ahead of Labor Day weekend, an ad for Ollie’s popped into my YouTube feed. Ollie’s? Then on Sunday, as I was driving along near home, I spotted an Ollie’s where vacant retail had been until recently. Coincidence? No, not at all.

“Ollie’s is now America’s largest retailer of closeout merchandise and excess inventory,” the retailer’s web site says. “The chain currently operates 492 stores in 29 states.”

I stopped by for a look. “How long has the store been open?” I asked an employee. Four days was the answer. A new Ollie’s for Labor Day weekend, it seems.

As you’d expect from that description, it’s a hodgepodge of a place: canned and boxed food, books, personal care products, cheap furniture, clothes, toys, pet supplies, mattresses and on and on. I found a few items to buy, mostly food, but also a book: the 2023 edition of A Guide Book of United States Coins, the Red Book published for a long time (since 1946) by Whitman. Remaindered: the 2024 edition is out now.

Still, ’23 is mostly current, and it’s packed with information. The Red Book an almanac for U.S. coinage. Moreover, it’s a sturdy volume, with strong binding, meant to be opened an closed a lot. List price: $19.95. Ollie’s price: $2.99. Nice, Ollie, nice.

The recto-verso of a real book makes it easier to thumb through, I believe, than a similarly informative web site, and chance on interesting things. Or look them up. I already had the vague idea that I’m unlikely ever to own a Brasher Doubloon, for instance. Whitman quantifies that for me. One sold for about $9.36 million at auction in 2021. Other examples have sold in the millions as well, and one version is so rare that the Smithsonian has the only one.

The doubloon counts as a post-colonial issue, but before the U.S. mint was established in 1792. Since I bought the book, I’ve been thumbing through the entries on colonial and post-colonial coins. A fascinating array I didn’t know much about: Willow Tree and Oak Tree and Pine Tree coinage, Lord Baltimore coinage, American Plantation coins, Rosa Americana coins, Carolina Elephant tokens, Gloucester tokens, Higley coppers, Nova Constellatio coppers and the mysterious Bar coppers, among many others.

“The Bar copper is undated and of uncertain origin,” the Red Book says.

The Peshtigo Fire Museum & Fire Cemetery

Posted on August 27, 2023 by admin

You can drive from Sault Ste. Marie to metro Chicago in a day. It would be a long day, maybe eight or nine hours depending on traffic, construction, etc., but you can do it. I decided against such a long day, breaking the trip roughly in half by spending the last night of the drive around Lake Superior – which I was leaving far behind by this point – in Marinette, Wisconsin.

One reason: so I could enjoy a leisurely drive through the UP, including westward on Michigan 28 and then south on National Forest 13 through Hiawatha National Forest.

These are roads unlikely to make it on conventional best-drive lists, except for one that I might compile myself according to idiosyncratic lights, which might also include the Icefields Parkway, Lake Shore Drive, Alamo Heights Blvd., North Carolina 12 on Hatteras and Ocracoke islands, among others that come to mind. That the UP has two such favorite roads says something about the car-commercial driving to be had in the mostly forested UP.

Light enough traffic, at least on National Forest 13, that you can stand on the center line and take pictures at your leisure.

Another thing about NF 13: It took me to Pete’s Lake once upon a few times, and again on August 5, though I didn’t camp this time or experience a thunderstorm or yahoos yelling in the distance. It remains a sentimental favorite spot.

On the morning of August 6, I finally headed home, with one more stop in mind: Peshtigo, Wisconsin, a place that demonstrates, if nothing else, that the human mind is a creature of habit.

That includes me. I only mentioned the town in passing in 2006, when we stopped at the Peshtigo Fire Museum.

The building is a former Congregational church, on the site of a Catholic church that burned down in the firestorm of 1871 – which remains the deadliest wildfire in U.S. history, according to the National Fire Protection Association. Remarkably, the Maui wildfire is, for now, placed at fifth; modernity can’t protect us from everything.

“On the night of October 8, 1871, in Peshtigo, a lumber town about seven miles southwest of the Michigan-Wisconsin border, hundreds of people died: burned by fire, suffocating from smoke, or drowning or succumbing to hypothermia while trying to shelter in the Peshtigo River,” notes USA Today.

“But the fire also raged across Oconto and Marinette counties into Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, while another blaze burned across the bay of Green Bay in Brown, Door, and Kewaunee counties.”

No one knows exactly how many people perished in the Peshtigo fire — I’ve seen varying estimates, all in the low thousands — but it was certainly more than in the Great Chicago Fire, which happened the same day. Which one is mostly remembered? Chicago, of course, thus illustrating a habit of mind. Once a thing enters the tapestry of the popular imagination, it can crowd out similar events.

Peshtigo isn’t a large museum, but it is full of stuff.

The museum includes much information and a few artifacts from the fire, though naturally not much survived. The fire itself is illustrated not by photography, but artwork.

Two volunteer docents were on hand to spread the word about the fire. It’s the only distinction for modern Peshtigo, pop. 3,400 or so. One was a woman about my age, the other a woman about Ann’s age. Again, good to see young’ins up on their local history.

Speaking of that, the museum is actually more local history than the single incident of the fire, as important as that is. As such, there are many artifacts from the entire spectrum of the town’s history (including in the basement).

Next to the museum is the Peshtigo Fire Cemetery.

Including survivors of the fire.

Along with many who did not.

Too grim a note to end on. Not far south of Peshtigo is a roadside plaque I’d seen before, but not photographed.

“The most obsessive of all of 45th Parallel markers are the plaque-on-rocks sponsored by Frank E. Noyes,” says Roadside America. “We know that he sponsored them because he put his name on every one.

“Frank was 82 years old, a faithful Episcopalian and 32nd degree Mason, and president, general manager, and editor of The Daily Eagle, a Wisconsin newspaper founded by his dad. For reasons lost to time, he became fixated on the intangible world of latitude in 1938 and put up plaques around his home town of Marinette to mark the halfway line.”

There are other such signs, of course, not of Frank Noyes origin, such as at the Montana-Wyoming border, as seen in 2005.

Except for bathroom and gas breaks, the Wisconsin 45th parallel proved to be the last stop of the nearly 2,000 miles around the lake.

Grand Portage National Monument

Posted on August 13, 2023 by admin

So far since taking office, President Biden has proclaimed five new national monuments under the authority granted him by the Antiquities Act of 1906, including one only last week, with the lengthy name of Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni – Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument, which is in Arizona near the Grand Canyon. (For those keeping score, his immediate predecessor proclaimed five over four years.)

How can we keep up with all the new ones? For now, there are 133 national monuments, with more coming, I’ve read.

Grand Portage National Monument has been around a little longer. Longer than me, but not much, being one declared by President Eisenhower. It occupies land very near the tip of the arrowhead region of Minnesota, within a few miles of the Canadian border, which happens to the Pigeon River at that point.

I arrived fairly late in the afternoon of July 30. The U.S. flag, Minnesota and – what’s the other one?

The flag of the Grand Portage Band of Chippewa; the national monument is entirely within their reservation. More about them is here. Gichi Onigaming = The Great Carrying Place.

“Grand Portage was a fur-trade depot and route of the voyageurs at the western extremity [sic] of Lake Superior,” says the Canadian Encyclopedia. “It was the first and most strenuous of the 29 portages from Lake Superior west to Lac La Croix, requiring that each voyageur carry four loads of 80 kg over some 14 km of rocky trails around the cascades of the Pigeon River.

“The North West Co. (NWC) established an extensive post at the mouth of the river, which by 1784 was the wilderness capital of the fur trade, providing a meeting place for the voyageurs bringing supplies from Montréal (porkeaters) and the traders bringing furs from the North West (winterers). Within the post, which was protected by a 5-m high palisade, reinforced with a bastion and a heavy gate, were the Great Hall, living quarters, shops, warehouses and a stone powder magazine.”

The NWC packed up and left after it was finally determined that, according to the Jay Treaty of 1794, the site was in the United States rather than British North America, though it took some time for the company to actually leave (1802). In more recent times, the United States reconstructed the Grand Hall and the wooden palisades.

Along with Native structures of the period outside the palisade.

Inside the palisade, work still seems to be under way, or at least renovation. The Great Hall wasn’t open.

The North West Co. flag still flies.

As you’d expect, the Great Hall faces Grand Portage Bay. Once upon a time, it was a busy place in the short northern summers. Now, not so much.

Another view of Grand Portage Bay from the edge of the national monument.

Way off in the distance – though not really that far, about 20 miles – is Isle Royale National Park, a large island in Lake Superior, which was more distinct with the naked eye than in the digital image.

Still, I was a little surprised that it is visible at all. Except for some of the Alaskan properties, it’s pretty much the definition of remote among national parks, with only a few more than 25,400 visitors in 2022, according to the NPS. The fifth-least visited park in the system.

Since getting there and staying there is an involved process, I couldn’t make Isle Royale work logistically as a destination. This time.

The Wisconsin State Capitol

Posted on August 8, 2023 by admin

When I visited the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison in late July, I didn’t see this building.

Rather, I saw this one, late in the afternoon of the first day of my drive.

The beaux-arts capitol is actually Wisconsin’s fourth, replacing the one pictured in the postcard, which burned down in early 1904. The state tasked George B. Post to design a new structure, which took a while to complete, finally being finished in 1917. Post was known for late 19th-century mansions – paid for by robber barons who wanted to show off – but he also did other elaborate buildings, such as the New York Stock Exchange.

The gilded bronze on the top of the dome is yet another Daniel Chester French work, “Wisconsin.” French was a prolific fellow.

Like the Tiffany Bridge, this wasn’t my first visit to the capitol. That would have been sometime in the late 1980s. Wisconsin is, however, one of the few capitols, along with Texas and Illinois, that I’ve visited more than once.

So this visit didn’t change my vanity map of capitols, but I thought I’d update it anyway (green for interior visits, orange-pink for exteriors only, Hawaii gold because I don’t remember, but I might have seen it).

Lilly and I spent some time in the Wisconsin capitol during a December 2016 visit to Madison. It was cold that day, naturally, and visiting was a relief from the chilly air. This time the building interior was a relief because the day was hot and sticky. Besides, who doesn’t enjoy a view inside the dome?

The interior is as resplendent as the exterior. Badgers were in a few prominent places.

Those paintings are allegories. Liberty in this case, but also Justice, Government and Legislation, on the other three corners.

This capitol doesn’t feature a lot of statuary, unlike some, but there is a bust of Robert M. La Follette, no doubt considered a Wisconsinite among Wisconsinites.

I like these pics of him, lifted from Wikipedia. Fighting Bob all right.

The Assembly chamber was closed, but I could still see Old Abe through the window. He looks down on the legislators, presumably reminding them to do their duty.

I’ve seen Old Abe depicted before: on a tractor and a memorial at Vicksburg. Another Wisconsinite among Wisconsinites: He was the mascot of the 8th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry Regiment from 1861 to ’64.

“The regiment procured a large, shield-shaped mount and perch to carry the eagle,” says Atlas Obscura. “Old Abe witnessed all of the regiment’s battles. He was taken into combat with the regimental colors… Old Abe participated in 37 battles and skirmishes. The regiment mustered out of service in 1864. On September 26, 1864, his army comrades returned Old Abe to Wisconsin and gifted him to the people of the state.”

When the bird died in 1881, he was stuffed and put on display at the capitol – the one that burned down in 1904, reducing Old Abe to ashes. The one you can see now is another stuffed eagle, doing homage to the mascot. I didn’t remember seeing him on previous visits, but now I have. Huzzah for Old Abe.

Old World Wisconsin

Posted on July 25, 2023 by admin

On Canada Day this year, we were in Wisconsin. If we’d been in Canada, our Jasper Johns moment probably wouldn’t have happened.

Back up for a little context.

I looked him up, and remarkably, Jasper Johns is still alive at 93, and doing art as of only a few years ago.

We saw the patched 48-star flag on a clothesline of a re-created farm yard at Old World Wisconsin, our main destination during our early July southern Wisconsin dash (a one-day out, one-day back trip, according to my idiosyncratic definition).

Old World is a large open-air museum near Eagle, Wisconsin and Kettle Moraine State Forest. I’ve known about the place for years, probably since camping at Kettle Moraine in the late ’80s, but had never gotten around to a visit, not even with small children in tow. My Wisconsin completist impulses kicked in during the dash, so Yuriko and I went to Old World.

A unit of the Wisconsin Historical Society, the place is large: about 480 acres, with about 60 antique buildings from across the state, and a new brewpub, which I suppose counts as a welcome revenue stream for the nonprofit. Some are town buildings, others farm structures. Many immigrant styles are represented: Danish, Finnish, German, Norwegian, and Polish, and well as in-nation New England and African-American settlers in Wisconsin.

Among the town buildings is St. Peter’s (1839), the first Catholic church building in Milwaukee.

That wouldn’t be the last prominently placed stove we’d see. These were pre-HVAC buildings, after all. Makes me glad for the luxury of central heating, as much as I complain about winter.

More town structures.

The red one is an 1880s wagon shop from Whitewater, Wisconsin.

An 1880s blacksmith shop, with a smithy re-enactor.

And the band played on.

Among the farm structures, you can find this Norwegian schoolhouse.

With a spelling bee ongoing when we dropped in.

Antidisestablishmentarianism wasn’t a word in the bee, though it really isn’t that hard, come to think of it. Scherenschnitte: now there’s a tough one. Unless you’re German.

More farm structures.

More all-important stoves for those long winters. And cooking.

There were a few farm inhabitants, such as chickens and cows. We were able to sample some wonderful ice cream made from fresh milk. Also, we encountered an animal I called Future Bacon.

Yuriko chided me for that, but I’ve seen her eat bacon.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: US History