Spring Seesaw

Posted on April 18, 2023 by admin

Fitting somehow for Monday morning. Of course, the snow didn’t even last till noon, though it remained chilly all day.

For days before, the warm version of spring had been ascendant, creating conditions for a number of enjoyable meals on the deck. Cold spring returned on Sunday, got worse on Monday but eased somewhat today. Warm tomorrow, then rain, then cold again. Such is the spring cycle.

I almost forgot – because who wants to remember? – that the first night we were in the Uniontown, Pa., area last month, at a upper-mid hotel chain, the fire alarm went off at about 8 p.m. Yuriko had gone to the pool and I was in the room with the dog.

Those alarms are loud. I knew that in some abstract sense, but listening to BLAT! BLAT! BLAT! while you get the dog ready to go, grab an extra jacket for yourself and your wife, and make sure you have all your valuables on your person – it focuses the mind, and not in a good way.

I didn’t think to bring the good camera, which was tucked away. So all I had was my phone, which I use as a phone and to call up maps, but usually not as a camera. Because it takes crappy pictures.

Got to see the South Union Fire Co. in action. Not much action, since there was no fire. Mostly we waited around in the parking lot until we noticed people going back in after about 20 minutes. How did they know the emergency was over? Not because the desk clerk said anything. But I was able to confirm from a passing fireman that it had indeed been a false alarm.

More From the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania

Posted on April 16, 2023 by admin

Our most recent trip took us to fully 25% of the nation’s commonwealths, to celebrate a famed example of a distinction without a difference.

It wasn’t quite full spring in Pennsylvania last month, but warm enough most of time.

We drove the National Road (U.S. 40) in Pennsylvania, from where it crosses the border near Wheeling, through to Uniontown, and later drove the segment that goes into Maryland.

Didn’t quite make it to the eastern terminus, in Cumberland, Maryland. Once upon a time, maybe a small detour during a late ’90s return from Dallas, we saw the western terminus in Vandalia, Illinois.

One minor landmark along the way.

Searight’s Tollhouse, built in 1835 by the commonwealth of Pennsylvania to collect tolls, since the federal government had turned the road over to its various states that year. The structure, near Uniontown, is one of two surviving tollhouses, out of the six built. No tolls have been collected there since the 1870s.

The structure was built near the tavern of William Searight, the state commissioner in charge of the roadway, per Wiki.

Barman and toll collector. There’s an idea for a Western revival limited series on streaming: Will Searight, Frontier Toll Collector. I’m thinking a comedy, in the same Shakespearean writing style as Deadwood, but no one gets killed.

A church on the National Road, east of Uniontown: Mount Washington Presbyterian, founded in 1842.

The church cemetery provides a view of the National Road.

In Uniontown itself, I stopped by briefly at Oak Grove Cemetery, originally the Union Cemetery of Fayette County, which has been accepting permanent residents since 1867.

Famed permanent residents? I checked with Find-A-Grave (just now), and the pickings are slim: mostly forgotten members of the U.S. Congress, though there is a Civil War officer, Silas Milton Bailey (d. 1900). I just made his acquaintance. Quite a story. Uniontown jeweler in civilian life; solider that didn’t let getting shot in the face keep him from action for long.

Fort Necessity is just off U.S. 40 and thus the National Road. Something I noticed there, featured on a park service educational sign. Of course. How could they not be involved?

The camp, Pennsylvania SP-12, existed from 1935 to ’37, with about 800 men, planting trees and laying out trails and roads. This is the first time I’ve seen the CCC seal depicted at any of its sites, though of course the men sometimes rate bronze recognition. There is evidence that the seal dates back to the active period of the corps.

Just as we left Pennsylvania for the last time, I was able to stop at the border with Maryland on U.S. 219, just south of Salisbury, Pa. Not just any border, but the Mason-Dixon Line. It’s one thing to cross it, as I have who knows how often. It’s another thing, according to my eccentric lights, to stand on it.

Yuriko had never heard of it. I explained a little about its history and its wider but not quite literal meaning as a line between free and slave, North and South, but she didn’t find it all that impressive.

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.

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.

Ohiopyle State Park

Posted on March 30, 2023 by admin

The curious name Ohiopyle has naught to do with Ohio, which is apparently from a Seneca word meaning “big river” – but rather apparently a Delaware (Lenape) word meaning “frothy waters.” Standing on the banks of the Youghiogheny River, looking at Ohiopyle Falls in Ohiopyle State Park in southwestern Pennsylvania, that’s easy to see.

For its part, Youghiogheny, also Lenape, apparently means “flowing backwards,” and so it seems to at times, as it twists along, including in the park. I say apparently each time because I only know what I read, and am not an authority on any Native American language, or the place names that evolved from Indian words, which have a long history of being mangled or given over to (apparently) fanciful translations.

The state park is large – more than 20,000 acres – and Fallingwater is just outside its bounds. After visiting Fallingwater, we sought lunch in the town of Ohiopyle, which is actually the borough of Ohiopyle. Pennsylvania has counties, cities, boroughs and townships, but not towns, according to the Pennsylvania Manual, Volume 125, page 6-3. Boroughs form a middle rank of populated areas between cities and townships.

Anyway, the borough of Ohiopyle is only a few blocks in any direction, and clearly a tourist town, but not on the order of Gatlinburg in Tennessee or Wisconsin Dells or Hannibal, Mo. Rather, it caters to visitors to the park, who are mostly there for rafting, kayaking, and canoeing on the waters, and hiking, horseback riding, cross-country skiing, mountain biking and snowmobiling on land. I have a feeling the place is best known to Yinzers and unpleasantly crowded on summer weekends.

Mid-March is low season, and so pleasantly uncrowded. Only one place that served food seemed to be open, and we got sandwiches to go. There must be some full-time residents. Someone goes to Ohiopyle United Methodist Church.

Across the street from the church is a former train station, these days a tourist office with public bathrooms that serve recreational travelers on the Great Allegheny Passage. I don’t think I could think of a more Pennsylvania-y name than that for a trail. If we had a mind to – or more to the point, time for it – we could have walked to Pittsburgh. Or to Cumberland, Maryland, going the other way.

I didn’t know it at the time, but the trail was formed from a series of abandoned railway lines: Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad, Union Railroad, and Western Maryland Railway. Standing in Ohiopyle, all you see is that the trail crosses a cool old railroad bridge.

Love locks. Not many, though. Guess that beats graffiti.

Yuriko and the dog went on ahead. I paused here and there to push my camera button, and take in the views of the Youghiogheny in that better way, with your eyeballs.

I’d just planned to cross the bridge and come back, but they found a trail at the bottom of the stairs, one leading off onto the Ferncliff Peninsula.

Looked easy enough. Mostly the trail followed the river.

Eventually the trail lost its through-the-woods vibe and offered us rock surfaces and large underfoot stones and mud patches, which slowed us down.

Better shoes and our walking sticks were back at the car, so eventually we turned around, but not before getting a close look at the top of Ohiopyle Falls.

Just another bit of turbulence destined for the Gulf: Youghiogheny, Monongahela, Ohio, Mississippi.

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.

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.

Anticipating Arctic Air

Posted on December 15, 2022 by admin

Cold rain well into the night yesterday, enough to wake the sump pump. The good thing was, it didn’t ice everything over today.

Still, we’re on the cusp of a chill. Cold enough by Christmas Eve to snap off bits of Santa’s beard, looks like.

But that’s nothing to the jolly immortal elf. Has he ever got some stories about the Little Ice Age.

In the course of my day today, I was reading about the Lehigh Valley distribution market, which is one of the nation’s largest in square feet (and throughput, I assume). Distribution, as in the system of warehouses that concentrate and store goods until they’re shipped to stores or otherwise delivered to customers. You know, the agglomerations of mostly characterless but highly efficient and valuable buildings that most people drive by without a passing thought. But they’re buying in stores and elsewhere, keeping the whole distribution system in motion.

Then it occurred to me that otherwise I didn’t know jack about the Lehigh Valley. So a little reading followed. The area’s industrial history is deep.

How is it I didn’t know anything about the Lehigh Canal?

Now I do. Glad I got out of bed today.

Another reason I’m glad I made the commute downstairs to my office was my discovery early this evening of Allison Young singing “When I’m With You (Christmas Every Day).”

“I’m hearing some delightful strength and control that wasn’t there in years past,” says one of the YouTube comments. I’ll second that, but add that she was delightful enough in years past (and not too many years past).

Art Institute Spaces, Small and Large

Posted on December 8, 2022 by admin

I’d like to say I visited this room recently — looks interesting, doesn’t it? — but I only looked into the room.

An English great room of the late Tudor period, 1550-1603, according to a nearby sign. I couldn’t get in because one inch within this room equals one foot in an actual room of that kind, so at best I could get a hand in.

The Art Institute doesn’t want anyone to do that, and for good reason, since random hands would completely wreck any of the Thorne Miniature Rooms. So they are behind glass in walled-in spaces, and not at eye level for someone as tall as I am.

Still, I leaned over to look in. The fascination is there. Not just for me, but for the many other people looking at the rooms on Saturday. Each room evokes a different place or time, heavily but not exclusively American or European settings.

English drawing room, ca. 1800.

French library, ca. 1720.

Across the Atlantic. Pennsylvania drawing room, 1830s.

Massachusetts living room, 1675-1700.

The fascination isn’t just with the astonishing intricacy of the work, which it certainly has, but also the artful lighting. Artful as the light-play on a Kubrick set. I know those are electric lights in the background, but it looks like the rooms are lighted the way they would have been during those periods. With sunlight, that is.

“Narcissa Niblack Thorne, the creator of the Thorne Rooms, herself had a vivid imagination,” says the Art Institute. “In the 1930s, she assembled a group of skilled artisans in Chicago to create a series of intricate rooms on the minute scale of 1:12.

“With these interiors, she wanted to present a visual history of interior design that was both accurate and inspiring. The result is two parts fantasy, one part history — each room a shoe box–sized stage set awaiting viewers’ characters and plots.” (More microwave oven–sized, I’d say.)

Thorne (d. 1966) had the wherewithal to hire artisans during the Depression by being married to James Ward Thorne, an heir to the Montgomery Ward department store fortune, back when department stores generated fortunes. Bet the artisans were glad to have the work.

It wasn’t my first visit to the Thorne Rooms, but I believe I appreciate it a little more each time. I know I feel that way about the Chicago Stock Exchange Trading Room, which I also visited on Saturday.

The Thorne Rooms are an exercise in constrained space. The Trading Room is one of expansive space. So much so that my basic lens really isn’t up to capturing the whole. Still, I try.

No one else was in the room with me. It is a little out of the way, in museum wayfinding terms, and it is the artwork, rather than being mere protective walls and climate control, so maybe people pass it by.

Not me. I spent a while looking at details.

Overhead.

Such a grand room. Victorian ideas at work, striving to add uplift to a space devoted to grubby commerce. I’d say they succeeded.

“Designed by Chicago architects Louis Sullivan and his partner, Dankmar Adler, the original Chicago Stock Exchange was completed in 1894,” the museum notes on a page that also extols the room as a place where as many as 300 people can meet.

“When it was demolished in 1972, sections of the Trading Room, including Sullivan’s elaborate stenciled decorations, molded plaster capitals, and art glass, were preserved and used in the 1976–77 reconstruction of the room here at the Art Institute.”

I attended an event there myself for some forgotten reason about 20 years ago. Suits and ties (a while ago, as I said), dresses, and drinks in hand, the room hosted such a crowd with ease. If I had 300 people to entertain, I’d certainly consider renting the place.

Verschiedene Artikel (Donnerstag)

Posted on December 10, 2020 by admin

Still above freezing most of the time, and no snow or ice. My kind of winter. But rain is slated for the weekend, devolving into snow. Maybe. That might interfere with getting a Christmas tree.

Not long ago I visited a high floor of an office building here in the northwest suburbs, something I don’t do to much these days. The view included the roof of a major retail location.Not very green, that roof. Besides whatever sustainability might be achieved, a roof that includes plants is more interesting to look at. Such as can be seen here and here. I don’t get to visit green roofs that often — ones such as the Chicago City Hall are inaccessible — but I did see one in suburban Toronto during my green press tour in that metro area. Didn’t take any pics.

Just behind the retailer is the office building’s nigh-empty parking lot.

Parking takes up a lot of space, no doubt about it. This study only focuses on a few cities, however, not the endless suburbs.

I set the background of my laptop to change every minute, and to keep things interesting, and I change the collection of images the computer uses every few days, if I remember to. Yesterday I directed the computer to use the images in the file July 5, 2019, which was our first day in Pittsburgh last year.

This popped up as part of the cycle. I’d forgotten I’d taken it.
That was in the Andy Warhol Museum.

Ann and I are still watching Star Trek roughly once a week. I’d say she’s seen about half of the original series. The most recent ones were the “Immunity Syndrome” and “A Private Little War,” both of which hold up reasonably well, though in strict storytelling terms, “Immunity” is better, since the concept is simple and the execution fairly taut. It’s the crew of the Enterprise vs. a whopping big space amoeba.

Best of all, it doesn’t turn out that the whopping big space amoeba is actually a sophisticated intelligence that the heroes eventually learn to communicate with and peacefully coexist with, a la Roddenberry.

That can be an OK track for a story — such as in “Devil in the Dark” — but for sheer space pulp drama, what you want is a mindless menace that needs to be destroyed by the last act. Star Trek did an even better job of that in “The Doomsday Machine,” in which the Enterprise fights a massive bugle corn snack that shoots death rays.

At first I thought “A Private Little War” was the (stupid) episode with the Yangs and the Cohms, in which Capt. Kirk recites the Pledge of Allegiance, among other looniness. No, that’s “The Omega Glory,” which we haven’t gotten to.

“War” is a jerry-built metaphor for the Vietnam War, involving as it does war among alien rustics, a Klingon plot to arm the natives, Kirk’s “balance of power” response, etc. Also, there was a raven-haired femme fatale with a bare midriff that got the attention of the 13-year-old I once was, and a creature that looked like a man in an albino gorilla suit, because that’s what it surely was. Spock bled green from a gunshot wound and Nurse Chappell got to slap him around. Why didn’t we ever see more of Dr. M’Benga? (Seems he was in another episode briefly.) Here’s why: actors cost money, as much as showrunners might wish otherwise.

One more item for today. Not long ago we got takeout at Asian Noodle House, a wonderful storefront that seems to be surviving on the takeout trade. We go there every other month or so. Fortune cookies come with each order, one per entre. Each wrapped in its own little plastic bag.

Today we got three little bags. One of them had two cookies tightly packed within. Is that like getting a double yolk? Does it mean extra good fortune or extra bad chi? Maybe one cookie is ying, the other yang.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Tag Archives: Pennsylvania