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adventures / history / Monday / photo / site — Comments Off
26
Dec 22

Holiday Train Show at the New York Botanical Garden, part two

We visited the holiday train show, which is something we’ve been invited to by family friends for years. Finally, the timing worked out. The trains — all 25 of them cruising around on a half-mile of of track — were … fine. What they are weaving around — almost 200 scaled down buildings made of bark, leaves, and other materials — is the real attraction. I took a lot of photos of the miniaturized parts of the city. Here are some of them. (Part one is here.)

This is the Terminal Warehouse. See that arch on the bottom? That was the key to the whole operation. You could drive a train into that arch, into the center of the building, for loading and off-loading freight. The Hudson River was nearby, and the area around the warehouse was a bustling center of shipping.

Hundreds of people were killed around the site over the years. In the 80s and 90s it was a popular night club, until the surrounding neighbor started to blight. In the last two decades, the building has been home to food and beverage retailers.

Here’s New York’s City Hall. Built in 1812, Wikipedia tells me this building is the nation’s oldest city hall in the still containing its original governmental functions and is one of the largest government buildings in the world. Even then, 13 agencies answering to the mayor’s office are located elsewhere.

City Hall is listed as a National Historic Landmark and on the National Register of Historic Places.

The cornerstone was laid in 1803, but the project faced delays over complaints about extravagance. The plans were reduced, and browstone was used in the back to lower costs. In the 1950s, the brownstone and original Massachusetts marble was replaced by Alabama limestone.

You’re welcome.

The Washington Arch is a marble memorial arch in Greenwich Village. It marks the 100th anniversary of George Washington’s 1789 inauguration as president.

The real one exists because, in 1889, a large plaster and wood memorial arch was installed by a local business man. It was a hit, and so a new fundraising effort went to work. Three years later, the permanent stone arch was erected.

This is the Park Avenue Armory, built in 1881.

Another name for the building is the Seventh Regiment Armory. The building is known for detailed interior rooms, which seems like a given considering the exterior. This is a big venue, and is today a non-profit powered alternative arts space. Also inside is a small detachment of the New York Army National Guard, two different veterans groups and a local mental health shelter.

Right about here, in the sprawling tour, I had to catch my wording. These, of course, aren’t the actual buildings. That is a big model, but you could probably only fit a few of those things inside it. Of course.

Here is (a naturalist model of) William K. Vanderbilt’s mansion. This was built between 1878 and 1882 on Fifth Avenue. Across the street was William H. Vanderbilt’s much larger mansion. (William H. was the son of the tycoon. William K. was his grandson.)

The French Renaissance-style was razed in 1927. There’s an office building there today.

Here’s a beautiful representation of Saint Bartholomew’s Church, in Manhattan. They hoisted this third version of the church into the air between 1916 through 1919. The land was sold to them by William H. Vanerbilt. Next spring they’ll mark the 100th anniversary of the church’s consecration.

If you like organs, this page has a great breakdown of what’s inside the church.

Speaking of icons, left to right you can see the General Electric Building (1930), the Met Life Insurance Tower (1909), One World Trade Center (2013) and the Woolworth Building (1912).

It was right here where I said, “Ya know, they should lay all of this out as a full scale model of the city.” Our family friend, who was born in New York City, laughed and launched into a discussion about all of the accidental things that are built, somewhat haphazardly, in the city. It was a colorful lecture.

Here’s the Chrysler Building (1930), a little sliver of the Flatiron Building (1903), the Plaza Hotel (1907) and the beautiful St. Patrick’s Cathedral (1879).

I’ve had the good fortune to see St. Patrick’s from several perspectives.

This is the Hurst-Pierrepont Estate. The real one is up the Hudson River.

The two-story brick Gothic villa was built in 1867 and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. It went on the market for $5 million in 2019. It was still for sale last year.

An hour-and-a-half up the Hudson, you’ll find the town of Newburgh, which was where Highland Gardens was located. It was built in the 1830s by an untrained, 20-something architect, Andrew Jackson Downing. This, then, is a model of his own home. He was also a landscape designer and a horticulturist, so the botanical gardens is a good place for this miniature.

And this is a good place to stop this installment. (Part one is here.) Two posts and 21 photos down, 20 more photos to go.

adventures / history / Monday / photo — 1 Comment
26
Dec 22

Holiday Train Show at the New York Botanical Garden, part one

We visited the holiday train show, which is something we’ve been invited to by family friends for years. Finally, the timing worked out. The trains were … fine, I guess. Sure, there’s 25 trains and trolleys rolling along over a half-mile of track, but what they are weaving around — almost 200 scaled down buildings made of bark, leaves, and other materials — is the real attraction. I took a lot of photos of the miniaturized parts of the city. Here are some of them.

The Elephantine Colossus was a Coney Island tourist attraction. The seven-story structure opened in 1885, and burned down in 1896. In between, it was a concert hall and amusement bazaar.

Its legs were 18 feet in diameter. The entrance was in a back leg. The front legs held a cigar store. Apparently, for a time, it was the first artificial structure that immigrants saw when they arrived to the United States.

This is a representation of the Coney Island Light, still on the west end of Coney Island. This one has been in place and helping sailors since 1920. While the real one is still, this one is made of sticks and bamboo and resin. For more than 40 years the lighthouse was manned by Frank Schubert, the last civilian lighthouse keeper in the United States. He spent his whole life working for the Coast Guard, including his last 14 years, after the lighthouse was automated (as all of them are these days). Schubert was America’s last civilian light keeper. He died at 88, in 2003, and is credited with saving 15 lives.

Earlier this year I read Brilliant Beacons: A History of the American Lighthouse and I commend that book to you if you are mildly interested in lighthouses.

The Wonder Wheel is a 150-foot-tall attraction on Coney Island — not all of these are on Coney. It was built in 1920 named an official New York City landmark in 1989. And the ride is still an active fixture.

I’ve never had a desire to visit Coney Island. (For sure, I’m probably missing out.) But now I want to go. I want to ride a century-old ferris wheel.

Presumably this was the first sign, or one of the early ones. Not having something like this is a crying shame.

Here’s the small version of Grand Central Station. The real one covers 48 acres, has 44 platforms, all below ground, serving 67 tracks.

I wonder what’s below this one.

When Grand Central Depot opened in 1871, 42nd Street was remote, undeveloped and north of much of the city, but not for long. Within two decades this was in the middle of everything. In a dozen more years, this terminal was seeing passengers. For some reason, 21.6 million people visited it in 2018. Wikipedia says that excludes actual passengers.

Hey! Look! Another lighthouse!

This is one of the largest buildings in the show. This version of the historic, and much-lamented, Penn Station, occupies 20 square feet.

The actual building, built in 1910 filled up two city blocks, or about 80 acres. Train travel declined after World War 2 and the station was demolished in 1964. It took decades for people to really decide that might have been a mistake. So when someone says the 60s were great, here’s one more data point to the contrary. What remains of the old Penn Station is now beneath Madison Square Garden.

Since this is a train show … here’s one pulling into Penn Station now.

And here’s another, departing. Just have a look at those columns on the building’s exterior. Remember, these models are built out of natural materials. Someone made dowels and sanded those.

This is Kykuit, home to four generations of the Rockefeller family, starting with John Rockefeller, founder of Standard Oil.

This is in Mount Pleasant, New York, on the Hudson Valley. You can tour the actual estate, which is a six-story house and, judging by the photos online, is much more attraction than this particular model, impressive though it is.

Kykuit is a historic site of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The model makers thought enough of it to display an unfinished version, a small version of a huge mansion in progress. And now some details: the facade is pine bark, the balconies are built from a black cherry stump’s fungus, and the railings are eucaluptus stems. The front door is made from lotus pod, pin oak acorn caps, sticks and hemp rope. Those are magnolia leaves making up the roof. The sculptures and cherubs are made from, among other things, pistachio shells, juniper berries, sea grass, cocoa nuts and mahogany. The eagle on top? A white pine cone on a bur oak acorn cap.

And now you’re beginning to understand the attention-to-detail involved in these models, but we’re only beginning to see all of the displays. I have 30 more photos to go!

Auburn / errands / history / iPhone / Tuesday — Comments Off
13
Dec 22

Start in ’22, end in ’23 … 1923, that is

So we got new phones. The Yankee’s phone was starting to show signs, and mine wasn’t too far behind. Makes sense, as she bought her old one before I did. But we got five-and-a-half years out of the old ones, and we were quite pleased with the deal she found for this go around.

She scoured the Internet, see, and now we have a wireless provider from Denmark. Sure, we have to pay our bills in Danish Krones, but that’s the price we’ve paid. Quite literally.

Anyway, they were supposed to arrive on Sunday or Monday. They showed up on Friday. I spent that evening backing up my old phone — no small trick! Many websites were consulted, because I was trying to back up my phone to an external drive. I was trying to do this because my computer doesn’t have enough room. After a long while I remembered I have this wonderful program called AnyTrans. Problem solved. Backup … backed … up.

So Saturday morning I turned the new phone on. It is bigger than what I’m accustomed to. And it doesn’t yet have a case. So use carefully, carefully, and use it only over soft surfaces.

We were supposed to receive charging blocks. Phones need juice. And, of course, Apple, sells those separately now. For environmental purposes. So consider this: Sunday afternoon we had a portion of our carbon footprint spent on computer-based messaging, and then a half-hour long phone call all wondering why those charging blocks didn’t arrive. The disinterested voice on the other side of the call had a simple solution. Proceed to your local cell phone provider store. They’ll just … give you some, or something.

Maybe something got lost in the original Danish.

Yesterday, we extended our carbon footprint when we drove to the cell phone store, donned masks and went inside demanding they give us those charging blocks, or else.

The else was implied. The implication was that if they didn’t give us those charging blocks … we still wouldn’t have charging blocks.

We still don’t have charging blocks. I think it was because we merely wore Covid masks, and didn’t lean into that implied no “Or else.”

“George” was impressed by his phone colleague’s tactics. (This is his real name, because he was cool.) He had us go through the story a few times. (I know, he couldn’t believe it either!) He talked to the boss. I think he called someone. We all shared a quality eye-roll and some good customer “service” jokes. He suggested we call the phone people once again.

So we further extended the carbon footprint — remember, these are sold separately now “for the environment.” Today, The Yankee spent more time on the phone trying to get phone charging blocks. And, apparently, the phone company will now send the phone charging blocks. Separately.

Thank goodness we’ve saved the environment.

Got my oil changed today. First time this year, so I’m a little overdue. But only in terms of mileage, and only just. Living in a pandemic and other realities have substantially depressed my driving. So I went to the oil place at the end of the day.

I think I was the last car they serviced today, and I’m not sure if that was a good idea. It’ll be some time before I feel comfortable about this because, while they did, in fact, vacuum the floorboards, they were done in about as much time as it took me to write these two paragraphs.

Also, the guy told me my right blinker was out, but my right blinker is not out. It’s possible he got the wrong note on the wrong car. End of a long day, and all. But what does that mean for, say, my oil pan?

You worry about these things. And you worry for a lot longer than it takes to change your oil these days, apparently.

I visited a nearby dollar store after that. Just thought I’d look for some gag gifts. You could hear people at the counter complaining about the prices of things. And it is true! Things have prices. And many of them are going up. “They” are trying to break us, it seems. Or make us go broke. These terms were used interchangeably.

I was mystified by how much Tupperware and plastic bins this dollar store was offering. I passed on the $8 LED lights. I was not convinced that they’d last more than a set of batteries, or even as long as that oil change took.

We haven’t looked at an old newspaper in a while. (OK, it has been almost a month.) Let’s go back to campus and read the alma mater’s classic rag.

This is from 99 years ago. I wrote for this same publication just … 73 years later. In the interim, design changed somewhat. But, in 1923, you sat down with this over breakfast, and maybe lunch, if you were a slow reader.

This is a four-page edition. Let’s pick out a few topics of interest.

Here’s a front-page story that’s telling. Record enrollment! Remember, this is 1923. So you’re in the middle of a still-poor South. An article in a story from the previous year explained they’d had a record graduation of 200-some students. So retention was clearly an issue, too. But electrical engineering was the biggest department on campus, agriculture was third and there weren’t nearly enough women on campus.

Speaking of what is today the College of Agriculture, this was the beginning of a boom period. The campus-proper is 16-square blocks, but of course there are things all over the state, and the acreage mentioned here now make up the test units spread across town. I spent a bit of time in these fields and barns.

Ag journalism major, ya dig?

The rest of that story is full of process, none of which matters anymore, but at the time, the gist was “patience is a virtue” and “hurry up and wait” and “your younger brothers, or your kids, will reap the benefits.”

The university itself, you see, was in some financially dire straits at the time. It took a long time for them to rise up to meet their peers. This period, in fact, was the beginning of that achievement. The effort continues to this very day, despite the current endowment being … $1.05 billion dollars.

Arthur and Mary did OK. They are buried in Birmingham. She died in her early 70s in 1979. Arthur lived until 1989. He was the yearbook business manager the previous year, so ink was in his blood and I have some of his work. His dad was a prominent newspaper editor in the state capitol. He had a brother who was a small town editor, a wildly successful humorist and a state lawmaker. That guy, Earl, is in the Alabama Newspaper Hall of Honor. For their part, Arthur and Mary raised a doctor.

Bruce and Ethel Jones went back to Birmingham. He died in 1965, I don’t know when his wife passed away. They had a son, Claude Jones, who died just a few years ago, and that man had a full and interesting life. They have a daughter who still lives in the Birmingham area.

Which brings us to Posey Oliver Davis. He started without much at all, really. He was surrounded by subsistence farms and postbellum cotton, which burrowed deep into the red lands, as it was called at the time.

He became a school teacher, went away to college in his early 20s, and graduated seven years before this was published. For a short while he was at Progressive Farmer, then went back to campus in 1920 to become agricultural editor for the Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station and the Alabama Extension Service. (I interned there.)

In our last look at the 1920s, WAMV came up. Davis begrudgingly took on a role there, struggled, moved the old gear and the new gear into Comer Hall (where I studied, seven decades later) and started WAPI (a station where I worked in my mid-20s). He became a pioneer of the medium.

He rose through the ranks at Extension and would become the longest-serving director in Alabama Extension history, viewed as a regional and national leader in agriculture during the Great Depression. Put it this way, when people talked about Extension’s mission of outreach, it would have been easy to think that’s what the O stood for in the man’s name. Frustrated by farmers that didn’t take the good scientific advice that Extension agents could offer, he doubled down. It would have been easy, one supposes, to ignore those that ignore your good works, but that wasn’t P.O. Davis’ style. “We must reach more people,” he famously preached in 1939. It’s a clinical, dry, passionate editorial — a catalog of what was being down, which illustrated what more needed to take place. Much of what Extension became in the second half of the 20th century, and beyond, started right there.

This piece that the paper is referring to? The one 16 years earlier? It got a lot right, hits hard on Davis’ recurring theme of crop diversification and misses a bit of the point and impacts of the Great Migration.

Not that the man could see into the future.

And, finally, here’s a little column filler. True today, as it was then.

I’ve looked ahead. Of the surviving issues of “The Plainsman” that are available, we’re going to jump ahead a bit further into the 1920s in our next irregular visit to the old paper, sometime early next year. But something interesting is coming. Just you wait.

There will be other interesting things in this same space tomorrow, so come back and for that.

books / history / television / Wednesday — Comments Off
7
Dec 22

Writing more words about reading more words

I have re-started a bad habit, at least for a short while. I’m now reading multiple books at the same time once again.

Oh, I used to do this a lot more. There was the book-in-the-car book, the regular-read book, the books I might have been studying at the time. In the Before Times, when I went out to eat, just about the most fun thing to do was to eat and read.

But these days, not so much. There’s a lot to read online, though I’ve determined I should cut back on that. I have a three-shelf bookcase full of things to read. The top is stacked with books. There’s another pile almost as tall as the bookcase. There’s dozens of books waiting patiently on my Kindle, too. You can’t work through that stack, I’ve learned, without a certain determination, without fewer distractions.

None of that includes whatever else may come my way.

And what’s come my way today is a library book. Craig Johnson is just about the only non-fiction author I read, and that’s only because of the Longmire TV show. The book series spawned the show. The show — featuring 33 episodes across three seasons on A&E and and an additional 30 episodes in three more, grittier, Netflix seasons — was far superior. But the books are close enough.

Johnson writes one of these every year now. I check them out from the local library around Thanksgiving. This is this year’s installment. I’m not sure how much more he can get out of the character, who was aging when it started. But these years later, the long-in-the-tooth part is stretching the realism.

Just as well, then, that this book is all in the spirit world, or the afterlife, or a drug-induced condition, or a coma. This is kind of annoying, because physics in an already physical world don’t always apply.

But, when our protagonist sheriff is a ghost, in the past, there’s this line …

It’s a good line.

I’ll wrap this book up in a night or two.

But I’m also happily sawing my way through Rick Atkinson. It’s late in 1776. Washington is on the run, from out of New York and into New Jersey, from the British. The situation is dire.

I like that Washington had time to order wine and water. And, in a book, these things get compressed, so we don’t know exactly when Nathanael Greene wrote this letter to his wife, maybe it was after the fact. But it’s nice to think he dashed it off just before hoping on his horse. Apparently, there was a window of about 10 minutes between the general receiving bad news and moving out. So probably that encouraging note came later, but …

Atkinson’s attention to detail is so great I’m surprised he didn’t draw the comparison to Joshua 1:9.

I’m in the last 20 percent, or so, of that book, which means I now have to agonize over it ending, wondering when the second installment of the trilogy is going to come out and, most importantly, decide what book, or how many, to read next.

adventures / art / history / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
22
Nov 22

Claude Monet at the LUME

This is Camille Pissarro’s “The Boulevard Montmartre on a Winter Morning.” Or part of that 1897 work, anyway. Circumstances, and shooting from the hip, and just trying to get the part I wanted. And the point is to say, guess what we saw today?

That’s the clue, and so was the headline, I guess. But the answer is, the impressionists!

Here’s part of Monet’s “Water Lily Pond.”

But the museum trip wasn’t about paintings directly, but rather a digital introduction and interpretation. Art in the 21st century, remixing the old masters. (More on that tomorrow.) And getting photobombed in the transitional elements of the show.

There’s a part where you can take your picture on an iPad, and select a filter — a big hit pre-Instagram, I’m sure — and then have it displayed on the art wall. Here we are.

This is a small work of Paul Cezanne, “Landscape at Auvers.”

Cézanne was an innovator and influenced countless modern artists as he sought to both reflect nature and show his own response to it, whatever that meant at the time. His mentor was Pissarro, but he would eventually move away from the impressionist movement.

Edgar Degas is also an impressionist, but he also worked in sculptures, and this one is on display at the LUME. The one on the right, I mean.

This is “Dancer Moving Forward, Arms Raised” which was found in Degas’ studio and cast in bronze in 1920, a few years after his death.

Here’s another painting of Camille Pissarro’s. This is an oil on canvas, circa 1865. Pissarro is sort of the elder statesman of the impressionists, and the neo-impressionist movement. Oh, and also post-impressionism. Talent, longevity and a willingness to grow allowed him to cover a lot of 19th century bases. Now, if you aren’t particularly an art connoisseur, you might not be familiar with Pissarro, so let’s just say this. Over the course of four-plus decades, all of the artists of the era — Cézanne, Gauguin, Renoir, Seurat, van Gogh — were all influenced by the man.

Pissarro was a contemporary of Armand Guillaumin, and this is one of his works, the 1877 “Quai d’Austerlitz.” It shows the left bank of the Seine River in Paris where Guillaumin worked nights for the Bridges and Roads Department. Later he won the lottery, and decided to spend his time on landscape paintings. Excellent choice, moving on to things you love.

And this is Pierre-August Renoir’s “Bouquet in a Vase.” Big broad, rapid strokes. I wonder how long this sort of canvas took to complete in the hands of a master.

And since Claude Monet is the name on the event, here’s a Monet. This is “Charing Cross Bridge, London” a turn-of-the-century oil on canvas. You can tell without even reading the placard that this is Monet’s London.

He spent the Franco-Prussian War there, and he painted almost 100 paintings of the Thames during his time in smoggy London Town. Monet spent a lot of time playing with the light and the smoke and fog that gave the Big Smoke its reputation.

Group picture time! (This is just before the gift shop. Every thing in its place.)

I’ll have more from this fun Newfields exhibit tomorrow.

After dinner we went back to Newfields for Winterlights, and a quick walk through of the famous Lilly House. I was surprised to see this part of the house. They lifted this idea directly from my Pinterest page.

Here are some of the Winterlights. The big blue tunnel near the grand finale.

The weather was perfect. Everyone at Newfields was having a great time and full of the initial holiday cheer of the season. There will be a video or two from the lights show tomorrow, too. But it’s late, and, for now, I want to leave you with one final impression.