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The Newseum, Holocaust museums

Once again I went to a museum that was seemingly designed for my nerdiness. I’ve never been to The Newseum before. The first time I was in D.C., 10 years ago this summer, it was closed in preparation for the move to the new location on Pennsylvania Avenue. And so, finally, after years on their site, having lunch with their executive director and so on, I’m finally here.

They have a large section of the Berlin Wall. The side facing East Berlin was painted white — the better to spot people on. The side facing West Berlin often looked like this. Vandals had to actually stand in the eastern sector to cover the wall, so they faced considerable danger in making their statements and art.

The microphone tour continues — I should start a subsection on the site, I guess. This WTOP is a DC operation. It is one of the few major markets where I was never on the air:

Another CBS flag, another supposedly used by FDR for his fireside chats. I bet all the microphones from the 1930s, when they get together at microphone reunions, say that they were there. The stopwatch, before software, was a big part of the backtiming enterprise:

Radio Free Europe, a station set up to send a broadcast over the Berlin Wall. That’s the famous Brandenburg Gate in a photo in the background:

This is a reporter’s notebook used to cover the famous 1963 church bombing in Birmingham that killed four little girls one beautiful Sunday morning. Denise McNair, whose name you see there, was one of them. Her father tells the story so beautifully. I interviewed him several times in 2001 during the Thomas Blanton Jr. and Bobby Frank Cherry trials over the bombing. A former Jefferson County commissioner, as of this writing McNair is in jail on a bribery conviction.

(Update: Less than three weeks later a federal judge ordered McNair released for health considerations.)

This 1950s-60s teletype is part of a JFK display. They have it loaded with the first flashes of the story. That’s how newsrooms once received reports from far away, kids. The first report was that three shots rang out in Dallas:

In that same 1963 sliver of time, this camera was considered top of the line. Technology is grand:

Found this in the Newseum’s incredibly impressive newspaper display. I’ve always thought it was one of the best mastheads in the nation’s history. It was first published in April 1789 as a biweekly rag friendly to the George Washington administration, back when publications were more obviously partisan.

This is the first issue of the New York Times. Founded by Henry Jarvis Raymond and George Jones, the paper announced “We publish today the first issue of the New-York Daily Times, and we intend to issue it every morning (Sundays excepted) for an indefinite number of years to come.”

The Neosho Times here was a sample of advertising on the front page — which is no new thing. I include it because my family was related to Jesse James. The Missouri Historical Society, a good one, has six years of the Neosho paper digitized. The Missouri town these days is served by the Neosho Daily News. Newspapers.com tells us the Times ran at least until 1939.

A nice little Frederick Douglass display:

And the increasingly rare Double V campaign:

This was worth coming to see all by itself. This is Ernie Pyle’s typewriter. He carried that into Europe and the Pacific islands and typed his stories right there. Ernie Pyle. This is the Pyle book you want to read, by James Tobin.

Benjamin Harrison started a paper in London in 1679 and, later opened North America’s first paper, Publick Occurrences in 1690. This is that paper. It was shut down by authorities after just one issue. He wrote a piece that accused the king of France having an affair with his daughter-in-law. Ahead of his time?

The Newseum is contemporary too. This is less than a week old:

They have some rare books. This is a 1774 reprint of Letters From a Pennsylvania Farmer. It is hard to overstate the importance of this book in colonial America. It has has somehow escaped common history tellings. Scholars have likened it to Milton, Swift and Burke or Cato’s Letters or Cicero:

After the 2011 tsunami in Japan the local newspapers were offline. This is how one staff kept the news going. Heroic, in its own way, if you ask me:

This is a Pulitzer Prize winning photograph. The subject is Auburn’s gold medalist, Rowdy Gaines. Three photographers from The Orange County Register were up against bigger papers with huge staff, so they started looking for something unusual, heretofore unseen. They wanted readers to see an image they hadn’t watched on television the night before. (Novel approach, right?) Rowdy had just won the gold in the 100-meter free and was celebrating with his swim teammates, and this was the iconic picture. Golden-haired All-American speed demon does good, wins a paper, and photographer Hal Stoelzle, the prize.

We’re now making the joke public, apparently. In one of the Newseum’s three — count ’em, three — gift shops:

We’re all about the second amendment too:

We had lunch at Merzi, best described as an Indian Chipotle. And it was delicious. And then we visited the Holocaust Memorial Museum. It is a no pictures place. I wanted to take two, but I only had the opportunity for one, with no flash:

The wall reads:

We are the shoes, we are the last witnesses.
We are shoes from grandchildren and grandfathers,
From Prague, Paris and Amsterdam,
And because we are only made of fabric and leather
And not of blood and flesh, each one of us avoided the hellfire.
— Moishe Shulstein

And you are in a world where people’s fillings were extracted, property stolen auctioned, people were worked to death and their hair shorn, so it could be sold to serve as stuffing for mattresses, socks, boat bumpers, thread and anything else hair can be used for.

There’s a lot of grim life and death in this museum, and precious few smiles. But they stand out just because they are there.

There are two walkways where the glass is simply etched with the names of towns that were raided and disappeared. The photograph I wanted to take was a three-floor room of nothing but photographs. I’m drawn to old photos anyway, of course, and these were no different. Four photographers had documented the village of Eishishok in modern Lithuania for decades. Scholarship says Jews had been there for 900 years and, in 1941, they were wiped out in two days. And they are on display there, all of them ghosts. Some of them died from ill health or old age or pure evil. And they’re all looking out, staring at you.

It was singularly one of the most curiously haunting experiences I’ve ever encountered.

They call it the Tower of Faces, but there’s no name strong enough.

One last look at the Capitol, because it is from a angle three degrees different from the last one:

Here’s a building of the National Bank of Washington, one of those boom-and-bust organizations that so readily speaks to the banking condition. You can read all about it here. It was a PNC bank recently, but that’s gone now too. The National Registry of Historic Places document is a good read.

Look who made another great trip possible! She’s the best trip designer ever, even if I have to sell my feet at the airport for a new pair:

We’re going up into the light! Did pretty well on the Metro, I came home with a card holding five extra bucks. Who is going to DC soon?

And here’s the sunset we watched most of the way home. I’ll have a video about this tomorrow:

Great trip. Wonderful weekend. Hope your weekend was even better than mine.

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10
Aug 13

The Wild Bunch — on Segways

We learned how to do this today:

And then we went on a tour of the district. The guide said you steer these things with your feet or your hips. I knew what he meant. I would steer with my feet, and I did. And they already hurt. Now they hurt more, but who’s complaining? I mean, besides me.

Here’s the north lawn of the White House:

And now the Treasury Department. There’s no money in there! Har har.

This is the Old Post Office. Lately it is owned by Donald Trump, his first DC property. Built in 1899, it was the largest office building in Washington. It operated as a post office for only 15 years. Now it has office space. Soon it will be a hotel.

It boasts a 315-foot clock tower and some of the impressive views in town. Inside are the official United States Bells of Congress, a bicentennial gift from England celebrating the end of the Revolutionary War. They ring every Thursday evening and on special occasions. Something to check out on our next visit.

A picture of feet. And a Capitol building in the background.

The Smithsonian Castle on the Mall. Designed by James Renwick Jr., the Seneca red sandstone was originally intended to be white marble. Finished just after the Civil War, today it houses the administrative offices of the Smithsonian and the tomb of James Smithson.

Learning more about history on the Mall:

Nice to know some people still care, at the Vietnam Memorial:

The Washington Monument is covered in scaffolding in the background here. They are working to repair damage after the 2011 earthquake. It is said to be structurally sound, but essentially closed until sometime next year:

Some buildings just need a good high pressure washing. This is one of them:

After the Segway tour The Yankee changed and went back to the conference. I went to meet Elisabeth! She drove up to spend the day with us, which was great since we haven’t seen one another in four years. You won’t recognize her here, because she’s in disguise at the Spy Museum:

We had dinner here, one of those places with a full menu of delicious sounding food. When it came out it was delicious, and I would have liked more than the meager serving size. It was that kind of restaurant.

The check came out in a cigar box:

Elisabeth, Chris, The Yankee and I went to a bookstore on Dupont Circle for dessert. We had the cheesecake:

And here we are on the escalator:

Tomorrow, more tourist stuff and hanging out with Elisabeth and Chris.

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9
Aug 13

Smithsonian Museum of American History

After a day at the AEJMC conference we set out for the Smithsonian, which has many museums on the National Mall. And the mall looks pretty rough. But the Capitol is nice.

Here are a few of the artifacts we saw. These microphones were used by Franklin D. Roosevelt for his famous fireside chats:

This miniature desk, designed by Thomas Jefferson, was where he wrote drafts of the Declaration of Independence:

A movie I’d never heard of, but now I want to see. Apparently James Earl Jones is not a big fan, but no worry. The plot is that there was an accident that killed high ranking officials and Jones’ character rose to the White House. That did not go over well. Mostly because they didn’t know he was also Darth Vader:

I don’t collect things like this, but I really, really want a Clinton Jack-in-the-Box. Now imagine your best Clinton voice humming the Jack-in-the-Box song:

In one museum display they have correctly described an entire generation:

And there was so much, much more. There was the flag that inspired the national anthem — the first time I was here it was still being restored. You can’t take pictures of it, and you can’t quite make out the contemporary covers of the tune from where you see the flag, but the giant old flag is worth the walk alone.

Did I mention walking? My feet hurt. We haven’t even done that much walking.

Oh, by the way, the conference is being held near Chinatown. Here’s the big hint:

Tomorrow we learn to ride Segways.

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9
Aug 13

Touring the Capitol, Arlington

We did conferences this morning, where there were sessions and many tweets and meeting people and plenty of good research and teaching ideas. The conference is a good one.

In the late afternoon we ventured over to see the nice people who work in our Congressman’s office. We know them because we are High Powered People. You should see The Yankee’s pictures which prove it.

Anyway, one of them gave us a lovely, personal and individualized tour of this place:

Maybe you’ve heard of it.

Each stand has two statues installed at the capitol. One of Alabama’s, the newest addition which was installed in 2009 by sculptor Edward Hlavka is Helen Keller:

She replaced Jabez Curry, whom hardly anyone remembers — our guide was surprised I knew who he was. But let’s be honest about this: I’m me. And Curry was important. Also, that statue is now two floors below my office on campus.

Here’s the other statue, of Fightin’ Joe Wheeler, a man so awesome he was a Confederate general and then, decades later, an American general. If they come any tougher than Fighting Joe you don’t want to know about it. He was born in Georgia, was raised in Connecticut and died in New York. But he considered himself a Southerner and represented Alabama in the House of Representatives for several terms. I guess that qualifies for statuary.

He went from lieutenant to colonel to general in about nine months and made major general by 27, which you could do in the calvary if you lived long enough. He fought at Shiloh, Corinth, Chickamauga and Chattanooga. He was just about the only thing that slowed down Sherman, fought in Knoxville, Atlanta and Savannah, but the Georgians nevertheless didn’t care much for Wheeler. In the scheme of things it was largely ineffectual. He also fought in the Carolinas and try to cover the cowardly retreat of Jefferson Davis. He was captured late in the war, but only after he’d been wounded three times and had 16 horses shot out from under him. Sixteen!

He commanded calvary in the Spanish-American War, and was over a young Theodore Roosevelt there. Edmund Morris, in his near-hagiography The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt has Wheeler anecdote I shared today (from pages 668 and 675, respectively):

According to invasion orders, Major General Joseph (“Fighting Joe”) Wheeler, commander of the Calvary Division, was supposed to follow Brigadier General H.W. Lawton of the 2nd Infantry Division to Siboney and remain there to supervise the rest of the landing operation while Lawton established himself farther inland on the Camino Real, or Santiago road. But not for nothing had Fighting Joe earned his nickname, and his reputation of “never staying still in one place long enough for the Almighty to put a finger on him.” The fact that Lawton was tall, and fought for the Union in the Civil War, while Wheeler was five foot two, and had been the leader of the Confederate cavalry, only intensified the latter’s ambition to be first to encounter “the Yankees — dammit, I mean the Spaniards.” Needless to say, this attitude endeared him to the Rough Riders. “A regular game-cock,” was Roosevelts opinon of the bristling little general.

[…]

The way was now open for a final grand charge by all the American forces, with Roosevelt commanding the extreme left, Wood commanding the center, and the regulars on the right advancing under orders from General Wheeler himself. About nine hundred men broke out into the open and ran up the valley (Roosevelt stopping to pick up three Mauser cartridges as souvenirs for his children), their rifle-cracks drowned in the booming of four Hotchkiss mountain-guns. Like ants shaken from a biscuit, some fifteen hundred Spaniards leaped from their rock-forts along the ridge and scattered in the direction of Santiago. “We’ve got the damn Yankees on the run!” roard Fighting Joe.

He also commanded a brigade during the Philippine-American War until January 1900. He wrote five books, co-authored several more and appeared in an early film, Surrender of General Toral. He’s one of the few former Confederates buried at Arlington. This statue has been on display at the Capitol for 88 years. And he’s always been in front of Sam Houston:

That statue, with Wheeler in Confederate uniform, was made by Berthold NebelBut that means that northwest Alabama is over-represented at the Capitol. I wonder if anyone has figured that out yet.

This clock was on display in the House of Representatives chamber for almost 75 years, from around the Civil War until just before the stock market crashed. (The clock had nothing to do with either, we’re sure.) The gilded oak case was designed by Joseph A. Bailly and built by the A. Bembe and Kimbel Company. The bronze eagle was modeled by Guido Butti, who did a lot of Capitol work, and cast by Archer, Warner, Miskey and Company. William H. Rinehart designed the Indian and Hunter figures. They were cast by Cornelius and Baker.

This is the original Supreme Court. Just outside the door are the hooks where they hanged their robes. The nameplates are a new addition. But this is where the Justices heard arguments and that railing there, just on the other side of the padded seat, is thought to have given us the phrase “passed the bar.”

This Magna Carta replica was given to us by the UK. The presentation case is stainless steel, clad in gold and white. The panel in the front is inscribed with a replica of the Magna Carta and has replicas of King John’s seal. The vertical glass panel is the English translation.

There are symbolic decorations of Adam and Eve, 50 diamonds representing the states, above a dove and a tree of life, a snake representing evil, the fruit of original sin and mistletoe. There’s the Tudor Rose of England, the Shamrock of Ireland, thistles of Scotland and daffodils of Wales. Thirty-one craftsmen worked on this case, designed by the man who made Prince Charles’ investiture crown.

It was presented to celebrate the bicentennial of American independence, in 1976. The oldest original copy of the Magna Carta rested here for a year.

This is the old Senate chamber. It was used from 1810 until 1859. Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, all of the names you read about in history class sat here. Many of the desks (now reproductions as the surviving originals have been moved to the modern Senate) have books placed on them marking historic figures or events.

That is an original George Washington painting, by Rembrandt Peale. The desk where the vice president sat is also original. Our guide mistakenly, or not so mistakenly, called it a throne.

This room was never humble. The Congress has always thought of themselves as better than the rest of us:

This is the famous, and famously incorrect John Trumbull painting.

John Adams explains it himself:

Here’s a more … clever … interpretation of Trumbull’s vision. Nevertheless, this is the first completed painting of four Revolutionary-era scenes that the U.S. Congress commissioned from John Trumbull.

Speaking of paintings. Did you know that Samuel Morse dabbled with the colors? Morse of the Morse code Morses, that is. This is a study for the old House of Representatives chamber. He did this around 1821, to prepare for a nine-by-11 foot painting of the space.

There is apparently only one section of floor in the Capitol that is mosaic. This is one corner of it:

This Ronald Reagan, sculpted by Chas Fagan statue is in the Capitol rotunda as one of California’s two statues. The Tennessee Rose marble pedestal includes a narrow band of concrete pieces from the Berlin Wall. You can just see it at the bottom of the photo.

One of my favorite things about Washington is the symbolism and how so many small details of history and meaning are intertwined in everything, just like that statue. Also, if you want to see more about all of the state’s statues, here’s the official site.

I’d almost completely forgotten about this, but our guide suggested we go see the Toomer’s Oak on Capitol Hill before the rains came. If I’d been on top of my game I would have visited a restroom in the Capitol, grabbed some toilet paper and did this up proper. But we rolled it anyway, with TP from the Cannon Building, one of the Congressional offices.

We carefully removed the paper after taking a few pictures.

The Library of Congress, which is situated across from the Capitol:

We took the Metro over to Arlington National Cemetery. We walked around for a long time, seeing the Kennedy’s and several Alabama men, a Medal of Honor winner Harry Parks and more generals than you can shake an admiral at.

We made it up to the tomb just in time to see the changing of the guard.

We also walked over to Dean Hallmark’s grave. I wrote about him. His cousin is my friend. The two men buried on either side of him are also Doolittle Raiders. Elite company on that quiet little hill.

We had a lot of walking today — and my feet would tell you all about it — and more tomorrow.

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4
Aug 13

Catching up

Aside: I wrote my first blog posts 10 years ago today. They weren’t especially insightful or useful, but they gave me something to do on slow afternoons after work. Ten years is a long time to do anything, it is fairly old for a blog. But this one is still moving along. Here’s to the next 10 years!

And now we continue on with the Catching up feature. This is the 112th edition of Catching up, where we normally share leftover photos that didn’t land anywhere else during the week. The time frame this time is a bit longer as we get back into the swing of things. With that, let us begin.

This is the lock on one of the doors in the Churchill War Museum in London. It protects Room G, which is Plant Room No. 7. During the war this room provided power to the underground offices and was restricted to H.M.O.W. staff only. Now it is part museum piece, part banquet hall that can be rented out.

In the little cantina in the Churchhill War Museum. The cup on the right sat on every table and held sugar and other sweeteners. The one on the left held my vegetable soup, which was essentially a pureed squash with a few other ingredients:

You see crazy things on public transportation in the U.S., but we didn’t see anything like that on the Underground in London. This lady was the extent of the eccentricity:

It rained almost the entire day we were on the Aran island of Inishmore in Ireland. But the water that came into the cove that protected Kilmurvey Beach was beautiful even still. You’d love to see that water on a clear day. Several rare plant species are listed in this area and the birds are of “international significance.”

One of the few things about Ireland that was a bit frustrating was that there were so many ancient things that didn’t come with great descriptions. But ancient is relative when you’re showing off 4,000 year old churches and forts. Who knows what this building, near the bronze age fort of Dun Aengus once meant:

This was the doorknob to our restroom in the hotel we stayed in outside of Dublin. It was a fancy place:

In the future all bacon will come from a machine like this:

National Geographic included Auburn’s Old Rotation in a list of the world’s longest running experiments. This is a mini-bail commemorating the 100th anniversary of the experiment:

An interesting use of wine bottles at Warehouse Bistro in Opelika:

This is the Roasted Vegetables with Basil Pesto crepe from the Crepe Myrtle Cafe in Auburn. It has roasted tomatoes, mushrooms, squash, zucchini, caramelized onions, red and green roasted sweet peppers, parmesan cheese and basil pesto sauce. It was delicious.