For good reasons. I was only 13 when the movie came out, with no memory of the original reference, and you couldn’t just dial up any old song on your machine in those days. Still, I’m happy to say I saw Young Frankenstein in the theater, as I did Blazing Saddles that same year, which also included some references I didn’t understand until later, notably the names of Lili Von Shtupp and Gov. Le Petomane.
On the road home from Florida, we passed through Chattanooga, a city I hadn’t visited since sometime in the 1980s. I also have handful of memories of Chattanooga during our family road trip around the South in 1969, especially the hotel.
This time I noticed that the Chattanooga Choo-Choo was only a few blocks from the Interstate. So we paused our drive for a short visit.
“This landmark Chattanooga hotel located on Market Street in downtown Chattanooga initially served as the Southern Railway Terminal,” the Tennessee Encyclopedia says. “Designed by Beaux-Arts-trained architect Donn Barber of New York City, this magnificent architectural gateway to the Deep South opened during the Christmas season of 1909.”
With the mid-century decline of passenger rail in the U.S. came the near-demolition of the terminal, but the lesson of Penn Station and the era’s other thoughtless architectural destruction was apparently enough to fuel the Southern Railway Terminal’s preservation. With its redevelopment into a hotel-retail-entertainment complex came a new, instantly recognizable name: the Chattanooga Choo-Choo.
Inside, the sort of grand hall that marks grand old train terminals.
Behind the main building, relics of past choo-choos.
In case you’ve forgotten where you are.
Shovel all the coal in, gotta keep it rollin’ Woo, woo, Chattanooga, there you are
Years ago, when we visited the Spam Museum in Austin, Minnesota, I noted with satisfaction that Monty Python’s Spam Sketch was playing on demand in one of the exhibit rooms. I understand the museum has moved to a different location in Austin since then, but I hope they still play the sketch.
As far as I noticed, there was no clip of One, Two, Three playing at the World of Coca-Cola in Atlanta last month. The scene I’d pick is the back-and-forth about Soviet scientists’ efforts to replicate Coca-Cola without its famously secret formula: “Even the Albanians wouldn’t drink it.”
I’d have this clip playing, too.
Or even the jingle scene from The Coca-Cola Kid. Nice jingle.
The World of Coca-Cola shares a plaza with the Georgia Aquarium. Pemberton Plaza, named for the doctor who invented a particularly successful “brain tonic,” back in the days when enterprising doctors and druggists did that sort of thing. Interestingly, the museum doesn’t play up Lt. Col. John Pemberton’s military service for the CSA, or his morphine addiction, which drove him to experiment with a new wonder drug, cocaine, to kick his habit. That didn’t work out, but he did leave a lasting soft drink legacy.
As a museum, the place includes a number of interactive exhibits and activities, starting at the Coca-Cola Theater with a six-minute commercial. I mean, a short history of Coke. You can also see the vault where the secret formula supposedly resides —
— check out various smells associated with the cola-making process, “explore Coca-Cola’s iconic influence on art, music, fashion, sports, and entertainment,” and “engage with interactive displays and AI magic that bring Coca-Cola’s legacy to life in new, unforgettable ways,” the museum explains. You can even, if you register – maybe with some app? – stand in line to have your picture taken with a person in a polar bear suit.
“The Coca-Cola Polar Bear… became truly iconic in 1993 with the launch of the ‘Always Coca-Cola’ campaign. In the famous ‘Northern Lights’ commercial, created by Ken Stewart, animated bears gather to watch the aurora borealis while enjoying Coca-Cola — a scene that brought the Polar Bear to life and captured the hearts of viewers worldwide,” the museum notes.
Does it rise to the level of icon? Somehow the Coca-Cola Polar Bear had made only a faint impression on either of us, so we took a pass on it. Also, there was a line. And it cost extra? Always with the revenue streams. But I did enjoy the more standard sort of museum exhibits on offer at World of Coca-Cola.
A seasonal observation.
Artifacts from long ago.
Ads from long ago.
And from distant places.
I seem to remember a similar political cartoon of featuring the Earth being nursed back to health after the ravages of WWII, but I can’t quite place it.
There were video clips, including of course the “Hilltop” commercial. That, I remember. Many people old enough do too, which naturally gave the final moment of Mad Men its punch.
The museum also featured Coke product cans and bottles of various kinds (but not a collection of caps that I saw), many more than you see in everyday grocery stores. For instance, Sting and Bon Jovi had their own cans at one point, as part of a musician series.
Cans from around the world.
A very crowded room includes soda and water dispensers that allow visitors to sample Coca-Cola products from around the world. We went to town trying the various concoctions, as did a lot of people, and eventually I found my favorite: Bonbon Anglais, a wonderful fruit drink from Madagascar.
The web site Madagasikara tells us: La boisson gazeuse Bonbon Anglais est fabriquée à Madagascar, un pays reconnu pour ses produits naturels et son savoir-faire artisanal. I would expect no less.
The gift shop was crowded, too. I took pics but bought no Coke merch. (I might have bought a postcard, but found none.)
To my way of thinking, the Coca-Cola Co. should pay me – even a little – to advertise its products on my person. Also, while I’m on that particular hobby horse, the World of Coca-Cola shouldn’t charge admission, especially not as much as a standard museum.
I ran the numbers, and World of Coca-Cola admission costs more than twice as much as admission to the Taj Mahal. Sure, Georgia isn’t Uttar Pradesh, but it’s galling that you’re paying at all, just to be marketed to. Obviously Middle America disagrees with me – and Yuriko didn’t mind paying for both of us – so that idea will just have to be a quixotic hobby horse of mine.
If you asked me, and no one has or will, Key West is missing something in having plain manhole and utility covers (though this isn’t bad).
I suspect custom covers cost more, and money is money, but distinctive places should have distinctive manhole covers. Aren’t details important in fostering – or in this case enhancing – a sense of place?
On the other hand, Key West has a sense of place without too many equals. That’s as good a reason as any to stroll down Duval Street, tourist hub of Key West, and take it all in. Or as much as you can. On a mild mid-December day, that wasn’t hard.
As a tourist street, a lot of retail detail.
Buildings that have somehow survived these last 100 years or so, despite the ocean’s habit of kicking up a hurricane-force fuss now and then.
St. Paul’s Episcopal, 401 Duval.
In 2014, I ducked away from crowded Duval into the church, which seemed to be open because the organist was practicing. I sat, impressed by his vigorous noodling, and by the fact that no one else was in the church.
This time, closed.
Looks like a movie theater. It was. Now a Walgreen’s.
More detail.
“Duval Street, the undisputed ‘Main Street’ of Key West, is the only place in the U.S. where one street allows you to walk from the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico,” says the American Planning Association, in picking Duval Street a Great Place in America.
“ A citywide commitment to preserving the National Register of Historic Places single-largest collection of wooden structures has allowed Duval Street and the rest of Key West to transition from an economy based on maritime industries and Cuban travel during its earlier years to one now supported by entertainment, art, and tourism.”
Not far outside Omaha, along I-80, it’s possible to stop and see, under two very large roofs, such marvels of aeronautical engineering as a B-17, B-29, B-36 and B-52, a Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, a Douglas C-47 Skytrain and a Douglas C-54 Skymaster, a Convair F-102, and a Fairchild C-119 Flying Boxcar, among many others. Along side the airplanes are exhibits about the Tuskegee Airmen, Doolittle’s Raid, the Berlin Airlift and Francis Gary Powers.
There are also space artifacts at the Strategic Air Command & Aerospace Museum, as the name says, but not that many. Still, my favorite artifact at that museum, the coolest bit of space hardware I’d seen since the Kansas Cosmosphere, was a Vela satellite.
Looks like something you’d see on the set of Space: 1999, but the Vela is more than just a curious glassy polyhedron. In September 1979, a Vela satellite noticed the characteristic flash – actually a double flash – of a nuclear explosion in the atmosphere, near the remote Price Edward Islands in the ocean south of Africa, roughly half way to Antarctica. It wasn’t long before the press got wind of the event, and I remember a widely held suspicion that Israel had tested a nuclear warhead, with the cooperation of South Africa, whose island it was. It seems likely that this was the case.
Besides that, “in 1967, the satellites were the first to detect extra-terrestrial gamma-ray bursts, thought to be the brightest and most energetic electromagnetic events in the universe,” the Space Force notes.
I arrived at the museum on September 5 heading westward, bypassing Omaha in favor of it.
Most of the artifacts are aircraft used in one way or another by SAC, on display under sprawling ceilings. Leo A. Daly, a longstanding Omaha architect, did the museum’s design, completed in 1998.
A named aircraft, the Lucky Lady, a B-29 Superfortress.
“The bomber was manufactured by Bell Aircraft, in Marietta, Georgia and delivered to the U.S. Army Air Force on August 4, 1945,” Airplanes Online says. “Its initial assignment was to Walker AAF (Second Air Force), Victoria, Kansas.” Lucky all right, as in manufactured too late in the war to get shot at, unless there’s something about 1940s Kansas I don’t know.
Smaller items, though not actually that small.
Besides the Vela satellite, other space items include spaceman gear and leftovers from the early days of manned space flight, such as a boilerplate Apollo, which wasn’t actually a capsule, but had the size, shape and mass of a command module, for testing.
Picked up cheap after the dissolution of the Soviet Union?
Probably something non-astronauts wonder about a great deal.
“Good morning,” Walter said in response to me, but in a hushed tone that somehow made his Austrian accent more distinct. “Do you want to see some bears?”
Yes. I followed him out to the large deck off the large common room of the Country Sunshine B&B. Outside we met with cool air, bright morning sun, and the strong smell of pine. The deck was a floor above the grassy ground, which sloped downward away from the bed and breakfast, shaded by a small copse of enormous pines.
We’d just spent the night at Country Sunshine B&B, the first of three for our visit to Durango, Colorado, a place I’d wanted to visit since the moment, years ago, when I heard Garrison Keillor describe the place in the engaging way that he had. I’d come out of our room – one of the three or four bedrooms off the common room – ahead of Yuriko, to examine the breakfast spread at the main table when Walter asked me about bears.
Under one of the tall pines, and among the many pine cones dotting the ground, was something dark and much larger: a bear.
“He isn’t the only one,” Walter said, pointed upward. Another sizable bear was perched part way up the largest pine. I didn’t say anything, or maybe I did. Something along the lines of, How about that. When I spend time on my deck, squirrels are about as large as the animals get, except occasional rabbits and raccoons.
“Look way up,” Walter said.
Two more bears – smaller bears, though I wouldn’t want to be face-to-face even with them – clung to the branches toward the top of the tree. They were hard to see, and my photos barely show them, but they were there, not moving a bit.
Soon Yuriko, and some other guests, had come to the deck to see the bears and take pictures. Every few minutes while we watched, the largest of the bears, the one on the ground, would start shimmying up the tree. The bear in the tree snarled at his approach, and, after pausing for a few moments, the first bear returned to the ground.
We were about 10 miles north of Durango, where the human settlement is fairly thin, and bears known to prowl the mountains on either side of the single road, US 550.
In the two decades of so that Walter and his wife Jodi have owned the B&B, he said bears had been sighted. Of course they had. Get careless with closing an outdoor garbage receptacle and bears will make an appearance in the neighborhood. During dry spells, they come for the creek waters near the property, and Walter pointed out that this summer had been fairly dry in the region.
But this was a first, Walter said: probably a male bear out to do harm to some cubs, a female bear standing in his way — a bear drama playing out in the tree near the B&B.
Late that afternoon, we returned to the B&B. Papa Bear, as everyone was calling him now, still lingered under the tree. Mama Bear still watched him from the lower branches, and the cubs still clung to the upper branches. Papa Bear had mostly quit trying to climb the tree, Walter said, but he was still waiting around.
The bears stayed in place through that evening, but when I went to the breakfast table the next morning to examine the bagels and spreads and fruit and hot drinks, the bears – I checked from the deck – they were not to be seen. After their one-day show (from a human point of view), they’d taken their drama somewhere else,
We spent that first day (September 16) wandering around town and nearby. In downtown Durango, small buildings that have endured for more than a century line Main Street.
Or not so small. Such as the magnificent Strater Hotel, built in 1887.
The sort of place where presidents stay, or used to. Did any? The hotel web site doesn’t say. I’d ask ChatGPT, but it would probably tell me that FDR stayed there during his Grand Western States Whistle Stop Tour in 1939, a wholly fictional event. Wiki says Gerald Ford stayed there. Louis L’Amour did too, and now has a room named after him.
A competitor. Named for this fellow, Union (brevet) brigadier general and railroad man, who co-founded the Denver and Rio Grande RR.
Downtown Durango is well supplied with retail.
Lunch options, besides burgers and empanadas or a liquid lunch, included the likes of the Diamond Belle Saloon, Seasons of Durango, Chimayo Stone Fired Kitchen, Steamworks Brewing Company, and Eolus Bar & Dining. All very nice, I’m sure, but we chanced on something more to our tastes at that moment: the Durango Diner. In business for 60 years.
Durango started not so much as a mining town, but a railroad node that served the mines further up the line. Silverton, for instance. One reason Durango is where it is: the Animas River. These days, the river is accessible to pedestrians in a number of places in town. One was near the Durango Library, also the location of a shady sculpture garden.
At this place, the tracks of the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge RR run along the river.
That was also true at the 29th Street Park, though the tracks were on the other side of the river.
TV Land missed a bet when it didn’t commission a bronze of Mork from Ork for Boulder, Colorado. The place to put Robin Williams as Mork would be the Pearl Street Mall, the pedestrian shopping street in downtown Boulder. He’d jazz the place up a touch.
The street has some art. A buffalo with some heft and a swinging girl with lightness. Nice, but not zany Mork.
Also, there’s a boulder in Boulder. Not a bad idea.
As a pedestrian street, Pearl Street has good bones. That is, picturesque old buildings that are well maintained.
All together, the mall stretches four blocks and has been around for almost 50 years, the result of a tax-funded effort to draw people back to downtown Boulder. I don’t know for a fact, but I suspect the street might have been a little run down by the early ’70s. Now it’s anything but. We arrived late in the afternoon of September 12, after spending most of the day at Rocky Mountain NP.
Most of the retail spaces are occupied, with the likes of the small-batch Björn’s Honey, SmithKlein Gallery, Japango sushi, Lindsay’s Boulder Deli @ Haagen Dazs, Ku Cha House of Tea, Lighthouse Bookstore, Peppercorn kitchen supply, Bramble & Hare Bistro, Into the Wind toy store, Boulder Spirits Tasting Room and much more. My own favorite sold antique maps, by themselves and mounted as art.
I didn’t go in Lighthouse Bookstore, but I took it for a Christian bookstore. Not quite, from its web site: At The Lighthouse Boulder, seekers discover many paths of wisdom for their spiritual discovery. With books to learn, spiritual tools to discover, and readings of all kinds to light the way – we’ve been serving the community since 1975.
The street was fairly busy on a warm Friday afternoon. Not everyone was there to shop, however.
Wiki at least says the history of busking is robust at Pearl Street, including David Rosdeitcher, ZIP code man, who can name zip codes for places the crowd names, or name places for zip codes that they yell out. He wasn’t around the day we were. I’d have stayed for some of that act. He’s probably prepared even for someone who says, American Samoa! (Zip code: 96799) (That’s something I might pose to him). But would he know Kingman Reef? (96898). Exactly zero people live there, so why it needs a zip code is probably detailed in some memo at the USPS. Just being thorough, maybe.
Another intriguing shop sells lamps. More than I’d care to pay, but still wonderful to look at.
The Boulder County Courthouse is also on the street. Impressive art deco, or it might be called moderne. We walked past on our way out, to get to the car before the meter ran out, so I didn’t quite get to look as long as I wanted. There have to be studies somewhere that show that parking meters are counterproductive in generating foot traffic in such places as Boulder.
The highway Nebraska 2 passes through the town of Alliance, as do the BNSF railroad tracks paralleling the highway. During my drive across the Sandhills, I saw train after train headed east from Alliance. Long trains, the seemingly endless sort, even though they’re going the opposite direction you are, so they’re passing by at your speed plus their speed: well over 100 mph probably.
Every single one was a coal train. The industry isn’t what it used to be, but it isn’t dead, and much extraction takes place in the Powder River Basin, with rail from there converging in Alliance and then heading to the markets in the east. For a fairly small place, Alliance (pop. 8,150 or so) has a large rail yard.
Back up a little further, and the region reveals clear signs of circle-pivot irrigation.
In ag terms, most production in Box Butte County – a favorite of mine among county names – is actually livestock, raised on non-irrigated grassland, which you can also see driving in. As for the irrigated places, that’s corn and wheat, with a smattering of alfalfa, beans, sunflowers and sugar beets. Somewhere up north is a rock formation called Box Butte, a name that I understand the railroads were using in promoting settlement this way, before it was ever official.
I didn’t come to town to learn all that, but I did later. Mainly I came to see Carhenge. The weather that day, September 7, was clear and very warm, which inspired some further looking around. First stop, Alliance Cemetery.
“Bury me in old Box Butte County.” There’s a western swing title in that.
Something I’d never seen on a gravestone before: Scooby-Doo.
Go figure. Maybe Richard “Red” Hardy is the one who wanted it on the stone, since he would have been almost 10 when that cartoon premiered (September 13, 1969), and that’s about the right age to get hooked on such a thing. Then again, I was eight — saw the first episode myself — and yet somehow I’ve remained immune to its charms.
As for the Huskers, I saw them on some other stones in this cemetery. Hardly the only example of fandom from the grave.
I’ve seen cowboy churches and I’ve seen cowboy graves.
The cemetery is east of downtown Alliance, but not that far away. The Box Butte County Courthouse is on Box Butte Ave.
Along with a number of other vintage buildings. Newberry’s Hardware Co., once upon a time, which seems to be 1888 and then maybe an enlargement in 1914? Looks like it needs an occupant.
The 1927 Fraternal Order of Eagles Building.
Slacker that I am, I didn’t take many detail shots, but one of this particular building is available (public domain) that shows how seriously the local FOE took its eagles about 100 years ago.
Hardware Hank is a hardware cooperative. New to me, but that only means I need to get out more.
More murals.
Rhoads’ was a local department store. Gone but not forgotten, at least if you read the mural, which looks refurbished recently. The tag at the bottom says it was a gift of the Alliance High School Class of 1962.
An art deco theater. Nice.
A really cheap way to advertise.
You never know when (and where) Dali will show up. Enigmatic fellow.
And who is poor Jerry?
Antique shop within? A simple desultory Google search doesn’t reveal much. Street View puts the sign’s appearance between 2007 and 2012 (Google didn’t come that much to Alliance.) Even the Library of Congress wants to know.
I found lunch in Alliance that day at Golden Hour Barbecue, which promised (and provided) Texas-style ‘cue. I enjoyed it thoroughly. Same league as Salt Lick, though a little expensive, considering how close the cattle are. Then again, everything seems expensive these days, and it was such a large lunch that I barely needed to eat that evening in my room in Scottsbluff, so that mitigated the upfront cost.
Before heading to the big rocks near Scottsbluff on the morning of the 8th, I took a look around that town as well.
Can’t have too many art deco theaters. When I’ve done image searches for Scottsbluff, the Midwest theater comes up often as not.
A car to match. At least that morning.
Another former small department store, now private offices.
Just outside Scottsbluff is a single grave.
The grave of Rebecca Burdick Winters (d. 1852) She died a faithful Latter-Day Saint, her stone says, on her way to Utah. Officially, it is Rebecca Winters Memorial Park.
“Seven miles northeast of Scotts Bluff National Monument lies a solitary grave,” says Find a Grave. “This site marks the final resting place of Rebecca Winters, who died of cholera on August 15, 1852. Rebecca was only one of thousands of people who succumbed to disease as they made their way west on the overland trails, but her grave is one of only a few that remains identifiable today.”
There I was, in Seward, Nebraska, parked on a side street lined with single-family houses. Interrupting the pattern of houses was a large open space, with buildings behind it — a large house, and maybe a workshop. In the open space, which was a green lawn, stood a sigma-shaped structure, and behind that, a white pyramid.
Both taller than a grown man. A plaque was fixed to the sigma. From the point of view of the time capsule, the sigma shape could be a 3. So – third millennium?
World’s Largest Time Capsule.
I wasn’t quite sure what to make of that claim. The world’s largest time capsule would surely be the one entombed in 1939 at the New York World’s Fair for an opening in the year 6939, an exercise in official optimism if I’ve ever heard of one. Wouldn’t it? No. It grew in my memory, but was actually quite small. The Crypt of Civilization instead might be a candidate for largest.
Anyway, there’s no doubt Seward’s is a whopper among time capsules.
The capsule, buried by Seward resident Harold Davisson, had more modest ambitions, time-wise, than the NY time capsule: only 50 years. Looking at the plaque, I wondered if the opening, promised for this year, was going to happen.
Later I learned that it had already happened, earlier in the summer. NBC reported that the opening revealed “letters, pet rocks, artwork, a groovy teal suit and even a yellow Chevy Vega.” A video of the opening of the time capsule, and the removal of its contents, has been posted to Facebook. The opening including removal of the car, by means of an enormous wench. News reports suggested that Vega was going to be reconditioned and run during the town’s bang-up Fourth of July festivities. Hope so.
The pyramid lid had been put back on. If you look closely, you can see the line marking the bottom of the lid. Put it back on expertly, since you have to look closely to see there was a separation. So I missed the grand opening by a few weeks. As they say in those parts of Nebraska, c’est la vie. Hard to attend an event you’ve never heard of, though not impossible, as I found out years ago when I happened across Northalstead Market Days one summer day. That one was an eye-opener.
The Big Thing, Thomas Nast, 1867
Seward honors the Seward of Alaska purchase fame, though if pressed I’d bet most Americans have sort of maybe heard of him, but don’t remember anything about him, even though he (likely) still gets passing mentions in school.
Seward, seat of Seward County, there in the populous (for Nebraska) southeast corner of the state, is close to Lincoln – fitting, isn’t it? – and I-70.
Seward County built itself a handsome courthouse, once upon a time. Classical Revival when the getting was good for that style, in the first decade of the 20th century. It was a popular style around this part of Nebraska at the time, with the National Register of Historic Places Registration Form telling us there are 18 buildings like it still extant in Nebraska. Architect George Berlinghof (d. 1944) designed a lot of them, including this one.
On the grounds, Seward in bronze. I know there are other statues of Sec. Seward, but not that many.
Sporting a cape. How many bronze figures honored with public statues are in capes? More than I know, probably. The Maid of Orleans in New Orleans comes to mind; she’s wearing a cape, over that armor.
A plaque identifies the artists, brother and sister David and Judith Rubin, and the vintage, recent. Alaska commissioned them to do one of Seward for the 150th anniversary (2017) of the sale of Alaska to the United States. Interested parties in Seward, Nebraska, wanted one for the their town, and so commissioned another one.
The square is right handsome, too.
Cattle National Bank. Reminds me of Gary Larson, somehow. I’m glad to report that it’s one of four locations for Cattle National Bank & Trust, a community bank owned by the Cattle family. Has been since 1881. If I lived in Seward, I’d bank there just for the name.
One more thing about Seward. This isn’t the one further north.
Seward was a flyby on September 5 on the way to Grand Island, Nebraska, that evening, which would be the jumping off point for my drive through the Sandhills. The highlight of my short stay in Grand Island wasn’t the false alarm that got us all out of our rooms at the motel around 10, thrilling as that was, but the next morning, on my way out of town.
I’ll give credit where it’s due: I found Fred’s Flying Circus on Google Maps. Attaboy, algorithm.
The work of body shop proprietor Fred Schritt (d. 2016), on his place of business, with the shop now run by his daughter and son-in-law. An informal sort of memorial to the old man, I hope they believe. One of the more cheerful memorials you’ll see.
Yesterday I asked ChatGPT a question. I had my reasons.
Human (me)-generated question: How many U.S. state controllers or comptrollers have been honored with bronze statues?
Machine-generated answer (entirely sic): As of my knowledge cutoff in 2023, two U.S. state controllers or comptrollers have been honored with bronze statues:
William S. “Billy” McKeller (Tennessee) – McKeller was the Comptroller of the Treasury for Tennessee from 1923 to 1953. He was honored with a bronze statue that stands at the State Capitol in Nashville. The statue was unveiled in 1956, following his retirement.
Edward J. “Eddie” O’Neill (Massachusetts) – O’Neill was a longtime Comptroller for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. He was known for his tenure and service, and a bronze statue of him was placed at the Massachusetts State House.
Both statues honor the legacy of these public servants for their dedication and leadership in state finance and governance.
However, it’s worth noting that statues of public officials in general tend to be more common for governors, senators, or prominent historical figures, so the specific recognition of state comptrollers or controllers through bronze statues is quite rare. There may have been updates or new statues since my last update, so I recommend checking local state records or news sources for the most current information.
Wow, that’s a solid example of an AI hallucination. There may have been human beings named William S. McKeller and Edward J. O’Neill living at some point in Tennessee and Massachusetts, respectively, but neither of them held that office. See the Tennessee Blue Book for a list comptrollers of the treasury in that state. As for Massachusetts, comptroller isn’t a constitutional office, so a list of them is a little elusive. (The commonwealth has an elected “treasurer and receiver-general.”)
Just as dispositive is a list produced by the commonwealth that lists the artwork at the Massachusetts State House. A bronze honoring Edward J. “Eddie” O’Neill isn’t one of them.
That said, the machine is probably correct that “specific recognition of state comptrollers or controllers through bronze statues is quite rare,” but, considering that the machine’s examples are bogus, that ranks as nothing but educated speculation that I didn’t need ChatGPT to create for me. I can guess that myself.
Just as damning, however, is that the machine missed a perfectly real example.
During my visit to Annapolis, Maryland in late October, I chanced to meet Louis L. Goldstein. His memorial, that is, a bronze at the corner of Bladen and Calvert streets, about a block from the Maryland State House.
The statue is in front of the office building occupied by the state comptroller. Goldstein was comptroller of Maryland from 1959 until his death in 1998 and, it seems, a character. A character who was also a successful politician, which is an increasingly rare combination, unless you count those pretending to be wingnuts.
“Many recognized Goldstein as the state’s white-haired, robustly outgoing goodwill ambassador, a handshaker’s handshaker, passing out fake coins as souvenirs and bestowing his trademark greeting, ‘God bless y’all, real good,’ “ the Washington Post reported at the time of his passing.
More politicos should pass out fake coins. I have fond memories of the aluminum Silber Dollar we had around after the 1970 election in South Texas. It’s probably still around.
Admittedly one ChatGPT answer is a small sample size, but still – how is it that three years have passed since I asked the machine to come up with examples of a certain kind of real estate deal in the past, and it spat out five completely make up ones? Shouldn’t this kind of thing be less likely by now? Apparently not.
Never mind, Maryland has a handsome capitol, one built remarkably enough in the 1770s – beginning before the Revolution and completed in the throes of that war, in 1779.
The view from the steps. The small rally below, at a place called Lawyers Mall, is demanding that Maryland Gov. Wes Moore to kick Avelo Airlines out of BWI airport, for its deportation flights for ICE.
Detail on the exterior: the obverse and reverse of the Great Seal of Maryland.
A cool seal, if you asked me. Including an Italian motto used, for obscure reasons, by the Calvert family. Fatti maschii, parole femine has drawn criticism, enough that the state has an innocuous “official translation,” which is fine, if a little silly.
Of course, Maryland also has a cool flag, the heraldicbanner of arms of Cecil, Second Baron Baltimore, acknowledging the state’s founding as a proprietary colony of the Calvert family. It’s also worth noting that the flag wasn’t official until 1904, by which time the family had become merely a colorful part of History.
Unlike Delaware, Maryland’s capitol was open on a Saturday.
With a few volunteers talking to visitors.
The Maryland State House has the distinction of being the capital of the United States, from November 26, 1783 to August 13, 1784. Two important events happened in the building during that narrow window: George Washington came before the Confederation Congress to resign his commission as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, and Congress ratified the Treaty of Paris, which acknowledged U.S. independence.
Maryland doesn’t want you to forget that Washington stepped down in the state house. On display are artifacts and artworks to illustrate the point.
Including portraits of those who were there for the event. Some of those who were, I assume.
The scene itself, depicted later, and on display at the state house.
The speech. Washington had a gift for brevity. A more prolix (and vain) fellow might have gone on at length about the virtuousness of Cincinnatus — hint, hint, like a certain other man you might know — but I suspect he knew that his audience, and maybe posterity, would make the comparison without it being explicit.
Kids came in some numbers for Halloween here in the northwest suburbs yesterday, but I didn’t keep an exact count this year. The day was cool but not cold, without a hint of rain, so that might have encouraged turnout, like for voting. One time a passel of kids showed up, maybe a dozen or so, all under 10, with a smaller passel of parents off near the sidewalk.
We were giving away full-sized candy bars until they ran out, and the passel squealed with delight at receiving the various Hersey products. Even now, the costumes are a blur, maybe because I didn’t recognize a lot of the characters. Ones that I might have known weren’t familiar either. I asked the parents of a very small boy — ah, first-timers — what he was supposed to be. His shirt pattern reminded me of TMNT, but it was Hulk, they told me. “Hulk smash,” they said. “Hulk smash, all right,” I agreed.
All of the Halloween traffic, except for a handful of older kids, came before dark. My not-so-inner curmudgeon reacts: in my day, we trick-or-treated after dark, risking bodily injury on the streets, and we liked it.
But I am glad to report that the older kids – junior high and even high school – are far fewer than they were, say, 20 years ago. So it’s back to the way it should be. For older people, there are always such seasonal events as the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade. To this day, the ’06 iteration of that parade remains the only time I’ve encountered the band KISS live – they were the grand marshals (RIP, Ace Frehley). We also encountered Space Ghost then, or at least a fellow who was adamant about his Space Ghost identity.
Near Central Park on Fifth Ave. is 1 East 57th Street. We walked by last month.
A few years ago, luxe retailer LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton added a faux facade to its NY flagship store there on the avenue, one that evokes its signature luggage trunks in a highly visible way. Redevelopment plans for the building behind the trunks were unveiled not long ago, so I suspect the trunk-appearance doesn’t have much longer to look down on Billionaire’s Row and its strato-priced residential properties (whose high rents and sale prices don’t necessarily guarantee high-quality construction, apparently).
As we neared Central Park, we spent a little time at Augustus Saint-Gaudens’ statue of William Tecumseh Sherman (dedicated 1903) in Grand Army Plaza. Life’s too short not to look at some Saint-Gaudens from time to time.
Not far away, something a little newer.
“First Sun,” a painted aluminum sculpture of a human-scarab figure by Senegalese artist Monira Al Qadiri, and slated to be in place until the end of next summer.
Visible from near the statues is the storied Plaza Hotel and an Apple Store, which is open 24 hours, Google Maps tells me. Storied in a different way.
I’m glad the Plaza acknowledges its fictional role in The Great Gatsby by featuring a lavish-beyond-the-dreams of Croesus Gatsby Suite. Of course. A smart hotel operator isn’t going to waste an opportunity like that. In this case, Fairmont Hotels and Resorts, a Canadian company, managing for owner Katara Hospitality – the large hotelier owned by the Qatari government. In the 21st century so far, the Plaza has been owned by an Israeli company and then an Indian one before Katara bought it. There’s something oddly American about an ownership trajectory like that.
We – Robert, Geof, Yuriko and I – charted ourselves a simple walking path through some of the southern reaches of Central Park. Manhattanites and visitors to the borough were out in Saturday-afternoon force. Saturday, in the park/I think it was the 18th of October. No, that doesn’t scan. A fair number of pitch-a-blanket cap and souvenir salesmen were out, too, but not nearly as many buskers as a great city park like Central Park should attract.
There’s an editorial right there: why America needs more buskers, and why some American cities need to chill when it comes to suppressing buskers. Europeans might not be right about everything, but about allowing buskers? Yes.
The leaves weren’t at peak just yet, with the greens still hanging on more than not. I don’t remember which visit to Central Park it was, but one time I wandered the park during peak coloration, whipped into even greater yellow-and-red glory by a brisk October wind. Temporary clouds of leaves came and went, even as the wind shook more leaves from their branches. Color, but also motion.
Eventually, we came to The Lake by way of Bethesda Terrace and Fountain.
But not all the way across The Lake to The Ramble, whose Wiki description drily states that “historically, it has been frequented for both birdwatching and cruising,” with hyperlinks articles about both of those activities. What about cruising birdwatchers? There’s a Broadway musical in that concept somewhere.
The Lake was clearly a good time and place for casual boating.
In that part of Central Park, it’s hard to miss Strawberry Fields. There is a fairly empty section.
That’s not the case when you get to the Imagine memorial. Among the visitors, a guitarist was noodling out one of the more famous Lennon-McCartney tunes, but I forget which. One of the usual ones. Not “Dr. Robert,” say, or “Happiness is a Warm Gun.” So that was one busker anyway, since I think he had a guitar case open in front of him. All you need is love, sure, but bills are bills.
Gone these 45 years and still packing ‘em in. Good for you, Mr. Lennon. In another 45 years? It would be interesting to know, and I sure I won’t.
I’m afraid the history of memorials doesn’t bode well for the longevity of any memorial, even the kind that people line up to pose with. I didn’t know the man, but I suspect somehow that the thought of fading into obscurity wouldn’t have bothered John Lennon.
At that point, you emerge from the park and are practically face-to-face with the Dakota.
We headed east to a subway station, and happened to walk by the entrance of the Dakota. In its grim way, it’s a kind of memorial too. The signs make it known with no uncertainty that no one unauthorized is getting in.
