The San Marcos City Cemetery

Posted on February 28, 2019 by admin

San Antonio to Dallas is roughly a five-hour drive straight through, provided traffic isn’t gummed up somewhere along I-35, which it will be in Austin, so best to take Texas 130 around that city, even though it costs extra.

Also best to break the trip into smaller segments and take a look around an in-between place or two. My nephew Dees told me that Aquarena Springs, formerly a postwar tourist attraction — trap — of some renown in San Marcos, is a good thing to see. In recent years, Texas State University-San Marcos remade the place as the Meadows Center for Water and the Environment. Glass-bottom boat tours are star attraction now, rather than the “aquamaids” of yore.

Sounded like a diversion of more hours than we were willing to spare, so we skipped it this time. But we did stop in San Marcos.

First for a look at the Hays County Courthouse, which is a fine old building with a statue of John Coffee Hays outside, whom the Handbook of Texas Online calls a “Texas Ranger extraordinary.” South Texas sculptor Jason Scull did the bronze.
Not far away is the San Marcos City Cemetery. According to the Heritage Association of San Marcos, the cemetery replaced a smaller boneyard, with burials beginning in 1876. The city took ownership in the 20th century, as it retains today.

Though you climb a small hill at the entrance, most of the cemetery is level. Though not heavily wooded, the cemetery has trees to remind us that late February in central Texas is early spring.

There are some larger stones and some funerary art, but not a lot.
As Jay pointed out, ready money in 19th-century San Marcos — when such art was more likely to be erected — was in short supply, at least compared with a place like New York, home of Green-Wood and Woodlawn, or even old Charleston.

Still, there are some more ornate markers, such as the draped obelisk of Z. T. Cliett (1847-1892).
Or the stone of Dr. P. C. Woods (1820-1898).
A nearby Texas Historical Commission marker says that Dr. Woods came to Texas from Tennessee, as so many did (T for Texas, T for Tennessee). Commanding the 32nd Texas Cavalry Regiment during the war, he patrolled the border with Mexico and the Gulf coast against possible Union attack, and fought in Louisiana, where he “received an arm injury which impaired him for the rest of his life.” That didn’t keep him from being a farmer and doctor in postbellum Texas, however.

Thomas Reuben Fourqurean (1842-1925) (interesting name) had a metal marker to denote his service to the CSA, of the kind that’s easy to find in older Southern cemeteries.

Another marker — local, not state — tells the story of Ann B. Caldwell (1800-65), who was reinterred here in the 1870s from an earlier San Marcos cemetery.
In life, she had been among Stephen F. Austin’s colonists and then an early settler in Hays County.

The cemetery’s old enough to include weather-worn stones whose names have been lost to time.
Everyone’s stones will eventually disappear in the fullness of deep time, of course. These stones simply have a head start on the others.

The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth

Posted on February 27, 2019 by admin

If you want to see artful concrete, Tadao Ando is your man. I came to a fuller appreciation of that when we visited the 659 Wrightwood in Chicago late last year. On exhibit at the 659 were images of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, an Ando design that looked pretty artful, too.

As it is.

That’s the back of the structure, or at least the side facing the water feature and a scattering of outdoor sculptures, and sporting the museum’s distinctive Y beams.

The front, or at least the side facing the parking lot and a public street, isn’t quite as distinctive, but it is handsome in a modernist sort of way.
Ando’s design is apparent not only in the exterior, but in the smooth concrete walls that form parts of the interior.

The Modern is one of a cluster of art museums in Fort Worth that also includes the Amon Carter Museum of American Art (designed by Philip Johnson) and the Kimbell Art Museum (Louis Kahn and Renzo Piano). The last time I spent a day in Fort Worth, early in 1990, I visited both of those. The Modern didn’t exist then, opening only in 2002.

How best to approach a museum whose collection is as eclectic as the Modern? Wander around and look at things. Some works will be interesting, some less so. I try to wander around upper-end grocery stores with the same attitude in mind, if I have time.

The usual modern suspects were all in evidence at the Modern: Picasso, Lichtenstein, Rothko, Andy Warhol, Jackson Pollack, Josef Albers, Henry Moore and more. Worth seeing, but it’s also good to see interesting works by artists that aren’t quite as well known.

Such as “Ladder for Booker T. Washington” by Martin Puryear (1996), a wooden ladder-like structure fixed to the floor that winds its way upward. It doesn’t merely appear to shrink in size as it rises, it actually does. The surrounding Ando-style concrete walls add to the effect.

Or the curious “Camouflage Botticelli (Birth of Venus)” by Alain Jacquet (1963-64), an image of Venus on a cockle shell merged with a Shell gas pump.

For something newer, and more kinetic, there’s “Kind of Blue” by Jenny Holzer (2012), an array of nine LED signs with blue diodes fixed to the floor, emitting blue words that appear to flow along. As far as I could tell, there was no direct reference to the Miles Davis album of that name, but I could easily be wrong.

The video also offers a good look at the tall glass windows that overlook the museum’s shallow water feature — essentially a field of rocks covered by a little water.

Photography is part of the Modern’s collection as well. One wall sported a number of gelatin silver prints of water towers in France, Germany and the U.S. by Bernd and Hilla Becher. How is this tower in Dortmund-Grevel, Germany, anything but a delight?

Near the museum’s front entrance is “Vortex” by Richard Serra (2002), who is best known to us rubes for the notorious “Tilted Arc” in DC.
On the other side of the museum, beyond the water feature, we took a look at a familiar figure.

“Conjoined” by Roxy Paine (2007), done in stainless steel. I remember seeing his work at the National Sculpture Garden and, I believe, at the Denver Art Museum, the Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, MOMA and the Hirshhorn. Cool. But does lightning strike the Modern piece?

The Cambodian Buddhist Temple of Dallas

Posted on February 26, 2019 by admin

If you know where to go in Texas, you can find yourself face-to-face with these figures. That’s what we did on February 17.
About a quarter-mile from the Cao Dai Tay Ninh Temple of Dallas is the Cambodian Buddhist Temple of Dallas, also known as Wat Jetaphon Khemararam.

The area is something of a religious precinct, since also nearby are the Homprakhoon Baptist Church, the Wat Lao Sirimoungkhoun of Dallas, the St. John Neumann Redemptorist Monastery — called the Vietnamese Redemptorist Mission on Google Maps — and, a little further away (but not much), the Potter’s House of Dallas, a megachurch.

The entrance of the Cambodian Buddhist Temple of Dallas is a recently completed temple gate that’s a replica of the gates at Angkor Wat. My pictures of it didn’t turn out, but this article shows it well.

The grounds were open and we were free to wander around. So we did. I was reminded of the various wats I visited in Thailand, though the Cambodian style is a bit different. The grounds featured temple structures.

Along with Buddhas a-plenty. Or rather, Buddharūpa.

Including a reclining Buddha.

Not the largest reclining Buddha I’ve encountered, but impressive all the same.

Monks live on the grounds. In fact, some of the buildings sport signs in English designating them as monk quarters. I saw one man whom I took for a monk doing some exterior work on one of the temple structures, and as we were about to leave, another man — whom I also took for a monk, though dressed in clothes you might see on anyone in our place and time — asked me if I liked the temple. I told him I did.

The Cao Dai Tay Ninh Temple of Dallas

Posted on February 25, 2019 by admin

A few years ago, I was browsing Google Maps, as one does, and I happened across the Cao Dai Tay Ninh Temple of Dallas. That was intriguing. I wanted to take a look.

Usually when I visit Dallas, I spend time in the northeast part of the city, at about 2 o’clock from downtown. The temple is in the southwest at about 8 o’clock from downtown, so I knew that it might be awhile before I made it down that way.

February 17 turned out to be the day we visited the Cao Dai Tay Ninh Temple of Dallas. This is the entrance. I think.
The temple belongs to an overseas branch of the Caodai religion of Vietnam.

“Caodaism is a relatively new, syncretistic, monotheistic religion with strongly political character, established in 1926 in Southern Vietnam…” writes Md. Shaikh Farid. “It draws upon ethical precepts from Confucianism and Buddhism, occult practices from Taoism, theories of karma and rebirth from Buddhism and hierarchical organization from Roman Catholicism…

“This synthesis of elements adapted from other religions into a functioning religious movement manifests itself in such common Caodai practices as priestly celibacy, vegetarianism, seance inquiry and spirit communication, reverence for ancestors and prayers for the dead, fervent proselytism, and sessions of meditative self-cultivation.”

The temple is in a part of the city of that’s mostly devoted to light industrial buildings, mobile homes and undeveloped properties. Presumably, the site was affordable for local Caodai devotees.

I’d never heard of that religion until I made an excursion from Saigon in 1994 to the main Caodaist temple, the Holy See of the religion, in Tay Ninh, Vietnam. Here’s a picture I took of that building.

A more detailed description of the various influences that went into the building is here. An amalgam of Chinese and Indian and other elements, it seems.

The temple in Dallas, from roughly the same angle.
The similarities between the Holy See and the Dallas temple were apparent at once, though I’m pretty sure that the Holy See is larger, and some details are different.

The Dallas temple is still a work in progress. This was especially noticeable when we went inside — a side door was open — and noticed construction materials and tools here and there.
Though smaller, the Dallas interior also had strong similarities to the one in Tay Ninh.
As I understand it, services are at midnight, 6 a.m., noon and 6 p.m. We visited around 3 p.m., so no Caodai worshipers were around in Dallas. The tour in Vietnam was timed to see the noon service, so we saw the worshipers in their various colorful robes, each color with a distinct meaning best known within the religion, though ordinary worshipers are in white.

It’s good to travel to exotic places and see exotic things. Like you can in Dallas.

Texas Winter ’19

Posted on February 24, 2019 by admin

My recent trip to wintertime Texas took me to Dallas and Fort Worth, San Antonio, and a few other burgs. February is winter in Texas, but it’s a pale moon of a winter compared with where I live. During the trip, temps varied but didn’t drop below freezing, and we experienced rain but no ice or snow.

I spent the weekdays working, but I also visited my brothers, one nephew and his family, one nephew by himself and a friend I’ve known for 45 years now.

I made it to a few new places and a few familiar old places. No matter how often you go somewhere, there are always new places, and no matter how familiar an old place is, there are always new aspects.

One new place was the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, which I’ve had a mind to see since we went to Wrightwood 659 in December. Tadao Ando designed both Wrightwood and the Modern, which is easy to visit from Dallas, as Jay and I did: just pop on over on I-30.

While gadding around in greater DFW, we also saw the Cao Dai Tay Ninh Temple and the Cambodian Buddhist Temple of Dallas, whose neighbors in the southwest of the city are the likes of Mission Foods, Standard Meat, Cartamundi USA and Old Dominion Freight Line.

In San Antonio, we had the benefit of a free evening admission to the McNay Art Museum — an example of a familiar place offering some new things to see. Later, while on the road between San Antonio and Dallas, we stopped by the Hays County Courthouse in San Marcos and the San Marcos City Cemetery, whose burials go back to the 1870s.

Had some good meals along the way too. In San Antonio, a dinner at one of the Paesanos locations, a local Italian restaurant with roots in the 1968 world’s fair. Good pork shank and gnocchi. In Waco, a lunch at a joint that goes even further back: the curiously named Health Camp, in business, as the exterior says, since 1949. Good burger and shake.

In Dallas, on the day I flew in, I enjoyed sausage and homemade sauerkraut and Texas beer and other good things at my nephew Sam’s house, on the occasion of his 36th birthday. Naturally there was birthday cake too.

Reminded me of the morning, late in my college career, when Jay called me to tell me that Sam had been born. Been an uncle ever since.

Life Jackets on the Titanic

Posted on February 5, 2019 by admin

Got an unexpected press release today from a place I visited a while ago, the Titanic Museum Attraction.

Branson, Mo. Feb 5. 2019 – For the first and only time, the largest assemblage of remaining RMS Titanic life jackets will be on exclusive display March through June 15 at the Titanic Museum Attraction in Branson, Missouri. A new dimension in “Living Titanic Exhibits” will showcase seven of only 12 known Titanic life jackets beginning March 1 in Branson.

One detail: Branson ought to stand alone in datelines. Just my opinion. AP, the arbiter of such style points, disagrees. The list of cities that take no state in datelines is fairly short, according to the AP.

Besides Branson, I’d definitely add Orlando to that list, along with Austin, Birmingham, Buffalo, El Paso, Fort Lauderdale, Nashville, and some others.

“This is a stunning, world exclusive exhibit that we’re extremely proud to bring to Branson and to millions of our Titanic followers,” said Mary Kellogg, president, COO and co-owner of Titanic Museum Attractions. “There are only 12 KNOWN Titanic life jackets left in the world. For the first time, seven of these priceless artifacts will be at Branson’s Titanic Museum Attraction.”

All-caps KNOWN in the original. True, it is a fact that I didn’t know until now, but the emphasis is too much.

Wonder where the other five are. Private collections, including at least one held by an eccentric Japanese billionaire? The Greenwich Maritime Museum? The Maritime History Archive in St. John’s, Newfoundland? Someplace even more obscure?

The release also offered some quotable facts about the sad state of emergency preparedness on that doomed steamer, specifically about its life jackets.

There were enough life jackets to protect the 2,208 passenger/crew on board Titanic… but not enough lifeboats to save them all.

Life jackets were made of hard cork and canvas, proving dangerous for many forced to jump into the water.

So not only did a lack of lifeboats fail the passengers and crew, so did relatively primitive materials science. Guess cork was the best available material in 1912. It floats, after all.

I wish the Titanic Museum Attraction well with its life jacket exhibit, though I probably won’t make it to Branson to see them. But I might go if the museum promised an exhibit of surviving deck chairs from the Titanic. You know, those that were famously re-arranged.

Adding Shape to Flat Illinois

Posted on February 4, 2019 by admin

Spotted today under construction here in the northwest suburbs: some hills.

I like to think that anyway. The land could use a little more contour. But I suspect there will actually be an addition to a nearby major medical complex built on this site. Think of it as a physical manifestation of the aging population bulge of which I am a younger member.

St. Paul Square, Sunset Station & the SP 794

Posted on February 3, 2019 by admin

Four years ago, I wrote: “One fine thing about South Texas in February is that it isn’t northern Illinois in February.” Then I called northern Illinois “septentrional,” to use a 10-dollar word that ought to be used at least occasionally.

Anyway, it can be cold in San Antonio in February, but just as often it’s pleasantly cool — good temps for a walk.

Four years ago I visited San Antonio’s Eastside Cemeteries Historic District. I also took a look at the nearby St. Paul Square, an area that flourished in pre-Interstate years because of its proximity to San Antonio’s main passenger train station.
The area has enjoyed some recent revival as a retail and entertainment center. The aforementioned train station is Sunset Station, vintage 1902 and redeveloped in the 1990s as an entertainment complex.

The last time I’d been at the station was when it was still a station, 25 years earlier. I caught an Amtrak train — the only train still using the station in 1990 — that took me to Los Angeles, where I changed trains for San Francisco.

Next to the renovated station: Southern Pacific 794.

“She was built in 1916 by the Brooks Locomotive Works in Dunkirk, NY, for the Texas and New Orleans (T&NO) Railroad, which was a subsidiary of the Southern Pacific Railroad,” says the San Antonio Railroad Heritage Museum. “She was transported to Texas as parts and was assembled in Texas, and then was operated for forty years while being based in San Antonio. 794 was used for freight service as well as passenger service.”

With steam obsolete by the 1950s, the SP donated a fair number of locomotives to various entities, including the San Antonio Chamber of Commerce in the case of the 794. From 1957 to 1999 the locomotive stood in Maverick Park just north of downtown on Broadway. Then it was moved to Sunset Station.

Since Broadway was the way we usually went downtown, by car or bus, I saw it often. Then I noticed, probably during an early 2000s visit, that the 794 was gone. Maverick Park still looks strangely empty without it, 20 years later.

Cow Ride at the Mall

Posted on January 27, 2019 by admin

Australia Day has come and gone. Oz is reportedly suffering a viciously hot summer this year. Adelaide, a pleasant place in my recollection, seems to be getting hit especially hard.

Meanwhile, here in North America, or at least my part of it, after being a slacker for most of December and part of January, winter is hitting hard. Dead ahead, according to the NWS on Sunday evening:

WINTER WEATHER ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 9 PM THIS EVENING TO 6 PM CST MONDAY… Heavy snow and blowing snow tonight with freezing drizzle and blowing snow likely at times Monday. Snow rates overnight into early morning are likely to reach up to an inch per hour at times. This will result in very low visibilities and rapid snow accumulations into the early morning commute. Total snow accumulations of 3 to 7 inches and ice accumulations of a light glaze expected.

This after subzero temps on Friday, and ahead of temps as low as minus 20 by Tuesday (Fahrenheit, the only scale that’s made for humans). Still, on Saturday things had warmed up to low double-digits, so we were out for a while. The three of us and a friend of Ann’s, on the occasion, not quite precisely, of Ann’s birthday. Nice to get out of the house.

We ate at Gabuttø Burger at Ann’s request. Since I discovered the place at the Mitsuwa food court, the Japanese burgerie has moved into a small strip center on a busy street in Rolling Meadows and seems to be doing well there. We visit a few times a year.

Then to a northwest suburban mall. Not the biggest one, the 2.1 million-square-foot Woodfield, but a smaller one. The one we visited isn’t a dying mall, but it has lost an anchor or two, along with some of its inline stores.

Still, the mall is doing what it can. It now sports a number of places to take children and entertain them, for instance. Not playplaces in the middle of the mall, but small entertainment venues that used to be more conventional retail.

Including a place where you can rent animal-ride scooters for a few minutes. She’s not in the main demographic, but according to Ann, it was a birthday thing to do, so she and her friend spent 10 minutes tooling around the mall.

She picked a cow. Looked like she had a jolly time of it.

Snowy MLK Weekend

Posted on January 22, 2019 by admin

The weather’s been strangely accommodating so far this month. Ten days ago, snowfall held off till Saturday afternoon. This is what it looked like in Chicago, as Ann and I went to lunch after Titus Andronicus.
At Mr. J’s Dawg ‘n Burger. Glad it’s still there.

Last Friday, heavy snow started to fall well after rush hour, which was a few hours later than forecast. After finishing work in the late afternoon, I went to a grocery store. The place was jammed. We all could have gone a few hours later and still avoided driving in the snow.

By Saturday morning, about a foot of snow covered the ground. Spent a fair amount of that morning removing snow from the my driveway and sidewalks, but not so enthusiastically that I found myself in a hospital or worse. At least the snow was light, unlike the heavy stuff in November.

On Sunday, the high was 14 degrees F., the low 4, and the previous day’s clouds had cleared off. Here we are in the pit of winter. This encouraged us to stay home.

As I was taking out the trash in the evening, I looked up at the full moon and noticed that part of it was missing. A shadow had taken a bite. Then I remember the expected total lunar eclipse, which I’d forgotten.

A little later, at about 10:50 pm, we all went out in the single-digit temps to see totality: a pretty penny in the sky. Lunar eclipses are better in the summer, but they are when they are. Less than a minute outside looking at it was enough.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Been There