Vienna 1994

Posted on November 17, 2019 by admin

At Stephansplatz in Vienna in November 1994, I posed for a picture in front of Stephansdom. I decided to make a globe-like shape with my hands by putting the fingers of both hands together, fingertip-to-fingertip.

Which looks like some kind of nightmarish gluing of my fingers together. Just an eccentric little gesture that didn’t quite go right. I’d realized sometime earlier that Vienna was as far east as I’d reached in July 1983, when coming from the west. In 1994, coming from the east, I’d reached Vienna again. So I had passed through every longitude. Hence, a globe.

Actually, I’d already passed through every longitude by the time I’d reached Prague about 10 days earlier, traveling from Krakow, because Prague is west of Vienna, but never mind. I figured Vienna was the meeting point. It occurs to me now that besides London, Vienna is the only place in Europe that I’ve visited more than once. Need to rectify that in future years if I’m able.

Had a good visit both times. Here’s Yuriko on the grounds of Schönbrunn Palace.

It was a foggy day. Just barely visible in the background is the Gloriette. The day I visited in 1983 was sunny, not too hot, and pleasantly windy. I parked myself on a bench on the slope between the palace and the Gloriette and sat a while, admiring the view and writing a letter. A peak moment.

The Christkindlmarkt on the Rathausplatz had just started when we were there.
In the background is, naturally, Vienna’s Rathaus. Lots of pretty things were for sale at the market, I remember, but more expensive than the equally pretty baubles we’d seen at Krakow Cloth Hall market, which wasn’t a Christmas market, but had ornaments.

Belvedere Palace. You want palaces? Wien’s got ’em.

Vienna’s Ringstrasse.
One of the things that struck me when wandering around that part of town during my first visit to Vienna was spotting OPEC headquarters. It was in this building from 1977 to 2009.

If I’d known OPEC HQ was in Vienna, I’d forgotten that fact. OPEC isn’t that well known these days, but in the ’70s the organization was in the news all the time, generally characterized as shifty foreigners gouging upstanding Americans for oil. Not the kind of organization that occupies a building in a major European city, with offices and windows and phones and secretaries and all that. A silly thing to think, but often enough it’s hard to shake the prevailing nonsense.

The Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center

Posted on November 12, 2019 by admin

The first time I ever heard of anyone denying the reality of the Holocaust was when I did an article about the fact that there were such people for my student newspaper in college, ca. 1980. I interviewed a VU history professor about it — a professor who would later teach a semester-long Holocaust seminar that I took. I’d never heard of such a thing. Who would say such a thing?

This venomous wanker, for one, who was too extreme for the John Birch Society, and who libeled William F. Buckley. For his part, Buckley said that the wanker (not his word) epitomized “the fever swamps of the crazed right.”

I don’t remember whether the wanker’s name came up in the interview, but the name of his publishing company did, which I remember after all these years. Back then, it produced books and pamphlets. Now the same ideas are spread by social media posts that sprout like poisonous toadstools.

I remembered all that when I visited the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center on Sunday.
I also remembered news reports in 1978 about Neo-Nazis who wanted to march in Skokie, which had a sizable population of Holocaust survivors. The prospect of such a march inspired the creation of the organization, the Holocaust Memorial Foundation of Illinois, that would eventually (2009) open the museum, which is in Skokie.

The motive for founding such a museum is clear enough: tell the story, show the documentation, put the testimony out for all too see — or do nothing while evil people lie about what happened.

I arrived just in time to be admitted, at about 4 in the afternoon, under overcast skies, so it was hard to get a good look at the building. I did not, for example, notice that roughly half of the structure is black — including the entrance — and other other half white — including the exit. The entrance/exit can be seen in this photo, taken in the light of a June day. The museum is a work by Chicago architect Stanley Tigerman, who died just this year.

I only had an hour, which wasn’t enough. I need to go back sometime. The Holocaust exhibit takes up most of the first floor, which is where I spent the hour. The exhibit winds its way through a number of small rooms and alcoves, running more-or-less chronologically from a description of Jewish life in Europe in the early 20th century to the rise of the Nazis and the increasingly harsh repressions of that regime, eventually to become industrialized mass murder.

The museum acknowledges that the Nazis murdered many other people, but its focus is on the genocide of European Jews. Much of the story is familiar, at least to me, but for those less familiar with the history, the museum does a good job of walking visitors through the steps toward the Final Solution.

The many documents on display fascinated me as much as anything else. Germany, Nazi or otherwise, is a document-happy country, and there they were: letters, notes, passports, visas, orders, lists, ID papers, records of various kinds, and on and on. Now just paper on display, but some of them vitally important to the people who originally had them; probably life or death, in the case of exit papers.

The many photos were haunting. Some were of survivors, before the ordeal began, or when things were bad but not as bad as they would be. Others were of the doomed. Yet others were those whose fate is unclear, but who likely perished. The museum’s videos were short and to the point, and often featuring testimony from survivors who later lived in the Chicago area, the ranks of whom must now be thinning rapidly. They told of uncertainty, suffering, everyday life in the ghettos, the struggle to escape, efforts to resist against impossible odds.

By the time the museum announced that it was closing, I’d made through the early Nazi years and the beginning of the war and to the first displays concerning the Final Solution, but I could have easily spent more time.

From that point in the museum, finding the exit turned out to be more of a challenge than I’d have thought. Tigerman and interior designer Yitzchak Mais made a little maze-like, a little disorienting, which must have been on purpose. I’ve read similar things about the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. I navigated my way out using the red-letter EXIT signs mandated by fire codes.

The Branson Scenic Railway

Posted on November 10, 2019 by admin

During my visit to Branson in November 2012, I took an excursion on the Branson Scenic Railway. Nothing like hopping aboard a pleasure train pulled by mid-century locomotives.
Specifically, according to the railroad’s web site, “BSRX 98, Locomotive, 1951 EMD F9PH, rebuilt 1981, has HEP (Formerly B&O, then MARC #83).” I looked up HEP, at least: head-end power. Nice to know that the locomotive has hep.

The web site further explains: “Traveling on a working commercial railroad line, the train’s direction of travel… is determined by the Missouri and Northern Arkansas Railroad just prior to departure. At that time, the train will go either north or south. The northern route goes as far as Galena, Missouri, to the James River Valley; and the southern route extends into Arkansas to the Barren Fork Trestle.”

We went south into Arkansas, which isn’t actually that far from Branson, across water and through hills and woods and tunnels, just as the leaves were turning nicely.

“The construction of the White River Railway in the early 1900s made the area accessible for tourists and is largely responsible for the development of Branson and the Ozarks as a tourism destination… The route crosses the White River in Branson, now Lake Taneycomo, and then runs along side of it after taking a fifty-mile short cut over the Ozark Mountains.

“This was part of the Missouri Pacific Railroad between Kansas City, Missouri, and Little Rock, Arkansas. It became a part of the Union Pacific after the UP bought the MOPAC. The Missouri and Northern Arkansas Railroad now operates the line.

“In 1993, the Branson Scenic Railway was formed, and through a lease arrangement with the MNA, runs excursions through this historic route March through December.”

A train through the Alps it isn’t, but it’s scenic all the same.

Recent Eats

Posted on November 7, 2019 by admin

During Open House Chicago last month, we saw this.
Nothing to do with the event. It’s a Thai shrine of some kind. Not sure whether it counts as a spirit house, but the building behind it (from this angle) is a Thai restaurant — Taste of Thai Town at 4461 N. Pulaski. Previously, the building housed a Chicago PD station. We ate lunch there and were well satisfied with the meal.

In Virginia last month, Ann and I ate at Moose’s by the Creek in Charlottesville. It’s a large diner, decorated with a couple of enormous moose heads, many antlers and other reminders of sizable members of the deer family. Had some good sandwiches there, and when I paid, the woman at the register — it might have been co-owner Melinda “Moose” Stargell herself — said she wanted to take our picture under a major pair of antlers.

For Moose’s by the Creek’s Facebook page. Lots of customers have their pictures there. She said we were free to download it for ourselves, so here it is.

I had to be careful not to bump up against any of those points. Moose’s by the Creek also gave us some stickers.

We had dinner the first evening in Richmond at Belmont Pizzeria in the Museum District, a pleasant old neighborhood not too far from VCU, so maybe students eat its pizza too. Mostly it was takeout, with the large kitchen completely visible from the ordering counter, but there were a few tables, so we sat down to eat as a parade of people came in to get their orders. It was a popular joint, full of wonderful smells, and when we got our pizza — which had shrimp on it — we found it to be wonderful too.

Belmont Pizzeria has a curious bit of wall art on the outside.

Even without the art, it was the best meal I had in Virginia, though the hipster waffles were a close second and, as I said, Moose’s was good too.

Christ the King & Trinity United Methodist

Posted on November 6, 2019 by admin

Our visits during the 2019 Open House Chicago event on October 19 weren’t only to churches — just mostly. The opportunity was there.

In the mid-afternoon, we headed down to the Beverly neighborhood on the Southwest Side. Next year, no long drives between neighborhoods — we spent too much time jammed on the Kennedy Expressway, then the Dan Ryan Expressway. I should have known better. But the sites were worth it.

Eventually, we got to Beverly. First stop, Christ the King.

Midcentury Modern, with distinctive brass and glass, completed in 1955. Design by Fox & Fox, who are still in business.
The King of Kings indeed. Painted to look like a mosaic from the floor.
Some blocks to the south is Trinity United Methodist, designed by Ralph E. Stotzel and Edward F. Jansen.
“The present building is its 5th location, begun with the construction of the community house — the northern portion of the current building — in 1924. Construction of the Gothic sanctuary was delayed by the Great Depression, but it was completed in 1940,” says Open House.

The church also has a fine organ.

We heard it in action. According to the church, it is a Möller Pipe Organ, opus 8240, with three manuals and 26 ranks, installed in 1951. Apparently the M.P. Möller Organ Co. of Hagerstown, Md., was a busy organ-maker in its day.

St. Benedict the African

Posted on November 5, 2019 by admin

As a saint, Benedict the African (1526-89), or Benedict the Moor, has enjoyed longstanding popularity in Italy, Spain and Latin America, and is also the patron saint of African-Americans. I didn’t know any of that before we visited St. Benedict the African, a church in the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago, as part of Open House Chicago on October 19, but I was going to learn.

The exterior looked unpromising. It’s a modernist design completed in 1989 by Belli & Belli. “Eight parishes were consolidated into St. Benedict the African in the 1980s, the building was designed specifically with and for its predominantly African-American community,” Open House says.
The exterior might be utilitarian, but inside is a whole other story. A whole other remarkable story. A welcoming St. Benedict is one of the first figures you see.
Fashioned from Ethiopian glass (there’s an industry there) by local artist David Csicsko to honor Benedict’s parents’ birthplace. The Sears Tower and the John Hancock building are in the background.

Not far from that window is an astonishingly large baptismal pool (too big to be called a font?). Open House claims that at 10,000 gallons, it’s one of the world’s largest.
The sanctuary is in the round.
“An inspired 200-pound, hand-woven tapestry adorns the wall behind the altar and depicts a dancing flame (the spirit of God), choppy waters (daily strife), and the broken body of Christ image as the Bread of Life,” the church says.

In wood, a depiction of St. Martin de Porres, another saint I knew nothing about before visiting the church.

More Csicsko glass. A Living Cross.
Elsewhere is another one of his windows, or a pair actually, depicting Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks and Sister Thea Bowman, the last of whom was new to me as well.

Our Lady of Victory & St. Edward (the Confessor)

Posted on November 4, 2019 by admin

According to Open House Chicago, Our Lady of Victory is in the Portage Park neighborhood of Chicago, though it isn’t that far south of the Copernicus Center in Jefferson Park. Other sources put the church in Jefferson Park.

Never mind, Our Lady of Victory was our first church of the day during Open House. Others would follow.

Underneath the main church is a chapel. According to a parishioner on hand to talk to visitors, the chapel was completed decades before the rest of the church — 1928, designed by E. Brielmaier & Sons. Then work stopped. First there were hard times, then there was a war.

“Work on the upper church was delayed until it was finally completed in 1954,” Open House says. “The tan stone of the Spanish-style exterior was selected specifically to complement the color of the ornate terra-cotta around the original entrance.”

By this time, different architects were on the job: Meyer & Cook.“The warmth of the exterior extends to the sanctuary’s lavish tan and pink marble and terrazzo. Polychromatic details throughout, particularly in the stained glass, wooden Stations of the Cross and other painted elements contribute to a colorful and welcoming space tied together with subtle Art Deco influences.”

East of Our Lady of Victory, and east of the Kennedy Expressway in the Irving Park neighborhood, is St. Edward. I don’t know that I’ve ever visited a church named for Edward the Confessor, but there it was.
And there he is.
Quite a view, looking straight up.
The church has a similar construction history as Our Lady of Victory, except the archdiocese managed to complete it before the war. “Plans to build the current St. Edward Church began around 1926,” Open House Chicago notes.

“Construction of the lower level was completed, but the work was halted because of the Depression. Worship took place in the lower church at basement level. The upper church was completed in 1940.”

The distinctive feature of St. Edward is in the narthex. Not too many churches you can say that about.

More specifically, all around the narthex ceiling is a painted replica of the first third of the Bayeux Tapestry, done in oils by an artist named Mae Connor-Anderson and completed in 2005. It’s about 75 feet long and you have to crane your neck to appreciate it, or — as I did for a few moments — lay on the floor.

Just inside the nave a parishioner, maybe only a shade older than I am, sat at a small table with some material about the church and especially the Tapestry, mostly some photocopied sheets. I took an interest and told him that I’d seen the Tapestry. He seemed a little excited at that — not only someone who knew what it was, but who had actually seen it. He told me that he wanted to see it himself, but hadn’t gotten around to it.

So we talked some more about the Tapestry and St. Edward’s replica, and just before I left, he told me to wait a second. From under the table, he produced a professionally made 12-page booklet about the St. Edward and the Tapestry and gave it to me. The cover:
The first third was reproduced on the ceiling for reasons of space, but also because it begins with King Edward meeting Harold II — perfidious Harold, according to Norman propaganda — and ends with Edward being interred at Westminster Abbey. Other adjustments were made as well, including leaving the Latin tituli out.

An example page of the booklet:
From my perch on the floor, I was determined to get at least one image of the ceiling painting.
Who else but good King Edward?

Jefferson Park, Chicago

Posted on November 3, 2019 by admin

The weekend after I returned from Virginia, where we encountered a number of statues of Thomas Jefferson, I found myself in front of a statue of Thomas Jefferson. In Chicago. In the neighborhood known as Jefferson Park on the Northwest Side.
Jefferson Park Jefferson statue He’s standing in front of an open-air CTA bus terminal. Actually, an intermodal station, since the Jefferson Park El stop is back there, too.

“The statue depicts Jefferson standing at a podium as he signed the Declaration of Independence,” says Chicago-L. “The statue stands on a circular granite base, divided into 13 wedges representing the 13 original colonies. One of Jefferson’s quotations — ‘The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government’ — is imprinted around the outer edge.

“A time capsule, which includes essays from the children from schools in the surrounding area, was buried at the statue’s feet. The statue was made possible through a fund drive organized by the Jefferson Park Chamber of Commerce.”

Elsewhere, I found that it’s the work of Edward Hlavka, erected in 2005.

As interesting as an eye-level bronze of a Founding Father might be, I hadn’t come to Jefferson Park for that. Rather, the area was our first stop during Open House Chicago 2019 on October 19. The fact that I just gotten back from a trip wasn’t going to keep me away. Besides, it was a pleasant fall day in Chicago.

First we went to the Copernicus Center on W. Lawrence Ave.
These days, the Copernicus Center is an event venue owned by the Copernicus Foundation, a Polish-American society, which holds events of interest to the local Polish population, but that’s not all. Looking at its list of upcoming events, I found a concert by Iranian pop singer Shadmehr Aghili; Praise Experience, “one of the biggest African gospel concerts in Chicago”; and a stage show called Cleopatra Metio la Pata, “Por fin llega a los Estados Unidos la sexy comedia musical!”

The building opened in 1930 as the Gateway Theatre, “designed in Atmospheric style with classical Roman-inspired flourishes; complete with a dark blue, starlit sky in the 2,092-seat auditorium, and classical statuary and vines on the side walls,” Cinema Treasures says. A movie palace, in other words. Mason Gerardi Rapp of Rapp & Rapp did the design.

Movies are still shown at the Copernicus — the Polish Film Festival in America is coming there soon — but mostly the stage holds live shows.

From there, we walked along Milwaukee Ave., passing the Jefferson statue, and soon arrived at the Jefferson Masonic Temple.
The main room was open.
A mason was on hand, the fellow wearing the tie, to talk about the temple and Masonry. The subject of the Anti-Masonic Party didn’t come up.

“The Jefferson Masonic Temple, completed in 1913, is one of a few remaining active Masonic Temples in the city limits of Chicago…” Open House Chicago notes. “The Providence Lodge, which built the structure, eventually merged with the King Oscar Lodge, and the space is now shared by several different Lodges and owned by the nonprofit Jefferson Masonic Temple Association.”

The Edgar Allan Poe Museum

Posted on October 31, 2019 by admin

Halloween snow today. Mid-morning.

Mid-afternoon. Of course, it will melt in a day or two.

I’ve spent a fair number of Halloweens in the North; this is the first time snow has fallen. Cold rain, sometimes, but no snow. Sometimes warm fall days or blustery cool ones, like the Halloween of 2001, when Lilly was so unnerved by the dark and the strong winds while out trick-or-treating that she insisted that I carry her home. She wasn’t quite four, so it was possible — but tiring.

Speaking of Halloween, I’ve been listening to “Danse Macabre” lately.

In high school, I made the mistake of calling the piece “Halloween music” in front of my band director. He let me have it. It’s a tone poem! It’s serious music from France! It’s blah blah blah. Know what, Mr. W? I was right. It can be all those other things and Halloween music as well. Halloween as in spirits roaming our world before All Hallow’s, not the candy-gathering custom.

The last place we visited during the recent Virginia trip was the Edgar Allan Poe Museum in the Shockoe Bottom neighborhood of Richmond.

A small, specialized museum not in a house that Poe lived in — one of the places he lived was a few blocks away, long demolished — but including a building that is suitably old. In fact, according to a plaque on the wall, the oldest house still standing in Richmond, the Ege House.

All in all, an interesting little museum. Ann thought so too. I found out things I didn’t know, such as that Poe was a gifted athlete at the University of Virginia. Also heard more about things I did know, such as that after Poe died, his enemy Rufus Griswold wrote damning and largely false accounts of the author — vestiges of which still cling to Poe.

The museum is essentially three rooms: Poe’s early life, which was haunted by Death; Poe’s literary career, which was informed by Death; and Poe’s early and mysterious death, which was literally about Death. Some of the artifacts were owned by Poe or his family, or were portraits of them. Other items evoked his life and literature.

Such as this marble-and-bronze memorial to Poe.

The sign says, “… Edwin Booth, on behalf of the actors of New York, presented this monument to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1885 in memory of Poe…” Eventually, I guess, the Met got tired of it, and it ended up in Richmond.

Or this bust of Pallas, a copy of a Roman sculpture. Can’t call yourself a Poe museum without that, though a depiction of Night’s Plutonian Shore would be good as well.

Poe himself in stone out in the garden.

The garden is a pretty little space. People get married there, apparently.

My own favorite item.

I haven’t seen The Raven, but a movie with Vincent Price and Peter Lorre and Boris Karloff and Jack Nicholson, directed by Roger Corman, who did a lot of Poe-inspired movies, has to be worth a look.

Hollywood Cemetery

Posted on October 30, 2019 by admin

It sounds like a place where movie stars repose, but Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond had that name long before the film industry acquired its metonym. The graveyard in California is the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, named such only in 1998 in a clear exercise in marketing. Founded in 1849, Virginia’s Hollywood is a first-rate example of the rural cemetery movement of the 19th century, and as beautiful a graveyard as you’ll find anywhere.

The cemetery stands on hills overlooking the James River, covering 130 acres not far west of downtown and counting more than 64,000 permanent residents. It has everything an aesthetic cemetery should have: landscape contour, trees and bushes, funerary art and a wide variety of stones, and notable burials.

I went on the warm and clear morning of October 15 not long after Hollywood opened. Getting there wasn’t too hard. It’s enough of an attraction that signs point the way.

But I suppose not that many people come on Tuesday mornings. A handful of joggers and dog walkers and groundsmen were the only other living people there.

Some mausoleums, but maybe not as many as in cemeteries in historically more prosperous parts of the country.

Hollywood offers some nice views of the James. I’d heard that the river was low because the region’s been dry lately.
As you’d expect, one section has an enormous Confederate burial ground.
Made distinctive by a monumental pyramid, dedicated in 1869.
“This famed 90-foot pyramid stands as a monument to the 18,000 Confederate soldiers buried in Hollywood Cemetery,” the cemetery web site says. “Made entirely from large blocks of James River granite, the pyramid was created through the efforts of the women of the Hollywood Memorial Association who tended the graves of the Confederate dead after the Civil War. They worked together to raise over $18,000 and commissioned the help of engineer Charles Henry Dimmock to design the pyramid.”

By chance, I happened across J.E.B. Stuart’s grave. Plenty of other Confederate generals lie in Hollywood as well.

But I wanted to find the cemetery’s presidential graves, which I did. Jefferson Davis was hard to miss, located toward the western edge of Hollywood among other members of his family. He and his wife Varina are in front of the bronze.
I believe that’s the third flag of the Confederacy, limp on the flagpole. The draped figure on the left marks the graves of Joel and Margaret Hayes; she was one of the Davis daughters. Off further to the left, though not in the picture, is the grave of Fitzhugh Lee.

The angel marks the grave of Varina Anne Davis (1864-1898), youngest daughter of the Davises.
On one of the cemetery’s prominent ridges is Presidents Circle, location of the two U.S. presidents.
One is James Monroe.
He died in 1831, before the cemetery opened, but was re-interred here in 1858 from New York City, during the centennial year of his birth. Apparently the reinterment was quite a big deal, involving speeches, banquets, civilian and military escorts, and a fair amount of cooperation between the states of Virginia and New York, as detailed in this article in the Richmond-Times Dispatch.

The article also notes a toast delivered by a Richmonder at the Virginia banquet: “New York and Virginia; united in glory, united in interest… nothing but fanaticism can separate them.”

Oh, well. Architect Albert Lybrock designed Monroe’s Gothic Revival cast-iron monument. Seems like he’s best known for that very work.

Not far away is John Tyler’s tall marker, mostly in shadow when I saw it.
He happened to be in Richmond when he died in early 1862, before he could take his seat in the CSA House of Representatives. He had been in the Provisional Congress, however.
His second wife, Julia, is with him, and a few of his large brood are nearby. Hollywood Cemetery says: “Tyler requested arrangements for a simple burial, but Confederate President Jefferson Davis hosted a grand event, complete with a Confederate flag draped over the coffin.”

The bust wasn’t added until 1915. Guess bronze was in short supply in secessionist Virginia, and funds in short supply after the war. The work is by Raymond Averill Porter, better known for a Henry Cabot Lodge statue in Boston.

Counting the two latest ones, that makes 17 U.S. presidential grave sites I’ve visited: Jefferson, Monroe, Jackson, Tyler, Polk, Lincoln, A. Johnson, Grant, Hayes, B. Harrison, Taft, Hoover, Truman, Kennedy, LBJ, Nixon and Ford.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Been There