Peace Arch Park

Posted on September 3, 2015 by admin

One thing to think about at Peace Arch Historical State Park in extreme northwestern Washington state is the last time the United States invaded Canada, namely the bungled campaigns of 1812 and ’13. Bungled from the U.S. point of view, that is, though of course there were some successes, such the battles of the Thames and Lake Eire (“We have met the enemy and they are ours.”).

The War of 1812 was the last bit of fighting along the U.S.-Canada border, not counting spats over fishing, so it’s reasonable that a bi-national park on the border commemorates the long peace. Peace Arch Park is that place, 22 acres south of the border (Peace Arch Historical State Park) and nine hectares north of the border (Peace Arch Provincial Park).

I arrived around noon on August 25, driving up from Bellingham, Wash. You take the last U.S. exit on I-5 (or maybe it’s the first exit) and park nearby, just south of the border, and then walk to the Peace Arch, which is slap on the border, meaning it’s also exactly 49 degrees North, as well as in the grass median between the northbound and southbound lanes of the highway (the meeting of I-5 and BC 99). Since traffic stops on each side of the border, crossing the road on foot there isn’t very risky.

On the U.S. side, the Arch is 67 feet tall; on the Canadian side, 20.5 meters. It’s been standing for there for 94 years, built at the behest of Pacific Northwest business tycoon Sam Hill (1857-1931), who also had a replica of Stonehenge built in another part of Washington state, and who was an avid advocate of road improvement. (“Good roads are more than my hobby; they are my religion.”) Presumably Hill would have been happy that a major road linking the two nations passes around the Arch.

The border’s also marked by a number of concrete posts.
The International Boundary Commission (Commission de la frontiere internationale) put the plaque at the bottom of the post on the occasion of its centennial in 2008. I figure most Americans, and most Canadians, have never heard of the commission. I barely remember reading about it some years ago in the context of the Alaska-Yukon border.

According to the commission’s web site, “Officially, the Commission’s work is described as maintaining the [U.S.-Canada] boundary in an effective state of demarcation. This is done by inspecting it regularly; repairing, relocating or rebuilding damaged monuments or buoys; keeping the vista cleared, and erecting new boundary markers at such locations as new road crossings.”

My italics. This is the body that’s responsible for clear-cutting the border between Alaska and Yukon — a 20-foot (six-meter) swath all the way along the 141st meridian. Since I read about that some years ago, I’ve since pondered the usefulness of doing such a thing. The commission asserts that “the boundary vista must be entirely free of obstruction and plainly marked for the proper enforcement of customs, immigration, fishing and other laws of the two nations.” I’m not quite persuaded, but anyway, more about the line is here.

The border posts have four sides: UNITED STATES on the south face (visible in my picture), CANADA on the north face, and INTERNATIONAL BOUNDARY and TREATY 1925 on the other two. I wondered about that. The commission references it too.

The treaty’s formal name is: “Treaty Between the United States of America and His Britannic Majesty, in Respect of the Dominion of Canada, to Define More Accurately at Certain Points and to Complete the International Boundary Between the United States and Canada and to Maintain the Demarcation of that Boundary, Signed at Washington, February 24, 1925.”

I made a point of crossing and recrossing the border a number of times near the posts. Now I can accurately say I’ve been to Canada more than a dozen times, including the six regular check-your-passport visits, plus the half-dozen (maybe more) crossings at the Peace Arch.

A Few Fine Portland Buildings

Posted on August 31, 2015 by admin

Drive into a large city for the first time, without the benefit of some GPS box advising you, and with few exceptions, it’ll be confusing for a while. The way the streets are connected seems to make little sense. They don’t match your maps, or rather, what you think you remember from looking at your maps. Signage isn’t what it should be (often just an impression, but objectively true in Boston). The route you want to go is under construction. There’s always someone right behind you when you need to make a critical decision about turning, but you’re never in the lane you need to be anyway.

It sounds like I’m complaining, but not really. Once the worst of the drive is over — because you do get where you’re going, usually — you’ve had the satisfaction of navigating through a strange place. You’ve also seen, even fleetingly, some things you wouldn’t have otherwise. GPS is fine if you have a meeting to attend or a plane to catch, but otherwise it obviates the need to guide yourself through new territory with maps, landmarks you know ahead of time, and your own sense of direction.

I plowed through parts all three cities — Portland, Vancouver, and Seattle — on different occasions last week, each causing me temporary location frustration. Each time when it was over, it was worth it. When I found a parking garage in downtown Portland early on the afternoon of August 22 and set out on foot, it was wonderful not to be in that car anymore, and taking in what the streets of Portland had to offer.

The first thing I took in was the air. A light haze and the smell of a not-too-distant fire hung everywhere. It wasn’t a choking haze, or even one that made me cough, but it carried a distinct odor. Smelled like one’s clothes after grilling, especially the burned wood. The source was the vast complex of forest fires then raging in eastern Washington — still raging — and which only a few days before had killed three U.S. Forest Service firefighters near Twisp, Wash., all young men.

Portland is known for a number of things, such as trying to rival Austin for urban weird. More on that later. I want to point out that downtown Portland, and the nearby Pearl District, have some exceptionally fine buildings a century or more old that aren’t remotely weird. Such as the New Market Block (1872).

The Blagen Block (1888).

The Postal Building (1900).
And the Pittock Block (1914). Among a good many others, including more modern structures.
I have a fondness for buildings with visible fire escapes.

Also worth noting: Portland’s a sizable industrial town. Not something you hear about much either. I spent the night at some distance from the city center at a motel on U.S. 30 near the Willametta River, a major tributary to the Columbia, both of which are working rivers. The motel was in an industrial zone, both for manufacturing and distribution, and I know there are other areas similarly industrial in greater Portland. It isn’t the largest industrial market even in the Northwest, but it’s large enough to have current and projected development of nearly 2 million square feet.

Prambanan 1994

Posted on August 16, 2015 by admin

Candi Prambanan, or Candi Rara Jonggrang, is a 9th-century Hindu temple compound near Yogyakarta in central Java, though it had lain in ruins for centuries before reconstruction in the 20th century. UNESCO asserts that “the temples collapsed due to earthquake, volcanic eruption and a shift of political power in the early 11th century, and they were rediscovered in the 17th century. These compounds have never been displaced or changed.

“Restoration works have been conducted since 1918, both in original traditional method of interlocking stone and modern methods using concrete to strengthen the temple structure. Even though extensive restoration works have been done in the past and as recently as after the 2006 earthquake, great care has been taken to retain the authenticity of the structures.”

My snapshots hardly do the structures justice. We visited in the mid-morning of August 11, 1994, after seeing Borobudur earlier that morning. The increasing tropical heat made the temple compound a little harder to appreciate than Borobudur, but it was impressive all the same.

More from UNESCO (the compound became a World Heritage Site in 1991): “Prambanan, named after the village, is the biggest temple complex in Java. It is actually a huge Hindu temple complex… Dedicated to the three great Hindu divinities, this temple with its decorated reliefs is an outstanding example of Siva art in Indonesia and the region.

“It was built in the 9th century and designed as three concentric squares. In all there are 224 temples in the entire complex. The inner square contains 16 temples, the most significant being the 47 m high central Siva temple flanked to the north by the Brahma temple and to the south by the Vishnu temple. These three ancient masterpieces of Hindu architecture are locally referred to as the Prambanan Temple or Lorojonggrang Temple (Slender Maiden); the compound was deserted soon after it was completed, possibly owing to the eruption of nearby Mount Merapi [volcanoes are always a risk on Java].”

Looking at it, I’m glad that Indonesia hasn’t spawned as much religious extremism as some other parts of the world. This is the kind of place that ISIS and Taliban barbarians would dynamite.

Thursday Leftovers

Posted on August 6, 2015 by admin

Late on Sunday evening, a short, intense thunderstorm rolled through. A little later, just before midnight, I looked out of my back door — which has a southern exposure — and saw the most vivid cloud-to-cloud lightning I’ve ever seen, as the storm was a few miles to the south. Quick arcs and pops of lightning, mostly horizontal, illuminating the otherwise inky sky.

I didn’t drag Lilly to a cemetery on our recent short trip. I didn’t see one I wanted to visit. But I did see a presidential site completely by chance. At the entrance to the Michigan Union, which is U-M’s student union, there’s a bronze plaque sporting a relief image of President Kennedy. Technically, Sen. Kennedy, because it said:

Here at 2:00 a.m. on October 14, 1960, John Fitzgerald Kennedy first defined the Peace Corps. He stood at the place marked by the medallion and was cheered by a large and enthusiastic student audience for the hope and promise his idea gave the world.

The medallion says: Conception of Peace Corps. First Mentioned on This Spot. October 14, 1960.

The Peace Corps web site is careful to point out that candidate Kennedy did not, in fact, make a policy proposal that morning. Rather, “Speaking into a microphone at the center of the stone staircase, with aides and students around him, Kennedy began by expressing his ‘thanks to you, as a graduate of the Michigan of the East, Harvard University.’ (A recording shows that this got a shout from the crowd.) The campaign, he said, was the most important since the Depression election of 1932, ‘because of the problems which press upon the United States, and the opportunities which will be presented to us in the 1960s, which must be seized.’

“Then he asked his question: ‘How many of you who are going to be doctors are willing to spend your days in Ghana? Technicians or engineers: how many of you are willing to work in the Foreign Service and spend your lives traveling around the world? On your willingness to do that, not merely to serve one year or two years in the service, but on your willingness to contribute part of your life to this country, I think will depend the answer whether a free society can compete. I think it can. And I think Americans are willing to contribute. But the effort must be far greater than we’ve ever made in the past.’ ”

The Toledo Museum of Art’s auditorium — which it calls the Peristyle — looks like this.
A Greek-style auditorium. Can’t say I’ve ever seen one like it in this country. I understand that it’s the home of the Toledo Symphony Orchestra, among other things.

Across the street from the main museum is its Glass Pavilion. Fittingly for a museum built with a lot of glass-industry money, the pavilion features extensive glass exhibits and also a glass-blowing studio, complete with really hot furnaces. We stayed for a glass-blowing demonstration: two young women creating a blue glass bowl. It was an intricate process, more than I knew. Looked tedious, too. Unless you’re a glass-blowing enthusiast.

I’m glad the world has a place for glass blowers, but I couldn’t be one myself. Guess that goes for most skilled activities.

Nuestra Señora del Espíritu Santo de Zuñigais & Presidio Nuestra Señora de Loreto de la Bahía

Posted on July 29, 2015 by admin

Nuestra Señora del Espíritu Santo de Zuñigais is on the San Antonio River, but it’s well downstream from the SA metro area, in the modern town of Goliad. It’s been there since 1749 in one form or another, at first doing what missions did in the early days, such as convert the natives, engage in ranching, and be a part (along with the nearby presidio) of Spain’s claim to the region against French and English inroads.

By the early 20th century, it was a ruin. But not forgotten completely, because the CCC rebuilt it in the 1930s. It isn’t as well known as the chain of missions in San Antonio, including the Alamo, which were tapped by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site earlier this month. That agitated a few simple-minded crackpots, since it’s always something. So the NPS felt obliged to include the following sentence in its press release about the honor: “Inclusion of a site in the World Heritage List does not affect U.S. sovereignty or management of the sites, which remain subject only to U.S., state and local laws.”

Ann and I made our way to Mission Espíritu Santo in the late afternoon of July 11. Only one other group was visiting at the time, and in fact the interior was already closed for the day. But we got a good look at the mission and its grounds.
Some parts are still ruins. It adds a certain something to the site.
Other parts are open to the sky.
A short drive away is Presidio La Bahía, the fort that protected the mission. In full, Presidio Nuestra Señora de Loreto de la Bahía, it was the place to go to when Apaches were coming. During the Texas Revolution, Fannin and his men were imprisoned there before they were killed not far away. In our time, that means people tell ghost stories about the place.
We got there after closing time. The presidio, being a fortress, has a wall all the way around — also rebuilt, I assume — so no peeks inside. That just means I’ll have to come back someday for a longer look.

Fannin Battleground State Historic Site

Posted on July 28, 2015 by admin

The easy way to get from the greater Houston glop to San Antonio is via I-10. That route has its interests, such as Flatonia and Schulenburg and not far away, the Painted Churches, a few of which I’d like visit someday. But on the 11th, I had other things in mind, and followed US 59 southwest out of town.

Or rather, the future I-69. Every 20 or 30 miles, a sign told me that the current route of US 59 — which is already mostly a four-lane highway between the outskirts of Houston and Victoria — would someday be a bone fide part of the Interstate system running all the way to Laredo. For ordinary drivers like me, I’m not sure of the value, since on an Interstate you can’t use turnarounds in the medians, as you can — and as I did a few times — on a large US route. But looking at a map, I can also see the advantage of an I-69 through Texas for trucks barreling up from Mexico to points east: they can bypass San Antonio and its traffic.

Just southwest of Victoria is the Fannin Battleground State Historic Site, where Col. Fannin surrendered to Gen. Urrea after the Battle of Coleto not long after the fall of the Alamo. An obelisk marks the site.

Soon after the surrender, of course, Fannin and most of his men were murdered on the orders of Santa Anna, in a move that wasn’t just a crime, but a blunder. The Texas State Historical Association posits: “The impact of the Goliad Massacre was crucial. Until this episode Santa Anna’s reputation had been that of a cunning and crafty man, rather than a cruel one. When the Goliad prisoners were taken, Texas had no other army in the field and the newly constituted ad interim government seemed incapable of forming one.

“The Texas cause was dependent on the material aid and sympathy of the United States. Had Fannin’s and Miller’s men been dumped on the wharves at New Orleans penniless, homesick, humiliated, and distressed, and each with his separate tale of Texas mismanagement and incompetence, Texas prestige in the United States would most likely have fallen, along with sources of help.

“But Portilla’s volleys at Goliad, together with the fall of the Alamo, branded both Santa Anna and the Mexican people with a reputation for cruelty and aroused the fury of the people of Texas, the United States, and even Great Britain and France, thus considerably promoting the success of the Texas Revolution.”

A little further to the southwest is the town of Goliad, seat of Goliad County. It has a handsome courthouse, as many counties in Texas do.
Alfred Giles, a British immigrant who did a lot of work in South Texas, San Antonio in particular, designed the Goliad County courthouse in 1894. A hurricane knocked down the clock tower in 1942, but it was finally replaced in 2003.

On the courthouse grounds is the Hanging Tree.
According to a State Historical Survey Committee plaque near the tree: “Site for court sessions at various times from 1846 to 1870. Capital sentences called for by the courts were carried out immediately, by means of a rope and a convenient limb.

“Hangings not called for by regular courts occurred here during the 1857 “Cart War” — a series of attacks made by Texas freighters against Mexican drivers along the Indianola-Goliad-San Antonio Road. About 70 men were killed, some of them on this tree, before the war was halted by Texas Rangers.”

More on this little-known incident here; it isn’t to the Texans’ credit. Even so, across the street from the Hanging Tree is the Hanging Tree restaurant. How very Texas.

The East End Historic District, Galveston

Posted on July 22, 2015 by admin

The East End Historic District covers over 50 city blocks in Galveston. In July the time to take a stroll in such a place is early in the morning — not something we did — or late in the afternoon, which we did. It’s a delightful mix of housing styles, or as the East End Historic District Association puts it, offers views of “a towering pillar, shadowed silhouettes of ornate carvings, a splash of stained glass in a window, welcoming porches or a bit of wrought iron fencing.”

It also has trees large enough to move the sidewalks from underneath with their roots. Ann asked about the malformed sidewalks, and I explained that the roots did it slowly over the years.

The Julius Ruhl Residence, at the corner of Sealy and 15th and dating from the 1870s, has a widow’s walk. That’s just not something you see in suburban Chicago.
Many houses sport fine porches. A good thing to have in pre-air conditioned times. Or even after air conditioning was invented.
This is the J.C. Trube Castle.
It dates from the 1890s. Its web site — the place is a commercial enterprise now, available for weddings and other events — says the building is “constructed of bricks covered by stucco mixed with Belgium cement creating a rusticated stone effect. The mansard slate roof with seven gables and the battlement tower give the historic home a castle distinction. The observation deck on the top of the tower offers a view of both the gulf and the harbor.”

The building is also one of the few remaining designs of architect Alfred Muller. Nicholas J. Clayton didn’t design everything in 19th-century Galveston. The Prussian-born Muller also had the relative good fortune to die a few years before the 1900 hurricane.

More pretty houses.
Note the plaques to the left of the door on this house.
The upper one’s a little hard to read, but it says 1900 Storm Survivor. Hurricanes are serious business around here. Lest we forget, Ike slapped Galveston as furiously as Katrina hit New Orleans.

The Strand, Galveston

Posted on July 21, 2015 by admin

I can’t pin down the last time I went to Galveston. It was sometime in the early 1970s, probably as an appendix to a visit to Houston from San Antonio. Little memory remains, and for whatever reason we didn’t return when I was older. My brothers remember visits in the 1950s, during the time when my parents lived in Houston, but that’s before my time.

I suspect we never went to the Strand on any family visits to the city, because the area, which is a part of the city near Galveston Bay, didn’t begin its revival until the 1970s. The always-informative Handbook of Texas Online tells me that the Strand — formally called Avenue B in Galveston — was included in the original plat of the city in the late 1830s, with the origins of Avenue B’s nickname unknown.

“While the avenue extends throughout Galveston, the Strand has usually referred to the five-block business district situated between Twentieth and Twenty-fifth streets,” it says. “Throughout the nineteenth century, the area was known as the ‘Wall Street of the Southwest,’ serving as a major commercial center for the region.”

Some of the 19th-century buildings still stand on Avenue B, the Strand. With a 20th-century tower to the south.
Naturally, the Hurricane of 1900 put the kibosh on the Strand’s career as the Wall Street of the Southwest. I’ll bet after the storm a common enough sentiment among businessmen was, To hell with this, we’re going to Houston. Galveston didn’t have the space to grow into a megalopolis anyway.

“In the rebuilding process, businesses moved off the Strand and away from the wharfs,” the Handbook continues. “The area became a warehouse district. In the 1960s amidst widespread deterioration of the Strand, the Junior League of Galveston County restored two buildings sparking interest in the area. In 1973 the Galveston Historical Foundation initiated the Strand Revolving Fund, a catalyst in subsequent years for dramatic restoration and adaptive use in the Strand Historic District.”

These days, the Strand is a Galveston tourist zone, populated by ordinary visitors, and when a cruise ship’s docked near the zone, probably even more people, though I didn’t see any ships nearby when we were there. As a tourist zone, it has two distinct advantages. One, the sidewalks are covered, so that strolling along in mid-summer doesn’t mean walking under a hot and copper sky. Also, the clothiers, geegaw shops and other venues are universally air conditioned.

Ann and I did our share of ducking in and out of shops, eventually buying a single key ring and a few postcards. I can report as a matter of historical interest — that is, for future historians of 21st-century minutiae — that Confederate battle flag-themed merchandise hasn’t died out in the souvenir shops of Galveston as of the summer of 2015, though I can’t say its presence was overpowering.

Sad to say, the eccentric Col. Bubbie’s Strand Surplus Senter has closed. The sign is still there.
“Col. Bubbie’s was the longest-running, single-owner business on the Strand,” the Houston Chronicle reported last December after the shop closed. “Since 1972, it sold military equipment — gas masks, camouflage pants, canteens, mess kits, medals and insignias, you name it — encompassing 60 countries and conflicts from the Civil War to Iraq.

“The shop helped outfit the TV show MASH and war films as diverse as Saving Private Ryan and 1941, among others. Until a few months ago it was the go-to spot for local theater productions to get period uniforms, but that stock has dwindled.”

We also stopped in at La King’s Confectionery on Avenue B. We were glad we did. The place makes excellent ice cream. Ann’s pistachio was particularly good. Ice cream jockeys and soda jerks in white were on hand to serve whatever you wanted.

A neon sign says Purity Ice Cream, and I thought that meant a product of Tennessee’s Purity Dairies, but no. According to the Austin Chronicle, “Ice cream on an industrial scale arrived in Texas in 1889 when the Purity Ice Cream Company opened in Galveston.” The ice cream that La King’s serves is a direct culinary descendant of that ice cream, and La King’s is the only place it’s served.

In the back, you can watch a fellow making taffy, which the store also sells.

One other thing I spied on the Strand: a public chess set.
It was a little too hot to play, but still. That’s what parks need more of, public chess sets.

July Idles

Posted on July 6, 2015 by admin

This year was a stay-close-to-home Fourth of July. That is, metro Chicago. Some are, some aren’t. We returned to our old haunts in the western suburbs on Saturday night to see the Westmont fireworks, from the vantage of Ty Warner Park. It’s always a good show.

That was a high point of the weekend. So was taking my daughters to Half Price Books, at their request, on the evening of the 3rd.

The low point of the weekend was walking the dog on the 4th, not long before we left for the fireworks show. Late afternoon, that is. Part of our usual route takes us along a path between a dense row of bushes and a small patch of land sporting enough trees to block the sky, when they have leaves. Pretty soon I re-discovered its mid-summer nature as Mosquito Alley. The mossies were especially forceful when I was cleaning up after the dog.

Complaining about mosquitoes, though, is just carping. I’d rather look out of my back door and see this (an early July shot).

Than this (an early January shot).

Bugs aside, I spent a fair amount of time over the weekend on the deck reading The H.L. Hunley by Tom Chaffin (2008), a fine book about the submarine of that name, along with its predecessor vessels (the Pioneer and the American Diver). Or, as I learned reading the book, the “submarine boat,” which is a 19th-century usage. The Confederates gave underwater warfare a shot, but it turned out Age of Steam technology — as inventive as it clearly was — wasn’t quite up to the task. Not without killing more submarine boat crew than Union sailors.

Also, it’s another reason to visit Charleston, to see the vessel, now an artifact on display at the Warren Lasch Conservation Center. Not that I’d need any more reasons for a visit.

Waterloo and All That

Posted on June 18, 2015 by admin

Been quite a week for multi-centenary anniversaries. After Magna Carta earlier this week came Waterloo today, so famous you don’t even need to call it the Battle of Waterloo. It was the occasion for a lot of showy commemorations in the UK and Belgium (and what are they doing in France? Calling it jeudi, probably).

I guess everyone was busy with other things during the centennial, so the bicentennial got star treatment. The Daily Mail has a fine collection of photos for the commemorations. The pics made me wonder: will the fellow who’s playing Napoleon, according to the caption a French lawyer named Franck Samson, be sent to St. Helena for a while now? You know, to buttress the re-enactment’s authenticity.

The Daily Mail again (man, they know how to use the Internet): pictures of St. Helena. Apparently the island’s going to get a real airport soon, so that the not-so-frequent royal mail ship from Cape Town will be a thing of the past.

One more thing about Waterloo re-enactments: I wonder who played Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher? That’s a pretty important part, after all. An elderly German with a taste for re-enactment, no doubt, made up to look like his horse had fallen on him.

As I look around, I find more things inspired by Waterloo. That’s one of the time-eating dangers of the Internet, but also its prime joy. The song that helped propel Abba to a higher income than the GDP of Sweden (or something like that) was named “Waterloo,” of course, but there’s also a song lost to time of the same title, recorded by Stonewall Jackson in 1959, which hit the country charts just after Johnny Horton’s “The Battle of New Orleans.” It was the golden age of battle-themed honky-tonk music, clearly.

Stonewall Jackson’s song includes the following deathless lyrics. Punctuated as I hear it.

Little general, Napoleon of France
Tried to conquer, the world but lost his pants.
Met defeat, known as Bonaparte’s retreat.
And that’s when Napoleon met his Waterloo.

Incidentally, at 82, Stonewall Jackson — reportedly not a stage name, and I believe it — is still with us. That’s good to know.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: History