RTW ’25 Leftovers

Posted on June 12, 2025 by admin

Summertime, and the living’s not bad. Pretty good, really. But those aren’t as catchy as the actual lyric. Time to pause posting for the summer holiday string: Flag Day, Juneteenth, Canada Day, Independence Day and Nunavut Day. Come to think of it, that’s an exceptionally representative run of holidays for North America. Back around July 13.

The flight from Chicago to Tokyo took us far north, as that flight path usually does. There was more light than I thought there would be, looking down at this moment on the February snows of the Yukon or Alaska; I’ll never know which. I could have been eying the border, for all I know, which suggests that borders are a gossamer fiction at these latitudes.

Japan

It was a happy moment when we ate at Mos Burger. One of these days, I’m going to dig out my paper copy of an article I wrote for Kansai Time Out in 1993 about four varieties of Western-style fast food chains founded in Japan, and post it. Today isn’t that day. But I can say that Mos Burger was the best of them.

As good as I remember it from 25+ years ago, the last time I went to one.

In Enoshima, near the ocean, this fellow hawks soft serve ice cream. Goo goo g’joob. Look but don’t touch.

The handsome Osaka City Central Public Hall, completed in 1918. Amazing that it survived the war and urban renewal 20 years later, those forces that generally gave modern urban Japan the boxy concrete character it enjoys today.

India

A monumental monument in New Delhi: India Gate, which honors more than 74,100 soldiers of the Indian Army who died during the Great War, and a number more in the Third Afghan War a few years later. They did their part. One of the larger relics of the Raj, unless you count things better described as legacies, such as railroad lines, parliamentary government, and the bitter feud between India and Pakistan.

While we were looking at India Gate, a group of about a dozen uniformed schoolboys, who had detached themselves from a larger group, approached me and asked where I was from. They were gleeful to hear “America,” a reaction I didn’t know anyone would have anymore, but I suppose they’ve seen a lot of our movies. A middle-aged male chaperon appeared in short order and shooed them away, while giving me a sidelong glance with a hairy eyeball, though I hadn’t precipitated the encounter in any way. I was just a suspicious foreigner, I guess.

The Taj Mahal has a fair amount of parkland around it. That means a population of monkeys, too. I spotted more monkeys in urban India than I would have anticipated. These didn’t seem to be bothered by the men, the dogs or the motorcycle.

On display at the Ghandi Museum: a Marconigram. I don’t know that I’d ever seen one of those before. Or maybe there was one on display at the Titanic Museum in Branson. Anyway, that’s one good reason to go to museums: for things once common, now curiosities. Safia Zaghloul was an Egyptian political activist of the time.

United Arab Emirates

In Dubai it seemed like there were more men at work sweeping, mopping and other cleaning of floors and other flat places, per square meter, than anywhere else I’ve ever been. There are worse things to do with cheap labor.

Not sure exactly where this was, except somewhere out on Palm Jumeirah. Must have been a wall, or like a wall, in one of the posh retail corridors winding through one of the posh resort properties amid the poshness of the island.

Note: White on green is common indeed around the world.

Desert flowers. Of course, sprinklers water that bit of terrain at regular intervals.

Germany

What’s Berlin without currywurst? They say it came into style soon after the city was divided.

What would Germany be without Ritter Sport? A giant stack of them can be seen, in their great variety, at the Hauptbahnhof in Berlin. Later, I bought about 10 squares of RS at a discount price at a Netto grocery store near our hotel. Think Aldi or Lidl, but more cluttered.

Views of the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas, near the Tiergarten in Berlin. It wasn’t there in 1983.

Czech Republic

Not calling it Czechia. Or, if it ever comes to it, not calling India Bharat, either.

St. George’s Basilica. I admired the nearby St. Vitus Cathedral. That’s a grand edifice. But St. George’s has that human scale, and echoes of an even earlier time. It was completed during the time of Good King Wenceslaus.

Vladislav Hall. The site of centuries of Bohemian parties, banquets and balls, me boys. That and affairs of state.

The Dancing House. We rode a streetcar line out of our way to see it, though not that far. It wasn’t there in 1994.

A sidewalk golem in the old Jewish Quarter of Prague. The Sidewalk Golems was a relatively obscure band who sometimes toured with Irwin Hepplewhite and the Terrifying Papoose Jockeys.

This could have been over Spain or Portugal.

The last image of thousands that I took, a staggering number in any context except digital images that take practically no time or effort to make.

The Bridgehouse Museum, Chicago

Posted on May 28, 2025 by admin

Vexillologists, I understand, are fond of the Chicago flag. So are the people of Chicago. I’ll go along with them on that.

Walking along the Chicago Riverwalk last Friday, how could I say no to this?

By happy chance, I’d arrived at the Bridgehouse Museum, whose entrance is on the Riverwalk level on the Chicago River next to Michigan Avenue bridge, on a free admission day.

Actually not next to the bridge. The museum is part of the bridge, consisting of one of the four bridgehouses at each corner of the Michigan Avenue bridge, which houses the Machine Age equipment that raises and lowers part of the bridge. In full, it is the McCormick Bridgehouse & Chicago River Museum.

The museum tells the story of the bridge, completed in 1920, and the Chicago River, which has the distinction (among others) of having its course reversed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 1909, during the heroic age of American civil engineering. The story arc of the Chicago River is that of a modern urban river beginning as a sluggish, marshy stream in pre-settlement times that gave way to periods as an open sewer and home to a welter of commercial docks and warehouses; long periods of unhealthy levels of pollution and its abandonment (mostly) as a working river; and more recent efforts to remediate the waters.

Mr. Dooley on the river as it was: “Twas the prettiest river f’r to look at that ye’ll iver see …. Green at th’ sausage facthry, blue at th’ soap facthry, yellow at th’ tannery, ye’d not thrade it f’r annything…”

The challenge posed by the river to the free movement of vehicles and pedestrians in downtown Chicago was solved by a raft of bridges, most of which are bascule, as is the one at Michigan Ave. The river sees the life of the city along its shore and on its bridges, and it has seen death, such as the almost comic collapse of the Rush Street bridge under the weight of cattle in 1863 and the nightmarish capsizing of the pleasure vessel Eastland in 1915.

The museum consists of five floors, each a smallish room connected by concrete steps. Brick walls and battleship gray floors form the dominate color palate of the place. There is a fair amount to read and images to see, with each room covering a different subject, such as the bridge itself and the ecology of the river.

A door from the first-floor room leads to a view of some of the steel equipment that makes the bridge move, such as this massive pinion.

Not everyone likes reading at museums, but I do. You just have to be selective. Some bridge facts.

A display about a time the Chicago River caught fire. Cleveland shouldn’t be the only place known for that, though of course the incident at the Cuyahoga was recent enough to be on TV news.

Antique bridge equipment.

Small windows in the bridgehouse offer large views, especially from the top levels.

The other three bridgehouses are visible, for one thing. Then I wondered: why four and not two, since the bridge has two leaves that are raised and lowered? Later, I found out that each leaf is actually two separate sections, divided in the middle of the road, so in fact there are four parts being raised and lowered in unison.

There are two reasons, I understand. One is that each quarter section is lighter, and thus easier to move. Another consideration is what happens when a ship hits the bridge — an incident apparently more common in the 1920s than now, with a higher volume of ship traffic on the river in those days. Even if the damaged section has to be raised for repair, its companion on the same side of the bridge can (probably) stay in place, so the bridge wouldn’t need to be completely closed, which would be disruptive indeed for the city.

All in all, a good little museum. I made a small donation. One complaint, though — and I see this much more than I used to — no postcards at the gift shop. Note cards, yes. But not postcards. If there had been reproductions of this one, I would have bought at least one.

Ancient Roman Sculpture from the Torlonia Collection

Posted on May 15, 2025 by admin

Go to one of the newer galleries at the Art Institute of Chicago, at least until June 29, and these figures will greet you. Or at least stay still while you take a good look.

Marcus Aurelius is front and center, looking rather stoic, or should I say Stoic, with some contemporaries near him.

He doesn’t look that much like Alec Guinness. Or rather, Sir Alec doesn’t look much like him. Long ago, I watched The Fall of the Roman Empire in Latin class, one of those last week of the school year sort of activities, finding it a ridiculous mess, despite a stellar cast that included Guinness as the last Good Emperor, and lavish production values.

Also, as a fellow named John in the class pointed out, the movie left out good old Pertinax in its depiction of the events after the death of Commodus. “Where is he?” John said. “Pertinax came after Commodus.” Latin students were the sort likely to notice that kind of omission.

There’s the seed of a series of counterfactual novels: Pertinax survived for some years, re-establishing a chain of Good Emperors, thus preventing the chaos of the 3rd century and hey – Rome didn’t fall. Or something like that.

We’d come to the Art Institute, a few weeks ago now, to see Roman sculpture.

After spending time in Berlin seeing the same sort of ancient art, I couldn’t very well miss something so close to home. The collection owes its origin to Prince Giovanni Torlonia (d. 1829) and his son Prince Alessandro (d. 1886), who bought ancient works when the getting was good, and dug up other pieces at their extensive estates.

“The Torlonia Collection is not only the largest private collection of Roman marble sculptures in Italy, but it is also arguably the most important of such private collections in the world,” the Art Institute says. “Comprising 622 works and a wide range of sculptural types and subjects, its holdings rival those of major institutions in Europe, including the Capitoline and Vatican Museums.

“Nearly half of these sculptures, which range in date from the 5th century BCE to the early 4th century CE, have not been publicly displayed in more than 70 years and have been newly cleaned, conserved, and studied specifically for this exhibition, making for a spectacular opportunity to experience their first public presentation in decades.”

For once, a curated experience that reflects the actual meaning of that now abused word, since I’m assuming expert curators were involved. They had a great deal to work with besides imperial portraits.

Such as a sarcophagus depicting the Mighty Hercules at his Labors.

Its lid.

Makes you wonder who the last person was to see it, who knew the people depicted. A grandchild perhaps, now nearly as remote in time as sarcophagus itself. After that person was gone, the figures might have been revered as Noble Ancestors, but increasingly distant ones. Eventually — who were these people again? And so no one minded as the object slipped out of sight, only to be found much later by antiquarians of a remote posterity.

The exhibit included more than people in stone.

The signage for the exhibit included information I’d never seen depicted in quite this way.

Part of the history of these works now includes restorations done during centuries previous to ours, but still comparatively recent. That’s more information that you usual get at a display of ancient art, and I compliment the curators on it.

Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin

Posted on April 30, 2025 by admin

I’m not sure exactly what “Hey, this is a World Heritage Site! Show some respect, wanker!” would be in German, but I suspect in German you probably could shout just the right mix of threat and shaming.

Spotted in March on Museum Island (Museumsinsel) in Berlin.

Note that the red-letter headline is in English. I think of that as more of a function of English as a ramshackle world language than the propensity of Americans, Britons or Australians to use bullhorns while peeing on World Heritage Sites from their bicycles or scooters. Well, maybe Australians would. (I trade in that stereotype with abiding affection for that nation, since the Australians I know would sound right back about Americans). To be honest, it also sounds like something Florida Man would do.

We were in the vicinity of the Alte Nationalgalerie.

Make it a Greco-Roman temple, at least on the outside, King Friedrich Wilhelm IV must have said, though he didn’t live to see its completion in 1876. August Stüler was tasked with the design, but he didn’t live to see it done either.

The museum complex on Museum Island certainly deserves to be on the UNESCO list. A detail from the museum’s tourist leaflet shows the Old National Gallery in relation to the others, and the fact that the Pergamon Museum is “closed for refurbishment.” Dang.

We didn’t go directly to his gallery up on the third floor, but I knew the Casper David Friedrich was a priority at Alte Nationalgalerie. Like visiting an old friend. They say maintaining social relations is important for one’s health in older years, and maybe that’s so. But I’m sure visiting old friends makes your life better in the here and now. Mine, anyway. Including mainly people, but also places and favorites in art or entertainment.

My old buddy Casper’s canvasses are usually good for more than one detail. Such as “Abtei im Eichwald” (1809/10), sporting a good old Casper David Friedrich moon.

Or “Eichbaum im Schnee” (1829). The man had a gift for trees too.

This one is CDF and it isn’t, since it is a copy of one of his paintings, “Klosterrunie im Schnee” (1891), by an unknown artist. The original didn’t survive WWII.

There was even an appearance of CDF himself, at work, in a portrait by colleague Georg Friedrich Kersting (d. 1847).

There probably would have been more CDF on display, but as it happens, the place to be right now to see many of his works is the Met, which is hosting Caspar David Friedrich: The Soul of Nature until May 11. Seventy-five paintings, drawings, and prints by Friedrich are in that show.

No matter, the museum offers plenty else to see, with a collection of European art roughly from the French Revolution to WWI. The place wasn’t crowded, but a fair number of museumgoers were around.

We spent a while looking around ourselves.

Detail from “Die Pontinischen Sümpfe bei Sonnenuntergang” (“The Pontine Marshes at Sunset”) (1848) by August Kopisch, which has a Chesley Bonestell vibe.

Detail from “Doppleporträt der Brüder Jacob und Wilhelm Grimm” (1855) by Elisabeth Jerichau-Baumann.

Detail from “Tükische Straßenszene“ (1888) by Osman Hamdi Bey.

Detail from “Porträt Kaiser Wilhelm II” (1895) by Vilma Parlaghy.

Tough luck, Willie. But at least your hope didn’t end at the end of a rope.

Jewish Museum in Prague

Posted on April 3, 2025 by admin

One good thing about the historic core of Prague, at least for old visitors, are the small squares (náměstí?) with benches and sometimes trees. Walkability doesn’t mean much if you can’t sit down at regular intervals, and old Prague provides that, unlike some other pedestrian-intense places on this trip (and I mean you, Osaka).

We stopped often at this one, often as our first rest out from the hotel. Once Jay waited here for a few minutes while I wisely went back to the hotel to fetch a cap to wear.

We stopped here more than once as well.

Of course, in early March, the air was distinctly cool, and the squares weren’t so green. Or quite so busy. The views from the first small square looked more like this.

During our first ramble through the old city on March 11, we came across this unnerving figure.

Kafka. Of course. Rub the shoes for luck? Isn’t there only one kind of luck for Kafka, and it isn’t good? The bronze dates from 2003 and inspired by one of his lesser-known stories, “Description of a Struggle,” which I haven’t read, but which sounds Kafkaesque all right.

I had to look up the sculptor, Jaroslav Róna, a resident of Prague and a member of its small but enduring Jewish community. Looks like he specializes in unsettling figures, so Kafka would be right up his alley.

I don’t know whether it is coincidence or not, but the statue happens to be near the Spanish Synagogue (Španělská synagoga). An exceptional piece of work, dating from 1868, built on the site of a much older synagogue. There has been a Jewish community in the city since at least the 10th century of the Common Era.

Now a museum, the Spanish Synagogue – referring to the Moorish Revival style – is part of the Jewish Museum in Prague, which oversees a half-dozen or so structures in the former Jewish quarter, including the aforementioned Pinkas Synagogue and Old Jewish Cemetery.

After decades of misuse and neglect, beginning with the Nazis and continuing under the Communists, the Spanish Synagogue was restored not long after the Velvet Revolution. It is magnificent.

The view from the upper level.

Another synagogue-turned-museum is the Maisel Synagogue (Maiselova synagoga).

What would a Jewish museum in Prague be without mentioning everyone’s favorite clay man animated by one of the names of the Lord? On display at the Maisel.

An active congregation gathers at the Old-New Synagogue (Staronová Synagoga), another of the historic structures.

It was once the New Synagogue, then there was a newer one; so it became Old-New, built in late 13th century of the Common Era. More than one source says that Staronová Synagoga is the oldest active synagogue in Europe.

Yes.

Altes Museum, Berlin

Posted on April 2, 2025 by admin

Lots of April showers today. More than showers, much of the time: vigorous April thunderstorms. I suppose we’ll get May flowers eventually, but for now mud dominates.

One reason to fly off to far places is to see things you’ve only ever heard about. That includes things familiar from photos as well. Mostly those, in fact. Usually the thing is something so famous that a lot, even most people, have heard of it, and know it by second-hand sight – such as the Taj Mahal.

But sometimes the object is something smaller, and maybe more obscure for most people, but which you know by accident of what you’ve read or where your interests happened to lie. Even better, something you’re not expecting, but there it is, right in front of you. One of life’s little delights, if you ask me.

There it was.

In a glass case in one of the Roman rooms of the Altes Museum, Berlin, you can see this tempura on wood portrait on the family of Septimus Severus, created around AD 200, when Severus was the emperor of Rome. He acquired the job in 193 by force of arms from a rich fool named Didius Julianus (d. 193), who bought the office from the Praetorian Guard, who had murdered his predecessor, good old Pertinax (d. 193). The Guard has its untrustworthy rep for a reason.

I’ve seen images of this bit of portraiture in books on the history of Rome but not in person before. (And oddly enough it isn’t in Cary & Scullard. I checked.) The work even has a name, according to Wiki: the Severan Tondo, or Berlin Tondo. As the signage in the museum points out, it is the only surviving group portrait of a Roman imperial family, originally depicting Severus, his wife Julia Domna, and his sons Caracalla and Geta.

After the death of Severus in 211 – remarkable considering his position, of natural causes – Caracalla and Geta were to be co-emperors, but before long Caracalla had Geta rubbed out. Whoever owned the Severan Tondo rubbed out Geta, too, in a more literal way. So it remains, more than 1,800 years later.

The Altes Museum is on Museumsinsel (Museum Island), facing the Lustgarten and near the Berliner Dom, all in the former East Berlin. True to the name, it is the oldest of the island’s museum, dating from 1830.

We visited on March 8. I hadn’t seen a collection of ancient art as fine since the Getty Villa, back in 2020, though the Art Institute has a good one, and I need to see this exhibit before the end of June. It all only goes to show that I need to get out more.

Going roughly chronologically through the many rooms, starting with Greek works.

Something you don’t see that often: a gravestone. It belonged to a woman named Archio, who died on Melos ca. 500 BC.

More.

On to Rome. Many of which are copies of Greek works, but no big deal.

This is a curious one.

“The actor wears the woolen costume of the Silenus from the Attic satyr play of the classical period,” its sign says. Good old Silenus. Everyone needs a drinking buddy, even Dionysus-Bacchus, which is what Silenus was. And what of the satyr play? Ripe for a modern interpretation on HBO.

More Rome. This couple looks about as Roman as you can imagine.

Eventually the Roman rooms edge into portraits of recognizable historical people. Heavy on rulers, created to let everyone know who was boss.

Sort of like Octavian, but not quite. Maybe one of his grandsons, or some later member of the dynasty who never made the purple. The sign merely says a “Julio-Claudian prince.” I wonder what the original paint job looked like.

“Green Caesar.”

Tiberius.

Hadrian.

More Romans. Maybe “ordinary” isn’t the word, since they or their heirs had the dosh to commission a sculpture, but not necessarily members of the imperial household either.

As the German sign put it for that last one, “Dame mit Lockentoupet.”

The Old Jewish Cemetery & The Pinkas Synagogue, Prague

Posted on March 27, 2025 by admin

Memory’s a dodgy bastard, so I’ll never be sure whether or not I saw souvenir golems for sale in Prague in 1994, when I bought a book of Golem stories. Maybe there were some, but those were the early years of the post-communist tourist economy. It takes a while to ramp up the tourist merch. I am sure, however, that I saw them in just about every gift shop we visited in the Czech capital in 2025. Some smaller, some larger, some gray, many the color of a dirty orange flower pot.

I decided not to buy one, though it might have been a good office-shelf companion to my figure of Ganesha or the meditating Bigfoot. But you never can be sure about golems, and since I don’t have the learning or wisdom of Rabbi Loew of Prague, the thing might get out of hand.

I also don’t remember any of the historic synagogues being open during my first visit. I’ve read that the nonprofit that manages them, the Jewish Museum in Prague, was only re-established in 1994, so I expect that most of the structures were still closed in those days.

One place that was open in ’94 was the Old Jewish Cemetery (Starý židovský hřbitov), but only for a glimpse.

Now you can take a stroll through the cemetery, which is adjacent to the Pinkas Synagogue (Pinkasova synagoga), on a stone path that snakes through the grounds. That’s one thing we did on March 11. It remains one of my favorite cemeteries.

I like the seeming chaos of the stones. Not only were people buried close to each other, they were interred in layers. I’ve read that as the cemetery grew more crowded, and use of an ossuary wasn’t an option, more soil was added, and new layers of the dead were added. You do notice, being there, that the ground tends to be higher than street level in most places, with the cemetery walls holding in the excess earth.

Burials occurred from the early 15th to the late 18th centuries. A few of the stones were also marked with modern plaques, denoting a notable permanent resident. Such as one Avigdor Kara (d. 1439).

Or Wolf Spira-Wedeles, mentioned here in passing. By the time he died (1715), some notables were receiving larger memorials, such as his.

I remembered to take a few black-and-whites.

Monochrome suits the texture and austere beauty of the Old Jewish Cemetery, I believe.

The adjacent Pinkas Synagogue hasn’t had a congregation in a long time. In our time, it serves as a memorial to the Czech Jews murdered during the Holocaust. Inside you can visit two floors.

On the walls on both floors are the names of the dead, and their birth and death dates, if known, inked by hand.

About 80,000 names in all.

The USS Lexington Museum

Posted on January 27, 2025 by admin

It was a nicely structured day trip to Corpus Christi earlier this month, if I say so myself. We left not ridiculously early from SA, but early enough to catch a few easy sights in Corpus before lunch. After lunch: a single main attraction and then a drive home in time for dinner.

It was a Texas dinner: drive-through Whataburger.

The main attraction that day: The USS Lexington, CV-16, nickname, the Blue Ghost. That is to say, the 16th aircraft carrier belonging to the U.S. Navy, commissioned in early 1943 in the thick of the war in the Pacific, where it kicked ass. The ship survived the war with close calls and Japanese propaganda broadcasts asserting more than once that she had been destroyed. After a period of decommissioning beginning in the late ’40s, Lexington returned to serve throughout most of the Cold War.

Note the rising sun flag. That is where a kamikaze struck the ship off Luzon in November 1944, killing 50 men and wounding many more. RIP, sailormen.

That afternoon my brothers and I were entering what is now called the USS Lexington Museum, which is permanently moored across the ship channel from downtown Corpus Christi, where it has been since 1992, within sight of the Texas State Aquarium, the scattered buildings of North Beach, and the old highway bridge and the new one.

The Blue Ghost is one of five aircraft carrier museums nationwide, with two others in California, and one each in New York and South Carolina. These days, tourists enter the Lexington via the Hanger Deck. This deck and all the other lower decks are thick with exhibits, on many of the available surfaces, about the ship and its active service.

I’ve seen a similar bronze before.

George H.W. Bush as a young naval aviator. A sign is careful to point out that the future president was never assigned to the Lexington, but spent a few days recuperating here (“sack time,” he later called it) in June 1944 after being rescued from the ocean when mechanical issues forced him to ditch. Also, he trained as a naval aviator at Air Station Corpus Christi, so there is that connection.

We climbed a number of staircases to higher decks, through the Foc’sle and ultimately to the Flight Deck. Slow going at our age, but we went.

Some of the exhibits were very specific, such as the rat guards used by the vessel. I remember seeing those depicted in a Carl Barks comic, maybe a Scrooge McDuck adventure.

Others were more generalized, such as entire room in the Foc’sle about the attack on Pearl Harbor. Eventually we made our way to the Flight Deck, towered over by the island (the towering section including the bridge). Mostly, the Flight Deck is an open-air aircraft museum.

Sage advice.

Restoration in progress on a Phantom II.

An A-6 Intruder. Like a number of the other airplanes at the Lexington, on loan from the National Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola.

An AH-1 Cobra. There’s a warrior slogan for you, on the nose.

A T-2 Buckeye, developed in the late ’50s as a trainer. The marvel, when it comes to naval aviation, is how anyone learns it without getting killed.

How indeed. The sign mentions an incident on the Lexington in 1989, when a T-2 Buckeye flown by a trainee crashed into the aft section of the island, killing five and injuring others. Among the dead: Airman Lisa L. Mayo, 25, of Oklahoma City, the first woman killed aboard a U.S. carrier in the line of duty. Again RIP, those who died.

More.

Onward to the Bridge.

There’s the captain.

Spare and utilitarian, the Bridge is. Except for that wig.

The National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum

Posted on January 7, 2025 by admin

You might say I had a vision recently.

A vision, but no mystic revelations. When I saw the Jesus bobbleheads in Milwaukee on the Friday after Christmas, I thought that a really good lyricist could do a follow up song to “Plastic Jesus,” which would be called “Bobblehead Jesus.” But I am not that person.

We’d dropped by the National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum, where the bobbleheads crowd shelf after shelf after shelf: some 6,500 on display of the 10,000 figures the museum says it has.

But for Google Maps I might have missed National Bobblehead, which reminded me at once of the American Toby Jug Museum in Evanston. Still, there are some differences. Most of the tobies are behind glass, but not the bobbleheads, and most of the bobbleheads are sports figures, while the tobies have a wider variety of figures.

Like that other museum, National Bobblehead started with a single collection that morphed into something bigger – in this case, a bobblehead business for the two founders, Milwaukeeans Phil Sklar and Brad Novak. It isn’t enough that they collect them, though they still do, but they make them and sell them as well.

The museum asserts that Chinese nodding dolls had a vogue in Europe in the late 18th century, and that afterward various bobbly figures were made worldwide, with references to Germany and Russia and other places. These days sports figures dominate. Maybe three-quarters of the bobbleheads on display are sports figures, including both players and mascots.

Their popularity in the sports world has been growing since their introduction in the early 1960s in baseball. The first player-specific bobbleheads formed quite a lineup: Roberto Clemente, Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris and Willie Mays.

Most of the others are entertainers and political or historic figures, as you’d expect.

More of him than I’d expect.

Can you really be a famous entertainer if you don’t have a bobblehead?

Near the gift shop – which sells bobbleheads, naturally – is a more than complete collection of U.S. presidents, in order, back-to-front, left-to-right, Washington to Biden.

More than complete because FDR is represented twice, once standing (with a cane) and the other in a wheelchair. Grover Cleveland is represented only once, however. Curiously, beginning with Herbert Hoover, all of the figures have their hands raised, as one does to a crowd. Before him, only TR does so, and he’s holding a top hat.

One more note: the museum occupies part of the second floor of one of the redeveloped Kramer International Foundry buildings in the Walker’s Point neighborhood of Milwaukee. That early 2000s project was an early one in the transformation of the neighborhood from industrial to retail and residential.

Milwaukee continues to surprise.

The Seiberling Mansion

Posted on December 31, 2024 by admin

In my 7th grade Texas history class back 50+ years ago, I’m pretty sure the prickly Mrs. Carico taught us about the 1901 Spindletop oil gusher in what’s now Beaumont. Could be that not even Texas students learn about that any more, though I couldn’t say for sure. We did not learn about the Indiana natural gas boom of the late 19th century. Maybe Hoosier kids of my age did. I hope so. Anyway, I had to go to Kokomo to learn about it.

Or rather, go to Kokomo to hear about it. I read more about the gas boom after I got home. I might as well stay home if I’m not going to occasionally follow up on the intriguing things I’ve seen and heard elsewhere.

“[Eastern central Indiana’s] industrial characteristics were brought about by one of the great booms of the late 19th century in the Midwest: the discovery of natural gas,” writes James A. Glass, an architecture prof at Ball State Muncie, in “The Gas Boom in East Central Indiana” in the Indiana Magazine of History (2000).

“The eruption of real estate speculation, industrial development and commercial expansion and population growth transformed a… portion of the state from a landscape of farmers, forest and agricultural villages into a territory in which cities and boom towns dominated, each teeming with factories, neighborhoods and commercial districts….”

There was so much natural gas under Indiana that for a while new towns burned it simply to show off. Gas flambeaux heated the day and lit up the night.

Image from Leslie’s Illustrated Magazine, January 18, 1889.

Hindsight has only one ending to this story: the region had run out of gas by the turn of the 20th century. We tell ourselves that a “this resource will never run out mentality” is particular to the industrial revolution, as if we didn’t really believe it ourselves.

Not far from central Kokomo, you can stand right next to a physical legacy of the Indiana gas boom – the gas boom-era Seiberling Mansion.

The porch. The dome. The gables and arches. The brick and stone. Probably not to everyone’s taste, but it looks like a handsome assemblage to me. We arrived only about 20 minutes before the house museum closed – off-Interstate travel, while rewarding, can be a time suck, and besides, Eastern Standard Time had snatched an hour away from us. The desk volunteers were good enough to say we could look around without paying admission, though I did make a modest donation.

No surprise to find Christmas at Seiberling in full flower.

We would call Monroe Seiberling a serial entrepreneur, though I expect in his time he was simply a business man. He was a shooting star in the history of Kokomo. From Akron, Ohio – where his nephew Frank Seiberling stayed and cofounded Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. – the elder Seiberling turned up in Kokomo during the gas boom to take advantage of the lovely free gas to set up a few businesses, including a glass factory. He also stayed long enough to commission a mansion, designed by short-lived Hoosier architect Arthur LaBelle and completed in 1891.

After gas ceased to be so available or cheap in Kokomo, Seiberling moved on to Peoria, Illinois, according to one of the mansion docents, who provided us a quick informal tour of the first floor, probably because we showed some interest in the place. Also, she said, Seiberling’s wife didn’t much like Kokomo. As an incentive for him to leave above and beyond mere economics, that has a ring of plausibility to it.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Museums