Mother Jones in Mt. Olive

Posted on August 6, 2014 by admin

Gene Autry – the singing cowboy, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” Gene Autry – recorded “The Death of Mother Jones” early in his career: 1931, shortly after the death of labor agitator Mother Jones (Mary Harris Jones). It’s worth a listen.

For years I’ve been seeing the sign on the Interstate advising me that Mother Jones’ memorial is off Exit 44 in Mt. Olive, Ill., not far outside greater St. Louis, but it’s been a one-of-these-days destination. The day turned out to be July 27, 2014, our last day of the trip. I’d planned to have lunch at Crown Candy Kitchen in St. Louis, and remarkably enough, I didn’t have any trouble finding that establishment. But at about 1 on that Sunday afternoon, a line was out the door. Crown Candy might be good, but not that good.

So we pressed on into Illinois. I’d stopped for lunch in Litchfield some years ago, and had a good enough memory of that, so that was the target. But then I saw the Mother Jones sign, and a billboard for a diner in Mt. Olive, pop. 2,000-plus. A winning combo. We got off at Exit 44 and followed the signs to the Union Miners Cemetery, final resting place of Mother Jones and presumably a lot of mining men. This is the view from her memorial.

The view of her memorial.

Why Mt. Olive? The Illinois Labor History Society tells us that Mother Jones herself made the request a few years before her death.

A Special Request to the Miners of Mt. Olive, Illinois:

When the last call comes for me to take my final rest, will the miners see that I get a resting place in the same clay that shelters the miners who gave up their lives of the hills of Virden, Illinois on the morning of October 12, 1897 [sic], for their heroic sacrifice of [sic] their fellow men. They are responsible for Illinois being the best organized labor state in America. I hope it will be my consolation when I pass away to feel I sleep under the clay with those brave boys.

— Mother Jones

The monument was dedicated in 1936, and according to the society, “The cash raised for the monument was $16,393.25. All of the labor involved was donated. It stands 22 ft. high on a 20 x 18 ft. base. It is built of 80 tons of pink Minnesota granite. The name of the sculptor is lost from the record.

“The dedication was, itself, a monumental event. Five special trains and 25 Greyhound buses brought celebrants to Mt. Olive. Others came in private cars or hitch-hiked to the town. The crowd was estimated at 50,000. There were 32,000 in the line of march.”

The memorial also includes plaques to men killed in the Virden Massacre, which Jones mentioned, a gun battle in 1898 between union men and company guards over whether strikebreakers were going to detrain at a major mine in Virden. The miners prevailed, in that no one got off the train, but a number of them died. The names of the dead I saw included E.W. Smith, E. Kraemmerer and Joseph Gitterle. “General” Alexander Bradley has a plaque too, though he died in 1918.

“Who were the miners who led this fight? The best known was Alexander Bradley, a 32-year-old mule driver who worked in the Mt. Olive mines,” says Illinois Labor History… By the mid-1890s, Bradley had traveled widely throughout the Midwest, tramping with other unemployed miners to Chicago and taking part in the famous march to Washington DC of Coxey’s Army of the unemployed of 1894.

“In the course of the strike, ‘General’ Bradley, as he became known, developed a well-earned reputation as a colorful and charismatic figure. Arriving with his ‘troops’ in Collinsville, for instance, Bradley sported ‘corduroy trousers, a light blue coat, white shirt, brown straw hat, toothpick (narrow and pointed) shoes, at least three emblems of secret societies and several rings on his fingers…[as well as] a light cane or a furled umbrella.’ ”

More about Virden – “Hotter than San Juan Hill” — is here.

The Duke in Winterset

Posted on July 30, 2014 by admin

The thing to do when heading out of Des Moines in a southerly direction is to detour into rural Madison County, southwest of the capital, whose county seat is Winterset. If you have time. I decided we had time, since how could I pass up a look at a bronze of Winterset’s favorite son, Marion Robert Morrison?

JOHN WAYNE

Born Marion Robert Morrison

In Winterset, Iowa

May 26, 1907

Sculpture donated to the

People of Madison County

By the John Wayne Family

The statue of John Wayne is a short block from his birthplace house, now a museum that (like the capitol) happened to be closed when we arrived. No matter. A good look at the bronze was enough for now, and we weren’t the only ones doing so. A few other families pulled up for a look-see while we were there. Wayne’s fame has some staying power.

Next to the statue is a Chevy van, detailed to honor Wayne. According to the birth site museum web site, “Several years ago, an anonymous person from Arizona donated a full-size 1980 Chevy van that has been extensively customized for the true John Wayne fan….

“This one-of-a-kind vehicle is covered with $50,000 of artwork from John Wayne movies—even the windows are etched to continue the design! The interior boasts hardwood floors, carpeted walls, a wet bar, TV and VCR (this was 1980, remember?), a souped-up sound system, and saloon-style swinging doors that lead to the queen-sized bedroom [sic] in the back.”

I didn’t realize it when we were there, but the statue usually resides at a corner of Washington St. and John Wayne Dr. – one of the main drags through town – but has been moved a block away, so it won’t be damaged during construction of the John Wayne Birthplace Museum. Work started in 2013 on the new museum, which is slated for completion for the 2015 John Wayne Birthday Celebration (and it’s convenient that baby Marion was born pretty close to Memorial Day). Last year my old friend Kevin, quite the fan of the Duke, went to the birthday fest. He said he had a large time.

One more thing: there are other John Wayne bronzes out in the wider world. You have to go to California to see these two.

In the Midst of the Corn, the Middle of the USA

Posted on July 29, 2014 by admin

In early August 1978, I took a bus from San Antonio to Stevens Point, Wisconsin, and back again, along with a busload of other high school students to attend the Mu Alpha Theta national meeting in that (seemingly) remote Wisconsin outpost. The route took us through Des Moines, which I only knew as the capital of Iowa from maps. We didn’t stop, but one of the teachers on the expedition, the admirable Paul Foerster, pointed out the Iowa state capitol as we went by – and noted the gilding on the dome, which he said was a very thin layer of gold. Indeed it is.

In later years, I figured I’d go back someday and take a look at the capitol more closely. Somehow, I never got around to it until July 12, 2014, our first day of driving, when I made a point of stopping there. We arrived just after 4 on that Saturday afternoon, right after the building closed (that’s what we get for having a leisurely lunch in Coralville). Ah, well. I had to make do with looking around the grounds, and seeing the magnificent gold dome up close from the outside.

The building was completed in 1884, repaired after a major fire in 1904, and exterior refurbishment was done in the last years of the 20th century. “The commanding feature is the central towering dome,” according to the State of Iowa (whose text, I note, was copied directly to Wiki). “This is constructed of steel and stone and covered with 23 carat gold. The gold leafing was replaced in 1964-1965 at a cost of $79,938.”

Since the capitol itself was closed, we took a look around the immediate vicinity. We would have done that anyway. The grounds sported a good number of memorials, as capitol grounds usually do. Including the modest and not-very-picturesque, such as this homely slab.

It memorializes the Iowa men of the China Relief Expedition (you know, 55 Days in Peking), the War with Spain, and the Philippine Insurrection, and is dated April 23, 1898, to July 4, 1902.

This is a much larger memorial. It is, of course, the state Civil War memorial, or to use its correct title, the Iowa Soldiers and Sailors Monument.

The Iowa Department of Administrative Services tells us that “the State of Iowa erected this monument, funded partially by refunded war taxes, to commemorate Iowans who fought during the Civil War. The monument was approved in 1888, the cornerstone was laid in 1894, and the structure was completed two years later. Because formal controversy developed over the location and artistic details of the monument, nearly 50 years passed before its dedication in 1945.”

I didn’t realize it looking at the thing, but the equestrian statues – two of the four are visible in my picture – represent actual individuals: Marcellus M. Crocker, who led troops at Shiloh, Corinth, and Vicksburg; John M. Corse, who joined Grant at the siege of Vicksburg; Grenville M. Dodge, who built railroads to support Grant and accompanied Sherman on the March to the Sea, and Samuel R. Curtis, commander of the Union Army at Pea Ridge.

The other figures are allegorical, such as Victory at the top, common soldiers and sailors nearer to the base, and Mother Iowa.

Let’s just say that Mother Iowa, offering nourishment to Iowans in a way that only a mother can, looks a little odd to modern eyes.

My Online Encounter With Yabba

Posted on July 9, 2014 by admin

I woke up this morning wondering, is there really a statue of a baseball player in London? I dreamed about it. I made notes in my dream, so that I could write about it. I didn’t think it the least bit odd. Such are dreams.

As far as I can tell, there are no such statues, at least not in a public setting. I didn’t spend a lot of time looking into it, though. But I did come across the Sporting Statues Project, which seems to list sport-themed statues all over the world. I looked at a couple of its maps out of idle curiosity, including the World Cricket Statue Location Map. At a glance, you can see where people care about cricket: the UK, the Indian subcontinent, Australia and the Caribbean.

Look a little further and you can examine curious works like “Yabba.” The web site says: “Sydney Cricket Ground. ‘Yabba’ (Stephen Gascoigne). A tribute by the Sydney Cricket Ground Trust to every spectator who has ever come to these Grounds. Sculptor: Cathy Weiszmann. Benefactor: Basil Sellers.”

“Yabba” was one Stephen Harold Gascoigne, “remembered as a heckler at Sydney Cricket Ground cricket and rugby league games in the early part of the 20th century. Yabba was known for his knowledgeable witticisms shouted loudly from ‘The Hill’, a grassy general admissions area of the SCG.” – Wiki

Good useless fact for the day. You never know where your dreams will lead you.

Things You See in Mount Carroll

Posted on June 30, 2014 by admin

Somewhere or other at some time, I read that Mount Carroll, Illinois, had enough things to see to recommend a short visit (how’s that for source amnesia?). Wherever I got it, I can pass along that recommendation. It’s a small place, with only about 1,800 people, but it has a sizable concentration of historic structures. We took a look at a few of them on the afternoon of June 20.

That includes a fine courthouse, the Greek Revival part of which dates back to before the Civil War. Elsewhere on the courthouse grounds are a few monuments – but not quite as many as some courthouses I’ve seen – including a tall one dedicated to Union veterans. Turns out that Lorado Taft sculpted the cavalryman at the top of the monument, which is formally called the Carroll County Civil War Soldiers And Sailors Monument.

Writing in the short-lived blog Larado Taft: The Prairie State Sculptor, Carl Volkmann says, “Lorado Taft was a member of a team of artists who was commissioned to create the Carroll County Civil War Soldiers And Sailors Monument. George H. Mitchell designed the monument, and Josiah Schamel constructed the foundation. John C. Hall designed the annex that was added later when county officials determined that there were many names missing from the original honor roll list.

“The monument consists of a fifty-foot vertical shaft with a Lorado Taft-sculpted soldier holding a flag at the top. Lewis H. Sprecher of Lanark posed for the statue and made several trips to Taft’s Chicago studio to model for it. Two additional statues are attached to the base of the monument, one an infantryman and the other a cavalryman.”

Not far from the town square is a genuine, honest-to-God Carnegie Library that is, in fact, still a library. We went in for a look around. It seemed like a nice facility for a town the size of Mount Carroll. We were the only ones in the library except the librarian – it was about 30 minutes ahead of closing time on a Friday afternoon – and I spoke briefly to her, telling her that I wanted to show my daughters what a Carnegie Library was. I also wanted to come in because they aren’t exactly common sites.

Later, I checked, and my feeling wasn’t quite right. At least according to this Wiki list, some 60-odd Carnegies are still functioning libraries in Illinois alone, out of more than 100 originally built. Seems like most of them are in small towns away from metro Chicago, so unless you frequent that kind of small town, you won’t see them much.

Just before we left town, we came across something that’s presumably not always near the courthouse in Mount Carroll: this unusual car.

Unusual for American roads, that is. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Morris Minor in this country. It’s so unusual that besides it being a Morris, I didn’t know anything else about it.

Naturally, I had to look it up. Through the marvel of Google images, I was able to pin it down to a Morris Minor 1000 Traveller. In its pages on Morris Minor history, Charles Ware’s Morris Minor Centre Ltd. in Brislington, Bristol, says “there is only one other car on British roads today which is as familiar as the Morris Minor, and that’s the Mini. That both were designed by the same man is no coincidence, and indeed Sir Alec Issigonis is one of the very few car designers whose name is recognised by the man or woman in the street and not just by enthusiasts or fellow engineers. [This might be true in the UK, but I have no way to judge that.]

“The products of Sir Alec’s genius have had a profound and highly beneficial influence on the British motor industry, so it is hardly surprising that it is his first car, the Morris Minor of 1948, which has become the subject of this proposal for a long-life car.”

More about Sir Alec here. I’m not sure I’d want to own a Morris Minor myself, but it’s a distinctive design. Good to see one loose on the roads of North America. I’m glad there are enthusiasts in this country. Any fool with money can buy a snazzy new sports car or a Lexis or the like, but it takes some imagination to invest in a Morris Minor.

The Dickeyville Grotto

Posted on June 25, 2014 by admin

Writing for PBS, cultural anthropologist Anne Pryor says that, “In Dickeyville [Wis.], one of the area’s small towns, is Holy Ghost parish, the home of a remarkable piece of folk architecture. Situated between the rectory, church, and cemetery is the Dickeyville Grotto, a structure so amazing that I have seen unsuspecting drivers come to a full halt in the middle of the road to gape. What stops them short is a 15-foot-tall false cave, decoratively covered with colored stone and glass, dedicated to Mary the mother of Jesus, to God and country.

“Although the name implies a singular structure, the Dickeyville Grotto is actually a series of grottos and shrines. It includes the grotto dedicated to the Blessed Mother, the structure seen from Highway 61; a shrine dedicated to Christ the King; a shrine to the Sacred Heart of Jesus; and a Eucharistic Altar in the parish cemetery, formerly used for annual outdoor Corpus Christi processions. The large Patriotic Shrine depicts the history and love of country represented by Columbus, Washington, and Lincoln.

“All of these creations display decorative embellished cement ornamentation achieved by placing patterns of colorful materials in the concrete when it is still damp: shells, stones, tiles, glass, petrified moss or wood, geodes and gems. Iron railings with the same distinctive decorations border the walkways between the different shrines and grottos, unifying these separate structures.”

We arrived at the Dickeyville Grotto late in the morning on Sunday, when it was already sunny and very warm. The Blessed Mother grotto is striking indeed, and in case there’s any doubt, the site proclaims itself to be about RELIGION and PATRIOTISM. (And another sign mentions the gift shop.)Here’s the back of the Marian grotto. Virtues are literally written in stone.

Most of the surfaces are as colorful as can be. Under strong sunlight’s a good way to see it.

Father Mathius Wernerus, priest at Dickeyville’s Holy Ghost Parish, and his parishioners built the grotto during the late 1920s. It was renovated in the late 1990s. The timing of its origin must account for the aforementioned and odd (to us) Patriotism Shrine, with Columbus, Washington, and Lincoln. The patriotism of U.S. Catholics was widely and openly questioned at the time, so it makes sense.

Also worth seeing at Holy Ghost Parish is the cemetery, which fulfilled my informal requirement of at least one cemetery visit per trip. While my family poked around the gift shop, I strolled through the cemetery. Not a lot of fancy funerary art, but still a handsome array of gravestones in a bright Midwestern setting. The most interesting stone I saw was a large one depicting a large farm, which presumably the deceased had owned and operated.Also worth seeing, and not just for the air conditioning, was the church building. Its stained glass is nice, and tucked away in the landing of the stairway that connects the basement and the nave are a couple of statues with themes you don’t see that often (at least I don’t), such as St. Sebastian, whom I’ve seen depicted more often in paintings.

And this pietà. Maybe I’m not up on my Christian symbolism, though I have heard of broken vessels standing in for us sinners. But I’ve never seen a statue quite like this.

I didn’t see anything to identify the work or the artist, so I’ll have to leave it at that. Enough to say that Holy Ghost Parish and its vernacular grotto were well worth detouring a few miles into extreme southwestern Wisconsin to see.

Big Buddhas ’94

Posted on June 1, 2014 by admin

Go to Asia, see Buddhas, big and small. Or, to be more exact, Buddharūpa of various physical sizes. In early May 1994, we were in Hangzhou, China, and took a bus out to see Lingyin Temple, which I called “Lurgyin Temple” the last time I wrote about it (clearly a transcription error).

“The grounds featured a multitude of buddhas, most looking Indian in inspiration, some remarkably large, with huge feet and hands, carved into the side of a bluff,” I noted. “The place was nearly as popular as the West Lake, so the translation of the temple’s name, the Temple of Inspired Seclusion, didn’t apply any more, or at least on warm spring weekends.”

By early June, we were in Bangkok, where we saw more big Buddhas. Including a favorite of mine, the famed Reclining Buddha of Wat Pho. The image is about 16 feet high and 140 feet long, with the right arm supporting the head. Down at the other end, you get a good look at the enlightened one’s feet.

These are the feet and toes of Buddha. The bottom of the feet are inlaid with mother-of-pearl, as can be seen here, and supposedly there are 108 designs, though I didn’t count them. One-hundred and eight is an important number in Buddhism, but I’m a little fuzzy on the details, and explanations I’ve read and heard haven’t helped that much.

On New Year’s in Japan, Buddhist temples chime their bells 108 times; there are supposedly 108 earthly temptations to overcome to before achieving nirvana, one of which must surely be an obsession with pachinko.

Washington-on-the-Brazos State Historic Site

Posted on May 19, 2014 by admin

Not far south of College Station and Bryan is Washington, Texas, an unincorporated place with a small population. In some alternate universe, it’s a major city sprawling along the Brazos River in Washington County – and it’s the capital of Texas (the state, or an independent nation; maybe that’s two different alternatives), best known for a large public university, its tech industry, and a thriving music scene. Popularly called Brazos, to distinguish it from that other Washington on the Potomac, the city also has a countercultural streak: Keep Brazos Weird, the bumper stickers say.

For a while, little Washington on the Brazos River was the capital of the Republic of Texas – 1842 to the end of independence in 1845, but then a town further west permanently won the prize of state capital, where it remains. Along the way, the back-and-forth of the Texas capital location led to the odd incident known as the Archive War, which wasn’t really a war, and which I don’t remember being discussed in 7th grade Texas History class.

These days, Washington, Texas, is best known as the site Texas declared independence from Mexico in 1836, a fact that was taught in Texas History class. That event is memorialized at the 293-acre Washington-on-the-Brazos State Historic Site, owned and operated by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. More about it here.

Jay and I took a look at the site on the way from College Station to San Antonio on April 25. I’d never visited before. The site has three major components: Independence Hall, the Star of the Republic Museum, and the Barrington Living History Farm. We saw the first two, along with the visitors center, where we each bought a small Come and Take It flag in the gift shop because how many places can you do that? (Amazon doesn’t count.)

Near the visitors center is a bronze of this fellow: George Campbell Childress (1804-1841).

Another of the long line of Tennesseans who came to Texas early, and a brother-in-law of James K. Polk, Childress was honored with this bronze because he’s acknowledged to be author of the Texas Declaration of Independence. Note the quill and scroll. He was head of the committee tasked on March 1 to write a declaration, and it was ready the next day, so it seems likely that he’d already prepared the thing. The document clearly owes a rhetorical debt to Jefferson. The first paragraph says:

When a government has ceased to protect the lives, liberty and property of the people, from whom its legitimate powers are derived, and for the advancement of whose happiness it was instituted, and so far from being a guarantee for the enjoyment of those inestimable and inalienable rights, becomes an instrument in the hands of evil rulers for their oppression.

Even so, the list of grievances is specific to the time and place, such as abrogation of the 1824 Constitution of Mexico and the annoying union of Texas with the state of Coahulia, but mainly boiling down to the assertion that no dictator in Mexico City’s going to tell us what to do.

The deco-like statue itself dates from 1936 – the centennial of Texas independence – and was done by Raoul Josset, a French sculptor who immigrated to the United States in the early 1930s, and left behind a number of works, including Childress but also “The Spirit of the Centennial,” now in Fair Park in Dallas, and the Fannin Monument in Goliad, Texas. More about Josset here.

Tiananmen Square 1994

Posted on May 18, 2014 by admin

Ten years ago, I wrote about our visit to Tiananmen Square 10 years earlier, noting that “Yuriko and I got into a taxi — one of those yellow van-like vehicles that Bob said were called breadboxes — and said ‘Tiananmen.’ Said it a few times, actually, before the driver figured out where we wanted to go. Soon we were walking the cement squares that make up that vast plaza. It was a bright, windy moment.”

Naturally, we took pictures of each other. Here I am wearing the same shirt I held while posing with Mt. Fuji, this time posing with Tiananmen Gate.

Here’s Yuriko, posing near Mao’s tomb, or more formally the Chairman Mao Memorial Hall.

The line wasn’t long to get into the tomb. The Great Helmsman, as I recall, was under glass, and had a Chinese flag draped from mid-chest on down. He looked a bit waxy, but I guess nearly 20 years of embalming (at the time) will do that to a fellow. Being the only exhibit, it didn’t take long to see Mao, and soon we exited – right into the gift shop, or rather the gift area outside the exit, which was marked off by partitions.

How many places can you buy Mao souvenirs? Not many, so I bought a set of Mao postcards, which I sent to Jay and Deb, and some packs of cigarettes with Mao on them, which I sent to friends who smoked. I also bought a set of lapel pins, which I still have somewhere. One has the National Emblem of the PRC; another, the Chinese flag; and then there’s Mao. I scanned it some years ago. Not the best image, but it gives a flavor of the thing, which is maybe about a half inch in diameter.

In September 1994, when we returned to Beijing to prepare to ride the Trans-Siberian to Moscow, Bob took us to the Hard Rock Cafe Beijing, which had opened earlier that year, and which I’ve learned closed in 2012. The place featured the usual Hard Rock collection of rock memorabilia and hagiographic images of rock stars, but particularly striking was a round painting on the ceiling. Its background was sky blue with clouds, and arrayed around the edge were portraits of early rock legends – Elvis, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, the Beatles, the Stones, et al. The painting also had local references: Tiananmen Gate and the Temple of Heaven.

We were seated so we could see the painting easily. Bob said, “Look closely and you’ll see a figure not usually associated with rock ’n’ roll.” And sure enough, there he was. The reproduction of Tiananmen Gate was accurate, including the painting of Mao that hangs there.

The Bonfire Memorial

Posted on May 14, 2014 by admin

Besides a few buildings and a WWI exhibit at a campus library, Jay and I also took a look at the Bonfire Memorial on the campus of Texas A&M. It’s located on the edge of campus, on the site where 12 students and former students were killed, and 27 more were injured, when the Aggie Bonfire collapsed during construction in the wee hours of November 18, 1999.

Passed the entranceway to the memorial, there’s a walkway to the ring – the Spirit Ring, it’s called. To the right of the walkway is a north-south line of cut stones that represents each year that the Bonfire burned from 1909 to 1998, with a black stone marking 1963, when the event was cancelled because of the assassination of President Kennedy. The names of three students who died during their involvement with pre-1999 Bonfires are also marked, each on the stone for the year he died (in logging and traffic accidents).

These are three of the 12 granite “portals” of the ring, as they’re called. I wondered about their orientation on the ring; later I read that each points toward the hometown of the person they memorialize. Connecting the portals are 27 stones to represent the injured.

Inside each portal is a bronze interior that gives the name, likeness, and a written reflection about one of the dead.

This one happens to be Bryan Allen McClain, Class of ’02, all of 19 years old, who happened to be from San Antonio. All of them are listed here, including their inscriptions on the bronze.

Usually when I see a new or newish memorial, I can’t help the sneaking suspicion that in a century, even half a century or less, the memorial will be disregarded, and the event hazily remembered at best. This comes from seeing too many neglected memorials of that age, though it’s just a feeling, and completely untestable.

Not the Bonfire Memorial. Texas A&M pays an unusual amount of attention to its past, mostly in the form of revered traditions. I don’t have any reason to think the 1999 Bonfire’s going to be forgotten as long as there’s an A&M.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Public Art