Old Tractors & Old Abe

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At the College of the Ozarks is the Ralph Foster Museum, and at the Ralph Foster Museum is a modified 1921 Oldsmobile Model 46 Roadster, the truck used in the Beverly Hillbillies. I didn’t get to see that because the museum was closed the day I visited in early November last year.

Instead we went to the Gaetz Tractor Museum. On display are such marvels of the machine age as the two-cylinder, three-ton Advance Rumely, introduced in 1924.

There’s also a Rumely 6A, vintage 1930, as well as four-cylinder, three-ton Case model K, ca. 1927.

Made by the J.I. Case Threshing Machine Co., which was eventually M&A’d out of existence as a separate entity. Now that’s a corporate name. Beats much of what we have now, such as the Three Initial Corp. or the Random-Syllable Co.

Note the eagle. That was J.I. Case’s corporate symbol, but it isn’t just any eagle. It’s Old Abe.

Old Abe – a living eagle – was the mascot of the 8th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry Regiment from 1861 to ’64. Quite a story. Bonanzaville, an open-air museum in West Fargo, ND, that we visited in ’06, has a striking Case Eagle on display.

Thursday Bits

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In the mid-afternoon, a call center employee called me, pitching an extended service plan for a major appliance I bought about a year ago. That doesn’t count as violating the do-not-call list, I suppose, because of some verbiage in the sales agreement. She was about 15 seconds into her pitch when I offered up a curt “no thanks” and hung up.

My reasoning about most service plans and extended warranties and so on is fairly simple. If it were to my benefit, the company wouldn’t be offering it. The odds are I’d pay them to do nothing, and they know it. I know it too.

I saw about 20 minutes of Geronimo the other day – the latest in a long line of movies I’ve seen bits and pieces of. It’s vintage 1962, so while the Indians were portrayed sympathetically, the title character wasn’t actually played by an Indian. I recognized him at once: Chuck Connors.

His blue eyes weren’t the only Hollywood stretchers in the movie. In 1886, when the story takes place, Geronimo was already in his late 50s. Connors was about 40, and a buff 40 at that. The Apache warrior’s wife was played by an Indian, however. An actress born in Bombay.

Never mind. One of the U.S. cavalry officers looked awfully familiar. The one who wanted to let Geronimo surrender, rather than blow him up with artillery, as his commander seemed eager to do. Who? I thought for a minute. Adam West. A pre-Batman Adam West.

Here’s a lesser-known Geronimo story: as an old man at the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904.

I had reason to be out briefly at about 11 p.m. tonight, under a near-cold, clear sky. I had to look for him and he was there, off in the southeast, large and rising over the horizon: Orion. Harbinger of winter in these parts. So are the chill in the air and the increasingly bare trees, but it’s good to have celestial cues, too.

Mommy SEO! Our Limited Supply is Very Nearly Gone

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More rain through the night. It’s a good to be in a dry bed, drifting off to sleep, at times like that. The day was classic November gray.

The following arrived in the in box of an email system one of my clients lets me use. I dislike getting anything in that in box not related to the work I do for them, because the incoming volume’s high and it’s all too easy to lose track of something useful. So this is pretty much the definition of useless clutter, as far as I’m concerned:

I specialize in driving new traffic through Google+1 public backlinks and social network activity. I am a Mommy Blogger with a large Mommy Blogger network. If you have a website or product that fits well with Mommy Bloggers I can drive Mommy Blogger traffic your way in mass.

I would love to work with you and prove the results firsthand. To showcase my work I am glad to offer a one time [sic] package of 20 Google+1 backlinks or 100 new Facebook Likes to a website of your choice FREE of charge. You can visit my Mommy Blogger SEO website here…

Most of the men who went off to the goldfields in California or the Yukon or Australia or wherever didn’t make much, if any, money. The fellow who got rich sold them equipment and provisions.

Wacky Packages Are Definitely Non-Edible

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Gray all day and then rain into the night. Light, steady rain that helps bring down the colorful leaves. On Sunday, under cerulean skies, diligent neighbors were outside collecting leaves. We weren’t so diligent, but I have a rationale (rationalization, perhaps). If you rake leaves on November 2, they’ll be more by November 9, and more still on the 16th. Best to wait.

Maybe in 20 or 30 years, raking leaves will be passé anyway. Leaves are just biomass nutrients for next year’s lawn, after all – which will be left uncut by right-thinking householders to save energy and encourage prairie restoration and wildflower cultivation to keep bees alive. I know I would skip lawn mowing if it meant saving the bees; I’m eco-minded that way.

Speaking of things that are passé, while digging through my desk recently – it often sports stacks of papers waiting for attention, because the only papers that need attention right away are slips payable to me, slips with information about how much I have to pay someone, and occasional personal letters or postcards – I found an early 2013-14 school year letter from Quincy Adams Wagstaff Elementary School.

Dear Parents/Guardians,

Birthdays are important to children and we want our students to be recognized on their special days…. Due to the rise in food allergies nationwide, and to promote healthy dietary choices and dental health, your child will be allowed to bring non-edible [their emphasis] birthday treats only…

The days of buying doughnuts for your kid’s class, in other words, are over. I don’t remember that we were entirely consistent about that, but during Lilly’s time at the school, and at least once for Ann, I remember going to our local doughnut shop early and getting three dozen doughnuts for the class: a mix of glazed and chocolate frosted, I think.

The letter continues —

Some ideas include:

Stickers

Bookmarks

Pencils/erasers

Fun items found at dollar stores

Donating a book to the classroom library in honor of your child

We are confident that these types of fun items will be just as enjoyable for classmates to receive on your child’s birthday…

Signed, the principal and the school nurse.

I’m not confident stickers or pencils or especially a donated book will go down as well as doughnuts, but I’m also slow when it comes to the latest in child psychology. Come to think of it, trading cards might be just the thing if they were along the lines of the perfectly juvenile Wacky Packages. I remember a few of these from junior high, even though I never bought any myself.

My Own Private North America

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The following is an exercise in self-absorption. But then, what’s a blog for? Recently I chanced across a site that would generate color-coded maps not just of states and provinces you’ve visited, but rank them with a five-color scheme (counting no color). The site of origin is the not-very-often-updated defocus-blog.

I’m changing defocus-blog’s suggested definitions of the colors a little to suit myself.

Green: either lived in these places or visited so many times I’ve lost count. Very familiar.

Blue: Numerous visits covering a fair amount of the state or province, or one or two visits of strong intensity and some variety. Fairly familiar.

Orange: Spent the night at least once, saw a relatively limited number of places.

Pink: Passed through (on the ground) but didn’t spend the night.

White (no color): Never visited.

The difference between orange and blue is sometimes a little hazy. For instance, I thought for a while about the color of Alabama and Georgia, places I’ve been more than once, and decided that I haven’t really seen that much of them. (I need to see Mobile and Savannah, I think, and some spots in between). The rest of New England (except for Rhode Island) could be blue, maybe, since I visited more than once — and they aren’t that big — and Louisiana might merit orange, but Louisiana has offered up some intense visits.

I don’t particularly aspire to add any more green states or provinces. But I would like to convert orange and pink to blue, and fill in those pesky white spots, which naturally are all pretty far from each other and me.

The Final Roundup for Woody

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Looks like peak coloration is here. Or least a lot of yellows and reds and browns and even a spot of orange. The skies have been gray much of the weekend, so that adds to the contrast.

Alas, poor Woody. The dog did a little brain surgery on him this weekend. Not sure how he got on the floor. Maybe he was trying to escape while we weren’t watching. I seem to remember some movies along those lines. But the dog seems to have been watching.

I expect we’ll have to take Woody up to Boot Hill and lay him to rest. The dog does exactly the same thing to a number of rubber ducks she’s chewed on. Goes right for the head, she does.

Halloween ’13

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I can’t remember the last time it rained on Halloween, but today we had a fair amount. It finally slacked off in the late afternoon, and children and others emerged to collect sweets. Not as many as most years, but some. Lilly was out with friends, ignoring my opinion that she’s too old for it.

I took Ann out in the immediate neighborhood while she waited for a friend of hers to show up – they were going to some kind of park district spook-tacular or boo-nanza or something. She reported having fun at that, but I’m glad I didn’t have to take her. A little Halloween goes a long way.

Mostly she collected usual-suspect candies. In no particular order: Hershey bars, Nestle Crunch, Snickers, Kit Kats, Twizzlers, M&Ms, Twix, Tootsie Rolls and Pops, Butterfingers, Milky Ways, Whoppers, Dots, Milk Duds, Dum Dums, Take 5 and Jolly Rancher. There were a few oddities, such as Sour Face Twisters Bubble Gum, product of Mexico, and three flavors of small Tootsie Roll imitators, except they’re brick-shaped rather than rolls – Wild Cherry, Blue Raspberry, and Green Apple chews, all made in Brazil “by Riclan S/A for R.L. Albert & Son.”

A modest amount of looking around tells me Riclan is a confectionery company located in Rio Claro, in São Paulo state. R.L. Albert & Son is located in Stamford, Conn., and seems to specialize in making seasonal candies – or having them made off shore. The manufacturer didn’t short the product on brightly colored food colors, that’s for sure.

We gave away Romeo and Dreemy, two Aldi brands made in Germany. Aldi sells wonderful German chocolates, and those are two: coconut and nougat bars, respectively. I also insisted on giving away Smarties, despite mocking from my offspring. “No one likes Smarties,” Lilly said. “Oh, yeah?” I shot back. “At least a quarter of the people in this house do.”

Smarties and I go back 40+ years. And I’m happy to report that they’re made by the Smarties Candy Co. (until 2011 Ce De Candy Inc.) of New Jersey, not some secretive confectionery behemoth bent on world domination (and they know who they are). The candies are made in only two places. Smarties’ web site says that “Smarties are made 24 hours a day in two candy factories located in Union, New Jersey, and Newmarket, Ontario. The company produces billions of Smarties rolls each year.”

Alexander & Johann

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Name that Founding Father. Who happens to be depicted by a bronze in Lincoln Park in Chicago, a place he surely never visited.

Yes, it’s Alexander Hamilton, inventor of the national fisc. And, for that matter, our public debt, which you can see as a millstone around ca. 300 million necks, or a brilliant way to promote the stability of the federal government (indeed: the entire world now has an interest in maintaining the United States).

The statue has a story. Kate Buckingham — the heiress who paid to build Buckingham Fountain — apparently thought Hamilton didn’t get his due among Founding Fathers. She lived long enough to see Hamilton put on the $10 bill, so you’d think that would be enough, but no. She didn’t live long enough to oversee the large memorial she originally wanted for the site (see this posting for more on the story, including the original, never-done monument design by Eliel Saarinen).

So what we have in the 21st century is a gilded bronze of Hamilton on a red plinth, overlooking some flower beds. As you can see, there isn’t much gilding left. I like it that way.

Not far away is a statute with a somewhat different vibe.

Yet Hamilton and this fellow were pretty much contemporaries: it’s Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (except Geothe never wound up on the wrong end of a dueling pistol, so he lived longer than Hamilton). Maybe Johann’s dressed for an outing of Sturm und Drang. At the base the statue says: To Goethe/The Master Mind of the German People/The Germans of Chicago 1913.

I can’t see the date 1913 and not think of what was to come, when the Mind of the German People was distracted in such unfortunate ways. But that’s hindsight. The statue’s been there 100 years, free of the “trammels of costume and conventionality,” as the committee of local Germans who commissioned the work wanted. Recently, I read, a new brown patina was added, so it looks nearly new.

The Elks National Veterans Memorial

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“The elks live up in the hills and in the spring they come down for their annual convention. It is very interesting to watch them come down to the water hole. And you should see them run when they find that it’s only a water hole. What they’re looking for is elk-ohole.”

 – Capt. Jeffery T. Spaulding

I was winding down by around 4 p.m. on October 19, but I wanted to see one more place. It wasn’t far north of Mother Cabrini’s shrine, and also at one of the edges of Lincoln Park: the Elks National Veterans Memorial. I could see its Roman-style dome from quite a distance in the park.

After the Great War, the Elks wanted to build a memorial to their members who had died in the conflict, which numbered more than 1,000, as well as space for the org’s national headquarters. The main rotunda of the Elks National Veterans Memorial was the most ornate space I saw during Openhousechicago, though Mother Cabrini’s shrine was a close second.

This was no accident. The Elks War Relief Commission, which was tasked with supervising the building’s construction, wrote in its  recommendation to the Grand Lodge in 1921 that: “The suggested building be made definitely monumental and memorial in character; that the architectural design be so stately and beautiful, the material of its construction so enduring, its site and setting so appropriate… that the attention of all beholders will be arrested, and the heart of every Elk who contemplates it will be thrilled with pride, and that it will for generations to come prove an inspiration to that loyalty and patriotism which the Order so earnestly teaches and has so worthily exemplified.”

The order picked New York architect Egerton Swarthout to design the memorial. He had a predilection for Beaux-Arts, which shows in the Elks memorial. More than shows, it overflows. I wouldn’t want everything to be done in that style, but it has its place – such as in massive, ornate memorials completed in the 1920s.

My camera, and my skills, aren’t remotely up to capturing the marbles or the soaring murals or even the gilded allegorical statues of the rotunda, which depicted Elk-approved virtues (Brotherly Love, Charity, Fidelity, and Justice). Better to see them with the eye, or failing that, at the memorial’s web site.

By contrast, I gave picture-taking a go at the Grand Reception Room at the Elks National Veterans Memorial. It too is ornate to beat the band.

I was especially taken with the allegorical painting called “The Armistice,” which of course references November 11, 1918. Eugene Savage did that work and others in the room, and I thought that style looked familiar. Like a WPA work, but before that agency existed. Sure enough, Savage was an important player in the WPA Federal Arts program, so I guess that was no accident either.

The National Shrine of St. Francis Xavier Cabrini

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I expected to see interesting architecture on last week’s Openhousechicago. I didn’t expect to run across the humerus of a saint. But the relic arm bone’s behind glass and under the altar of the National Shrine of Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, which is just west of Lincoln Park.

The shrine itself is magnificently ornate, done in a “modern Romanesque” style. Mosaics and frescoes on the dome overhead illustrate the life of the saint; the stained glass all around tell of the Resurrection, the Virgin Mary, the Holy Spirit, the Apostles, and more, even including the seal of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which was founded by Mother Cabrini; there are four side chapels and four side altars; and the shrine has a Tamburini Pipe Organ, an Italian variety that I’ve read is rare in North America.

This is the view of the dome from the front pews, and a part of the baldachino (canopy) over the altar.

I’ve been in a fair number of ornate churches, but what struck me about this place was how new it feels. Not just new by the standards of European sacred spaces – which might be 100 years or less – but new by American standards. This iteration of the shrine was only opened last year.

A predecessor shrine was part of Columbus Hospital, an institution founded by Mother Cabrini (d. 1917) at this location in 1905. All together she founded 67 hospitals, schools, and orphanages in the Americas and Europe. I’m pretty sure I knew about the Columbus Hospital before it closed in 2002, but never ventured into it or the original shrine.

A condo tower was eventually developed on the site of the hospital – an extremely valuable piece of land, with its immediate access to Lincoln Park and views of Lake Michigan – but part of the deal was that the shrine had to be redeveloped on the site as well. So the floors over the shrine, which is a separate entity within the structure, are residential condos. An unusual arrangement.

The shrine also includes offices and a small museum about the saint. Among other things, the room in the hospital in which Mother Cabrini lived until her death is re-created, and on display are a habit she wore, her bed, an address book, and a to-do list (“continue work on that fourth miracle this week”).