The Presidents Day Storm: We Called It Monday

Posted on February 16, 2021 by admin

Another Presidents Day come and gone. The aftermath of the Presidents Day Storm of 2021 still lingers, especially down South. (I’d forgotten about the Presidents Day Storm of 2003, probably because it was NE and Mid-Atlantic.)

Around here we merely had more snow pile on top of our increasingly large drifts. About 6 inches in my neck of the suburbs, but other metro Chicago places got two or even three times as much. In any case, it’s accumulating. In some parts of my yard, the snow looks at three feet deep.

Indoors, I marked the day by taping a new postcard to the wall. It depicts FDR.

“During the autumn of 1944, Roosevelt received a letter from artist Douglas Chandor, proposing that a painting be created of Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin, to document the allied efforts at the Yalta Conference in Russia,” the Smithsonian says about the painting.

“Chandor arranged a sitting for Roosevelt in early April, less than a month before the president’s passing. This portrait is a study for the larger painting, The Big Three at Yalta — a sketch of which appears at the lower left. Chandor also painted a life portrait of Churchill, which is owned by the National Portrait Gallery, but Stalin would not sit for his portrait. Thus, The Big Three at Yalta was never painted.

“Chandor believed that hands revealed as much of a person’s spirit as his or her face would, and therefore experimented with multiple configurations and gestures, scattered across the bottom of the canvas. Roosevelt, however, was dismayed by the attention Chandor paid to his hands, dismissing them as ‘unremarkable’ and likening them to ‘those of a farmer.’ ”

Interesting hands, but also an idealized face. I’ve seen photographs of President Roosevelt from around that time, and there was more than a hint of death in his face. The ravages of untreated hypertension, perhaps.

Speaking of presidents, one of our most recent Star Trek episodes was the one in which Abraham Lincoln gets a spear in the back. As Capt. Kirk said, it was a little hard to watch. So was the episode, though it wasn’t quite as bad as I remembered. Just mostly. I don’t feel like looking up the title. If you know it, you know it.

One interesting detail, though. Faux-Lincoln comes to the Enterprise bridge and, among other things, has a short interaction with Uhura. He uses a certain word and apologizes, afraid that he has offended her. To which, Uhura says:

“See, in our century, we’ve learned not to fear words.”

Of all the many optimistic things Star Trek ever expressed about the future, that has to be the most optimistic of all.

Who Knows, I Might Live to See the 50th President

Posted on January 20, 2021 by admin

Time to dip into the well of presidential significa — don’t call it trivia — for obvious reasons. Much has been made of Joe Biden’s age, for example, and he is indeed the oldest person ever to be sworn into the office, besting his immediate predecessor in that regard as well.

Also, Biden was born before four of his predecessors, as was Ronald Reagan. I recall that once upon a time, Reagan was considered an old man for the job, taking the oath as he did at 69. Time flies, the gerontocracy becomes more robust. Kennedy was born after four of his successors, to look at the other extreme.

Then again, presidents are living longer than ever, along with the general population (well, until very recently). Jimmy Carter has made it to 96, topping that long-time champion of presidential longevity, John Adams, a good while ago now. Biden was just a young pup Senator when Carter was in office.

As of today, Carter has been out of office precisely 40 years, the longest post-presidential span. Herbert Hoover is still number two at 31 years. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama might make it to 40 years: to Jan. 20, 2041 for the former and Jan. 20, 2057 for the latter, but they would be very old men by those dates, 94 for Clinton and 95 for Obama.

Biden’s the first president from Delaware. That state had to wait a long time, considering that it was first state to ratify the Constitution. So far 19 states have been home to various presidents at the time of their election. Twenty-one states have been birthplaces of presidents. Florida Man has never been elected president.

Thus far, 14 presidents were born in the 18th century (ending Dec. 31, 1800, so Millard Fillmore counts), with James Buchanan as the last one; 20 were born in the 19th century, with Dwight Eisenhower the last of those; and 12 so far were born in the 20th century. According to the Constitution, that string has to continue at least until the 2036 election. Still, assuming the office continues as it has, and I certainly hope it does, the first president born in the 21st century may be out there somewhere even now.

And what was it about 1946? Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Donald Trump were all born that year. There have been a number of other years in which two presidents were born, but that’s the only triple year so far.

I didn’t think it very likely, and sure enough it didn’t happen, but it would have been interesting had Donald Trump resigned in the aftermath of the Capitol Hill insurrection. Just so Mike Pence could beat William Henry Harrison’s record for short time in the office. Also, so that Trump’s term wouldn’t be exactly four years. Eight years, four years, eight years, etc. That’s just not very interesting.

There have never been four presidents in a row who were in office for eight years each. Three in a row, yes. Most recently Clinton-Bush-Obama. Before that, Jefferson-Madison-Monroe. Trump’s loss means four in a row might not happen for quite a while, if ever.

I could go on and on about this. But I’ll end by adding that we’re back up to five living former presidents again, the fifth time that has happened. Because of improved longevity, four of those periods have been recent.

A friend sent me a link to this.

Seems fitting.

Debris Under the Tree

Posted on January 3, 2021 by admin

Another Christmas, come and gone. We opened presents in the morning that day, as usual.

Not as usual, we had a family Zoom in the afternoon. My brothers, and my nephews and their expanding families, Lilly, and Yuriko and Ann and I were all linked. A geographic diversity: Texas, New York, Washington state and Illinois. We had an enjoyable time, even if the connection was wonky occasionally.

Later in the day, our Christmas movie was The Day the Earth Stood Still. The original version, of course. I hadn’t seen it in at least 30 years, but it was as good as I remember. The movie also inspired me to look up its source story, “Farewell to the Master” by Harry Bates, originally published in Astounding in 1940. No doubt a copy of that edition is somewhere in the house in San Antonio, among my father’s sizable collection of SF. I’d never read the story before, so I found in on line. I did know about its unnerving, surprise ending, however. I heard about it from a college friend years ago.

Another New Year’s Day has gone as well, featuring ice precipitation on top of an inch of two or snow that had fallen a few days earlier. Not enough to rise to the level of an ice storm, but enough to keep us within our walls, occasionally listening to the tap-tap-tap of ice hitting the ground or roof, but mostly paying attention to electronic entertainment, or lost in a book or two, for me including American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House (Jon Meacham, 2009) that I put down this summer and which I’m finishing now, about half way through. Big things ahead: Old Hickory is going to destroy the Second Bank of the United States and go up against nullification, and win, along with a second term. He’s already set the Trail of Tears in motion.

Half Day Forest Preserve & Captain Daniel Wright Woods Forest Preserve

Posted on November 9, 2020 by admin

The weather over the weekend was brilliant, a cluster of warm, mostly clear days, an echo of this year’s golden summer. Today too, but it will end tomorrow evening with storms and cold air behind them.

Here in northern Illinois, summer 2020 offered mostly warm, mostly clear days that stretched into months, with just enough rain to keep the intense green of a wet spring still green as the summer wore on.

Such a fine summer, if you were lucky enough to enjoy it, came as if to soothe over the nervous energy and dread the near future emanating from the wider world, though I’m fairly sure the weather takes no interest in our concerns. Birds don’t either, but somehow they were singing just a little more cheerfully over the weekend. What’s up with that, eh?

This is how to give a presidential concession speech.

Two weekends ago, temps were cooler but not bad. Certainly high enough for a walk in a new forest preserve. New to us, and actually two adjoining forest preserves: Half Day FP and Captain Daniel Wright Woods FP.
The preserves are in Lake County. We started at the Half Day parking lot near a small lake, walked to the small lake in Captain Daniel Wright Woods, and came back the way we came.

Except for seeing a sign along the trail, we wouldn’t have known where one forest preserve began and the other ended, which was more-or-less at the Des Plaines River. First we had to cross that river.

I can’t see a name like that and not look it up later. Captain Daniel Wright, a veteran of the War of 1812, later became noted as the first white settler in Lake County.

Find-A-Gave has more. “Capt. Wright was active as a farmer and a cooper,” the site says. “He built his cabin when he was in his mid-fifties and in spite of the hardships associated with pioneer life, he lived to be ninety-five years old and is buried in the Vernon Cemetery in Half Day. A stone memorial was erected in his memory on his old farm on the east side of Milwaukee Avenue.”

Something else to look for next time I come this way.

Ottawa Sights (Not the One in Canada)

Posted on July 28, 2020 by admin

We arrived in Ottawa, Illinois, on Saturday in time for lunch. We decided on carry-out from Thai Cafe on Columbus St., which seems to be the only Thai joint in town. At a population of 18,000 or so, maybe that’s all Ottawa can support.

We took our food to Allen Park, a municipal park on the south bank of the Illinois, and found a picnic shelter. The river’s large and on a weekend in July, home to a lot of pleasure craft.
Sometimes, the river must be angry, such as on April 19, 2013. Got a lot of rain in northern Illinois about then, so I believe it.

Downstream a bit is the Ottawa Rail Bridge, which rates a page in Wikipedia. The current bridge dates from 1898, though it was modified in 1932.

Two large metal sculptures rise in the park, both by Mary Meinz Fanning. The red one is “Bending.”
The yellow one is “Reclining.”
“Fanning was the driving force behind the creation of the red and yellow steel sculptures at Allen Park by the Illinois River in Ottawa,” says a 2010 article in The Times, which seems to be a local paper.

“The 40-foot-tall sculptures, which weigh 17 tons each, were erected in 1982 and 1983 from parts of the 1933-built steel girder Hilliard Bridge that was demolished in 1982 to make way for the present-day Veterans Memorial Bridge. Fanning died of illness Nov. 4, 1995, in Ottawa at age 48.”

Just as you enter the park, you also see a wooden sculpture: one of artist Peter Toth’s “Whispering Giants,” which I’d forgotten I’d heard of till I looked him up again. The one in Allen Park is Ho-Ma-Sjah-Nah-Zhee-Ga or, more ordinarily, No. 61.

Looked familiar. I realized I’ve seen one before —
That one is Nee-Gaw-Nee-Gaw-Bow or No. 59, and we saw it by chance in Wakefield, Mich. about three years ago. Apparently the artist has put up at least one in each state.

Ottawa has a place in U.S. history mainly for two things. One that the town is happy to celebrate: the first Lincoln-Douglas debate in 1858. The other is the awful story of the Radium Girls, poisoned by luminous paint at a clock factory in Ottawa in the early 20th century. For a long time, there was no public acknowledgment of that incident. Now there is. But I didn’t know the Radium Girls have a statue in town (since 2011), so we missed that.

We didn’t miss the site of the Lincoln-Douglas debate, which is in the shady, square-block Washington Park.
Lincoln and Douglas are there as part of a fountain to memorialize the event. They were cast in bronze in 2002 by Rebecca Childers Caleel.
It would have been more pleasant if the fountain were on, but maybe it was dry for public health reasons in our time. The noontime heat was oppressive, so we didn’t have a leisurely look-around the area as much as we might have otherwise. There are other memorials in the park, and plenty of historic structures nearby, forming the Washington Park Historic District.

Those buildings include the Third District Appellate Court Building (1850s), the Reddick Mansion (1850s), the Ottawa First Congregational Church (1870), Christ Episcopal Church (1871), and a Masonic Temple (1910). A few blocks away, the LaSalle County Courthouse looked interesting, too, but we only drove by.

I managed to take a close look only at the former Congregational Church building.

Gothic Revival in brick. These days, the church is part of the Open Table United Church of Christ.

Prairie du Chien: Fort Crawford Military Cemetery, Trail of Presidents &c.

Posted on July 9, 2020 by admin

Not all road trips include visits to cemeteries or presidential sites, but I’m glad when they do. Our recent visit to the Driftless Area included both. On Saturday morning, I got up a little early to put gas in the car by myself. Yuriko knows what this means: I visit a local cemetery, too, if I can. She dozed on in the room while I drove a short distance to the Fort Crawford Military Cemetery, also known as the Fort Crawford Cemetery Soldiers’ Lot.

The entrance to the cemetery is a narrow patch of land in the residential section of mainland Prairie du Chien, with the burial ground at some distance behind an iron fence. Or maybe soldiers are buried in patch of ground, but I didn’t see any indication of it.

“Fort Crawford Cemetery is located on the former site of the Fort Crawford Military Reservation in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin,” says the National Cemetery Administration, which is part of the VA.

“There were two subsequent Fort Crawfords in Prairie du Chien during the 1800s. The original Fort Crawford, built in 1816, was situated adjacent to the Mississippi River. Repeated flooding led to its abandonment in 1826. Rebuilt on higher ground in 1830, the second incarnation of Fort Crawford operated until 1856.

“The first burials here were of the members of the 1st and 5th Infantry regiments stationed at the fort. The soldiers’ lot includes eight above-ground box-tombs that were likely erected by the regiments. The United States received the title for the lot in 1866. There are approximately 64 interments in the 0.59-acre soldiers’ lot…”

It’s sparsely populated.

With some of the inscriptions practically illegible.

Others were legible, but conveyed only anonymity. This looks like a latter-day stone, dedicated to an unknown. There were a sprinkling of these in the cemetery.

As I left, I spotted this near the entrance, attached to a boulder.

Just goes to show you how thorough the Daughters were. A memorial so obscure that no one has called for its removal? Not so.

On St. Feriole Island, I happened across a presidential site of sorts: Trail of Presidents. Trees in honor of presidents, arrayed in two rows to form a path, and originally planted in 2014.
I expected a tree planted for every U.S. president, which would have been the standard approach. But in fact the trees only honor presidents who visited Prairie du Chien either in or out of office, and includes two presidents of other entities besides the United States. I was surprised.

The full and semi-literate text of the sign at Trail of Presidents is here.

The honored U.S. presidents include: Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, James Buchanan, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses Grant, James Garfield, Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, Woodrow Wilson, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

For instance, President Fillmore has a white oak.
His plaque explains that he passed through Prairie du Chien when he was vice president in 1849. I haven’t ever seen anything about the travels of Vice President Fillmore — and out to the spanking-new state of Wisconsin that year would have been far afield — but I assume there’s some source for this buried in Fillmore’s papers, or maybe local news accounts.

The non-U.S. presidents? One was him again. He was stationed here, after all.

Also, curiously, Vicente Fox also has a tree, a red oak. “Vicente Fox attended Campion High School in Prairie du Chien in the 1960s,” the plaque says. “He then returned to Mexico.”

The last tree has been reserved for the next president to visit, so it isn’t too late for the most recent living officeholders.

One more Prairie du Chien sight I came across was overlooking the Mississippi, but not on St. Feriole Island. Rather, a statue of Marquette stands atop a tall column near the local chamber of commerce, and also not far from the bridge connecting Prairie du Chien with the town of Marquette, Iowa.

Rev. James Marquette, S.J.
Who discovered the
Mississippi River
at
Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin
June 17, 1673
This monument was erected
with
The solicited contributions
of generous citizens
by
The Business Men’s Association
Of Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin
A.D. 1910
Fred Herber & Son Architects

Unusual to see him called “James,” which doesn’t sound very French. We’ve seen him honored elsewhere around the Great Lakes; Pere Marquette got around, back when muscle power (yours or an animal’s) was the only way to do it.

Presidents Day?

Posted on February 17, 2020 by admin

This came to my attention ahead of “Presidents Day.” It exists in the realm of not just the ignorant, but the proudly ignorant. Not recognizing Warren G. Harding is a fairly minor bit of ignorance, but the subtext is that everyone is, and should be ignorant, of the past.

Arguably today isn’t even really Presidents Day, not if you cite the Uniform Monday Holiday Act of 1968, which calls it Washington’s Birthday. Presidents Day seems to be an invention of calendar makers and ad men, who can’t even agree on whether there should be an apostrophe or where it should be (AP says no apostrophe).

So no Presidents Day unless, however, your state uses the term “Presidents Day,” or some variation. There is no agreement among the several states. Or unless you feel like calling it that. At this point, it’s a touch pedantic to deny the name at all.

“…we now have a hodgepodge of state holiday schedules in the USA: some states still observe Lincoln’s and Washington’s birthdays as separate holidays, some states observe only Washington’s Birthday, some states commemorate both with a single Presidents’ Day (or Lincoln-Washington Day), and some states celebrate neither,” Snopes says.

“And there are odd exceptions such as Alabama, which designated the third Monday in February as a day commemorating both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson (even though Jefferson was born in April).”

This state of affairs might rankle those who are fond of dull uniformity, but the more I think about it, the better I like it. Each state honors Washington in its own way, just as the proliferation of Columbus Day alternatives and dope law is according to the states. Keeps things interesting.

You could also argue that today isn’t Washington’s Birthday either, depending on how you feel about the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, though I can appreciate the urge to create three-day weekends. The Father of Our Country was born on February 22 N.S. or February 11 O.S., to complicate things just a little more. Try explaining that to someone who doesn’t know Harding’s face, even with those distinctive eyebrows.

The New Frontier Joke Book

Posted on February 10, 2020 by admin

Pick up a book like The New Frontier Joke Book and be reminded that humor doesn’t age well. With some exceptions, of course.

I picked up the paperback at my mother’s house some years ago and now it reposes on one of my bookcases. I assume my parents bought it new. That is to say, in 1963, which is the copyright date. Meaning that not long after it was published, sales fell as flat as Vaughn Meader’s career.

Still, enough copies must have sold to make the book a non-rarity on Amazon in our time. If you want one, you can get it for $2.30. The original price was 50 cents, or about $4.20 in current money.

Gene Wortsman was the author (aggregator, really). He was a newspaperman from Alabama, covering Washington for the Birmingham Post-Herald, which ultimately folded in 2005. Apparently he also wrote a book about Phenix City during the 1950s, which seems like a thing a newspaperman from the region would do, though Ray Jenkins of Columbus, Ga. (who died only last October), was better known for his coverage of Sin City, USA.

The promotional text on the back cover of The New Frontier Joke Book says, “Use this sparkling collection of the newest, brightest, and fanciest quips and cartoons about THAT FAMILY in the White House. Read it aloud, for the delight of your friends. Or save it for your private enjoyment — as a sure cure for the frustrations of thinking about the Cuban situation, income taxes, government spending, or any of the other joys of modern living.”

I thumb through it, looking for something that’s still funny. It isn’t easy. This was worth a chuckle:

“Son,” said a corpulent businessman, “it gives me a glow of pride to know you hate Kennedy the way I hated FDR.”

Other quips are mildly puzzling.

Thanks to Postmaster General Day, the nickel wins the award for the greatest comeback of the decade.

I assume that had something to do with an increase in the price of a first-class stamp.

These days, everyone in Washington wants to know if the President is off his rocker.

Ah, yes. The president was known to spend time in rocking chairs. (Which would account for the book’s cover art.) Bad back, you know. You can still buy one of the style he used for $549.

Some are Johnny Carson sorts of jokes, on his weaker nights.

Averell Harriman went on a mission to Moscow for FDR and a mission to India for JFK. That guy has more missions than the Salvation Army.

It isn’t true that JFK had a locksmith go through the White House and replace all of the Yale locks.

There are jokes about Jackie Kennedy’s wardrobe, the John-Bobby rivalry, the president’s relative youth, taxes, LBJ chaffing at the vice presidency, the size of the Kennedy family, Khrushchev, the space race, etc. etc.

Even one making fun of the Secretary of Agriculture.

So the Yankees are still winning baseball games. The only way to stop them is to put Orville Freeman in charge of their farm system.

Not a very good joke — I think, it’s a little hard to tell at this late date — but I suppose that was better for the secretary than being known for telling a remarkably crude joke.

Hollywood Cemetery

Posted on October 30, 2019 by admin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Monticello

Posted on October 24, 2019 by admin

Here I am again, I thought as I stood on the west lawn of Monticello, a place of such enormous resonance, in the early afternoon of October 13, 2019. The nickel view.
Yet I had a hard time remembering much about my first visit, which was on September 4, 1988. Maybe that’s because 31 years is a long time. Or because the view of Monticello from the west lawn, which I’ve known as long as I’ve known Jefferson nickels — all my life, for all practical purposes — is as close as anything gets to changeless.

I do know that the first time I saw the building in person, I realized that the nickel has a uninspired representation of Monticello. Flat. In person, you see that it’s a place to gaze at from more than one angle.
I’m holding a nickel in this picture, by the way.
A look at the eastern elevation. I’m glad to say that the house sports lightning rods, unlike a hilltop structure in Wisconsin that’s going to burn down after a strike someday.
The east entrance is where the interior tours start. Actually, no. You’re not getting in the building without starting at the David M. Rubenstein Visitor Center, which is down the hill from Jefferson’s home. That’s something different from 1988. The 42,000-square-foot visitors center has only been there for about 10 years.

Exactly where we bought tickets back then, I don’t remember, but I suspect it was simpler facility — not like the five pavilion-complex of the Rubenstein. Also, there were no timed tickets the first time around. I even think our tour was self-guided. Nor did I experience the warren of interconnected parking lots next to the visitors center, which was largely full. There must have been parking in 1988, and it too must have been simpler, but who remembers things like that?
Also: this interesting chronology tells me that I paid $7 in 1988 for my ticket. That’s just over $15 in current dollars. Note the 2019 ticket price: $26.95. Guess that extra $12 is going to pay for ever-fancier guest infrastructure.

In 1925, not long after the house was opened to paying visitors, admission was 50 cents — the equivalent of $3.88 in 1988 and $7.34 now, so I suppose ticket inflation has been an ongoing thing at Monticello.

I originally bought tickets online for the 10:45 am tour, but jammed traffic on I-64 just outside Charlottesville put us at the visitor center at 10:50. The helpful clerk didn’t bat an eye at that, and put us on a 12:30 pm tour (meeting at 12:25).

What that meant was that we had time to walk up the high hill to Monticello, as opposed to taking a shuttle bus, and stop roughly halfway up to see the Jefferson family graveyard, so it worked out for the best. Climbing gives you a sense of just how high the hill is. Besides, it’s a lovely path.
The burial ground is behind an ornate iron fence.
There are a lot of Randolphs. Jefferson’s daughter Martha married a Randolph, and they were the fecund parents of 13 children, 11 of whom survived childhood.
President Jefferson himself.
The path from the burial ground to Monticello proper takes you past the re-created garden, planted on a long terrace dug out of the side of the hill. In October, most of the vegetables have been harvested already, but some still linger.

The house tour, lead by a lively gray-haired gentleman who was probably a retired teacher, took us through the first floor, beginning with the entrance hall and its displays of Indian artifacts and animal horns and paintings and maps and such. Museums as such didn’t much exist in early Republic Virginia, so Jefferson created one for himself.

Then I remembered the Great Clock, hanging over the main entrance, from last time. A favorite of mine.

Other rooms feature books, furniture, paintings — including a Gilbert Stuart portrait of Jefferson probably painted when he was president — more books, oddly placed beds, scientific instruments, papers, clocks, busts, yet more books, and the dumbwaiter that he had installed to fetch wine from the cellar below, something else I remembered from 30 years ago. It’s an admirable clutter.

After Jefferson sold much of his library to the U.S. government to form the nucleus of the revived Library of Congress after the British burned the original one in 1814, he started accumulating books again. The only reasonable thing to do, and hang the cost. Libraries as such didn’t much exist in early Republic Virginia, so Jefferson created one for himself. Twice.

From Monticello’s FAQ:

Who built the house?

Local white masons and their apprentices did the stone and brickwork. Local carpenters, assisted by several Monticello slave carpenters, provided the rough structural woodwork. The fine woodwork (floors, cornices, and other moldings) was the work of several skilled white joiners, hired from as far away as Philadelphia. One Monticello slave, John Hemmings, who trained under the white workman James Dinsmore, became a very able joiner and carpenter.

How much did the house cost?

No one so far has managed to calculate the cost of Monticello with any degree of accuracy.

That is, the house was a money pit for the third president.

We also spent some time looking around the exhibits in the North and South Pavilions, which are structures that branch away from the main house, though they don’t seem directly connected. We poked around such places as the wine cellar and the beer cellar next to it, plus the elaborate kitchen, which naturally wasn’t part of the main house. When you dined with Thomas Jefferson, the feast must have been sumptuous.

There are a few outbuildings. Such as this slave cabin replica, built since I visited last time.
I don’t remember exactly how much emphasis Monticello put on slavery during my first visit. I suspect it was a matter not of denying it, but not talking much about it either.
I can report that in 2019, not only does Monticello not deny the importance of enslaved labor at the house and farm, or the humanity of the enslaved, the official texts talk about it quite a lot. Including the Sally Hemings and Hemings family story — which rates a room of its own in one of the pavilions and a video. That pendulum has swung.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Tag Archives: presidents