Goofing off on the Gulf

The last week has been a potpourri of activity and some rest, but I must tell you at the beginning that I figured out the simple math issue I wrote about (and pictured!) in my last posting (the scale model thing on the USS Lexington).  There really was nothing to figure; apparently I just had a couple of neurons that didn't connect right the first three hundred times I stared at it.  Now I am left with shame and embarrassment, but fortunately the only people in the universe who could know about it are those who have access to the Internet.  Whew!  I suppose I could go back and edit it out, but then only people whom I really care about would know.  So why not let perfect strangers who stumble upon my blog have a little fun, too?

We are staying in a Residence Inn in Sandestin, Florida, which is next to the better known Destin, Florida. This is the "Emerald Coast" of Florida: fine, white sand beaches and clear emerald water stretch along for miles.  The whole coast is dotted with small (and some larger) communities that pretty much run into each other.  Driving west from here for less than an hour, one reaches Pensacola, which, I was surprised to learn, is a very old city with a rich history.  Driving isn't particularly interesting when one can't see the ocean--it's all commercial, either hotels and condos, or retail, with little evidence of planning (South Minnesota Avenue in Sioux Falls; Central Entrance in Duluth etc.).

But, of course, retail isn't all bad!  Next door to us, the "Grand Boulevard" center has many mid-scale stores and seven or eight nice restaurants...and then down the road is a fine outlet mall that we have visited several times. That is, to be accurate, I shop and Bill listens to ESPN in the car.

We have spent two days with Bill's first cousin Bill Bremser and his wife Greta.  Bill was born in 1933 and grew up in St. Louis, so he was gone from home as Bill came of age, but they have renewed their cousinly relationship in the past few years.  Bill B.'s father took him on an outing to Westminster College (Fulton, Missouri) in 1944 and thus Bill was THERE when Winston Churchill made his "Iron Curtain" speech.  After Cousin Bill retired from the Navy, he and his wife settled in Pensacola, and so we toured the museum of naval aviation and had a great time.  Here I am, at right, standing next to a Sikorsky helicopter.
I, Martha Sikorski Sozansky, am not related to Igor Sikorsky, but I wouldn't trade my dad John Wilbur Sikorski, for anyone else anyway. Ironically, my father and Igor died 11 days apart in October of 1972.

But I have not told you the most exciting thing to me about our visit with Bill and Greta.  They have been watching birds forever and have seen almost everything, and took us on two days of looking for birds.  I got seven or eight new id's, including  two new gulls and a Prothonotary Warbler, and we saw something very cool:  a loon in "breeding plumage:" Very boring-looking, before he makes his way to Minnesota or Wisconsin and turns fabulous in basic black and white.  These cousins were very, very good to us to help us find and identify several birds that are either here year 'round or who are on their way north.  As a birdwatcher, I am not competitive, nor do I have a life list, and I get as much thrill from seeing great birds I've known for decades--as I do from a new identification.  That's why I asked Bill to take the photo of the Great Blue Heron at left, above.  He (or she) walked back and forth along the shore hunting for fish, and was at times less than 10 feet from us--but didn't care at all.

We leave tomorrow to start back to Duluth, but we may have some more adventures: The Jimmy Carter Presidential Library in Atlanta tomorrow (only 5 hours away!), Lookout Mountain and lunch at the Cafe on the Corner on Monday, and some time with our friends in Dubuque, Iowa.  We hope to avoid the next blizzard in Duluth, due early next week.

Tourism and indolence

Since visiting the last Presidential Library, we have been tourists on the Gulf Coast, and true snow birds in Destin, Florida, with a 3-day stop on the way in Corpus Christi, Texas.

We wanted to go to Corpus Christi because many Minnesotans head to Southeast Texas--especially to Padre Island--for a winter break.  We did not, however, drive the three hours from Corpus Cristi to South Padre Island, which is the most popular resort (and spring break) destination.  Instead, we spent a day on the Padre Island National Seashore, which comprises the north part of Padre Island, and which is a very large barrier reef.  It's managed by the U.S. National Park Service.  There's a beach, but it was too cool to play in the water. The best part: BIRDS!!

The area has been designated as "important" by the bird people, and Corpus Christi has the designation as the "birdiest" city in the U.S.  It's important as a travel route for many birds that summer in the Upper Midwest.  I got a new identification on the Laughing Gull--a very noisy fellow indeed--and when we visited the Corpus Christi Botannical Garden on another day, I identified a Northern Shoveler with help from a nice young man who was obviously an accomplished birder.


We visited two other sites in Corpus Christi: the first was the South Texas Art Museum, which had an exhibit of Ansel Adams photos, as well as a number of great art from their permanent exhibit.  And Duluthians (as well as others who have visited) will know why Bill took this picture: their Chihuly seems virtually identical to the showpiece in the UMD Library...except for the color.

Our other non-nature visit was to the USS Lexington, which is a huge aircraft carrier that lies permanently in the harbor at Corpus Christi.  There are many exhibits, and one can tour the living quarters of the ship, and see several of the actual planes that flew during the war in the Pacific.  I particularly enjoyed seeing the crew's quarters below deck, as Bill's father was a cook in the Navy, and was on a ship in the Pacific during the war.  There was one hitch: on the lower level are two rooms filled with 200-300 models of both planes and ships of all kinds-- you know, the type your brother bought at the local hobby shop and built in the 1950s, complete with decals.  Surely you will remember (ha!) my writing about the miniature museum in Tucson in last year's faux blog--dozens of houses, shops and cities all in miniature--and how interesting it was (to me) to learn that miniature hobbyists create on a 1:12 scale. But airplane and ship models cannot be built to a universally standard scale, because, of course, they vary so much in size!  Now, the reason I asked Bill to take a photo of the sign in the museum is that I stood in front of it and tried to follow the math for about 15 minutes, and by the end I had tears in my eyes and lost all of my self esteem, because I THINK in the second example (of a "1:350 Ship model"), one inch equals only 12 inches--one foot-- and not 48 inches, as in the first example.  I think.  But they don't state that the scale is different! I can't stand it!  The sign has been there for years!  Am I nuts?  Do I have to read Math Doesn't Suck by Danica McKellar again?  I leave it up to you, dear reader.


It was too far to drive in one day from Corpus Christi to Destin, Florida, so we stopped for one night in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.  We had just time to visit the Rural Life Museum in that city, which is managed by LSU and includes a working plantation as well as huge exhibits of tools and domestic artifacts from early and mid-nineteenth century.  Naturally I loved seeing the quilts, including this one I think is called "rail fence," a pattern I like a lot (not from the 19th century, though, these are made by women in the community for display as reproductions).
 
 And this:  an iron with a hollow handle that had a metal ball in it, so it would be known (by the noise) that the slave in charge of laundry was indeed ironing.  While I have referred to myself on occasion as the slave in charge of laundry, I have never had to iron with one of these.

Next week: reflections on life on the Florida panhandle. Indolence rules.

41, 42, 43 in 6

We visited the libraries of Presidents George Herbert Walker Bush (41), Bill Clinton (42), and George W. Bush (43) over a period of six days last week.  In addition, we visited Dealey Plaza and the museum in the School Book Depository in Dallas.  Below I offer some observations.

Settings
All three of the buildings housing these libraries and museums are big, imposing, well-designed structures surrounded by a lot of open space.  The Clinton library is on the edge of downtown Little Rock and its construction was the spark for a revitalization of the downtown.  I'm not sure to what extent the downtown area had fallen off before the library was built, but now it is a lively place, with good retail and restaurants.  For example, we had dinner at the Flying Saucer, a great place featuring hundreds of beers.  Oh, pardon me, I have been redundant ("great" and "hundreds of beers").

The George W. Bush library is on the campus of Southern Methodist University in Dallas.  It is very new and beautifully designed.  (It's on SMU Drive, which our GPS voice referred to as "SMOO" Drive.)  The maintenance of this library has not yet been taken over by the federal government, so it's still private, and admission prices are double those at other libraries.  There is an atmosphere of "newness" here, and I was disappointed that they do not yet sell those commemorative little spoons that I am collecting: "No, jeez, we're tryin' to get spoons," the student in the gift shop said.

(Each President has to raise his [or her, one day, let us hope] own funds to build a library and museum, and then, if it becomes an "official" presidential library/museum, the federal government takes over its maintenance.)

The George H.W. Bush library is the most modest of the three we visited, but it has a catch-and-release pond for fishing in the back, and it is there that the senior Bushes will be buried when they die. It is on the campus of Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas, which is a more remote and much smaller city than Little Rock or Dallas.  The library/museum doesn't seem any smaller physically than the others, but one example of its more subdued nature is that there is no restaurant--we had lunch at both "42" in Little Rock, and at "Cafe 43" in Dallas.

Exhibits and messages

We visited the Clinton Library on Dr. Seuss's birthday, and the greeter outside as well as staff were dressed in Cat in the Hat costumes.  There were 300-400 school children attending that day, and the atmosphere was loud.  Students were lively and animated but not ill-behaved, and I marveled at the staff's tolerance and willingness to yell out stories about the Presidency and the displays.  The exhibits are organized as my linear mind might have: one alcove for the highlights of each year of Clinton's presidency, and then a separate display for the most important programs.  Yes, they covered the impeachment, but it was pretty subdued.  The primary message seemed to focus on his work in moving the economy and social programs forward.  Other than a short history of his early life in the opening film, there was little reference to his personal life.

Visiting the Geo. W. Bush Library in Dallas, one first steps into a very large, square ante room with high ceilings.  Once visitors are gathered there (no seats), the upper 10 feet or so of all four walls becomes a  screen for the most technologically wondrous video presentation I've ever seen.  There was no narration, only music; it consisted of images of people and land and the images moved around all four walls.  The resolution was perfect.  When it was done, I said to Bill, "Marshall McLuhan should be here: that was a medium without a message.  But it was fabulous."  I thought about it the rest of the day, and periodically erupted with my various opinions--poor Bill.  But I kept thinking about Nick saying, after a movie, "It was crap, but the special effects were fantastic."  Most disturbing of all, I'm re-thinking my often-repeated belief that "technology is but a tool.  It is only a means to an end, which is communicating a message."  I just don't know any more.  Maybe the tool is enough, especially in our times.  You might well observe that buying fabric and tools for quilting seems to be an end for me, even when there's no quilt forthcoming.

The W Library, of the three we visited, seems the most intent on driving home a positive message about the President...and its driver, if you will, is the President's leadership following 9/11.  Most of the libraries start with a 15-minute video, and W's led with his throwing out the first pitch at the Yankee game after 9/11.

The George H.W. Bush Library in College Station has, as noted, no restaurant, and the gift shop is much more modest than at the others.  This is the most background-and-family oriented of the three libraries, and we learned a lot.  The President and Barbara (nee Pierce, somehow related to President Pierce) were married after he served as a Navy pilot in WWII, when they were in their very early twenties.  I didn't know they moved from the East to Texas, where he built a successful oil business and then went into politics only after he had earned  a bajillion dollars and could educate his family.  There were a lot of displays about WWII, and I was left with the impression that this was truly a member of the "Greatest Generation."  I'm afraid I did not know that his plane was hit on a mission in the Pacific; he was able to land it on a carrier, but two others who were in the plane did not survive.

It is helpful to see these libraries in order to understand the times in which the Presidents were in office.  For example, during Bush 41's single term, the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union ceased to exist.  And as much as we want to not see it, politics plays a role in everything: in the Clinton and Kennedy gift shops one can purchase reproduction jewelry similar to that worn by Jackie Kennedy Onassis.  But there's no sign of that at the Bush libraries; instead, one can purchase reproduction 3-strand pearl necklaces of the type worn by Barbara Bush.

Other Highlights

"Spies, Traitors, and Saboteurs: Fear and Freedom in America" is a temporary exhibit now at the Clinton Library.  The exhibit was created by the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C.  I thoroughly enjoyed it and learned a lot.  The first entries are about the plethora of German people who were in the U.S. at the beginning of the 20th century, and who were playing dirty tricks to retard the ability of America to prepare for entering WWI.  There was quite a bit of history of the Ku Klux Klan--now apparently splintered into many smaller groups who have chosen to fight immigration as their primary stated cause.  And of course I loved the references to the anarchists.

Bill had been to Dealey Plaza and the School Book Depository.  Displays in the SBD are fairly ordinary--with too much copy on placards for the number of people visiting--but I thought the best feature was that they created the museum right in the space from which President Kennedy was shot.  They have glassed in the corner where Oswald shot from--a chilling piece of history.


We were happy to have been able to see these three libraries within 6 days.  I continue to be amazed how different it is for us when we visit museums of the presidents whose terms we lived through as adults...from visiting the museums of, say, FDR or Hoover, who served before we were born.

Now we are goofing off in Corpus Christi, Texas for three days; we'll leave for Destin, Florida on Monday, stopping in Baton Rouge for a night.  Nick has already sent us about a dozen recommendations for restaurants in Baton Rouge--we'll be there one night.

Week 1: Getting to 60 degrees Fahrenheit

The chronology of Retirement Road Trip II shows us leaving Duluth a day later than planned (Feb. 27), due to--what else?--blowing snow in Southern Minnesota; spending two nights with Steve and Arlys in Sioux Falls (one highlight: fundraising auction for Augustana College); driving 610 miles in one day to beat a blizzard to St. Louis for 2 delightful days with Bill's sister and family; a night in Bentonville, AR; two nights in Little Rock with Bill Clinton and others; a day with the horses and the baths (not at the same time) in Hot Springs; and our recent arrival in Dallas, where it did indeed reach 74 degrees today.  But chronology is boring: let me touch on the highlights.

(My report on three presidential libraries, a special exhibit at one, and a visit to the School Book Depository in Dallas will be in my next posting, after we have visited the George H.W. Bush library in College Station. Thus I drone on here with no reference to the libraries.)

Our visit in St. Louis was all about family but also about media: we watched the Oscars together and here is a surprise: Bill won the contest to pick the winners.  By the time the Oscars aired, Bill had seen all but one of the 9 nominated "Best Pictures." We also visited the St.Louis History Museum, which is currently featuring a "250/250" exhibit celebrating the 250 years of the city's existence.  Yes, this wonderful city was founded in 1764.  I was most interested in the prominence of material about the fur trade and the Chouteau family, who were brilliant in both negotiating with native peoples and with other business interests.  One really cool member of this family was Pierre Chouteau, after whom the capital city of South Dakota is named, though it is pronounced "PEER."

I was terribly interested in an entire room devoted to the 1904 World's Fair held in St. Louis.  This is a permanent exhibit.  Skip these sentences if you have heard this before, but it's why I have a personal interest in this event:  My great grandmother Susanna McMurtry Slayton (1867-195?) was born (and thought she would be forever) in central Indiana.  But as an adolescent, she met one Robert Slayton, a dashing young man who came to Indiana every year from Prineville, Oregon--might as well have been Mongolia to the Hoosiers--to buy horses.  They fell in love, and moved to Prineville, where Susanna bore two daughters, including my grandmother Fern.  But when the girls were 2 and 4 years old, Robert died of appendicitis--as people did in those days--and Susanna was left with (as she reported later) "two babies and forty dollars."  Instead of returning immediately to Indiana, where she knew she'd live under her parents' thumbs forever, she stayed in Oregon for a few years, and opened a millinery shop.  They lived in the back of the store, and, with the help of a Blackfeet woman who looked after the girls (as well as the neighbors who owned a restaurant next door and gave them food), they survived for some years.  But return to Indiana they did, on the train, stopping in St. Louis to attend the World's Fair.

The exhibit focuses on the great number of foreign countries represented at the fair--the Phillipines' contingent had 1,000 people living on the grounds for the duration of the fair, making and showing their arts and crafts every day.  But, of course, for me the tie-in is always the fact that my grandma was there.  And the fact that the ice cream cone was invented on those hallowed grounds.  Let us pay homage.

We stopped in Bella Vista, Arkansas, to visit a beloved friend of my mother's, Barbara Cota.  Barbara was Mom's first "boss" when she went to work in the admissions office of Sioux Falls College (now the University of Sioux Falls) in 1959, and they were lifelong friends.  Now 85, Barbara is one of those people that one always feels about 85% better after visiting, though one doesn't exactly know why.  She's lived in that area for a while, but only last June moved into a retirement facility, where we had dinner and chatted for two hours.  I made her tell the story (again, so I wouldn't get it wrong on retelling) of her graduating from SFC in 1953 and getting a job teaching in Lyons, South Dakota, about 18 miles from Sioux Falls, school population 60 students.  Her salary was $2,900, which was higher than anyone else's, because she did drama and speech.  She had no car, so roomed with a "widow lady" during the week, and then paid someone ONE DOLLAR for a weekend ride to Sioux Falls, where she hung out (Baptist Church) with her girlfriends for the weekend.

I interviewed a woman for the CLA newsletter who used the phrase "the personal is political."  I didn't know what it meant, so I looked it up.  It's attributed loosely to the feminist movement, to no one in particular, but it has to do with the difference between personal experience and political theory.  This was in my mind as I had several experiences in the past few days, in which I was at first excited and then frustrated with myself, thinking myself a rube for relating to great art and great events only because they were meaningful to me.  Three examples:

• At the Crystal Bridges Art Museum Center in Bentonville, Arkansas (you know, the museum of American Art conceived by an heiress to the Walmart fortune), one of the featured paintings is Mary Cassat's "The Reader."  The commentary notes that the idea of women reading in the 19th century was both positive and negative: positive because it indicated they were actually literate and had leisure time, and negative because reading was considered a "frivolous pursuit." Instantly I though of Mom, reading Truman's biography until 9 a.m. and then, still in her robe, declaring herself a "lazy bum."
• I was riveted by the reference at the Clinton Library of his great work in helping negotiate the peace in Northern Ireland...but mostly because we met a couple from Northern Ireland once in Barcelona, who talked endlessly about President Clinton and how much he had helped their country.
• There is currently a special exhibit at the Clinton Library called "Spies, Traitors, and Saboteurs,"  It was wonderful (more info in my next post).  But I had to acknowledge that the highlight for me was the graphic about the anarchists in the early 20th century...mostly because of my favorite novel, "The Secret Agent" by Joseph Conrad.

Is the personal how we relate best to  art?  To culture? To literature? To everything?

In Little Rock, I went by myself to the Esse Purse Museum.  It's the only one of its kind and features display cases with examples of purses and their contents from each decade beginning in 1900.  The written commentary is excellent.  In the 1910s, the Suffragists started a "Ban the Bag" campaign to counteract the movement that would make is fashionable and acceptable for women to carry purses.  They wanted, instead, to demand that women's garments be created with pockets--which were not a part of women's clothing at the time.  But the growing fashion won out!  Purses were in forever!!

Hot Springs: our B&B reservation included seating in the "Jockeys' Club" at Oaklawn Horse Racing Track, which had a dress code (men wear coats; absolutely no denim).  Actually, it was delightful and I had a great opportunity to watch what my lifestyle might have been like had I been born in a different place, to different parents.  Do not go there without a manicure and good jewelry.  There was an attendant in the ladies' room, a phenomenon I had not experienced since Charlie's Cafe Exceptionale in Minneapolis, circa 1975.

Marty's New Blog

Remember the Faux Blog of 2013?  The 2014 version will be a real, authentic, 100% real blog, and this is a test.