The Money Man

Driving through sleepy Florence, IN, minutes after Mine that Bird's miraculous victory, and turning around the bend along the river to see the towering Belterra casino (obviously a big local employer) was something of a shock. We rushed in to get tickets before the 7 p.m. show (early so people could gamble afterwards) and quickly noticed that Louisville and Jeffersonville's indoor smoking ban did not apply to some parts of Southern IN. We shifted just in time to a smallish casino concert hall. Twenty years earlier I'd seen Eddie Money (singer of late 70s hits like "Two Tickets to Paradise" and "Take Me Home Tonight" and the early 1980s MTV revolution era hits "I Wanna Go Back" and also my favorite, "Shakin'," in the famous Palladium theater. This theater - off of Union Square and scene of Club MTV - which my apartmentmate Belinda and her boyfriend danced in - for a couple of years. Although Money had been a NYC police officer before he became a rock star in the late 1970s, he and his Mr. Entertainer banter (complete with loads of mediocre jokes) seemed a tad out of place in the hip club. Although the Belterra's audience was older and spread somewhat thinly through the concert hall, he almost seemed more at ease in the casino. He talked up gambling there and had apparently played there three years earlier (when we were nearby in Louisville - this was our first trip to any of these IN casinos. I had only been in a casino some 15 years ago when I stopped in Vegas to visit with my cousin Scott and his family and they showed me around the town). (After the Grand Excursion, Stephanie and her friend Jo and two others had also been to another river casino - the one in Fort Madison, Iowa, along the Mississippi River. Stephanie had also visited a river casino boat on a trip to St. Louis with her friend Rita some 14 years ago.) I didn't really manage to get any good pictures of Eddie Money or the casino. Money performed most of his hits, a few new songs, and a Motown song from a new cover album. He talked up gifts he was selling to raise money for care for HIV-infected children. Money, 60, was backed up on vocals by his daughter, Jessi, who also sang three songs herself. His band, which I suspect had changed personnel in 20 years, was solid.

With a waitress's encouragement, we moved up closer to the front as soon as the show started. Because I didn't know if we would make it, because I wanted to avoid the Ticketmaster extra charges, and because I was told on the phone that the show was unlikely to sell out, we waited and got tickets at the box office as we arrived. But we quickly left our back-row seats (still - it was so small - there were no bad seats). But we weren't right up front and we didn't join the mainly women my age or older dancing up front - which would have positioned us to get better pictures. We chatted a little with the women who moved up near us, including one who bemoaned Money leaving out a hit from his set list.

Money periodically played saxophone in the show.

I haven't been able to find any video of this exact show on YouTube.

But here's a performance of "Shakin'" at a casino in Connecticut from the same tour - two months before we saw Money and his band: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDP3PGdP2Rc

Here, from a week after we saw him, is Money performing the 1980s hit "I Wanna Go Back." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tF9XEub8mDM

By the time he'd got the crowd going more at the end, Money said: "I don't do this for the money - I do this for you." - even though he'd joked earlier about money. "I sold 37 million records, but I don't know what happend to all of that money. . . . Who knew?" he asked, suggested that he had spent like he thought he was going to keep selling millions of records forever. Speaking of money: After the concert, we walked over into the casino, which shifts effortlessly to the boat. Again, Stephanie discouraged me from taking pictures, and I got no good ones. Apparently there was a vantage point from which you can look out on the river, but we missed it. Stephanie knew some of the tricks. There were lots of slot machines and then blackjack tables, including those with $100 minimums. Early on we walked through a quiet, smoke free back room where people were playing poker, and this was kind of cool to see. I've seen much more of casinos in movies (like in "Casino Royale" and "Ocean's Eleven") than in person. This definitely wasn't Vegas or even Atlantic City, but it was interesting to see nonetheless (plus this slice of Kentuckiana broadly construed - We hadn't been able to consider taking Vincent because the whole facility is apparently age 21 and up - because of the gambling.) I wasn't tempted to try gambling - though Stephanie had tried it in Fort Madison (she broke even, she said). I joked that I didn't recognize anyone from the Creation Museum at the casino and that I definitely would not expect to see anyone from our church at either of these locales. As we walked out, some people - dressed up, including women with hats somewhat like the one that Stephanie had bought for Derby but didn't get a chance to wear - were arriving on a shuttle from Churchill Downs and the race. (I had developed a whole elaborate plan to board the dog - if we had decided not to try to go to the concert but only to the mall and the museum - but we ended up leaving late neough that I thought we'd get back in time.) As it turns out, Vincent surprised us by going back home from his girlfriend's (where he'd spent the previous night) at 8:30 p.m. and so he was there to rescue the dog (and - eventually - talk with Stephanie). We headed across the street to retrieve our car and drove off to do a little more exploring (in Vevay, Madison, and Bedford). Furthest below is video I took of Money (not his real family name, I bet) and his sax solo from "I Wanna Go Back." Click on play to watch and hear.

-- Perry

Grand Excursion

In summer 2005 towns along the upper Mississippi River replicated a series of events from 150 years early - when a flotilla of ships spent days and days traveling up the Mississippi River, from the Iowa-Illinois border - very near where I lived in 2003 and 2004 - to the Twin Cities, where we lived before that. On our way to Illinois (and then to Louisville) on a Memorial Day weekend trip to the Twin Cities five years ago - just before the "Grand Excursion" - we essentially did the Grand Concourse in reverse. We left St. Paul and stopped in Pepin, Wisconsin, to see the "Little House in the Big Woods," then drove along the Mississippi, criss-crossing between the states - stopping to go to the bathroom in Winona, MN; driving around LaClerc, Wisconsin; having dinner in Dubuque, Iowa; driving back past the Davenport (Iowa) mall (where Stephanie and Joanne had shopped a year before) - unti we arrived in Macomb very late at night. Stephanie and I thought of this trip as we sort of replicated this on the Ohio River, minutes after leaving the Creation Museum (including the petting zoo and the bridge) two weeks ago Saturday. we were in a hurry, because I wanted to try to get to a concert outside of Vevay, Indiana. So we left the museum at 5:45 p.m., took the Cincinnati beltway across the river (I'd only driven this stretch once before on my way in a rented SVU - going 30 mph in the snow - when my plane got snowed in in the Cincinnati airport - on my way back to Macomb after my Louisville job interview 5 1/2 years ago in January). (Pictured above) we quickly passed one of many coal-fired electric generating plants along the river. Indiana allows gambling on boats (mostly on the Ohio River or Lake Michigan) (some of these boats actually fake). Here's the entrance to a casino in Lawrenceburg, IN - the first town we drove through in IN (along the river).

Further into Lawrenceburg we drove across a bridge, close to a Seagram's distillery.

Yet another distillary.

One of the cuter towns we drove through was Aurora, IN, where we drove past the end of a church wedding. (For some reason there is no bridge across the river between Lawrenceburg and Vevay, IN - almost an hour away. Looking at a map with indistinct bridges, I thought there should be a bridge at Aurora or Rising Sun, and we could have driven along the river on the KY side, and then crossed at one of these two towns - but, in fact, no bridges.)

We kept driving through Rising Sun.

Below is a barge - like the barges we used to see heading up and down the Mississippi River from the Shepard-Warner expressway in St. Paul - and like the ones - in fact, this could be a Louisville-headed barge - in the Ohio River passing Louisville and Southern IN.

Around about now was 6:15 p.m., when Stephanie remembered that the Kentucky Derby race was slated to start in eight minutes. We messed around with the car radio and a transistor radio for the whole eight minutes until we finally found a station that was carrying the race, which thankfully started a little late. The station faded in and out until I eventually stopped along the side of the road - mid-race - to make sure we wouldn't lose the signal down the road. We had just 15-20 minutes to get to the casino in Florence, IN - but I thought we could afford a one-minute wait. The race was awful exciting - but it was hard to figure out on the radio what happend at the end. I've watched the race several times on YouTube - with the same announcer announcing the race on TV who was announcing it on the radio - and he doesn't mention the winning horse until basically AFTER the end. Mine that Bird was dead last through most of the race - way back - and didn't roar way into the lead - sneaking in on the rail - where he's hard to see - until the last few seconds. Afterwards, we heard a little analysis that helped explain what happened (though it was even more clear to me after watching the race on YouTube - partly to see where Mine that Bird came from). Calvin Borel rode horses to victories for the second time in two days (having rode Rachel Alexandra to victory in the Oaks race at Churchill Downs the day before).

Minutes later we drove through tiny Florence, IN (town with same name as KY town just miles away across the river where we had eaten lunch) and then suddenly saw the casino. After leaving the casino three hours later, we continued with our Ohio River version of the Grand Concourse. We drove past the bridge to KY at Vevay, through small Vevay and its open bowling alley and then down the road though the very cute Madison - scene of a fatal speedboat regatta several years ago and filled with historic homes - and drove past a famous hamburger joint I'd heard about from an admissions officer at the nearby (Presbyterian) Hanover College the day before. We made an emergency city park public restroom stop for me, and then drove across the bridge and over land towards Interstate 71, though yet a fifth county seat of the drive: Bedford, KY, county seat of Trimble County (two counties from Louisville). We'd lost Vincent on the phone (who wondered where we were) in Madison (which we hope to visit again) and then called him back as we entered Henry County near 71. Stephanie talked with him during our whole freeway trip home and told him we were about to drive into KY seconds before she opened the front door (surprising him with our sudden arrival). Great trip - but it was 11 p.m. and we were happy to see Frisco and him.

-- Perry

Creation Museum

When I proposed a trip up the Ohio River Valley towards Cincinnati, Stephanie suggested we go to the controversial Creation Museum - which turns out to be a mixed Bible history/natural history/cultural conservative politics museum with petting zoo - west of the Cincinnati airport (which is actually located in Kentucky) very near the Ohio River. We drove up midday Saturday, stopped for lunch at the Japanese restaurant in the Florence Mall (should have just eaten in the museum cafe), and then drove over on the Cincinnati beltway to the museum. The museum blends an interesting version of scientific creationism/intelligent design theory. Central to the museum's version of this theory is that the earth is just about 6,000 years old and that dinosaurs and people co-existed. The great flood is also central to the story - and, very recently, a mini-intraspecies version of Darwin's natural selection - and the idea that some 6,000 years ago God created people and a variety of other species that coexisted until dinosaurs eventually died off and some other species - internally evolved. (There's little direct confrontation with the idea that the Bible's 6,000 years could be treated as metaphor or that this could be a non-essential part of the Bible that reflected pre-scientific understandings of the time.) There is some conservative morality story included here, including a critique of social Darwinism and scientific racism. Images of the dinosaur-people coexistence jump out pretty quickly at the museum.

The figure below is of an actual scientific creationist archeologist, who was also speaking in a film projected in the same room. This man explicitly said he's out to prove the scientific creationist interpretation of the Bible. The exhibit on the whole conveys a rather relativist view of science, a view that some postmodernists would like. There's one theory (Darwin's evolution theory) and another theory (scientific creationism) - perhaps both plausible. It's not easy simply to test one versus the other. We must accept both as valid theories. It's just that only one of them is Biblically valid also.

Here's where they quickly get into contemporary history/cultural critique. There is a pro-scientific creationism take on the Scopes monkey trial, in which a TN science teacher was tried and convicted for teaching the theory of evolution in public schools. Even though the prosecution prevailed, the trial - popularized in the movie "Inherit the Wind," which the museum criticizes - discredited opponents of the theory of evolution in many circles.

The museum sends visitors through a gritty supposedly urban secular humanist wasteland/tunnel in which all truth is relative and moral decay sets in (though keep in mind the scientific relativism outlined before).

Stephanie and Vincent have always loved natural history museums. Stephanie knows plenty about just about everything except for U.S. history, and there's plenty about prehistory, anthropology, archeology, zoology, and geology in natural history museums to keep her occupied.

Stephanie snapped this picture of me "petting" one of the dinosaurs (really good dinosaur models, by the way.)

Below Stephanie was reaching for the apple - apparently from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (as in scripture).

Stephanie thought this model of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden was a little risque (she said they were basically having sex). Interestingly, they don't have blond hair, but they're not black either. (And how does Adam have a trimmed beard?)

Here (below) is the snake lurking - about to lure Eve and Adam into trying that forbidden fruit.

Stephanie wanted me to take a picture of her posing with a Methusalah figure (below) because she ways she sometimes tells her students she's as old as Methusalah (the oldest figure in the Bible).

Stephanie also sat down in a model of the ark. I mentioned that the flood is very important to this version of the scientific creationist story. Apparently the existence of the flood and its effects helps explain many trends (like the creation of the Grand Canyon?) that otherwise we might need to explain by the passing of millions of years (which of course isn't an available explanation if you're trying to explain how the earth is only 6,000 plus years old).

A smaller ark model of just the exterior ark appears (below) in a diorama. (Later in the gift shop we bought a Noah's ark puzzle for one of Stephanie's students. Recall that one of the churches we have visited in Guatemala is the Arca de Noe church.)

This is apparently a new exhibit of the museum that touts a central part of Darwin's theory of evolution: natural selection - how species - well - "evolve" - at least within the species (apparently inter-species evolution - like other primates turning into people - is out - partly because God created certain species and they've only had 6,000 years to change anyway.) The example that I couldn't get a good picture was blind cave fish (but in the exhibit they were being exposed to light - how many generations before they might get their sight back?) No direct comment here on how - according to what I learned in college - the principle tenet of natural selection - the essential random quality of it - violates a central tenet of scientific creationism - that God is in control over everything, that everything has a purpose.

What came next (and below) was a fascinating sociological analysis of - among other things - racism that tied - somewhat correctly - the appearance of Darwin's theory of evolution with the subsequent rise of social Darwinism (individuals and families that are more fit rise to the top of the economic ladder in a Darwin-esque survival of the fittest competition (a set of ideas that justified new wealth in the Gilded Age)) and of the scientific racism that followed (evident in the justification for the 1920/21 U.S. immigration quotas and Nazism). Creation Museum founder Ken Ham (who I've heard talk somewhere on TV or in person) apparently had more to say about this in a book we saw in the bookstore that apparently also defends interracial marriage (we're all God's children, all created from Adam and Eve). Left out from this exhibit are concern for religious discrimination and sexual orientation discrimination and a recognition that oppression long predates the release of Darwin's "Origin of the Species."

I snuck on ahead to a pretty cool dinosaur exhibit, presenting a lot of the images and information that any brand-new natural history museum would present - plus the claim that dinosaurs and people co-existed and dinosaurs lived until a few thousand years ago (but why does God permit extinction, if everything God created was perfect?).

Back in the earlier exhibits was a somewhat confusing argument about horses and how (interspecies?) evolution couldn't possibly proceed quickly enough to work (at least not in 6,000 years?).

The text of the sign below suggests that the museum folks believe in some forms of evolution.

Back to the dinosaur exhibits below.

Two films helped punctuate the tail end of the main set of exhibits (we missed several extra-fee presentations.) One film highlighted aspects of Jesus' life and made an altar call-type pitch. Stephanie compared the young woman who shepherded us into the film and talked a little before and after to the young Mormon woman who beckoned us into the house in Carthage, IL, where Joseph Smith was killed and then finished off by making the pro-Mormon pitch. A striking thing about the museum's understanding of world history and theology is the stress on sin, punishment, sacrifice, and atonement. Our pastor says she's not even sure about the theory of atonement, and our theology of graces puts somewhat different emphasis on things. But the museum really stresses Adam and Eve's original sin, ongoing sin, and the need for sacrifice to atone for this (first the sacrifice by Jewish people of gentle lambs, which I found it was odd the Christian museum was essentially talking up), and then Jesus' sacrifice on the cross (along with - implicitly - the sacrifice of Christian martyrs throughout the centuries - like the sacrifice of the Korean Christians whose sacrifices my father is helping chronicle.) While Stephanie awaited her chai at one of the cafes, I watched part of film that started out talking about St. George and the dragon and went on to argue that various historical and modern-day sightings of dragons (and even Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, and UFOs?) may be evidence of at least the historic co-existence of people and dinosaurs, just as scientific creationists argue should be the case.

No dinosaurs were visible in the petting zoo we went to as we left the inside museum and ventured around the pond on the way to a kind of nature area. But there were some pretty neat mammals and marsupials. Below is an Australian animal.

There were also peacocks (below).

Stephanie had great fun feeding the most assertive of the goats and a camel. Both of them could scarf up the food faster than Stepanie could get out another quarter.

The camel (below) freaked Stephanie out somewhat because its lips were not only separated top and bottom but also right and left. With four different parts to its lips, the lips felt almost opposable, like fingers/hand.

Afterwards - all the more so with the "swine flu" circulating and those odd-feeling camel lips, Stephanie made sure to wash her hands (below).

Below is also a video clip of one of the first dinosaur exhibits we came across in the museum.

-- Perry

Coraline

Yesterday, Vincent and I, after dropping Perry off at the Cincinnati airport and exploring the Florence Ya'll mall, went to see the movie Coraline at the discount movie theater here in Louisville. Vincent was happy to get out of the house for something not errand related. I was happy to relax temporarily before tackling the rest of the windows and curtains in the house.

We didn't have the normal Perry amount of popcorn but we did have hot dogs for dinner at the theater (a splurge we thought we could afford since the tickets were cheap). We noticed that it wasn't very full but did have some children in the audience. I think Vincent felt a little odd going to see a children's movie with his mom and no kids. But, once the movie started all was fine.

Vincent has always loved the Nightmare Before Christmas movie. He even has a patch on his favorite winter jacket (that is covering a hole in the arm he got from dragging his sleeve across a fence during a Mardi Gras parade on Frankfort Ave) that is of Jack-Skelington. I bought him an alarm clock with the Nightmare Before Christmas design when I went to a conference two years ago in Orlando. So he wasn't too put out to be watching a movie in the same child's horror/ tongue in cheek style.

Coraline is filmed in the same style as Nightmare Before Christmas and has a lot of the same feel. A little girl is unhappy in her new home with busy parents (hmm...can Vincent relate?). She explores her new home to find a mysterious door. Soon she is in an adventure behind the door and has to compare the two worlds, behind the door and reality, and decide where she would rather be. Let's hope all of us make the right choice between reality and fiction.

After the movie Vincent tried to analyze it and decided the movie wasn't really for children. It was more a commentary on having your eyes opened to what the real world is like and what you truely want and love. This seemed rather ironic coming from a almost adult who has had problems with the real world. Either way Vincent liked the movie and it was a fun outing.

Of course Vincent came home and read some of It by Stephen King. Around mid-night he came down and was rather chatty. I realized he had read enough to scare himself and didn't necessarily go back to bed by himself (remember he is 17). We talked for a little bit (I have to admit I was trying to read my book for book club) before I sent him back upstairs. When he saw the It movie when he was much younger he refused to take showers. Let's see what happens with this latest horror movie/book combination.

---Stephanie

New home

Yesterday after meeting Perry and Jamie for lunch at Mai's Thai (a great little restaurant in Jeffersonville) Vincent and I ran some errands. First we took his old plastic mailbox/bookcase to my room. He no longer needs to keep hot wheels in the plastic tubs. We then returned a pillow I had originally bought for Perry for his trip. We then were off to Pet's Palace. Pet's Palace was nice enough to not only order but also hold back for us a new aquarium for our turtles (who experienced temporary homelessness...living in a cardboard box like hobos...due to a much too vigorous door opening).




Once we were home I set up our new aquarium, that is actually an inch shorter than the original. I spread the reptile bark and the spaughum moss. Once the turtles were placed in the new aquarium. They looked happy! It is just a little hard to tell when a turtle is smiling. Either way they basked in the heat lamp light, climbed on their log, and got to eat worms and fruit.




It was amazing how empty the turtle corner was without them. It is nice to have a little normalcy back in the living room.

--- Stephanie