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

Looking back

A year ago this weekend a giant snow fell upon Kentuckiana, keeping me home from taxes and almost from church. Stuck at home I began to play with the new digital camera Stephanie had gotten me for Christmas, and soon tried my hand at blogging. St. Matthews Station was born, with the first photo we posted (as part of the "Snow emergency" blog entry) reproduced above. A week ago Vincent spent his first full night in treatment over in Jeffersonville, IN. Tonight we picked him up, waiting for him to finish dinner (and apparently say good-bye). He was quickly reunited with his cell phone, and when we stopped at a Chinese buffet restaurant - with some special teas, which we sampled - Vincent popped in to have some sushi and chat briefly, but spent the rest of the time on the phone. He told Stephanie he was still mad at her for the past week, but I think he's also tired. I wasn't thrilled about staying up to pick him up, Stephanie wasn't thrilled that he was mad, and - although he seemed happy to have his cell phone back - he didn't seem thrilled - at least not to have spent a week over there. The social worker said the scariest moment for the patients is the moment they get out - although that wasn't crystal clear with boy. It's not clear what's changed in the past - and how much for the better and for the worse - but I'm sure something has changed. Vincent spent several hours with friends and his friend Samantha - and while Vincent says all is the same over there - I bet that has changed a little. Next up for him - supposedly to see the movie "The Watchmen" - while we try to get one of the cars fixed and help out - and hopefully enjoy - Saturday PM's concert at church.

-- Perry

Happy birthday, Mr. Lincoln!

For eight months (me) and twice for two months (Stephanie), we lived in the land of Lincoln. After dropping off my car in Macomb, where I would teach for two semesters at Western Illinois University, Mom, Stephanie, and I rendevouzed in Springfield, IL, where we spent the night. On the way "out of town," we drove past Lincoln's tomb just north of Springfield. Twice during one of her summers in Illinois, Stephanie visited the brand-new Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield. On the second trip there, she and I met in Macomb, went to the Dickson Indian Mounds museum, then on to New Salem. We watched "Little Shop of Horrors" in an amphitheater there, then spent the night in a bed and breakfast in nearby Peterburg. In the morning we drove down the street to the cemetery where Ann Rutledge, reportedly Abraham Lincoln's first love, was buried (along with Edgar Lee Masters, author of "Spoon River Anthology"). Then we drove back to New Salem, the restored village where the young Lincoln ran a store, read, and first ventured into politics as a state representative. I had seen Sam Waterson portray this Lincoln on Broadway, with my friend Darra. Then we drove in Springfield, where we went to the massive, stupendous museum and library. Later that night Stephanie left me at the Springfield train station, where I took a train to Chicago, just like Lincoln did on his way to give his "House Divided" speech in New York City and on his way to the inauguration.

During one of her presidential library visits, Stephanie caught sight in the gift shop of an Abraham Lincoln doll. She bought one and eventually gave it to our nephew, Jacob. Later we called the store and ordered a replacement, along with a Mary Todd Lincoln doll. They remain among the most popular items in Stephanie's classroom (photographed back in November, below), where the now sit alongside the Sherlock Holmes doll. Today is Lincoln's birthday- 200 years ago - it's a state holiday every year in Illinois. Stephanie also bought several children's books about Abraham Lincoln that have been pretty popular with her students, especially Abe's Hat. (While in the library and museum, we saw one of Lincoln's real (top) hats, the dress that Mary Todd Lincoln wore to the inauguration (mimicked in the doll now in Stephanie's classroom), the bed in which Lincoln died (on loan from Chicago Historical Society, where I once saw it), and a replica of the White House when the newly dead Lincoln lay in state.)

Of course, KY and Indiana are also in the Lincoln birthday sweepstakes. 22 years ago Mom and I visited Lincoln's birthplace in KY - and we'll have to go back, since it's just an hour away - and then two Thanksgivings ago - on the day after - we visited Lincoln's boyhood home outside of Evansville, IN (in an eventful day for Stephanie, Vincent, Grandma Martha, Frisco, and I). They had a cute little museum and a great trail/walk through various sites. We'd have to go for a longer time to also see the house where Lincoln's mother (or stepmother?), Nancy Hanks, grew up. This past summer, you might remember, one of our reasons for going to Fort Wayne, IN, was to see the Lincoln Museum there - but, unfortunately, it had just closed. We've cherished for years our special Florida license plates (manatees, turtles, etc.). For reasons I'll explain later, we are currently without those. Our first KY titled and tagged car was the brown car, the Nissan, which got a breast cancer license plate. For the tan car, the Camry, we selected the license below, which highlights today's Lincoln bicentennial birthday and KY's status as the birthplace of Lincoln.

P.S. Last night Stephanie and I - in between occasional peeks back at "Idol" - watched Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s fascinating "Looking for Lincoln" documentary, which essentially started at the library and museum in Springfield. It also stopped by the boyhood home, though it spent little time in KY. It also spent time in Ford's Theater (where President Obama was last night and which Stephanie and I (separately) have both visited, me for a theater production of the musical "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" with Mr. Gilpin's 1979 bus tour (?). It also went to Gettysburg, which I visited with Susan and scene of a favorite book/movie of mine: "Killer Angels"/"Gettysburg." The documentary sketched a fascinating portrait of a Lincoln as a flawed, sometimes tortured but always growing and still great man. Among the more interesting scenes were the visit by Gates, an African American scholar, to a Sons of Confederate Veterans events (folks warm up to him after the organization honors the descendants of an African American man who helped save his master during the Civil War), and interviews with Presdient Bush (W.) and President Clinton (Bill.) There has been of wave of segments about Lincoln on National Public Radio this week also. This afternoon I heard a "Talk of the Nation" with the author of a book about Lincoln's depression. Apparently Lincoln spent time with the Speed family, here in the Louisville metro area, as part of the recovery from his second bout of depression, during the ups and downs of his relationship with the young Mary Todd (both from Springfield and (down the road from here) Lexington, KY). (Stephanie also read a book about the friendship of Mary Todd Lincoln with a former slave Mrs. Keckly and just finished Weird Kentucky! which has some history about the home Mary Todd Lincoln grew up in in Lexington.)

P.P.S. Stephanie also reminded me that when I led our caravan by Lincoln's tomb in August 2003, I was driving that somewhat ill-fated rented moving truck. In between going to the library and museum and me going to the Amtrak station in Springfield, we went back to the tomb and actually walked around and went in (to the insides of the monument that surrounds the tomb). Twice in the past year bad weather has dampened Lincoln birthday celebrations scheduled for Hodgkensville, KY, Lincoln's birthplace. A year ago Laura Bush was to come to a big celebration, starting the birthday bicentennial year, and the whole thing was canceled thanks to the snow storm (see "Snow emergency") that started our blog. Then this week the combination of the ice storm and then Wednesday the wind storm left just a few hundred people at the birthday celebration (partly since many people there that week had not had power) and some of the Lincoln sites there they could not even hav open to the public). "It feels like we're cursed," said one local. If the weather lightens, later this summer, Ed Hamilton, the Louisville sculptor whose studio is around the corner from my first Louisville apartment, in Phoenix Hill, is set to unveil a new Lincoln statue, which will be in the extended Waterfront Park along the Ohio River, near the railroad bridge they're turning into a pedestrian bridge.

-- Perry

Valkyrie

Friday saw the three of us go to yet another movie set in mid-centuray Germany. I saw a documentary on TV some 20 or 30 years ago about one of the most promising efforts to assassinate Hitler. This dramatization of the plot led by German Army Colonel Claus von Stauffenburg won the thumbs up for historical accuracy by my Tallahassee World War II buffs David and Boyd. Boyd wrote his dissertation about the economic impact of the SS in wartime Germany. This movie is fair enough with familiar faces such as Tom Cruise and Kenneth Brataugh. The omnipresent Tom Wilkinson again almost steals the show as the hedging-his-bets General Fromm. A relatively suspenseful portrayal of this promising attempt, the movie nevertheless suffers from the inability of viewers to get an idea what motivated Stauffenburg to form part of the Resistance to Hitler.

-- Perry

In mid-century Germany

This month Stephanie and I saw two surprising and good movies set in 1940s and 1950s Germany: "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" and "The Reader." I can't say much more without revealing too much of the plots. Just when you thought "Schindler's List' would be the final word in movies about 1940s and 1950s Germany, these to come along - and, in one case, reminding one of us of a couple of other movies - one set in North Africa, the other in France. Both of these are based on books - and - in the case of "The Reader" - Stephanie and two women we saw the movie with had all read the book (so not as many surprises for them). What do you think?

-- Perry