Small State, Big Self-Image

The South Carolina State Museum is in the old Columbia Mills Building and that’s its problem.  It’s just too big.  The AAA gives it a gem and compliments its “four floors of hands-on exhibits”.  I was quickly tired of looking at the machinery used for processing cotton, war weapons, planets, bones, ETC.  Every state has a museum or historical society facility, and the better ones tell you a lot about the state without exhausting detail.

The 4th floor has a telescope display, information about both the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, a displays about plantation life and Native Americans, and more.  By the time I got to the 2nd floor Dinosaur Gallery, I was ready to head for the exit which was down some stairs by the Reverend Dr. Solomon Jackson, Jr. 4D Theater.  I no longer had interest in the South Carolina Confederate Relic Room & Military Museum downstairs, which required a separate admission or a combo ticket.  Maybe it was just a slow day, but I only saw half a dozen other visitors the entire time.  Ruth wouldn’t even go in.

The city of Columbia has a lot of fine attractions, and its Official Visitor Guide put the South Carolina Stare Museum in a “Don’t Miss” category.  Maybe if I had been there with children, I’d have a different opinion.  Unlike me, who tries to see as much as possible, kids have a way of focusing on just a couple of things or suggest that I buy them ice cream when they get bored.  When I later read in the visitors guide that the CONFEDERATE Relic Room had artifacts from the Colonial Era to the present time, I wasn’t surprised.  Or interested.

Hank

 

Pleasant Penzance

Last year The New York Times recommended Penzance, England, as a destination.  It rated it #14 among its 52 choices.  We went to this port town in Cornwall on Mount’s Bay to see if  TNYT was right and really liked it.  David Shaftel, who wrote the recommendation, focused on Poldark and Penzance’s growing reputation for culinary newness.  Aside from a couple of restaurants, the only attraction he mentioned was the Jubilee Pool.  There lots to see both in town, like the Jubilee Pool, and not too far away, like Land’s End, where England stops and the Atlantic Ocean begins.

The Jubilee Pool, an art deco lido swimming pool on a seaside promenade, is beautifully situated.  It extends out into Penzance’s fine harbor and has become one of the area’s most popular tourist attractions.  St. Michael’s Mount, another huge tourist draw, can be seen across Mount’s Bay from this pool.  Now a rare survivor, the Jubilee Pool opened in 1935; so it has been a local treat for more than 80 years and over time has become the largest seawater pool in the United Kingdom.  Jubilee suffered structural damage in 2014’s storms and had to be expensively restored.   We didn’t get to experience it because the Jubilee Pool still hadn’t opened for the season, which usually runs from late May to early September like public pools in the U. S.  A few locals told me that they had not been to it recently because entry had gotten rather expensive.

Travel writer Kirsty Fergusson says that Penzance often has a pirate gathering in late May, and she compliments this town’s year-round “gritty vibrancy”.  This phrase gets Penzance exactly right.  Its main shopping street is called Market Jew, a name which bothered me until I learned that its  name derives from “jow”, the old Cornish word for Thursday.  Chapel Street has a number of pubs and antique shops.  Among Penzance’s many 19th century houses is the one Maria Branwell, mother of the Bronte sisters, once lived in.   It seemed to me that most of the small shops in city center sold pasties.

Seen through many windows, pasties, like displays in a historic fast food franchise, were the only local culinary treats that we got to try.  They are convenient but doughy meat pies filled with beef, onion, and potato that hard-working miners used to take down into Cornwall’s once ubiquitous copper and tin mines.  The pie makers, usually the miner’s wife or mother, carved his initials in one corner and crimped the dough to create a clean handle.

 Unlike us, if you rent a car to get around Cornwall, you can see 2 of its so-called better attractions, the Eden Project and the seasonal, seaside Minack Theatre.

Hank

 

 

A 5 Compass National Museum

A few years ago in Washington, DC, I was so enamored of the National Museum of the American Indian that I went there 2 days in a row.  I returned so I could take a Highlights Tour with a Native American guide.  These excellent tours that meet on the bottom level last up to an hour.  Ask about them at the Welcome Desk.  This time in Washington, the National Museum of the American Indian was on our list of things to do, but it was near the bottom and I didn’t really expect to see it.   However, we saved time, went in, and I fell in love with it all over again.

Before looking at the exhibits, Ruth & I had lunch at the Mitsitam Native Foods Cafe, well prepared simple fare that was definitely different.  About half of what we saw upstairs was familiar.   By the time we saw both old and new, the National Museum of the American Indian became my favorite Smithsonian institution.

The building alone is worth a visit.  Its curvilinear limestone design faces the rising sun and includes a major water feature that looks like a tidal creek flowing beside a Native American settlement.  The 40 large boulders outside are meant to remind visitors that Native Americans are one with their environment. They are called Grandfather Rocks.   An Architecture Fact Sheet is often available for those who inquire about this truly unique building.

The National Museum of the American Indian does mount new shows that are usually up for a long time.  My 2 favorites, “The Great Inka Road” and “Nation to Nation”, will still be there in the next decade.   The latter is on Level 4 and Inka is on Level 3.  The semi-permanent “Return to a Native Place”, which is about native communities in the DC area, is on the 2nd floor.  While browsing all exhibits, take the steps instead of the elevator.  Thanks to this building’s brilliant design, stair descenders get spectacular views of the Potomac Atrium on Level 1.

“Nation to Nation:  Treaties Between the United States and American Indian Nations” won’t disappear until the end of 2021.   Beginning in the colonial era and extending to the present, “Nation to Nation” explores the rocky history of government VS Native Nation diplomacy.   I really liked the way it contrasted  viewpoints.  For example, King Charles II claimed ownership of the Lenape homeland because his warships conquered Dutch colonists in 1664.  The Lenape people, who lived in what is now Pennsylvania and New Jersey, thought the land belonged to them because it was created when a great turtle rose out of the ocean and water ran off its back causing a tree to sprout in its center.  Shoots from that tree became a Lenape man and woman.

“The Great Inka Road:  Engineering an Empire” will be on view until the 1st of June, 2020.   Don’t spend much time in this exhibit if you suffer from vertigo because it focuses a lot on the grass bridges that natives erected to cross canyons.  Caravans of llamas accompanied the Inka using them.  This fine presentation points out that the Inka developed a 24,000 mile road network without iron or wheels.  Machu Picchu, built to be a royal residence, survived because the Inka learned how to channel water.

Don’t be surprised if your visit to the National Museum of the American Indian means less or no time spent in the National Gallery of Art.

Hank

Below is A Tlingit totem based on a story called “How Raven Stole the Sun”

The Paley Center for Media

Because of its size and complexity, there are lots of interesting, unheralded attractions in New York City that receive little or no publicity.  Part of the fun of visiting New York is unexpectedly learning about some of these.    Recently, Ruth & I visited The Paley Center for Media.

Our visit to the International Center for Photography didn’t work out because it had moved 2 years previously to Lower Manhattan.  Our map clearly showed it to still be on 6th Avenue.  I later realized that the map we were using was new in 2014.  Concierge Maps does do a good job of updating shows and hot attractions.  Since we still had time before an afternoon appointment, I said, “Let’s see what in the Museum of Radio and Television on 52nd Street,” which was close.

In 1976. William Paley, the media executive who founded CBS, started this museum.  However, in 2007 it became The Paley Center for Media, one of those unheralded attractions.  There are actually 2 Paley Centers.  The other is in Los Angeles and seems more active.  Between March 16 and 25, 2018, for example, it will sponsor Paleyfest, which opens with a Barbra Streisand concert.   BS is nearly sold out.  There are only some $40 seats in the back still available, and they’ll probably go fast.  “The Big Bang Theory” is scheduled for discussion one of the evenings.   Tickets are still available for that for $204.

Both Paley Centers have the same goal, to preserve and promote the “cultural, creative, and social significance of television, radio and emerging platforms for the…media-interested public”.  As a result, they maintain a permanent collection of over 160,000 TV shows, radio programs, and ads that are available for watching either at one of the Centers or by searching a data base on-line.  The New York staff was very helpful and welcoming, and Ruth and I were soon watching an old tribute to Lucille Ball.  What we did that day was free; but, in general, the Paley pushes for membership.  However, we were not solicited.

The staff usually offers visitors a top ten list of what is currently hot.  We weren’t in New York during the next weekend or we might have attended the archival screenings in the Center’s auditorium.  They say you don’t really appreciate TV until you watch something old that was made for it on a big screen.

The New York Center at 25 West 52nd Street is closed Monday and Tuesday.  The other days of the week it’s opened noon to 6 pm.  I think it would be interesting to see the 1968 premiere of “Sixty Minutes” scheduled for Sunday, March 18.  Yes, this show will celebrate its 50th birthday this year.

Just inside the Paley Center’s entrance on the 1st level was the ticket and information area where I took the photos below.  The Steven Spielberg Gallery on this floor is used for temporary exhibitions and media events.  An elevator took us to another level where we were soon laughing at the classic antics of Lucille Ball.  The tribute to her had many clips from “I Love Lucy”, probably the funniest series ever on TV.  If you haven’t seen Meatavitavegemin, you’re missing one of the most hilarious things ever to appear on TV.    Little known fact:  Lucy met Desi on the set of a movie they made together in 1940 called Too Many Girls.

Hank

PS The photo of Lucy and Desi is a free download from pixabay.com

 

 

 

Charlotte’s Queen and Firebird

Charlotte, the largest city in The Carolinas, is named for Charlotte Sophia, the wife of King George III.  George was England’s King during the American Revolution and its longest-ruling monarch until Queen Victoria reigned for 63 years.  George was on the throne for 59 years.  That a city here would be named after a British Queen makes sense because Charlotte was settled by people from England.  There’s a statue of Charlotte Sophia Uptown, which is what residents call their downtown.

There’s now another important statue in Charlotte.  It’s called “Firebird”.  I had to wait to take a photo of it because there were several sets of parents posing their children with it.  Sculptor Nikki de Saint Phalle created Firebird.  Locals now call it their unofficial mascot.  It’s in front of the locally popular Bechtler Museum.

This museum displays the important Bechtler collection.   In 1950 a Swiss industrialist named Hans Bechtler and his wife Bessie began buying art.  They had a genuine eye for what would become valuable.   They bought Warhols, Picassos, etc.  Their son Andreas became a collector too, and he fell in love with Charlotte, an increasingly go go, high rise city.   After his parents died, Andreas gifted most of their collection to the city and hired a Swiss architect named Mario Botta to design a museum for it.

The Official Charlotte Visitors Guide says that “Charlotte can be both conventional and quirky” like the Bechtler’s childlike Joan Miró painting above.   We found conventional (the Billy Graham Library) and quirky (the Levine Museum of the New South) to aptly describe Charlotte.

Hank