Vandalism or self expression? Graffiti in Queens, NYC
This week’s photo challenge is express yourself. While some call it vandalism, there’s no more in-your-face, larger than life form of self-expression than graffiti. For the past 20 years, the mecca of that gritty urban art form has been 5 Pointz, a dilapidated factory complex in Queens, New York City.
Founded as the Phun Phactory in 1993, it was designed as a place for street artists to legally practice their craft. Here, aerosol-can Picassos made the derelict buildings beautiful and gained worldwide fame.
Sadly, the buildings were recently demolished to make way for yet more shiny high-rise apartment buildings.
The new One World Trade Center rises over lower Manhattan. The final component of the skyscraper, its glowing spire, made the building’s height 1,776 feet, tallest in the Western Hemisphere.
Who doesn’t feel like they know just about everything there is to know about 9/11? We’ve seen the video tapes of planes crashing into the World Trade Center on September, 2001 countless times and viewed special reports and documentaries without end. Yet, when I stepped into the new National September 11 Memorial Museum I found that there actually was more to learn, but more importantly, to remember.
Located underground in the heart of the World Trade Center site, the museum tells the story of what happened on 9/11, including the events at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the story of Flight 93 that crashed in Pennsylvania. The exhibition explores the background leading up to the events and examines their aftermath and continuing implications.
In Foundation Hall, the “Last Column,” stands 36-feet high and is covered with mementos, memorial inscriptions, and missing posters placed there by ironworkers, rescue workers and others.
Even though we’ve seen them so many times, when those video clips and films of what led up to the attack played in the museum the people watching them with me all had the same reaction: “Oh my God.” There are video taped stories from people who were there, displays of artifacts ranging from fire trucks and twisted metal beams to personal objects of people working in the towers that day (really personal things like shoes and purses), papers that rained down, and a portion of one of the stairways from which survivors escaped the building.
The National 9/11 Museum at ground zero in New York City is underground with entry adjacent to a portion of staircase from one of the World Trade Center towers.
As one would expect in such an emotionally and politically charged situation, many parts of the museum have been controversial. Some people object to the the way one exhibit connects Islam and terrorism and the simple fact of tourists gawking at what is essentially hallowed ground offends some of the families. Nonetheless, I felt like the curators struck the right balance.
Many survivors of the attack on the World Trade Center and their families are very involved with the museum and give tours and talks at the complex. I felt lucky to be there for a presentation by an NYPD officer who was on site that day and a young woman whose father died trying to get people out of one of the towers. Their stories made it all very personal. Not a dry eye in the house.
I left the museum to stroll around the 9/11 Memorial outside with its two square waterfalls surrounded by the names of those lost in the attacks. The newly opened One World Trade Center–the tallest skyscraper in the Western Hemisphere and the fourth tallest building in the world–towers, symbolically, over it all. I’m sappy enough to feel proud of the way the city and the country has moved on, but still remembers.
If you go: Admission, $24 for adults. Go to 911memorial.org to reserve tickets, download the free 9/11 app to enhance your tour and for directions.
Read up: As usual, I recommend a bit of reading before you go which adds immensely to enhance your experience. And, as usual, I recommend fiction books for their ability to layer events and emotions to create a story that is almost more real than non-fiction. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close– Jonathan Safran Foer, Falling Man, Don DeLillo. For nonfiction, check out an anthology of New Yorker articles, After 9/11– edited by David Remnick.
Since the beginning, Minnesota’s lakes and rivers have been the engine of the region’s development and the focus of recreation, not to mention the source of a whole lot of fish. The Twin Cities, for example, have their roots on the Mississippi River, which has transported timber and grain from the Midwest to markets in the east and powered the four mills of the Pillsbury family, among others, since the early 1800s. That made the riverfront in Minneapolis primarily an industrial area. Interesting, but not particularly scenic.
All of that is changing as the city rediscovers and redevelops its waterfront. The mills and warehouses have been converted to trendy apartments and condominiums now and that section of the riverfront is part of an expanding Mill Ruins Park. It’s the sight of the Mill City Farmers Market in summer, where you can eat and buy great organic produce under the watchful gaze of some of the world’s great playwrights who look down from the Guthrie Theater next door.
Though the new version of the riverfront is more vibrant, it’s the unusual history here that makes it so intriguing. You can revisit the city’s early days in several ways. First, pick up a copy of Mary Relindes Ellis’s novel Bohemian Flats, which is named after the area slightly downriver from the mills which was home to the city’s poorest immigrants, mainly from Germany and eastern Europe (or Bohemia) who are the subject of the story. Set after World War I, the book traces the progress of a German immigrant family who settled in the ramshackle village that grew up along a low point along the river, many of whom worked in the flour mills.
Next, start a riverfront tour at the Mill City Museum, which offers an in-depth look at the flour industry and the early days of Minneapolis. It’s built into the ruins of what was once the world’s largest flour mill. Wander the across the Stone Arch bridge for a terrific view of the river and St. Anthony Falls, which powered the mills and check out the paths and ruins along the water. Grab some grub at the Farmer’s Market and watch the river roll by as you eat.
Book lovers will want to wander down Washington Avenue to explore the Minnesota Center for Book Arts at Open Book. You can view the artistic assembly of the pages, covers, and spines, then peruse the shop at MCBA, which is a reader’s delight of books, gifts, handmade paper, and journals.
Rent one of the green bikes from one of the Nice Ride Minnesota stations near the museum and head downriver for a scenic tour. Make a stop at Izzy’s gourmet ice cream to fuel your trip. You’ll arrive at Bohemian Flats, which is no longer a wild collection of shacks, but rather a lovely park inhabited mainly by University of Minnesota students throwing frisbees. It’s a great pastoral place to enjoy the view of the river, the university campus and, in particular, the futuristic Frank Gehry-designed Weisman Art Museum. It makes quite a contrast to the image of the old Bohemian Flats on the cover of Ellis’s novel.
Bohemian Flats in Minneapolis is now a pastoral play area across from the University of Minnesota.The view from Bohemian Flats is quite a contrast to the site’s 19th Century origins with the futuristic Weisman Art Museum, designed by Frank Gehry, atop the river bluff.
University of Michigan Stadium, “the Big House,” in Ann Arbor
Whether you’re a died-in-the-wool Wolverine or not, fall is a fantastic time to visit Ann Arbor, Michigan. Even without football tickets, you can tour the “Big House,” the University of Michigan’s football stadium which is the largest stadium in the United States, the third largest stadium in the world and the 36th largest sports venue. Its official capacity is 109,901, but it seems like whenever I’m there they have at least 110,000. No matter how well the team plays, there’s nothing like walking into this stadium on game day and I always enjoy walking to the stadium behind the marching band.
The University of Michigan Marching Band
As long as you’re on the campus of my alma mater, be sure to stroll
University of Michigan Law School’s beloved Reading Room
the “Diag,” the heart of the central campus for some great people watching, pop into the law school’s Hogwarts-like reading room, and spend some time in the terrific art museum on campus. The museum’s new modern wing, with its Tisch Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art, offers a look at some very important works by Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, Alberto Giacometti and Max Beckman, to name a few.
Hungry? Head to an Ann Arbor classic, Angelo’s, for a breakfast that will fill you up for the rest of the day. Calorie counts don’t usually slow me down, so despite my gigantic breakfast, I like to stop by Dominick’s for beer, sangria, pizza or subs. Need something to wash all the down? I’ve always been partial to the milkshakes at Pizza Bob’s. Finally, you’ll want to round out your Ann Arbor pig-out weekend with a stop at Zingerman’s Deli or Zingerman’s Roadhouse, or both.
Wait! Don’t pick up another pastrami sandwich or you’ll burst. Instead, pick up a feast that will be easier on your arteries, Charles Baxter’s novel, The Feast of Love. It’s set set in Ann Arbor where Baxter was an English professor (he’s now at the University of Minnesota). This terrific book as nominated for the National Book Award.
The bar, the courthouse, the house on the Mississippi river where “I could step right in the sucker, an easy three-foot drop, and be on my way to Tennessee.” For authors such as Gillian Flynn in her huge fiction bestseller Gone Girl, the setting of a novel plays as crucial a role as the characters themselves. It creates atmosphere, foreshadows what is to come, and sets the pace. But when director David Fincher and his location scouts set out to make a movie based on the novel, it was a challenge to find real world places to match those of Flynn’s imagination. They found them in Cape Girardeau, Missouri.
The movie, released today, has received some pretty great reviews. So, between the book and the movie, I’m betting that plenty of Gone Girl fans will be looking for her in Cape Girardeau, a lovely river town in southeast Missouri, where the movie was filmed.
In case you’ve missed it all, in Gone Girl, Amy Dunne (played by Rosamund Pike) disappears from the North Carthage, Missouri, home she shares with her philandering husband Nick (Ben Affleck) on their fifth anniversary, leading him to be investigated for her (maybe) murder. “If there are married couples here, maybe you should change seats” rather than sit together, said Ann Tenenbaum, the chairman of the Film Society of Lincoln Center, when the film premiered in New York. “Abraham Lincoln said, ‘Marriage is neither heaven nor hell, it is simply purgatory.’ David Fincher will personally escort us there.” As the story progresses, we learn that this is one crazy couple and we find that the narrator isn’t necessarily giving us the straight story. (To see a fun discussion among readers of the book, see Book Journey‘s spoiler page.) The realistic setting adds to the tension.
“Gone Girl” director David Fincher said that the view from the Common Pleas Courthouse stairs overlooking the river is what sold him on Cape Girardeau, Missouri, as North Carthage in his movie.
Stacy Dohogne Lane of the Cape Girardeau Convention and Visitors Bureau told me, “North Carthage doesn’t actually exist, though there is a Carthage, Missouri. The Mississippi River plays such a big part in the book that they wanted to capture a true Missouri river town. Steve Mapel, the film’s location scout, came to Cape Girardeau in the Spring of 2013 and spent quite a bit of time here doing a very intensive search for specific locations. We had such a good time sitting around our conference table with Steve…he’d say ‘I’m looking for a place that has x, y and z’ and we’d all brainstorm a variety of places that fit within those parameters.” David Fincher has said that the view from the Common Pleas Courthouse stairs overlooking the river is what sold him on Cape Girardeau as North Carthage. Gillian Flynn later told Fincher that Cape Girardeau was the place she had in mind while she was writing the book, and he joked in an article that he wish she’d told him that sooner and saved him some time.
Alas, Gone Girl fans probably won’t find Ben Affleck or Rosmund Pike on the streets of Cape Girardeau but the river town makes a great weekend getaway (about two hours from St. Louis). Beyond Cape Girardeau’s movie role as North Carthage, you’ll find intriguing historic and outdoor sites, antiques and shopping, and it makes a great spot for a girls getaway weekend with wineries, spas and more.
I used to love to sneak into the adult section of the library when I
My Banned Books bracelet.
was in grade school. I lived in a small Michigan town with a very loving yet stern librarian who I remember vividly, Miss Lillian Crawford. She knew my my grandparents, my parents, and probably most of the parents of children who came to the library. My mom dropped me off on Saturdays while she got her hair done, making the library both a source of child care and intellectual stimulation.
Occasionally I drifted from the sections that Miss Crawford deemed appropriate for my young mind into the adult fiction. Ohh, la, la–swearing, sex, and ideas I didn’t understand. Actually, I probably didn’t understand the sex, either. Miss Crawford ratted me out to my mother. I was a super good girl and Mom, fortunately, thought it was amusing that I went astray in such a way. What a rebel!
Forgive me, Miss Crawford
During this week’s discussion and celebration of banned books, I have to say both Mrs. Crawford and my mom were right. There’s nothing wrong with guiding young people in their reading, getting them to read in the first place, and encouraging age-appropriate, quality literature. So, I have some sympathy for parents who worry about the books their children are exposed to in school. But, though it was probably benign neglect rather than liberal thinking, I’d err on my mother’s more permissive side every time. What is reading about if not about challenging old ideas, learning about other people, the wider world, and about ourselves?
One the the most frequently banned authors currently is Sherman Alexie. He grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Wellpinit, Washington. His stories about life on the reservation are often far from the mainstream portrayal of Native Americans and consequently his book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is regularly at the top of the most challenged list. He says on his website, “It means I’m scaring the right people. Hooray! I keep hoping somebody will organize a national boycott against me.”
Banning books is all about fear. Fear of ideas that challenge our religious and world view. Fear of children learning about sex and fear of people whose skin color is different. In an article on Huffington Post, Bonnie Stiles, mother of four students in Meridian, Idaho schools where Alexie’s book was recently banned, said she pushed for its removal from the high school curriculum after reading the book and counting 133 profane or offensive words in its 230 pages. Really, if that’s your worry, you need to ban your children from riding the school bus where that language is freely shared.
Forgive me Mrs. Crawford! But, friends, I encourage you to be a rebel and let your freak flag fly. Read those banned books yourself and, rather than counting swear words, discuss the books with your children. Encourage your book club to join you in reading banned books. Take a look at the ideas and recommendations some of my favorite books bloggers are offering this week: Sheila at Book Journey, Epic Reads, and Banned Books Club. You’ll also find lists of current and classic banned books and this list of banned classics from the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom.
Finally, for inspiration, listen to what Bill Moyers said a couple of years ago.
At first glance, visitors to the lovely Carter House in Franklin, Tennessee would never guess that it was the scene of one of the Civil War’s bloodiest battles.
We’re standing in the dimly-lit cellar of the Carter House in Franklin, Tennessee, about half an hour south of Nashville. Our guide holds us in rapt attention as he paints a mental picture of the battle that raged outside. We begin to imagine being in this very spot 150 years ago when one of the biggest clashes of the American Civil War blasted away just outside the cellar doors.
This is where, on November 30, 1864, Union forces commandeered the Carter family’s house to be used as the Federal command post. The Carters and one other family huddled for hours during the night while roughly 60,000 soldiers from the Union and Confederate armies came together in perhaps “the bloodiest five hours” of the Civil War, the Battle of Franklin.
Most people are familiar with the Battle of Gettysburg, but the not-so-well-known Battle of Franklin was larger, longer, and deadlier than Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg. In the biggest Civil War battle you’ve never heard of, John Bell Hood’s Army of Tennessee faced off with John M. Schofield’s Army of the Ohio and the Cumberland, much of the time in hand-to-hand combat. The battle resulted in around 9,500 casualties with 2,000 dead, 6,500 wounded and about 1,000 missing. (As a comparison, the number of casualties at Franklin was roughly comparable to those of the allies during the D-Day invasion of Normandy.) When the smoke cleared the next morning, the family emerged to find dead and dying men literarily heaped in piles. Fourteen Confederate generals (six killed or mortally wounded, seven wounded, and one captured) and 55 regimental commanders were casualties.The Army of Tennessee never fought again as an effective force and Hood’s career was ruined.
See a related Battle of Franklin post about Carnton Plantation and the “Widow of the South.”
Visiting the Carter House is particularly impressive because it’s different from what one sees visiting most other Civil War battlefields. In Gettysburg, for example, one sees wide open farm fields and wooded areas like the famous Little Round Top. Here in Franklin, visitors see the bullet holes in the buildings and get a sense
The farm office is the site’s most bullet damaged building.
of what is was like as the armies came up the pike to fight in a more settled area. Beyond the battle, it’s interesting to get a glimpse of the Carter house, its furnishings and the farm buildings where life of that era took place.
Unfortunately, modern life has crept into this historic site to the detriment of the story of this battle. Our guide had to describe the armies moving up from down by Domino’s Pizza, which doesn’t exactly enhance the visitor experience. Unlike more well-preserved battlefields like Shiloh and Gettysburg, the trench lines and places of savage combat here in Franklin were, over the years, covered over with homes, industrial sites, shops, and parking lots. Whether through ignorance or a desire to forget, the places where hundreds lay dead or dying became places to buy pizza or cold beer. Yet a determined group of preservationists (including the Heritage Foundation of Franklin, Save the Franklin Battlefield, the Battle of Franklin Trust, and the Civil War Trust) are fighting their own battle—to reclaim the Franklin battlefield, often acre by acre, tract by tract.
Coming Events to Mark the 150 Anniversary of the Battle of Franklin
November 14-15, 2014 – Blue & Gray Days
Blue & Gray Days draws hundreds of school children and adult spectators every year. Hosted by both The Carter House and Carnton Plantation, guests will meet Civil War re-enactors and get hands-on experience with clothes, trades, and weapons of the past. This living history experience is the perfect field trip and great for families. For additional details or to make field trip reservations, please contact Angell Roberts at (615) 794-0903 or angell@battleoffranklintrust.org. November 15-16, 2014 – The 150th Anniversary Battle of Franklin Re-enactment
Re-enactors from all over the country will come together to bring the Battle of Franklin to life. Camps will be open for visitors to walk-through and experience civilian and soldier life in the 1860s.
I was delighted to see this coverage of Off The Beaten Page in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. I hope it inspired others to make their travels “literary travels.” Check out the article, Literary traveler goes ‘Off the Beaten Page’ and please be sure to tell your friends.
There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks.–Raymond Chandler, “Red Wind”
Raymond Chandler
I’ve never been a huge fan of crime fiction, but I’ve found I can’t resist Raymond Chandler, the king of the detective novel, because he can turn a phrase like no one else. Sit down with one of his classics–Farewell, My Lovely or The Long Goodbye, for example–and you’ll soon find yourself on the hunt for “Chandlerisms” like “as conspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.” His dialogue and similes are so crazy and over the top I want to memorize them and use them in my own conversation.
Beyond the similes, you start to recognize in Chandler’s work all of the hallmarks of “hard-boiled” and “noir” detective fiction–the shadowy scenery, the sleazy criminals, and Phillip Marlowe, the epitome of the tough and surprisingly idealistic private eye. The dialogue, the setting, and the characters are all as familiar as the nose on a washed-up boxer’s ugly mug, but it was Chandler who created them and, in the process (along with fellow crime writers Dashiell Hammett and James M. Cain), pioneered a uniquely American literary genre and style.
Bogie and Bacall brought his hard-boiled characters to life on the big screen and his stories have been the subject of parody by everyone from Woody Allen to Steve Martin to Garrison Keillor. As Paul Auster, a modern crime writer, says, “Raymond Chandler invited a new way of talking about America, and America has never looked the same to us since.”
In Raymond Chandler’s day, an infamous fleet of gambling ships anchored just far enough offshore to be beyond the jurisdiction of California state law.
The Los Angeles area of the 1930s and 1940s was rife with organized crime, greed, and celebrity scandals. In particular, daily life in Santa Monica, the beachfront town on the western edge of Los Angeles where Chandler lived for a time and which appears as Bay City in his books, offered plenty of material from which to draw his stories.
If you visit Santa Monica and the Los Angeles area, it’s fun to read Chandler’s books and those of his crime fiction contemporaries and picture the area as it was then. He described it as a place with “lots of churches and almost as many bars.” It’ll add a little depth to your understanding of the area, beyond Hollywood and UCLA/USC football. Esotouric offers literary tours of Los Angeles including one focused on Raymond Chandler and another on James M. Cain. You might also enjoy their podcasts. In addition, the Santa Monica Conservancy offers walking tours that cover Santa Monica history.
Santa Monica’s “mean streets” have been replaced by glamorous shopping streets such as Montana Avenue and the Third Street Promenade. Yet, enough of the old Bay City remains today to get your imagination moving, including the famous Santa Monica Pier and Main Street’s deco-era City Hall, the scene of many of Phillip Marlowe’s coming and goings. Of course, there’s still the harbor and “beyond it the huge emptiness of the Pacific, purple-gray, that trudges into shore like a scrubwomen going home.”
The mysterious House of Seven Gables in Salem, Massachusetts
Salem, Massachusetts, makes a nice day trip from Boston and if you’re there, a stop at the House of Seven Gables is a natural for lit lovers or anyone who likes the occasional glimpse of really old colonial homes. Author Nathaniel Hawthorne’s cousin, Susanna Ingersoll (and other ancestors who played a part in the Salem Witch Trials of 1692), lived in the house and he visited there frequently. He stated that his book, The House of Seven Gables, was a complete work of fiction, based on no particular house. Nonetheless, as you tour the tiny, dark rooms typical of the era in which it was built (the late 1600s), it’s easy to see how such a house could set the author’s imagination rolling. The site also offers a chance to tour the house in which Hawthorne was born (which was moved to this site) along with several other buildings of that period.
If you haven’t read The House of Seven Gables, the novel follows a New England family and explores themes of guilt, retribution, and atonement, with overtones of the supernatural and witchcraft. For me, the book doesn’t compare to Hawthorne’s classic, The Scarlet Letter. However, it was an inspiration for the horror fiction writer H.P. Lovecraft who called it “New England’s greatest contribution to weird literature.” That seems a backhanded complement to me.
You can tour this tall ship at the Salem Maritime National Historic Site.
While you’re in Salem, I also recommend stopping at the Salem Maritime National Historic Site, a short walk from the House of Seven Gables. The National Park Service operates it and you can wander through old wharf buildings, the Custom House where Hawthorne worked when he wasn’t penning famous novels, and other buildings of the colonial era.
Salem was, of course, the home of the famous Salem Witch Trials which were the focus of Arthur Miller’s classic play, The Crucible. The National Park Service Visitor Center (2 Liberty Street) is a great place to get quality background on that incident. It’s ironic that Salem has made a cottage industry out of the witch trials when our puritan ancestors were so thoroughly opposed to witches. Unless you’re a fan of super-tacky witch paraphernalia and occult museums, stick with the Park Service displays on the subject and skip the other witchy tourist traps.
Travel to the places you read about. Read about the places you travel.
Off The Beaten Page Travel 