Late last month I had the opportunity to visit two of the islands of the Dutch Antilles – Bonaire and Curacao – as part of a National Trust Gardens of the Caribbean tour. (These are the B and C islands of the A-B-C Antilles. We didn’t make it to Aruba.) This was a new part of the world for me and it was a great experience.
The scene was set with enlightening lectures prior to our arrival by long-time Trust lecturer Paddy Bowes and Williams College professor Michael Lewis, which prepared me for the very arid conditions on the islands (8 variety of cacti on Bonaire), and the Dutch city-planning and architectural influence. You can see the latter in the photo at the top of the post of one of the most photographed streets in Willemstad.
Our first stop in the Dutch Antilles was the island of Bonaire and the town of Kralendijk. The landscape and wildlife are the stars here, with clear blue waters and pink flamingos.
Our last day of the tour took us to Willemstad, Curacao’s capital. There was much to take in: the Queen Emma Bridge (aka “The Swinging Old Lady) which is a floating pontoon bridge that opens to allow boats to pass into the bay; the Floating Market on the waterfront; the beautiful colonial architecture of the government buildings; and my favorite, the oldest synagogue in the western hemisphere complete with a very unusual sand floor. I was able to take a “This Place Matters” photo there – translated into Dutch!
The tour was wonderful…capped off by being able to spend a week on the beautiful Sea Cloud II. I made a number of new friends, rekindled a couple of old friendships, and had a chance to learn more about the natural and cultural history of the Caribbean. A great way to spend a week in February!
Rosenwald Schools are unique in the American landscape. Built in the early 20th century to educate African-Americans in the rural south, the 5,000+ schools quickly became centers of community life as well as educational facilities during the difficult years of segregation.
I wrote a blog post in October of 2008 after reading Mary Hoffschwelle’s insightful book on Rosenwald Schools. Now Voice of America has featured the Rosenwald Schools story – along with information on the preservation efforts led by the National Trust for Historic Preservation with funding from the Lowe’s Charitable Foundation – in a new video on their web site. Take a look below. I think you’ll enjoy it.
Today’s PreservationNation blog has a story and video about Historic Rugby, a 2009 National Preservation Honor Award winner of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The blog post brought back great memories.
Rugby was established in the 1880s by the successful Victorian-era author Thomas Hughes as a Utopian community for the second sons of English gentry. Due to the system of primogeniture, these men would inherit little or no property and had very limited career opportunities. Hughes established this colony in the beautiful but hard-scrabble Cumberland Plateau area of Tennessee. After some initial success, the colony fell on hard times, ultimately failed and was largely forgotten. In the mid-1960s, residents of the area began to restore the remaining historic buildings and over the course of five decades have saved this wonderful place and turned it into a thriving community and a favorite spot for tourists.
That’s the official story. The reason it is important to me is because it is where I undertook my first hands-on preservation work, leading to a career that’s now in its fourth decade.
Thomas Hughes Free Public Library at Rugby, Tennessee
One of the visionary individuals who began the hard work of saving Rugby was named Brian Stagg. His brother, Alan Stagg, was my Boy Scout leader. Beginning in the late 1960s, our scout troop would travel to Rugby during the summer, camp out on the site of the old hospital for a week, and undertake clean-up/fix-up projects around the historic buildings in between hikes and swims in the beautiful Clear Fork River (in the old “men’s swimming hole”). My very first preservation experience was cleaning out the brush that had surrounded the amazing Thomas Hughes Free Public Library (pictured in the background above), which contained over 7,000 volumes of pre-1900 books, many first editions donated to Hughes. Even as a young teenager I was astounded that such an amazing collection of historic books were just sitting in a sweet little structure in the middle of nowhere. (And Rugby, dear friends, is far from the beaten path.)
Brian Stagg tragically died much too young, but the family connection has remained, as his sister Barbara has been a leader and stalwart at Historic Rugby since the 1960s.
If you are traveling down the interstate highway from Knoxville to Nashville and see a sign for Historic Rugby and the Big South Fork Recreation area, do yourself a favor and take a couple of hours detour to see a unique place in American history and learn about what the vision of a handful of hard-working citizens – mixed in with the sweat of some Boy Scouts – can accomplish.
In a little town on a wintery day, a postman delivers a mysterious package tied up with a big pink bow to a lonely man named Mr. Hatch. “Somebody loves you” the note says.
“Somebody loves me,” Mr. Hatch whispers as he dusts his living room. “Somebody loves me,” Mr. Hatch whistles as he does errands in town. “Who,” Mr. Hatch wonders, “could somebody be?”
This is a wonderful children’s book that sees Mr. Hatch come alive after learning that someone loves him, and then deflated when the postman returns weeks later to say he had delivered the package to the wrong address. That’s not how the story ends, as you might expect. The town discovers the reason Mr. Hatch has returned to his solitary ways and they let him know that plenty of people really do love Mr. Hatch. We read the book aloud last evening during a family Valentine’s dinner and our kids became 4-years old again.
Today a friend gave us a gift that reminded us – in several ways – of the joys of giving love. She had read my blog about saying goodbye to Lilly, our Sussex Spaniel who died last December, and bought the book Old Dogs are the Best Dogsfor us as a way of remembering Lilly. I had quoted from the book’s opening essay in my post, so she guessed – correctly – that we’d love it.
On the way home today, Claire read aloud from the book and I was struck, once again, about the joys of giving love. The section Claire read went like this:
Some years ago, a humor contest in The Washington Post invited readers to come up with Item One from an underachiever’s to-do list. First prize went to: 1. Win the respect and admiration of my dog.
It is no big deal to love a dog, they make it so easy for you. They find you brilliant even if you are a witling. You fascinate them, even if you are as dull as a butter knife. They are fond of you even if you are a genocidal maniac: Hitler loved his dogs, and they loved him.
We all laughed, but it reminded me of all the love that’s come my way – deserved or not – through the years. Valentine’s Day is a good day for those memories and also a good time to recall those words of the famous philosophers Lennon & McCartney:
And in the end, the love you take, is equal to the love you make.
Happy Valentine’s Day. Tell someone you love them.
The America Bowl pulls together all of my favorite ways of wasting time.
So says Don Steinberg, creator of the online America Bowl showdown between the U.S. Presidents and the Super Bowls. I read about Steinberg’s web site in a recent issue of The New Yorker and had to check it out.
This all began as Steinberg was thinking about Barack Obama, the nation’s 44th president, and he wondered about the connections with other famous 44s – like Hank Aaron who wore the number for the Atlanta Braves.
Steinberg soon realized there was a football echo, too – that the 2010 Super Bowl…would be the forty-fourth, or, rather, the XLIVth. This alignment, like the Rapture, will happen only once.
So a web site – complete with logo featuring a pony-tailed George Washington going head-to-head with a football helmet – was born over Thanksgiving. The idea is to pit each President against his corresponding Super Bowl. Presidents are judged on their accomplishments; Super Bowls on their competitiveness.
If you remember anything about the founding fathers and the early Super Bowls, you just know that the Presidents took an early lead. But you’ll no doubt remember that string of Presidents that led us up to the Civil War, so the games bounced back.
One thing you’ll notice, as you peruse the matchups, is that this country has had to endure a parade of unexceptional chief executives and championship football games. The Super Bowl, few will disagree, is a bloated, overhyped spectacle, and, more often than not, an anti-climax; this may also be true of the Presidency.
Today, as we enter Super Bowl weekend, we’re at game 41: George H.W. Bush vs. the Colts/Bears in 2007. Steinberg makes some telling remarks about dynasties in both politics and football. Prescott Bush made it to the Senate, but he had to wait for a son and grandson to became President. Archie Manning was a great quarterback for the Saints, but it took Peyton and Eli to win championships. Steinberg gives this battle to the Super Bowls, and they lead by a 21-20 margin with three to go.
There are little gems throughout. Super Bowl 37 (when the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, for crying out loud, were champs) top Richard Nixon because they avoided scandal. Super Bowl 3 vs. Thomas Jefferson was an epic, but Steinberg eventually awards it to TJ over Broadway Joe. It isn’t until Super Bowl 4, when the Chiefs top the Vikings and go up against James Madison, that the Super Bowls finally get a win. What, you may ask: How does the Father of the Constitution lose, even to Hank Stram and his boys “matriculating the ball down the field”? Well, Steinberg limits accomplishments to the time these men were actually Presidents, and Madison had that unfortunate thing with the White House being burned by the British against his record.
So, if you want a laugh on Super Bowl weekend head over to The America Bowl and see how your history and sports knowledge hold up.
As we await our second snowpocalypse in two months here in the Washington area, I was fortunate enough to read Dr. Tom Bibey’s Stories of the Bluegrass Music Road blog this morning. It reminded me of how your outlook affects so much in life.
My favorite story from Dr. B’s blog this morning:
I began to write in 2000. I’ve had the same game plan since 2002; write a bluegrass based book, have it out in 2010, then travel a little with my wife for a couple years before we get too old to go. Our goal is to meet the best people, play a lot of music, learn a bunch of new songs, and sell enough books to make the trip break even. A buddy of mine said he toured with a bluegrass band and made it to California and back. He had a great time and met all kinda folks. After it was over he had ten more dollars than he started with. He is my hero.
So I’m approaching the snowpocalypse with the idea that I’ll be in a nice warm home this weekend with plenty of time to play music, be with the family, watch the Super Bowl, and connect (electronically) with friends all over the world. What’s so bad about that?
Growing up, I was such a Willie Mays fan that my friends called me “Say Hey” in honor of the Say Hey Kid. In those pre-Internet days it was tough to live in Tennessee and keep up with late-night baseball in San Francisco. However, many was the summer morning I called the sports department of the Daily News Journal to ask for the previous evening’s scores off the wire. This was serious business. Many years and games later, I still believe Mays was the best, most complete ballplayer to play the game.
So I was thrilled recently to see the new book Willie’s Boys: The 1948 Birmingham Black Barons, the Last Negro League World Series, and the Making of a Baseball Legendby John Klima. The title tells what’s in store. This is a book about the difficult period when major league baseball was undergoing integration and Birmingham – that hotbed of both baseball and racial segregation – was at the center of the story. In 1948, Mays was a 16-year-old rookie on the Black Barons and helped the team appear in the last Negro League World Series. He went on to a storied career with the New York and San Francisco Giants, hitting 660 career home runs, collecting 3,283 hits, gathering 12 Gold Gloves and playing in 24 All-Star games.
There’s so much to like in this book, but I’ll only quote two passages. The first is from the prologue. Carl Hubbell, the “Meal Ticket” pitcher of the 1930s who famously struck out Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and three others consecutively in the 1934 All-Star Game, was at the Polo Grounds with New York Cubans owner Alex Pompez in 1950 to scout an 18-year-old Willie Mays.
“Hubbell noticed how the boy liked to play extremely shallow in center field, which in the cavernous Polo Grounds was like walking the plank….Finally, a ball was struck well into left-center field, providing the first chance to watch Mays. The ball landed safely for a base hit, a double in most circumstances. Mays’s toes turned so quickly that his cleats severed the grass blades beneath him, and he reached the ball on the first bounce, speared it with his bare hand, and uncoiled the whip. His throw to second was made off-balance, but arrived with such velocity that Hubbell noticed the second baseman lift his glove to meet the ball, not because Mays missed the target, but because he threw so hard that the ball was still rising. The throw was enough for the trepid base runner to hurry back to first base, like a mouse running for a hole….Years of pitching in the big leagues had taught Hubbell to conceal his emotions, an advantageous ability for a scout. But Pompez could read a man too. He knew Hubbell was astounded.“
Hubbell watches similar defensive plays throughout the day, sees Mays hit a home run with a bat that moves through the strike zone faster than any of the greats he played with, and is convinced. Years later, after Mays became a Giant and the story of his “accidental” discovery had been told, Hubbell would…
“relive that day in the Polo Grounds when the Giants truly discovered the talent, the power, and the voice of Willie Mays. ‘Gentlemen,’ he’d say regally, ‘that was the day I saw the best goddamn baseball player I have ever seen in my life.'”
Later in the book, Klima introduces the reader to Rickwood Field, where the Black Barons played when the (White) Barons were out of town. The Birmingham Barons were affiliated with the Boston Red Sox, and in the spring of 1948 the Sox come to town for an exhibition. Ted Williams…
“…took batting practice and played left field in Rickwood Field….part of a banner spring in Birmingham. On April 12, the New York Yankees came to Rickwood Field. That was largely because of Yankee radio broadcaster (and Birmingham native) Mel Allen….Allen might have been the local hero, but there was no doubt that the real box-office gold was Joe DiMaggio….He collected a single in three at-bats and struck out with the bases loaded in the first inning. It didn’t matter. DiMaggio was DiMaggio, and in the spring of 1948, three of the greatest outfielders of all time, DiMaggio, Ted Williams, and Willie Mays played at Rickwood Field.“
That’s hallowed ground in my book. Thankfully, Rickwood Field is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. The wonderful web site Baseball Pilgrimages has dubbed Birmingham’s Rickwood Classic the #1 Baseball Pilgrimage for 2010. (As an aside, you’ll note that a visit to historic Durham Athletic Park – the star of the great sports movie Bull Durham – is #2 on the list.) When the Rickwood Classic takes place on June 2nd, it will mark the field’s 100th year of professional baseball, two more years than Fenway Park. To learn the history behind the numbers, check out the preservation story of Rickwood Field as recounted in Preservation magazine’s Field of Forgotten Dreams. Both the magazine and Willie’s Boys are recommended reading.
To top off this Mays love fest, I’ve posted a video of his most famous catch, the grab and throw from the blast off the bat of Vic Wertz in the 1954 World Series. Enjoy.
More to come…
DJB
Image: DJB beside the statue of Mays outside San Francisco’s ballpark in 2014.
I’m glad I was standing in my local Barnes & Nobel a few years ago when Patty Griffin’s1000 Kisses came on over the store’s speakers. Mesmerized by the voice, I wandered through the music section until I had listened to a majority of the album. Needless to say, I took it home and have been a fan ever since.
Downtown Church by Patty Griffin
Griffin has a new album out entitled Downtown Church, and it is a winner in so many ways. Beginning with the wonderful old tune House of Gold all the way through to the beautiful hymn All Creatures of Our God and King, there isn’t a false note here. Wade in the Water with Regina McCrary – the daughter of the founder of the Fairfield Four and “gospel royalty” to quote Griffin – really rocks. Never Grow Old with Buddy Miller is beautiful, simple and meditative. Griffin sang both songs and more on a terrific live stream tonight on her Facebook home page and you can catch the latter in a video below. Every song on the album rings true and it is worth the price of purchase (or download).
The other winning part of this album is where it was recorded: Downtown Presbyterian Church in Nashville, Tennessee. Designed by the famous nineteenth-century architect William Strickland (also the architect of the Tennessee State Capitol and the Second Bank of the United States in Philadelphia) this is a masterpiece of the Egyptian Revival style.
I was honored to speak at Downtown Presbyterian in 2001 on the 150th anniversary of this wonderful place. I spoke again from the pulpit a few years later at a national heritage areas conference. And just this past October, I joined about 1,500 colleagues at the National Preservation Conference in that magnificent space and listened to Congressman John Lewis give a riveting speech about the civil rights era of the 1950s and 1960s, ending with a call for a new Civil Rights Heritage Trail to help us remember those special places from our past. Downtown Presbyterian is the kind of space that brings out the best in all of us.
This place has a personal connection as well and I told the story when I spoke on the 150th anniversary. Here’s how it goes:
I’m delighted to be here today because one of your founders – the Rev. Gideon Blackburn – is a relative of mine. My great-grandfather seven times back was a man by the name of Benjamin Blackburn. “Benjamin and Mary Blackburn had six sons and six daughters. One of those sons was John Blackburn, my great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather. Another son was Robert Blackburn – Gideon Blackburn’s father. I think that makes him something of a great uncle six or seven times back – but I’ll claim him in any event.
Gideon Blackburn is listed on the tablets on the front of Downtown Presbyterian as being among the founders of the church in 1814. He was a native of Virginia (in fact, I use to live in the county seat of Augusta County, where he was born). Gideon Blackburn founded many churches from Alabama to Illinois, he served for a time as the president of Centre College, and in 1837 he deeded 16,000 acres of land in Carlinville, Illinois to the Trustees of what would become Blackburn College, which still exists today.
The Blackburn family history calls him one of the most eloquent orators of his generation. An old newspaper clipping in our family’s possession notes that ‘It was under the preaching of Gideon Blackburn that Andrew Jackson’s beloved Rachel was brought into the Presbyterian fold, a circumstance for which the pious mistress of the Hermitage never thereafter ceased to bless the Lord.’ I have a lot to live up to here today! And finally, we’ve found a quote that indicated that Gideon Blackburn generally preached for two hours or more. As one author put it, ‘He was wont to preach at great length.’ I’ll try to refrain from following in those family footsteps today.”
You’ll be happy to know that I got through my speech in less than two hours.
Downtown Church comes highly recommended. When you hear Patty Griffin sing We Shall All Be Reunited (as in this special concert version with Emmylou Harris and Shawn Colvin) think about how special places such as Downtown Presbyterian bring us together. This truly is a match made in heaven.
I’m wrapping up a visit to Miami and Miami Beach for work (I know – I love my job) that ended with a spectacular tour of two landmarks of Miami’s past…and the more recent past.
First up was the 1963 Miami Marine Stadium. Arriving by boat while listening to the architect – Cuban born Hilario Candela who at age 27 designed this aquatic marvel with its zigzag concourse floating over the stands – was an incredible experience. It is threatened because the city sees the site as much more valuable for development, even though it doesn’t take a great deal of imagination to understand how this wonderful place could thrive again as a civic center for all South Florida. Watch the video at the end of the post to hear that quintessential South Floridian – Jimmy Buffett – talk about why this place matters.
After a short bus ride, we were transported to Vizcaya – one of the country’s great early 20th century marvels. This estate was built from 1914-17 by James Deering of International Harvester, and the 70-room house and magnificent gardens are filled with artwork, architectural detailing, and landscape views that are more than the eye can capture in a short visit. This National Historic Landmark, threatened by nearby high-rise development that would destroy the view from the gardens, has a bright future thanks to the work of so many people who understand the value of saving not only the buildings, but the settings, of great places. I had the good fortune to have dinner with Joel Hoffman, the Executive Director of Vizcaya, and my colleague Laurie Ossman, who had been the assistant director and chief curator at the site before joining the National Trust. They told of the hard but satisfying work to fight the development plans, making for a terrific ending to a wonderful four days in Miami.
The next time you hear someone say, “I understand preserving truly historic buildings, but I don’t think we should try and save this structure from the 1950s (or 60s, or 70s)” remind them that the Art Deco architecture of the 1920s and 30s use to be similarly dismissed.
