Queen of Wands

Southern Comfort: One Week in Kentucky and Tennessee

 One night this past summer, I fell asleep looking at a rock promontory high above, with green dewey woods climbing up below it and the calming sound of crickets. I was at peace nestled in the dip that is Cumberland Gap, having feasted earlier on barbecue and spent the previous week traveling around the wonderful states of Kentucky and Tennessee. Hailing from north of the Mason-Dixon line, I live now on the tip of the region, Washington DC, which is really more like New York City than Atlanta. So I felt a need while here to head out and see what it was like out there in the so-called "country." And come to find out, as I did in Cumberland Gap where three states kiss together, there is much beauty and history around these parts held together by a loyalty to local customs. 

 I started my look by checking out the Highway127 Yard Sale, the longest yard sale in the world, running over 600 miles from southern Ohio to northern Alabama and held every year in the first weekend of August. I did 150 miles of it from just north of Frankfurt all the way down to Russell Springs in Kentucky, visiting churches, fair grounds, people's yards, road turnoffs, literally any flat surface seemed to have a table set up. True, most of it was junk but it was interesting cheap stuff and just plain fun to dive through all of it; I didn't go to find a Tiffany lamp tucked away for $5 but I did find a faux Tiffany lamp for a good price. What was great about the sales was the opportunity to meet local people, especially the folks just popping a squat on the side of the road hoping to get some cash for some goods they dredged out of their basements. They were friendly albeit sales-minded people for the most part, interested in the array of people driving by from all over. To them, the sale was an opportunity to have some good times with friends, camping out and tarping your displays at night. If you made some cash and met some non-Kentuckians, all the better. 

 The yard sale trucking brought me down to south central Kentucky to a town called Glasgow. It was a random stop, a little town off a local highway, but an opportunity again to meet more of folks who call this place home. I decided to head a few miles outside of town and go to a BBQ joint called Honey's. I happened to be there on karaoke night, with first prize being a whopping $500. Hearing the locals belt out some of the best country songs on pitch and some damn near perfect, I remembered I was in singing country. I was also in family country, with grandmothers holding hands with granddaughters as their mothers sang Loretta Lynn, grandfathers being cheered on by their sons as they sang old Hank Williams. The warm summer air, fantastic sweet BBQ, everyone happy, it was bliss, even if I got a few sidelong glances that read, "You ain't from here, are you?" No, but I kinda wish I was. 

 On from Glasgow, I drove a few hours south to Nashville to visit the Country Music Hall of Fame, a $33 billion behemoth downtown that opened in 2001 after having various homes since 1961. It's a very large museum and a complete showcase for artists of all eras. At a somewhat pricey $29.99 entry ticket, I was allowed to explore a well-designed museum that flows you from the start of country music on to modern times, with an exhibit solely devoted to the Williams clan--Hank Williams Sr., HW Jr. and HW III. The Williams name is like the Kennedys in politics, with Alabama-born Senior becoming a major star in the 1940s. His life ended in tragedy in 1953 when he died from a heart attack at only 29 from too much drinking. Junior fared much better, becoming a star in his own right, most known outside the country world as the guy who sings about being ready for Monday night football, with his son getting into the singing business as well. Just one story of many in the museum that for a lucky few end up with your face in bronze in the Hall of Fame. A big open round room full of sunlight, it has got to be the temple of the gods for any aspiring country singer. Wandering around the museum for a few hours, anyone who isn't a country fan soon would be. The colorful stage costumes, the stories about rising from nothing to global renown, the array of loud and proud personalities, the hard-wired connection to small southern towns, it's a culture most definitely and completely American in showing how dreams can come true.   

 One option at the museum is to go visit RCA's Studio B where Elvis Presley, Dolly Parton, and other major singers of the 1950s and 1960s recorded many a hit single. Built in 1957, the single-story studio is tucked away in the Music Square neighborhood about a mile from the museum, short and squat and made of cement. It doesn't look impressive and the inside is pretty cramped. There is only the one recording room, which is sparse and only 30x40 feet. But that room did open up when I began to think about all the musicians who walked on the worn linoleum. In the room is a piano once played by Elvis, which I wasn't allowed to touch but I could sit in front of and faux-play as I listened to recordings of studio sessions over a loud speaker. This was the place alright where people took off, country music ground zero. 

 In blistering 95 degree heat, I managed to slog myself a few blocks away from the Hall of Fame to the Ryman Auditorium, which is where the Grand Ole Opry originated in 1943 and was broadcast until 1974. A brick square building erected in 1892, the auditorium is only two stories inside with wooden pew seats in a half circle on each level. It started as a place for revivals as the Union Gospel Tabernacle, the idea of businessman Thomas Ryman who wanted the voice of revivalist Sam Jones to carry to his devoted following. And carry it does, which happens to work just perfectly for singing as well. People are allowed to go on stage for a picture holding a guitar in front of a Grand Ole Opry sign, which had a weird way of empowering me into thinking I just may be the next Tammy Wynette. Some people did get up and sing, including a young family that harmonized amazingly. The tour of the auditorium took me backstage to rooms that were pretty bland, having been redone in 1994 after the building was brought back from disrepair. The tour was really all about being on that stage for a few minutes, pretending the audience was out there like in the 1950s, sweaty from a lack of air conditioning in the southern heat but packed in because this was the best show in town. Elvis, Hank Williams and Johnny Cash played here in their early careers, everyone did, everyone had to if they were anyone in what was then the new Nashville music scene. To this day, the auditorium hosts shows, all kinds of music and big names. A must-play for those who missed the days where people packed outside in the street to get in.

 Just 12 miles outside of Nashville is the Hermitage, the plantation home of Andrew Jackson who lived there until his 1845 death and in the years following his 1829-1837 term as seventh US president. Called "Old Hickory" for his toughness and familiar nowadays on twenty dollar bills, Jackson was a Democrat president elected at a time of US expansion when backing Native American removal was a popular way to get votes. He is infamously known for the Trail of Tears, which took around 46,000 Native Americans on a grueling deadly march from the southeastern US to western territories. Jackson also was living in the South during slavery and owned 150 slaves at the time of his death. The Hermitage has a museum about their lives, which revolved around the simply designed two-story Greek revival mansion. At the back of the house is a beautiful garden designed by Jackson's wife, Rachel, where nearby he and she are buried under a cupola. Just outside the cupola is a small gravestone, where slave Alfred was buried in 1901 after spending his entire life on the plantation. The son of slave Betty who was bought by Jackson as a child in 1794, he was a symbol of the changing times, being freed during his life there and ultimately becoming a tour guide worthy of being buried in honor right next to a former president. It made me think what Jackson would have thought of that, but then again, it was a sign of the changing South in the early 1900s that the locals agreed he should rest there in honor despite likely causing Old Hickory to roll over in his grave.  

 North of Nashville in western Kentucky are some caves, weirdly since the state on this side doesn't elicit much shock and awe on the outside, just woods and rolling hills. But sure enough at the Mammoth Cave National Park, I got down deep in the soil. Mammoth itself was booked on tours the day I went so I went to a smaller, privately-run cave called Diamond Caverns in Park City. Founded in 1859, the cavern has all the delights of a limestone cave system forged from the slow dripping of water--stalactites, stalagmites and what look like goopy sandcastles, 100 feet down and millions of years ago. As always with these caves, the best part is how pitch dark and quiet it is down there with only the occasional spelunk! of a water drop hitting the cavern floor. And then there is the coldness of it, which is like standing in a moist freezer. It's an unknown feeling your body gets trying to figure out where it is or maybe some ancient recognition of what we came from. Either way, worth the cash as always. 

While Kentucky may not be known for caves, it is known for horses--Kentucky Derby anyone? And all around the state are vast open areas where horses graze and very rich people own stables of some of the finest horses in the world. In honor of its four-legged friends, the state is home to the Kentucky Horse Park, which is a massive complex of museums, riding rings, horse cemeteries, stables, breeding grounds, horse competitions, everything horse. Tickets get you in to see a Hall of Champions show of past famous horses who won major cash in their day, including those who won for racing and carriage racing. Seeing these horses up close, I realized how large they are, machines almost that just happen to grow hair. Fortunately, their owners donated them to the park to live out their lives in peace well-tended; these horses  earned millions so at least they can get a cold hose-down on a hot day. Also on site are memorials and graves for those horses that brought Kentucky world renown, including thoroughbred racehorse Man O' War which has his own massive bronze statue. Famous in the 1920s, the horse was unmatched in his field, winning 20 of 21 races, and is considered one if not the best of his breed, born and bred in Kentucky. Also at the park are shows highlighting certain breeds and riding styles like dressage. My favorite horse shown was the Nokota, a wild horse from the Dakotas that is almost extinct with only a few hundred in captivity, friendly with an easy gallop and an unusual coat of blue gray. People are working hard to preserve them given they were part of the American expansion into the West in the 1800s. It was a pleasure to see one up close and to see his rider devoted to it. People sure do love their horses in Kentucky.  

When watching horses in Kentucky, people can't seem to do it without a mint julep, which has meant bourbon whiskey must be the official alcohol of the state. Big names such as Jack Daniels and Jim Beam have their headquarters in the state, but I decided not to go to a big plant and instead visit a historic distillery of premium bourbon called Woodford Reserve just outside of Versailles. Woodford is known for being the official bourbon of the Kentucky Derby, made in limited batches and a wonderful dark honey gold color. Like a winery, a tour of the distillery ends with a sip of the bourbon, which runs around $40 for a 740 ml bottle. But given I couldn't seem to get a 90.4 proof shot down, the real interesting part was getting to see how it is made, with a close-up look at the stinky gaseous mash that is fermented in the open air, then onward to see the large copper stills unique to this distillery, and finally where the filled wooden charred casks are aged in a small stone building for six years in conditions that were remarkably cool in the summer heat. The distillery has been in operation since 1812, built by Elijah Pepper, and is now owned by the Jack Daniels parent company. The owners don't let you walk around independently but the tour is long enough to catch a whiff of sweetness in the air from the aged casks. Driving out from the distillery among bright green fields of horse country, I could understand why a porch, a mint julep and a cool breeze might sound like a good idea every day.

 West of the Woodford Distillery is also another historic landmark of note, the birthplace of 16th US president, Abraham Lincoln, in 1809. I had always thought Lincoln was from Illinois (where his family moved in 1830 after moving to Indiana in 1816) but apparently he spent his early years in a pretty non-descript part of Kentucky by Elizabethtown in a one room log cabin now housed in a large granite shrine. So sacred is it, even though not original, that it is guarded by a National Park Service official who has to sit all day in the stuffy place that smells like cold dirt. Lincoln really did start from nothing and maybe more surprisingly was born in the South which he went on to rally against for attempting to cede from the Union. Who would have guessed?  

 In more modern times, Kentucky has become known for its fried chicken, or more obviously, Kentucky Fried Chicken or KFC for people who don't want to think about what fried means to longevity. Colonel Harland Sanders ran a gas station and motel in Corbin near Cumberland Gap as a stop for tourists back when car traveling was the rave. He started in 1930 and went on to found KFC officially in 1952. He then grew it into a national brand and sold the franchise for $2 million in 1964, watching it boom into a southern cooking juggernaut by the time of his death in 1980 at 90. In every major city I have been abroad, there has been a KFC, whether that's a good thing or not. The original restaurant is a funny affair, located on a side road in the middle of a little non-descript town, a tiny house-like building. I expected the inside to be a mimic of his original restaurant but no dice; it was just like any modern KFC with the same food offerings, no special recipe at this location. The eating area, however, has been preserved and reminded me of an old grandmother's kitchen. The real treat, though, was being able to sit next to a real-size Sanders for a picture. I ended up having a picture taken by a local guy, complete with the Kentucky accent, who told me, on the sly, that Ole Sanders was a real stingy bastard to work for, as evidenced by him not getting paid for some work he did at the restaurant. But then again, could a nice man have created the empire he did on just fried chicken alone if he wasn't made of some serious grit? Or maybe the sweet image we see in the ads is just that, an image of what we think of southern gentlemen. Sanders was born in Indiana and he wasn't a real colonel. But so it goes.

 All this driving around in a big loop led me back to Cumberland Gap, where I spent my last night before heading back up to DC. The town of Cumberland Gap, all one Main Street of it, is located at the intersection of Tennessee, Virginia and Kentucky, nestled in the gap itself. I stayed at a wonderful old mill bed and breakfast with a room that looked up at a perch where you can view the 12-mile long Gap itself from a 1,600-foot elevation or so. Pioneer Daniel Boone in the late 1700s led people through the pass and around 300,000 people followed by 1810. It was and is a gateway, back then to more woods and possible death by Native Americans but now it leads to horses, bourbon, country singers, thrifty locals, old presidents, caves and best of all, BBQ. Really what else is there? Onward, ho!

Goodbye Busy Bee: Tribute to My Grandmother, Janet Forkey

  Janet Ruth George Forkey was the only one who called me Chrissy. My mother, father and sister as far back as I can remember called me by my full name, Christine, until around college when my Dad one day started calling me Chris or what I had gone by since high school among my friends. I never considered myself a Chrissy, all bright light and cheer-leading effervescence even though on occasion I can be like that. My grandmother saw that I had a light, though, and calling me that alone warmed me up. She loved me, with that grin and cackly laugh of hers. And her hands, rough and strong but so gentle. And her eyes, a golden brown that her daughter and my mother, Diana, had passed on to me. I remember talking to her soon after my mother passed away and remarking that we had a bit of her still when we looked into each other's eyes. So today, when I found out my grandmother had passed away suddenly at 93, I realized I was the only one left with those eyes, their eyes that I share with them now when I look in the mirror, in memoriam, the last one.

My grandmother's eyes are certainly not the only thing she passed down to me. While I got the exploratory bug from my mother, my grandmother and my grandfather were the real deal. They traveled all over the world, often to fish or golf, having spent time in the early 1900s out West when the West was just a few roads and people. She was toe to toe with my grandfather in the ability to fish a stream in Alaska that happened to have grizzly bears in it. I have photos of her in her 20s in chaps, riding horses or standing by a campfire, or as a child standing next to her dad and a big Redwood tree. Over the years as I traveled, she was the one in my family who could identify with me in terms of how beautiful the West's deserts are, how Caribbean waters look, how cathedrals in Europe are just awe-inspiring. Although she never said it directly, I was the one out of her three grandkids who she knew would travel far and wide and would love it as much as she did. I had the guts and cowgirl nature that she admired because that's what she had. And she knew I admired her for it, too. My only regret is that I didn't know her back then so we could saddle up and ride off at full tilt, glad that we weren't confined by skirts or stuffiness.

 As I have aged, I have gotten more artistic and I know this comes from some genetic predisposition passed down from her. My grandmother was above all an artist--a potter, an illustrator, a painter, a skilled hand in cloisonne, a Christmas card silk screener. Dubbing herself the "busy bee" and signing her art with a bumblebee, she was highly creative and fortunately, over the years she was generous enough to give art pieces for Christmas and to let her family pick up pieces that go all the way back to her art school days in the 1930s. These things have traveled with me whenever I move and are always put up in whatever apartment I have had over the years. Not only because they are great pieces but because I am proud of her. I have tried to be an artist over the years but the innate skill seems to have been passed on to my sister or at least, the higher level of skill that differentiates good with great. But the innate love of art that she passed to my mother and myself, that's no doubt there and will be forever.

So Grammy, here's to a long life filled with adventure and creativity. May what your eyes had seen pass my eyes as well. I love you. 

Something Simple, Something Amazing: Katz's Deli in New York City

I do so love a good corned beef. It's a rare find, surprising since you can pretty much find corned beef at every grocery store or deli. I was lucky then to have a chance to go up to New York City recently and come upon Katz's kosher Jewish deli on the lower East Side's East Houston Street. Founded in 1888, the deli is not a fancy place, a box really, but it holds many charms that hit you even before you get a chance to sit down. For one, as soon as you walk in the door, you are greeted with a guy who hands you what looks like a very complicated ticket. And then you head into a choice of lines at the end of which is a carver who takes you order, handcuts your meat of choice, and then scribbles your order on the ticket. Efficiency at its best, or so you would think given how many carvers they have. But Katz is a popular place for New Yorkers and tourists alike. I went around 3pm on a Tuesday after what I thought would be the lunch rush--no such luck, the place was mobbed. The wait, however, was worth it, something of a reward to finally get to the front and watch the carver grab a big slab of corned beef and start slicing, just for you. You can also order whatever bread you want (rye, obviously) and dressing (russian although most get mustard), with the bonus of while you wait, the carver hands you a little slice to wet your appetite. The sandwiches come with pickled green tomatoes and mild crunchy dill pickles; real sides such as cole slaw are separate. I must admit I ate it all, even though I realized biting into the sandwich that my carver had given me at least a pound of meat. No, I wasn't going to leave any of this warm, juicy salty/sweet corned beef behind. I could eat it every day, although a considerable dent would be in my wallet given a simple sandwich runs about $15.

As if the sandwich alone wasn't worth the trip, the Katz's deli interior is not just simple wooden chairs and tables but an all-out assault of photos of all the famous people who have eaten at the establishment, including the last few NYC mayors, actors starring in NYC-based TV shows, sports stars, movie stars. Only Obama hasn't been by--yet. The deli is maybe most famous for being the place used in the movie When Harry Met Sally where Meg Ryan fakes an orgasm and Rob Reiner's mother famously quips, "I'll have what she's having." Indeed, the food is that good. The day I went was a melting pot of decidely local New Yorkers, some Europeans, young and old, and a massive tour bus drop of Jewish women from somewhere. It was very New York, a cacophony of voices with accents from all over noshing on some great simple deli food.

 Katz's is located in an area known for being the first stop for immigrants coming into Ellis Island. Many nationalities have walked around the Lower East Side, including the Jews hence the delis but many, many more--Irish, Italian, Chinese, Eastern European and Russia. So entrenched in the area that some ended up staying to create Little Italy and Chinatown just to the south of Katz's. Near the deli is a museum that honors how these immigrants survived in New York City over the last few centuries. The Tenement Museum, created in 1996, has a tour of one of these tall brick apartments on 97 Orchard Street, designed so you can see how actual families lived in them from the mid-1800s to the 1940s. Built in 1863, these little apartments were where whole families packed in and many made a living doing whatever they could, typically garment work. At $20, tickets are based on certain families and parts of the tenement, which has been reburished to certain time periods. I took the Eastern European tour, which was one floor of the building. Sadly, no indoor photos (mine taken from their website) but seeing the apartments, including one that had three small rooms for nine people running a piecework dress shop, made you appreciate how badly immigrants wanted to be here. The conditions were definitely not nice but hope apparently sprung eternal, the dream of getting out with hard work and some sweat.

What I found most interesting was how the museum cureators took care in the renovation process to leave bits of the past around the apartments. I particularly liked all the layers of paint and wallpaper, linoleums that had been laid down over the years. It was a literal representation of all the people who had come through just this one building, which oddly had made it through all the years after being abandoned in the 1940s after not meeting safety codes. The Orchard tenement is a piece of New York history but in many ways, it's also a reminder of the present, as many more immigrants continue to come to this country to seek out a future better than the one they could expect at home. It's these immigrants that made America, literally in small, dark, airless rooms with nothing more than desire. It's good we remember them and still have bits of them here today, including the age old recipe for some fantastic corned beef.    

When One Is Not Enough: Artscape's Brass Art Car

Obsession can be a wonderful thing and Ernie Steingold knew it. Over the course of 10 years, the vacuum repair man covered his 1975 GMC van with brass, any kind from anywhere he could find it, from thrift stores all the way up to traveling abroad to get it. In total, he bolted on 5,000 items--masks, statues, belt buckles, candlesticks, you name it--and coins valued at $15,000, covering literally every inch of the car, with exception of the license plate, wheels, lights and windows. Even though Ernie passed away in 1998, his California Fantasy Van still travels around as a street legal art car well known in that world and award-winning, most recently on show in mid-July at Baltimore's Artscape festival. I saw it on a sunny day when the brass, albeit gritty, managed to shine brightly enough to make it hard to discern exact objects. It was beautiful from afar, like looking at a golden ocean that seemed to change and move as you looked at it. But up close, it was even better, discovering the little things tucked in crevices, with my favorite being the "Do It Now" letters. It seemed appropriate with the idea of an art car, facing piles of brass and having the patience and time, the dedication. When is there a better time than now to do what gives you your kicks?

Also shown at Artscape were many other art cars, including Harrod Blank's Camera Van started in 1993 and finished in 1995 with the word "Smile" on top, working televisions in the back windows and sides, and featuring every Polaroid camera ever made (www.cameravan.com), Emily Duffy's Mondrian Mobile finished in 1996 in honor of the modern artist Piet Mondrian, and many others beyond explanation but completely captivating for the amount of attention and thought that went into them. I have often wondered when buying a car, why we are allowed only flat colors--why not patterns? I would guess looking at the art cars, it's about wear and tear and clearly having to live in a place without rain or any weather that would strip paint, rot wood or tarnish metal. But sometimes, obsession and a love of art overrides all and fortunately, it's all street legal.     

Kissing Failure Goodbye: The Story of Milton Hershey

Milton Hershey was a failure but he didn't let that sit heavy on his soul for long and therein lies the key to the success of a man who not only created a candy empire from nothing but some milk and cocoa beans but also set the bar for personal and corporate philanthropy. Born on a farm in 1857 near Derry Church, Pennsylvania, the only child of Henry and Fanny Hershey didn't finish school but found an early love of candy-making in 1871. After only four years apprenticing, he struck out on his own with a shop in Philadelphia, failed there and then twice more with businesses in New York City and Chicago. Undeterred, he returned to Pennsylvania in 1883 at 26 where he gave it just one more go, establishing a caramel company that proved the fourth time can be the charm. A resounding success, the Lancaster Caramel Company could have been the end of the story but Hershey wasn't a man who was afraid of risk, of trying again and that old adage, if at first you don't succeed, try, try again. 

After checking out German chocolate makers at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, Hershey decided to roll the dice in milk chocolate, selling his caramel business for $1 million ($24 million now) in 1900 and opening a factory in 1905 that is now the largest North American manufacturer of chocolate. His company over 100 years later employs over 13,000 people worldwide and has revenue of nearly $5 billion. A brand name known around the world, Milton's company not only owns all the Hershey brands from little Kisses to the world's largest chocolate bar but Reeses, Twizzlers, Almond Joy, Mounds, Heath, Milk Duds, Mr. Goodbar, Kit Kat, and Rolo and non-chocolate brands such as Jolly Rancher, Bubble Yum, Breath Savers and PayDay. When Hershey died in 1945, he was worth $60 million, a master of creating a brand name and mass production.

Hershey picked his hometown in Pennsylvania for his factory because the area was plentiful with clean water and dairy farms. But while he was lucky in that sense to know of an area to suit his company's needs, he made his own luck later on by creating a town that his workers actually wanted to stay in depsite being miles away from any major city. There was only a slight smell of sweet milk in the air during the early summer trip I took to the town he renamed Hershey whose downtown is based around the company's massive cream-colored factory. There is only one main street, called appropriately Chocolate Avenue, complete with Kiss-shaped street lights. Small well-built worker houses spread out from the downtown and just across railroad tracks from the factory is Hershey Park, opened in 1907 as an amusement park with a zoo for his workers to enjoy in off hours. It is now a massive modern complex with roller coasters and water slides, venues for bands to play, and a shopping center that sells all manner of Hershey products. He also built public schools and transportation systems that all put together allowed the town to avoid the trap of being a faceless factory feeder. As if all that was not enough to perk his employees' spirits up, Hershey decided to help the town through the Great Depression by building the 230-room Hotel Hershey, which overlooks the park on a high hill with outdoor rose gardens in honor of his wife who died young, a butterfly exhibit, and an interior modeled after an Egyptian bizarre. Completed in 1932, the hotel allowed Hershey to say he never had to lay off one of his employees during the rough times.

Hershey clearly knew how to keep his employees happy but he also knew how to give back to the world that had given him so much, as evidenced by the other major things he accomplished in his lifetime. Living in a modest mansion, closed now to the public, within a five-minute walk to the factory, he spent the majority of his vast fortune on helping others who grew up in similar circumstances than him. Married relatively late in 1898 and never able to have children of his own, he opened the Hershey Industrial School for Orphan Boys in 1909 and willed all his stock to the school when he died. The pre-kindergarten to Grade 12 school originally took in orphan boys after Milton and his wife Kitty noticed more boys were in orphanages at the time. Apparently, little girls ended up adopted by family members since they could prove useful around the house. With over $6 billion in endowments, the school today takes in both boys and girls from disadvantaged backgrounds, welcoming over 1,700 annually to a magnificant sprawling campus full of trees and bright green lawns. The school's trust also goes to other aims, including a $50 million medical college and hospital built just outside Hershey in 1963.

Milton Hershey came from a Mennonite background of modesty and hard work so when he died in 1945, he was placed at a simple granite grave site just north of the town, next to the graves of his wife and parents. No Hershey symbols or colors anywhere, no lists of his accomplishments, no signs of his success anywhere in the quiet cemetery that's next to a cornfield, out of site from the town and the noises of the park. In a new museum detailing Hershey's story on Chocolate Avenue, he is lauded for his innovations in manufacturing and his ability to inspire his workers, clearly a great man and that classic all-American story of rising from nothing. But in looking at his grave site, I realized Hershey was a great man because he realized life was about being brave and about sharing the success of that attitude with others. Life is sweet, why not make it for everyone if you can? 

Outest Beyond: North Carolina's Kitty Hawk and the Wright Brothers

The adjective "outer" is one of my favorite words; it always seems to peak my curiosity by denoting a situation that goes farther than normal or as the dictionary defines it, farther from the center. "Outer space" or "outer limits," places only a few lucky people get to go. The closest physical place with the word "outer" in it, barring paying millions to fly to the Moon, would be the Outer Banks, a 200-mile stretch of barrier islands off the coast of North Carolina that starts just south of the Virginian border. The land is buffeted by the wind, just deposited sand that some day will all be washed away by the waves of the ceaseless Atlantic Ocean and the hurricanes that sweep through on occasion.

The windy Outer Banks then seemed an appropriate place literally but also symbolically for two Midwestern men named Orville and Wilbur Wright to go beyond the bounds of gravity and bring the world into the modern era of flight, to test the horizon of what they knew then as travel. In Kitty Hawk, North Carolina on Kill Devils Hills with a great view of the ocean, the men on December 17, 1903 flew a one-man airplane, successfully adding distance in four separate runs to reach 200 feet at a height of just 10 feet above the ground. Not quite flight as we know it today, but these few minute runs made Orville and Wilbur the first people to fly the first sustained, powered and controlled flight ever.

Looking at a full-scale bronze model on site at a memorial park for the Wrights run by the National Park Service, the first flight must have been a scary if not exhilarating affair--Orville or Wilbur strapped in between two big wings with an attached heavy motor and God's grace. An indoor museum has a scale model along with information about the self-taught men and others who were firsts in the aviation field, including women such as Amelia Earhart known for being the first woman to fly solo over the Atlantic Ocean in 1932 but also  the lesser known Harriet Quimby, who was the first woman to earn a US pilot's license in 1911 and the first woman to fly across the English Channel in 1912. Both were Americans and both died in flight at young ages. The Wrights were luckier in a sense, not dying in the air but Orville in 1948 due to a heart attack and Wilbur in 1912 due to typhoid fever. Neither married or had any children so dedicated they were to their craft.  

The outdoor part of the Wright memorial focuses around a 60-foot granite Art Deco wing, dedicated in 1932 and  jutting up atop Kill Devils Hill where the men flew gliders down into a field, practice for the motorized flight that occurred at the bottom of the nubby hill. Busts of Orville and Wilbur are there along with a notation "In Commemoration of the Conquest of the Air, Wilbur and Orville Wright, Conceived by Genius, Achieved by Dauntless Resolution And Unconquerable Faith." Not a bad tagline for a few feet and a great idea. Standing on the memorial, facing a strong headwind and looking downward, the temptation is there to spread out your arms and fly. Being in love with airplanes and the ability to travel around the world, I could see how the men wanted to join the wind, sail out with that elated sense of freedom. Being first is good, but a real achievement is getting to do what you love, out ahead of everyone else.      

Stonewalling Drag: 40 Years of Walking the Rainbow

Forty years ago on June 28, 1969, a cadre of cops walked into the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, New York City and raided the joint, not because of drugs, mafia dealings, prostitution or the like, but for a reason that at the time seemed much more scandalous. The small bar was raided because some of the male patrons were dressed as women, while others loved members of the same sex. It was a gay bar and therein lied the trouble for the Public Morals Squad. But this time, the gay and lesbian men and women didn't file into paddy wagons quietly, this time they fought back when one patron being taken out roughly by the cops yelled at a swelling crowd, "Why don't you do something?!" What they then did was riot, throwing garbage cans and rocks at the inn, yelling at the police and shouting chants, or as one rioter said, it was the "freedom to at least show that we demanded freedom." While the riot ended a few hours later, the impact started a wave of momentum, spawning the activism that started with the first Gay Pride event in NYC in June 1970 and culminated in international Gay Pride events every June, including the June 14 event in downtown DC in the shadow of the Capital.  The birth of the Gay Liberation movement started with a Stonewall.

Much progress has been made since 1969 but much more is still needed given gay, lesbian, transgender and bisexual members of American society don't have equal rights, particularly marriage rights but also rights just to freely live their lives without being discriminated against. Some are loud and proud, carrying on the Stonewall torch, while others, especially in Washington DC, remain silent for fear that their gayness or alternative lifestyle will sink their careers. There are only three out members of Congress and relatively recent additions--Barney Frank of Massachusetts elected in 1981 and out in 1987,  Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin elected in 1999 who has no picture of her partner on her website, and Jared Polis of Colorado elected in 2008 as the first ever freshman, all Democrats in the House of Representatives. The first openly gay member of Congress was Gerry Studds, who served in the House as a Massachusetts representative from 1973 until 1997, came out publicly in 1983, and died in 2006 unable to give his pension benefits to his spouse of 15 years, Dean Hara. Again, that was just in 2006. 

Walking around the DC Pride Festival, the feeling was mixed, optimism about progress made so far but a resolute acknowledgement that more is needed. Many of the booths were disseminating information about gay-centric clubs, including tennis and rugby, about getting tested for AIDS because the disease is still prevalent, about services run by gay members of the community, about joining activist groups for all types in the gay community. But one booth in particular caught my eye, one about helping gay people come out at work. Out front there was a sign to indicate whether you had come out at work and while there were many stickers in the yes category, there were a few in the no category. I had to think that there should really be none in that section, that these little colored dots were an irrevocable sign that more needs to be done. So while there are celebrations and no worries about raids in the early morning hours anymore, there is still fear to speak out, even in America where freedom is a right. So I hope that the momentum begun at Stonewall snowballs further so that every day in different ways becomes Gay Pride, not just one day but many.         

The World Needs More Glitter and Goomie Bears: Hedwig and the Angry Inch

The world needs more glitter. It really does. It's a shame that instead of rain, it doesn't just glitter, all colors, trickling out of the skies. I would never have a bad day and those with any sort of playful nature wouldn't either. What's wrong with a little flash, sparkle, play? Absolutely nothing. Indeed I know John Cameron Mitchell gets it, my glitter soul mate, the man who penned Hedwig and the Angry Inch as a musical play that premiered in New York City in 1998 and went on to be a Sundance-favorite movie in 2001. He also starred in both productions as Hedwig herself, a German transgender rock singer with the most fabulous head of blazing blond feathered hair, a wardrobe part David Bowie from the 70s and part your dearest grandaunt. She's a bloody bleeding heart on her sleeve kind of gal played with incredible pathos and passion by the petite Mitchell, who despite edging up on 50, looks much like an innocent 15-year-old boy who you wouldn't think could wail in stilettos.

Hedwig and the Angry Inch starts in East Germany, where a young gay boy named Hansel lives for the American music sound and wants nothing more than to get out of the oppression of communism. Along comes a black US army serviceman named Luther Robinson who offers his Gummy Bears (or as Hansel pronouces them, "goomies"), then his dick, a wedding ring, and an airplane ticket to Kansas. Alas, Hansel needs to be a she to flee so he has an operation to remove his manhood, which goes horribly wrong and leaves him with his "angry inch" mound of flesh that is nothing more than a scar, neither man nor woman. But it was enough to get him now her to Kansas, where she is left by Luther in a trailer park. Before all is lost, Hedwig starts a rock band with some army wives called The Angry Inch, starts writing songs, but more importantly, meets a young Christian boy called Tommy Speck. They explore music together, with Tommy unaware of the oddity that is Hedwig but attracted in a crush kind of way. Onward they move, writing songs together with Hedwig crowning him Tommy Gnosis, with "gnosis" being the Greek word for knowledge. Tommy then leaves her, becomes a huge rock star with the songs they created together, and she tours with her own band, forever pissed off at his betrayal yet wishing for their union so she can be made whole, into one human.

What makes the movie is its unabashed emotion expressed visually, bright loud colors and uniqueness everywhere, complimented by punctuations of driving rock songs. Amid all the action, though, is heartache and deep questions about what defines us and how that definition can change for the worst when we are missing our other half. Hedwig is unabashedly unaware of the world outside of Tommy Gnosis, of the other people who clearly adore her like her bandmates. The movie plays this off with a touch of zany insanity and humor but a reproduction of the play at the Warehouse in DC with Chris French as Hedwig portrays this as more true drama with a touch of comedy. The sorrow is palatable in the small space where I sat so close I could have touched Hedwig's feathers.

French isn't even out of drama school at the University of North Carolina School of Arts (the whole cast hails from there) but he gives a stellar performance of over two hours, either monologuing or singing. He's petite but has a powerhouse voice with the correct German droll that never faltered on a lyric or a note or a comic delivery. It also was incredibly refreshing to see him disrobe through the show, arriving in a metallic black capecoat and ending up in the smallest of black shorts, unabashed and electric with a shockingly white body. There was a surprising maturity in his performance as he sang on about missing his half. Even throwing candy and actually spitting water on one audience member (who surprisingly didn't mind) became more shocking than gleefully funny in this environment. We were watching a breakdown we couldn't turn away from, so in love we all were with the pitious Hedwig who couldn't see she was remarkably whole without Tommy. I had only wished there was more glitter but then again, I always do.

So Close, Yet So Far: The Parkway Deli and Corned Beef Galore

Sometimes, when you miss a place, you try to recreate it in any way you can. I recently visited New York City and one of the many things I love about that city is the Jewish delis, mounds of the best corned beef or brisket piled onto soft marble rye bread, maybe with some sauerkraut or maybe just wrapped up in wax paper to eat in the park with a schmeer of mustard or Russian dressing. I definitely would not be able to be a vegetarian in that city. Recently, I visited what the local D.C. people call the best New York-transplant deli in the area, the Parkway Deli at 8317 Grubb Road in Silver Spring, Maryland. Located in a small shopping center surrounded by a typical suburban residential area, the deli was founded over 40 years ago and is family run going on its third generation. Open for breakfast, lunch and dinner, it's a small affair with a deli upfront where you can get sandwiches, bagels and desserts as well as snacks and drinks to go with them. In the back is a small restaurant where the dinner fare includes non-Jewish "gentile" food such as pasta and fried chicken and there is a pickle bar in case one spear is not enough.

People, gentile and alike, may come just for a meal but most come for the Jewish specialties on the menu, many of which you won't get at a typical restaurant, like baked stuff cabbage, chopped liver, borscht, kiska, knish, blintzes, latkes, kasha varnishkas, scotch kippers, whitefish salad, bagels and nova lox, and herring. And then there is the Parkway's particular specialty, matzoh ball soup. On a cold day recently when soup sounded fantastic, I went with the distinct salty sweet memory of the last time I had matzoh ball soup in my head. So I couldn't help but get a large order ($6.75) with a cold corned beef sandwich with sauerkraut ($7.75) and fried eggplant fries ($3.75). Alas, New York is New York and not Silver Spring, Maryland. While the food was edible, it wasn't particularly more special than what you could get at any deli shop. The corned beef sandwich was a bit dry with soggy bread, the fries were pretty greasy so the eggplant taste was lost, leaving the matzoh soup to be the best out of the three. Two big moist balls somewhat bland, with large chunks of white chicken meat that were a bit tough, soft carrot slices with some clear onion slices, all in a slightly salty chicken broth. Good but not great; calling up the brights lights of the Big Apple, not at all.     

Happy Where We Belong: The Edith Bouvier Beale Story

Aren't we all just a little bit insane? We think of insane people as those rolling around in a padded cell, uttering gibberish, but insanity is really about not living in reality, not seeing what's around you. Some because their brains are missing parts and they can't help it, while others, most of us, because we want to avoid the obvious, because sometimes it just hurts too much and it's the easiest thing to do to get by in life with as little fear as possible. Some watching the 1975 documentary Grey Gardens would think Edith "Little Edie" Bouvier Beale was insane or "eccentric," to be more polite. For close to 20 years, she lived in filth in a 14-room dilapidated mansion called Grey Gardens in posh East Hampton, New York, with her mother, Edith "Big Edie" Bouvier Beale. So dire were their circumstances that in 1971 the local health department raided their home that by then was overrun with feral cats and raccoons with a tree crashed into the roof, the inside ruined by leaks, mounds of garbage everywhere. A long dead car rusted in the yard; the famous enclosed garden had gone to seed. Ruined would be a mild word for the state of the house as well as the women. They were saved from eviction by Little Edie's cousin, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, who paid over $30,000 to clean up the place and remove about 1,000 bags of trash. Left with some familial backing, Little Edie remained there until her mother died in 1977. She then spent some time in New York City, Montreal, California and finally, Florida where she died alone in 2002. The house still stands, bought by former Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, and has been restored to some of its former glory albeit without Little Edie walking the grounds in a mink.

Born in 1917, Little Edie grew up rich and privileged with the aim of emulating her mother as a singer and dancer. With her unique New York society drawl, she was her mother's darling, never discouraged from her dreams even as Big Edie hid away at Grey Gardens, the only place where she could do her own singing and dancing without criticism from her husband. But as money began to get tight after the Great Depression and her parents' acrimonious separation in 1931, Little Edie was charged with finding a husband to support her upper crust lifestyle, gladly moving to New York City in 1947 at her father's request. But after failing to find a husband and make a dent in her show biz aspirations and with her mother aging alone at Grey Gardens, she returned to the home in 1952. A classic spinster charged with her mother's care, it was all down hill from there. Although she showed signs of it early on in her youth, she permanently lost her hair to alopecia, which spurred her to cultivate her unique fashion sense from ensembles involving head scarves and elaborate pins and painted on dark eyebrows, always accompanied by lipstick because a lady never left the house without lipstick. She and her mother were effectively abandoned by her father, who died in the 1950s, and her two younger brothers, all the men gone with the exception of the occasional handyman. All they had were cats and themselves.

The big question among all the scandal was why Little Edie stayed with her mother who was clearly afraid of the world outside of Grey Gardens, decidedly stubborn out of her own fear, unmovable even when her sons offered to move her down to Florida where she would be kept well. According to the recent HBO biopic with Drew Barrymore as the minked woman herself and Jessica Lange as Big Edie, her mother undermined her ability to weather the rough in life, essentially creating a moon that could only exist in her orbit, a classic narcissist who needed someone to be weaker and a lesser version of herself. And therein created the unbreakable co-dependent bond despite the fact that Little Edie would have flashes of anger at the life she could have lived. She could have walked out of the house at any time but what becomes clear from watching the films was that Grey Gardens was safe and free from the restrictions she faced in life, whether real or inflated by her mother, so why not stay and follow her mother's browbeaten logic? At Grey Gardens, there was nobody else to burst their bubble so they could both claim to be great singers even though in reality neither would have made it big. Or they could claim they could have their cake and eat it, too, even though they had no cake, only little containers of empty ice cream everywhere. Fear begets ignorance, ignorance begets insanity, blissful if you want it to be. For a taste of it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgdtBFHkzD8  

Little Edie once claimed, "My mother gave me a priceless life." Like her mother, it was all about the silver lining, at least for a while or in sum total, and indeed, it was a life you couldn't get in some store. As the HBO movie's theme song goes, "when we are together, we know we are where we belong." But in the end, maybe because she actually got out in the world, her final request was not to be buried next to her mother in East Hampton. She is now in Long Island's Locust Valley Cemetery with her brother, far from her "Mother Darling" as she used to call Big Edie. It's fitting in a way, symbolic of the tension that seemed to be needed to keep them together but in the end caused them to fall into ruin. At least, Little Edie found some sanity in the end and found her own space. Listening to the theme song from the HBO movie, possibly playing in their heads over their years together, I could see how they could hum along, forever together: http://www.library.yale.edu/musiclib/hsr/hsr_ind_brunswick_6517.html

Alice Down the Rabbit Hole: New York City in Two Days

Visiting New York City makes me feel like Alice falling down a rabbit hole into Wonderland where there are strange creatures and amazing sites to see. All it is missing is a big Cheshire cat grinning in a tree but I bet he is somewhere, if not around the Alice in Wonderland statue in Central Park. The city is unto itself, an experience where you can jump in and get absorbed and come out with plenty of memories. I have been to New York numerous times for work when all I saw was the inside of gray-carpeted anywhere offices or some generic hotel lobby. This time I vowed to see as much of the sights and sounds as I could in two days. Yes, two days to run around a little island called Manhattan only a few miles long and wide and packed with over 1.6 million people. An adventure in subway riding.

I first tackled the southern part of the island with a walk around the World Trade Center site where there is really nothing to see exception construction, no two buildings running upward majestically anymore. The site is being turned into a memorial to 9/11 but it still feels like a gaping wound, a tooth roughly pulled out leaving a void space. Unfortunately, with all the construction, there is no on-site memorial as there had been in the past but the feeling remains, an emptiness amid a flurry of activity and buildings. Nearby is Wall Street and the New York Stock Exchange, symbolic of the American greed mentality that spurred the Trade attacks. Since 9/11, a large American flag has hung front and center on the exchange, reminding folks that the spirit is still alive and that given the year Wall Street has had, we can survive anything. The symbol of Wall Street since 1987, the big bronze charging bull by Arturo Di Modica, continues that spirit of aggressive optimism. A bull in financial terms is an investor looking to make money, while its opposite is the bear, who represents the cautious investor. Funnily enough, the statue, made for over $300,000, is for sale and only on loan to the city. No buyers yet and I doubt any Wall Street trader or investment banker could afford it now. Nearby the bull is the tip of Manhattan where you can take a boat to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, yet more symbols of American optimism and the reminder of the waves of immigrants that came in the 1900s and made New York what it is. The copper statue dedicated in 1886 is so tiny standing from shore it takes a while to comprehend how massive it is up close, a whole 151 feet high and 305 feet with the base. Facing the other skyscrapers in Manhattan, the statue is bright green due to corrosion, which only adds to the awe factor of a strong-faced woman with arm resolutely raised to shine out the light of freedom. I could only think of the millions of immigrants who saw this first American sight, elated and overcome, they had arrived. At least 100 million Americans are said to be able to trace their roots back to someone passing through the Ellis gates. If it hadn't been a freezing cold April morning, I would have stared at her all day.

Then on up through to Central Park with sights on the way including Chinatown, Little Italy and Times Square. Like most of New York, all of these sights are unique, walk a few blocks either way and the flurry dissipates but while in it, you're immersed. Chinatown with its little trinket shops and sesame balls and Little Italy with its just right cannolis and old men with cigars drinking cappuccinos out on the sidewalks, and Times Square with the neon lights everywhere and massive advertisements for Broadway shows. At these places the city is alive with a heartbeat, each unique in tempo to the location, but only in New York. This barrage of noise settles down when you hit the John Lennon memorial on the western side of Central Park where nearby the Beatles singer was shot and killed in 1980 outside the Dakota apartment building. I was struck at how simple the site was albeit in an expanding sun sign, a quiet reminder of man who asked us to imagine, a simple word in the middle of it, a simple idea. 

Along up the park on its eastern side is the Metropolitan Museum of Art, my most favorite museum in New York City and the world so far. I am an old school fan of art, especially medieval art and art of the masters, and this place is world class in terms of range and sheer quantity. Van Goghs were rampant, Vermeers, Sargents, Picassos, Seurats, Monets, Rembrandts, Renoirs, a whole catalog of fine art. The Met goes on and on with exhibits of all kinds of centuries with the best being the medieval rooms and artifacts they have, including an armor room complete with actual size knights. In and of itself, it is worth a good part of a day but alas, I had two more world class museums to see--the Guggenheim just up the way from the Met and the New York Museum of Modern Art down just south of the park.

The Guggenheim is famous almost more for its design that what's inside, the famous toilet bowl sitting squat since 1959, built by Frank Lloyd Wright and just restored in 2008. Unfortunately, they don't allow pictures inside or rather only on the interior looking up to its four floors, which run consecutively like a spiral or as you may imagine a toilet flushes. I was surprised at how small it was inside and how little art there was to see, displayed along the spiral but also in annexes. It is based on the private collection of Solomon Guggenheim, who apparently had so much art he needed an ever-expanding space to keep it. In it are works focused mostly on the modern--Piet Mondrian, Marc Chagall, Wassily Kandinsky, Pablo Picasso. But really in the end, it is about the building, 50 years standing and still unique no matter what's inside. The MoMA is more a traditionally designed museum but holds vastly more examples of the modern masters, particularly overloaded with Picassos but also Warhols, Klimts, Kahlos, de Koonings, Rothkos, Chagalls, Van Goghs, Seurats, Pollocks galore and one massive Monet painting of a water reflection that spanned a twenty foot wall. And the best part, it is free on Friday nights if you can weather the crowds on the micro escalators that take you up to the multiple floors. It was the most crowded museum I went to in New York but it just shows how many people know as I did that it was worth the shuffling and nudges.

New York is not just museums of art. Another fantastic place for kids and adults is the American Museum of Natural History on the western side of Central Park. Like the Met, it is an older museum, founded in 1869 with a great painted hallway in homage to President Theodore Roosevelt who loved the outdoors. Packed within its walls is a bewildering range of things to stare at, particularly its realistic displays of animal scenes and the evolution of man exhibit where you can stand next to two little ape-ish humans that are so real it would be the stuff of nightmares for kids who end up staring eye to eye with them. Then there are the dinosaur bones, all the major ones with the biggest teeth, all built life size enough to make you realize humans would not have stood a very good chance back then. Also displayed are an array of cultural exhibits, Mayans, Asian, Amazonian, other rooms where you do doubletakes at how realistic the displays are. It's an educational funhouse at any age. 

The only way I could have seen all of what I did was due to the New York subway, taking me everywhere in no time and surprisingly not as crowded as you would expect but full of an array of people types, its own museum in a way of real life for folks in this city. While definitely grungy and with a rat or two running near the third rail, it was full of things to see even before you got above ground. I particularly loved the tile mosaics at some stops, possibly done by the same person but always wild and worth a brief stop to look at. Then there were the musicians ranging from an Asian man with a flute, a full fledged rock group, and a singer who I swear mimicked Whitney Houston to a tee. Entertainment in the nether world. But the best moment I had was sitting on a subway one late night with only one other college-aged guy in the car with me, staring at this circling bit of feather that appeared to have a life of its own. He and I kept thinking it was a moth or something alive but the doors would open and it would settle to the floor, only to continue once the train moved ahead and the air currents picked up. It was magical  and we shared that Alice in Wonderland moment, quietly staring at the little bit of joy under a ton of concrete and millions of people. I am surprised she didn't stay down in the hole forever but then again, you can always go back, just an Amtrak ride away for me.      

Precision in Paint: Gregory Ferrand's Art

I was always a kid who liked to color. Something about all the little sticks in that Crayola box, the freedom of choice. But while other kids enjoyed scribbling all over, I enjoyed the challenge of coloring in the lines, the precision of following them slowly, a shape colored in perfectly. This attention to detail never translated into my own artwork but rather a love of others' artwork, fostered by my mother who took my sister and me to museums from an early age. Whenever I walk through a museum and see something I like, I always have to step up close and see the lines the artist used, the thickness of the brush, the delicate touch he or she used to paint the canvas, almost touch my nose to it so I can be immersed in the detail. A painting is a sum of the lines, a multitude coming together to make a whole, real genius when put in the right hands.

My favorite local DC artist Gregory Ferrand at a recent show, La Vida Intensa at the Hillyer Art Space, showed how he plays with lines, some sharp and some shadowed, in an exhibit focused on people's faces, mainly in DC places but also a beach and a Mexican town. I saw Ferrand's acrylics on canvas last summer at a massive Artomatic show, fell in love then, but I had to wait until the new show to see his paintings up close again. What I had forgotten was how addicted to lines he is as I am, not just straight lines but all lines, lines in faces, in pants, in a sunshade, in a shirt collar, in a cat's neck. He's a precise man and I could only marvel up close at his paintings at how he could hold his hand so steady to draw all these lines. Fortunately, I was able to buy one of his works, The State of Things, with a mournful woman with dark eyebrows holding a cat by the phone. A simple tableau but also a complex study in lines, especially the dirty blue background covered in black scrollwork.

Ferrand, who is a young friendly guy whose wife had a baby just days before the show, didn't write any explanation for the composition or title to go with the painting. I was tempted to ask but I realized I don't want to know as it might ruin why I bought, why I had to buy it. I knew I wanted one of his artworks and I was tempted to commission something but as luck would have it, the painting has everything I would have wanted. If I didn't know better, I would say we had some psychic connection where he channeled the key things I wanted in a composition--a bird (to represent my love of travel and to symbolize my departed mother who loved birds), a cat (to represent my solitary nature and my cat Gordo), the color red (to represent my favorite color indicating luck and passion), and a pattern (to represent my love of mental activity and visual stimulation). Besides the symbols, there is the literal--the idea in the painting that this woman is waiting to go out and be free, awaiting a call on an old phone, symbol of time passed, and the held cat with the cage-like background a symbol of restricted freedom. And yes, the sadness in the woman's face with Ferrand's characteristic upturned eyebrows, the sadness of waiting to be free. Not the most upbeat painting but then again, a great reminder to get out and about if only to go see artists like Ferrand.              

Efficiently Intelligent: Thomas Jefferson's Monticello

While this year's President's Day was focused on Abraham Lincoln since it's the 200th anniversary of his birth, I decided instead to celebrate the long weekend by focusing on another famous president, one I have come to believe is the greatest US president to date, looking at his home called Monticello in Charlottesville, Virginia. Our third president most known for being the primary drafter of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 at the young age of 33, Thomas Jefferson lived on top of an 850-foot high peak with amazing panoramic views in almost every direction. The "Little Mountain" house, completed in stages from 1768 to 1809 with an Italian name, is a surprisingly small affair considering the size of the brain and literally the man who lived inside (he was 6 foot 2 inches). It is essentially a man's large apartment shaped like the sun with rooms fanning out from a great entry room. Spread out horizontally are two L-shaped buildings attached to the main building's basement level and partially wedged into the earth. The wings housed his black cook, stables, the kitchen, the bath, wine and beer casks, and storage. Also on the property, although long gone by now, were slave houses, a dairy, a foundry and other buildings to run the house and on-site fields, built like steppes down the hill from the main house. Just down the hill from the house is the Jefferson family cemetery where he is buried under a simple obelisk grave. Even on a cold winter's day, the site is wonderful to walk around for the views, $13 per adult for a ride up the hill from the tourist center and for entry into the house itself. 

Monticello, however, has three downsides. While able to look into the wings' rooms, the outside has almost nothing of Jefferson's era about it, very little recreation of the time when the farm was fully up and running and so it is hard to imagine living there way back then. Sally Hemings' house, for instance, was along Mulberry Row parallel to the southern L-wing but since it hasn't been recreated, you can't get a sense of her slave life, which included being a mulatto mistress to Jefferson and siring at least one of his children, or so historians think. Secondly, while you can tour the house with a guide, you are not allowed to linger in the 30-minute walk-through and all of the upper story rooms, including the dome room, are closed to the public. The interior is also a tad worse for the wear with little if any artifacts from his life or anything specifically he owned other than a few books. That lack of items is due in part to the Jefferson family having to sell his estate to pay off some steep debts he had when he died. And finally and sadly, no pictures are allowed in the house at all.

But these are trifling things for what I really saw when I entered the house and was surrounded by expressions of a man far more interesting that I imagined, even beyond his other jobs besides president--French ambassador, vice president, Virginia representative and governor, and University of Virginia founder. His house embodies a simple man with a refreshingly quirky soul who embraced the Enlightenment despite being thousands of miles away from his European brethren. His three idols personifying wisdom were British men of science and philosophy, Isaac Newton, Francis Bacon, and John Locke--no wonder when you enter the house in the front room, there is a two-story museum of sorts or so Jefferson had hoped by covering the walls with American artifacts from fossils to Native American art to maps of US territories. Once called cluttered, the collection was supposed to engage his guests' minds, something that Jefferson did throughout his life. In a homage to science itself, a massive clock he designed sits above the front door, which on the outside looks normal enough denoting the hour but on the inside, not only tells the time with minutes but also the day of the week through weighted balls that run up and down the wall. The main rooms, including his bedroom, living room, and dining room, feed off of this main room, built with a conscious effort to maintain interior light and foster energy efficiency through banks of large windows, an octagon design to reflect heat, skylights and specially crafted doors. To show how close he was to his daily intellectual endeavors, his bed where he died at age 83 in 1826 is crafted in the wall separating his private study and library from his dressing room. Above his bed is another clock, placed there since Jefferson never got up late and wanted to wake up knowing what time it was. I got the impression this man didn't want to waste a second of his life on earth. 

Monticello's rooms are not large, the furniture spare, Jefferson clearly did not like to waste space and did not need much of it because in many ways, space was ever-expanding in his head as he filled it with knowledge. His "essay in architecture" set on a hill is an example of a great mind who appreciated the world he lived in and lived to explore it, digesting information about politics but also languages, archeology, and natural sciences among others and then applying it, a man of his time but willingly striving to go beyond his era until he heard the last tick of his beloved clock.   

Charles' Jacket: The Civil War Battles of Manassas, Virginia

Sometimes things can be more than they appear. A simple field made dusky yellow in winter, 25 miles south of Washington DC, seems like any other expanse of land mowed down to make room for civilization with a tree or two left to provide shade for possibly horses or cows. Nothing special can really be seen standing on a hill that flows about a mile down and up to another hill. My first thought is that this is a great area for sledding, perfect pitch downward with no rocks and padded down grass, just a smooth path bordered by stands of red pine trees. But this place is not for merriment. The land has stayed well trimmed because it's the Manassas National Battlefield Park in Virginia where the first significant battles of the Civil War happened. The Battles of Manassas as they were called by Confederate soldiers, or the Battles of Bull Run as they were called by Union soldiers, happened in the summers of 1861 and 1862. In both cases, Confederate soldiers showed they were not going to join the Union easily and decisively drove Union troops back, the start of an all-out war that ended in 1865 with over 600,000 dead.

Out of the battle came famed Confederate General Thomas Jackson, who is known by his nickname "Stonewall" bequeathed on him at the site, which is now marked with a massive statue of him staring down the direction the Union troops came with an inscription of how he got it: As said by Confederate General Barnard Elliot Bee when Jackson and his troops appeared as reinforcements, "There is Jackson standing like a stone wall. Let us determine to die here, and we will conquer. Follow me." Jackson would die years later from a battle wound, while Bee followed his own words and fell at the first battle of Manassas.

Also within the park is the Henry House, a simple two-story weathered wood building recreated after being blown to bits by the fighting and sadly closed to the public. Around the house is a grave marker for men who died in the battles as well as a family plot where Judith Henry is buried, the only civilian killed in the first battle. Down Henry Hill at the base of the rise to Buck Hill is the Stone House, also closed to the public, which housed wounded men and somehow survived the bullets and cannons to still stand. Among other landmarks scattered around the park, down a few miles on the busy Route 29, is a grave of 260 Confederate soldiers, all but two unidentified. 

The park headquarters on Henry Hill house a museum with a great enactment of the two battles with red and blue lights to show you how each group of troops moved back and forth against each other until the defeated Union soldiers fled in a surprisingly organized line. One of the exhibits of memorabilia is a remarkably small wool jacket worn by Charles Norris, a 17-year old Virginian Confederate who lost his life at the first battle from a single wound to the shoulder. The bullet or shrapnel hole can be seen in the jacket, which shows no other signs of trauma, perfectly clean and bloodless. He was one of the 460 Confederates killed in the first battle to the Union's 387 men killed. The second battle saw 1,300 killed and 7,000 wounded Confederates as well as around 10,000 Union killed or wounded.

These numbers may seem small compared to the war's total but a glimpse of the jacket in the context of how small the actual battlefield was brought to my mind how brave both sides must have been, running down en masse to clash with each after spying the enemy on the opposing hill. It reminded me of a staged fight where two dogs are put in a ring, no escape until one concedes or dies. Yet dogs don't have that sense of conviction in a cause that makes you forge ahead into essentially man-to-man combat knowing full well you may be taking your very last steps. The ground in this sense is more hallowed than just being historically significant. It's a reminder of the spirit of bravery that isn't uniquely American but decidedly human. No need to embellish that with a mass of monuments, just let it linger invisibly yet tangibly in a field in Virginia, more than it appears.        

Where We End Up: The Grave of F. Scott Fitzgerald

Isn't it funny where we end up? Often when I pause to think about where I am at a given moment, I'm amazed at how all the events, people, places, things experienced over my life have all led me to this one exact spot. And always, when I think about it, I chuckle because I never would have guessed it, always surprising. Life is like that, uncertain but always forward, like watching a leaf go down a stream, falling down waterfalls, getting caught in eddies, drifting sometimes or speeding down the middle. Where will we go until inevitably we stop? We never, ever know, but then again, that's the fun in it--the ride, from beginning to end, with all its surprises.

I had these thoughts while looking at the grave of Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, or F. Scott Fitzgerald, the heralded novelist of the early 20th century who is most known for The Great Gatsby published in 1925. He's buried at the St. Mary's Church cemetery in Rockville, Maryland. It's a small cemetery, triangular in shape since major roadways run by it, people speeding off to the local mass of suburban shopping malls that surround it in every direction. Fitzgerald was laid to rest here with his family after dying in Hollywood, California, in 1940 at the age of 44 from a heart attack tied to his excessive drinking. With him in the grave is his wife, Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald, who died in 1948 at the age of 48 in a fire after spending much of her later life in insane insylums and her last decade away from him. Their only child, a girl called Frances Scott Fitzgerald who was born in 1921, is also there, laid to rest in 1986. On the grave were left coins and someone had placed a pen and pencil across it, acknowledging one of America's best novelists.

Fitzgerald and Zelda personified the hey-day of the 1920s, or what he termed "The Jazz Age" before the Great Depression, when the young and rich lived to excess and celebrity began to take hold. The era of being famous for being a personality as much as for your contribution to society had begun, with the two as the poster children. Not that Fitzgerald lived with it, conscious-free. The Great Gatsby's central character, the Midwesterner Nick Carraway, idolized the wealth of the Long Island rich but also was critical of the immorality that comes about when you live a life above the rest of the world as characters Tom and Daisy Buchanan did. Enter in the title character, Jay Gatsby, another well-off man who pines for Daisy and is ultimately killed by a lower class man who was avenging his wife, the secret lover of Tom who was killed in a hit-and-run accident by Daisy and not Gatsby. All the excess is in the end a big waste and Nick returns to the Midwest dejected.

The Great Gatsby did not catch fire until after Fitzgerald's death and ultimately what had started as a very promising career with his only four novels praised (Gatsby, This Side of Paradise, Tender is the Night and The Beautiful and Damned with The Last Tycoon published posthumously) turned out to be about promise unrealized and a decline into alcohol. He essentially lived his books and like Nick, ended up back with his family, buried not in some vaulted cemetery visited by many and among the rich. And so appropriately on his grave is the epitaph taken from the last line of The Great Gatsby: So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. Where we all end up is the past but where we'll each end up in the end, we never know and maybe it's for the best, in case we end up by mini malls.    

The Goracle on the Hill

On an icy winter day in a White Palace high on a hill in the capital of the strongest nation in the world, men and women representing many tribes gathered in a golden room and surrounded a pink oracle dressed in black. They asked him about the future of our people, our nation, our world, with worried questions and concerned eyes, an anxious crowd noting every word. The oracle, eyes straight forward and shoulders squared, sat at a simple wooden table and spoke of horrible things--rising waters, people fleeing, the earth dying. The future was grim if we kept on our path, he said, dire indeed if we did not change our ways. Life as we know it would end.

This oracle was not the famous Oracle of Delphi, a Greek woman named Pythia who gave prophecies inspired by Apollo in the 8th century B.C. This was Nobel Prize winner and former US vice president Al Gore speaking recently at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing I attended, sitting a mere three feet from me, so close I could see him sweating and the pinky hue of his perfectly shaved face and coiffed (dyed) hair. He was speaking on his favorite topic--climate change and what the US should do to reduce greenhouse gas emissions domestically and internationally. His one-man show came as a new presidency has vowed to pursue a goal to reduce emissions while working abroad to create a global scheme. President Barack Obama's views were an about-face from the last eight years under the Bush administration, which saw hesitation and delay in reducing emissions over fear of this action's impact on the economy and global competitiveness of American companies. Climate issues went from the back to the front seat on January 20, with the current economic recession being seen as a way to green up our energy use and boost our economy through green jobs. It's a world that welcomes Gore, whose nickname has become the Goracle for having warned about climate change for years even when he was only one of many members in the House and Senate.

But this was not always the case for the 60-year-old Tennessean with his distinctive slow Southern drawl. After giving up a 25-year career in politics that ended when he lost his Democratic presidential bid in 2000, Gore starred in 2006's An Inconvenient Truth, a 2007 Academy Award-winning movie about the impacts of climate change and what our continued production of emissions would do to the world, namely getting rid of some prime coastal property due to catastrophic temperature rises. Debate that had been relegated to scientific circles burst out into the mainstream as people chose sides, some believed Gore and his predictions while others called him hysterical. The issue was almost unarguable since we haven't been recording temperatures since the dawn of time and we don't have temperatures for millennia to come. How can we then say what this stage in Earth's evolution means and whether we caused it, not to mention what will happen in the future? Nevertheless, sides were taken. At the time, the Republican head of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, James Inhofe, called global warming "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people." That committee is now chaired by Senator Barbara Boxer, a Californian Democrat who is spearheading the effort in her chamber to craft a climate bill. How times have changed. For this movie and his ongoing efforts, Gore received the Nobel for raising awareness on the issue--whether right or wrong in the end, people have and are listening to the Goracle.   

This shift in thinking headed by the Goracle comes as a bit of irony when you consider the history of the Delphi oracle that Gore takes his name from. Pythia derived her name from Python, the earth-dragon of Delphi. A serpent, Python was born by Gaia, the original earth goddess, and was ultimately slain by Apollo, a god who took over her oracle and made the temple of Delphi his own. Apollo was the god of the sun and the arts as well as a god who could bring deadly plague. He was also twin brother to Artemis, the goddess of the hunt. Both in their own ways are symbols of man's connection to nature but with a distinct vein of mastery of it, gods that people revered in hopes to stave off nature's wrath and curry its favor. This mindset set us off on a long path that led to our current state of disconnection from nature and the questioning now of how far we have taken a separation that clearly is non-existent when we see polar caps melting at the same time we send up clouds of automobile smog. The only questions that remain are whether we still believe in oracles and if we really want to listen. 

Being There: The Obama Inauguration

How often do we get to witness history in person? I was thinking back through the 34 years I have been alive and tried to think of any historic event I had witnessed. I couldn't think of anything, maybe a sad comment on things but I can't be everywhere as much I would love to be. I have, however, been alive during historic events such as the fall of the Berlin Wall but my generation doesn't have much on the list of big events, especially American historical events tied to our politics. After being alive to see the first female House speaker and the first woman to be seriously considered for the presidency over the past few years, today on January 20, I watched in person the inauguration of the first black American president, Barack Obama.

What I will remember most about the event is the hordes of people covering the Washington DC Mall like a colored blanket representing pretty much every ethnic background I could think of, something I've never seen on the long stretch of land even on the worst tourism day. All wrapped up in warm clothes for the chilly winter weather, they stood watching the massive teletrons as Obama gave his inauguration speech, quietly but undoubtedly with a sense of excitement and happiness as his voice echoed confidently out. It was a big love-in forty years after hippies stormed the Mall to protest the Vietnam War as we all watched history happen. As the ceremony ended, people broke out in smiles, some dancing around and some even hugged each other.  Nobody pushed, nobody moved around in a hurry, nobody was yelling or fighting. At least for a few hours, people reveled in the moment and like myself, would revel in it for years to come. Finally, I can say I was there. 

Prisoners of the Past: Confederacy in Southern Maryland

Being devoid of freedom. I can't imagine a worse fate. Nothing but monotony, walled in physically and mentally, passing time in minutes that seem like eons, waiting for nothing. A true nightmare. It's a phobia felt by many but I feel it acutely, loving to travel and being able to damn well do what I want, when I want. This may be a personality trait or maybe it's because I am an American with a Bill of Rights giving me plenty of freedoms that go with the territory, so to speak. So it's hard to imagine that once upon a time in this country during the Civil War, there were Americans imprisoned by Americans.

On the skinny piece of sand called Point Lookout on the farthest tip of the southern Maryland shore in St. Mary's County, over 52,000 Confederate soldiers and civilians were held by the Union at a prison camp. Nothing of the camp remains except a sign on the side of a long winding road bordered by tall stands of red pine that run up to the edges of the peninsula at the confluence of the Potomac river and Chesapeake Bay. On a winter day, the state park encompassing Point Lookout was dreary with rain-clogged clouds and quiet with the whisper of the pines. Supposedly, since nearly 4,000 men, women and children died here from 1863 and 1865, there are ghosts, folks from all over the South that never made it back home, penned in by a wooden fence and given simple tents to beat out the wind off the water. The park's website notes that the 8% death rate was actually better odds than fighting in the field. But dying of exposure, starvation and disease, I am sure, would never have been seen as a blessing in disguise for the men led down to the Point, which arguably could have been called the Point of No Return for many.

Just outside the park is a brand new memorial for the Confederate fallen. Opened in September 2008, the site is comprised of a circle of flags representing the southern states of the people held at the camp. And in the center are bricks with the names of the people lost topped with a bronze statue of a bearded man representing a typical Confederate soldier. I noticed the site is monitored by a video camera as it notes on a large sign. My first thought was that people against the Dixie flag would come to spray paint or the like, peeved at a site that honors those who fought to continue slavery. This cautious attitude about the past I could see as well when I noticed the Confederate flag flying at the far back of a nearby mowed fenced area where there are two older obelisks built by the state of Maryland and the US government over 70 years ago to honor the dead. The US flag flies at the front of that site, a reminder in many ways of who won the war and that while its neighboring state of Virginia seceded from the Union, Maryland never did in the end. Apparently, a bit of a civil war continued on into the 20th century involving the right to remember those who lost the war and whether the Confederate flag should be out front or not.

According to the builders of the new monument, the federal government put up quite a stink over the past 15 years when the descendants of those imprisoned asked and were denied the ability to put up a statue and a plaque with the missing POW veteran names from the existing monuments. "Rather than bow down and abide by these unconstitutional acts of tyranny, on April 9th, 2003 (our Appomattox, but we won this one!), we bought our own land, have now raised nearly two hundred thousand dollars to construct our own memorial to our ancestors and have erected our own POW statue where our ancestors' battle flag can freely fly 24/7/365. During & after today’s ceremony you will be able to witness FREEDOM of speech as the true history of Pt. Lookout can/will be told," or so the builders said on their website for the day they dedicated the memorial. So the site not only flies the Confederate flag but also the flags of South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, Kentucky, and Missouri. Also flying is the flag of Maryland, underscoring that while 115,000 men joined armies in the Civil War of which 85,000 went to the Union side, the others went Confederate. President Abraham Lincoln was so concerned about the state staying in the Union that he used US troops to guard Baltimore and ensure a pro-Union legislature and governor. He also jailed pro-South legislators, including Baltimore's mayor.

The memorial reminded me that the South still is ever present even in this modern era and the Civil War, the war among Americans, still rages on, festering in some like a wound that just won't heal. It's a bizarre concept to me that people almost two centuries removed would want to stay imprisoned in an era long over. But I can see the intent, to honor those fallen, regardless of the side, to make sure they are remembered even if they were the underdogs against a powerful federal government backed by states that were to be more well-off than they were without slavery. Someone scrawled on a notebook at the memorial site this: "God bless these men who died for what they believe in." While some may say what they believed in was  morally wrong and certainly dated in this day and age, it's still worth the note that they believed in something.      

Texas, Where You Find It

Sometimes the best place for food pops up in the weirdest places. Living in Maryland, I think of crab cakes or maybe a touch of Southern food but not Texan ribs drenched in sauce with a fat slice of toasted bread, creamy coleslaw and tomato-y sweet baked beans. But apparently, Maryland and Texas can be combined, at least in the BBQ place called Texas Ribs and BBQ (a literal name if there ever was one) in the southern Maryland town of Clinton at 7701 Old Branch Avenue. Located in area surrounded by malls and suburbia, the honeywood-paneled restaurant is a simple ode to the western culture, with a painted picture of John Wayne in cowboy garb and the interior sporting a massive pair of Texas longhorns. Nothing fancy because the focus is on the meat.

The place specializes in "dry rub" and smoking pork rib meat four to six hours until tender, while the beef brisket is cooked for 16 hours. The restaurant even won the Maryland State BBQ Championship in 2008. And for a very reasonable price of $12 given the accolades, you can get six beef ribs, a side of beans, a side of coleslaw, and two pieces of Texas toast. A side of brisket was $6. They also give you a choice of hot and mild BBQ sauce and a sweet vinegary sauce to add at will. And man, is it good, so good, I ate too fast and couldn't eat half of the meal. Breakfast brisket, sounds good to me. While seafood remains my food of choice given my New England background, BBQ will always come a close second, something about the dark burned flavor of it likely reviving a long dormant cavewoman thing in me. Or maybe it's the simplicity of foods like this, best as is, right from the source into your mouth, connecting with your food because you can see where it came from and hold it in your hands, visceral and literal, back to olden times when you didn't have Safeways, just a fire and your hands. We've lost a connection with food but at least we can find it out there.       

Christmas at Night and Other Thoughts

At 1665 North Portal Drive NW in Washington DC near the Silver Spring circle, there's a house made of light. Or I should say lights, thousands spread over about an acre lot. It's Christmas and the bishop of the United House of Prayer for Hill People wants to share the joy with his neighborhood or anyone who happens to see the bright colorful lights from a distance and wonder what the heck is going on. Walking the display from end to end, I pretty much saw every homage to Christmas, including candy canes, 27 Christmas trees, a real-size Nativity scene, 550,000 lights, glittery packages, white angels, and a snowman or two. All it needed was Bing Crosby crooning "White Christmas" in the background. And snow, there wasn't any snow, but the night I went it surely was completed with the freezing cold of winter.

Seeing this display at night as I watched my breathe smoke not only raised questions about energy bills in the logical part of my brain. It also raised a feeling of peace and calm in me, standing alone staring at it all. It was a weird sensation given all the hectic colors and mass chaos on the lawn, blaring out for the world to see. I realized the sensation hearkened back to when I was a child and I used to sneak downstairs Christmas Eve night to look at the lights on the tree. The calm before the storm, before the shredding sounds of unwrapping and the exclamations of delight and the always disappointing end, the denouement and sigh as you realize another Christmas is over and there's nothing more for you under the tree. I remember certain Christmases when I could look beyond the tree and see the snow fall, highlighted in silhouettes by our outdoor flood lights. And the smell, the smell of evergreen, hearty and spicy and full of sap. Cold outside and delightfully warm inside in my flannels. This sensation is why I like Christmas, not the gifts and the giving, not the cookies and mulled wine, not eight maids a'milking or five golden rings, not even Santa's white beard or his little cute elves. I like the feeling of it and that's why I sat up at 3 am to sit for just a little while longer in it. And that's the point of it all, not the things that go with it but the feeling of peace on Earth. Always to be cherished, at least once a year.