Play Those 78s

Sept 12, 2012

One more clutch of central-northeastern Wisconsin pictures. While visiting Appleton, I looked around two antique stores. One mostly specializing in fine vintage furniture, the other an “antique mall” with an endless variety of intriguing old stuff. I found some postcards there at reasonable prices.

At the fine vintage furniture store, the Harp Gallery, I saw more old record players than I’ve ever seen in one place. Somehow, I had to take pictures. These are only three of the dozen or so.

 

I didn’t make notes, so I can’t comment on the exact models. But maybe it’s enough to know that people listened to their “Yes, We Have No Bananas” 78s on machines like these.

Handcuff Harry and Tailgunner Joe

 Sept 10, 2012

I knew this was coming up, but I'd forgotten that Saturday marked the exact day when Jimmy Carter bested Herbert Hoover as the president with the longest life after his presidency. As the Atlantic article points out, September 8, 2012, was President Carter's 11,544th day as former President Carter, or nearly 32 years. Here's hoping he has some more post-presidential days.

The History Museum at the Castle in Appleton, Wisconsin, started out as a Masonic Temple, but now focuses on local history. Such as the previously mentioned Harry Houdini, master of escape and self-promotion, who has a whole floor devoted to him and his illusions. How is it that the former Erik Weisz (Ehrich Weiss) called Appleton his hometown? "Houdini came to America as a four-year-old boy in 1878," the museum web site says. "His parents moved him and his brothers to Appleton because of a job opening. Houdini's father, Meyer Samuel Weiss, became the community's first rabbi."

But the young Ehrich Weiss left Appleton with his family when he was only seven, after his father lost his job, moving to New York. So "hometown" is a bit of a stretch, but apparently Houdini claimed the town as his own, even asserting that he'd been born there instead of Budapest. Still, Appleton's a good place for such an exhibit, and the museum does well with it, featuring photos of Houdini during his performances, but also more casual shots; handbills and posters; and plenty of Houdini equipment, such as handcuffs and shackles and confining spaces, like a milk can and a simulated Chinese water torture box.

Various exhibits discuss how some of the escapes were done, which apparently upset some current illusionists -- such as David Copperfield, who owns a lot of Houdini artifacts himself -- as if all the information was somehow not on the Internet. There was also an exhibit, complete with seance table, explaining how some of those tricks were done, just as spiritualist debunker Houdini did during his lifetime.

The museum isn't all Houdini. The lower floors feature exhibits about local history, including an assortment of machines made or used in the area. One was a genuine early 20th-century Linotype machine. Considering how ubiquitous they once were, it's odd how few of them I've run across. Maybe I'm not looking in the right museums.

Right at the foot of the stairs in the basement is a bronze bust in a clear display case. "People ask us why we keep a bust of Joseph McCarthy," our guide said, anticipating the question. "Like him or not, he's part of our history." Sounds reasonable; he was born in Grand Chute, near Appleton, and is buried at St. Mary's Parish Cemetery in Appleton, which wasn't on my press tour. No point in pretending he didn't exist.

Bergstrom-Mahler and Its Paperweights

Sept 9, 2012

Whenever I see glasswork that's a few centuries old -- and that's always in a museum -- I wonder, how could those items survive that long? Maybe they could under the care of a museum, but the likes of  enameled beakers, covered goblets and engraved tumblers from 17th- and 18th-century Germany (for example) were made to be used, even if they were expensive items in their time. Gravity has been continuous every moment since then, and so has the unpredictable motion of people, animals or waves of energy, such as when your city is bombed.

The Bergstrom-Mahler Museum in Neenah, Wisconsin, has some fine examples of centuries-old Germanic glassware, all clearly survivors of time and random motion. It also features interesting newer glass as well, plus temporarily exhibits. And then there's the paperweight collection, which includes more than 3,000 objects: whirls of color and shapes embedded in glass globes.

I've only ever seen its like once before, the Arthur Rubloff paperweight collection at the Art Institute of Chicago (1,500+ objects). I understand Rubloff gallery has been expanded recently after some years mostly in storage, but I remember when some of the paperweights were exhibited near the front of the museum.

Paperweight collecting sounds eccentric, and maybe it is, but there are some astonishingly beautiful paperweights in the world, if the Bergstrom-Mahler collection is any indication. Click on the
thumbnails for a better view, but photos displayed on line really don't do the three-dimensional, well-lit objects much justice.

Hearthstone Historic House Museum

 Sept. 5, 2012

The Hearthstone Historic House Museum in Appleton, Wisconsin, was once a well-designed, well-appointed late Victorian mansion, but that's not its signal distinction. Back in the early 1880s, one Henry James Rogers, manager of the Appleton Pulp and Paper Mill, had the house built in a bluff overlooking the Fox River and across from the paper mill that he managed. He was also overseeing the mills' electrification in the summer of '82, just as his new house was being built, so naturally he wanted electricity for the house too.

According to the Wisconsin Historic Society: "The first electricity offered for public sale flowed through wires in Appleton, Wisconsin, to light the paper mills and homes of that Fox River city. Henry J. Rogers... supplied the world's first commercial electrical power in the summer of 1882, in downtown Appleton -- before it was available in Boston, New York, Washington, or Chicago." Electric wires at Hearthstone ran through the pipes meant to carry gas for lighting.

There's a charming sign in the front parlor of the house that says: "This Room is Equipped With Edison Electric Light. Do not attempt to light with match. Simply turn key on wall by the door. The use of Electricity for lighting is in no way harmful to health, nor does it affect the soundness of sleep."

Of course, they were merely assuming that electric light wasn't harmful to health, but we can give them that. As for affecting the soundness of sleep, I think we can all report that electric light has affected our sleep at some point, especially when switched on unexpectedly. That's hindsight anyway. Apparently people came specifically to see the light bulbs in action when the house was new, since it was a marvel of the age.

Our guide said that the voltage was low -- good thing, since at first the current essentially traveled through uninsulated copper wire -- and so the lights would look dim to modern eyes. But for all I know, the new lights might have been every bit as illuminating as gas lights or kerosene lamps or candles were. Just how bright non-electric lights were is one of those familiarities of daily life lost to time and improved technologies, I think. Not even a highly accurate dramatization of the period could probably convey what it would be like to live day-to-day with pre-electric technologies as your source of light. (Though I suspect the damn things would be inconsistent.)

This is what one of the aforementioned "keys on the wall" looks like, because the Hearthstone Historic House Museum still has all of the ones that Edison's men came to town to install.

Our guide told us that they still work. But he didn't demonstrate, probably for good reason. Touch them too often and they might break, always a risk with tech, high or low. If they break, none of Edison's men are around any more to fix them.

The power was incredibly expensive at first. I forget the exact numbers, but in true Gilded Age style, Rogers spent more to light each of his bulbs every year than he would have paid one of his workers for the year, or some such. Unsurprisingly, Rogers died deep in debt in the late 1890s, though probably electricity was only one of his extravagances, and the Panic of 1893 compounded his losses. In any case, his heirs sold the house and most of the contents, so the museum's furnishings aren't Rogers'. But the modern curators have done a good job at finding 1880s period pieces, so besides the back story of electrification, the place has some charms as a house museum.

Item From the Past: Fortaleza do Monte

Sept 23, 2012

This from Reuters recently: “U.S. billionaire Sheldon Adelson opened his latest resort in Macau on Thursday, adding to a string of casinos in the world's largest gambling destination that has helped the high-profile donor to the U.S. Republican party earn most of his multi-billion dollar fortune.


“Adelson, chairman of Las Vegas Sands Corp and its Macau unit, Sands China Ltd, presided over the opening of his Polynesian-themed casino and Sheraton Macau hotel, adding to his Sands Cotai Central property, which opened in April.”

Ah, Macao. I wandered into the round Hotel Lisboa during my visit in September 1990 and watched a packed gaming room for a few minutes. Some tables were packed with people playing recognizable games, others playing unfamiliar Chinese games. It was one of the few casinos in Macao in those days, I think. Now there are many, catering to the many more Chinese who have disposable income in our time.

The Lisboa was only one stop during my peregrinations that long-ago day. I also visited the hilltop Fortaleza do Monte. Wiki tells us that the site’s official name is Fortaleza de Nossa Senhora do Monte de São Paulo. In English: Fortress of Our Lady of the Mount of St. Paul. In Chinese: 大炮台)

As you can see, it had a spot of topiary. Old cannons also pointed outward from the hilltop – maybe for protection against junk-borne pirates, or Dutch or British ships eager to claim the territory, once upon a time. The building in the picture has been converted into a museum, I’ve read. When I visited, it was mostly empty, and had only one function as Macao’s weather station.

Gas For Less

Not long ago the girls and I went into the city on a hot Saturday afternoon. We ate lunch at Elly's Pancake House, which is a busy place at the corner of North and Clark -- something else used to be there, but I can't remember what. Then, to escape the heat, we went across the street to the Chicago History Museum, which I still think of as the Chicago Historical Society.

I wasn't in a picture-taking, note-taking mood.



So the only picture I took inside the museum was of a neon sign that caught my eye. It was pretty hard to miss.

The Woodstock Opera House

The Woodstock Opera House dates from 1889, when it was built as a multipurpose building: library, court, council room, fire department and second-floor auditorium for the city of Woodstock. The venue's web site says that Elgin-based architect Smith Hoag added "early American, Midwestern, Gothic and even Moorish elements. The interior is modeled after the showboats of the time, with dimensions and decorations that imitate many of those grand floating theaters."

The theater has hosted entertainment of various kinds since 1890, including an early '30s summer stock theater that included a very young Orson Welles. "In 1947 a group of citizens formed and supported the Woodstock Players," the web site continues. "For several years the Players provided acting experience for students graduating from the Goodman School. Now-famous personalities Paul Newman, Tom Bosley, Betsy Palmer, Geraldine Page, Shelley Berman and Lois Nettleton were among them."

I had to look up some of those actors, such as the late Lois Nettleton. (Who moved on to television, including appearances on Captain Video.) About a month ago, I noticed that Al Stewart would be back at the Woodstock Opera House again. Inconveniently timed, since I knew I'd be busy that week, but I decided to go. He's not getting any younger, and neither am I.

Item From the Past: Bandelier National Monument

In late April 2000, we dropped by Bandelier National Monument during our visit to Santa Fe. As we entered the monument, I noticed black plumes of smoke off in the distance. "What's the smoke?" I asked the ranger at the entrance checkpoint. "Controlled burn," he told me.

Not too much later, another controlled burn in the area got out of hand and became the Cerro Grande Fire, which torched 48,000 acres and a good bit of Los Alamos (which we drove through on the same day as visiting Bandelier). But when we were at Bandelier, it was simply dry and very warm, so we were able to take a look around some of the Ancestral Pueblo ruins. Peoples related, as much as my limited understanding goes, to those who inhabited Mesa Verde and Canyon de Chelly. At some point before the Spanish arrived, they'd already skedaddled.

Somewhere I have a picture of Lilly and me climbing up into one of the dwellings in the cliffside, probably the only one accessible to casual visitors, but I couldn't locate that image. I did find some of the non-cliff structures, which I thought were just as interesting. Especially this circular pit. Can't remember what it was supposed to be.

Glad we made it before the fire that year. There have been more recent fires as well, namely the Las Conchas Fire last June, which the Park Service called the "largest wildfire in New Mexico history." About 60 percent of the park's land burned, and then later in the year, floods came in the wake of the area's deforestation. Last year wasn't a good year for Bandelier, it seems.

Yerkes Observatory

We went to southern Wisconsin on Saturday not to discover monuments to long-forgotten fictional characters (see yesterday) -- though that's always a bonus in traveling -- but to get a look at the University of Chicago's Yerkes Observatory, which is in the town of Williams Bay, Wisconsin. We'd visited and taken the tour before, almost 10 years ago, but I was sure Lilly didn't remember and even more sure about Ann, who was in utero at the time.

I didn't mind going again. Once in a lifetime's not quite enough when it comes to seeing the world's largest refracting telescope, a 40-inch marvel. I learned this time around, or maybe relearned, that every part of the telescope except its lens had been displayed in the Manufacturers Building at the Columbian Exposition of 1893 before it was installed at the new Yerkes Observatory. So not only can you stand under an important telescope in the history of astronomy, it's an artifact of the Chicago world's fair. No doubt fairgoers appreciated it as a marvel of the age.

The guided tour was fairly short. The guide first talked about the design of the observatory, which was the work of Henry Ives Cobb. According to the University of Chicago, Cobb "was fond of ornamentation rooted in classic mythology. At Yerkes, he let his imagination roam: everywhere in the structure, both inside and out, the viewer finds hundreds of ornate, often playful representations of animals real and fanciful, signs of the Zodiac, phases of the Moon, and many other embellishments."

Such embellishments included swastikas, which the guide commented on. "We had them before the Nazis," he said, pointing them out with his laser pointer. The ones at Yerkes were non-Nazi anyway, pointing the other direction and featuring a square at the center, which is a variation I'd never seen before.

Later, I wandered around the grounds for a few minutes, and managed to take some shots of Yerkes' penile main dome in its park-like setting.

Under the big unheated dome -- Saturday was in the 50s, so it was cool in there -- is the 40-inch telescope, one of six at the observatory, and the only one seen on the Saturday tours. The guide told us a little more about the instrument, and moved it a little. He also raised the floor a few feet, and told us of the time Albert Einstein visited the observatory in 1921, passing around a photo that commemorated the visit.

The photo of Dr. Einstein and the Yerkes staff is at the bottom of this National Park Service page; the one looking Einsteinian is, in fact, the great physicist. I didn't think to ask the guide what Einstein was doing there, but from what I read later, the observatory was doing followups to Sir Arthur Eddington's observations of starlight bending around the Sun during the May 29, 1919, eclipse that confirmed general relativity, though the details of what Yerkes would do as a followup are beyond me.

Einstein is one thing, but he was only passing through. E.E. Barnard, an astronomer who worked at Yerkes, ought to be better known. I've known about him since I read about Barnard's Star in junior high (in one of the 8mm movies I made with some other junior high friends, we imagined a spaceship journeying to Barnard's Star, I think).

Besides Barnard's study of the red dwarf that now has his name, he discovered the fifth moon of Jupiter and a lot of comets, determined that certain dark regions of the Milky Way were actually vast clouds of dust and gas, was a pioneering astrophotographer and -- I didn't know this until this weekend -- was from Nashville and attended Vanderbilt, later receiving the institution's one and only honorary degree. His name remains as Barnand Hall, one of the dorms off Alumni Lawn.

Remember the Alamo

"The gallantry of the few Texans who defended the Alamo was really wondered at by the Mexican army. Even the generals were astonished at their vigorous resistance, and how dearly victory was bought..."

-- Francisco Antonio Ruiz, alcade of San Antonio in 1836 and supporter of the Texans; ordered by Santa Anna to see to the disposal of the bodies of the defenders of the Alamo.

The Schiller Park Greyhound Track

While coming home from an event in Rosemont on Tuesday, I stopped for a light at the intersection of Lawrence Ave. and Mannheim Road (US 12), which is on the eastern edge of O'Hare International Airport and (I think) happens to be in the small suburb of Schiller Park. I noticed a sign I'd never noticed before, and I happened to have a camera handy. Normally I'd take such a picture for reference only, but it turned out reasonably well, considering it was taken on an overcast day through a car windshield. So here it is.

Former Site of Dog Track • Raced Greyhounds • Schiller Park Historical Commission (Bullet points added.)

So a dog track used to be here. O'Hare was built in the 1950s, so it must have been before that. Maybe on clear, moonless nights when the traffic isn't so heavy, you can stand near the sign and hear the faint baying of ghostly hounds, forever rounding the track to the cheers of Depression-era working men.

Curiously, according to testimony heard by the U.S. Senate Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce in 1950, "During the heyday of Al Capone, the Capone syndicate was in control of dog tracks in virtually every part of the country... The Capone syndicate czar of dog racing during that period was Edward J. O'Hare, who was killed in gang warfare in Chicago on November 9, 1939."

Edward "Easy Eddie" O'Hare testified against Capone in the early '30s and for that, we can be sure, he eventually bought the farm. He was also father of the fighter pilot Edward "Butch" O'Hare, for whom the airport is named, and who didn't live much longer than his dad, since he was killed in action in the Pacific in late 1943.

It seems likely that the Schiller Park dog track would have been in the orbit of the elder O'Hare. For all I know, the track might have been small potatoes to him, but he surely must have visited on occasion. I doubt that he could ever imagined something so important in the area would someday have the same name as him, though honoring his son.