The French Market may seem empty around 10 a.m., but the calm and the extra personal space don’t last.
Day Four was spent walking here, there, everywhere around the French Quarter — gawking at random sights, browsing festive shops, learning history from museums, weaving through crowds, and trying our best to withstand the 90-degree heat that kept hammering at us all along the way. Fortunately a few places offered respite from melting.
Sorry, folks: these dime donuts are for historical display purposes only.
For the last several years, my wife Anne and I have spent our respective birthdays together finding some new place or attraction to visit as a one-day road trip — partly as an excuse to spend time together on this most wondrous day, partly to explore areas of Indiana we’ve never experienced before. My 2015 birthday destination of choice was the city of Fort Wayne, two hours north of home. Her 2015 choice last Saturday was Terre Haute, an hour west of here. In Part 1 of this three-part miniseries, you saw our final stop of the day, the CANDLES Holocaust Museum and Education Center, which absolutely made her day.
Our first stop of the day was something completely different: the Clabber Girl Museum and Bake Shop. The longtime purveyors of baking powder, baking soda, cornstarch, and other products under assorted brand names have their factory and corporate HQ in downtown Terre Haute. We happen to be fans of baked goods, and this wouldn’t be our first trip to a museum about baking ingredients (cf. the Mill City Museum in Minneapolis). It didn’t hurt that the museum is free.
This past Saturday afternoon my wife Anne and I paid a visit to the CANDLES Holocaust Museum and Education Center in Terre Haute, located a mere hour west of Indianapolis and a mile down the road from Indiana State University. The Museum’s Founding Director, pictured above, is Eva Mozes Kor. You might have seen her in such films as the 2006 documentary Forgiving Dr. Mengele or in the occasional special about the Holocaust. Eva survived the horrors of Auschwitz as a preteen and, today at age 81, lives to share the tale of her extraordinary life with new generations.
We knew the museum told her story and exemplified the principles that helped her transition from victim to survivor over the decades. We didn’t expect her to actually be there in person.
The front page of a special Honolulu Star-Bulletin Extra published December 7, 1941, three hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
When I first suggested driving to New Orleans for this year’s road trip, my wife was hesitant because most online tourism resources summed up the general ambiance as HERE THERE BE MANIACS. No matter where you stay, how brightly the sun shines, how large your group is, or how tall and muscular you are, message boards and review sites and travel books and Fodor’s agree sooner or later a tag team of America’s Most Wanted will come gunning for you.
Then we found out New Orleans is the home of the National WWII Museum. Not a WWII museum — the National WWII Museum, as duly designated by Congress in 2003. Anne knows stuff about WWII. Longtime MCC readers might recall the story of how we first met:
[Anne had] been a WWII buff for years, and read extensively about Germany in general and Hitler in particular. I still remember the time when the teacher (one Frau Schmitz by name) basically turned the class over to Anne and let her give us a speech about Hitler. Anne proceeded to do so…with no notes, and no real preparation beforehand. As I recall, her extemporaneous speech filled two solid class periods over two days — roughly 100 minutes total — with what she knew about Hitler before Frau Schmitz finally stepped in and resumed teaching.
She’s always up for learning more about WWII, above and beyond what she’s already accumulated over the course of decades. When she learned the National WWII Museum was in New Orleans…well. Murderers, schmurderers.
Sunday morning in Birmingham didn’t stay cool for long. We walked away from Linn Park hoping to see art. Before long we were dying for water. North of the park, nestled between the Birmingham Museum of Art and the Boutwell Auditorium, we found a tidy spot that offered and hid the best of both.
Indiana comes alive through all the exhibits at Fort Wayne’s History Center, except for this surly mannequin serving consecutive sentences for crimes of fashion.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:
For the last few years, my wife and I have spent our respective birthdays together finding some new place or attraction to visit as a one-day road trip — partly as an excuse to spend time together on this most wondrous day, partly to explore areas of Indiana we’ve never experienced before. My 2015 birthday destination of choice: the city of Fort Wayne, some 100+ miles northeast of here. It’s home to several manufacturing concerns, one major insurance company, a selection of buildings with historical importance to the locals, and a small comic book convention I’d never heard of before this year. We checked out the area, we found ways to enjoy ourselves, we got some much-needed exercise, and we took photos.
Fort Wayne’s tourism documents pitch a number of downtown leisure options for curious visitors — an art museum, an arboretum, their minor-league baseball stadium (home of the Fort Wayne TinCaps), a museum of religious artifacts dating back to the 13th century (closed weekends, alas), courthouse tours, and so on. After much consideration and random wandering, we settled for a post-lunch tour of their History Center. My wife is a history buff. I like places made of exhibits. Best of all, it was just three blocks east of where we had lunch. Who could deny so many converging criteria?
Spammy bids you welcome! Enter freely and of your own craving!
[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]
Day 4: Tuesday, July 25th (continued)
After several hours of gawking and photographing the animals, then a few minutes of fairly priced zoo cafeteria lunch, two more hours of driving took us southeast to the town of Austin, home of Hormel Foods and the world-famous Spam Museum.
One of many unreleased pics from our 8/31/2013 visit to the Indiana State Museum to see the “Star Wars: Where Science Meets the Imagination” traveling exhibit. It belongs in a museum!
Lucas is scheduled to present preliminary architectural plans to the proper committees in the fall, so we may have a long wait until we can storm the gates and take in the sights. Whenever it’s ready for us, we’re prepared for a certain lack of objectivity. Considering the media have refrained from calling it a “Star Wars Museum” it’s reasonable to assume we’ll see cameos from Lucas’ other works in addition to that one galactic-sized phenomenon. But we have to wonder: how much of his own history will Lucas leave out? Will we be allowed to see any flaws or signs of the stresses he’s endured in his forty-year career, or will his biography be subject to a selective “Special Edition” treatment?
This merchandise display is the perfect illustration for my new sitcom idea, Pink Nightmare Family. Two sons and two daughters are forced to fend for themselves after they’re abandoned by their intolerant parents, who don’t understand why their kids insist on living every moment of their lives inside four matching pink bunny suits. They never notice the strange stares from everyone around them. To pay the bills, they open a novelty lamp shop. They never take the suits off, but they never smell disgusting because of TV magic. All the plots will be recycled from every other sitcom ever, but with bunny suits, which will hopefully become the Next Big Thing. I, for one, think the world is ready for a cross between Party of Five and Full House, plus bunny suits, minus Dave Coulier’s Bullwinkle impressions.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:
[This coming] weekend is the fourth annual Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo (that “C2E2″ thing I won’t shut up about) at Chicago’s McCormick Place convention center, which my wife and I will be attending for our third time. As a tribute to this fascinating city, and an intro to C2E2 newcomers to provide ideas of what else Chicago has to offer while they’re in town, a few of this week’s posts will be dedicated to out experiences in the Windy City when we’re not gleefully clustered indoors with thousands of other comics and sci-fi fans.
Next on deck: our stroll through Chicago’s Navy Pier. What sounds like an off-limits military installation is in reality a stretch of public entertainment options that extends into Lake Michigan. Docked beside it are a handful of select cruise ships that offer sightseeing or party services for the right price. Budget-minded tourists like us are free to take photos and imagine the fun.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:
[This coming] weekend is the fourth annual Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo (that “C2E2″ thing I won’t shut up about) at Chicago’s McCormick Place convention center, which my wife and I will be attending for our third time. As a tribute to this fascinating city, and an intro to C2E2 newcomers to provide ideas of what else Chicago has to offer while they’re in town, a few of this week’s posts will be dedicated to out experiences in the Windy City when we’re not gleefully clustered indoors with thousands of other comics and sci-fi fans.
Today’s feature presentation: our visit to Chicago’s own Contemporary Museum of Art, a refreshing, sometimes challenging change of pace from other, more congenial museums. Missing are the ancient masters, the rock stars of previous centuries, the aging artifacts from long-ago-and-far-away B.C., and those nice Presidential portrait painters who weren’t paid the big bucks to confront your assumptions or distort your horizons.
Well before you reach the entrance, the MCA draws your attention with looming, whirling significance.
Most of this decorative frippery could be dismantled and sold as scrap metal. (photo credit: Valerie Everett via photopin cc)
On Monday local news sources confirmed that our city’s largest art museum has eliminated twenty-nine employees (11% of the total staff) as part of their ongoing efforts to stem the losses from previous years’ shortfalls, and as part of new director/CEO Charles Venable’s plan to minimize budgetary dependence on the museum’s endowment fund, which weathered considerable battle damage during the 2008 recession. I don’t envy the position in which Venable and his survivors now find themselves, though I’m a little bitter that they didn’t even try any of my awesome ideas before swinging the axe of doom.
The Indianapolis Museum of Art, which would make an awesome small-vehicle stunt-racing track. (Photo credit: Serge Melki via photopin cc)
Sadly, not all museums are enjoying the best of times today. Here in my hometown, our very own Indianapolis Museum of Art has struggled to recover after $89 million evaporated from their endowment in the 2008 recession. A recent Indianapolis Star interview with its new director, Charles Venable, revealed a few ideas the museum hopes to implement in order to recover lost ground, some of which have raised eyebrows of local patrons: a Matisse exhibit with a sizable surcharge (admission to IMA is normally free); late-night cocktail parties; and possibly an exotic car show. A few cost-cutting measures have already been taken, but financial stability can’t be achieved merely by clicking your heels three times and repeating the mantra, “Do more with less! Do more with less! Do more with less!” That way lies not wish fulfillment, but bankruptcy.
Midlife Crisis Crossover! 