The Museum and White House of the Confederacy
Main reasons for going to Richmond: (1) I’d meant to spend a day there on my road trip last year, but it got squeezed out; (2) $36 a night at a newly renovated Holiday Inn. Also it was within a six-and-a-half-hour driving radius from Pgh (barely). Plus there’s nothing to do there that requires you to use your hands to grab stuff.
That’s the White House of the Confederacy. The exterior is pretty unprepossessing. The side shown above is actually the back — the front is plainer. Supposedly the back was done up more because it’s the side that faces the (James) river and the place where guests would have hung out. Richmond city planners didn’t exactly go out of their way to preserve the “sanctity” of the location. The brick hospital that surrounds it on all sides is one of the uglier hospital complexes I’ve ever seen in my life.
For that matter, Richmond’s an aesthetically disappointing city generally. The topography should lend itself to something cool, but it hasn’t happened. Probably because all the good stuff got destroyed in the war (although they’ve had 145 years to recover).
The white house is a nice mansion. The stuff inside was cool. Plenty of smoking parlors, very tasteful. George Eastman and I could’ve hung out there and felt at ease, although I guess we both probably would’ve been weirded out by the slaves there. The tour guide looked like he was half-man, half-bloodhound, but he knew the heck out of that mansion, Richmond, Jefferson Davis, and the Confederacy. And fwiw, Davis didn’t really live here very long. Three years IIRC.
It also didn’t cost much compared to less historically-relevant mansions (I think the museum + mansion ticket was $12; I mean, not *cheap*, but not hilariously awful either).
The museum was all right-to-good. It didn’t hammer home the Civil War story of the Confederacy like I thought it would — mostly just short write-ups on key battles posted next to displays of flags and uniforms. They had some cool artwork that I liked though. I think this is the most famous Confederate painting that exists:
Depicts the last meeting of Generals Lee and Jackson — before Jackson died from pneumonia at Spotsylvania.
My favorite part of the museum, though, was the more proletariat-focused art. Like this:
These are just a couple of pencil sketches done by some confederate soldier. I’m guessing they’re depicting one of the better days in camp (fishing with your buddies, hanging out by the fire smoking your pipe), but I think it explains a whole lot more about the Civil War experience than does Stonewall’s revolver — not just in terms of content, but in terms of perspective. It also supports my thesis on humanity that even the most horrendous situations become normal to people over time. Yep.
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National Museum of the Marine Corps: New Addition
Went back to the Marine Corps museum when I was in NoVa a couple weeks ago. They added a couple new areas to it since I went there last year, one on “the early days” (pre WWI) and one on World War I. Now that those areas are open, it’s hard to imagine the museum without them.
Of those two areas, I think I dug the early years part the most, maybe just because it’s a more-forgotten time. It covered a lot of “expansion era” Marine Corps activities, where the Corps acted as an expeditionary force in securing colonies in, frex, the Philippines.
Like the rest of the museum, these new areas do some cool stuff to help the visitor experience the history they’re viewing. Like in the Philippines occupation area, you walk through this “tent” and through one “wall” of the tent, you can see shadows of marines hanging out by the fire, wearing expedition hats, whittling sticks, and smoking pipes. It’s simple and not very data-rich, but it’s ingenious in its ability to convey how it might have felt to actually be a marine stationed in the Philippines at the turn of the century (minus the heat and humidity). No plaque could have conveyed that.
Photo:
The World War I exhibit was also strong, although it started off with a short, made-for-museum video loop of a kid dressed up like in the old days hawking newspapers on an in-studio streetcorner. Hated that. The kid actor was terrible, like he was trying to channel Meeno Peluce. Children should *never* be allowed to act. I don’t know why I’m the only person who seems to have realized this universal truth. I guess this kind of intro might appeal to blue-hairs, but man it was tacky and over-the-top. To me.
The rest of World War I was good, though. They had a short Belleau Wood reenactment video (yes, made-for-museum) that I liked a lot. They did with it what I always thought every war movie always should have done (but did the opposite instead) in that I think they saturated the colors on the film. Most (recent) war movies (e.g., Private Ryan, Band of Brothers) have de-saturated the color (= made the colors less vibrant) in order to give them an “authentic”, sentimental, old feel. OTOH, every first-hand account of front-line warfare that I’ve read has expressed that, in battle, combatants’ senses have been in overdrive. In that sense, it seems to me like an over-saturated color palette would best convey the image of warfare and I think that’s what they did here. (I can’t prove that they saturated the colors, but they definitely didn’t de-saturate.)
They might have shifted things a little to the blue, too.
And for the sake of playing copy editor (how fun!), they had a sign there that referred to German soldiers calling the marines “teufelhunden” (sic). That’d be capitalized in German and pretty sure it should’ve been on the sign, too.
Also watched the museum movie this time (I guess I didn’t last time — it was totally new to me). It’s a great, engaging, and moving ten-minute branding video that hits everything it should and does it without feeling too sentimental, although it did include senators John Glenn and John Warner saying (in effect) that without the Marine Corps, they wouldn’t have become senators, which to me seems like a case *against* the Marine Corps. The Marine Corps: we make politicians! Yikesnothankyou, etc. IMHO. Perhaps Sens. Warner and Glenn also appropriate(d) funds for museums, which doesn’t lessen the problem.
The Marines are still really good at telling stories and this is still very possibly the most cogent, most nailed-it museum I’ve been to. With the new galleries, it’d be kind of a long day to go all the way through in one shot. I’m not sure who my audience is for this post.
Ending so with,
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National Air and Space Museum Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center
The best thing about the Udvar-Hazy Center and the one thing that they do that no other flight museum has yet accomplished is that they give the airplanes enough room and enough light and provide visitors multiple viewing angles. There, I said it.
I can’t go to an aerospace museum without trying to rank it within the pantheon of aerospace museums and there were some times walking through Udvar-Hazy that I was thinking yeah, this is the best flight museum there is and that was based in large part on how easy they make it to see and photograph the planes. The USAF Museum in Dayton, for instance, is really dark so in order to take photos without a tripod, you have to do flash-fill and be happy with taking a photo of one small part of the plane. And in most flight museums, including Dayton, it seems like they looked at the arrangement of displays as a Tetris variant. Udvar-Hazy gives the planes their due space. Well, except for in the commercial airplanes area, but those planes are kind of big, so I suppose it makes sense.
And if you could combine the National Air and Space Museum component on the mall in DC with the Udvar-Hazy Center, you definitely would have the greatest flight museum in the world. But they’re too far away, so you can’t. It’s like saying if you combined Seattle and Portland, you’d have the second largest city on the west coast. True but moot. Like most of life.
Enterprise, the real fake space shuttle.
The Concorde sees you.
A B-29.
Wouldn’t dream of it.
A galaxy of satellites. Maybe just a cluster.
It couldn’t fly very fast because the propeller was so small.
Hey look, an airplane!
The F-22 is a better value. (This is an X-35.)
A Ju-52.
The well-stocked commercial wing.
Which leaves only bullet points:
- I think the Top Tier of aerospace museums is this one, the one on the mall, the USAF, and probably Pima/AMARG.
- It’s interesting how they don’t tell many stories in this museum — they mostly let the plane speak for itself. There are no big panels explaining the Wright Bros. or anything like that — I think most of that is on the mall.
- Without a doubt the least impressive gift shop of any top-flite aerospace museum.
- Walking through the museum, you start feeling like there are planes that should be there but aren’t, and then you remember that the other half of the collection is an hour away, which is sort of comforting in that you know that they know that this isn’t a complete something.
- They have a bunch of “last one like this that still exists” planes there, including some bizarre-awesome German WWII examples, like the late-war gigantic fighter plane with fore and aft props. Too bad those airplanes are evil.
- For some reason the only planes missing their wings were German WWII planes. There was no explanation.
- They put plexi-glass up around the Enola Gay so no one could throw stuff at it. Apparently that’s happened before.
- Hooray for flight.
So yeah. ICYDK, the Udvar-Hazy Center is located right by Dulles Airport in Virginia. The Smithsonian (or whoever) built it in order to house planes that wouldn’t fit in the regular museum on the mall. They have elevated walkways along parts of the perimeter that afford the top-down views. The museum is free, but parking is $15. The only food inside is McDonalds. There’s very little to buy in the gift shop.
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PS, If you combined Seattle and Portland, it would still only be the third largest city on the west coast.
Three Hours in Balboa Park
Makes 21 in dog-hours.
Went to Balboa Park (in San Diego) ostensibly to visit the Museum of Photographic Arts there. They had some nice photos inside and, naturally, you’re not allowed to take any photographs yourself while there. Hypocrites.
I don’t think I’d ever been to Balboa Park before, though, aside from going to the zoo. Here are some pictures because I haven’t posted anything in a long time:
The top of some building + sky.
Stupid Balboa, thinks he's better than me just because he has a horse. Hate Balboa.
The Measure of a Museum of a Man -- it looks taller than that from a distance.
View of the park through a colonnade.
I noted names of a couple of photographers I want to look up some day into my Blackberry. Haven’t looked at it again since. Meh.
Then I went home.
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A Big Day at the Naval Undersea Museum
Probably *every* day is a big day there though.
The Naval Undersea Museum is a museum located in Keyport, Wash., which is pretty close to the big ol’ Navy base in Bremerton as well as the unknown-sized Navy submarine base in Bangor. Even though the website says they’re closed every Tuesday during the winter months, it turns out they’re open the Tuesday between Christmas and New Year’s. Or at least they were in 2009. YMMV, but it seems improbable that anyone who reads this blog will ever test it out in future years to see if the policy was a one-off or, like, a real policy.
The periscope actually works! You can scan the entire parking lot from inside the building!
I didn't really get into BioShock. Maybe I'll like 2 better.
Imperial Japan's most effective naval weapon: the man-guided suicide torpedo.
Some bullet-pointed thoughts:
- I learned that I don’t know very much about torpedoes or mines.
- About half the museum is about torpedoes and mines.
- It seems like a rich field — but narrow.
- The museum is free.
- They have a submarine there, the Trieste II iirc, that dove to 22,000 feet — which isn’t a record. The record is 35,000 feet that was set using a similar submarine.
- But they don’t call it a “submarine”, they call it a “bathyscaphe”.
- For some reason the museum merely glosses over the involvement of US submarines in World War II, even though they’re already probably pretty under-heralded.
Interesting enough museum, worth the price of admission. Heck, it’s probably even worth the toll to get back over that stupid new bridge.
And in Bremerton, they had four reserve fleet aircraft carriers each at some stage in the dilapidation process. Hard to get a good photo, plus it’s cloudy all the time there, but anyway:
They're getting parted out.
Two of the four there were Ranger and Kitty Hawk. You could probably look up the names of the other two if you need to.
Endut.
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The Evergreen Air and Space Museum
This is my favorite photo from there, but it’s not the most important thing in their collection or anything:
Titan II: Launcher of Gemini, Defender of the Free World
That probably begs a discussion on the meaning of the word “important” in this context and on the criteria and criteria weighting required to determine said importance. Or just: the Titan II may be the most important thing in the museum. It’s not the most famous thing there, though. This is:
The Spruce Goose: Launcher of Howard Hughes, Defender of the Inside of the Museum
Which begs a discussion on the meaning of the word “launch”. Meh: life is imperfect. BTW, the important (or merely famous?) part of that photo is the big ol’ plane, not the two engines in front of it. And I’m sure the two guys in the picture are very important to their respective mothers. I tried to take a bunch of artistic shots of the plane, but they all basically look like a gigantic airplane with a bunch of other little planes around it. See above.
The Evergreen Air and Space Museum is “actually” two museums, meaning that it’s housed in two buildings (three if you count the IMAX theater) and they charge admission separately unless you buy admission for both together. Pretty museum, solid collection of stuff, and they have the Spruce Goose. They also have one of these:
An illegally-parked MiG 29!
I dunno, I suppose the ominousness of the MiG 29 is probably lost on the current generation that didn’t grow up back before the West realized that the Soviets weren’t actually competent at stuff. But still, in its heyday, this airframe was the symbol of black-hat aeronautical engineering.
I also like how the ol’ Herc is watching the MiG through the glass. One false move and Herc leaps through the glass and eats the MiG. (Not really. That will never happen.)
The museum is in McMinnville, Ore. and was sort of founded and is/was bankrolled by Evergreen International Aviation, which I think might do some cargo operations as well as, like, water-bombing stuff for (against) forest fires maybe. And maybe some contracting with internationally recognized clandestine service organizations — who’s to say? Wikipedia is vague in these matters. I skipped the IMAX theater. I should probably go to one again some day, but I established a precedent of not going to them during the road trip and I’d like to maintain some part of that road trip magic for a while longer, thank you.
Bullet-point list:
- They have a missile launch simulator which takes five-plus minutes. The Titan II missile behind you does not launch when the countdown gets to zero.
- McMinnville is not that easy to get to considering how reasonably close to Portland and Salem it is.
- Don’t remember much else. Been a couple weeks.
Here’s an interior shot of a Ford Tri-Motor for some reason:
An interior shot of a Ford Tri-Motor.
They also had one of these at the museum:
A P-40 Warhawk with Fighting Tigers livery and a handy drip-pan (which may have been made in China).
P-40s mostly flew for the British and Soviets. But the drip pan adds a lot to the composition. IMHO.
Out.
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The Reagan Library in Simi Valley
Went there in early February with HC12 and allotted kids, thereby concluding my series of visits to local presidential libraries.
Never again to slip the surly bonds of earth (probably).
Pros:
- Air Force One on permanent display (the *old* Air Force One).
- It’s like a museum of my life from 1981-88. And I kind of liked being nine years old.
- Well, plus it seemed like there was an unusual number of momentous events that transpired during those eight years (although it may just be that those were the years of my life where I first started becoming aware of Everything).
- One of four surviving copies of the Magna Charta was on display!
- I get teary-eyed at Reagan’s speeches.
- Fantastic opportunities to discuss the question of which is more important: the reality of an individual or the idea of an individual. Although I don’t think the two are quite as separate from each other in Reagan’s case as they may be in the case of, say, Nixon or Lincoln. But maybe I’m just romanticizing the 80s. And romanticizing being nine years old. Plus Nixon and Lincoln are extreme cases. IMHO.
- Reagan is much more well-liked than Nixon and nothing at their respective libraries lets you forget that.
Cons
- Clear out in Simi Valley.
- Per the docents, the most interesting thing about the Magna Charta is the humidity inside the case that stores it.
- I felt bad for Old Air Force One. It’s like they’re trying to tease it by showing it the outside world even though they’re never going to let it get out there and fly again.
- The fudge they sell at the in-library pub was merely okay.
And not really a knock on the Reagan Library, but the Johnny Rockets in Agoura Hills left a lot to be desired. I think even my nephews would say as much.
Comparing the Nixon and Reagan libraries, obviously Reagan was much more impressive (Nixon has one of three helicopters he at some point used, while Reagan has freakin’ Air Force One, for example). Nixon comes across as a politician, while Reagan comes across as an icon who would’ve been an icon even if he’d never been president of the United States.
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(Happy St. Patrick’s Day — fortunately, my blog is already green.)