Saturday, September 24, 2016

The Midwest...Wild and Otherwise

People on the West Coast tend to be spoiled.  Even I say, "The West is the best and the Coast has the most".  Smugly, at that.  OK, the Midwest doesn't have towering snowcapped mountains.  But it has everything else...bustling cities, history, tranquil countryside, dynamic weather, and water...big rivers, peaceful ponds, inland seas.  Here the Lizards are contemplating their entry into the Midwest along the South Platte River in Sterling, Colorado.  The Midwest really begins at Denver.  Before I lived there, I always categorized Denver as a western city.  But it's really about half western, half midwestern.  Many folks from the Midwest go as far west as Denver, and stay there.  It's like there's an umbilical cord between them and their native land that will remain intact in Denver, but might sever if they cross the Rockies and go farther west.

Cozad, Nebraska lies on the 100th meridian of west longitude.  This is roughly the boundary between semiarid steppe to the west and wetter prairie to the east.  Irrigation is absolutely needed west of here, not so much to the east.  In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, salesmen of dubious integrity told settlers that once the land to the west was tilled, rain would "follow the plow".  Not!  For a couple unusually wet decades, it seemed that might be true.  Then came the dust bowl in the 1930s.

The state capitol in Lincoln, Nebraska.  It's an early Art Deco classic, completed in 1923.  I was in Lincoln on a football Saturday...Huskers vs Ducks.  90 thousand fans were converging on Memorial Stadium, about a mile north of here.  All the ones I saw were upbeat and friendly.  And they did beat the Ducks.  Didn't go to the game...I probably should have planned to.

Abe Lincoln in his namesake city.  He seems a bit downcast...perhaps he wishes his Fighting Illini had a program as strong as those of Nebraska and Oregon.

An old church and a new one in Lincoln.  The old church is similar to the one on Jackson Square in New Orleans.

The Iowa prairie.  It oozes lushness and fecundity.  Corn and soybeans thrive.  And windmills...Iowa is a good source of wind power these days.   On the prairies, there's nothing to stop the wind from Saskatchewan to Texas.

The Iowa state capitol in Des Moines.  Pleasant grounds surround the building.

A massive Civil War memorial in Des Moines, near the Capitol.

Tallgrass prairie near Joliet, Illinois.  About 40 miles SW of Chicago, it's peaceful here.  The grass in the pic is 7-8 feet high.  Shaq could hide in there!

Chicago.  So many innovatively designed skyscrapers, soaring into the sky.  A great city!

Ready to cross Lake Michigan from Milwaukee on the ferry.

Departing on a rainy morning.

Muskegon light at the entrance to the harbor.  Like many spots on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan, Muskegon actually lies on a smaller lake that was isolated from the big lake by a sandbar developing along the shore of Lake Michigan.  In Muskegon's case, a gap was dredged in the sandbar to make the city a major lake port.  Glaciers carved the original lakebed with many inlets, which were mostly dammed by sandbars.  Thus there is the odd phenomenon of many substantial lakes separated from Lake Michigan by a sand ridge only a mile or two wide, if that.

The Lake from the top of a dune in Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, northern Michigan.

A glowering sky silhouettes the landscape.

Dunes and lake.  South Manitou Island in the distance.

Fall colors are just beginning to develop.  It's been very warm over the past several weeks, with no hint of frost, so the leaves are a bit late this year.

MOMA?  No...Lake Michigan, dune, clouds.

The Lizards take to the beach at The Lake.  The water is still fairly warm...around 70 degrees.  The surf was very gentle, but the Lizards were still uneasy.  They have zero buoyancy and I think they were afraid of a rogue wave.  A rogue wave on a lake??? Well, there was the case of the Edmund Fitzgerald...

Thursday, September 22, 2016

One of the World's Great Museums

I visited the Art Institute of Chicago the other day.  It's a splendid place, with collections of many kinds, and countless masterpieces by marquee artists.  Here's a fine work by Winslow Homer...fishermen hard at work.  Blow these pics up for best effect.

Frederic Remington action sculpture.

This is just a shot of Chitown on a beautiful September day.

These Greek vases look like they were crafted on hi tech equipment in the past few years.  Actually, they're 2500 years old.  Great artists have been with us for a long time.

A coin of Alexander the Great's empire.  Interestingly, middle eastern monarchs minted coins showing themselves with a similar hairstyle for the next three centuries.  But there was only one Alex the Great.

An exquisite window done by Marc Chagall.

Ganesh presides.

A Chinese warrior gives a demon a good stomping!

The classic portrait of Napoleon by his court painter, Jacques-Louis-David.  I always took this to be a depiction of the emperor at his arrogant best.  But the bottom line is that the artist said Ol' Nap had been working all night on his code of laws; the clock in the background indictes a time of around 4...AM.  So maybe the emperor was just tired.

An exquisite 19th century vase.  According to the caption, elaborate artwork like this was often used during diplomatic negotiations in Europe.  One party would present it to the other...a bribe, perhaps?

Francisco Goya was a painter of many styles.  He is probably known best for his protest paintings of oppressed Spaniards rising up against their French antagonists during the Napoleonic wars...and sometimes getting shot for their efforts.  Later, as an old man, Goya painted many dark, surreal paintings that seem to me to be harbingers of modern art...in the 1820s.  But he started as a court painter, depicting various noble bigwigs.  This is an example, from 1795.

The Art Institute has a big room full of impressionists...perhaps my favorite art genre.  This is a seaside painting by Monet.

And a seaside painting by Manet.

And one by Renoir.  A fine representation of turbulence, both atmospheric and oceanic.

A French village, by Cezanne.  Watch the Tour de France in July and you'll see villages very much like this one, a century and a half after the painting.

An El Greco masterpiece.  Christ seems weary.  Or maybe he's a Bears fan and he's dejected because the team looks really lousy in the early part of the season.

I got mixed up loading pix so here's Winslow Homer again.

And Remington...the detail he achieves is amazing.  Though a native New Yorker, Remington spent a lot of time in the west, and loved it, though he wasn't particularly in non-artistic enterprises there.  He came from a distinguished and varied family.  He was related to George Washington; famed Indian painter George Catlin; and mountain man Jedediah Smith, among others.

Chicago skyline.

Huge building soars through the Millenium Park foliage.

Saturday, September 17, 2016

From the Aspens to the Prairies

Continuing east, the landscape changes.  The USA is fortunate to have an almost infinite variety of landscapes within its bounds.  On Sep 12, on the way to Denver, I detoured off the interstate into the Rockies, where the aspens are already firing up.  2-3 weeks before peak fall colors, there were already some fine aspen groves between Minturn and Leadville.

It was a bright day, crisp in the day but toasty in the sunshine.  I had forgotten how intense the sun is at two miles above sea level...it's hot when the temperature is only 60 degrees.  

These aspen have grown up among the ruins of Fort Hale.  I'd never investigated the Minturn-Leadville road before, even during the 12 years I lived in Denver.  During WW II, Fort Hale was the base of the famed 10th mountain division.  The members of the division endured rigorous training in alpine skills, combined with combat, and distinguished themselves in mountain warfare against the Germans in northern Italy in late 1944/early 1945.  After the war, many members of the division returned to the Rockies to settle...and were instrumental in developing many ski areas that are world famous today.  A few are still kicking and probably skiing the slopes in their 90s.

More aspens in the ruins of Fort Hale.  After the war, the fort was used for various training purposes at times for a couple decades; then it was abandoned and razed.  The 10th Mountain Division was resurrected in this century and has served in Afghanistan, Bosnia-Herzogovina, and other theaters in recent years.

Aspens blazing on a hillside under a threatening sky.

My friend Chuck and I took a hike in the foothills this past Thursday.  I kicked in the black and white feature on my camera and channeled Ansel Adams when the light seemed appropriate.

Prairie grasses and red rocks merge in the foothills of the Rockies west of Denver.  This is the interface between the two ecosystems.  I'm in South Valley Park, near Ken Caryl Ranch.  Look in the other direction, to the west, and you can see a massive, modern Lockheed plant. 

Abstract grass shot.  Rains have been ample here this summer.

A black tailed deer nonchalantly strolls a few metres from us.

And onto the Great Plains.  Here the Lizards are inspecting the South Platte river near Sterling, CO.

Shortgrass prairie near Crook, CO.

A byway transits the prairie.

This building in Gothenburg, Nebraska was a Pony Express relay station in 1860-61.  It was originally a few miles away and has been restored, but this is the structure where the young, unmarried, expert horsemen of the Express would rest, pick up and drop off mail, or relay their cargo to a relief rider.  Postage was initially five dollars for a half ounce letter, from St Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento.  Verrry expensive for those days...well over a hundred bucks in todays dollars.  By the summer of 1861 the rate had dropped to one dollar; the transcontinental telegraph made the service obsolete shortly after that.

The 100th meridian runs through Cozad, Nebraska.  East of this point, moisture from the Gulf of Mexico is ostensibly reliable enough to support crops with minimal irrigation.  Farther west, not so much.  This varies from year to year, of course, but the countryside does become notably lusher to the east.

A Google Earth Street View camera car at a rest area on I-80 near Grand Island, NE.  I love Street View!

This is a sculpture at the same rest area.  It was commissioned during the 1976 Bicentennial.  It's name is "Erma's Desire".  The origins of that are not immediately apparent.

The Nebraska state capitol building in Lincoln.  It was constructed from 1922 to 1932.  This was football Saturday in Lincoln, and there were red clad Husker fans everywhere.  They sold out Memorial Stadium...about a mile north of here...for the 350th consecutive game, and the Huskers beat the Oregon Ducks 35-32...mainly because the Ducks refused to kick points after touchdowns, despite having a good kicker.  They tried all two point conversions, and failed on 4 of 5.  WTF??

The building is imposing.  It houses the only unicameral state legislature in the US.  The state capitol in Bismarck, ND is also a high rise.

The capitol dome has fine mosaics, with a statue of a farmer sowing seeds at the top.

Abe Lincoln stands in his namesake city.  He looks a bit downcast here.  Maybe he's wishing the Fighting Illini could have a team as good as those of Nebraska and Oregon.

Two churches in Lincoln...one old, one new.  The older one in the foreground looks quite a bit like the one in Jackson Square in New Orleans.

A motto and a mosaic of sturdy pioneers and oxen grace the Capitol.

Iowa.  Lush corn and many windmills.  The land in Iowa oozes fertility.  You can almost feel it.  The insects keep up a steady drone, tripping out on the lush vegetation.

Soybeans.  Abundance.

This tile mosaic of a plow tilling the soil is in a rest area on Interstate 80 west of Des Moines.