I've noticed in the latest issue of County Highway that a couple of Madison stores had ads in the classified section.
First there's one from butcher Conscious Carnivore:
The second is from the housewares/gift shop, Orange Tree Imports. I had no idea the joint has been open so long - since 1975.
Just as Sam Cooke didn't know much about history, biology, and other such studies, I don't know much about wine. But I do know that I like Rieslings.
Back in the summer when I stopped in at the Wisconsin Cranberry Discovery Center & Cranberry Country Café up in Warrens, I perused the gift shop and came away with, amongst other things, a bottle of cranberry wine from Elmaro Vineyards in Trempealeau.
Unsurprisingly, I've never heard of Elmaro as my Wisconsin winery knowledge doesn't extend beyond a few down here in the southern part of the state: New Glarus Primrose Winery (which seems to be no more), Wollersheim, the one on River Road in Waunakee, and the joint that begins with a B that you see signs for near the Hollandale exit on Highway 18. My rather cursory search for Wisconsin winemakers leads me to believe that every winery in the state has a cranberry wine (even found a lingonberry vino) except Wollersheim, which seems to turn its nose up at any fruit that isn't a grape, when it comes to wine.
I have friends who have a solid rudimentary knowledge of wine. They can more or less define the major varieties, opine on which countries produce the best whatever, and tell you some prices at Vic Pierce Liquor at Sherman and Commercial.
My knowledge is much more primitive. There's reds and whites that are dry or sweet. If there's bubbles, it's sparkling. Done.
Elmaro's cranberry vino is pretty stuff - a lovely ruby color. It smelled, well, vinous. Like your typical wine where the grapes go solo. At first the scent was like that I associate with a dry wine but a sweetness eventually made its presence known.
This stuff was quite sweet, at first, and then the cranberry tartness burst its way through the syrupy stuff like the Kool-Aid Man through a wall to make a brief appearance. There was what I figured to be some tannin dryness underneath it all. I think the tannins along with a little alcohol burn came through on the finish to finally wash the sweetness away.
With all that sweetness, I found this wine to be something of a syrupy overload. I liked it in small doses. The tartness from the cranberries was very tasty and I think this wine would be more enticing to my tongue if that flavor were on more of an equal footing with the grape sweetness. A few drams for dessert is the way to go for me.
(early-August 2023)
(Watch this entry's prelude.)
Having constructed a prima facie case in my mind that the Masons' influence permeates Indianapolis, I made my way back to the convention as I had a game to play. On my way there, I passed the lovely old Deschler Building that dates from 1907. It is on the National Register of Historic Places.
My next game was a Call of Cthulhu adventure entitled “The Stone Gateway Mystery, Starring The Hardy Boys” and I played Iola Morton, Joe Hardy’s sweetheart.
We are in Bayport and the Hardy Boys’ dad, Fenton Hardy, must head out of town on business so he entrusts his sons with the responsibility to investigate a developer named Terrence Wall, er, Nolan Andrews who is to present his plans that very night for a big, new development which would gobble up precious shoreline and imperil the charming historical character of the town. This character is aided by a mysterious stone gateway adorned with eldritch carvings - or pictograms, perhaps…
I have never read any Hardy Boys stories but the guy running the game and the other player had. (Two people didn’t show up.) It was a blast investigating the evil developer's stratagems, fretting over Joe’s dangerous ("Oh, Joe! Be careful!") yet very manly (sighhhhhhh) actions to thwart the developer, and screaming occasionally because that’s what girls do, right?
It was a fun game and we managed to stop the mad developer from not only erecting ugly, out of character buildings that would tarnish Bayport's charm, perhaps irreparably, but also from summoning forth hideous, evil creatures that would destroy the world! We really dodged a bullet there.
When the game was done, I met up with one of my friends who, like me, was tired of bar food. I hadn’t had a bad meal, really, but I'd certainly had enough salads and Buffalo wings to last a week. And so we went to a Thai restaurant not too far from our hotel. Completely expectedly, many other gamers had the same idea we did and there were a dozen people waiting in line for the place to open at 4.
My companion had a fine curry while I went for tom yum soup, one of my favorite foods.
The soup was excellent though a bit different from what I’m used to. This stuff had no noodles but there were onion and tomato in it, which was a new twist for me. Also, I am accustomed to getting a plate on the side with Thai basil, bean sprouts, a few jalapeno slices, and a wedge or two of lime. Not here.
Still, not only was it a welcome change from the bar food that had largely been my diet so far, it was genuinely tasty stuff.
We went back to the hotel with full bellies to freshen up before heading out to a movie. We had tickets to see Oppenheimer on the IMAX and on film too at the Indiana State Museum, just a few blocks west of the hotel. We wandered over there and discovered that the museum was next door to another one, the Eiteljorg Museum.
It features art from Native Americans and from Western America. Indianapolis seems an odd spot for such a museum but it apparently got its start from the collection of a philanthropist for whom the place is named: Harrison Eiteljorg. We had some time before the show and were waiting on another friend of ours who was grabbing a quick bite after a game so we decided to do a little wandering.
There was a path leading behind the Eiteljorg and so we followed it.
This led through a small green area and out to the Central Canal.
It was a really nice spot with a park on the opposite shore and a trail to walk along the canal. We saw only a few people as we slowly strolled our way along the canal path. Did the threat of potentially having to navigate large crowds of gamers keep locals away? The area just seemed oddly quiet. I am not sure where the canal goes, exactly, but walking it to find out may just be in the cards for a future visit.
The museum was closed except for the IMAX cinema but it looked to be an interesting place. Many other people had the same idea we did as the theater was full when we settled in for 3 hours of celluloid goodness. I’ll be honest, though, it should have had an intermission. I guess the industry has to squeeze as many screenings in as they can, audience bladders be damned.
I really liked how director Christopher Nolan used the IMAX format for scenes depicting massive flames, ripples on the surface of water, and just any phenomenon that captures the scientist's vast imagination. The sheer size of the screen engulfs us and, just perhaps, instills a tidbit of awe in our minds as the man on the screen ponders the universe and its workings. I wish there were a few more of these scenes as I really enjoy this montage style where the film cuts to something that illustrates a character's thinking or feeling or perhaps just shifts the mood for us. Personally, I especially like it when a film cuts to something outside of the story world for a brief second before throwing us back into it so we can ponder how what we just saw relates to the story. I enjoy that act of trying to link seemingly disparate things.
The Trinity scene was just great. While we see various people taking shelter, donning goggles, and looking on in anticipation, we hear only breathing despite an atomic bomb just having detonated. And then the sonic boom hits them. But it also hits us with that IMAX sound system cranked up to 11. I felt the boom. Just fantastic cinema. Great credit must be given to Nolan for not making this the climax quickly leading to the end of the movie. It’s another element of Oppenheimer’s story, albeit a very important one, but it’s by no means the end of his tale.
I would really like to see Oppenheimer again but, alas, probably won’t be able to on an IMAX.
As was our custom, we retired to the Omni lobby for the night after the film where drinks and conversation flowed easily.
********
Saturday morning I had a date down the street from our hotel at this place, the City Market.
A friend and I walked down there and we discovered a small memorial for James E. O’Donnell, a native of Indianapolis who survived the sinking of the cruiser named after his hometown on 30 July 1945 just after it had delivered the uranium and other parts for the atomic bomb that would be dropped on Hiroshima, courtesy of one J. Robert Oppenheimer. You may recall the scene in Jaws where the grizzled old man of sea, Quint, tells of the ship being torpedoed and of how he and his fellow sailors found themselves at the mercy of the sharks who called the Philippine Sea home.
My friend went on his way whereas I entered the City Market and found that it is now a public market. It was still early so no vendors were yet open.
I was here for a tour of The Catacombs, the subterranean ruins of Tomlinson Hall which stood next to the Market building until 1958 when it was consumed by fire. Both buildings were/are on Market Street and, true to its name, markets were held on this street as well as in the two edifices which were designed by a German architect whose name I cannot recall. While the first floor of Tomlinson Hall hosted markets and vendors hawking their wares, the rest of the building was more of a public event space.
Concerts and cotillions were held for Indy’s good and great and Benjamin Harrison celebrated his nomination for the presidency in the Hall’s ballroom. The Catacombs were the basement of Tomlinson Hall, with plenty of room for things such as produce for the markets that would stay cool underground.
The Catacombs were quite spooky and I dared not stray from the rest of the tour group lest I never return…Our tour guide was a member of Indy’s historical society and explained the history of Tomlinson Hall and its surroundings. While not as dramatic as Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow starting the Great Chicago Fire, local legend says a bird dropped a discarded, yet still lit, cigarette on the building's roof to start the blaze. Did a pyromaniacal pigeon really do the deed? Or was it a story concocted by an anti-smoking crusader? We shall never know.
In years past, The Catacombs were used as a haunted house on Halloween and Gencon held at least one session of Dungeons & Dragons here which sounds like it would have been a hoot.
With the tour over, I headed east. This area of downtown felt gentrified with lots of newer apartments. Since such buildings are about as interesting as watching paint dry, I headed north and again found myself surrounded by older homes and other buildings like this Catholic church.
I came to another beautiful and decidedly older building where I spied a Green Man on the side.
Don’t see these often. I discovered that it was affixed to a wall of The Athenæum, a gorgeous 19th century building that was originally a kind of community center for the city’s German immigrants and German-Americans. Back then it was named Das Deutsche Haus or "The German House” but World War I forced a change to The Athenæum lest community members be accused of being loyal to the enemy. Besides, a Latin name sounds all highfalutin, especially when it has that fancy a-e diphthong with the letters melded together.
My understanding is that German immigrants and their descendants were slow to learn English and adopt it as their primary language. I believe Milwaukee still had multiple German-language newspapers as World War I began. But, as the conflict progressed, these people scrambled to learn English, anglicize their names, eat hot dogs instead of frankfurters, etc. OK, so I am not sure about that last one.
Das Deutsche Haus featured a Turners Hall, a theater, and surely a bier hall too, amongst other things. Today there’s a German restaurant, concerts are held there, and I think some of it is office space.
Turning the corner to see the great architectural detail of The Athenæum, I found myself on Massachusetts Avenue which begins in the northeast part of downtown and continues in that direction.
I first discovered Mass Ave, as the locals call it, back in 2006 or so. It’s a bit like State Street here in Madison but with less emphasis on college students and more on young professionals. New apartments sit next to older ones with hip restaurants and bars to be found along much of the streetscape. Well, they looked all trendy to me, anyway.
The stretch closer to downtown seems to have more newer apartment buildings and more places that would appeal to a younger set who found it important to be seen at such joints.
Kitty corner from The Athenæum is another fantastic building but this one has a Middle Eastern look to it.
Are those minarets? It says “Murat Shrine Club” on one wall and it turns out that this was the local HQ of Indy’s Shriners, formerly known as the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, hence the architectural style. I got this vision in my head of the front door opening and a bunch of old duffers donning fezzes zipping out on go-karts heading for some parade or other. Shriners are an offshoot of the Freemasons – Masons again! They're everywhere in this town.
I wondered if there was an Illuminati lodge somewhere. If I happened upon an Eye of Providence or any other esoteric symbol while traipsing around, I was going to get very paranoid.
I presume mystical, arcane rites used to be performed there but now the place is a theater called the Old National Centre where the only chants raised are drunk concert goers singing along to their favorite bands.
Just look at the marvelous detail!
I could have looked at all of the stained glass windows and the carvings and whatnot all day. But time was tight so I pushed onwards.
Another highlight I stumbled upon was an old fire station that had been converted into the local firefighters museum and memorial.
Across the street I found one of, if not the, neatest ghost sign I’ve ever seen. The wall of the building was covered in layers of ads - a veritable early 20th century advertising palimpsest. But it was the Quaker Oats sign that was the biggest and stood out from the rest.
A gentleman who was sitting on a bench flagged me down and introduced himself as a photographer and videographer. After introducing myself, he said that he had seen me walking along the street taking photos and was glad that I had traipsed by him. He inquired as to where my pictures could be seen online and if I considered myself a street photographer.
“No, I’m no street photographer,” I replied. “Just a tourist who likes old buildings and ghost signs. And no, I’m not on Instagram or Twitter or any social media like that. Just an old school blog where these photographs will be posted in a few months.”
It was a friendly little chat and I was appreciative that someone would think that I was even a remotely practiced photographer whose snaps would be worth viewing.
I found the storefront theater where I was scheduled to see a play that night and then checked the time. A game awaited so I turned around and headed back to the convention.
On the way, I passed a couple of murals. The first was of hometown literary hero Kurt Vonnegut.
The second was of Mari Evans.
Evans, another Indy native, was an artist, writer, and poet who was associated with the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s. I am not familiar with this "Black Arts Movement" and so will have to investigate.
I was tempted to stop in at that ice cream parlor where they make it to order in a bowl resting atop a bath of liquid nitrogen but didn't want to be late.
********
Bonus photo. Here’s another one of Piper at the vet unsuccessfully hiding behind the doc’s laptop. Poor Pipey.
Apparently Alexa doesn't understand Kobaïan, the language created by Magma's drummer and songwriter,
I stumbled upon this piece over the weekend. It's called Looney Toons by Robert Paterson, a contemporary composer. It's got 4 movements and each is inspired by a different Looney Toons character and each is just a hoot. Playful and melodic with strong rhythmic centers.
I think I'm getting better at pouring because all of my Civil Life samples had nice heads. Here, I got big, light tan one. The beer was just lovely, all copper and clear with a bubble here and there. It smelled no less glorious with some coveted leather joined by caramel, apricot, and a hint of herbal hops.
First sip revealed a moderate fizz (should it have been flatter?) heralding the leather and caramel aromas which were joined by a delicate bready flavor. There was a little sweetness, at first, but it gained in strength as the beer warmed, though it never became cloying. I found it to be only very slightly astringent and that mixed well with the minty-herbal taste of the hops.
The malty flavors took on a fruity note on the finish before a bracing dose of those minty hops swept them away for a nice brisk finish. Not mega dry or bitter but enough to clear the palate.
Brilliant!
That leather-bread malt flavor combo is to die for. Or, at least, go to St. Louis for. It also had a very pleasant smoothness which was accented by the sweetness that, as I noted above, never got out of control. All of the great, rich malt flavors contributed to making a medium-light body but this stuff is nimble on the tongue. Extremely flavorful yet not filling.
So here I am once more in the playground of the Civil Life. One more experience, one more entry in a blog, self-penned.
My first trio of Civil Life brews were comprehensively explored here.
I was keen to try their Porter Ale to discover if it was on the American side of things with lots of coffee and bitter chocolate flavors or if it had been brewed in a traditional English style. Truth be known, I'm not sure what a traditional English porter is supposed to taste like but I believe it's more like a brown ale with less flavor from black malts or anything heavily kilned. Yeah, yeah, yeah - I know this is not the OG porter. But I think this gets me in the ballpark of a modern English porter. Maybe.
This stuff had a tempting smoothness to it that held back a mellow fizz. Dark chocolate, coffee, and some malt sweetness were the tastes I culled from its light-medium body. Definitely American. The malt flavors faded on the finish and were replaced by a firm dose of hoppy bitterness that had a eucalyptus thing going on, i.e. - minty but not sharp with something of a medicinal aspect to it. Fairly dry too.
This Porter Ale was good. I really enjoyed the smoothness and those coffee/dark chocolate flavors. Also, it was rather light-bodied so it went down easy. It's just that I wished those hops had a greener, more sprightly taste to them. They had a mushy, almost vegetal thing going on.
Perhaps they make an English porter too.
Why yes, I was unable to get a photograph of this beer that was in focus.
I tried Civil Life's American Brown Ale last time and was curious if this was the same brew but with oats or something entirely different. Not that my palate could really tell, mind you.
The kicker about my poor photography skills is that this beer's big, tan head looked great and had staying power giving me ample time to take a decent shot yet I was never able to wrangle adequate focus pulling out of my camera app. Like the previous brown ale, this stuff had a gorgeous deep amber hue accented by stunning clarity allowing me to see some bubbles inside.
While it looked the same as the American brown, it smelled quite differently, more conventional. Some caramel, milk chocolate along with a hint of stone fruit, and a touch of grass. A decent fizz couldn't keep all that luscious oaty smoothness down. Milk chocolate, a general roasty flavor, and a little caramel were kept in check by a good dose of herbal hoppiness. I was happy that it never got too sweet. Nice malt flavors but the body was lightish.
Sweetness and malt tastes faded at the end allowing the hops to come to the fore with a generous amount of bitterness that made it fairly dry.
Definitely not an adulterated American Brown Ale. With the smoothness and prominent milk chocolate taste, it felt rather indulgent drinking this stuff. The hops made for a nice counterpoint but that chocolate flavor was a bit too strong for me. A good beer but only one, please.
I held off on drinking this Burton on Holt Ale as the label described it as the brewery's "ode to the English winter warmer". "Warmer" is an apt description of the late fall weather we'd been having so I waited until an actual day that was below freezing to try this stuff.
The tempting amber liquid was topped off by more lovely tan foam. The head lasted what I think of as an average length of time allowing me to get a photograph that was more in focus that that of the oatmeal brown but still not sharp. My nose received waves of caramel and bread larded with some grassy-herbal hops. There was also a scent that I can best describe as like that of Lucky Charms - sweetish and grainy.
As expected, the body was heavier than the other brew's I'd sampled. Medium leaning towards heavy. Fizziness was restrained allowing a full dose of caramel taste along with bread. While sweet, it wasn't cloying and I suppose those peppery hops were doing something behind the scenes to make sure it didn't veer towards the treacly. A hint of leather came through on the finish but it was short-lived as a peppery wave of hop essence washed the malty flavors away. Fairly bitter and dry in the end.
As with the previous two brews, this Burton on Holt Ale was good. Not super sweet with a really nice rounded malt taste. It seemed potent but not deadly. In fact, it went down rather easily, as if the beer was distracting my tongue as warming alcohol went down with me barely noticing until the glass was mostly empty. Well played, Civil Life.
All of the beers in this trifecta were good. I was slightly disappointed that the Porter Ale was an American style beer considering the English-looking gent on the label is donning a bowler hat. But what can you do? Nothing stood out here like the American Brown Ale did in my first round of tasting.
One more Civil Life brew to go.
A neat article by Lars Marius Garshol, whom I mentioned not too long ago, called "Gotlandsdricke: Sweden’s Elusive Smoked Ale".
Real gotlandsdricke is little-known for the same reason it has survived: It’s from an isolated and pastoral island in the Baltic. Lars Marius Garshol sheds some light on this smoky, juniper-infused, hard-to-get farmhouse ale.
Sounds good to me.
A local TV station sent a crew out to the solstice bonfire at Olbrich Park yesterday. The cameraman got some footage of yours truly and the editor knew a handsome fellow when they saw one so I was briefly on TV.
The winter solstice bonfire at Olbrich Park has become an annual tradition in Madison. https://t.co/JpsKiLtdAa
— News 3 Now / Channel 3000 (@WISCTV_News3) December 22, 2023
The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society has a new Dark Adventure Radio Theatre® adventure out called "The Temple of Jupiter Ammon". It's an original tale.
Celebrated treasure hunter Count Byron Khun de Prorok leads an expedition into the Libyan Desert in an attempt to find the lost tomb of Alexander the Great at the Temple of Jupiter Ammon. Can the Count succeed where countless others have failed, and recover one of history's greatest archeological finds? Or are some secrets buried with good reason, and those who seek them doomed to be met with madness and disaster?
Some new holiday prog.
First is Marillion's cover of "I Believe in Father Christmas" by Greg Lake. I wonder if this song is more well-known these days than "Lucky Man". It has transcended the "classic rock" tag, I think.
Lovely version here by the Marillos.
Challenged by a friend last week on why I’d never done a Christmas song, I protested it wasn't really me, and besides I didn’t think I had it in me to write suitably Christmassy lyrics. "No problem”, he said, "we’ll get ChatGPT to do it for you!", upon which he instructed the AI to generate Christmas lyrics in the style of Steven Wilson. Which it proceeded to do so. By the yard, in fact, I was shocked at how instantaneous and easy it was to guide it ("don’t actually mention Christmas" we said to it, "make it feel more lonely”…etc)
I think it did a good SW impression. "Make it feel cold and lonely" - ha!
The Frau and I went to Toby's Supper Club with a friend last night and, improbably, it was my first time at the venerable institution. I'm not quite sure how I'd never made it out there before. At 5:30 the joint was hoppin' - it was packed to the gills.
We were seated in the non-smoking section.
Old fashioned (brandy), beer, and a relish tray. Doesn't get more Wisconsin than that. This was followed by some tasty chicken, a fine steak, and fried blue gill which gained high praise.
I got a Christmas gift early - pickled jalapenos, pickled garlic, cranberry sriracha jam, et al.
The first fruits from The Claudettes' summer recording sessions are now available - "No Matter How Much". New(ish) singer Rachel Williams seems to be fitting in just swell. I love the German Expressionism-like visuals here. Great song too.
After seeing that mural, I discovered that legendary jazz trumpeter Freddie Hubbard is from Indianapolis.
A recent visit to Chicago's Christkindlmarkt yielded a purchase within a minute - this fine star. It looks really nice with the living room lights turned off. I am tempted to pretend it's the red star of the Solar Federation and stand there naked with arms extended - and without closing the curtains. Holiday cheer indeed.
(early-August 2023)
(Take a look at the prelude.)
Friday. Just after dawn. The sunlight squeaked in through the hotel room curtain. There was just enough for me to navigate my way to the bathroom without tripping over a suitcase and ignominiously faceplanting on a grocery bag full of potato chips and trail mix. My plan for the day was to have a mellow morning. I’d grab a cup of coffee from the hotel lobby (Starbucks - not good but decent), go get some postcards, mail them, and then head down to the convention. My wanderings yesterday took me away from the con and its hordes of gamers for most of the day so I figured, since I had no games planned, I’d buy some generic tickets that could be used to gain entrance to any event. You just show up at one that you want to attend but hadn’t registered for and, if a registered player doesn’t make it – usually because they are hungover – then you’re in.
Well, that was the plan.
My first destination was the Indiana State Library as their website indicated they carried postcards in their gift shop and I just couldn't recall where I'd bought them the previous time. It was a nice older building that kept up with the neoclassical motif I had seen on the courthouse yesterday.
What a contrast to our Capitol here in Madison which is surrounded by grass and trees on all sides, inviting any and everyone to come visit the building to admire the architecture or hang out on the lawn with some fine local cheese for a snack. Indiana seems to treat their Capitol as just another office building, to some extent, anyway. It's just odd to see acres of blacktop like this in the downtown of a large city. Why not build a ramp and more buildings and use that no doubt value real estate better?
As I continued north, I found this mural of various local jazz musicians called “46 for XLVI” on the side of the Musicans’ Repair & Sales building. I did not recognize any of the faces of the players but this is not surprising. Other than Kurt Vonnegut, I don't know of any other famous folks from Indy, jazz musicians or otherwise. Regardless, it's good see locals honored whether they made it big on the national scene or not.
I turned east thinking I’d check out the war memorials that I’ve seen from a distance before but never up close and soon found myself before a Masonic temple. Immediately that episode of The Simpsons featuring that fine parody of the Masons, The Stonecutters.
Another really neat building in the neoclassical style. I think so, anyway. It does have columns. I wondered if the Masons had an outsized influence in Indianapolis. Regardless, the city has retained some very nice, old buildings.
Across the street the from the temple is the Scottish Rite Cathedral.
Scottish Rite is something to do with Freemasonry but I’m not sure exactly what. I have a friend who is a Free and Accepted Mason and has talked about other Masons that follow the Scottish Rite but has never explained what it all means, presumably because it’s a big secret and he’d have to kill me if he ever went into detail.
The cathedral was dotted with friezes or whatever you call them of bats and owls.
The stretch I was on had displays off on the side of the path dedicated to various historical figures and I investigated the ones for Thomas Edison and Susan B. Anthony.
Perhaps one of these trips I’ll rent a bicycle and investigate the Trail further.
I headed northeast to another neoclassical (columns!) building which turned out to be Indy’s central library.
On the west side of it was a piece of art that I call the Headless Slender Man statue. I give Indy credit for featuring a piece of public art that is a bit odd and uncanny if not genuinely disturbing.
It turns out that the library was at the north end of a several blocks long stretch of memorials, fountains, parks, and whatnot. The library faced the American Legion Mall lined with even more neoclassical buildings including the American Legion National Headquarters.
The memorial in the center here is for Hoosiers who served in “the World War”, i.e. – World War I. There were more memorials along both sides of the mall but I stuck to the west side and encountered the one for those who served in the Vietnam War.
Stepping into the space created by its semi-circular shape, one is confronted by a list of all the Hoosiers who died in that conflict. Walking around it, I saw that excerpts from letters home by those who never returned alive were etched into the concrete.
The mall was a lovely, peaceful spot. A great greenspace in the northern part of downtown.
There were Canada geese ambling around on the grass in the middle of mall as well as hanging out in the shade on the tree-lined sides. Oddly enough, I didn’t see one pile of goose shit.
Continuing south, I crossed the street and was at Obelisk Square which is home to a very large black obelisk with a fountain at its base.
It didn’t appear to be a war memorial and instead had these rather large bas reliefs at the bottom which illustrated…I don’t know…general virtues, maybe. The virtues that make a nation strong, perhaps. One with a cross must have represented religion. Another was of a woman reading to a child while holding a torch. Wisdom and knowledge? And there was one with a guy relaxing near a globe with a surveying telescope behind him and a familiar looking bird ahead of him.
An owl! The Masons are everywhere in this town!
Crossing another street to the south I arrived at the Indiana War Memorial & Museum. It’s a building I’ve seen from a couple blocks away previously but now I would actually see it up close.
Again, neoclassical (I think) with colonnades. The cornerstone indicated that it was laid by old Black Jack Pershing himself on 4 July 1925. It’s a rather imposing structure – like a fortress. The bronze(?) doors were rather neat.
They looked like they'd be right at home in Lord of the Rings and I could envision some king entering his fortress through these doors after a hard day of killing orcs and being greeted by an entourage bearing fresh clothes, some water to wash the blood off, and a big flagon of mead.
Out front was a statue entitled “For the Fatherland”.
When it doesn’t look like a fortress, it has the feel of a mausoleum. There wasn’t a welcoming entrance inviting me in and I felt like I was being asked to contemplate the sayings etched into the exterior walls instead. Checking out the museum would have to wait for another visit.
Continuing south was another wonderful bit of greenspace. Not only were there trees and flowers and grass, but also this beautiful fountain.
Men and women joyously dance as fish swim at their feet. At the top a woman plays a cymbal. Something joyous and a bit of revelry made for a nice contrast to the more serious and solemn things I'd seen on my way here.
On the east side of the fountain area was a statue of a woman holding a flower that looked like a water lily.
And on the opposite side of her was one of Pan playing his pipes, which means that figure above is surely a nymph. Pan is no doubt trying to convince her with a song to rusticate out in the country with him where he would plow her field, so to speak.
This reminded me of a statue that I had seen on my wanderings the day before which featured the Roman god Mercury. It was neat to see neoclassical architecture and Greek/Roman statuary dotting the cityscape. Man, Indy sure does love a war memorial! I wonder if anything commemorates the fallen from our invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq over on the east side of the mall that I didn't investigate.
During my perambulations I seemed to encounter very little auto traffic. There was some, of course, but it felt like I didn't have to go very far from the convention center to escape a constant stream of cars. Do a lot of the businesses there let folks work from home? Or do locals just try to avoid downtown to keep their distance from the unwashed masses of gamer dorks? I couldn't blame them if they do.
While there were cars parked everywhere, I saw relatively few people. The mall was populated mostly with the homeless, as I walked through. A gentleman came out to his car from the Scottish Rite church as I was admiring it and he chatted with me briefly. Indy is a very friendly city. Hell, even the geese don't shit in public, it seems.
And so I completely failed to spend more time at the convention this morning. But it was a fun and intriguing hike around the downtown.
********
Bonus photo. Cats! Here’s one from many years ago with Grabby grooming a very young Piper out on the porch of our apartment.
