Our first stop is in Yirgacheffe
To check Ethiopian fields
While at Gencon earlier this month, Command Coffee on Monument Circle was my go-to for go juice. It was close to my hotel and they open early. Plus their coffee is good. I grabbed a back of their light roast, an Ethiopian bean.
The label emphasizes floral flavors and, while there was that, it sat atop a firm earthy, nuttiness. Good stuff.
The official beer of Gencon has been announced:
Thank Christ it's not another breakfast cereal beer such as Froot Loops Hazy IPA. Cyzer is apparently an apple ale which doesn't sound bad at all. Unless it is brewed with Apple Jacks...
When I first landed at Four Day Ray's website, I thought I was at the the wrong place. There were only pictures of food so I figured the site belonged to a restaurant. Then I saw the Four Day Ray Brewery logo. I had indeed gone to the correct website. It is very odd to me when a brewery pushes their food to the fore and you have to go to another menu entirely in order to see any beer. I mean this was Four Day Ray Brewing, after all. Relegating your beer to a subordinate position, to simply being an accessory to food which comes in big, colorful photos just rubs me the wrong way.
Now, these Hoosiers aren't alone in giving food pride of place over beer but there aren't even glasses of beer in the photos to show any complementary relationships. There are many more photos of French fries than of lovely glasses of suds with big heads carelessly spewing enchanting beery aromas and filled with sumptuous liquid whose burnished colors are like a siren call to your tastebuds.
Perhaps that is how brewpub breweries survive these days. You lure folks in with the promise of chow and give them the hard sell on your beer once you've got them in your clutches.
As I have in years past, I attended Gencon this year which meant a midsummer trek to Indianapolis. I like to sample local brews while on vacation and even try to bring some back home, if I can. Just like last year, I went to a liquor store just a few blocks from my hotel to find something to tuck away in my cooler for sampling at home. The selection this year paled in contrast to last year with IPA's and various Belgian-style ales dominating the shelves. In the end, I returned to Madison with a six-pack of their Booberry Blonde, a "tart blonde ale" made with booberries.
My impression was that this was a summer seasonal as the can had something on it indicating the beer's high refreshment quotient being perfect for warm weather. But, upon closer inspection of the Four Day Ray website, I have discovered that it is, in fact, a year-round brew.
This beer looked wonderful. Why wouldn't you want to feature photos of it on your website? My glass had a big, frothy, pink head that had staying power. The beer was a lovely light purple and clear. I spied lots of bubbles inside. The aromas were all fruity beginning with a lemony tartness followed by hints of booberry.
The brewery was right to tout this brew as a summer quencher with its light body. Considering all of the foam and bubbles, the fizziness was on the mild side. The lemony tartness was solid but not deadly and the booberry was really nice. Lemon and booberry lingered on the finish before the latter faded to be replaced by a dash of hops. The tartness joined those hops to make for a really nice dry ending. My thirst was quenched.
As something cold on a hot day, Booberry Blonde works well. But letting it warm up to cellar temp is where it really shines as the booberry flavor becomes more prominent yet the tartness never attempts to overpower it. Just a great balance of fruit flavors and the perfect level of sour for my taste.
Junk food pairing: Booberry Blonde is all about subtlety and restraint and so mote it be with your food pairing. Keep the local theme going with some potato flavored potato chips from the Broad Ripple Chip Co., made just a bit southwest of Four Day Ray.
Every year Gencon has an official beer brewed by Indy's Sun King Brewery. Last year I voted for the Kölsch but the English mild with honey proved victorious.
This year we're stuck with garbage. All entries are based on junk food breakfast cereals.
Why can't we have grown-up beer instead of flavors aimed at the palates of 12 year-olds?
(early-August 2023)
(Watch the prelude.)
On my way over to Lucas Oil Stadium where a game of Mystery of the Abbey awaited me, I encountered a group of singers on a street corner.
Whoever they were, I crossed the street to hear them better and found them singing the old hymn "The Old Rugged Cross". I cannot recall the last time I'd heard it. Maybe on an old Doc Watson album or one of those compilations of Alan Lomax field recordings. This street corner version was quite beautiful and my sentiment was shared by a woman sitting in the passenger seat of a car at the intersection who leaned out of the window and applauded. I did the same when they had finished and continued on my merry way.
I arrived at the football stadium and, walking up the stairs, noticed a statue of a quarterback in the classic quarterback pose with arm back, hand clutching a ball, and ready to throw. At first I thought it might be of Earl Morrall and then felt stupid because, if they're going to put a statue up of a Colts quarterback, it would be of Johnny Unitas. Duh! Then it occurred to me that those fellows played for the Baltimore Colts, not the Indianapolis Colts.
Oops.
The statue ended up being of Peyton Manning.
Entering the stadium I was amazed, as always, at how small it seems. I mean, it holds tens of thousands of fans but it doesn't feel like a megadome. People on the other side of the stadium aren't teeny tiny dots like I am used to. Looking around, I found that there was much to be desired in terms of signage. After wandering aimlessly for a few minutes, I finally came upon someone who looked like he was in authority and I asked just where the hell my game was to be held. He smiled and admitted that the game's listing in the event catalog didn't quite match the names of the rooms at the stadium in anything approaching an intuitive way before pointing me to my table. My fellow players eventually showed up after being similarly confused. With everyone present we donned pretend habits and delved into Mystery of the Abbey.
It merges the old board game Clue with Umberto Eco’s novel The Name of the Rose, one of my favorite tales. There’s been a murder in a medieval abbey and you play a sleuthing monk trying to expose the identity of the killer.
While the game has the same basic premise and similar mechanics to Clue, Mystery of the Abbey expands them, makes sleuthing more complicated. Your investigating monk cannot wander the abbey at-will and must return to the chapel for mass every round. Certain rooms give you a card which can turn the situation upside down and undo a lot of your work - e.g. - the abbot catches you being a naughty monk poking around where you shouldn't be. Plus, there are many more suspects than in Clue.
Was the evil deed perpetrated by a wayward Benedictine scribe in the throes of madness? Or perhaps a Franciscan acolyte led onto the wrong path by Satan himself?
Here I am, the green monk, heading to the white monk’s cell to poke around for clues.
Mystery of the Abbey has more going on than Clue yet it is not a very complicated game. It was easy to get the hang of. I had a lot of fun gathering clues and attempting to throw my fellow monks off the scent so that I could be the one to approach the abbot with the identity of the killer. I had my speech all ready with tales of an illuminator taking a bath with lime leaves, blackened fingers and blackened tongues, a lost text by Aristotle, etc. Unfortunately, someone beat me to it and won the game.
With my session being done, it was back to the Omni to meet up with my cohorts and a spot of lunch. Just across the parking lot from it is the old Union Station, a gorgeous old train station.
I think it dates back to the 1880s and, while it no longer serves rail passengers today, riders of Amtrak’s Cardinal route board and alight from their trains in a building just adjacent to it. I think that the building is now a hotel. Next time I’ll have to go in and see that big window from the other side.
I once again met up with a friend at the Omni and we retired to the bar for lunch. It would be a wedge salad for me. But a fancy one.
Instead of a wedge of iceberg lettuce, I was given a few trimmed heads of Romaine. Also different was the dressing. I am used to the French kind on a wedge salad but there was bleu cheese here, although I have been to at least one restaurant here in Madison which serves it with French and bleu cheese dressings. Decadent! I had shrimp added to my lunch (decadent!) which weren't too bad considering we weren't anywhere near shrimp waters. After all, I was on vacation. It was quite tasty but a different animal from the Wisconsin supper club salad to which I was accustomed.
Soon enough evening rolled around and I was off to Massachusetts Avenue again to see a play at The District Theatre, a small storefront place. They were putting on a performance of Spring Awakening, described as being “based on an old weird German expressionist drama”.
Old?
Weird?
German?
This sounded right up my Strasse.
I had never heard of it nor its author Frank Wedekind but I was intrigued. Wikipedia describes it as a play that “criticises perceived problems in the sexually oppressive culture of nineteenth century Germany and offers a vivid dramatisation of the erotic fantasies that can breed in such an environment.”
Well, there were all kinds of mature content warnings to go with it.
The stage was sparsely decorated. Sitting before a brick wall that had several areas exposed where the black paint had been scrubbed off/faded away was a lone chair with what looked to be a chemise hanging on the back. A garland with notecards dangling form it was strung from the rafters.
The play had been transformed into a musical with the score written by pop musician Duncan Sheik whom I’d heard of but I don’t think I’d ever heard a note of his music. But the late 19th century German setting was kept.
It opens with a teen girl pondering where babies come from and asking her mother about this sensitive subject only to be rebuffed by one thoroughly embarrassed parent. We then meet other kids in her town who, like her, are navigating their ascent into adulthood and their burgeoning sexuality.
There were some affecting moments that brought back scenes from my adolescence but also crazy ones such as when one of the boys is at home in the bathroom trying to masturbate. His father, at stage right, keeps pounding on the door asking him to hurry up in there. To stage left, one of the boys in his class at school is receiving a piano lesson from his mother. The catch is that the kid's classmate has a crush on his mother and the classmate’s fantasy is brought to life when she rips open her dress, grabs the boy’s head, and shoves it between her breasts which she jiggles for extra fun.
Tender moments of teen confusion alternated with comic routines - I had never seen a circle jerk in play before. And there were also some deadly serious scenes involving rape and abortion. I really enjoyed how modern pop music was integrated into the Germany of 130 years ago. A fun and interesting play, I want to learn more about it. I can only imagine the brouhaha that it caused back in the 1900s when it debuted.
I felt it made a nice complement to Austrian writer Arthur Schnitzler’s novella Dream Story. Although written 30 some odd years after Spring Awakening, it is a look at sexuality from an adult perspective in roughly the same culture. The story became the basis for Stanley Kubrick’s film Eyes Wide Shut.
After the play it was back to - you guessed it - the Omni for beer and good company.
********
The next day was Sunday, the last day of the convention. For the first time ever, I actually had a scheduled game on a Sunday. I got up early and packed my stuff into our SUV before wandering over to the hotel where the game was to be held.
I passed over the Central Canal and got a different view of it.
I also discovered that Indy has a 9/11 memorial.
My last game of the con was called “Our Lady of the Eternal Sapphire” and was an Achtung! Cthulhu scenario. Achtung! Cthulhu is a role-playing game like Trail or Call, which I’d played in the previous days, but, unsurprisingly, everything takes place during World War II.
It builds on the Nazi preoccupation with the Spear of Destiny and their expeditions to Tibet in search of, amongst other things, proof of racial this and evidence of occult that to create a game world where the Nazis and their allies utilize occult techniques and ceremonies to harness the powers of the supernatural and summon old gods to do their evil bidding.
In our game, we were sent to a monastery outside of Cairo to acquire a magical, precious stone that could be used for nefarious purposes before the Nazis got a hold of it.
The premise was good. And who doesn’t like outwitting and killing Nazis? Unfortunately, the guy running the game missed out on something very important: there was no threat here. I never felt menaced like I should have. It was obvious to us that monks of the monastery were under the influence of a strange power by their thousand yards stares and robotic movements but they did little to nothing to prevent us from escaping with the titular gem. While they may have occasionally given us a collective gimlet eye, they seemed otherwise content to let a bunch of foreigners infiltrate their midst and roam their home at will.
The whole point of Cthulhu games is to expose characters to earthly dangers and cosmic horrors alike, to confront the investigators with crazed cultists and weird, threatening creatures from another dimension that cause our heroes to lose their grip on reality and, if they're lucky, to be put out of their misery by some heinous daemonic creature who chows down on the hapless human for a snack.
Oh well.
We were on the road around 2. Another successful Gencon.
I’ve come to like Indianapolis more over the years since I’ve been attending Gencon there. I heard that there were 70,000-75,000 attendees this year and appreciate time spent away from the throngs of gamer dorks. Downtown Indy is eminently walkable and laid out in a grid so it’s easily navigable when you want to find a meal or something to do that’s not gaming.
I liked the old buildings and really enjoyed traipsing down the American Legion Mall and that stretch of memorials and obelisks. Indy loves its memorials. The Red Line makes taking an extended trip away from downtown a breeze and think I may go south next year in search of the perfect pork tenderloin sandwich.
A couple gripes. First is that the restaurant situation downtown could use some work. That Thai place was an exception to restaurant after restaurant of common, American fare. Indy loves its steakhouses almost as much as war memorials! And there was Italian and fast food but something “ethnic”, something not your typical kind of food was hard to come by. I walked by an Indian restaurant on one of my walks and that makes 2 places. There were probably more non-American type restaurants than I recall, but there just didn’t seem to be many.
At some point in the past, Indianapolis got the nickname “Naptown” which I think began as a playful thing but morphed into something derogatory, saying that the city was slow and sleepy. It may have overcome that but there’s still a definite small town feel, at times. Especially at night when an inordinate number of people – young men, no doubt – feel the need to rev their engines. This is the home of the Indianapolis 500, I guess, but still. Are the ladies of Indy really impressed by this kind of thing? It’s just like high school.
A great thing about Indy is that folks are very friendly. From the concierge of our hotel who wanted to see the photos I took on one of my walks to the panhandlers who were never once aggressive. Heck, even the geese shat away from pedestrians. The animals here are truly nice, human and otherwise.
I grant you, I only know Indy when the biggest convention in is town so my view is skewed. But, when I get out of downtown, I find that locals are still friendly to this tourist.
Oddly enough, I don’t think I saw a police officer until the third day we were there. A friend had and said that he’d chatted with her. She remarked that they were trying to hustle the homeless and the panhandlers away so that we congoers saw only the nice face of Indy. And so we did.
********
Bonus photo. Close to my place of work is an old bus stop. I contacted Madison Metro and they said it dated back to the 1960s but it is still used today.
(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.
(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.
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Bonus photo. Cats! Here’s one from many years ago with Grabby grooming a very young Piper out on the porch of our apartment.
