The dress in question is slide number eight in the slideshow.
Archive for the ‘Museums’ Category
This one’s for RoadRich.
Thursday, October 9th, 2014Random notes: June 6, 2014.
Friday, June 6th, 2014The NYT obit for Chester Nez clarifies a point I was confused on:
…
This should not be taken as an attempt to diminish the accomplishments of Mr. Nez, the other 28 original code talkers, or the ones who followed the first 29; I’m just trying to make sure the historical record is clear. (I felt some of the other media coverage confused this point.)
This goes out to our great and good friend RoadRich: Whiskey 7 made it back to Normandy. Briefly: Whiskey 7 is a restored C-47 transport that originally dropped troops over Normandy. It was in a museum in New York, but was invited back to Normandy for the 70th anniversary. So a crew from the museum flew it across the Atlantic…
(One of these days, I want to ride in a C-47. Or a DC-3. I’m not picky.)
Fun feature piece by John Marchese in the NYT:
Things I didn’t know:
- I was not aware of the Louis Armstrong House Museum.
- “The archive is housed in the library of Queens College in Flushing and is open to anyone who calls ahead to arrange an appointment. And if you bring your own mouthpiece, you can play one of five Armstrong trumpets kept there.” Not that I would ever do that, since I can’t carry a tune in a bucket (much less play the trumpet), but I can imagine this would be incredibly cool if you were a trumpet player.
- “… he spent much of his time in his wood-paneled second-floor den, making mixtapes on his two reel-to-reel recorders and decorating the tape boxes with elaborate and often humorous collages.”
- The Armstrong red beans and rice recipe.
Free Bubble-Up.
Friday, February 28th, 2014You may be wondering why this boxcar is so important to preservationists. After all, aren’t there plenty of boxcars in the world?
Yes. But this isn’t just any boxcar: this is Merle Haggard’s childhood home.
I wanted to drop some Haggard into this post, but I had a lot of trouble finding a performance of “Rainbow Stew” or “Fighting Side of Me” on YouTube that allowed embedding. So how about this: Merle Haggard in 1978 on “Austin City Limits”.
Burning airlines give you so much more.
Saturday, December 7th, 2013Roberta X has a funny post up about the misadventures of a tank. (Not a tank car, or a tank of gas; a honest-to-goodness Chieftain tank.) You should really go read it when you get a chance.
This post is about something I found while reading the original tank story:
Evergreen International Airlines? Never heard of them? Why should you care?
Oh, so they were tied to Air America? Interesting. But there’s more. Evergreen, when times were good, put some money into non-profit organizations. One of those organizations is the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum, which is notable for having a SR-71 and the Spruce Goose.
Oh, dear. Wikipedia has Evergreen shut down as of November 30th:
So what’s going to happen? Will they sell off the planes? Would you like to buy a 747 used by the CIA? (More seriously, Evergreen also has a 747 that’s been modified for firefighting purposes.)
And even better:
I wonder if the lawyers aren’t showing up because they’re not getting paid.
However, Evergreen does have a FAA issued “airline certificate”. I’ll admit, I’m a little fuzzy on the whole “certificate” thing (RoadRich, you out there somewhere?), but as best as I can put it together, the “airline certificate” gives you FAA authorization to run an airline.
So to heck with buying a 747, you can have an entire airline and fly almost anywhere in the world!
Oh. Also, with the certificate and the airline, you also get the pilot’s union, which may or may not be a problem, given that Evergreen is $1.4 million behind in contributions to the pension plan.
But other than those minor issues, this sounds like a great chance to make a small fortune in the aviation industry. That is, if you have a large fortune to start with.
Go West, family man.
Tuesday, October 1st, 2013Have you ever heard of the Great Platte River Road Archway?
Neither had I, until I read this morning’s NYT. The Archway is intended as a monument to the Westward Expansion. It sits near the site of Fort Kearny and the intersection of three major westward trails (Oregon, Mormon, and California).
The Archway actually crosses I-80, and weighs 1,500 tons. How much did it cost to build? The NYT isn’t clear on that, but we’ll come back to it in a minute.
Buried in there is a further assumption that families still vacation by car, which makes it easier to stop at places like the Archway. But I’ve touched on that before, and there’s no reason to belabor the point.
Especially since I bet you can guess what happened next.
Thirteen years later, the Archway is flat broke.
Attendance peaked the first year at nearly 250,000 and has been falling ever since. Last year, fewer than 50,000 visitors strolled through the turnstiles. And although a bankruptcy judge recently approved a plan to relieve the Archway of its final $20 million in debt, its future remains uncertain. Archway officials say the museum could survive through the end of the year, but would need hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars for long-term security. And that will come only with the approval of the Kearney City Council and county board members — several of whom are skeptical.
Among other things, that new highway exit took twelve years to build.
$60 million in debt, folks. But don’t worry: “Through bankruptcy proceedings, that debt has been lifted.” And now the folks behind the Archway plan to ask the city and county governments to cough up $200,000 a year (each, so $400,000 total) for the next three years.
And again, we come back around to the same point I made earlier. I have nothing against Nebraska; one of these days, I hope that I can visit the SAC Museum. But I’m odd. I’m not sure that most families do driving vacations these days, and the Archway just doesn’t strike me as compelling enough a destination for people to fly into Lincoln or Omaha and drive halfway across the state.
A Bob Clampett cartoon!
Saturday, June 15th, 2013
(Onion Creek Mosasaur, Texas Memorial Museum, Austin, Texas.)
Rabbit season!
Friday, June 14th, 2013
Werewolf?
Tuesday, June 11th, 2013
It’s a bird! It’s a plane!
Monday, June 10th, 2013Actually, it’s a big sort of bird-like object. And DARPA apparently used it as the basis for a model aircraft back in the mid-1980s.
(Quetzalcoatalus northropi, Texas Memorial Museum, Austin, Texas.)
Tarkus!
Saturday, June 8th, 2013
Texas Memorial Museum, Austin, Texas.
Random notes: January 30, 2013.
Wednesday, January 30th, 2013Gun control works! Just ask Chicago!
More:
Uh, that’s not what a “straw buyer” is, Monica Davey. (Nor does Davey mention that “straw purchases” are also a violation of Federal law, though rarely prosecuted according to the WP. One wonders how much of a deterrent Chicago’s law is to people who are already violating federal law.)
(Likewise, purchasing guns in other states, bringing them across state lines, and selling them on the Chicago streets violates multiple existing federal laws. Davey ignores that fact as well.)
Edited to add: Just saw this, and found it appropriate.
Chicago pols blame rampant shootings on guns from Indiana and Iowa, which, mysteriously, don’t have rampant shootings.
— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) January 30, 2013
And I said, “What about ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’?”
He said, “I can’t afford a million dollars,
and as I recall, you’ve got plenty of money.”
And I said, “Well, that’s one thing we have not.”
The Bell trial picked up again yesterday. Rebecca Valdez, the former city clerk who wasn’t actually the city clerk at first, is still on the stand.
The defense is attacking her credibility, “seeking to show that record-keeping in Bell was in disarray. Valdez testified that she signed minutes for meetings she didn’t attend, was appointed to the job in name only and sometimes made mistakes marking the times that meetings began and ended.”
And what’s this about her being the city clerk but not being the city clerk?
Also interesting:
Not “food bank coordinator”, but “assistant to the food bank coordinator”, and pulling in at least $100,000 a year. How do I get this job?
Ah, the Texas Highway Patrol Museum. You do remember the Texas Highway Patrol Museum, don’t you? Shut down by the Attorney General last year? Assets, including the building, being sold off?
Well, about that…
The “procedural impropriety” seems to be that the high bidder says her bid was ignored. Also, the real estate broker would make a larger commission if the other bidder got the property. There’s some technical aspects that make it unclear which bid is best; that’s why the AG recommended that the building be listed again.
(Hattip on this to Grits for Breakfast. If Ms. Wong winds up getting the building, and we’re all still here, I want to do a road trip to Rosario’s Café y Cantina.)
Hey, hey, LBJ.
Friday, December 28th, 2012
Lyndon Johnson’s birth certificate is on display at his presidential library. Insert your own Barack Obama joke here.