Rainy day

Though it was fine when we left Little Rock this morning, it was overcast and we thought it must have rained overnight judging from the puddles here and there.  As we crossed the Arkansas River, the sky didn’t look so promising.

We’d started out on our usual ordinary roads, avoiding the Interstate highways and taking the slow route.  But after a couple of hours with not very much to see, we wondered if we might move over onto the interstate and just get to Fayetteville sooner.

Whilst on our last cruise, we’d enjoyed dinner with a couple from around here who had told us about the Crystal Bridges Gallery.  Though we had kept it in mind, it was slightly out of our way but bearing in mind the weather, we decided to hit the interstate and head right on past Fayetteville to Bentonville.

The Ozarks looked interesting, but we’ll have time tomorrow to explore further and hopefully, the sun will shine again.

So, Bentonville, here we come.

Needless to say, on this rainy day we weren’t the only people to have thought of coming here.  Right from the get go, however, we noted that this was not your usual gallery crowd.  Here were extended families, groups of teenagers and couples with young children.

Come on in y’all.

To begin with, the gallery looked and felt much like any other.  The nineteenth century collection was the usual bunch of portraits and sculpture and though some stopped for a closer look, most visitors passed right on through.

One new acquisition was spotlighted here in an alcove – Jasper Johns created this work by painting encaustic wax onto a silk flag.  It was well explained in the notes alongside, with a good explanation of why the artist chose to work in this medium.   By highlighting a single work and offering a straightforward explanation for it, our attention had been grabbed.  A good start!

Though we were interested generally and weren’t simply seeking out particular favourites, needless to say, we picked out a few.  I liked this one of a Brooklyn street scene by Francis Guy – the intersection of Front, James and Fulton Streets in the 19th century.  I’d say it’s changed a little in the intervening years!

I liked this portrait of the Embroideress by Gari Melchers too.  How unusual to see a piece of needlework held so casually in a portrait.

How well the artist captured the details too – the lacing of the fabric onto the stretcher frame, and the needle and thread in the hand.  The lace isn’t half bad either!

We giggled at this painting, entitled “the song”.  One woman is sitting at the piano whilst the other sits with her head in her hand with the most desperate expression on her face.  We could only think that the song wasn’t exactly that tuneful!

Just around the corner was an activity station – a couple of still life arrangements were set up and these youngsters were having a go at creating some art.  All the materials were there, there were plenty of encouraging suggestions and it was clearly inspiring some visitors to pick up a paintbrush.

I have never seen someone so young sit quietly drawing, quite independently in a corner of a gallery.  What a great place!

I’d noticed ipads around the place, tethered to the wall in some corners, inviting visitors to take a closer look.  Here was another such invitation to get involved in some way with the art.

The architect of the gallery had designed the place on several levels and turning right to descend a few steps in a curved corner, I noted the words on the floor “watch your step”.  Well, yes…why might I need a reminder?  The answer was above me – a series of hooks on the curved wall and a track on the straight side opposite was threaded with some fine thread in a rainbow of colour.

Lit from above, the interference patterns were beautiful and of course, people were looking up at it and perhaps, not taking care on the steps as they should.

The effect was quite stunning.  Gentle and rather lovely.  Simple but effective.  Clever.

A look outside through a floor to ceiling window confirmed that yes, it was still raining.

At the end of this walkway, on a plain white wall and lit from several directions was this wreath.

Simple materials, beautifully constructed and so very regular in shape.  I loved it!  It looks so soft and yet it’s made from rough, steel wire.  Good contrast.

It was the first of the late twentieth century pieces, where the work of a few more familiar artists to us were to be found.  We recognised work by Norman Rockwell, Mark Rothko and Georgia O’Keeffe immediately and then felt pleased to recognise that of Andrew Wyeth too (spotting the “wind” aspect of his work which we encountered in Washington last year)

But it was perhaps this picture which encapsulates the gallery for me.  The figure of the elderly man was in the “hyperrealism” section of the gallery and the father and son (aged about 10 or 11) who stood looking and talking about it were exactly the visitors I was referring to when I noted our observation about it “not being the normal gallery crowd”.  The two were talking about the figure, the boy was wondering if real hair had been used and having chatted about it a while, they stood back and just looked, quietly, each in their own thoughts. 

If a gallery can inspire the “dads and lads” not only to visit, but to look and talk about art, then I think it’s doing something rather clever.  Full marks, Crystal Bridges, then for making a great collection of art so accessible!

Having dropped our bags off at the hotel, we followed the recommendation of the guy in the Fayetteville Information Centre and headed to Hugo’s for a burger before paying a visit to the the #3 bookstore in the USA according to….sorry, we can’t remember!

When we switched the TV on this evening, there was a “flash flood” warning tickertape running at the top of the screen.  Hopefully, nowhere near here – but it is still raining…

Exploring a little more of Arkansas

We set off after breakfast to find out what the Arkansas countryside looks like. Eventually, we found it, once we were out beyond the suburbs which seemed to go on forever,

Not many folks seem to live out in the sticks with only the occasional home hidden deep in the trees.  Every so often, we’d pass a large complex which on closer look, usually turned out to be a church.  These would appear to be the hub of the community down here.

About an hour and a half from Little Rock, we began to see larger, more elegant town houses along the side of the road. 

We were approaching the resort of Hot Springs.

We’d not heard of the place before, but here we found ourselves in a large, turn of the century spa town, reminiscent of the grand European spa towns like Baden Baden or Karlovy Vary.

Except, sadly, this Hot Springs never quite made it.  Hit by the great depression, by fire and flood a couple of years later (not to mention the gangsters) and in the 1950s the dreams of those who developed it all crumbled.

But on Central Avenue, the remaining bathhouses are now owned and preserved by the National Park Service, so our first port of call was to the Visitor Centre.

We resisted the lure of the bathtub, preferring not to even attempt to recreate the postcard.

But having equipped ourselves with a map and a guide, we made our way along Bathhouse Row.  First up, with the smart blue awnings is the one remaining, traditional working bath, the Buckstaff Bath.

A few were queuing inside for the full treatment – we chose to forego the experience and continued along the row.

Next up was the Ozark Bath House, now a cultural centre and closed whilst we were there today.

The Quapaw Bath is now a modern spa having been renovated and updated, then right next door is the Fordyce Bath, owned by the National Park and now turned into a visitor center and museum.  We were glad to find a bath house we could look around at last!

We began in the Women’s cooling room – starting right at the end of the bathing experience, really.

Each room was well explained with a picture of how it would have looked in the 1920s, when it was buzzing with activity.

The bathhall was a room filled with individual cubicles where ladies would bathe, attended by women dressed in nurse-like uniforms.

Following her relaxing bath, a lady would be guided to the needle shower – quite an operation by the looks.

We loved all the shiny pipes and plumbing paraphernalia – so very much of its time.

But when we saw the steam cabinet, we all thought back to comic books and people sitting and steaming.

Like this – but hotter!

So the ladies had their own part of the bathhouse, but it wasn’t anything like as lavishly decorated as the gentleman’s area.

They enjoyed a stained glass ceiling with cavorting mermaids and half naked women…

Mind you, there were some fierce looking water jets too.

Mind you, some of the “gentlemen” who frequented the place probably deserved a good jet of water at the very least.

Now we’d seen what goes on in these bathhouses then, we felt quite confident to visit the last one on the street, the Superior Baths and spend an hour or so there.

Now a microbrewery and bistro, we could enjoy some lunch and a spot of people watching there!

Suitably refreshed, we wandered a little further to see the Arlington Hotel, rebuilt in a different spot having burned down in the early days of the resort.

We then crossed the road and wandered back to the car along the “other” side of the street, past the tacky gift shops, the waxworks museum, the gangster museum and so on.

Spotting the information panel telling of the dodgy characters who frequented these buildings, I waited a little whilst a woman pootled around in front of it.  I was fairly certain she knew I was trying to take a picture of the panel…the more so when she sat down on her walking frame right in front of it.  You know, so few people make it onto the pages of my blog – but she was so determined that I allowed it.  Just once.

And that was that for Hot Springs.  Well, almost…we made a short stop at Chicos whilst we were there and made one of those peculiar transactions where the top I chose became cheaper by the minute.  We still can’t quite work out how we could buy a $59 top and two items costing $79 and $49 respectively for a total of $93.  I love shopping here!

My Hero’s birthday today, too, so we celebrated at Damgoode Pies here in Little Rock this evening, where he enjoyed the last portion of peanut butter pie on the house!

Which Little Rock?

We read there was a real “little rock” here, so we went to find it.

Might it be this one?

Or this one?

Or this?

Who knows?  Well, the two policemen in the Capitol building weren’t too sure but they loved our accents anyway

We began the day at the Presidential Library.

You know which one!

We love to come to these places and learn a little more about the people we’ve read so much about over the years.  Vanessa greeted us at the door and she, too, loved our accents and thought I sounded just like…hmmm….just like….Camilla!!

(I told her how much I loved her accent too, btw)

Though we began with a guided tour, we found it difficult to hear amongst the general hubbub and so equipped ourselves with audio tours instead and had the man himself tell us about his life and work.  The photo above is the Cabinet Office table – do you notice how the President’s chair is 2” higher than the others?  I used to use the same trick as a young teacher when I had to meet parents!

The archives are stored in the blue folders in each pillar (and in the library next door as well).

Though we couldn’t look in these, we could access the daily programmes for the whole time of his two terms.  I picked one out – March 1997 – and found a few redacted appointments which picqued my curiosity!  I wonder what proportion remains secret?

The displays were great, genuinely interesting and pretty candid when it came to things like the Whitewater scandal and the impeachment stuff, though of course, the accounts were hardly impartial.  Still, the man comes over as incredibly passionate about his work and the video of his story was inspiring and rather moving.

The mock up of the Oval Office looked just like it did on the West Wing and House of Cards, too.

You might have thought that we’d have been politicked out by now, but you’d have been wrong.  Next stop, the Capitol.  Very impressive from the outside and build to a similar design as other Capitol buildings we’ve visited, the Arkansas Capitol was very quiet this Monday morning.

It’s rather plain inside and there was hardly anyone to be seen.  I posted a card home from the small post office here – someone else loved my accent – and we chatted to the policemen, but they were the only ones around it seemed.

There was a rather different, plainer and simpler cupola to photograph: Shame I didn’t get it dead centre but never mind.

There was also a portrait of the youngest Governor in the USA (and the youngest Governor to be defeated, therefore the youngest ex-Governor too).  How young he looks!

There were the usual two chambers – the Senate and the House of Representatives but little in the way of art or adornment beyond thumbnails of the sitting members.

So, though we are glad we’ve been, we’d not chalk the Arkansas Capitol as a must see, unless like us, you’re a bit of a Capitol geek

After a picnic lunch by the river, we went on over to the History Museum, where Nancy Graves (known as Ku-To-Yi to her Cherokee family) had stitched this beautiful sampler when she was 11 in 1828.  It’s said to be the oldest sampler stitched by a Native American in the whole country and it’s remarkably well preserved.

There followed a room with half a dozen paintings by Josephine Graham which I found quite amusing.

She has a distinctive style of painting “suggins”; a “playful term she used to describe people living along the White River”.

Her style of painting facial expressions was particularly fun, I thought.

From here, we continued on through the museum where they were staging the next exhibition of “Arkansas Made”, a show which would have been so very much up my street, being the best of craftsmanship in the region.  They were staging handmade chairs, knives, quilts and wooden boxes as we wandered through and I’d have loved to have had a closer look.  But we couldn’t, so there.

Instead, there was the permanent exhibition upstairs, aptly titled “We walk in two worlds”.  It told the story of Arkansas’s first people: the Caddo, Osage and Quapaw Indian tribes and was beautifully designed (if not very well lit – those spotlights don’t do so well on shiny surfaces!)

 

As usual, it was the shoes which caught my attention – there is something particularly compelling about someone’s shoes and I often wonder, where have they been worn and what stories they could tell.

And that left just one more place on our Little Rock list.

Mary had told us of the events at the Central High School, seen through the eyes of a friend of hers who was there at the time and like her, we were curious to learn more.

I won’t attempt to retell the story here but will suggest you read here about the events of 1957 for yourself.  It was a thought provoking way to end the afternoon and hard to imagine it happened (just!) within my lifetime.

And that just about wraps it up for Little Rock.  We’re heading off out in a bit for some supper at the Flying Fish.  Will it be catfish and gumbo?  Crawfish?  Jambalaya?  Will The Carpenters ever sound the same?

Taking the fast route

There are times on a road trip when it helps to skip a step.  To hop on a plane rather than drive thousands of miles.  So, though our original idea was to do a circular route from Chicago, somewhere along the way, we thought it would be good to explore that bit further by means of adding a flight into the formula.

So early this morning, we were at Minneapolis Lindbergh terminal boarding a small plane, first to Chicago (59 mins) and connecting to an even smaller plane to Little Rock (1hr 35min). 

It took us all day.

Leaving Minneapolis, the views were rather good.  Minnesota isn’t called “the land of 10 000 lakes” for nothing.

Sitting waiting for the connecting flight, I looked at the names of the standby passengers and thought how strange it was that they all had Chinese names…that was just before I realised that the list showed just the first three letters of each surname.  Duh!

It was a pretty cloudy ride this time and there wasn’t much to see, sadly.

Though as we came into land, we flew low over the Arkansas River and caught a good look at the downtown skyline.

We collected our rental car (yay!  this one doesn’t smell of curry inside!!)  and found our way to the River Market area, where our hotel is situated.

My hero and I scored our 41st state here, too!

The Fourth of July

Today, we did what most people here seem to do on a bank holiday, we went shopping!

We’d hummed and haaahed about going to the Mall of America – and yet, could we possibly come to Minneapolis without seeing it for ourselves?  But if we were going, we’d better go early because the last thing we wanted was to get snarled up in nightmare traffic scenes.

No, the last thing we wanted was to get lost!

So, we were there around 9.50am (it opened at 9.30) and we made careful note of where we’d parked the car before going inside.

We then made careful note (ie took photographs!) of where we started out, which is where the first surprise came.

The Mall of America isn’t anything like as enormous as any of us had imagined.

The stores are arranged around a square, over three floors (or rather, two floors and one comprising mostly of food offerings).  I think there may have been four anchor stores, one at each corner, but right now, there are just three, whilst the other is being rebuilt.

The thing is, as is often the case, the shops are the same here as they are in every other mall we’ve been to in the US. 

Not that I’m complaining!

What was different was in the central area – though my friends living close to the Metro Centre in Gateshead won’t find it at all unusual to have a funfair there.  The rides looked pretty serious – like nothing I’d ever dream of trying out – and if anything, the funfair was rather busier when we were there than the shopping centre.

We walked around two floors, stopped for milkshakes and one or two purchases, but by lunchtime we were done.  We ticked the Mall of America off our list and retraced our steps (very easily) to the car and drove back into St Paul.

We’d decided to spend the rest of the day at the History Center.

It’s in a pretty impressive building, with a replica of Lindbergh’s Jenny hanging in the atrium.

There was also a great view of the Capitol building from here too.

We began in the Minnesota exhibition where one of the staff was standing by the Fur trading post, ready to do business with these Europeans who had just turned up.  From this moment onwards, once again we were struck by how much the staff enhanced our visit.  They were friendly, knowledgeable and yet didn’t overwhelm us with too many details.

We learned about the Indian schools, where children were boarded for weeks on end away from their families.

We also learned more about the lives of the pioneers.

Imagine a family of seven living in this small one room home during a hard winter. (I’d rather not)

We learned a little more about the plague of grasshoppers we’d read about in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books.  It sounded dreadful.

I’ve really enjoyed finding out about the lives of the pioneers and seeing pictures like this confirms just how hard it was for them – and how much easier it must have been once the railroad opened up.

The challenges of life in modern day Minnesota were explained in the next exhibit, which focused on the weather! 

Woollen underwear features highly.  This whole room described the many extremes of weather which life in Minnesota involves and gave us all the chance to experience a simulated tornado whilst sitting in a mock up cellar.  Even knowing that it was just a demonstration, it was scary.  I can’t imagine what it’s like sitting it out for real.

Next, was a feature about “the greatest generation” – the parents of the baby boomers, born in the 1910-1920s. 

Throughout the center, I admired the imaginative ways to impart information.  Here, the stories were told on the hanging clothes covers of a dry cleaners’ set and pressing the button sent the conveyor along a little and moved to the next story.

This flowed nicely into the next room, which was about the H’mong people who’ve settled in Minnesota.  After the Vietnam war, many refugees were settled here and over the years the arrival of their families and friends have expanded the community still further.  We’d seen part of the exhibit yesterday, when we were at the Hill House.

 

Finally, in this part – we thought – was a great show of the couture clothes from Ebony and Fashion Fair magazines.  Absolutely stunning mannequins, somehow arranged in just the right attitudes of the 1970s-80s-90s, I loved it.

And that was that. 

Or?

There was one other exhibit – the story of one house in Minneapolis and the people who lived there.  Once again, it was the creative ways in which the exhibition designer communicated the information which wowed us.

Like this chest of drawers in the first family’s sitting room.  Each drawer was labelled with an aspect of their life.

Pull out a drawer and voila, here was the story with pop up figures too.  Each drawer told about a different aspect of their lives.

Another family moved in a few years later and their story was told on their clothes, by printing on the garments, writing on labels and on ribbons and trims.

Subsequent families had their stories told in their lunch boxes.

and on the tins and containers on the kitchen dresser.

Multi media, interactive and so varied.  Great imagination.

This couple lived in the house around the time of the war and they were brought to life by means of TV screens in the dinner plates around the table.  Someone had really had fun putting all this together, I think.

And rounding things off nicely, one of the latest inhabitants of the house was a H’mong family. 

As we took one last look around, the lights flashed to signal that the museum was closing shortly.  Hmm.  A quick zip around the museum shop (and a groan from the two assistants when they saw customers approaching just five minutes before closing!) and that was it.

As we left the excellent Italian restaurant on our way back to the hotel, we passed this bronze statue we’d spotted as we passed by yesterday.

I like you, Charlie Brown.