Bill Rhodes People Friendly Garden

Pennsylvania, it turns out, is not the greatest place to look for environment-builders and outsider artists, according to Roadside America and Atlas Obscura. There are finds in the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh areas, sure, but in the rest of the state, not so much. 

There are two exceptions in the parts of the state I covered on this trip, though. The best one was Bill Rhodes People Friendly Garden, which I found on Atlas Obscura. It's at 248 S. 3rd Street in the nice small town of Hamburg, which is about two-thirds of the way from Harrisburg to Allentown (north of Reading). 

Rhodes is a welder, but he's also a sculptor who — unlike many reusers of found objects — paints his objects. 

The garden seen from above on one of the balconies.

Rhodes also renovated the historic duplex adjacent into several unique apartments, one of which he occupies. He's been there 25 years. The gardens are a fun accompaniment. 

My photos don't do the place and the work justice. 

This is the Seussian head of the blue-bodied creature in the next photo.

The water wheel was spinning, of course.

A warthog?

I asked Bill where he gets his found materials. He said he goes to a lot of flea markets, generally. He has two intermodal containers, one stacked atop the other, set up behind the building, that are full of pieces waiting to be used. 

Overall, it's quite an enterprise, and if you're anywhere nearby, it's worth going out of your way to visit.

Pics from the Road

I'm just back from my summer road trip, this time to a family reunion in the Delaware Water Gap in southeastern Pennsylvania. I'll have a few more posts about particulars, but here are some random photos from along the way. 

First the ones from the road: 

This is where the onions come from.

This attorney billboard, seen along the highways around Chicagoland, is very confusing to people from Minnesota, where pond hockey is a real sport in the winter. 

Apologies for the fuzziness of this image but I had to zoom in with my not-so-great phone camera. It was nice of that deer to cross right in its crossing spot, wasn't it? 

As seen in the elevator of one of the roadside hotels we stayed in.

While at the family reunion, I got a chance to touch the Appalachian Trail... which, believe it or not given the part of the country I am from, I have never done before. 

There was Japanese knotweed everywhere, including next to the entrance to the Appalachian Trail and along every stream. Ick.

In the historic (and unrenovated) municipal building in my home town, I was amused by the sign on the inside of the second-floor door, which was standing open and had a rubber door-stop keeping it that way.

This was the first time I have seen any of the new all-electric U.S.P.S. vehicles in person. Very exciting! I don't know if there are any of them in Minnesota or not. 

Just before we left for home, I stopped at a yard sale and saw this concrete evil baby... or proto gnome... or what is it? It was $5.00. I did not buy it. I have a feeling I will regret that for a long time.
 

Letting His Inner Self Show Through

Am I losing my mind, or does he not look like the very image of a Bond villain?

Is he trying to look like one? 

A Frame to Share

As ICE and DHS generally (and the National Guard and other paramilitary operations) ramp up their unconstitutional and violent actions around the country, I suspect this frame from a recent Tom Tomorrow cartoon will come in handy, so here it is for sharing as needed:

Did you hear that 2,000 National Guard troops will be quartered in D.C. for the next two years, based on a $292 million contract that was awarded for four apartment-style buildings? 

The new contract is cheaper than the hotels the Guard member have been staying in, of course, but it's still a lot more expensive than sending them home — which is what should have been done months ago. And it sucks up a bunch of the housing in the D.C. market, which I'm sure is not a good thing for regular people. 

Quoting that Military Times article,

The new arrangement comes on the heels of a May 28 report, meanwhile, that assessed that the 2,000-plus National Guard troops to have participated in the D.C. task force have had “no measurable effect on violent crime.

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As always, here's the reminder that you can support Tom Tomorrow by signing up for Sparky's List.
 

A Grim Anniversary

Thanks to Vince Mpls for reminding me that today is the anniversary, and in fact the 175th anniversary, of the enactment of the Treaty of Traverse des Sioux.

It forced the Dakota Nation to cede 21 million acres to the U.S. government, much of it in Minnesota. 

According to the Wikipedia page for the treaty, "The U.S. paid the Dakota an annuity the equivalent of 7.5 cents an acre and [then] charged settlers $1.25 an acre." In addition to this obvious financial chicanery, the treaty's translation for the tribes was also deceptive in describing other terms. And then delayed payment of the compensation over the next decade left the Dakota starving and directly led to the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862.

The treaty was the brainchild of Minnesota's governor, Alexander Ramsey — namesake for my home county here in Saint Paul — and Henry Sibley, until recently another unassailable Minnesota big name. Sibley's name was only recently removed from one of our local high schools (as was Ramsey's). I've yet to hear anyone talk about changing the name of our county.

A giant painting of the treaty-signing used to hang in the Governor's Reception Room at the Minnesota State Capitol until the building was renovated 10 years ago. After the work was completed, there was a big discussion about whether to return it and three other paintings to their prominent locations, given their content. 

After much process, the treaty-signing painting and another one were rehung in a different, less prominent room on the third floor, with contextual information to accompany them. Two others were put into storage. This page on the Minnesota State Historical Society website gives a bit of information about that outcome. 

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Those divergent acreage payments are about $3.00 and $50.00 in 2025 dollars, according to the inflation calculator. 

Regressive Supremacy

A.R. Moxon had a recent essay about one of the big problems underlying our current polycrisis. I think of his subject in terms of the 20 (or 30 or whatever) percent of people in this country who, as Heather McGhee put it in The Sum of Us, will drain public pools instead of share what is clearly easy to make available to everyone, or as Jonathan Metzl showed in Dying of Whiteness, would rather die of preventable illness than extend Medicaid if it means "those people" also get to have it.

Moxon calls this regressive supremacy, and its opposite progressive humanism:

Progressive humanism is the belief that all people matter and deserve life, that generative human value springs from an inextricable and diverse mutually cooperative interconnectivity, and that we have a natural responsibility and moral duty to take the natural human system we have inherited and use our energies and skills to progress and improve it.

Regressive supremacy is the belief that only specific types of people matter and deserve life, and then only to the degree that they conform to specific and rigid hierarchical roles and doctrines; that all other human beings, who must earn life, get what they deserve and deserve what they get, because they are the natural property of the people who matter most.

I recently read about the results of a thorough qualitative research project* carried out in several states (mostly in the South but also the Midwest), mostly focused on committed Christians. The way they were described would clearly put them all in the regressive supremacy camp. 

The researchers tried to make their subjects' world view make sense by referencing Jonathan Haidt's six types of morality, and how that differs between liberals and conservatives. (Haidt says conservatives value loyalty, sanctity and authority over liberals' valuing of fairness and care/compassion.) 

Give me a break. This is not a new insight, I know, but the people in the research say they adhere to the Bible when it's clear they have no interest in anything resembling Christ's teachings. 

Everything they promulgate is fear-based, trying to instate order on behalf of authoritarian personalities who make them feel safe. And it's also usually to obey the big father they've been taught is over all of us, according to some preacher their parents indoctrinated them into following. 

I'm tired of this and these people. 

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* I can't find the link to the research because I got so down-hearted reading it that I closed the tab. I'm trying to remember who referenced it so I can retrace my steps. 

When Calculators Were Paper

My dad had a friend who was an electrical engineer in the mid-20th century, and inherited from him a bunch of paper calculators and slide rules used for various tasks. Partially because I'm a pack rat and partially because they have some cool graphics, I brought them along, thinking I would do something with them... some day.

Well, today is the day, and posting their pictures here is the something. Then I will see if a vintage shop is interested in their physical versions.

I don't have any particular commentary on these, or knowledge about what most of them were used for. Resistors, ohms, what have you. Sure, a couple of them are obvious, and others are not:

I find the human ingenuity in the making of these physical artifacts itself — with their sliders, grommets, die cuts, and various meaningful colors — the most interesting part. 

One Lyndon

My parents were dyed-in-the-wool Democrats who lived in a rural area of upstate New York, which meant they were used to being the political minority all the time. 

Here's a piece of memorabilia I found while helping them downsize. As I'm looking at downsizing myself, I just found it in a box of their stuff. I imagine I kept it to post it here!

The copyright says 1966, so it must be from the midterm elections that year:

(Click to enlarge for better viewing.)

The copy is all about inflation, but the heading at the top of the back side may sound familiar to contemporary ears: "Keep America Safe and Sound."

On the far right side of the back are the words "Help Defeat Inflation" — a proto-version of what became Nixon Gerald Ford's slogan, WIN (Whip Inflation Now). 

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Thanks to Michael Leddy for reminding me of the correct WINning candidate.
 

Art in a Time of Fascism

I finally got to see the Modern Art and Politics in Germany 1910–1945 show at Mia. It has just closed, though, so this is now a retrospective, unless you can see it in another city.

I don't have a holistic review, and not even a political one. I think I'm too overwhelmed by the present situation in this country: the parallels are just so obvious to me that it feels extraneous to write about them. Even reading the political timeline provided outside the gallery door felt unnecessary to me. Maybe it's because I watched Babylon Berlin not too long ago, but I felt I already knew what the artists had been living through.

Instead I have a somewhat disjointed set of images to share: the paintings and sculptures that particularly spoke to me, some just in a visual way, others because of their resonance in the context. The works are shown in the order I saw them, and the text for each is based on the accompanying information provided.

Kate Diehn-Bitt
Self-Portrait with an Orange, 1930–31
Diehn-Bitt had her only solo show in 1935 in Berlin. She was attacked by the Nazi press, which called her work "alien to the species." She was then barred from membership in the correct organization, so she was not allowed to exhibit again and later had to end contact with her parents because her stepfather was Jewish. 

Marianne von Werfkin (born 1860)
Procession near Ascona, c. 1924
Daughter of a Russian noble army officer, von Werfkin was financially independent and moved from St. Petersburg to Munich. She was a member of various Expressionist groups, including Blue Rider. She emigrated to Switzerland in 1914, finally living in Ascona.

Alexej von Jawlensky
Head of a Woman, 1912
von Jawlensky was the partner of Marian von Werfkin, and also followed the Russian emigre path from St. Petersburg to Munich in the 19th century. The subject and format of this painting was typical of his work, with the colors varying greatly from painting to painting. He was a founder of the Munich-based group Blue Rider, which had its first exhibition in 1911. 

Wassily Kandinsky
Hornform, 1924
Born in Moscow, trained in Munich, Kandinsky was a master at the Bauhaus from 1922–1933. His work became more geometric over that time. The information card noted that 1924 was the year government funding for the Bauhaus in Weimar was cut, precipitating its move to Dessau.

Otto Möller
City, 1921
A call was made in November 1918, after the end of the Great War, to "artists who have broken the traditional mold." This painting "combines elements of Expressionism, Cubism, and Futurism..." A way of seeing Berlin and its signs.

Alice Lex-Nerlinger
Field-Gray Yields Dividends, 1931 / 1961
The artist became a pacifist and critic of capitalism because of WWI. Her painting condemns "industrialists and statesmen who profited from weapons production and war policy." It was part of the War section in the spring 1932 Great Berlin Art Exhibition. The Nazi press criticized it, and the card speculates that the artist destroyed the original as well as other works out of fear. "After 1933, she and her husband, Oskar, were subject to suspicion, harassment, and even arrest." She recreated the work in 1961.

Wilhelm Lehmbruck
Fallen Man, 1915–1916 (cast by 1972)
Lehmbruck left Germany for Paris in 1910, then returned in 1914, planning to compete in creating a heroic statue of Siegfried, the German hero, for a cemetery. "Instead, he sculpted The Fallen Man, now one of the most famous sculptures of the period. It is universally interpreted as a memorial against war rather than a monument to its valor." The sculptor committed suicide in 1919. Most of his work was labeled degenerate and seized from German museums in 1937.

Käthe Kollwitz
Tower of Mothers, 1937-38 (cast after 1958)
Born in 1867, Kollwitz had a son who was killed early in WWI. In March 1919 she became the first woman member of the Berlin Academy of Arts. She showed a version of this sculpture in Berlin in 1938. "It was removed by the Nazis."

Horst Strempel
Night over Germany, 1945–46
Hailed as a masterpiece in 1947 and called the "altar of the Hitler era." The painting shows four aspects of the Nazis' crimes: the concentration camps at center top, civilians during night bombings at left, hidden Jewish families at right, and the Resistance in the underground at bottom. "In the war's aftermath, the German public struggled to confront and process the era of Nazi terror. Strempel was asked to remove the word 'Jew' from the depiction of the hidden family. The painting disappeared into storage for decades."

Max Beckmann
Self-Portrait at a Bar, 1942
Beckmann was a successful painter with more than 500 works in German museums. When his paintings were seized by the Nazis in 1937, he and his wife fled to Amsterdam, hoping to go to the U.S., but his visa was denied. Then the Nazis invaded the Netherlands. While he was working on this painting, he wrote, Jews were being deported from Amsterdam and English planes were bombing the city. He finally was allowed into the U.S. in 1947, where he taught for a few years before dying in New York in 1950 at age 66.