1904 World's Fair

I’ve often wondered about the transient nature of our society. Why is nothing built to last? Our infrastructure crumbles while in Europe parts of the ancient Roman aqueduct system is still in use. We tear down our building because they are out of date just a couple decades after they were built. Pop culture tastes change constantly, its reinvention just another name for recycling. Why is there no permanence in American society? I don’t know if I’ll ever understand. But I did gain some clarity and insight into this nature this evening at the St. Louis History Museum.


The museum has a continuing exhibit commemorating the centennial of the 1904 World’s Fair held in St. Louis. The exhibition celebrated “Looking Back at Looking Forward” and took the city years to prepare for the visit from the world. Buildings and entire neighborhoods were constructed. Public sculptures commissioned, marketing thrown into overdrive. All of it was done to show the world how modern St. Louis and the rest of America was becoming. It was a show that has become etched in the collective mind of this country. It was a show that launched the world into the American Century.


All of which makes a lot of the artifacts from the show rather disconcerting. Countless pictures and paintings were commissioned, and now on display, that depict the model of perfection. It is easy to imagine the event as representing a “city on a hill.” But look closely. Not at the pictures of the natives living their happy lives, those pictures are far too easy to critique. No, look at the magnificent sculptures towering in those pictures. Now walk over to the display of the now ruined sculptures, the mass produced composite moldings that were not meant to last but meant to be an impressive façade. Those sculptures gave grand appearances to new buildings that had been built for the exposition. They were there in the photographs but not long after as many were torn down almost immediately after the fair. So much unnecessary waste, what have we learned.


To be sure, the World’s Fair did leave a lasting mark on St. Louis. What was built for the exhibition that still remains adds to a magnificent city. But it contributed to a culture with some very bad habits. In many ways America is a “city on a hill” with a false façade. Our American Century has been terribly wasteful; we constructed symbols of envy but did not build them to last. We are still a transient society, one magnificent to experience. But if we still build things to crumble, how long will it all last?

The Spirit of St. Louis

Have you heard the story of Pearl Curran? The 20^th-century housewife who channeled a 17^th-century spirit? She was of, and is, St. Louis. She lived in the early 1900s, when the gateway to the West was a growing, bustling metropolis. But she had a tie to America’s uncertain past. The spirit she channeled went by the name of Patience Worth, a supposed spinster from the late 1600s. Through Curran’s Ouija board, Worth would convey instances of her dangerous, abrupt life and dictate stories she never got to humanly compose. The women were bound and tied by societal constraints in two different ages of opportunity. Worth’s America was still in its defining infancy. Curran’s was in the infancy of what in the coming decades would come to be known as the “American Century”. Their singular story was one of a soaring success tied to the past but with no place to go but down.

In a way, St. Louis has never been able to exorcise itself from the story of Curran and Worth. It is a city whose past and present coexist in its precarious current reality. It has a glorious literary history that has been visited by the specter of one of America’s great living writers. It is a region obsessed with America’s pastime even while that pastime falls further and further behind America’s sporting passion. It is home to the great American beer, which is now owned by a foreign corporation. The city gave rise to various pioneers of American music and is now bustling with the music of the streets, chronicling the deadly decent prosperity has taken. Its famous arch is a portal to the past, present and future, a portal to opportunity and decay; it is a portal to America.

St. Louis was once the fourth largest city in the country but has now slipped to the 52^nd largest city, although the sprawling metropolitan area is much larger. Literature has helped define the area’s rise and descent. Adding to the supernatural literary echo has included Mark Twain, who grew up in the region as Samuel Clemons. He has almost singularly ensured this area will always have a major role in the telling of the American story. Other major contributors have included T.S. Eliot, Tennessee Williams, and Maya Angelou. And about halfway down that decent from four to 52, another son of the Midwest, novelist Jonathan Franzen, set his debut novel, “The 27^th City” in St. Louis and observed, “for too long, our officers have accepted the idea that their mission is merely to ensure that St. Louis deteriorates in the most orderly way possible”.

That deterioration has been constant since the height of St. Louis’ ascent and has been echoed all across the country. Infrastructure the country over has been failing and is in desperate need of reinvention. Even in the best of times, poverty has been rampant. Today, St. Louis has a violent reputation nationally. Its arts reflect desperate lives in the shadow of progress. Hip Hop has a strong foothold here, famously producing the rapper Nelly. At other times it has spit out deities such as the Rock and Roll pioneer Chuck Berry and the jazz luminary Miles Davis. In the face of blight, St. Louis has consistently helped redefine itself, its culture, and consistently redefined what it means to be American.

We are now at the dawn of a new age of reinvention, perhaps best illustrated by what has happened to the great American beer, Budweiser. In 2008, Anheuser Busch was purchased by the Belgian company Inbev, bringing globalization fully to doorstep of St. Louis. It is a move mirrored the country and world over. It is causing the confrontation of what it means to have local pride when a foreign company is a major employer of St. Louis workers. Is Budweiser still the great American lager? What constitutes American made anymore? Is it better to eschew the macro-brews that have long been dominant in the name of micro-brews like the Square One, Shlafly and O’Fallon Breweries that now populate the area? What does that mean for the American worker?

Through all of these reinventions that have been documented in St. Louis, the one constant has seemingly been the St. Louis Cardinals. Even in an era when football dominates the nation’s sports scene, baseball holds an enduring spot in the hearts of this region. Some of the greatest players in baseball have called this area home. The Cardinals have been had their history illuminated by the Gashouse Gang; they have seen the Man and the Machine and have visited the Wizard of Oz. It is a love affair that has spanned the written word, been served a tall cold one, and has danced “The Duck Walk” to ragtime jazz. It has endured.

This is the St. Louis to be explored over the coming months. There is a “Spirit of St. Louis” that is felt today because it is being channeled from a magnificent past. The “Gateway to the West” once opened to a land of uncertainty just as this city serves as a gateway to an uncertain future. Through its deterioration this city has always endured as a beacon of light. It is still a magnificent city; it is still filled with problems. A reinvention is at hand, for it and the country. What we all become is a matter for the Ouija board that is St. Louis.

A Gem in Fairbanks

The next time you find yourself in Fairbanks, Alaska, might I suggest
the Pumphouse Restaurant and Saloon? The patio overlooks the Chena
River where riverboats still ply their trade and floatplanes land just
yards away. It is the perfect setting for lunch of a lean grilled Elk burger balancing nicely with the
smokey porter from the local Silver Gulch Brewery. Moseying into the saloon, pool
tables dating to 1898 compete for space with a largely unchanged late-
Victorian age decor. The velvet chairs, fringed lampshades and a tin roof
just scream for a nice glass of whisky to help take it all in. The gold rush may have largely
been a bust for this town but this joint is one hell of a cultural boon.

The Anchorage Museum

The Anchorage Museum is a multi-faceted, multi-media home of Alaska’s history, natural wonders and artwork telling the story of the nation’s 49th state. The museum’s doors hold an account of a landscape largely untouched, yet forever altered by human occupation. The images and presentations are of the unfamiliar and familiar made foreign by an arctic prism casting an otherworldly light. Bathed in those hues, interpretations take form and messages are relayed from a living land to a transient occupant of Alaskan soil and the museum’s walls.

One of the most striking features of Alaska is the light. Prominent as the days grow short, the aurora borealis are famed the world over as an atmospheric phenomenon casting a watchful eye over a darkened wintery world. In “The Northern Lights” Sidney Laurence captured them on a canvas of dark features exhaling the glow for all to see as if god had just murmured, “let there be light.”



Into that light the mountains and rivers of Alaska awaken as if in a dream state. The colors, unreal to the lower 48 states, but are captured beautifully by native Athabascan artists Kathleen Carlo-Kendall with her landscape portrait sculpture, “Break of Day”.



With physical features awash in an abstract light, artists are obviously easily inspired. Even in the absence of the light, the wilds of Alaska are so striking they alone carry the feel of the abstract as Kesler Woodward displays in the painting “No wind, Fairbanks snow”.



Even the truer to life medium of photography buckles under the immense beauty of Alaska. Pioneering aerial photographer Bradford Washburn continuously exhibited the haunting properties of the state with his collection of Alaskan photographs.



Of course none of these works of art could have been presented without habitation of the land. Human occupation of Alaska is a major focus of the art in the Anchorage Museum. The forces at work affect us and we leave lasting reminders of our presence, as the photographs of the World War II battleground shows. The images of Kiska are particularly poignant considering it is an unspoiled battleground; the Aleutian island was unoccupied prior to the war and has been since the end of WWII.



The human affects on the land is now a constant source of inspiration for Alaskan artists such as Da-ka-xeen Mehner’s “My Right of Way, Summer”, a meditation on bushels of wild blueberries being replaced by bushels of industrial junk.



While there is profound impact humanity is having here and all across the globe, the Alaskan geography is becoming part of the collective soul as well. The painting, “Anchorage, 4th Avenue” by Spence Guerin interprets the unique color palette Alaska imparts on the Alaskan cityscape and its inhabitants.



The human race is becoming absorbed into the landscape. One of Tlingit artist James Robert Shoppert’s paintings blends the mountains and the human form into something of a mountainous Totum, “Punuk”.

Everything is blending; a tribal dance of the past and future attracts and casts out evil. It is all alive and moving to the Alaskan rhythm, swaying like Stron Softi’s video instillation, “Ketchikan”.

Matsu Miners Baseball

Entering the Alaska State Fairgrounds in the minutes prior to the call "Play Ball", you can almost hear the voice of the late John Chancellor booming from the public address speakers as if he were still narrating "Ken Burns: Baseball"...in Alaska, they rooted for the Anchorage Bucs, the Fairbanks Alaska Goldpanners, the Peninsula Oilers, the Anchorage Glacier Pilots, and the Matsu Miners...for the Miners enjoy an almost mythic existence here in the Matanuska-Susitana Valley.

Owned and operated as a non-profit organization by the community, the Miners play ball at Hermon Brothers Field where a game has the feel of a bygone era. The diamond might as well be a field of dreams, carved from a thicket of pine trees with mountains serving as a backdrop. Dotting the land surrounding the white lines are dotted with wooden equipment sheds housing balls and bats while the locker rooms provide very similar accommodations for the players. The concessions are manned by grandmothers and teens alike, both allowing commerce to take a back seat to conversations with the patrons. The whole operation would resemble a high school operation in other parts of the country if not for the high quality baseball being played on the field.

The Alaska Baseball League (ABL) is comprised of some of the best baseball players the collegiate ranks have to offer. The six teams in the ABL compete for the league championship and a place in the National Baseball Congress (NBC) World Series. The Miners are the defending ABL champs and winners of the NBC World Series in both 1987 and 1997. Currently the Miners are a half game back in the standings behind the Fairbanks Alaska Goldpanners.

Walking at the Foot of a Glacier

Reaching the base of these magnificent glaciers Alaska has to offer, it is easy to finally understand your ecological footprint. The ice seems limitless. Rivers emerge, rushing from the melting ice, a source of fresh water sustaining humanity since the dawn or time. It is humbling to feel such a life force trembling beneath your feet. Until you turn around. It is blatantly obvious where the glaciers once touched and any native of Alaska can tell you where the base of these glaciers were just a few years ago.

It is nauseating. The drive to Alaska contributed to this, though a plane flight would have been worse. The drive to Alaska, taken while an incompetent oil company grapples with how to plug the major oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico. You wonder what would have been worse, the destruction of the Gulf ecosystem or refining that oil so it could be pumped into our cars to help speed the demise of these glaciers, the Alaskan ecosystem.

So maybe it isn't easy to understand your ecological footprint. The drive here was destructive but eye opening better than any newspaper article ever could be. Would it be better for the planet if everyone took the drive and had the eyes opened to the need for drastic changes? How many would realize it or even care? Humans need to travel, to connect. When will we end our dependence on fossil fuels? When will the US Government and its people stop dragging their feet to enact real, drastic sweeping changes? I want to live, I want to travel, I want to connect, I want to experience this world. Will doing so always require a Faustian deal with the devil?

Livin' in a Narcaleptic Paradise

Back in Columbus, the sudden popularity of the Taco Truck is no doubt tied to the influx of the hispanic community all across the country. Except Columbusites don't tend to get their panties in a bunch like their brethren in Arizona. Rather there are sponsored tours all over the city to visit each of these trucks with the dream of sporting some sort of Bourdanian badge of honor.

But this post is not about hunting down Alaska's own collection of Street Meat Vendors, though rumors of a Poutine truck (with real cheese curds!) will no doubt inspire a treasure hunt upon the Gravy Train. Rather this post is about the preponderance of coffee huts that populate this state. Now, warning had been given prior to arrival by a resident in the know that Alaska has more coffee shops per capita than any state in the union, but this is almost absurd!

Whether it be due to the legendary insomnia that results in constant daylight or the perpetual darkness that accompanies winter, these people must be constantly tired and/or in need of something to reduce the chill in the air. There are two huts within walking distance from the efficiency and probably 5 within a five minute drive. This is referring to huts mind you and not full coffee shops, three of which populate the same block in the small town of Palmer, Ak. Huts have been spotted on desolate Alaskan roads, in the middle of nowhere serving fine cups of java, not the crap Ohio rest stops are cursed with, but nice dark roasts from the likes of Kaladi Brothers with lattes and mochas to spare.

It is kind of a paradise for the cold and sleep deprived. It would be a challenge to go anyplace in this great state and not find another coffee stand before the effects of the last cup have worn off. Southern invaders have overrun Alaska too, with the Seattle influence being thoroughly embraced.

A Whale of a Time

Life has a way of screaming at you to pay attention. Particularly while dreamily conversing on a boat bound for a halibut fishing hole, sipping a beer, chuckling at a goofy looking otter tracking your progress as it reclines on its back. Seriously, while surrounded by mountains, facing a frigid headstrong wind, it is easy to miss the awe inspiring.
Which is why you need life to snap you out of it with an otherworldly scream. It is a sound of which never heard before and probably never again that trumpets the emergence of a whale across the bow of the boat, not 10 feet from where you sit. There is a moment of exhilaration followed by terror that it will capsize the boat. The captain cuts the motor and runs from the cabin screaming that is as close as he’s ever come to hitting one. As he lights a cigarette to relieve the tension, you run around the starboard side of the boat laughing hysterically as you look on the poor soul who took the brunt of the snot that had just erupted from the great beast’s blowhole.
Now it can’t be said the obsession become Ahabian, but for the next half hour the passengers of the boat relentlessly scan the Kachemak Bay waters for more whales who oblige by cresting all around, blowholes spouting, tails flopping, though now at a much safer distance.
As the boat resumes its trip out to sea, you sit hyper-aware of the puffins and seagulls that fly all around and ponder the moment you already know will be with you for the rest of your life. You sit and wish your camera’s battery hadn’t given out a few minutes before and begin thinking about purchasing life insurance, probably from Pacific Life.

Best of Photos from the Drive

On the Shoulders of Giants

The devastation inflicted upon the First Nations of the Americas by the incursion of the Western world is one of the great tragedies of history. The plight suffered is long and varied, extending into today as native culture and language erodes while alcohol and drug abuse continues to be a major problem. Generation upon generation have been relegated to the fringes of society by central governments paying to keep them there with no means or direction to improve their lot in life.
This relegation happens all over the Western Hemisphere, but in Teslin, in the Yukon Territory of Canada, the Tlingit Nation has begun to retake its destiny. They have a self-governance agreement with the Yukon and with Canada that redirects power back to their clan system of government. The clans, Raven Children, Frog, Wolf, Beaver, and Eagle stand in representative Totem Poles in watch outside the magnificent Tlingit Heritage Centre just beyond Teslin.
The centre comprises the past, present, and future of the people. Visitors receive a museum style history lesson on the traditional lands, way of life, and plight of the Tlingit. There are examples of classic works of art as well as contemporary pieces by artists reintroduced to the skills by their elders. In a boathouse, fiberglass canoes, a nod to modern ways, sit painted, in stunning Tlingit artistry, awaiting their next ceremonial use.
Though fiberglass, a modern necessity, is the way of the future, traditional dugout canoes provide a path for that future. Two years ago, Tlingit Master Carver Wayne Price took 19 tribal youth with drug and alcohol problems to a remote Yukon River island with nothing but carving tools and a very large log. Over the next ten weeks, with no modern conveniences or chemical crutches and with no way off the island other than traditional knowhow, the youth learned how to and carved a 30-foot dugout canoe out of a 13,000 pound red cedar log and carved a path for their own future development.
The Tlingit Heritage Centre is but a drop of restitute water for a culture that once lived off of the vast Northwest waterways, but it is a significant step. With no way to undo history’s gross injustices, there is no way to go but forward. These First Nation people are taking the steps to preserve their past, address and solve their present issues while building a better future that is tied to a proud heritage.

A Pot of Yukon Gold

We were tempted to chase down the pot of Yukon Gold at the end of this rainbow. Tempted till the realization hit that the terrain is a bit too daunting to chase down that dream along with the realization that just being dwarfed by that terrain is a pot of gold in and of itself.
The mountains of the Yukon are majestic and the lake waters blue. Life is alive in the Yukon. It is a zoo without borders and a naturalists dream. Bison, bear, moose and caribou exist unabated as they did before humans overtook the continent and drink of sparkling without motorized pollution.
For those who need that touch of civilization, the territory’s capital, Whitehorse, is a vibrant city of over twenty thousand that time forgot. The downtown is filled with life, free of urban sprawl that has ruined countless city centers. It is a glimpse of the way populations once congregated to a center surrounded and supported by the bounty that attracted it in the first place.
Of course the Yukon is not for everyone and it does have its share of problems, the native population for instance is blatantly impoverished and relegated to the fringes of the society. But for those drawn to nature’s beauty and a civilized, simpler life, a pot of Yukon Gold just may be the treasure that allows us to start over and continue working on the ills of modern life.

Marked For Home

Fairy Tales will tell you it is always good to be able to find your way home. Hansel and Gretel left markers of bread that were a great idea until they were consumed by wild animals. Consider the lesson learned because in the adult world, markers left to guide the way home are made with materials that will stand the test of time.
The Inuit people of the North built stone markers called Inuksuit to point out features important to their civilization. There were specialty ones as well, turaaqtilt, that were meant to point you home in the best direction. These Inuksuit can still be found dotting The Alaskan Highway speaking to you in an ancient form of communication for anyone still capable to read it.

For those who can no longer decipher their meaning, a more modern way of marking home was started by a U.S. Army soldier during construction of The Alaskan Highway during World War II. Carl K. Lindley posted a sign marking his home and travelers have been leaving their own signs in the town of Watson Lake ever since.

The Watson Lake Signpost Forest appears to be as dense with signs as the forests along the highway are with actual trees. The signs are markers to our civilization and how far we have spread. The travelers who have left the signs that now totals over 61,000 remind us that no matter where we go in the world, it is always important to remember where we’ve come from.

The Alaskan Highway that's the best

Born of rushed military ingenuity to provide a route for combat equipment necessary to battle the Japanese during World War II, The Alaskan Highway was turned over for civilian use after the war and has now given birth to countless adventures in search of North American majesty.
Embarking on the highway in Dawson Creek, BC, the sense of adventure remains though the danger implied in the term “adventure” has diminished as roads have been better paved, guide books have been written, gasoline mile markers provided and visitor centers built. The newfound convenience immediately pays off at the first visitor center when a cheerful employee calls ahead to reserve a campsite while you are free to surf the Internet and connect with the modern world you are attempting to leave behind on this trip. What thrill is lost is more than compensated by the piece of mind received when traveling with a wife, two small dogs and a car chalked full for a three month stay in Alaska.
What is to be found along the highway was largely inaccessible and new to most of the Western world’s eye not even one hundred years ago. A landscape appearing to be ancient, but young in geologic time, houses wildlife virtually nonexistent to a highly developed North America.
It is a landscape of apparent, abundant beauty that was hiding in the open waiting for technological innovations to make it available for the rest of us. Soul crushing war with an ancient country opened some of the West’s youngest lands to the possibility of tourism. Along the Alaskan Highway you’ll find your soul, fractured by modern life, soothingly reminded of its connection to the natural world.

Our Prairie Home Companion

Several years ago my father, through the magic of the Internet, found a late twenties pickup truck rusting of disuse on a Dakota farm. Rescued to Dad’s garage, the soul of its past echoed through the hand-rigged gun rack that housed the instrument a long dead farmer undoubtedly used to feed and protect his family. Reincarnated as a hot rod that now rolls through my hometown, the truck is a reminder that the past can never be blown away.
I’m reminded of that ancient vehicle while watching the winds catch the tall grasses of the Northern prairie states that brings “amber waves of grain” to life, as they hadn’t been since childhood. Those winds swept life back from history and tied it to a largely unchanged land. Waves of vegetation crash against rusting vehicles and tractors that served a life of purpose until finally giving out, dying on its still unmoved resting spot amongst the swaying grasses and tying its past to the visual present.
All through Western Minnesota, North Dakota and into Saskatchewan, Canada there are these ghostly reminders in the form of vehicles and homes long since abandoned. The presence of these markers allows the laughter of former inhabitants, in a land of Scandinavian decent, to emerge through the winds while life passes by and reminds us to pause like the knight in Bergman’s “Seventh Seal” and enjoy a moment with friends because life is fleeting.
Of flesh and blood those who lived here are gone, but upon their toils the present and future thrive. North Dakota is awash in its farming and fossil fueled past while also appearing to be ground zero for emerging technologies. Ethanol advertisements dot the windswept landscape that is shaded by the shadows of windmills harvesting a renewable resource.
Those who continue to call this land home are sparse but hearty stock. They live amongst whispering ghosts and build upon their heritage. In Southern Saskatchewan we refill at a small family owned, full service gas station that looks to have been around for generations. Dust from the wind is washed from our car’s windshield while Ethanol laced gasoline is pumped into our gas tank by an attendant undoubtedly descended from one who on that very spot serviced myriad late twenties pickup trucks.