So, my car is getting a tune-up, new tires and some new parts. Driving over 30,000 miles on some very rough roads has done some damage. Also, it’s really hot everywhere. Fortunately, my Mom is letting me stay in the northeast near the coast until I can get back on the road. After over 150 park units, it’s time to pause the blog for a couple weeks. Ciao.
Like the Oklahoma City Memorial and the Touro Synagogue, this is an affiliated site that’s run separately from the park service, so there’s a $15 fee for the house tour. I’m a fan of Cole’s The Course of Empire set of paintings, which depict the same landscape from Nature to height of civilization and to forgotten ruins. The reproduction in his old studio above is from another series called The Voyage of Life.
Cole immigrated from England in 1818 at 17 and settled in the Catskill area of the Hudson River Valley to become a painter in 1825. Witnessing both the natural beauty and its destruction due to rapidly growing industry, Cole created romantic and allegorical landscapes to convey both his love of nature and his sadness at its devastation. He was extremely influential, and there’s a whole Art Trail devoted to the landscape artists who followed his style.
“Nature has spread for us a rich and delightful banquet.
Shall we turn from it?
We are still in Eden;
the wall that shuts us our of the garden
is our own ignorance and folly.”
Thomas Cole
Lindenwald is a country estate on the Old Post Road between New York and the state capital Albany. The Hudson River Valley was still Dutch-speaking when Van Buren was born in a local tavern (fyi, ‘kill’ is Dutch for ‘waterway’). President Van Buren bought it in anticipation of not winning re-election, after a financial crisis and not backing Texas statehood after the Alamo. Van Buren was a political tactician who helped form the Democratic Party, managed Andrew Jackson’s campaign and became his Vice President. He expanded the franchise for white males by reducing the property ownership burden, but he restricted the franchise for black males by raising the property ownership burden. He also opposed women having any rights and continued Jackson’s cruel Native American relocation policies. The house tour was very educational, especially since I knew almost nothing about him, and I was pleased that the ranger described our 8th President’s faults without hesitation, unlike Andrew Johnson‘s ridiculous site.
This boot monument may be the park’s most famous, but let me quickly set the scene. In 1777, General Burgoyne led his British Army from Canada down the Hudson River Valley to New York City (captured by the British fleet the year before), planning to separate New England from the rest of the colonies. After recapturing Fort Ticonderoga, the British marched confidently further south.
General Gates led the colonists who dug in at Saratoga to stop them. The British advance troops had marched into some fields to gather wheat, and the Americans surprised and flanked them. The British took heavy losses retreating to their own fortifications on two hills, and the Americans took the hill with the monument before night fell. The British continued retreating, became surrounded and soon surrendered.
The boot monument was for an American officer who was wounded in the leg taking that hill. It was the officer’s third leg wound in one year. He was a sometimes brilliant, extremely aggressive, apparently fearless, greedy, back-talking, insubordinate veteran, who was hated by other officers and loved by his men. He had led an unsuccessful assault on one hill, and then switched to this hill in the middle of the battle. The officer wasn’t supposed to be leading troops in the battle at all, since Gates had taken away his command. Actually, he had tried to resign, but Washington refused after learning that Fort Ticonderoga had fallen, insisting that the officer (who had helped capture Fort Ticonderoga originally) march north again. Angry at being mistreated by the army and in pain over his wounds (one leg became 2 inches shorter than the other), Benedict Arnold ended up betraying our country.
The museum also has a fascinating exhibit on the fallout of the British defeat at Saratoga. The French allied with the Americans first, followed by the Spanish & the Dutch, leading to attacks on British colonies in Central America, the Caribbean, South America, Africa, India, and Indonesia.
I think this is the living room downstairs, but the European Baroque extravagance made me dizzy. I’ve now been to four Vanderbilt mansions, so I’m halfway done. Fortunately, a combination of the Great Depression, regulation and taxation ended the Guilded Age, so the mansion spree ended. FDR convinced the last owner to donate this estate to the government, since she already had several other estates.
Today’s unregulated multi-billionaires fly rockets into space, while some regular citizens lack basic healthcare available for free in other countries. Corporations have more rights than pregnant women, but they pay little to zero taxes. I think individuals should be allowed to incorporate to get similar benefits. You would only owe tax on your savings, not your income, for example. Or maybe corporations should pay taxes like we do. Either way, we need to figure out a way to make things fairer, before everyone is broke except the one guy who owns all the corporations and robot workers. Maybe after AI puts the bankers, lawyers and doctors out of work, voters will decide that the system should work for people and not the other way around.
I’m not sure why this site hasn’t been promoted to National Historical Park, since it is a presidential birthplace, childhood home, presidential home, library, and gravesite. There’s also the walled garden at Bellefield, the neighboring Eleanor Roosevelt site, and the neighboring Vanderbilt site.
These wonderful estates are a fine introduction to the historic Hudson River Valley. I enjoyed the Clinton written & narrated film in the museum, and thought $10 for the library worth it. Your park pass includes the house tour, and there’s even a cafe serving hot dogs (see ’Hyde Park on the Hudson’ with Bill Murray). I can’t complain about the three top notch tours today or anything else here. Simply superb!
This is where a young nominee sought the critical endorsement of Eleanor Roosevelt. She thought him too wishy-washy on Civil Rights, and counseled him to be more assertive on the issue. JFK complied, she endorsed him, and he won by a hair. Without Eleanor, it also seems impossible to me that FDR could have overcome his crippling polio limitations and successfully campaigned for and won the Presidency. And of course, without Eleanor, it seems unlikely that the UN would have adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. After her husband’s death, she was in many ways the moral leader of the Democratic Party. She stared down the Soviets at the UN. She wrote over a dozen books. And she spoke frequently to labor, Civil Rights, and other important leaders, as well as to the public.
Her home here was also where many of the most important acts of FDR’s diplomacy took place, including playing in the pool with Churchill and famously eating hot dogs with the King of England. The house is viewable by tour (frequent in summer) and the grounds are also lovely. The site was once part of FDR’s family estate, so there’s a hiking path linking them, if you have time. The archive library & museum at the FDR site contain useful exhibits of Eleanor, so it’s wise to visit both sites together.
Long before this was a park, as children we used to walk quietly past Laurance Rockefeller’s country mansion, up the hill and through the woods to this small lake, ‘The Pogue’ (or ‘The Kiss’ in Gaelic), and swim out to cool off from the summer heat. While there are carriages, fine art, antique furniture, a pool a formal garden and farm animals to see in or near the mansion, the star of this place is the forest itself. Hike deep into the woods!
The whole state was deforested, mostly for ranching, to only 20% forest, resulting in erosion and floods. Marsh was an early environmentalist, inspired by Thoreau, and he sold the property to Billings, who after making his fortune through exploitation, had a change of heart and planted trees “scientifically” to regrow the forest. Billings’ granddaughter married Laurance Rockefeller of Grand Teton fame, and the ‘experimental forest’ continued to regrow. Vermont has now reached 80% forest due to dedicated efforts like the ones here. Now protected, the park is invaluable to foresters trying to figure out the nearly impossible task of reversing deforestation.
I’ve ranted on this subject before, so all I’ll ask is that you try to remember your favorite memories of nature and be inspired to do something to help save it.
“I cannot be weaned
Off the earth’s long contour,
her river-veins”
Seamus Heaney
Ranger Naomi, an artist, was kind enough to put up with my incessant, ignorant questions during the outside tour this morning. We discussed the stunning Robert Shaw memorial depicting the Massachusetts 54th volunteer regiment marching in Boston, the statue of Lincoln that drew Saint-Gaudens here to find lanky & tall models, how Daniel Chester French considered Saint-Gaudens his mentor although they were the same age, the collaboration evident in the Farragut monument, his nude model for the huntress Diana (his mistress), Victory on the Sherman monument, and more, including how “poor artists imitate, good artists copy and great artists steal”. All these glorious pieces can be seen around the country, or, better yet, all here in one beautiful garden, where the sculptor worked and led a colony of artists, below a lonely mountain and above a covered bridge.
This piece, “Amor Caritas”, set in a lovely atrium, is also modeled by Augustus Saint-Gaudens’ mistress, whose love-child’s education was paid for by his wife. I often see the Latin mistranslated as “Angel of Charity” or “Love and Kindness”, but my seven years of Latin study says different. While in a church or graveyard setting for which the piece was created, it might be acceptable to translate it that way using church Latin, but that’s not what it originally meant, especially to someone as familiar with Greco-Roman themes as Saint-Gaudens. To the Romans, before their language was coopted by medieval Christians, I believe the phrase would have meant something more like “Oh the costly affair”. (Amor meaning physical love, and Caritas, “the expensiveness”, positioned after as vocative case to call out). At least, it was a double-entendre.
OK. First thing you need to know is to avoid Lexington; nothing to see or do there. Sure, the first shot of the day (4/19/1775) may have been fired there (unknown who or why), but the untrained militia scattered immediately. Next, unless you’re interested in walking through the woods along the Battle Road and imagining the battle scenes, you can probably skip the Minute Man visitor center too. They have a film, in case you don’t know who the Minute Men were, but the action is all at the North Bridge in Concord.
“By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Emerson was standing at the Old North Bridge in Concord when he read that line to commemorate when the Minute Men (militia with extra training) were ordered to fire the first shots of what became the Revolutionary War. The British were thwarted from crossing the bridge and taking the arsenal on the hill behind the statue, and they were forced to retreat to Boston pursued by small groups of Minute Men engaging them in small skirmishes along the way. The quote is carved in the base of the famous Daniel Chester French statue across the bridge above.
Emerson’s grandfather witnessed the battle from The Old Manse, which is part of the site and later was home to Nathaniel Hawthorne. Emerson was also friends with the Alcott’s, and another part of the park is the Wayside where Louisa May Alcott lived. And, since you’re in Concord, you really should visit the Concord Museum, where you can see Paul Revere’s lantern, learn about Emerson’s other friend Henry David Thoreau, and see the excellent new exhibit that describes the battle in detail. All four literary luminaries are buried on Author’s Ridge in Concord.
Again, any propaganda you may have heard suggesting that Lexington was somehow historically important is nonsense. (And I should add that a group of cowardly Lexingtonians snuck into Concord to vandalize and destroy an early monument built around the 50th anniversary in a pique of petty jealousy). ‘The shot heard round the world’ was fired in Concord, likely by Minute Men from Acton, who were in the front and suffered the first casualties, because that order to fire on the British was understood to be an act of open rebellion that could lead to war. Soldiers on both sides blamed the other for firing first. There’s another visitor center over the bridge and past the statue that describes the day’s action. If you get a chance to hear the ranger talk “Monuments & Memories” about how the meaning of the battle has changed over time, I highly recommend it.
Zero Carbon Travel 