Truman's Independence

So Katrina and I have hit the road for our big Presidential Tour.  First stop was the Herbert Hoover Museum in Iowa, but I'm going to share today's adventure in Independence, Missouri first.

Independence is President Harry Truman's hometown and it had a beautiful courthouse which gives guided tours.  Our guide was wonderful and I won't spoil it by giving it all away.  It's less about the architectural aspects and more about Truman who was responsible for its expansion/reconstruction when he was an elected judge in Jackson County before his career in the Senate began.

Device Truman used to sign multiple documents at once!

Also in the museum is art by George Caleb Bingham, who was a self taught artist of the newly expanding west.  A lot of his work depicted commerce and daily life, including this engraving titled "County Election" with an amusing collection of voters waiting in line.

On the town square was a covered wagon giving a history tour puled by horses wearing Santa hats.  Those poor horses!  At least it was a sunny day.

Independence is also known as a mecca for the Church of Latter Day Saints, and a Visitors Center is located there to guide those looking for Mormon attractions in the area.  We didn't go inside, but admired the architecture of a church site across the street.  Here is a list of sites if you're interested.

But the main reason for our visit was of course the National Archives museum for President Truman.

Katrina checked out the gift shop first, getting very excited when she found a Rosie the Riveteer rubber ducky to take home with her.

But of course what drew my eye upon entering was the mural "Independence and the Opening of the West" painted by Thomas Hart Benton.  Native Americans from the Pawnee and Cheyenne tribes are depicted, as well as Fort Bent along the Santa Fe trail on the Arkansas River.

When Truman himself came to check on the progress of the mural the artist invited him to come on up the scaffold and paint a few strokes of the blue sky.

If you're not familiar with Truman as president, his is an interesting story.  He was Vice President and became president when Franklin D. Roosevelt died suddenly of a stroke in the last months of World War II.  He instantly inherited a lot of serious problems.  Not only did he have to contend with the defeat of the Germans, for months the war with Japan still dragged on, and the atomic bomb was seen as a solution to ending the war quickly.

After the war he had the job of trying to rebuild our economy.  He wanted to gradually remove wartime wage and price controls to avoid shortages and inflation.  He was a true liberal who wanted to ban racial discrimination in employment, expand social security benefits, raise the minimum wage by 50% percent and clear slums and build housing.  This proved to be too ambitious for Congress who blocked most of the reforms and unfortunately inflation, shortages and strikes resulted.  Even though he had given solutions that were ignored to prevent the situation he and his party were blamed. He also wanted to enact government sponsored health care like Great Britain did.  Think how long we have been trying to get that off the ground!  He did see some success in that area when Medicare and Medicaid were enacted, and President Lyndon B. Johnson signed them into law in the museum with Truman in attendance. A look at the list below will show most the issues of his presidency are not different from those we are still battling over more than half a century later including voter rights laws and higher taxes on the wealthy.

It wasn't just the end of WWII and the recovery of our economy on his plate, here are some quick bullet points:

•  President  Truman signed the United Nations Charter and the United States became the first nation to complete the ratification process and join the new international organization.  
• He undertook extensive renovation of the White House due to structural problems
• Was the first to recognize the new nation of Israel
• Appointed justices to the Supreme Court who believed in Civil Rights 
• Dealt with the emergence of Soviet/Cold War tensions post World War II
• Dispatched troops to South Korea to try to contain the spread of Communism

He had a LOT of hard decisions to make, as most U.S. Presidents do.  Not all of them were popular, as is true today.

Visiting Missouri State Parks in 2010

As I tend to do in winter, expect a series of flashback posts to pop up here on the blog!

Back in February of 2010 Wayne broke his tibia and his fibula slipping on some black ice in our driveway .  While still wearing the boot that May we took a trip down to Missouri.

Navigating the one mile paved Braille trail at Elephant Rocks State Park was definitely an uphill  challenge in his condition, but the 1.5 billion year old granite boulders were pretty neat.

Also of interest was the history of granite quarrying in the area.  Quarrying in the area goes back to 1869 and provided a lot of employment both in the quarry and the railroad needed to transport the rock.

In addition to the engine house built in the early 1900's of the rock quarried there, a water filled quarry made a pleasant place to stop and enjoy the mild weather.

All "booted up"

The state park website had a link to a 3 minute video showing quarrying technique from 1935.

We stayed at Johnson's Shut-Ins State Park which had a recently rebuilt campground that was pretty amazing but we left a few days early due to ticks falling from the sky.

A dam upriver had a retaining wall that broke in 2005 flooding the area and luckily no one was killed.  You can read the really well written news story here.

The "shut-ins" are a place where the river's breadth is limited by hard rock resistant to erosion. Apparently this park is used mostly as a natural "waterpark" in the summer. We had it all to ourselves that morning but swimming was not on our agenda, but I certainly enjoyed climbing around on the rocks.

Since we decided to leave early we headed up along the Mississippi River, enjoying the migrating birds.

We ended up at the Thomson Causeway COE campground which I highly recommend to anyone looking to get away for a few days.  It's not close to any services, but right on the Mississippi River with wildlife viewing opportunities everywhere including wading birds, turtles, muskrats, beavers and even some nesting eagles at one of the lock and dams.

Originally we thought we would stay at the Illinois state park in Savannah but it is bare bones and nowhere near as nice.  Since it is Illinois this is a nice flat area for bike riding, and bring your kayak and you can paddle right from your campsite.  Wish I had taken a picture of our site, but they are all large and quite a few are right on the water.  Don't head there now though, they closed in late October and won't re-open until the first of May!

Walking in St. Louis

The Old Courthouse

Cory wanted to go meet a friend he made through online gaming so we found ourselves half an hour from St. Louis this weekend.

Old Courthouse interior, low light photography conditions

Wayne and I visited St. Louis for our 17th anniversary...10 years ago.  Not much has changed, except they are doing some work on the Jefferson Expansion Memorial (more commonly known as The Arch) and the site is looking a bit messy.

Having been here before I wasn't too disappointed and Cory was happy just to walk around with his friend and catch Pokemon on his phone.

I dashed back and forth across the intersections getting a few architectural shots.

No interior shots because the federal buildings are usually closed on the weekends.

I didn't have much time to explore, but it was to revisit a city and see it from a different perspective a decade later.

All the pictures were shot with my new wide angle lens, Canon - EF-S 10-18mm f/4.5-5.6 IS STM, and this one will be a keeper! At last!  All of these were straight out of the camera  and the lens was a great price at $280, quiet motor for video, and super lightweight.  It also seems to have less perspective distortion from bottom to top for architectural shots than when I used the 10-22mm, which I did not want to replace at a cost of $649 for how I felt it performed.  Only downside is it will not perform as well in lower light but who cares for the price difference?  So now my "kit" is complete until I decide I'm okay with a heavier lens.

Even with a wide angle lens it would be hard to get all of City Hall from street level in a single shot, it does sit on 6 acres after all.  Built in 1898 it was inspired by the City Hall of Paris.  Maybe someday I'll be back again and get a peek inside, I'm sure it is magnificent.

Just down the road is another impressive building, the 120 year old Union Station.

Once the largest and busiest rail station in the world, it has been renovated and smartly repurposed, housing a hotel, retaurants and when we were here a decade ago a mall.  Now it is under construction again and next year will contain a train park and in 2018 an aquarium too!

I've never been here at night when the fountains are lit up, but I'm guessing it makes the guy above look less grumpy.

I don't know if anything could make this guy look cheerful!

Chihuly glass exhibit and more in Saint Louis, 2006

I was inspired by Sharon over at The Odd Essay to write a post about an anniversary trip we took in November 2006 to Saint Louis. What prompted it was her photos of an exhibit of Chihuly glass in Seattle. We saw a similar exhibit at the Missouri Botanical Garden, which wasn't on our itinerary but one of those things that you stumble upon unexpectedly that end up making the trip.

Happy 17th Anniversary!

We look so young in that photo! We didn't even have any gray hair 6 years ago! The glass in the garden exhibit was the highlight of our trip, but there were other great things to see. St. Louis' Union Station was brimming with beautiful art and architecture..and had been converted to a mall and hotel. Much of the original impressive architecture remains in the Grand Hall and the exterior still looked as it must have on opening day in 1894. The only train departing from the station was the Hogwarts Express, but I couldn't find the ticket seller so I stayed in St. Louis.

Another surprise was the Old Courthouse which was within walking distance of our hotel.  Part of its unfortunate history includes the auctioning of slaves on its steps, but it is also the site of the Dred Scott case.  He had lived in free territories with his master, including Minnesota and Illinois. These states held that a slaveholder forfeited his rights to property by illegally holding a slave to a state that prohibited the institution and where there was no law to support his controlling the slave. Congress had never before addressed whether slaves were free if they set foot upon free soil. Scott lost the case at first, but a jury voted in his favor upon appeal. In 1852, the Missouri Supreme Court struck down the lower court ruling. Scott was defeated again in federal court, and yet again when his case reached the United States Supreme Court. This decision hastened the start of the Civil War as it inflamed tensions over the issue. Scott and his family eventually gained their freedom when they were returned to a prior owner and that other owner granted them emancipation in 1857.  Scott only lived another 17 months, dying from tuberculosis, but his wife survived another 18 years.

Also interesting was St. Louis' most well known landmark, the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial.  Not very pretty close up, but I got what I thought was an interesting photo by lying on the ground. We didn't feel the need to take a ride to the top, but visited the museum and bought a pack of playing cards that depicts the building of the arch which we used on our last camping trip while playing a game of cribbage.

All this reminiscing has got me thinking maybe we should do something special for our anniversary again.  We'll be married 23 years next month...it might be too late to come up with a plan for this year, but not for next year!