A museum is a not-for-profit, permanent institution in the service of society that researches, collects, conserves, interprets and exhibits tangible and intangible heritage. Open to the public, accessible and inclusive, museums foster diversity and sustainability. They operate and communicate ethically, professionally and with the participation of communities, offering varied experiences for education, enjoyment, reflection and knowledge sharing. The official definition of Museum by the Extraordinary General Assembly of the International Council of Museums In Prague, on 24 August 2022.

I want to start by saying two things: first, the definition, above, is wrong, it ought to say should be rather than is because not all museums reach the lofty goals that follow. Second, for some strange reason, Michele and I go to way more museums when we are traveling than when we are at home. On this trip, it seems we went to every kind of museum under the sun (even using the term museum very loosely).

On this trip, we started the serious part of our museum run with the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad State Park and Visitor Center on the Maryland side of the Delmarva Peninsula.

As an aside, Maryland and Delaware sit side by side on the Delmarva Peninsula. When we cross over from Delaware to Maryland, they are hard to tell them apart even though, presumably, they are different. Interestingly, Maryland became a “free state” on December 1, 1864, before the 13th Amendment was ratified by Congress, and Delaware didn’t actually ratify the 13th Amendment until February 1901. End aside.

As another aside, on the way to the State Park and Visitor Center, two things stood out to me. One is the towns in this area are almost European in their compactness. We drive through a dense town and, then we’re out in the empty country. This is the result, probably, of the town being originally built when most people walked everywhere. But it is also the result, probably, of tough, restrictive zoning thereafter.

The second is nobody has fences around their houses or usable yards. Outside of the towns, in the country, it is especially noticeable with houses sitting alone in a sea of grass. In my imagination, at least, this is because nobody lives outside their houses. They may go for a hike outside or go to the beach, but nobody just sits on the porch and has lunch.

The only exception I saw to this in the two weeks we wandered around The East was when we were at Al and Arlene’s. They built a small patio in their backyard, which they actually used, and, looking up and down the row of nearby fenceless houses, they seemed to be the only ones in their complex outside. End aside.

In Maryland, while loosely following the route of the Underground Railroad, we visited two very different museums that covered almost the same material (for lack of a better word). They couldn’t have been more different. In the rural part of the peninsula, near the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge is the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad State Park and Visitor Center. The Center is, apparently, a Federal Project on State land, and the building – designed by GWWO Architects, a Baltimore outfit that says they specialize in cultural and educational projects with emphasis on quality design that is inspirational and evocative – is perfect. It seems to be heavily influenced by Frank Gehry right down to the corrugated steel siding, with the outside looking like a group of disconnected buildings, both formal and humble, and the inside very much one interconnected space.

The problem is that the displays, though expensive and tasteful in the extreme, are not very memorable. It was so unmemorable that I didn’t take any pictures and had to resort to Google to refresh my memory.

Eleven miles to the north is the Harriet Tubman Museum and Educational Center in the small city/large town of Cambridge, Maryland. It is a storefront operation between The Canvasback Irish Restaurant and Pub on the left and The Sugar Plum on the right, and it isn’t even marked on the street, although it does have a seemingly permanent Yes We’re Open sign in the window. The Education Center waa founded in the mid-1980s and is dedicated to preserving Tubman’s connection to the local community and to helping young people see Tubman as a role model.

Inside, the museum is chock-full of pictures, magazine articles, books in reading areas, and artifacts of the slave period.

Of the two, it seems to me that the small, amateurish, Harriet Tubman Museum and Educational Center is the better museum. At least I liked it better.

Of all the museums we visited, the biggest disappointment for me was – for lack of a better name, I guess, but still sort of jarring- the National Museum of the American Indian. The building, which is terrific and designed by Douglas Cardinal Architect, a Native American – his description, not mine – is one of those buildings that seem much larger on the outside than on the inside, sort of like the original Mario Botta’s SFMOMA.

As an aside, the National Museum of the American Indian was one of Michele’s favorites because she “learned about how the Native Americans’ democratic principles inspired the US form of government”. Where I was bothered by the lack of passion and outrage in the displays that showed all the treaties the Europeans broke, she felt the lowkey, measured displays didn’t put off the visitor, instead walking people through early cooperative encounters and slowly revealing the horrors that became increasingly common as time went on. I pointed out the powerful impact of the displays in the Lorraine Motel at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis. She pointed out that people going to the Lorraine Motel know that it is the place where Martin Luther King Jr. was shot dead, and they know what they are in for, but that the majority of people going to the National Museum of the American Indian, which is on the National Mall, are casual visitors, many with children in tow and would probably feel put-off by displays as strong as at the Lorraine. End aside.

My biggest complaint, however, is the lack of information on pre1492 American Indian societies, and the state of American Indians and American Indian societies today. Instead, there are several big spaces that seem to be filled with, for lack of a better word, filler. One of the rooms, filled with appropriated American Indian iconography, reminds me of a complaint about merchant builders in that they named their housing developments after what they destroyed; Deer Meadows or Silver Creek are a couple of examples that come to mind.

The most traditional museum we went to on this trip is The National Portrait Gallery which is off the Mall. It is also my favorite museum in Washington. Maybe I should say “Still my favorite.” because I first saw it in the mid-1970s and thought it was terrific then. The National Portrait Gallery is traditional in that most of the art on display is standard paintings and sculptures with a sprinkling of photographs.

As a bonus, the National Portrait Gallery is in a great old building, in the Greek revival style that became popular in the early 1800s, that wraps around a courtyard that was the site of Lincoln’s second inaugural ball. The courtyard is now covered with a freestanding canopy designed by Foster + Partners – the designer of the Apple Headquarters, among other notable buildings – and it seems to fit in with the old building very well.

The last time I visited the National Portrait Gallery, in the mid-1970s – more than half my lifetime ago – the feature show was Time Magazine’s Person Of The Year. I was going to say Man Of The Year, and times have changed, but the first woman to win the honor was Wallis Simpson way back in 1936, then Queen Elizabeth II in 1952, and Corazon Aquino in 1986 (even though it was still called Man Of The Year until 1999). Then it was 30 years to German Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2015, followed by  Greta Thunberg in 2019 and, now, Taylor Swift. Times – as well as Time – have changed, and there are a lot more women shown in the National Portrait Gallery now. This year, the feature show was Portraits of a Nation 2022, which featured extraordinary individuals who have made transformative contributions to the United States and its people. The show included, among others, Ana Devernay, Anthony Fauci, entrepreneur Serina Williams, and equal pay activist Venus Williams.

Still, for me, one of the highlights are the presidents’ Official Portraits.

Lastly, I want to mention the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland. The visionary art in the name refers to outsider art, untrained artists, or primitive art if you prefer.

The building – photo at the top of the post -was designed by Alex Castro, who is a local guy and was not an architect when he designed the building, which was permitted under the license and overview of Rebecca Swanston, AIA. It’s nice to see a museum walk its talk.

Of all the museums we saw Back East, the Visionary probably best fits the definition of the International Council of Museums. It is so inclusive that the only entrance is by a wheelchair-accessible ramp. It is a not-for-profit, permanent institution in the service of society that researches, collects, conserves, interprets, and exhibits tangible and intangible heritage, and it is a fun space that provides a unique experience.

Pittsburgh entered the core of my heart when I was a boy and cannot be torn out. Andrew Carnegie (pronounced an·droo kaar·nuh·gee)

So much has happened, including Thanksgiving, catching COVID, and having a heart ablation, since we went to the East Coast for Michele’s Cousin’s Reunion, that it seems much longer ago than it really was. I also want to say that, although the rationale for the trip was the Reunion, the Reunion itself was a minor part of the trip. The trip itself didn’t really have a center unless rambling around counts. I thought Washington, especially the various Smithsonian Museums, might be the center, but it wasn’t. The parts that stand out were the new places we saw through the eyes of old friends, especially Pittsburgh and Baltimore.

Starting with Pittsburgh, the downtown part is pretty much like most downtowns, with new and newer buildings jammed together. But its resemblance to other cities ends as soon as you drive a couple of blocks from the epicenter. First, there are bridges, bridges everywhere. In some cases, after crossing a river, they dive directly into a tunnel. Just outside of downtown, I expected to see lots of lofts in recycled factories, and they might be there, but I didn’t see them. Although, we did go to see a superb jazz performance by Eliane Elias in an old industrial building that had been converted into a theater. The areas further from downtown are hilly, not mountainous, just hilly with tight hollows; somewhat like a Gold Rush town in California or Eureka, Arkansas.

Outside of downtown, on alluvial flats along the rivers or in a wide spot along a creek, flat ground is at a premium, and there are narrow three-story detached houses jammed together, giving it a somewhat Dogpatch-y appearance. As a former builder, I found this fascinating. On the way out of town, I would follow a road through a narrow valley with a creek, turn a corner, and it would open up to a small flat space jammed with a half dozen very narrow (around twenty feet wide) three-story houses, squeezed between the right-of-way in front and a cliff in the back. They looked old and not very prosperous. By the way, I don’t have any pictures of this because I knew we would be coming back in about two weeks. Unfortunately, by then, I had contracted COVID and only saw the inside of the hotel room.

At some point during our stay with Arlene and Al, Arlene said something like, “I love it here. I love the green. I would never want to live in California where everything is dry and brown.” It was a comment that I kept bringing up in my mind as we drove around the East. The question just wouldn’t go away. It seemed so true, I didn’t know why anybody would prefer the burned-out California hills to these green hollows either.

While we were staying with Al and Arlene, Arlene said that the Appalachian Mountains were the oldest mountain chain in North America which sort of surprised me because of all the coal beds in the road cuts. But, it turns out, the Appalachian Mountains are 480,000,000 years old (plus or minus depending on where in time you put the beginning. Basically, they were formed when the North American Plate slammed into the European and African Plates forming Pangaea. That was a long time ago, even before life had left the seas and started to colonize dry land.

During the next 480M years, it was much warmer because this area was closer to the equator, and the atmosphere was richer in oxygen; life on land flourished. For a good part of the time, this area was periodically underwater, and the submerged plants and animals were covered with alluvium. Millions of years turned those layers into coal and oil. Later, much later, I drove through road cuts that had exposed those layers and eventually ended up on a plateau where the Amish had settled in the early 18th Century.

I spent about an hour or so wandering around a faux Amish village which was very interesting until it wasn’t. Ever since I’ve read or heard of the Amish, I thought they were Luddites, afraid of progress. That is not true, they seem to have no problem with modern conveniences, what they are tucked away from is the outside world. They have no problems with refrigerators or blenders, for example, just the connection to the outside world that electricity requires. They have solved that problem with natural gas-powered refrigerators and pneumatic blenders.

During the late 60s, I became very interested in Amish quilts. I thought they were knock-out, with their moody dark colors like purple and maroon and I’m glad to say that the Amish are still in the quilt biz even if what they are doing seems more conventional.

Leaving Lancaster County, heading towards the Cousins’ gathering in Cape May, I entered a tree-lined maze in which I had only a vague idea of what state I was in. Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, and Delaware all seem to be intertwined in a way, that, from the tree-lined tunnel I was in, seemed close to random. At the end of the day, I ended up at the Atlantic Ocean just in time for a drink with Michele and Claudia.

Cardioversion is a treatment to restore a normal heartbeat when your heart is beating too fast or with an irregular rhythm. It’s often used to treat atrial fibrillation, the most common kind of irregular beat. UCSF Health

Ablation is a procedure for restoring normal heart rhythm, particularly if the irregular rhythm has not responded to medication…The pumping action of your heart is triggered by electrical impulses. Heart & Stroke Foundation of Canada

I got my third ablation last Monday because my atrial fibrillation has come back. In the olden days, say the 1970s or 80s, it was fairly common to treat atrial fibrillation with a pacemaker. Then cardioversion, which involves shocking the patient’s heart back into normal rhythm with electrical jolts using paddles that look like ping pong paddles. Cardioversion is such a big name for what seems like brute force, and then came the simply named ablation.

The name is deceptive, however. An Ablation is staggeringly complicated. Close to unimaginably complicated. In my case, a catheter(s?) is inserted into the blood vessel by my groin and guided into my heart where the extra heartbeats are being generated. The thickened heart walls are then removed or scarred so that they no longer generate extra electrical signals. This is all done in my body in the dark – duh! – so finding the areas to ablate is the main problem. On my Consent to Surgery for the procedure, it is listed as Catheter ablation of atrial fibrillation with electrophysiology testing trans-septal approach with transesophageal echocardiogram possible use of intravenous contrast media.

The equipment to do this is almost laughably complex as these photographs – the first by Michele, and the rest by one of the doctors, using Michele’s new iPhone – show.

I am now back home, feeling better except for the expected sore throat caused by the breathing tube inserted into my lung and an ultrasound sensor inserted into my esophagus. I think it was in my esophagus; I was peacefully unconscious, so I’m not sure.

I’m now on my way to having a heart free of Afib. I hope and expect.

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. Not when I was young when the adults sat at a separate table and seemed to be having more fun, but now when I am one of the adults having fun. Thanksgiving is just a time to get together – with people you want to be with – and give thanks. But now there are cracks starting to appear in this idealized facade. Today, it is easier to see the echo of our past being played out in Israel/Palestine. The first Thanksgiving was a nice dinner with some Indians who – in the long run – had most of their land taken away – not to mention that the majority of them died (although murdered may be more accurate).

 I have mixed emotions about this and am reminded of my grandmother Bambow. After my grandfather died, my grandmother lived alone, and every couple of weeks, one or more of her descendants – usually my mother and, less often, me – would go up to Santa Rosa and take her shopping. She would fill her shopping cart to overflowing, and then she would waddle to the checkout counter pushing the cart while one of us would follow, picking up the boxes that slid off of the pile. Once, as my grandmother got close to the checkout, a woman with a bottle of milk tried to scurry ahead of her. (This was way before the time of 15 items or fewer checkout lines.) With a mighty shove, my grandmother pushed her cart in front of this poor soul, cutting her off.

The woman couldn’t believe it, and I couldn’t either. It was just such a nasty move. The woman looked at my grandmother and said “Well, I hope you are happy!” My grandmother looked back at her and said, “Of course, I am, I won, didn’t I?” I probably took the opportunity to admire the floor tiles.

But now I feel a bit like that about the Indians or First Nations, if you prefer. What we did is probably to the point of being genocide. Still, the world is becoming kinder, more compassionate. Every day, there are more acts of love and kindness. And I am happy that we are here, on this wonder-filled continent, celebrating Thanksgiving.

“The cries of the Palestinian and Israeli children sound no different to me. What I don’t understand is why the cries of Palestinians sound different to you all.” -@RepRashida

In one of its few bipartisan votes, the House of Representatives censured Rashida Talib, its only Palestinian member, a week or so ago, and I’m not sure why. I know that they said it was because she used the phrase “From the river to the sea.” which, defacto, proves she is an anti-semite, but… really? It upset me way more than I expected, and I want to talk about it.

I’m going to start by saying anti-Semitism exists, and a good case can be made that it is getting worse. Also, I would be willing to bet money that there are anti-Semites in Congress. Over my lifetime, however, anti-Semitism has changed. When I was younger, anti-semites were the so-called good people, the town elites, and now they are considered declasse. But, while being an anti-Semite may no longer considered fashionable, it is still threatening.

I also want to say that Jewish people, in the US, in Europe, and even in Israel, are not the same as the Israeli government, and criticism of the Israeli State’s treatment of Palestinians is not, necessarily anti-Semitism.

Every day, we swim in an almost infinite sea of opinions passed off as fact. All – maybe this should be prefaced with almost, but I don’t think so -news and information sources we get are biased, FOX and the New York Times are both biased. This sea of opinion influences who we are and what we think, it influences what we believe down to our bones.

One of these opinions that are often presented as fact is the definition of racism and, specifically, anti-sematism. When somebody does not like a specific Jewish person or a specific thing they did, that does not make them an anti-Semite. A lot of money and a lot of ink – pixels now, I guess – is spent every year to convince us that they are the same. A great majority of that money comes from AIPAC – which I believe stands for American Israeli Public Affairs Committee – and AIPAC is out to get Talib.

As an aside, AIPAC does not like any members of the Squad, according to The New Republic: Sources say AIPAC is gearing up to spend over *$100 MILLION* as part of a campaign to knock the Squad out of Congress in 2024. Cori Bush, Ilhan Omar, Jamaal Bowman, Summer Lee, and Rashida Tlaib are all marked for high-dollar challenges. End Aside.

Lastly, but most importantly, Rashida Tlaib is not an anti-Semite, she is one of the good guys. Yes, she strongly disagrees with Israeli policy, but that does not make her an anti-Semite. On her Congressional website, Talib says, I have repeatedly denounced the horrific targeting and killing of civilians by Hamas and the Israeli government, and have mourned the Israeli and Palestinian lives lost. (https://tlaib.house.gov/).

There, now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, I feel much better.