A Texas Flashback

Talk about old posts that never saw the light of day, this one goes back to the trip Katrina and I took down to Texas last January! Here's a few of the places we stayed along our trip.

Just 13 miles from the State Capitol in Austin we stayed at McKinney Falls State Park in Texas.  Was is nice to sleep outside and get up in the morning and not put on a jacket?  Heck yeah!  I sprung up off that air mattress and went for a walk both mornings right away.

 I may have not liked the toll roads in Texas (got off at the next stop when I saw the prices YIKES!) but I couldn't have been happier with the park.  Like Wisconsin there was an out of state fee that was a bit outrageous at $6 per person per day.  In Wisconsin it is $11 per vehicle, not per person.  Imagine if you had a car with 4 people?  That would be $24 PER DAY added to your camping fee.  I'm not a fan of penalizing out of state visitors, I wish state parks would discontinue this practice and make the fees more even and fair.  I wish they would all do away with the sticker system altogether and just raise the camping fees a little and have our state tax budget do the rest.  Not likely in Wisconsin as Scott Walker got a budget to pass in 2015 that cut funding for parks and moved to make them self-funded.  So, fees keep going up which is okay because they were a bit lower on average than other states, but staff keeps getting cutting for the park system so the system isn't only taking away dollars but diminishing the experience opportunities for the public as well.

Not into cactus? The park had water as well! 

In case I haven't mentioned it here on the blog yet, I'm a big fan of the toiletry bag I got from LL Bean.  I use it camping and for my hotel stays, everything I need fits inside and I just unzip it and hang it on the back of the bathroom door!  I could fit my travel hair dryer and flat iron also, but I usually just toss them in the tote bag with my towel and change of clothes.  Worth every penny!

While driving past Waco we saw this -

Luckily there were a few clues in this mural that wraps the building of the Twisted Root Burger Company in Waco, Texas. The artist portrayed scenes from War of the Worlds, it might be one of the coolest murals I've seen to be honest.  Would have been cool watching it go up.

In Arkansas we stayed at Lake Catherine State Park.  Of course we arrived after dark and there were no hosts around to help so we had to try to figure things out on our own.  We reserved a yurt, and in the dark thought this was it.

It was freezing!  We had a small space heater that kept us from dying, but it was not a good night's sleep.  Katrina must have hated me that night.

As we were leaving in the morning we saw this...where we were supposed to stay.  I went to the office and got a refund on the price difference.  You know, having something hanging at the site saying it is reserved and who it is reserved for would have prevented this.  That is how things are done in Wisconsin state parks.  So, not very organized was my impression.

Speaking of cold nights, I'm done sleeping outside for the foreseeable future because it has been below freezing here for weeks now at night but with my job I'm away from home at least one night a week.  With my allergies I have to find hotel rooms that have windows that open more than an inch to air out the cleaning chemicals and carpet air freshener and most nights I sleep with the window open and with the heat off so it's almost like sleeping outside.  I strip the hotel bed, put down my dust mite cover and lay on top in my down sleeping bag.  Every time I wonder what the maids think when they come the next day!  Even with all that I toss and turn on the hard mattress and think about how much sounder I sleep outdoors with only a 2 inch air mattress between me and the ground...

Texas State Capitol Architecture

Boy I kind of jumped ahead with that last post talking about Arkansas because I didn't finish relating our adventures in Texas yet!  While in Austin to visit the LBJ Library and Museum of course we had to scoot on over to the Capitol building.

It is a Renaissance Revival beauty!  A lot of folks were outside on the grounds, many of them catching Pokemon on their phones or just lounging around on benches enjoying the fantastic weather.  Capitol Square has been around since 1839 but this is the second Capitol building that has occupied the space.

The current Capitol building broke ground in 1882 and was finished in February of 1888.   It's a three story beauty made of Sunset Red granite with a zinc Goddess of Liberty statue atop the dome.  Every state has their symbol and in Texas it is all about the Lone Star.  We were seeing stars everywhere, even on the doorknobs!

Standing guard in the entry was a guy with a large a rifle in front of a closed door.  I was too intimated to take a picture of him!  The terrazzo floor commemorates 12 battles fought on Texas soil and the South Foyer also contains life sized statues of Stephen F. Austin and San Houston made by Elizabet Ney in 1903.

Elizabet Ney was German born and studied sculpture in Munich and then Berlin, after of course proving that she could study alongside the men without causing distraction.  In 1857 she set out to persuade the famous philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer, to sit for a portrait.  Under Schopenhauer's influence, Ney began "to construct for herself a theory of life, a mixture of idealism, materialism and radicalism held in check by an essential purity of mind." In addition to meeting philosophers, she did work for statesmen, scientists, diplomats and artists, as well as two kings. How did she end up in Texas?  In July 1870, the Franco-Prussian War began and a few months later she discovered she was pregnant.  An invitation to come to idyllic America from a friend came at an opportune time and she and her lover fled leaving all their belongings and her work behind.  They remained in Germany for another 25 years!  They lived in Georgia for two years and then Ney traveled alone (yes alone!) around the country before settling on a plantation in Texas.  Of course her doctor lover had to sign the papers though she was the one who ended up running the plantation.

Hey there's a star again!

Outside on the grounds there was an "inverted rotunda" with yet another star in the center.  Drains are incorporated into the design, how cool is that?

The Senate chamber was still decked out for the holidays, but it was the ceiling that I couldn't keep from staring at.  The original skylights admitted too much heat and they along with the decorative ceiling panels were blocked. The 1990s Restoration installed reproduction acid-etched tempered skylights with a Plexiglas barrier as a safety precaution in case of glass breakage.  Those might be the best ceiling lights I've seen anywhere, don't you agree?

After wandering around we were hungry so we went to El Mercado for a simple Tex-Mex lunch.

It was much better than McDonald's for about the same price.  Though both places had sculptures!

More to come about Arkansas, sorry it's trickling out so slow I've been distracted by my non-traveling life now that I'm home!

LBJ - Our 36th President

This one is full of lots of history nuggets, and it took me awhile to get around to writing it because I knew it would be research heavy!  Of the 7 libraries I have now visited, I am surprised to say that the LBJ Library and Museum in Austin, Texas was my favorite.

Lyndon Baines Johnson had a long career which began as a teacher and not in politics.  His years in a poverty stricken school left an impression that ended up influencing policy.  In 1931 his political career began when he became a Congressional Aide and he ran and won in a special election in 1937 when a Congressman in his district died. When Pearl Harbor was attacked in 1941 he was the first Representative from Congress to volunteer for active duty in the U.S. Navy. In 1955 he was elected the Senate Majority leader and that same year suffered a severe heart attack.  He quit smoking, lost weight and learned to delegate responsibilities so he could continue to work for many years to come.

But despite his years of experience it was John F. Kennedy who won the nomination for Democratic Party candidate in 1960.  As Vice President Johnson was assigned to be Head of the President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity, Chairman of the National Aeronautics and Space Council, and representative of the United States on trips abroad as well as serving as President of the Senate.

In the wake of Kennedy's assassination Lyndon Johnson gave a wonderful speech to Congress imploring them to pass Kennedy's Civil Rights Bill.  A topic too complex to get into in this post, of course this legislation had a profound effect on our country and is immensely important even today.

Upon his successful election to president in 1964 LBJ quickly got down to business and proposed the largest reform agenda since President Roosevelt's New Deal. Calling his plan the road to The Great Society,  in 1964 he signed the Economic Opportunity Act to start his fight against poverty.

The goal was to create job opportunities through education and other community services and break the cycle of poverty. Part of that was The Elementary and Secondary Education Act which provided   funding to individual states to distribute to public school districts with a high percentage of low income families. It also included creating a domestic volunteer organization called Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) which many years later was incorporated into President Bill Clinton's Americorps.  I loved this letter from an 11 year old student who wanted to help out too.

In 1965 at the Truman Library in Independence (hey, we've been there!) President Johnson signed the Social Security Amendments of 1965 which created Medicare and Medicaid.  President Truman and his wife Bess were given the first official Medicare cards, calling Truman the true father of Medicare.

I love how we learned about how all these presidents are inter-connected through the years with the work they do!

Another part of his war on poverty that is still in place today is Head Start.  Lady Bird Johnson herself was its champion, and she also led the effort to get the Highway Beautification Act passed.

Katrina and I were truly impressed by LBJ's list of undertakings, here is a sampling of what we discovered:

• The Wilderness Protection Act and to date Congress has designated more than 100 million acres of federal lands as wilderness.
• Signed the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act remarking: An unspoiled river is a very rare thing in this Nation today. Their flow and vitality have been harnessed by dams and too often they have been turned into open sewers by communities and by industries. It makes us all very fearful that all rivers will go this way unless somebody acts now to try to balance our river development.
• The Voting Rights Act of 1965 banned literacy tests and other discriminatory methods of denying suffrage to African Americans.

• In 1967 appointed Thurgood Marshall to the U.S. Supreme Court. Justice Marshall is the first African American Supreme Court Justice.
• Signed the Arts and Humanities Bill which created the National Endowment for the Humanities. NEH grants typically go to cultural institutions, such as museums, archives, libraries, colleges, universities, public television, and radio stations, and to individual scholars.
• The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 ended discriminatory quotas based on ethnic origin and focused on reuniting immigrant families and attracting skilled labor to the United States.  More on immigration in another post!

• The Civil Rights Act of 1968 prohibited discrimination regarding the sale, rental and financing of housing based on race, religion, national origin or sex
• Signed the Public Broadcasting Act in 1967, establishing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting which supports PBS and NPR.
• Congress tightened pollution controls with stronger Air and Water Quality Acts.
• Standards were raised for safety in consumer products.
• The Gun Control Act was signed in 1968.  It is a U.S. federal law that regulates the firearms industry and firearms owners, focusing on regulating interstate commerce in firearms by generally prohibiting interstate firearms transfers except among licensed manufacturers, dealers and importers.

I admire the etched magnesium plates depicting Lyndon B. Johnson over the years with
Presidents Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy in the stately Great Hall

Wow, right? Of course much of his domestic accomplishments were overshadowed by the war in Vietnam, and the end of his term in 1968 included the assassination of both Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy.  President Johnson himself was not well and that is one of the major reasons he chose not to run for re-election. When he left office it was with a balanced budget and a 3.3% unemployment rate (so I don't want to hear about how government involvement doesn't lead to jobs, wink wink!).

re-creation of LBJ's oval office

He died at the LBJ Ranch in 1973, but did live to see this museum finished in 1971 and published his memoirs "The Vantage Point: Perspectives of the Presidency".  One of the sources he used to write that book was those taped phone calls from the Oval Office.  Much has been made of his taped calls, but every president from Franklin Roosevelt to Richard Nixon with the exception of Harry Truman had some type of recording system in place.

Of special interest to Katrina at this museum was the women's suffrage banner from 1919 belonging to Jane McCallum.  She fought for the 19th amendment and had the distinction of not only winning that fight to vote but she also served as the Secretary of State for Texas.

And, we learned that the Kansas City Chiefs were defeated by the Green Bay Packers in the first Super Bowl in January of 1967.  Obviously these two Wisconsin girls do not come from a football family, right?  One more presidential stop in Arkansas....

"Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the color of men's skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact."
                                                                                                     Lyndon Johnson, May 30, 1963

The Three D's - Dubya, Downtown Dallas and Dealey Plaza

Also on our presidential tour was a stop in Dallas to see the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum.  I have seen 7 National Archive Presidential museums now, and unfortunately this one was hands-down the most expensive and the least impressive.

Parking was $7, and entrance to the museum is $16 for one adult. A large portion of the museum seemed to be dedicated to the "war on terror" and of course the tragedy on 09/11.  The focus was on the events and little of the president's actions seemed to come across.  While the events and the aftermath were a large part of his presidency I would have liked more detail on his specific actions since it was a presidential museum and not a war memorial.

Steel from the World Trade Center

President Bush’s words from his national address given from the Oval Office that evening: “Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America. These acts shattered steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve.”

A reminder about "No Child Left Behind" wasn't something either of us were particularly fond of  considering how it has transformed the classroom into a standardized testing factory in an effort to hold schools to certain performance standards.  Ugh.  For example, the grade school Katrina attended in 3rd grade taught them the test for a month for almost the whole day, neglecting any learning that might have actually been enriching.  When time came for the test their teacher walked around the room and "helped" them with tough questions.  Another teacher told me that at the end of the day that same helpful teacher was locked in her classroom with all the test booklets for hours.  Katrina was a nervous wreck for those weeks, and had nightmares on how she would perform due to the pressure that was put on them to do well.  We left public school for homeschooling not long afterward, and thankfully Wisconsin was a state that did not require standardized testing for homeschooled students.  Katrina now has a Master's Degree so I think she did okay getting into college and pursuing her education, all without standardized testing until she took the ACT.

Katrina took Sociology of Education at UW Eau Claire where she learned that while the legislation was well intentioned it has fallen short of what it set out to do.  Here's a bit of good news, in December 2015 Congress passed the Every Student Succeeds Act to replace NCLB. ESSA moved in the opposite direction—it seeks to pare back the federal role in K-12 education and will go in effect for the 2017-2018 school year.  Education is one area I think we have a long way to go as a nation, Katrina tells me that a study that polled high school exchange students revealed that they have less homework and more vigorous material during the day which was an observation I made when we were homeschooling that much time seems wasted during the day only to send busy work home and take time away from family and much needed leisure time for children.

Whew!  I didn't mean to go on at such length!  Another exhibit talked about Hurricane Katrina, which was not a high point of the Bush administration.  From Wikipedia: Within days of Katrina's August 29, 2005 landfall, public debate arose about the local, state and federal governments' role in the preparations for and response to the storm. Criticism was prompted largely by televised images of visibly shaken and frustrated political leaders, and of residents who remained in New Orleans without water, food or shelter, and the deaths of several citizens by thirst, exhaustion, and violence days after the storm itself had passed. The treatment of people who had evacuated to registered facilities such as the Superdome was also criticized.  Worse, apparently Bush did not mention hurricane recovery or administration involvement/shortcomings in his 2006 or 2007 State of the Union addresses.  Want to know more about how New Orleans is faring a decade after the storm, read about it in this New York Times piece.

We did enjoy the Oval Office replica and a nice employee took our picture sitting in front of the fireplace.  At the Clinton museum you were not allowed to bring your own camera into the room at all, but we did shell out the money for the behind the desk shot when we visited that one.  A nearby exhibit dealt with the family and the pets, which we have seen at each museum, and an interactive exhibit called Decision Points Theater gives the opportunity to express how YOU would act in response to major crises which we skipped.  Again, I would have liked to see more detail about Bush's actions like the bills and executive orders he signed but little was displayed in that regard.

One of the themes that keeps coming up at every presidential museum is their efforts on behalf of immigration.  This is a topic that touches me deeply and I plan a separate post on the history of immigration legislation.  We've also been keenly aware of how no matter which president or how many years it has been, certain "problems" seem to recur in our government and our society.  Do we learn from history?  I hope so.

View of Dealey Plaza not far from spot where Zapruder film was shot

Our other presidential related stop while in Dallas was at the Sixth Floor Museum across from Dealey Plaza.  Again, we paid for parking and $16 each to get in to the museum.  If you need more in depth information about the dark events in Dallas in 1963 this could be a worthwhile stop.  It was interesting seeing where the famed assassination took place and getting a feel for the space, imagining the streets filled with 250,000 citizens who came out to see their president.

The former School Book Depository building,
now the Sixth Floor Museum 

The museum is a self-guided audio tour of billboard type displays and a look at the area where Oswald was allegedly situated when he shot JFK.  For us none of the information was new and the audio tour was annoying and turned off within minutes while we wandered around scanning the boards.  The only items of interest for us were as I said the view out the window and also a miniaturized model of the plaza and where the automobiles were placed at the time of the shooting.  For me it seemed to raise more questions than it answered as it seemed the window in question was an unlikely spot considering he would have had a much better shot while the cars were coming toward him than after they had turned the corner and were moving away.  But who knows what happened?  Maybe he had a malfunction with his gun and was delayed in his shot?  

The only pieces of information relating to the investigation that were new to me was that President Kennedy had 400 death threats in the 9 months prior to his trip to Dallas and new information regarding the sound tests performed on the Dictabelt recording from a police officer's motorcycle that was part of the motorcade.  For those results follow this link.

We walked around downtown Dallas while waiting our turn to get into the museum, noting many references to Pegasus.  Apparently it was the symbol of Magnolia Oil which was later folded into Mobil Oil and has a long history in Dallas.

Unique Christmas tree in Pegasus Plaza

I'm sure we missed a lot, but you can't do it all in one day, right?  We did get to try Hypnotic Donuts in one of the local coffee shops and took a quick walk through Neiman Marcus where we were unsure whether or not to be impressed by a Dyson hair dryer.  If you're in the market for a $399 hair dryer you can also get one at Ulta!

We are missing those warm Texas days already, tomorrow we will be home, and tonight we are hiding in our hotel from the  -1F wind chill here in Indiana!