Meanwhile...

Obituaries are a thing.

America is an odd culture. We avoid the topic of death like a plague yet the Internet is packed with discussions of people who read the newspapers (and Internet) obituaries everyday of their lives and why they do it. A cursory examination of Google Scholar did not turn up any studies, nor could I find any data, on people who read obituaries.

There are many citations on Google Scholar about obituaries, though...how to read them, how to write them, how and why to research them, what they tell us about the people they discuss, what they tell us about society in general.

It's interesting reading. You might take some days to study obituaries.

Why am I talking about them? 

Well, it's a lead in to my excuse for my absence from this blog for a couple of months.

First, a very close friend died. Learning can be…somber, but it's always potentially edifying. I learned that, as you get older and old friends die off, it gets easier to shrug it off. Bereavement is about loss, not pity for the deceased. After you loose enough, you get used to it and life teaches you that everything isn't necessarily about us. The world goes on.

When you know you are dying, you can either say, "I'm dying," or "I'm going to live until I die." Mike showed that it is entirely possible to do the latter with all the determination of a 20-something with nothing but life ahead of them. Another person I knew who "died well" was my father. You can learn a lot from folks like that.

A week later, I went to church and couldn't sing. The next day, my annual episode of bronchitis was in full swing. I have learned to expect it every year. Some truths are just nasty. So, for a month, I sat around hacking my brains out and wearing myself down.

A close friend and college math professor was scheduled to attend a mathematics conference in town and I had said that I would go with him. It was the week after my hacking cough had let up and I was flat worn out but I keep my word, and I really did want to go since I'm an amateur mathematician and it would give me something to blog about. I had the opportunity to go as his guest, which meant a 95% discount. On my pension, it was an offer I could not refuse.

Of course, it was mostly sitting through lectures and strolling around math art exhibits and vendors (I bought gifts for folks). There was a surprising lot about my own, not so deep interests - math education and statistics. So, at least I enjoyed further abrading my life force. And I got some close-ups of the big blue bear.

At least, between bear and horse, the more personable one is the more accessible.

Finally, I'm on the mend and I've even knocked out another terminal hike (that leaves three to go) and that will be the subject of my next blog.

I recommend not avoiding mental adventures like community lectures and conferences because you think they will be boring. It's all mindset. Things that you expect to be boring usually are.

Shake out the obituary section of a newspaper. Look at some obits online. Do they have a consistent structure? Do you know an obituary reader? If so, why do they enjoy reading obituaries? What do obituaries tell us about our attitudes toward death? What do obituaries tell us about our attitudes toward life?

--- Terminus: California Street ---

A circuit around California and Stroud Streets from 15th Street to 19th Street in Downtown Denver forms the terminus of several of the light rails  - F, H, D, and L. A hike around the circuit is short but there's a lot there. I wasn't that interested in food or shopping but there is plenty of that.

I left the train at the Convention Center/Theater District Station and walked around to the Convention Center entrance. I've shown the big blue Bear ("I See What You Mean") in a past blog. Here he is looking into the Convention Center lobby.

                                                                  [Big Blue Bear]

The Convention Center is near the south end of 16th Street Mall, the southern end of old Denver, and the Civic Center Park. Denver is really a fairly small city. I would not attempt a hike across downtown Atlanta in a day but it would be easy  to start at the Convention Center, walk down 16th Street Mall and see the capital and other government buildings at Civic Center Park, return to California Street to complete the circuit around Stout back to 16th Street, and then take the 16th Street Mall Flyer bus to Union Center, look round there and Commons Park, then walk back down to the Conference Center in a day. For those that like city life, that would be a good day trip.

                                                     [Denver from the Conference Center]

The Conference Center/Theater District complex is cyclopean. The Conference Center itself is modernist sculpture of glass and steel. Characteristic of Denver, the interior is adorned with art.

                                                      [Conference Center and wall art]

There was a garden show opening in a couple of hours, but I didn't want to wait around so I started up California Street.

                                                    [California Street and the light rail]

The Colorado Information Center is just down the street on the right (north side of the street). They have a gift shop where you can buy, among other things, replicas of the blue bear (not quite as big as the original) for less than $30 - two sizes, even. The staff is friendly and informative.

The buildings along the circuit are a mixture of old and new. The old tends toward ornate.

                                       [Rose colored building with decorative pilasters and plaques]

Older buildings in Denver often affect a Greek Classical style. If a wall doesn't need columns, columns are suggested anyway with the use of ornate pilasters.

An interesting assemblage of buildings, the Holy Ghost Catholic Church literally rests under a cantilever projection of a skyscraper. Beautiful as a combination of new glass and old stone, there is also a humor here. I say "old" but the church building was dedicated in 1924 with less than a third of is original plan completed. The present building displays the largest collection of colocreme travertine in the United States, over 300 tons of decorative stone.

                                                     [Holy Ghost Catholic Church]

The Federal Custom House at California and 19th Street has an impressive portal. There's a lot of brass in Denver.

                                                          [Federal Custom House]

This is where I turned down 19th Street to follow the light rail over to Stout Street. At 19th and Stout is a collection of buildings, old and new, that house the Federal 10th Circuit Court. The new building to the east is an ornamented block of concrete.

                                              [New Byron White United States Courthouse]

These buildings were names for Byron Raymond White (1917 - 2002) the first Coloradan to serve on the United States Supreme Court.

Across 19th Street is the old building, a classical style building of the same Yule marble that adorns the state Capitol, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Consistent with Denver's love of monumental architecture, the front of the courthouse has a porch with 16 (count 'em) columns. The side walls don't need columns, so they have pilasters to be consistent.

The inside is similarly spectacular with barrel vault ceilings in the lobby and Federal District Courtroom and richly paneled ceilings in other rooms. Being a federal courthouse photography isn't allowed, but you can visit and be wowed. They also have an informative brochure in the lobby.

                                               [Old Byron White United States Courthouse]

The west side of the courthouse is adorned by these two bighorn sheep. The sheep were the work of Denver sculptor, Gladys Caldwell Fisher. Their official names are "Rocky Mountain Sheep" and "White Ram".

                                                                  [Courthouse sheep]

Across 18th Street from the Byron White Courthouse is the Ghost Building. You can look at the outside but you can't go in - it's very posted.

                                                                [Ghost Building]

It was named after Allen M. Ghost, who was a real estate tycoon. The 1700 stone blocks were moved to the current location in 1985.

Almost back at the Convention Center, I spied another purple building, this one the La Boheme Gentlemans' Cabaret. Again featuring ornate pilasters, it is, as they say, a strip club. I see on the Internet that they consistently get good reviews.

                                                                  [La Boheme]

After the train ride back to University Station, I walked across campus to home, stopping along the way to take a few pictures of the construction being done on the west side of the Driscoll Building. This is scheduled to be finished next fall.

                                                             [Driscoll construction]

Some cities favor a monumental style, others like small town American aesthetic. How would you describe downtown in your city? Have many of the buildings been relocated? A lot of Selma, Alabama, where I used to live, was originally in Cahaba, Alabama but was moved upriver because of flooding.

--- Pride of Place: Denver's History of Public Art ---

It's interesting to see how much of the forces that drove New Haven's public art movement (described in Melissa Sand's section of Pride of Place: New Haven Material and Visual Culture - Discovering New Haven's History of Public Art. http://teachersinstitute.yale.edu/curriculum/units/2008/3 accessed 10/15/2018)  also drove Denver's. Of course, from the first (which is much more recent than New Haven's "first", Denver worked hard for recognition as a cultural center, but the early steps were rather amateurish.

What really jump started the public arts movement (in the whole United States) was the New Deal Public Works of Art Project (PWAP) of the 1930s. This brought such works as the two Gladys Caldwell Fisher sculptures at the Byron White courthouse, Rocky Mountain Sheep and White Ram, and the Hugh Weller East High School murals.

The Federal Art Project of the 30s and 40s provided further impetus that continues to the current day. Much of the art in Denver was funded through these government programs. Denver's Public Art Program was established in 1988. It directs that one percent of any capital improvement project costing over one million dollars must be set aside for public art to be included in these projects.

Public art intersects intensively with both culture, politics, and history. I attended a presentation on the history of southwestern Denver and a topic that was brought up was the survival of neon sign art from the 50s.

                                                            [Voorhies memorial]

The Voorhies Memorial was placed in the northern section of Denver's Civic Center Park in 1919. Funded by John Voorhies, it was to be a memorial gateway. The ensemble includes the Greek Theater and Colonnade of Civic Benefactors. Water features and ancient-style murals break the powerful architecture. The colonnade was designed by William E. Fisher and Arthur A. Fisher, and the Greek Theater was designed by Willis A. Marean and Albert J. Norton. These architects were active in many of the early architectural projects in Denver including the Cheesman Park Pavilion, the Governor's Mansion, and the Brown Palace Hotel.

The memorial would fit quite well in the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The sheer size of solidity exudes pomp and power.

It is interesting that two different architectural firms came together to create such a unity of form, a testament to early Denver's vision of a cultural center for the West. I keep saying "early Denver" but keep in mind that Denver itself is a recent city when compared to the centuries older cities of the east and much more ancient cities of the rest of the world.

The creation captures a classical style while addressing local topics, such as the murals, "The Trapper" and "The Prospector" in the Greek Theater, modernistic works that, nevertheless, fit well into the feeling of ancient splendor. They do point to the idea that the triumphant sentiment reflects the conquest of nature - the West - instead of a conquest of nations, a sentiment that would have been appreciated at the turn of the century at the beginning of World War I (1914).

The animal heads in the photographs are a recent exhibition based on the Chinese Zodiac.

                                                                   [Mural - Alameda]

This mural, painted by Yulia Avgustinovich, is at the intersection of Santa F Drive and West Alameda Avenue. Called "Viva Colorado", it incorporates characteristically Coloradan elements including the state animal (bighorn sheep), bird (lark bunting), flower (columbine), cactus (claret cup) and insect (Colorado hairstreak butterfly), mountains, and a pioneer wagon. There is also a fish that I take to be a green cutthroat trout ( the Colorado state fish) and a blanket in Native American pattern. And above it all the trademark Colorado sun (I swear it's a different sun that what I was used to back east.)

There is a detailed description of the mural on the artist's website.

http://yulia-art.com/project/denver-mural-viva-colorado

The pale pastels give the mural a dreamlike quality and I can't help thinking about the writings of Carlos Castenada when I see that spooky looking, blue eyed bighorn. Of course, that might just be me - I've had a lot of spooky in my life. Certainly an artwork will draw drastically different associations from different people.

Obviously, this mural is blatantly about Colorado. One motivation the artist mentions in creating the work was to beautify a previously ugly wall.

The pioneers portrayed are not the usual "Old West" stock. One is, maybe, Spanish, playing a guitar, and the other strikes me as, perhaps German, blowing a horn. The small dog seems rather, unimpressed. The horse practically gambols. It all has an antique feel to it but there are modern cityscapes here also. Colorado - nature, history, culture - seems compressed into one here. The pioneers could be modern city dwellers.Anachronism can be used in artworks to tie the past with the present. Unlike (what seems to me) the electric, "edgy" (despite the picnickers) mural at Alameda station, this mural is endowed with an almost mystical peacefulness.

Most of these murals seem to be unaffected by political motives of patrons, and if Denver commissioned them and said, "paint what you want." In this busy intersection at Santa Fe, and Alameda, and Interstate 25, I must believe that the painter has attempted to give busy people a small does of peace.

                                                [Historical sculpture - Coming Home]

This grouping by Susan Grant Raymond consists of two draft horses lead by a man, with a child riding one of the horses and a colt trailing behind the team. The sculpture is visible from South Santa Fe Boulevard and South Prince Street as well as the Platte River Trail in Littleton. It represents a farmer and his son headed home at the end of a work day with their horses.

The bronze statues were created in 1987.

I sense the peace of the prairie in the fatigue of a days work. People like this settled the Platte River Valley. Southwestern Denver was farmlands until well into the 20th century.

The Littleton Fine Art Committee commissioned the piece from the artist who grew up in Littleton to add to the considerable collection begun in 1964.

                                                       [Modern artwork - big blue bear]

The big blue bear at the Denver Convention Center is the creation of Lawrence Argent, an associate professor of art and, later, professor emeritus at the University of Denver until his death in 2017. The actual name of the project is "I See What You Mean'. It is 40 feet tall and weighs around 10,000 pounds.

It is composed of fiberglass and, if you look closely, you can see that it's not furry. It is more...polyhedral. The blue color was an accident. Argent had originally intended to use the earth colors commonly seen around Denver but, due to an error in the copying process, the planning layout came out blue. Argent liked it, so blue it remained.

The bear is quite intentionally playful and funny, meant to get visitors into a lighthearted frame of mind.

The statue was installed in 2005 and has been well maintained. To emphasize the humorous aspect, there is a big coil that is sometimes brought out and placed under the bear between his feet. I guess if a bathroom tissue can make an ad campaign out of that old saw, Denver can, too. There has also been a ball and chain attached to the bear's leg.

The piece was inspired by a newspaper article that showed a bear looking into the house of a Colorado resident. Absolutely appropriate because there are bear statues all over Denver, the bear looks right at home.

It was  actually constructed in California before being shipped to Colorado, the project costing $424,400. It is a part of the Denver Office of Cultural Affairs Public Art Program. Reproduced in various sizes and photographed around the world, this is one of the most beloved art pieces to knock on Denver's windows.

                                                     [Stained glass at Evans Chapel]

Evans Memorial Chapel was completed in 1878 in downtown Denver by Governor John Evans, also founder of the University of Denver. It was built in memory of his daughter, Josephine, who had died of tuberculosis a decade earlier. In 1960, the building was moved to it's current position on the campus of the University of Denver.

It stands on the west side of the Harper Humanities water gardens. One of the reflecting ponds is at it's east wall. The High Victorian Gothic chapel is built of rough hewn stone and displays a collection of stained glass windows.

The large stained glass window in the eastern window depicts a scene from Ruth that personifies grief. The small inset at the bottom shows Naomi followed by her daughters-in-law after proclaiming, "call me bitterness".

The National Register of Historic Places Inventory Nomination Form for Evans Chapel is accessible here:

https://npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/GetAsset/NRHP/74000567_text

and provides more historic information about the chapel.

[Architecture - Buchtel Memorial Tower, University of Denver]

The Buchtel Tower was built in 1917 as part of the Memorial Chapel Building that burned down in 1982. It was dedicated to the memory of alumni who died during World War I. It was named after Henry Buchtel, who was the university's chancellor from 1900 to 1924.

The space around the tower - an amphitheater and garden with stone features and metal lattices - is the Holocaust Memorial Social Action Site dedicated to the spirit of inclusion and respect.

Although the whole ensemble is located on busy Evans Avenue, it has a feeling of quietness and solemnity. The stone and metal projects a sense of age and strength, perhaps of commitment in the face of adversity and social resistance.

 In 2015, the tower was rededicated to honor current military veterans in the DU student body.

Holocaust is a part of the human psyche. Any of us could be victim or perpetrator. I doubt if we can ever rid ourselves of the hatred of that which is different from us, but the memorial underscores the need to always be vigilant. Historically humanity is a vicious and hateful creature, but humans are also rational animals capable of choosing different directions. We can be better.

You have artworks in your area that are relevant to the spirit of your community (I know you do!). What are they? Can you interpret them in the light of the history of your community and your current world? Do they engender any feelings or emotions in you?

Look up the history of a local artwork. Does anything surprise you about it? Did the creator's intent differ from your interpretations? Has the message of the artwork changed over time?