The word of the day is: Kitsch

I went to the National Arboretum today, the first stop on my Tour of Suburban D.C. Oddities. I only intended to see the columns that were removed from the east front of the U.S. Capitol when it was expanded in the 1950s, but I got sucked into the place by the awesomeness of it.

The columns are arranged on a slight rise, in the same pattern as when they were attached to the portico. These were the columns that were there when Andrew Jackson was inaugurated, and Lincoln, and Teddy Roosevelt, and his cousin Franklin, and Harry Truman and Ike. They were taken down so that government could bloat without leaving the building, and thirty short years later, they found a home here on this hill in the farthest corner of the District of Columbia.

Now they stand like melancholy ruins. And like the delapidated ruins of Athens and Rome, they evoke a sort of awe. Their clean classical lines, their ornate Corinthian capitals, their lack of further function evoke a sense of how great must have been the people who made them. Their location, so remote from the crowds of busy cities, and from even the hordes of tourists that assault more ancient ruins, give them an aura of forlornness.

They were once at the center of power, the heart of a great empire. They witnessed power; they surrounded it; they ornamented it. Now, stark and alone on this little hill, they embody it.

Across the little valley in front of their reflecting pool stands a single carved stone. From this distance, I can't tell what it is, so I walk across the valley to see. It is a capital, brought down to eye level, where I can appreciate the work of carving acanthus leaves in sandstone, up close. I can look back at the columns. From here, their isolation is even more marked. They are utterly alone and unwanted.

Well, as long as I'm here across the valley, with such a long walk to the car, I think I might as well walk along the road instead of back along the grassy path. This proves to be a mistake. There is a koi pond with water lilies in it, the most perfectly formed water lilies I've ever seen. And next to that, across from the National Herb Garden, is the National Bonsai and Penjing Museum. I don't know what Penjing is, but I know what bonsai is, so I go in for a quick look.

Wow. Wow. Oh, wow. These little tiny trees and bushes are astounding. I will not try to describe them. After an hour and a half I realize I will have to come back here with a certain genetic biologist of my acquaintance, so I tear myself away and go see the dogwood grove on the farthest edge of the arboretum. But you can see the pictures I took here.

The Dogwood Collection, according to the official brochure, sits in a "tranquil setting with lovely vistas of the Anacostia River." That's partly true. It's a tranquil setting: long alleys lined with trees that seem exhausted by the weight of blossoms; a fountain, some well-placed benches, some colourful flowers. But the lovely vistas of the Anacostia are undone by the muddiness of its water and the masses of leaves that all but hide the river from view. Being really into Views From On High, I leave disappointed.

That feeling gets worse at the next stop: Castle Good Knight. After seeing the exceptional castle created by one man in Ohio, I can hardly wait to see the creation of another in Maryland, one that is described in the literature as a "castle complex" and billed as a children's museum and "enchanted kingdom."

Can you say "kitsch"? Plywood walls painted to look like grey stones pierced with lancet windows conceal three acres or more of ticky-tack. A weird assortment of dross, from Krewe of Rex banners to bengal tigers wearing saddles, is sprinkled among shabby plywood sheds dressed up like stubby towers. A statue of faeries done in a classical style -- Disney-classical, that is -- has pride of place in the courtyard, but it can't help the aura of seediness that pervades the place. Well, I suppose your average five-year-old won't see it the same way. Fortunately. Because I thought it was just trashy.

On to the next stop: the nation's only remaining wrought-iron bridge, in Savage, one of the hundreds of indistinguishable municipalities that stretch from south of Richmond to north of Boston without significant interruption. As I drive through this endless concatenation of polities, it strikes me that this place gives sprawl a bad name. Anything that is unique, anything that has character, is eventually subsumed in the unremitting sameness of progress. Every major intersection is a cookie-cut shopping center, with all the same stores as are in the cookie-cut shopping center in front of our hotel.

So my arrival in Savage is restorative: this town is centered on a precious little historic district, featuring the bridge and a partially-renovated mill complex housing an assortment of local shops. No Hallmark Card shop, no Restoration Hardware, no Barnes and Noble here. Inside the mill-mall I find ... Curmudgeon Books. That's right: Curmudgeon Books. Imagine how touched I felt. Also a gift shop featuring some of the funniest birthday cards I've ever seen. I stock up. And perhaps the most unique mall denizen I've ever encountered: Terrapin Adventures, where you can learn to ride down a zip line or kayak on the Patuxent River out back. If I'd had someone with me, to drive me back from the hospital, I might've taken advantage of that.

My last stop is the National Cryptology Museum, an outpost of the National Security Administration, a half-hearted attempt to lighten up a little. Not a lot to take pictures of in here; it reminds me of the little museum at Stinson Field in San Antonio: a lot of old photographs of airplanes and machinery, and some old machinery. The whole thing looks like it was done by volunteers with no budget. There's a mock-up of a Vietnam-era listening post, some uniforms, some obsolete computers. The most interesting exhibits were a collection of Enigma machines from World War II, and the United States National Seal, hand carved by Young Pioneers (the Soviet version of Boy Scouts) and presented to the American Ambassador, who hung it in his office for six years, not realizing that it contained a KGB microphone. Can we really have ever been so naive?

Finding Jesus Again

I spent Wednesday night in Bloomington, Indiana, famous as the hometown of the fictional Colonel Blake on M*A*S*H. Yes, it was that exciting.

Actually it wasn't a bad drive, across Illinois and Indiana. I left Macomb, Illinois that morning, figuring to get some coffee in the next town ... and this time I didn't have to get off the highway to find an actual town. I found a Bob Evans restaurant only about an hour from my hotel, right on the highway. Had their spinach, bacon & tomato "biscuit bowl" -- the named ingredients, mixed with scrambled egg and something approximating hollandaise sauce, served in a thin curved bread bowl made of biscuit mix. Not bad, as those things go.

Since I had plenty of time, I changed my route to take in a few unanticipated counties, scooting north around Springfield and east to Champaign-Urbana, where I bought a long-sleeve University of Illinois T-shirt. It being the end of winter hereabouts, the long-sleeved shirts were on sale. Lucky me. And this one is actually warm, unlike the long-sleeve T-shirts I've bought in Texas and Louisiana. I could've gotten an orange one, but honestly, it was just a little too orange; so I went with the navy blue, with orange lettering. Not an attractive colour combination, but you can't tell these people anything.

I also wandered around Indiana a great deal more than I'd planned, and still got to Indianapolis, where I'd figured to spend the night, before 3pm.

All of Indianapolis is under construction. It's about 24 miles from one side to the other; it took me 56 minutes. Do the math, then think about the kind of mood I was in. At least it wasn't raining, but I did have the top up. Lucky that: didn't have to smell all those exhaust fumes.

So to Bloomington, where the University Motel is so proud of its rooms that their best rate was $90 a night. I opted for the budget motel on the south side, and skipped dinner. Hey, I can afford to miss a meal now and then.

Bloomington is only like four hours from the Cincinnati airport, where I had to be at 3.30 yesterday afternoon. This gave me still more time for expanding my peregrinations to include unexpected counties, including a slow drift along country roads through picturesque farm country, then along the Ohio River Scenic Byway, which, let me tell you, isn't very scenic. It's all smokestacks, convenience stores and casinos, with occasional views of the river. I'd've been much better off taking Highway 56, which goes north from the river, then rejoins it farther upstream. That highway has the signs telling trucks not to take it. I regret not having taken it myself.

I got to the airport early enough that I could go buy gas -- I didn't really need it then, but I knew from the internet that gas taxes are about 12¢ a gallon cheaper than they are in Indiana, and about 6¢ a gallon less than in Ohio, so I figured I might as well. And since I still had bird crap all over the car from Kansas City, where I parked under a tree for 3 days, I figured it was time for a car wash. So, for the first time in my life, I hit the "yes" button on the pump when it asked if I wanted a car wash. Nothing happened, so I hit "yes" again, but it turned out that the first pressing of the button had registered, and the second bought the most expensive ($6) version of the car wash.

The car wash was out of order. Some kind of electrical problem. It was probably designed by Jaguar. Went inside and got a refund, and found out there was another station with a car wash about a mile down the road. So I went over there, but you had to have a code for the car wash. So I went inside and started telling the guy that the other station's car wash was out of order. He asked me how much it was, and I told him $6. So he gave me a code for the $6 car wash.

My first thought was, Ooh, got a free car wash! Then I thought, well I'll have to go back to the other station (which I had to go by anyway, on the way back to the airport) and give the first guy his $6 back. Then I drove through the car wash and came out with bird crap all over the car. So instead of doing the honest thing and stopping off to give the guy back his $6, I thought, Well: I'm certainly glad I didn't have to pay for that! I'd've been royally p.o.'d. See Hamlet, III, 1, 132.

To the airport in the nick of time, where the wife's flight was half an hour late getting in, then to our hotel way out in the boonies north of Cincinnati, near King's Island, an amusement park like Six Flags. I can see the giant roller coaster out the window of our room. Dinner last night at the Outback Steak House next door, then early to bed. Nothing else to do.

This morning, after taking my little kumquat to her conference at the Great Wolf Lodge (next to King's Island), I came back and looked on line for Sights To See Without Going Into Cincinnati.

What I came up with were a castle, and Jesus.

The castle was started in 1929 by a guy named Harry Andrews. The blurb on RoadsideAmerica.com made him sound like a pederast ("Three facts, however, seem pretty clear: Harry built an imposing European-style castle by himself, Harry had a low opinion of the modern world, and Harry really enjoyed the company of young men."), but I think that says more about the writer than the subject. Harry used to take local boys down to the river and taught them to fish and such, and was a scoutmaster, and gave them Sunday-school lessons. I don't think that was all that unusual in the 1920s in places like rural Ohio; I think it was viewed as the duty of every adult. (And no, I'm not naive.) Harry and his group of boys formed a sort of club, which they called the Knights of the Golden Trail. Then Harry decided that knights needed a castle. So Harry did what anybody would've done: he built a castle. And this is it.

He was still building it when he died in 1981. He left it to the Knights, which operate it now as a museum dedicated to Harry's memory.  It's quite impressive, worth every penny of the $3 admission: four storeys, from dungeon to tower, plus beautiful gardens, moat, and crennelated barbicans stretching the length of the property, which I would guess to be about 6 acres along the Little Maine River. I spent about an hour going through the rooms and gardens.

After that I found Jesus. What more can I say?