Category Archives: History

Culture, History, Ireland, Lodging, Strange

Thank God We’re Surrounded by Water

February 17, 2015 Davida Breier 3 Comments

Davida and I first crossed paths with Bram Stoker in January 2000, on the moors of North Yorkshire. With daylight bleeding out and many miles till Edinburgh, we arbitrarily decided to seek lodging in a brooding little waterfront town on the North Sea.

It was by chance, for us, that Whitby bears the literary distinction of being the point at which Stoker deposited his greatest creation, Count Dracula, on Albion shores. Although I had read Dracula, it had been many years since, and I had no recollection of the town or its role in the novel. However, this connection, we soon learned, has made Whitby, with its lurid tourist draws and ruined cliff-top abbey overlooking the sea, the Coney Island of goth culture that it is today.

We still travel this way – every January, often spending the night wherever the day has taken us. Ireland in the off-season, we figured, would be no exception. In fact, when planning our January 2015 road trip of the Emerald Isle, we had booked lodging for only one of our seven nights – the first, not far from Dublin Airport.

11015161_10204723941292919_2144134601_n — Clontarf Castle

Online, Clontarf Castle had appeared a bit more upscale than our usual digs, but we figured some comfortable sprawling room might be in order following a full day and night of travel; plus, our son would enjoy the prospect of spending his first night abroad in a castle.

Now an affluent suburb on the north side of Dublin, Clontarf was, a thousand years ago, the site of an epic battle that in the annals of Irish history commands a hallowed status comparable to that of, say, Gettysburg for Americans. It was here, in 1014, that Irish Ard Ri (or high king) Brian Boru defeated a joint force of Viking marauders and contentious Irish factions from the kingdoms of Dublin and Leinster. Nearly every commander on all sides , including Brian, died that April 23 – Good Friday – but the bloody Battle of Clontarf effectively ended 200 years of Viking raids in Ireland. Unfortunately, with Brian’s death, it also spelled the end of the fragile alliance between various Irish clans that he had spent a lifetime crafting, setting the stage for socio-political unrest that would pave the way for invading Normans in 1169.

In the 1960s, songwriter Dominic Behan (brother of author and playwright Brendan Behan) poetically summarized the Battle of Clontarf in his oft-covered tune, “The Sea Around Us”:

The Danes came to Ireland with nothin’ to do
But dream of the plundered old Irish they slew
“Yeh will in your Vikings,” says Brian Boru
As he pushed them back into the ocean

Those combatants would recognize nothing of Clontarf today…save, perhaps, for nearby Dublin Bay. However, the extant Clontarf Castle, which dates (only) to the 19^th century, might be a familiar sight for the area’s most renowned native son – one Abraham Stoker, born here in 1847, at the height of the Great Famine. Fifty years later, Stoker would turn loose upon the world one of the most enduring icons of gothic horror with the publication of his magnum opus, Dracula.

Bram Stoker's childhood home — Bram Stoker’s childhood home

While I knew Bram Stoker was Irish by birth, I could not have told you his particular place of origin – that was, until Clontarf, where, to our mutual astonishment, we once again found ourselves in his presence. Fifteen years and who-know-how-many-thousands-of-miles had found us on the very grounds of the ruined church in which he had been baptized, and but a short walk from his birthplace. Indeed, it was enough to render the most rational mind superstitious.

But that could be said for much of Ireland – and this was only the beginning…

History, Ireland

So Goes the Story

February 14, 2015 Davida Breier 1 Comment

With a small fortune of highly refined poison coursing through my veins, I listened to Davida promise that one day, once I was better, she would take me to Ireland, fulfilling my lifelong dream. The year was 2007, and I was in the midst of hard-hitting chemotherapy for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. We had just celebrated our son’s first birthday.

It goes without saying, thankfully, that I lived to tell the tale – and, thanks to Davida’s perseverance, see the land of my forebears.

I’m more Irish than anything. While my mother’s family is an amalgam of English and German ancestry, my father’s side is Irish through and through. My paternal grandfather’s branch of the family tree stems from late-18^th century Irish revolutionary Napper Tandy. Also a sympathizer of the French Revolution, the Dublin Protestant aligned himself with Napoleon Bonaparte, who at the turn of the 19^th Century was the best bet running for anyone with a British bone to pick.

Though less well known today than contemporaries like Wolfe Tone, old Napper did achieve a certain level of immortality by way of “The Wearing of the Green”, a traditional folksong that recalls the Irish Rebellion of 1798:

I met with Napper Tandy and he took me by the hand
And he said, “How’s poor old Ireland, and how does she stand?”
“She’s the most distressful country that ever yet was seen
For they’re hanging men and women for the wearing of the green.”

I do not yet know at what point the New World Tandy contingent crossed the pond. But I do know that four generations later, my father’s maternal grandfather, another Dubliner by the name of Daniel Desmond, stood to inherit his family’s farm – an enterprise in which, so the story goes, young Daniel wanted no part. And so it was that he, like so many Irish throughout the century following the Great Famine, cast his sights westward, toward “The Shores of Americay”.

The Tammany-run New York of the late-1800s was rife with opportunity for an enterprising young Irishman just off the boat. Or so my old man – born a decade after Daniel’s death – believes, as within just a few years, his grandfather went from poor immigrant kid to owner of a saloon in the Wall Street District.

Or so goes the story. Which is something I’ve always loved about the Irish: their deep-seated oral tradition, the lyrical tales whose fire-lit origins are as vague and elusive as the ubiquitous ruins that pepper the Hibernian landscape. And yet to this day, like those moss-covered monoliths, they persist – integral yarns in the cultural fabric. They live on in the artistry of the modern seanchaithe – authors and actors, musicians and playwrights – as well as in the lives of everyday women and men.

Fortunately, my own “Troubles” came and went. I was healthy once again – more so, in fact, than I’d been for many years leading up to the cancer – and Davida, hell-bent on making good on her promise, continued to sock money away for our epic journey-in-waiting. The only thing holding us back was the age of our son; he had to be both old enough to appreciate such an experience and sufficiently strong to withstand our at-times frenetic pace…

In January 2015, on the eve of his ninth birthday, that time, we felt, was finally upon us.

Books & Writers, Culture, History, Maryland

Bookish History in Baltimore

October 28, 2014 Davida Breier 1 Comment

Geo-Poe

Tomorrow night, Next Edit Travel’s editors will be reading their Edgar Allan Poe-inspired stories as part of Geo-Poe, a “literary geo-caching adventure.” Fourteen well-known local authors will read at Westminster Hall, a spot that has been called the spookiest place in Baltimore, and the site of Poe’s grave.

It is a free event as part of Free Fall Baltimore and in partnership with Poe Baltimore, you just need to register.

Where: Westminster Hall, 519 W. Fayette Street, Baltimore, MD 21201
When: Wednesday, October 29, 7:00 p.m.
Website: http://citylitproject.org/index.cfm?page=news&newsid=150

If you are in the city to visit Poe’s grave and other literary landmarks, there are many additional bookish spots worthy of your attention. Here are a few:

Kelmscott Books

Baltimore’s largest antiquarian bookseller is located at 34 W. 25^th Street (near Charles and 25^th Streets) on what was once “Bookstore Row.” The name of the store is a nod to William Morris and it specializes in Arts and Crafts-related books, including books about books. With 30,000 books in inventory – from the 1600s to present – the shop offers many temptations for the bibliophile. I found an affordable signed mystery just last week. The store also has genuine bookstore cats who provide security and greet customers.

Hours: Monday-Friday, 10:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m., Saturday by appointment only.
Website: http://www.kelmscottbookshop.com/

The Enoch Pratt Free Library

The Enoch Pratt Free Library began serving the citizens of Baltimore in 1886, making it one of the oldest free public library systems in the U.S. The Central Library, located at 400 Cathedral Street (near Cathedral and Mulberry Streets), is also Maryland’s State Library Resource Center. It is a beautiful building with an open floor plan in the entryway that extends to galleries on the second floor. They offer patrons a children’s room, exhibits (Maurice Sendak is up now), classes for kids and adults, author events, and special collections. The library also hosts the annual City Lit Festival in April. Next time you are in there, explore the building.

Hours: Monday-Friday 10:00 a.m.-7:00 p.m., Saturday 10:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m., Sun. 10:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m. (October-May)
Website: http://www.prattlibrary.org/

The Peabody Library

The Peabody Library is near the Washington Monument in Mount Vernon (17 East Mount Vernon Place). Started in 1860, a few decades before the Enoch Pratt Library, the Peabody’s collection of more than 300,000 books is mostly from the 18^th and 19^th century with a focus on the humanities, as well as maps. Much of their collection is online, including the library’s printed catalog, Catalog of the Library of the Peabody Institute, from 1883 and 1896. If you like books, this is an incredibly beautiful space.

Hours: Tuesday -Thursday: 9 a.m.-5 p.m., Friday: 9 a.m.-3 p.m.
Website: http://guides.library.jhu.edu/content.php?pid=205178&sid=1712833

History, Indiana, Strange

Indiana Medical History Museum

October 5, 2014 Davida Breier Leave a comment

“So…how long will you be here for?” the cab-driver asked in his heavy African patois. With our conference over, the three of us – Marilyn, Kat, and myself – had but a few hours left to explore Indianapolis before heading out for our respective home states; I nearly answered as much, until I saw the cabbie warily assessing a few distressed homes and unkempt yards surrounding us.

Indiana Medical History Museum, Indianapolis, IN

“An hour – maybe two,” I said, recognizing the seemingly questionable sense of three out-of-towners dodging the well-attended confines of their downtown hotel for a destination three-and-a-half miles west, in a neighborhood that grew rougher-looking by the block.

“Ah, good,” the cabbie said, exhaling his concern. “This neighborhood…might not find a cab back so easy.”

The four of us stared incredulously at the large, empty field surrounded by wire fence when his GPS announced our arrival about a half-mile later. It was Marilyn who finally noticed the non-descript sign that stood watch at the entrance to a long, flat driveway: INDIANA MEDICAL HISTORY MUSEUM.

“This is it,” said Kat, pointing down the lane.

The driver headed slowly through the open gate, coming to a stop a few hundred yards later in front of the Old Pathology Building, which houses the museum. The driver handed Marilyn a business card.

“You call this number when you are ready for pick-up,” he said. “They will send a driver for you.”

We stood before the brick Victorian as the cab pulled off. Built in 1895, the structure is one of the few remaining vestiges of the once-sprawling Central State Hospital, a self-contained psychiatric institution whose various incarnations operated on the site from the mid-19^th century until its complete closure in 1994. Today, the Indiana Medical History Museum, housed in what was once called the Pathological Department Building, chronicles the earliest days of modern psychiatry and medicine.

Inside, we paid our admission and were directed to wait in the nearby anatomical museum for the next scheduled tour. Guided tours, which begin on the hour, are mandatory, and for good reason, to which the museum’s fragile artifacts and sometimes constrained presentation ultimately attest.

With the arrival of a few more paying customers, a very knowledgeable docent named John led us on an informative tour of the museum’s key features, including its teaching amphitheater, clinical laboratories, photography lab, library, autopsy room, medicinal garden, and a small brick outbuilding known as the “Dead House”, where cadavers were once stored for extended periods of time.

Indiana Medical History Museum, Dead House

One of the most remarkable aspects of the Indiana Medical History Museum lies in the immediacy of its displays, which often suggest a phantom staff of doctors, nurses, and administrators who were there one day and gone the next, leaving everything in its place. Photography is permitted throughout the building save for one upstairs room, which still houses old patient records. Ancient textbooks bearing titles like Sexual Truths and Journal of Insanity abound in nearly every room.

However, despite its collections of autopsy equipment and preserved biological specimens, the Indiana State Medical Museum’s presentation avoids ghoulish overtones, focusing instead on pioneering efforts to scientifically identify and treat various forms of mental illness. It will appeal to fans of places like the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia and Scotland’s Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh (both stories for another time), and is well worth a jaunt for anyone living or staying in the Indianapolis vicinity. But those without their own transportation be warned: plan your return trip in advance.

INDIANA MEDICAL HISTORY MUSEUM
3045 West Vermont Street, Indianapolis, IN 46222
(317) 635-7329
Website: http://imhm.org/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/imhmuseum
Hours: Thursday – Saturday, 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. (last tour starts at 3:00 p.m.)
Cost: $10 (seniors $9; students $5, with valid ID)

History, Strange, Washington

Seattle Underground Tour

August 1, 2014 Davida Breier 3 Comments

Prior to traveling to Seattle, I did some research to make the most of my non-work free time. I read out about an underground tour near Pioneer Square. The website made it sound lurid and sensationalist. I love lurid and sensationalist! Instead, I found myself learning about Seattle’s early history in a way that harkened back to one of my history professors. Wait, wait, hear me out. In college I had this great history professor who knew the best way to get us to learn was to make us laugh. I still remember the lecture about early explorers starving while crossing the Pacific. In fact that might be the only lecture I remember from college, because the lecture included the crucial question, “Why didn’t the fuckers fish?” (that verbatim question was also on the final). He taught fact and context deftly slipped into the stories and jokes and so does Bill Speidel’s Underground Tour.

The tour starts with a 10-15 minute introduction inside Doc Maynard’s Public House. Bill Speidel saw the area around Pioneer Square in decline and historic buildings being razed for parking lots and did something about it. His first tours not only educated people about the area and the richness of history and culture, but they also gave him access to a public who would help him preserve the area. He did indeed succeed in having the area named a historic district.

Chris was the tour guide for my group and he was fantastic. He took us in and out of buildings and the accessible sections of underground, telling the fascinating story of Seattle’s founding, the later fire, and the rebuilding of the city that led to the “underground.” Did you know that the term “skid row” refers to this section in Seattle? Logs were cut down on the hill and send sliding (skidding) down the steep grade to the waterfront. And as with all waterfronts, one finds the carnal triumvirate of booze, gambling, and whores. Hence, Skid Row’s awe-inspiring reputation now extends to cities without trees or hills and a hair metal band.

Bill Speidel’s Underground Tour - Chris leading the tour — Bill Speidel’s Underground Tour – Chris leading the tour

The tour starts in the shadow of Smith Tower, once the tallest building in Seattle. While that was interesting, what made my nerd-heart sing was learning that it was built by the man who founded the Smith-Premier Typewriter Company, which became the Smith-Corona Typewriter Company. I should have toured Smith Tower, but since I didn’t someone else should and tell me about it.

From there, we descended down just a flight of stairs to what was once the street level in Seattle. Seattle was founded at low tide, which was even more problematic than one might expect. Exploding toilets anyone? In 1889, a fire leveled 25 square blocks and gave Seattle the opportunity to rebuild. The city decided to re-grade the streets and build them up above the tidal flats, but the businesses in the area couldn’t wait for the city, so they went ahead and rebuilt. Once the streets were finished, the first floors were now basically underground.

Bill Speidel’s Underground Tour - Old skylights illuminating the underground — Bill Speidel’s Underground Tour – Old skylights illuminating the underground

After three subterranean spots, we wrapped up with a surprisingly respectful history lesson about a brothel owner, Madam Lou, who helped build the city. Not only that, she left her estate to the school system.

There is so much I am leaving out, so if you are in the area and have 75 minutes to learn while being entertained, you really should take the tour.

Bill Spiedel’s Underground Tour
Address: 608 First Ave., Seattle, WA 98104
Phone: (206) 682-4646

Hours:
April – September: Daily, 9 am-7 pm
June – August: Daily on the hour 9am-7pm and these additional ½ hour times – 11:30am, 12:30pm, 1:30pm, 2:30pm, 3:30pm
October – March: Daily, 11 am-6 pm

Admission: $18 Adult (18-59 yrs), $15 Senior (60+ yrs), $15 Student (13-17 yrs or with valid college ID), $9 Child (7 –12 yrs)
Website: http://www.undergroundtour.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Bill-Speidels-Underground-Tour/143327805707973

Culture, History, Nautical, Washington

Lake Union and the Center for Wooden Boats

July 27, 2014 Davida Breier 1 Comment

The Center for Wooden Boats, Seattle, WA

My hotel was near Lake Union and the path near the lake was perfect for early morning walks. I also explored the Center for Wooden Boats which is located on the lake. I would have gone to the Museum of History and Industry, but ran out of time.

The Center for Wooden Boats is like a museum for boats, but they also believe in teaching through direct experience which I think is pretty awesome. They offer boat rentals – sailboat, canoe, rowboats, and pedal boats – by the hour. If I lived in the area I would love to take woodworking, sailing, and boat making classes. They also offer free boat rides on Sundays. Viewing the boats along the docks at Lake Union was a perfect rainy morning excursion.

Boathouse, The Center for Wooden Boats, Seattle, WA

Culture, Food & Drink, History, Louisiana

Napoleon House

July 8, 2014 Davida Breier Leave a comment

Following their final defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte on the plains of Waterloo, Belgium, in 1815, the British sent the former French Emperor into permanent exile on the South Atlantic island of St. Helena. But even a remotely imprisoned Napoleon remained the best bet going for many with a bone to pick with the Brits (and there were many).

Among these was one Nicholas Girod, a former New Orleans mayor whose cooperation with Andrew Jackson during the War of 1812 had as much to do with his hatred of the British as any pro-American sentiment. In 1821, Girod went so far as to offer his house at 500 Chartres Street in the city’s French Quarter as a residence for Napoleon pending the success of an alleged plot to break the exiled emperor off the rock and bring him back to New Orleans. However, Bonaparte died before any such effort could take place.

But his would-be association with the house at the corner of Chartres and St. Louis Streets lived on; nearly a century later, in 1914, the Impastato family opened the Napoleon House Bar and Café in Girod’s former home. Today, Napoleon House remains a throwback to a twice-bygone era, where the white bust of the former French ruler that stands behind the bar holds court over the locals and tourists alike who are drawn to its decayed old-world ambiance.

The café serves Euro-Creole-inspired cuisine such as muffuletta, boudin, and a variety of salads. But the real draw, for me, is the bar’s house drink, the Pimm’s Cup. The concoction’s base ingredient is a gin-based, herb-infused liqueur that can be mixed with anything from lemonade and club soda to ginger ale or champagne, and typically served in a Collins glass garnished with a cucumber slice. It’s a most refreshing libation in the paint-warping heat and humidity of a New Orleans summer; to be sure, meted out, one might drink it all night long to maintain a pleasant buzz without ever feeling any adverse effect.

If you’ve never had a Pimm’s Cup, Napoleon House is a great place to acquaint yourself. Indeed, over the years, it has become ritual for me, upon arriving in New Orleans, to drop my bags wherever I may be staying and head straight for Napoleon House to plot my next move over a Pimm’s (or three) within the peeling walls that once might have housed the man who first sold the city to America.

Napoleon House Bar and Café
Address: 500 Chartres Street, New Orleans, LA 70130
Phone: (504) 524-9752
Email: info@napoleonhouse.com
Website: http://napoleonhouse.com/

Hours: Monday: 11:00 a.m. – 5:30 p.m.
Tuesday – Thursday: 11:00 a.m. – 10:00 p.m.
Friday – Saturday: 11:00 a.m. – 11:00 p.m.
Sunday: Closed
Bar Hours: Bar open till.

	Davida Breier on U-Turn
	Davida Breier on U-Turn
	Marianne Bohr on U-Turn
	Florrie Cooper on U-Turn
	Ken on Serving the Woods

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