Yesterday, Janice and I returned from two weeks of traveling.  We visited
Washington, Baltimore, New York and Cincinnati, among other places.

For the first part of the trip, we stayed with a friend of Janice's in
Columbia, Maryland (between Washington and Baltimore), a fully planned
community started in the early 1960's by James Rouse and nearly finished.
It has a lot in common with "The Village" which starred in the old TV
series "The Prisoner".  All signs are lettered in mixed-case Helvetica;
all services are unobtrusive; the houses are carefully designed to not
look exactly alike; the landscaping is impeccable; almost every non-major
street is a curving cul-de-sac; every street name is cutesy.  Janice's
friend says that Columbia "is not user-friendly"; since every corner
looks like every other corner, it's extremely difficult to find your way
in and out of the maze.

We went to the Holocaust museum in Washington.  I'd heard that it was
difficult to get in there because of the crowds, with long waits in line,
etc., but Janice had obtained free tickets for a specific time, and it
was no problem.  I won't try to describe the museum.

We also went to the Vietnam Veterans memorial, which Janice hadn't
seen before, and the Albert Einstein memorial nearby (the most under-
appreciated delight among Washington's tourist sites).

We also went to the National Museum of Women in the Arts, of which
Janice's friend is a member.

The next day we went to Baltimore, and visited the B&O Railroad Museum,
which includes the oldest train station in the U.S., a roundhouse with
many period locomotives, etc.

Also in Baltimore, we went to the Babe Ruth Birthplace, which is right
near the Orioles' new Camden Yards stadium.  I was frankly appalled at
the poor preservation standards of the Birthplace: in the room where
Babe Ruth was supposedly born, all the original woodwork had apparently
been removed and replaced with totally inappropriate fancy new stuff.
Maybe the originals were already gone before the museum started, but
given that this is just one of hundreds of nearly identical row houses,
you'd think they'd have been able to figure out what the old woodwork
probably looked like.

The next day was back to Washington again.  Janice went to the National
Gallery of Art, while I spent time at the Library of Congress.  We also
had seafood dinner with conservative writer Martin Morse Wooster.

Then we traveled up to New York, where we stayed with some friends of mine
in Yonkers, just north of the city.  We immediately changed our clothes
and took the subway down to the Gershwin Theater to see "Showboat". 

Among other things we did in New York: we went to the New York City Subway
Museum; we visited my great-aunt Pearl for the first time in fifteen
years; we visited the Jewish Museum; Janice attended sessions of the
American Psychological Association convention; I did research at the New
York Public Library.

We almost always took the subway.  Those of you who last used the NYC
subway around 1980 have a very outdated notion of what that is like.  In
the years since then, the subways have been dramatically improved. 
Grafitti has been practically banished.  The odor problems are gone. 
Crime is way down.  All of the cars are air-conditioned: they're
practically frigid.  The stations are clean and well cared for.  A lot of
the lovely old tilework has been cleaned and repaired; other stations have
been completely redone.

I remember when subway maps were scarce and hard to find.  Every station
was out of them: finding one with maps in stock was like finding the Holy
Grail.  No longer: every station now has plenty of maps to hand out.  Of
course, that may have something to do with the Manhattan Bridge repair
situation: repairs on the Manhattan Bridge have necessitated the part-time
shutdown or relocation of the B,D,F,Q trains, and the current maps are
two-sided.  Each side has a complete map of all the subway/el routes in
the city, but one side is labeled "Weekday Midday & Weekend Service:
Manhattan Bridge Closed", and the other side says "Rush Hour, Weekday
Evening & Late Night Service: Manhattan Bridge Open".

Driving around in Yonkers, I noticed an old hexagonal house on Yonkers
Avenue, undocumented in any of my sources; I returned later to photograph
it.

From New York, we headed west and southwest to Reading, Pennsylvania,
and then to Covington KY (across the Ohio River from Cincinnati).  We
stayed with Janice's parents, and visited Janice's grandmother, 95 years old
and ailing in a nursing home.

A 1958 sourcebook I had with me indicated that there was a hexagonal house
in Lebanon, Ohio.  I called the Lebanon city clerk and verified that it
was still standing, now in use as a bed & breakfast.  We drove out to
Lebanon, just a bit north of Cincinnati; the house turned out to be of
1850's vintage and quite large.  I took a bunch of photographs, and we had
lunch at the Golden Lamb Inn, the oldest inn in Ohio.  It was started in
1803 in a log cabin; the present brick building dates from 1815.  Ten
presidents (mostly Ohio Republicans like Garfield, McKinley, Harding) have
stayed there, plus Charles Dickens and many other colorful people.

We also saw the Isaac Wise Temple in Cincinnati, a delightful sort-of
Moorish/Gothic synagogue built in 1866.  It's directly across from the
neo-classical St. Peter In Chains Cathedral, and kitty-corner from the
Cincinnati city hall, a great Richardson Romanesque style building from
around 1890.

We got back to Ann Arbor yesterday.

60 responses total.

Sounds like a blast....I wish i could have gone on vacaction this summer
....:(

The last time I used the NYC subway was over 25 years ago.  At that time, I
made a resolution never again to ride it.  Of course you need to know I
travelled to and from school every day for four years on the subway and
experienced every unpleasant experience it had to offer.  It was not air
conditioned and my summer rides were a nightmare.  Sounds like it has vastly
improved, but I am still not tempted to indulge. My negative memories are
still too intense.

I've never been on the N.Y. subway, but I aim to go there one day!  It sounds
like you had a great time, and I'm glad you all made it back safely.

   I've been to the Golden Lamb Inn--it's a wonderful place.  I think
the last time I rode the NYC subway *was* 1980.  I'm glad to hear they
have improved.  The last one I rode on had the lights go out, but that
was OK, 'cause I was able to get a better look at the tunnels.  I remember
seeing a tunnel that went off where we were at a perpendicular angle.
So it wasn't used.  I couldn't see more than 3 feet into it, but thought
I saw old track.  I've always wished I could have seen farther into it.

  I have a token, but have never ridden. Hope to remedy that one soon.

Back in 1980, unlighted cars were common.  In all my subway riding on this
trip, I didn't see even one.

It occurs to me that maybe the Subway Museum should have showed a car that
was covered with grafitti, to show how things were back then.  They were
slathered with it, inside and out.

I should also mention that I was in New York during the summer of 1980,
and then almost immediately was in Chicago.  After riding the New York
subways, I was *astonished* at how clean Chicago's subways were.

The current controversy in NYC is whether to raise the subway fare from
$1.25 to $1.50.

   Marlene told me that the station that she was in stunk to holy heaven, and
was hotter than blazes. Trains were nice, though. I don't know whic station
it was but I can ask.
.,

She would have been in at  least two stations... ;->
\

Washington DC has really nice subways. THe stations are very clean.
The rides are very scenic. (Not to mention the fact that the government
probably subsidizes them)

Essentially every transit system is subsidized in terms of its budget: it's
almost impossible to cover all the costs from the fares collected.

On the other hand, automobile travel is also subsidized in an economic
sense, in that the externalities of driving are not borne directly by the
people deciding to drive.  More people driving means more congestion, more
wear on the roads, more air pollution, etc.

Additionally, from an economic standpoint, it is always better to have a
person work and be productive than to have the same person idle and live
on welfare.  Given the high costs of owning/operating an automobile, the
availability of alternate transportation makes it possible for a lot of
people to be employed who couldn't manage it otherwise.

Hence, every person who takes the bus or subway instead of driving or
sitting home collecting welfare checks is a benefit to the community.
The comparatively small subsidy for a transit system is a cheap price to
pay for this.

  The world's worst subways are in Philadelphia...the trains are eight
hundred million years old, rats run up and down the tracks, and they
have these REALLY rickecty street cars that run on one of the lines.
And some of Philly's subway stations have these old walking tunnels
that you go through to transfer from one line to another and I'm
convinced some people have gotten lost in them and never made it out!
Philly's a nice place but if you visit, take the bus.

View hidden response.

Unless I've forgotten, I haven't seen anything about London subways, aka The
Tube. They are easy to navigate, and are fairly clean until you get to the
platform... ick. Lots of talented performers, but also lots of homeless people
in the corners. Only saw one or two rats. Problem is, the escalators almost
never work, and it's hell to go up such a steep flight of stairs.... and
escalator stairs are steep in themselves, never mind the incline. And just
like NY, you can't unserstand a damn word over the PA system.

  Atlanta's subway system is nice.  The MARTA system there is the "official
subway of the 1996 Olympic Games", although I havent the foggiest idea why

 Stop being rodentist. Rats are just mice who went bad ;)

We also saw the Baltimore subway on this trip.  It's sort of like the
Washington DC subway, but not quite so nicely set up.

I spent quite a bit of time on the Budapest subway this fall, and it was a
really nice system.  It was quite clean, rather cheap (then again, so is just
about everything in Hungary), ran frequently, and was part of a public
transportation network that made it possible to get just about anywhere I
wanted to go pretty cheaply.  In addition the the subway, Budapest also has
rather extensive bus and tram systems.  Looking at a transit map of Budapest,
it looks almost like the road maps do in a lot of places.

Ahhhhh, travel - wonderful stuff.

Sounds like a great trip; thanks for sharing, Larry!

For prosperity, this is now item 43 in the travel conf.!   

Don't you mean "posterity", Denise?

We are all enriched when items like this one are posted for future readers.

Bruin, my brain wasn't in full function, this morning!
Posterity sounds more like what I meant!

ummmm, i'd rather consider that "prosperity" is more the focus of travel.

This response has been erased.

I dunno, popcorn, your tales do not make me want to get back on the subway
the next time I go back to NY.  I think I'll stick to my vow never again to
set foot or body on a NY subway.

  Only thing I dont like about NY subways is the panhandling...nothing
worse than being on an uptown train with a guy with no legs standing
in front of you sobbing.  I think they've cracked down a bit the last
couple of years though.

Call me a bleeding heart liberal, but I think it might be worse to be the guy
with no legs standing in front of a lot of people sobbing.

I'm sure there are many legitimate cases of need, however there are also
many cases where the initial appearance is not the true situation. I feel
great empathy for people who are homeless, without hope, and on the streets.
I am not convinced that the panhandlers I have met fit those criteria. And
some certainly make substantial money. Life is so simple. #$@%^. 

This response has been erased.

  I have a policy not to give money when solicited in a controlled
situation.  If the guy with no legs comes up to me on the sidewalk, that
is one thing, and I give my fair share to the homeless, but if I am
solicited on the subway or when I am in McD's trying to eat my Big Mac
I regard it as an intrusion on my privacy.  The sidewalks and streets
are free and thats fine but when I have paid my money to be someplace
and enjoy myself, I dont think panhandling is appropriate.

I think if I were on a park bench eating a sandwich, and a person asked me
for half, I'd see no problem with it. My city has a fierce panhandling
problem, especially downtown. But even the homeless advocacy groups advise
not giving to panhandlers, because there are Help Wanted signs all over the
place, and anyone who wants to work can work.

In general I agree with you.  However, to say that all the homeless who want
work can find jobs is a bit of an oversimplification.  Some of them have just
fallen on hard times, but others are likely unemployed and homeless due to
severe mental illnesses, and would have a lot of trouble doing just about any
kind of job.  I don't know about the homeless where you are, but in Michigan,
where John Engler likes cutting money from things like mental hospitals and
schools so that he can build more prisons to put the people who should have
been helped by the things he cut in, that seems to be a pretty large segment
of the homeless population.

And Engler is working on making it bigger.

Sorry to bust your bubbles, bubs, but wasn't it the LIBERALS, with the 
backing of the ACLU, that were responsible for "deinstitutionalization" of the
mentally ill?  And today we are reaping the rewards of their enlightened social
policy!!!

In NYC, that's precisely how it happened.  The sudden proliferation of
"bag ladies," as they were then called, and various other street people,
such as the elderly man who used to tape a photograph of himself on the
side of Grand Central Station and then kneel down and pray to it, was
the result of deinstitutionalization.  They weren't forced out of the
hospitals they'd been in.  In fact, they'd originally been held their
by force.  The ACLU and others argued, rightly in my opinion, that the
state had no right to hold these people against their wills.  Nobody
made any plans for alternate care for them, however, and so they took
to the streets.  Does anyone know what percentage of street people are
in this category, as opposed to the sane-but-homeless ones?

There is another factor, probably the dominant one, in the
"deinstitutionalization" of the mentally ill. This was the discovery of a
whole suite of drugs that alleviated the overt symptoms - from lithium for
depression, to valium for "manias" (I con't recall the clinical details).
These made the patients so close to normal, as seen in the institutional
setting, that there appeared to be no medical, much less legal reason for
holding them. Of course, as in *any* new technology, its not always
simple. For one thing, by releasing the patients, the oversight of the
drug treatment was lost in many instances. Also, drugs might alleviate the
overt symptom, but might not touch socialization and motivation, etc. The
whole scenario had nothing to do with liberals vs conservatives.
Obviously, releasing patients because their symptoms were apparently
alleviated is a liberal thing to do, while the conservatives *did not
object* as it would appear just vindictive to insist that the patients be
held when there was no apparent reason to do so. I would hope people of
political perspective would learn something from this and not try to make
it another part of the "blame game". 

Yeah. Let's hear it for the good old ACLU.  Helping mentally ill people to
stick up for their rights to leave in the streets like dogs and suing the city
of new York when it tries to get them into someplace safe & warm.

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss