Virginia Way

2024 is almost over. On to my last post of this calendar year and then on to 2025. Not that I'm wishing away my life or anything...

I know I said this earlier this month when I wrote about finding art in the New York City subway but I have to say (again) that I don't want another travel year like 2024 any time soon. Taking just two week-or-more trips with a lot of small business trips and a (very) few weekend getaways just ain't going to cut it from a travel perspective for me. Too much time on the road for too little sustained really-being-on-vacation time. Never again. 2025 will be much different, I'm sure. Particularly because we have three one week trips already booked and are working on a fourth.

One of the effects of so much work travel punctuated by so few real getaways this year was me creating little pockets of down time and exploration when I was really doing something different in an effort to replace lost real travel. In some cases, those eventually added up to real connected experiences. On the road for work, that meant finding interesting restaurants or exploring New York's nighttime attractions or ultimately venturing underground for a world-class art viewing experience one or two pieces at a time. When I was at home, that meant heading out to a series of spots around Northern Virginia or maybe as far south as Richmond to go indulge my new favorite at-home hobby of birdwatching.

Now, before 2020, I never would have thought of (1) considering anywhere I could day trip to as an honest to God vacation (and therefore worthy of this blog) and (2) exploring birdwatching beyond traveling halfway around the world. I know, that last one sounded strange. This year, those two things formed an important part of my travel narrative and one thing allowed that to happen: COVID-19.

Red-shouldered hawk, Three Lakes Park, Richmond. November 2024.

That's right: the global COVID pandemic that hit in 2020 and lasted realistically and dangerously at least until late 2021 changed my attitude both towards local travel and local birdwatching. 

On the travel side of things, it got me looking more closer at home for places to explore where I could realistically drive pretty easily for a few days or a whole week. The fact that I couldn't very safely get on a plane within the United States or get on a plane at all and come back from overseas travel without a negative COVID test (if I could even enter another country at all) forced me to look at the thing in my driveway or garage that usually was only used on travel to get me to the airport. 

That year, I made all sorts of local travel plans and took a couple of them, including a trip to Vermont in August of 2020 followed up by long weekends to Bethlehem, PA and Richmond, VA in the few months after that. Bethlehem? Richmond? Are you kidding me? I traded Costa Rica, Uganda, the Napa Valley and New Mexico in 2020 for suburban Philly and the former capital of the Confederacy? Are you kidding me? For real?

Yes. For real.

But you know what? It worked. It changed my attitude about value in places more locally. It removed my snobbery around having to get on a plane or a train to take a "real" vacation or getaway. There is a ton to do that's interesting without having to travel thousands of miles. Did it make me prefer southeastern Pennsylvania to sub-Saharan Africa? Not at all. But it's a heck of a lot easier to get to Bethlehem than Johannesburg. Places within driving distance can provide meaningful travel experiences. Shocker!!

Pileated woodpecker (with chick), Huntley Meadows Park, Alexandria. June 2024.

So let's talk how COVID changed how I look at birds, shall we? I wrote earlier that before 2020, we'd happily go birdwatching in just about any place that we could go on a plane...but...not here at home. Why is that? Well, honestly, because it was pretty easy to see birds that are different and usually way, way more exotic while out of town than we could see at home. Parrots in New Zealand? We are in! Bee-eaters and fish eagles in Africa? Oh yes!! But birds at home...meh! What's interesting about that?

In early 2020, I had never worked a full day at home in my life. In March that year I started doing it full time. And in between things like conference calls and checking fee proposals and following up on whatever I had asked people to do, I looked out the window occasionally. Not to deliberately see birds, because I had even thought about it, I figured there would be some sparrows, starlings, crows, robins and the occasional cardinal and that would be it. Ho-hum! But when I looked out, I did see birds. And they weren't all boring. What was that little brown bird making all that noise? Why does that sparrow-looking bird have a red head? And is that a woodpecker? And a different kind of woodpecker? All this in our back yard?

I didn't really need to go to the other side of the world to see some birds that were interesting. We have some right here at home. I started noticing.

White-breasted nuthatch, Fort C.F. Smith Park, Arlington. October 2024.

So how did we put all that change in attitude into action? Well, this year, it got us enjoying day trips or quick overnight or weekend trips to various parks within Virginia to build a continuous experience over pretty much every month of the year and mostly multiple times per month. And that's important for birdwatching in any one spot anywhere on the globe, because this is very much a seasonal experience. And by that, I mean the experience varies with the season. When we venture away from home, we get whatever birds might happen to be there whenever we happen to be traveling. Not so when we decide to do this at home. We can get continuity over the entire 12 months.

It also chilled us out a lot from the weekly rat race. It's definitely something we are going to continue to do and we are likely to continue to travel to different places within Virginia to do it. I'm also not likely to blog about this again. Not here in VA. This is my shot at this experience.

Great blue heron, Theodore Roosevelt Island, Arlington. October 2024.

This post is really not about searching for birds in Virginia, by the way. It's really about searching for birds around Washington, DC and Richmond. Not anywhere near even the whole state, you say? That's right. There's a lot more to explore still. And we will. We just didn't get there quite this year.

So what's so great about birding in two tiny little areas of Virginia? How about cedar waxwings in January? How about hawks pretty much everywhere we go? How about one of the largest populations of bald eagles in the world? How about all sorts of birds stopping to feed along annual migration routes? How about shorebirds and river birds? How about multiple species of owls and woodpeckers? 

This is definitely a hobby that takes patience and research and study and moving around to where you might have the best shot at seeing what you want and love to see. That last piece is where travel comes in. Because as thrilled we were at seeing Carolina wrens and house finches and downy woodpeckers and even a yellow-bellied sapsucker one time in our tiny little plot of fenced land out in back of our townhouse, we can't see all of that other stuff without traveling. At least a few miles anyway. And the more we move to different places, the greater our experience.

Great horned owl, Dyke Marsh Wildlife Preserve, Alexandria. February 2024.

Near our home in Arlington, we spend our birdwatching time mostly in four spots: Theodore Roosevelt Island off the George Washington Parkway in Arlington; Fort C.F. Smith Park off of Lorcum Lane in Arlington; Dyke Marsh Wildlife Preserve in Alexandria; and Huntley Meadows Park in Alexandria. We've tried other places locally, including Roaches Run Waterfowl Sanctuary, Great Falls Park, Monticello Park and Occoquan Wildlife Refuge but for proximity and birdlife, we like the first four the best.

So why these four? We can reliably see herons and ducks at Theodore Roosevelt and in the summer there's the odd greater egret and even an indigo bunting or two. At Dyke Marsh, there's a pair of nesting bald eagles there year round and I think we've seen at least one on every trip we've made there. C.F. Smith is about a mile from our house and so it's particularly my fallback if I want to go for a wander; I'm not likely to see something incredible there but there are a ton of (non-pileated) woodpeckers and a good variety of thrushes in the woods. Huntley Meadows is by far the best of the four. There's everything in that park. It's also the furthest away but that place is fantastic every time we've been.

And I do mean fantastic. And if I'm being totally honest, we saw a pileated woodpecker at C.F. Smith one time.

For the most part, our experiences in these parks are mostly the same thing over and over again. We keep adding species to our list (so I guess that's not really the same...) and we keep taking pictures of the same birds over and over again. But here's the thing about this hobby: the perfect picture is never going to exist. So as many cardinals and nuthatches and yellow-throated sparrows we have seen, we are likely to keep chasing the perfect picture of these birds for a long, long time. And I'll bet we've seen easily 100 species of birds in our trips in Virginia alone. And some (hi, kinglets) will not sit still and are about impossible to get any sort of reasonable picture of. The perfect picture is going to take a while with some species.

Then in late summer of 2023 (I know, it's not this year), something happened that changed a lot for us. I was up at C.F. Smith trying to see what I could find and I saw some small bird flitting around a tree at the southwest side of the property where the foliage is a little more dense. Looked like a sparrow but maybe smaller and it would not stay in one place. I managed to get a pic or two: yellow-rumped warbler. 

Say what? What the heck is a warbler?

Yellow-rumped warbler, Three Lakes Park, Richmond. November 2024.

Warblers are like the Easter eggs of birdwatching in Northern Virginia. Is seeing kingfishers or killdeers or ospreys or hawks or red-winged blackbirds in their native environments fun? Sure it is and they are obvious and out in the open and doing stuff worth watching and worth photographing. But in between all those birds in trees and on grass and water and in reeds and wherever else you can find things with wings, warblers lurk. Not out in the open. Not standing still. Difficult to find.

Why are warblers awesome? Because they generally only show up around our house in NoVA during migration season and they are hard to spot but when you see them, they are these exquisite little frenetic birds that are brightly and colorfully patterned and there are so many different kinds. Yellow-rumped. Yellow-throated. Pine. Blackburnian. Prothonotary. Palm. Cerulean. Hooded. Black-throated. Black-throated gray. Black-throated green. Black and white. American redstart. Kentucky. Nashville. I could go on and on and on here.

Finding one of these birds in a spot near to our own backyard was special. Then we took a weekend trip down to Dutch Gap Conservation Area near Richmond on our anniversary weekend (yes, we went to Richmond for our anniversary) in late April and found a number of other species of these little jeweled birds. This is the stuff!!! I thought it was exciting seeing a bald eagle. Warblers...I'm just saying...

Yellow-throated warbler (top) and prothonotary warbler (bottom), Dutch Gap Conservation Area, near Richmond. April 2024.

If birdwatching is really pretty satisfying and interesting near where we live, it is way more so near our state capital. I often think about Richmond being a big city, but it's not at all. The population of Richmond proper is about the same as the population of Arlington, which is all of 25.8 square miles (Richmond is about 2.5 times that size). And around Richmond, it's just rural. Which means lots of parks. And when that much open area is combined with the mighty James River flowing through town, that means birds aplenty.

This year we went down to Richmond on two separate long weekend trips to go birdwatching in the morning (there's other stuff to do in the afternoon when the birds are done being active). I expect next year, we'll probably do the same thing. 

House wren, Fort C.F. Smith Park, Arlington. July 2024.

Dutch Gap Conservation Area is a giant, 810 acres strong piece of land just down the James River to the south and east of Richmond. You could spend days exploring this place. We spent about five hours or so early in the morning until just about noonish. We weren't the only people. We ran into a number of other folks boating and fishing and yes...birdwatching. 

It was admittedly bigger than we possibly thought it could be. We figured we'd walk the loop trail that appeared to be a few miles long. We didn't get close. We can spend hours on the swamp trail at Theodore Roosevelt Island and that's less than two miles or maybe even a mile and a half long. We didn't stand a chance at Dutch Gap, particularly because birdwatching is not a speed hobby. 

We picked up some warbler sightings early in our time there and managed some waxwings and a woodpecker or two along with some distant ospreys. I'll remember this place for the warblers and the vast size of the place. Maybe there's a return trip but that place is daunting in its size.

We paired Dutch Gap in a weekend with Robious Landing Park on the west side of the city where we got more warbler sightings (although no great pictures) along with our most incredible owl sighting in our travels. The barred owl at the top of this post spent 20 or 30 minutes watching us and its two chicks that were exploring the forest. I'm sure it kept watching the chicks after we left. The way its head swiveled and its eyes followed our every movement was powerful. I have no doubt if we'd have made any move towards the two fluff balls under its watch that we'd have been divebombed and we would not have done well. Pretty cool watching something watching you that intently.

We also got a lot of value out of Three Lakes Park towards the north side of the city this fall. Some of these outdoor spaces that have been created around the city are just such great places to walk and see what you can find. When we visited in November the place was flush with ruby and golden-crowned kinglets and tufted titmice along with some cormorants and a spectacular look at a red-shouldered hawk. Probably the best viewing we've had of one of those birds. It helps when the birds are right on top of the swing set.

Greater yellowlegs, Huntley Meadows Park, Alexandria. September 2024.

There is no doubt we've just scratched the surface on birdwatching in and around Richmond, let alone in the rest of the state. There are so many great parks and open spaces to discover and so many birds out there on the "not seen" list. On the November trip to Richmond we stopped by the Potomac River in Westmoreland County to try to find some migrated loons but with no luck. And we've still got a ton of different warbler species to find.

I know I've already laid out why I've written this post as part of my travel journey in 2024. These weekend day trips and weekends away are not the best way to unwind and find some relief and wonder in this world. But for the time we are in these parks looking, we are generally relaxed and fascinated by what we find, even if we don't always see what we want in the way that we want it. I know I've written many a time on this blog that nature trips are a crap shoot and we've frequently been disappointed by what we have not found in parts around the globe. The great thing here about our birdwatching travels this year close to home is we are rarely disappointed. And if we are, there's always the next weekend or the weekend after that to have a do-over.

These next (almost) two paragraphs put a wrap on this post and for blogging in total for calendar year 2024. I am confident there are many more treks into nature to find birds, both in our home state and as far away as other continents. Of those three week-plus-long trips (with a fourth pending) that we have already planned in 2025, I'll be taking the big camera and doing some birdwatching on three of those four. But I'm also looking forward to our next trip to Richmond to uncover some new spot that we will fall in love with. And maybe one or two other places in Virginia. Who knows.

These last two posts this year have been different travel experiences than I've had in past years. But they are every bit a part of our 2024 travel experience as spending Lunar New Year in Singapore, completing our 50 U.S. states quest and roaming around the coast of Cornwall. I see a lot of this stuff in Virginia in our future. I just don't see me blogging about it. Happy new year! Bring on 2025.

Belted Kingfisher, Huntley Meadows Park, Alexandria. October 2024.

I'd be remiss if I didn't give some credit to some resources that have helped us a lot in our birdwatching this year. So here's a shoutout to a couple of organizations that have pointed us in the right direction a lot over the past year.

First, the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources has an excellent website featuring a Virginia Bird & Wildlife page that will give you all sorts of options for finding birds all over the Commonwealth. We've used this to find parks and sites locally and when we've traveled within Virginia, both in Richmond and other spots.

Secondly, there's Merlin, the app produced by the Cornell University Ornithology Lab that will identify birds by sight and sound for you. I most always have the app on when we are walking and I'm checking it frequently. It's allowed us to find all sorts of cool birds when we've been traveling and we are very appreciative of the Lab for keeping this sort of resource up to date.

If you have any interest in traveling anywhere to see birds in Virginia, I'd recommend using those two resources to make your travels easier. Happy hunting!

The Words Of The Prophets

This year of travel has been strange. And by that, I mean really, really strange. I spent more nights in hotels in 2024 than I have ever spent in any single prior year I've been alive. I took the longest single trip (to Singapore, Cambodia and Malaysia) of my life. And I feel more weary from packing and getting on trains or in cars or in planes and then unpacking at the other end than I have ever felt. That all should make me super, super happy. But somehow, I ended up writing fewer blog posts about travel than I have written since I started this blog 11-1/2 years ago. Go figure.

I blame that whole situation on one thing: business travel. It's changed a normal travel year into a very, very non-traditional travel year. And not for the better. I've been on the road a whole lot but a whole lot of that whole lot hasn't been all for me. Or us. Two one week plus vacations is not enough for an entire year. It's honestly been a bit of a drag. But it's also driven me to change how I gather value from travel. This year, I've taken to squeezing in little experiences that make me feel like I've been traveling in between all the work assignments. It's a way different way of exploring than I ever would have thought of five or ten or even two years ago. And I don't want to do this as a substitute for real travel again.

But it has been a huge part of my 2024 travel narrative. So to close 2024, I'm going to write two posts about how this year has featured a lot of trips that are discontinuous but have reinforced a common theme and which ultimately, have built into something cohesive and coherent, even if these experiences were assembled in a way that I don't want to do again.  But both are part of my travel narrative this year. 

But before I get to all that, a little rant about business travel.

Mary Miss' "Framing Union Square". Union Square (L / N / Q / R / W / 4 / 5 / 6).

I dislike traveling for work. It sounds great (I mean it's free travel, right?) but it's never as fun as it seems like it should be (probably the work thing...). At its worst it can involve early morning breakfasts followed by a full work day with working lunches concluded with dinners with coworkers that last for hours until late into the night. It can be really pretty draining. Way more work than travel. You can probably tell by all the "work"s in this paragraph.

I guess I've been fortunate to travel some, but not a ton, for work over my career. I don't really think I've spent a lot of time on the road for my employers but for sure I've traveled a bit. Over my 30 plus years working I've ended up in hotels in Boston, San Francisco, Dallas, Chicago, Los Angeles, Orlando, Houston, Austin, Jersey, upstate New York, Charlotte, Roanoke (yes...Roanoke), Miami, suburban / rural Maryland (twice), Denver and maybe one or two other spots.

But over the last 15 months or so, I've had a regular travel-for-work gig and it's been to one of my favorite places of all: New York City. When I first took on this assignment, I spent my time in the City doing something resembling what I described two paragraphs ago: going to the office; going back to my hotel (which was really very close to the office); eating dinner (also very close to the office and the hotel); and then repeating until it was time to go home. After a couple of months of doing that I decided I had to do more. I had to accept that I was there for work but I also wanted to maximize the opportunity that I had to be living rent-free in New York two or three days at a time. I had to make my nights something more.

William Wegman's "Stationary Figures". 23 St (F / M) station.

So in January of this year (four months or so into my NYC assignment), I decided to do start exploring. I found izakayas and ramen places. I went to the 9/11 Memorial. I tried out different hotels. I went to a jazz club. I met up with old friends. I went to the opera. I explored Grand Central Terminal. I went to a play. I found different ways to see the city. It's definitely been rewarding for me. I feel like I've got something out of this in addition to my employer getting something out of me. 

I knew my time where I'd be making regular trips to New York was going to end at some point and in about the middle of this year I decided the appropriate time to cut this off would be at the end of 2024. I have to admit that deciding to terminate this assignment was sad. No more free meals at world class restaurants. No more hotel points or Amtrak points. No more opportunities to explore my favorite city for (almost) free. But it had to be done. 

I decided a needed a personal send-off. And I decided that send-off should be art focused. Do you know how many art museums there are in New York City? Me either. And it really didn't matter that much because my plan wasn't to explore art at the MoMA or the Met or the Guggenheim or the Frick or the Whitney or anywhere else that had the word museum in it. My plan was to go see some art for free. Or maybe an admission fee of $2.90 at a time. To do that, I headed underground. 

Leo Villareal's "Hive". Bleecker Street (6) and Broadway-Lafayette St (B / D/ F / M) Station.

Did you know that one of the best collections of art in New York City is in the Subway? Yes, the thing that has trains that take New Yorkers all over the City. The Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) has been purchasing and commissioning permanent and temporary works of art by emerging, famous and non-famous artists for decades. They have amassed quite a collection. Some of their art sponsorships are ephemeral (for posters that fill unused advertising space on Subway cars) but there is a lot that is not. And a lot of their collection is pretty world-class.

Now for sure, viewing art in the Subway is way different than doing it in an art museum. You can decide to roam around the Subway system randomly and just look at what you like as I sometimes do in new museums that I visit, but the collection is pretty de-centralized and, in most cases, you'll have to get on a train to go find the next piece. And it might not be something you appreciate. 

Their collection also sometimes takes some finding. They are not all like William Wegman's "Stationary Figures" ("Station"ary...get it?), which I found myself staring at when my F train stopped at 23rd Street station one night on the way back from dinner in the first half of this year.

Fortunately for the wannabe Subway art appreciator, there's a guide to art on the MTA's website and it's organized by borough. So for this last not-a-resident-but-so-in-love-with-New-York work/tourist quest, I decided to organize at least one night per trip starting in August around going to see some art, even if it was just one piece. If I could do it as part of a trip to dinner or some other spot in the City I wanted to see, then I'd do that. If not, maybe I'd just have to make a special trip. If it had to be a special trip, theoretically it's a $2.90 admission fee (the price of a ride on the Subway), assuming I can go see the piece I wanted to see and come back without exiting the system. Do you know how much it costs to get into the MoMA or the Met? $30. $2.90 is a bargain.

Ann Schaumberger's "Urban Oasis". 5 Av / 59 St (N / R / W) Station.

My intentional visits to the MTA's fantastic art collection started on a Tuesday night in August with a trip on the Q Train to legendary hot dog stand Papaya King on the Upper East Side (or UES to New Yorkers). Two hot dogs with mustard and 'kraut and a papaya drink if you must know.

The 86 Street Q-Train-only station less than two blocks from Papaya King houses Chuck Close's 2017 installation "Subway Portraits". That was my first quest. To see that piece. It's a series of large scale portraits intending to depict regular New Yorkers you might encounter on the Subway. That is if you consider Philip Glass, Lou Reed and Close himself to be regular New Yorkers. The works are huge, spanning from almost the floor of the station to almost the ceiling. And they are incredibly impressive. If these things were on display at the MoMA or somewhere else, people would be standing and gazing at these things in wonder rather than just hurrying past when I stopped for a while before heading to Papaya King. 

Like many works of art within the MTA system, "Subway Portraits" are executed in super durable materials. Mosaics of glass and ceramic or just straight up ceramic tile. This has to be one of the most hostile environments that someone can intentionally decide to place art and so it makes sense that the choice of medium be something that can withstand a lot of abuse. And I don't mean intentional. There's just a lot of stuff that happens in the Subway that is pretty down and dirty. Beautiful things need to be able to protect themselves. 

Close up of three "Subway Portraits". Eye. Eye. Nose/moustache.

On my way back from 86th Street, I stopped by the 5th Avenue/59th Street Station on the east edge of Central Park to see Ann Schaumberger's "Urban Oasis", her de-centralized tribute to the animals at the Central Park Zoo. I love animals (just not zoos) and some of those in "Urban Oasis" hit a chord big time, including the monkeys (I was born in the Year of the Monkey), the penguins and the macaws. 

I feel the representation within Schaumberger's work is definitely different from "Subway Portraits". And by that I mean less high art (if that's even a term and if it is, I know I'm being a snob). I can't see the monkeys and the penguins and the macaws on the edge of Central Park being on display in some museum in the City. And that's totally OK. On some level, these works are supposed to enliven commutes and provide relief from what is potentially a stressful rat race in America's largest city. They don't all need to be worthy of hanging in the MoMA or the Met.

I headed back to my hotel with some satisfaction that I had started something travel related that could be pretty special and I was doing it for almost free.

Over September and October and November, I continued to explore. Wegman's Wiemaraners on the way to dinner when I was staying at the Hyatt House on 28th Street. Stumbling across Tom Otterness' little figures who seemed to be everywhere in the "Life Underground" installation at the 14 St Station. A special trip to Ann Hamilton's transcription of the United States Declaration of Independence and the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights in her "CHORUS" work at the newly constructed WTC / Cortlandt Station. Hamilton's work is inspiring and uplifting, as flawed as the Declaration of Independence might be in its attitude towards the "all men" who are "created equal". It was calming and reassuring on an early November night.

Otterness' whimsical little men and women and rats and crocodiles and other sorts of bronze figures are an amusing distraction when you are not in a hurry to catch your Subway train on the way home or to work or wherever else you are headed. I love the image of these little mini-men taking care of business (including toting around giant Subway tokens) while us full size humans are passing them almost without a thought and largely unaware.

Tom Otterness' "Life Underground".  14 St (A / C / E / L) Station.

As I explored, I started to notice something as I was going from one of these installations to another, roaming around stations (some of these things are huge!!!) trying to find the latest work on my list. And that is that these things are EVERYWHERE. I started to notice more art installations that I wasn't looking for than I was looking for. In some stations (yes, Union Square and Times Square-42 St, I'm looking at you), there is more to see around every corner. Not just one piece of artwork, but multiple works in a single station. Everywhere. I'm telling you.

I visited stations all over Midtown on my way to work or dinner or somewhere else and bumped into works of art when I got to platforms or when I entered stations or when I got where I was going. Roots and plants and pipes with words of wisdom written on them near Bryant Park. Art Deco-like women performing theater and dance on the way to Lincoln Center. Recessed little square boxes in the underground walls at Times Square. And of course, I saw them while I was riding the Subway itself, fleeting glimpses of mosaics or glass seen through the open train doors during a brief stop at a station or even briefer looks when viewed from an express train that has no intent of stopping at some stations.

Some provided unexpected surprises and got a smile or two. During a stop at 23 St on the R or W (can't remember which), I looked up from my phone or whatever else I was paying attention to and saw a series of hats of all types rendered in tiles on the walls. And yes, when someone waiting for the train was standing in front of one at just the right height, it looked like they were wearing the hat behind them. I get it. Funny. Who wears a top hat any more?

Here's the other thing I noticed: there were other people noticing too. I was not the only one stopping and looking and studying and taking pictures. These things work. They ARE appreciated by people moving through this system, even if it looks like most are just hustling by because that's exactly what they are doing.  

Had to stop and look on my way to the 42nd Street Shuttle. 

It's now December 2024 and I just finished my last three nights in New York for this year. That brings me to a total of 44 nights in the City in the past 12 months. What a ride! Or more accurately a stay, I guess. That's probably not going to happen again but who knows. 

I didn't deliberately visit any Subway art on this last trip despite having a couple of spots left on my list. My off hours in December were spent with friends who had made the trip up to NYC with me to go explore the City in all its pre-Christmas glory while I slaved at work. And because I knew that's what December held, I knew when I visited in November that would likely be my last underground art time in 2024.  

So I had to do something special.

Roy Lichtenstein's "Times Square Mural". Times Sq-42 St (1 / 2 / 3 / 7 / N / Q / R / W / S) Station.

One of my favorite artists of all time is Roy Lichtenstein. Put him up there for me with Warhol, Jasper Johns, Gerhard Richter, J. M. W. Turner, Van Gogh, Mondrian, Magritte and likely too many others that I can't think of right now. I am always drawn to Lichtenstein's renditions of ordinary objects, famous works of art and works that look like they are torn from a comic strip in the style of those same American comic strips. It seems like most of the times when I see Lichtenstein's works in museums, they are among my favorites and I usually end up with a few pics of something by Roy on my phone.

And yes, there's a Lichtenstein in the Subway. Like an original work commissioned especially for the New York City underground train system. It's called "Times Square Mural" and it's at the Times Sq-42 St station (which is admittedly enormous) in the middle of a transit area that seems to be constantly flowing with commuters and tourists and art aficionados passing from the street to the Subway or one line to another or the Subway to the street. It's a futuristic Lichtenstein-yellow Subway car pulling up to the platform at 42nd Street and it's just glorious. And it's all yours to see for the low, low price of $2.90. What a bargain.

I found this work on my last underground art pilgrimage. I went there deliberately and specially to see it. I wasn't passing to or from Times Square or anywhere else. I rode the Subway specifically to see this piece and lay eyes on it for myself. It was well worth the price of admission.

If you decide to ever go seek out some of the works in the MTA's permanent collection, I am sure you will find something that resonates with you. I am also sure that you will find some other kinds of art down in the Subway while you go looking. And I don't mean more stuff hanging on the walls or little bronze men. By that I mean you'll likely find someone, somewhere performing some music. Rock, folk, classical, rap, whatever. I did when I went to see the "Times Square Mural" and it elevated that experience to something greater than I could have possibly imagined.

It was opera. 

Yes, standing in front of Roy's glorious mural when I visited on a Wednesday night, there was a young tenor (he's on the left in the pic below) standing in front of an "Opera Collective" sign with a collection bucket nearby singing the most gorgeous vocal parts to some sort of classical music coming out of the boombox next to him. It was inspiring and uplifting and impressive and spectacular. And it made my night as the perfect accompaniment to that magnificent yellow train pulling into some imagined 42nd Street station.

This aria emphasized to me the point of getting out there. Go. Explore. Find. Be curious. Adventure. Seek out something that you love or may love or will love. And every so often, you'll find it. And sometimes, it will be amazing and incredible and even better than you ever thought it (whatever it is) could be. Travel...I'm telling you...

Cornish Pasties

OK, so to start with here (and yes, I'm addressing some of the Americans...), it's pronounced past-y not paste-y. The second one is something different. Got it? Good!

Strap in for this post. We'll end up covering more than just pasties but just wanted to get the whole pasty pronunciation thing out of the way first. Now that's done, let's move on, shall we?

In late August, we made our way to Great Britain for the fifth time in the last ten years. It would have been six but COVID-19 had other ideas for our travel plans in 2020. Suffice it to say that we've spent a good amount of time over in England and Scotland since I started writing this blog so I can remember what I've done and seen and felt (and smelled and tasted I guess) while I've been trotting all over this globe of ours. Our travels in England have been focused in two spots: Yorkshire (where family lives) and London. We figured this time, we'd explore somewhere else. Somewhere else I'd never been, even though I was born in England. That somewhere else turned out to be Cornwall. Time to head south and west about as far as we could without falling into the sea.

The first thought I had when we decided to spend some time in Cornwall was Cornish pasties. Not Land's End or cute seaside harbors or winding country roads or art galleries or cream tea. Cornwall = Cornish pasties. That was mission one in Cornwall. We'd figure out the rest later.

So let's start with pasties and maybe we just need to start with what is a Cornish pasty. Quite simply it's a pastry crust, crimped shut by hand on one edge and filled with beef, potato, swede and onion and then baked. It's a portable dish that one can take on the road or on a picnic or just eat at home piping hot from the oven. Today, of course, it's available with all sorts of different fillings. Beef is by no means the only option whether you are making these things at home or buying one at your neighborhood pasty shop.

Cornish pasties are nothing new for me. I've been eating these things for the majority of my life, although there was admittedly a huge non-Cornish pasty period between the time I left home for college and pretty recently. Maybe not quite as recently as our few days in Cornwall but pretty close. I will admit I have not been a big consumer of Cornish pasties over the last 40 (wow, is that number right?) years or so. Despite that history, I was looking forward to seeing what we could find in Cornwall.

My mother's Cornish pasties that I ate growing up, by the way, resembled the pasties in the cover picture of this post with the crimp on top. And they were served with gravy and (I'm assuming here since my memory is not that good) a vegetable side. I'm guessing peas. I seem to remember peas.

We ended up spending four nights total in Cornwall, meaning three full days. We ate a Cornish pasty on each of those days: one at Land's End; one in St. Ives; and one at the Lost Gardens of Heligan. They were all good and (at least the ones I had) differently flavored: chicken, bacon and leek at Land's End; steak and stilton in St. Ives; and cheese and onion at Heligan. No gravy at all. Kills the portable thing, I think.

I am a strong believer in the quality of the pastry making a dish like the Cornish pasty into something exceptional. And hands down, the best pastry we ate was wrapped around the steak and stilton filling and handed to me across the counter at the St. Ives' Bakery. It's not the only thing I appreciate about this type of meal but the quality of the pastry means a lot here. The St. Ives' Bakery pastry was flaky and delicate and buttery (butter counts for a lot here).

The filling in the St. Ives' Bakery pasty also had the best potato and swede but the complete lack of stilton was a bit concerning. This last issue likely placed the filling in this pasty behind the Land's End pasty, which was to me the most flavorful. I'd eat all of these again. But I'd get something other than cheese and onion at Heligan.

Consuming a pasty on the streets of St. Ives, which really just looks like I'm eating a paper bag.

So that's it, right? End of blog post? Nothing more to see here. Hello, Cornwall...thanks for the pasties...see you later?

I don't think so. I told you this post wasn't just about the pasties. We needed and wanted more out of England's most southwestern county. Yes, we wanted to connect with Cornwall's historic, iconic food but we also wanted to explore something else about Cornwall's soul. Hey, we weren't just there for the food. But as it turned out, the Cornish pasty was actually the connection between the food and the history.

So let's do a little history. Starting with the history of the Cornish pasty itself.

Nobody today knows when these things were invented but there seems to be some degree of consensus that wherever they started out being baked, it was pretty likely for sure NOT in Cornwall (they were likely a French import). But at some point in the history of food in England, the concept of the pasty took off some how, some way down in Cornwall. There are references to Cornish pasties in print going back to the 1840s. These things have been in vogue for a couple of centuries. 

At some point, some (likely) Cornish woman put two and two together and started packing pasties as a lunch for the men (or at least her man) working in the fields all day doing whatever kind of farming was going on in the season when this idea first took root. This concept took off; soon pasties for lunch were a thing. They were easy to carry; filling; provided energy; and I guess stayed warm through lunchtime. Although (and I'm assuming here...) no gravy.

This whole local-dish-turned-portable-while-working thing is not unique to Cornwall and the Cornish pasty. We've heard stories like this in Naples (pizza) and Key West (key lime pie). I'm sure there are many, many more.  

When Cornish men started taking their pasties to work for their midday meal, they didn't all take them to the farm. That's not because some of them left their pasties at home; it's because not every Cornish man was a farmer. Cornwall has the longest coast of any county in England so certainly fishing was every bit as important to staying employed and staying alive as was working in the fields. I feel pretty confident that many a Cornish fisherman throughout the years has taken a pasty on board whatever size fishing vessel they were using to haul in a load of fish on any given day.

There's one other place that Cornish men took their pasties: underground. That's because Cornwall has a history of mining that is about as long as the Cornish have been farming and fishing. That industry is intimately entwined with the Cornish character and the history of the area. So when we made our final Cornwall itinerary we had two must-sees on the list: eating some Cornish pasties and visiting a Cornish mine. 

And there is a connection between the two, although the connection may be at best a myth. We'll get to that. 

Mining in Cornwall has been going on for centuries. Seriously. The history of extracting metal from that part of England goes back all the way to the Bronze Age. That's like 4,000 years ago in case you don't have your stop and start dates on all the Ages memorized. 

Bronze is an alloy made up of two metals: copper and tin. And Cornwall had and has plenty of both close to the surface of the Earth so it could be pretty easily extracted without a lot of effort. As easily as hard rock mining could get before the deposits got too deep in the ground and out of reach, that is. Mining minerals like copper and tin is not like mining for softer stuff like coal. I'm sure mining of any kind is not easy in any way, but I'm sure it's a lot more difficult if the stuff you are trying to get at is harder than the rock it is sitting between.

But men kept at it over the centuries, pulling that metal out bit by bit, until someone invented ways to get at the valuable stuff easier, which eventually (of course) they did. The Industrial Revolution provided men with new ways of separating the lode from the rock (some involved explosives); getting men in and out of very deep holes (not always super safely); moving ore up to the surface for processing; and keeping water out of the mine.

Once someone figured out how to do all those things, mining in Cornwall really took off. When it becomes easy to extract valuable things from the Earth with a ready supply of willing and cheaply paid labor with few regulations in place, these things tend to happen. By the turn of the 19th century, Cornwall was the largest supplier of copper in the world.

So...pasties and mine. The first one was really pretty easy. The second would require a little more effort. But there are some mines that you can visit in Cornwall. We picked a tin mine called Geevor.

In the Wheal Mexico mine.

The Geevor Tin Mine is all the way on the west coast of Cornwall close to the Atlantic Ocean. And by close, I mean really, really close. Like ON the Ocean (check out the second to last picture on this post). If tin were discovered in that location today, I have to believe the property would be more valuable as unspoiled oceanfront land than as a mine. But when mining started in earnest in that area in the late 1700s, tin was more valuable than an ocean view and it likely stayed that way through the mine's heyday in the early and mid-1900s. Ot at least I'm supposing.

I am by no means any sort of authority on mining means and methods or the history or the extraction or rock and minerals from the planet but I am pretty sure there must have been, over man's history, many, many different ways of removing valuable stuff from below the surface of the Earth. At Geevor, they used a method called stoping.

Pulling tin from below ground at Geevor first involved drilling a vertical shaft near a seam of the precious metal, and then digging six foot wide by seven foot high tunnels (called development drives) stacked on top of one another but spaced every 100 feet vertically. From there, teams of two men (called stopers, and hence the name of the mining method) would drill vertically upwards from a lower development drive to the one immediately above, allowing the broken ore-containing rock to fall below them which they then would use as their drilling platform. 

Does this sound safe in any way? Drilling up and allowing rock to fall past you and then using that potentially unstable deposit as a place to stand while doing the same thing again? Clearly, this kind of thing could only be used in places where removing rock below wouldn't cause the whole thing to collapse but still...I guess if you have no control over your economic situation and it's either drill into rock above you while that same rock falls past you and then serves as a not-so-firm footing for doing that same thing over and over, I guess you do what you have to do.

Geevor Tin Mine is no longer operational. And no, it's not because the whole operation for the miners was universally unsafe. It closed in 1986 after the price of tin crashed worldwide a few years earlier and made mining in a place like Cornwall a non-profitable business. Today it's a museum to preserve the history of this important Cornish industry, which of course is how we ended up being able to visit.

Model of the shafts and development drives that made up Geevor and two nearby mines.

Geevor today from the ground up looks (I would imagine) just like it did when it was operational, although I guess with a lot fewer employees. All the buildings necessary to operate and sustain a viable mining enterprise are still there, but they have all just been turned into museum spaces. The Winder House. The Compressor House. The Mill which housed all the machinery that used to separate the ore from the rock. The Dry where the miners changed before and after their shifts underground. All still in place and completely inoperable. Or maybe not completely, but certainly inoperable right now. 

This was not our first visit to a former mine. We did something similar in a former coal mine back in 2014 in Yorkshire near where my parents grew up and met. The stories that stuck with me on that visit were not the tales of the technology that pulled the coal from the ground, but the human stories. The stories of what men and women and children had to risk and endure to go down into some very scary and confined and sometimes completely unsafe situations because, ultimately, they had a choice between doing that and starving to death.

Those same sorts of thoughts came back to me at Geevor. I was completely uninterested in the equipment that supplied compressed air to all the tools used by the miners in their everyday work or the diameter of the steel ropes that lowered the cages holding the men down the shaft and into the mine. I was more concerned about thinking about the people going through the process of mining than I was about the technology. And those thoughts started in the Winder House with the cages that the miners used to stand in to be lowered into (and pulled out of, I suppose) the mine. 

Do you know how tight these things are? Being packed into these metal mesh cages with enough other large men to fill the entire enclosure and then being suspended down into some dark, wet, dangerous place every day must have been incredibly demoralizing. And being hauled out was likely just as bad. Sure there was the fact that you were returning to the surface of the Earth and fresh air and all that but the smell of those other miners (there were no bathrooms in the mine) at the end of the day must have been horrendous. You can read all about this sort of stuff in books I guess but there's nothing like standing next to the actual old cages to hammer the point home.

All that lowering and hoisting is assuming everything worked just fine, by the way. I'm sure towards the end of the life of the Geevor Tin Mine that the operation was pretty safe but there are for sure stories of mine collapses that killed men and orphaned children in significant numbers in a single event.

The cages. Imagine having to jump up and down in these things.

The history of Geevor is told from the first building you walk into (which houses the main museum) all the way through every building on the site. It is told by walking around the property and visiting the places where men risked their lives and their health every day in the mine, in the mill or operating any variety of equipment to pull that tin out of the ground. 

And at the end of the whole thing, you get to go underground. Not into the deep parts of the mine where the stopers worked (we did that sort of depth in Yorkshire 10 years ago and it was truly chilling), but into an older, shallow mine called Wheal Mexico. And no, nobody knows why it's called Wheal Mexico. At least nobody we talked to and asked that question.

The Wheal Mexico mine dates from the late 1700s and it can't be located more than 30 feet (that's a total guess since the mine is tunneled into a hill) below the ground. But walking through its limited length is remarkably perspective-altering. First of all the sensation of being below a massive amount of soil that theoretically could crush you is daunting. I'm sure it's totally safe and secured now but that can't have been the case back a couple of centuries ago. 

Second, the access (or lack thereof) to light and air, particularly in a mine that was active and being worked by teams of men (rather than being completely empty) must have been extremely claustrophobic and possibly panic-inducing. The atmosphere today is fine. There's plenty of fresh air and the whole tunnel is well lit with LED lights. But when you get to the shaft that brings air into the tunnel, it becomes obvious that there haven't been near or past too many (or any of those) in the mine to that point. 

Pulling tin out of a tunnel that you can't easily and often stand up to full height in? Not for me thanks. And yes, hardhats were mandatory on this whole tour and yes, I hit my head like four of five times while underground.

The machines that sorted the ore from the non-ore.

But none of that was the best part about Geevor. The best part was the talk with a miner (Eddie) who actually worked the place. 

Sometimes when you travel, you get lucky. We've been plenty of places that haven't worked out the way we planned over the last 11 or so years. We've also visited countries and cities and towns and the middle of nowhere where things have worked out spectacularly. Geevor was one of those in the spectacular category. 

I don't mean to sound melodramatic here but there are only so many men walking the face of this planet that used to work down in mines like Geevor and you don't get to talk to those sorts of people every day to hear tales of what they have lived through.  I know, there are men and women who go down into the pit every day in the United States and all sorts of other places in the world today and I'm not wondering around places like West Virginia or somewhere like that to hear mining stories. But if what was written in the museum or on cards or displays in the museums taught me a thing or two, it was nothing compared to what I was told by someone who had really been there.

I'm not transcripting it. But here's what I heard from Eddie and remembered. 

Hernias. Cancer. Heart surgery. Multiple hip replacements. May as well start with what mining can do to a man. This is not a healthy occupation.

The cages used to stick on the way down and when they did, the miners used to jump up and down to un-stick them. Yes, those same cages that I couldn't imagine being crammed into sometimes stuck. I don't know if it is worse to be stuck in a cage or down in the mine, but stopers were paid on a production basis, not an hourly basis. Being stuck in the lift didn't pay. You jumped.

You could be working over holes 1,000 feet deep below you and could not even know they were there. Water was dangerous. Safety equipment could save your life but sometimes it got in the way of your work and you needed to take it off. Eddie did once and fell and remarkably didn't get seriously hurt. That accident apparently was not one of the hip replacements or hernias.

Pictures from The Dry: lockers and clothes drying on hot steam pipes.

The talk took place in The Dry, where the men changed into their mining clothes at the beginning of their shift and changed back at the end of the workday. Sometimes Eddie was so dirty at the end of a shift that he showered fully clothed and then just threw his soaked gear over one of the hot steam pipes in the changing room. If he was lucky, it would be dry in the morning. If not, he'd be wearing wet clothes in a cold and wet mine.

The men weren't the only things alive in changing room. The mice used to eat the men's soap. Worse than the mice were the ticks. The ticks used to eat the men.

Speaking of food (were we?), eventually Eddie stopped taking food down into the mine. He used to eat a big breakfast and then just take liquids on his shift. Food caused cramps. And besides, there were no bathrooms down in the mine anyway.

I can't imagine doing what these men did down in the dark every day of their lives for money that probably wasn't really worth it. But then again, what choice did they have. 

The Cornwall coast. Chimneys against the Atlantic Ocean view.

So...pasties and a trip down a mine. That's not all we did in Cornwall. There were, after all, gardens and multiple cream teas and art galleries and museums and a huge domed botanical garden. But those two things are definitely part of our core Cornwall experience.

Before we ate our first (real, genuine) Cornish pasty and before we arrived at Geevor, we heard a Cornish tale about pasties and mining that may or may not be true. And it's all about the crimp really.

It is a well-established historical fact that pasties have been feeding working men at their jobs in Cornwall for decades, if not centuries, including in mines. Well maybe a century or a century and a half anyway. Tin mining is a hazardous occupation. And I'm not talking about the hernias or the falling or the mice or the ticks or the getting stuck in the cages. A byproduct of the tin mining process is the production of arsenic. And arsenic is, of course, poisonous. 

So eating in a mine where arsenic is in the air isn't exactly a great idea. I mean you don't want to accidentally ingest a bunch of toxic dust while you are taking a break from work (assuming you decide, unlike Eddie, that you still eat lunch down in the mine), right? 

Here's where the crimp comes in. Those grubby, arsenic-laden fingers can hang on to the crust on the edge of the pasty while you eat the pastry around the meat and veg and then you can just toss the crimp when you are done with lunch. Other than being totally scary that men are potentially ingesting arsenic (which I am sure went on anyway), it's a cool story right? Food evolving to meet the needs of society or something like that?

It's apparently a myth. Or a legend. Or maybe it's totally true and someone has artificially debunked it. That's all I got on this one.

Last bite of the chicken, bacon and leek pasty.