The Sidaway Bridge - A Chance to Communicate in Kinsman, March 23-25, 2012

The big headline here - if its "front page" is a tiny bit yellowed as I write this on April 20 - is in regards to an unexpected chance I had to talk at one of a number of at least seasonal meetings in the Kinsman neighborhood, on Sat., March 24, 2012. I felt it was generously offered and part of a positive time over three days of talking with people who live and/or work on the north side of the bridge. As the number of people with whom I spoke expanded, I also decided to venture into a side-bar to the Sidaway Bridge, of relating other stories, inspirations and causes in the "bridge area", and I hope - by the end of April if I can manage that - that you will read that part of my blog as well, under the heading of "So Many Stories".

Thanks to a chance encounter....

[As I begin this write-up, please bear with an initial "picture desert", partly because several important points come up in the paragraphs below!]

On Friday, March 23, I was at a rummage sale at the back of the Garden Valley Neighborhood House just off of 71st and Kinsman, partly because I wanted to find out more about what is happening at the front of "GVNH" as I have begun to refer to it, with there appearing to be historic preservation in the making, of a structure which happens to be six years older than the bridge (with a 1924 cornerstone within its Kinsman Avenue facade). In addition, I was dressed for an interview with a neighborhood leader that Friday, but I had not taken a more casual shirt which would be better for going down through the underbrush around the bridge.

I told a lady who was folding and arranging clothes at the sale why I was in the neighborhood and she informed me of the meeting I've noted, saying it would be at the community center of the Heritage View homes the next day and hosted by Burten Bell Carr (BBC), which you may recall from my first "bridge" blog of Sept. 2011 as the CDC (community development corporation) for Kinsman and at least two nearby neighborhoods.

To make a long story shorter, I was in the entry area of BBC shortly thereafter writing a note to its director Tim Tramble (also noted in my first blog), in which I said I'd like to meet him after my first meeting, when I received an audience much better than that. He came out, I said "I'm writing a note to Tim Tramble", and he said - "I am Tim Tramble".

Good enough, in a sense, but what followed was a half-hour plus with him prior to a deadline he had, including the possibility of my speaking to the community meeting the next day, and perhaps more importantly, a few key subjects, which I'll boil down here.

Welcoming dialogue on my interest in historic preservation, his main point may have been a wariness about introducing visions such as one of saving the bridge, without the tangible support to get them achieved. He bolstered this by saying that everything that BBC said it would do or support in an action plan in 2006 has been realized or is being started, including the building of much of the Heritage View homes to replace the Garden Valley projects and a repaving of Kinsman Avenue.

At the same time, I was glad that he was positive about the component that someone like me could bring to goals such as saving the bridge - in short, with no money and no active plan for that, but being part of a dialogue, which, if sufficiently positive, can help to create the political will for money and plans to be developed by citizens, foundations and governments.

An enjoyable and spirited neighborhood gathering

On Sat., March 24, while I did get an opportunity to speak to at least 60 area residents, I feel my time at the meeting, just off of Kinsman Avenue, would have still been upbeat without that.

One of the meetings' positives is that so much of it dealt with ideas and plans very much underway for a greener and more environmentally friendly city. While I personally am more interested in historic than environmental preservation, I would reiterate that both are hugely important and the more "natural" cause might literally be the main base for my main "cause" here, with the bridge crossing a real and potential green space as it does. 

The meeting agenda included an urban farm near 82nd and Kinsman and a cafe with that farm's produce and other nearby foods being planned for "Bridgeport Place", the development noted and partly pictured early on in my September 2011 writing here. An update was also provided on another farm at nearby 82nd and Otter (endnote 1) run by an organization known as the "Rid-All Green Partnership", whose representatives came attired in shirts with the phrase "green 'n tha ghetto". 

This brief green spurt reminds me of something Tim Tramble noted to me, that a number of people in Kinsman (and many other big-city neighborhoods I'll bet) want all of the present houses to remain, and new ones to be built in place of the old ones which have been lost, and that he would agree with that in the ideal situation, but as Cleveland has hemorrhaged population, that is sadly unrealistic and a positive adaptation is in large part one of greening the city.

My perspective, somewhat similarly, is a wish to save as many as possible of the houses of Cleveland's boom years (largely 1870-1920 for the north side of the bridge area), but - if to a different degree - I agree with Tim Tramble that that cannot be a reality, in a city which has shrunk from a 1950 high of 914,808 to a 2010 census figure of 396,815 (endnote 2).  In that regard, and hoping this is a useful paraphrasing of earlier comments here, if you have lemons, make green lemonade!

Returning though to the Sat., March 25 meeting, Tim announced towards the end of it that I would make a brief presentation, and he prefaced it with an idea of my passion for the bridge and the observation that I had come all the way from Philadelphia (!).

My sense of peoples' response is at the very least of an attentive listening, after a long but at times lively meeting.  In terms of opinions on the bridge, my general conclusion would be that four or more people freely voiced their feelings and that, with one exception, they were positive, including one lady saying that "that bridge" is as important as any church (or other landmark) in the neighborhood.

One resident with whom I spoke, Prisicella Fayne...

 living in what is at present the sole mid-rise of Heritage View, at 7230 Kinsman, definitely had an appreciation of history around the bridge, if in a form I had not heard before. She noted that she had become acquainted with the bridge as the "Hyanasac" Bridge, a name which I will definitely listen for in future talks with residents.

The one attendee who was in part critical of saving the bridge - at present - was Cathy Parris, seen here on a later visit with the bridge as a backdrop...

and also a resident at Heritage View.  She said to the gathering that saving the bridge did not have her vote, at least as long as there would be security concerns with the overgrowth covering it during warm weather.  With that, while I was so appreciative of the community hospitality and with the handful of residents who approached me after the meeting, my main interest was meeting Cathy, partly to honor all viewpoints, and partly - quite honestly - because I always want the chance - as I assume others would - to present my total bases for any policy, proposal, etc., in hopes of people listening and considering different viewpoints.

Today's Anxieties, yesterday's fears and hopes for the future

On Sunday, March 25, during a friendly and leisurely discussion, Kathy clearly shared her concerns about security vis-a-vis the bridge, and it was easy to understand them in a somewhat tangible sense, since she lives RIGHT next to the lawn next to its north side, as underscored in this view from her house....

With scenarios of looking outside at, say "12:30, 1 o'clock in the morning" and wondering "why is these young guys coming across?", she concluded that "after certain times, shouldn't nobody need to be crossing that bridge".

In the end, though, she said that she would be in favor of renewing this landmark if there are definite safety provisions for its reuse, including a clear view of it heightened by lights, cameras and perhaps closure of the bridge late at night.

Our talk reminded me of the "charettes" pursued in many places by neighborhood residents, urban design students and the like - often theoretical but hopeful and solution-oriented as well, but Cathy moved on to another basic - and somewhat similar matter of "hearts and history" which still, decades later, might not be as easy to solve as common-sense security matters.

Here, her sharing of views came from her exact location, which not surprisingly has begun to prompt new visitors to her home to think and reminisce about the bridge, and one of them, a man who drives her son Octavius to medical services, "remembered when [people on Francis Avenue, south of the bridge] set it on fire during the [Hough] riots of 1966...in the wee hours of the morning".

Once again, the 900-pound gorilla of race (both summarized and at times detailed in my September 2011 writing) entered the picture, and on this visit, my internal voice said "can you spell truth and reconciliation commission?" as I thought that such a group, which seemed to partly bridge a monumental gap in late 20th-century South Africa, may also be needed when stories are told of a dyed-in racism in Cleveland and other 20th-century Northern cities during the same general period.

Still, against the backdrop of anxiety that one side may be more to blame than the other for the bridge's long demise, the driver whose anecdote Cathy gave me was an older white man, and Lou, on the south side near 65th, also said that whites burned the bridge's planks in response to the riots (a repeat of brief histories cited in my first bridge blog).

A "north-side" echo of this came from Debbie Wilson, a life-long Kinsman resident currently living near 69th and Kinsman and seen here at the Harvest Day Care Center, where she has been an employee for 41 years....

Ms. Wilson said of residents from the south side of the bridge that "they used to burn the planks", and "we used to run out [to watch] when the fire trucks came" with her and other neighborhood residents not knowing "why they did it", but, again, this seemed to be delivered factually, with no recrimination, and was partly in the context of other, happy memories of the landmark.

Not as adventurous as Greg Wallace or as Lou (both noted here, at least in earlier blogs) - with her saying that "my mother told us not to go [on the bridge]", Debbie told me that "me and my sisters used to play on it" as "we'd go a little bit halfway", sneaking on to it, and "I'd talk with my boyfriend [on the bridge]".

As we spoke on Friday, March 23, we were joined by Ruby Alexander, the head of the center...

all of us there courtesy of Judy Johnson, who I hope will be remembered from my first blog!

Debbie Wilson was in agreement with Ms. Alexander's thought that a renewed bridge would strengthen the community now, giving another option, for instance, to get to the "Metro Health Clinic" - which Ms. Alexander mentioned, and perhaps two miles below the bridge on the key thoroughfare of Broadway Avenue. She also observed that if the bridge were still functioning in these last few years, she would have been able to easily walk to and from a building (noted in passing in my March 25 blog) that was until recently an active distribution center for the regionally famous "Dan-Dee" potato chips", when their food company made donations to an annual anti-violence march which will continue this year on Kinsman Avenue.

Both women cherished not just the memories of Kinsman but its special qualities today, with Ruby Alexander saying that despite decline because of drugs and other forces that the neighborhood "is still vibrant and wonderful". While Debbie Wilson has devoted her life to the area, Ruby Alexander represents part of the second generation of her family's long-term service to the neighborhood, and I wanted to debut an occasional segment of this series with a short account of that commitment, especially of her father and mother, under the title of "So Many Stories", seeing these coming accounts as brief journeys into a few of the memories and aspirations today, on both sides of the Sidaway Avenue Suspension Bridge.     
 


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endnote 1 - 82nd and Otter is roughly 5-7 blocks northeast of 72nd and Kinsman, and pointed out here: http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&q=Otter+Avenue+-+Cleveland&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=0x8830fb1404897b25:0x7d757ebe5cd3868a,Otter+Ave,+Cleveland,+OH+44104&gl=us&ei=uMiQT8b5FsTM6QGMoIWABA&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CB4Q8gEwAA.

endnote 2 - Cleveland's 2010 figure is noted in a number of places, but confirmed here with a March 9, 2011 Cleveland Plain Dealer article "2010 census population numbers show Cleveland below 400,000; Northeast Ohio down 2.2 percent" at http://www.cleveland.com/datacentral/index.ssf/2011/03/2010_census_figures_for_ohio_s.html and the 1950 U.S. census's "Table 18. Population of the 100 Largest Urban Places: 1950" as reproduced at http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0027/tab18.txt.

The city's 1950 peak is based here on the above 3/9/11 "PD" article and on "State & County QuickFacts" for "Cleveland (city), Ohio" at http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/39/3916000.html.

Cleveland's Sidaway Suspension Bridge, Sunday, March 25, 2012

[I encourage you to click on pictures below to enlarge them and to refer to three earlier blogs on the Sidaway Bridge, two in January and a much larger one from September of last year.]

[While the following is the sure sign of a long-time historian, most of the text here was enlarged on Jan. 18, 2018, as I prepared to issue a blog on revisiting the area under the bridge in these last two weeks.

In terms of clarity/aesthetics, I tried to enlarge picture captions but was unable to do so and could not figure out why.]


Today, for the first time, I went from one end of the Sidaway Suspension Bridge to the other, down through the little valley underneath it and not ON the bridge as I hope many people will do again one day. I had gone underneath it for the first time on a cold, snowy January 2 as I noted in one of my earlier blogs, but not all the way across to the southside bluff.

Looking up, the view, not surprisingly, was likely to be almost exactly the same as at the beginning of this year, but here it is once again, for documentary and promotional purposes of course (offer not void or prohibited!)....

looking towards the north pier, still identifiable as with last Summer by a bird's nest in an upper-left "wedge"; a portion of homes on Anita Kennedy Drive is visible in the right center

looking towards the south pier



Aside from those powerful lines, I think that what you could see and hear without the white covering of my first time in the "valley" was both more ugly and more beautiful this time, in its respective reality and potential.

The early Spring view next to and near the bridge, a mix in part of brown, green and blooming, included some tires and other large debris going down to and beyond the north pier, but it was more so a jungle of often brittle and easily breakable branches, feeling harmless but contributing to bridge corrosion by the minute, and seen here by the base of the north pier....

The view close to the south pier and on the hill above it quickly grew TIREd, as I had seen when it was coated in white close to three months ago, but not with the fuller force I noted today, in its potentially hazardous array....

 possibly toxic but definitely linked with a putrid puddle...

and also part of an easy path to the top of the "south hill", with vistas (sparing a comprehensive modeling of these sexy curves, even though I know you all enjoy this) from here....

looking uphill, partly to the street signs for 67th and Sidaway dimly visible in the upper center

to here....

heading towards the top of an easy if sometimes lumpy path, with part of the bridge's south side visible to the upper left 



to the top, visible straight ahead on Sidaway Avenue, with a part of the former Dan-Dee Potato Chip buildings in the background....[Footnote 1.]

And as easy as it was to make it to the top, it was easy today to see and hear the potential here, and hopefully not difficult for you, partly through the earlier possibilities I have suggested.

This is alternately a scruffy and disgusting landscape, but cleaning it up - assuming the political will will be there - is not rocket science, since it has been done elsewhere. Besides whatever money will be necessary, imagine all the hours of volunteer clean-ups (with at least one participant right here), the singing birds you could hear today, the urban sounds and sights nearby of the skyline and Rapid trains, and a well-designed, renovated, overarching landmark, and you have taken one of the first steps. 

Footnotes

Footnote 1. At this moment [as the size of the text grows before my eyes😆, I have to honestly say I may have to eat a lot of potato chips, or not, as the buildings in the last photo are probably not that of the ex-Dan Dee company, but I hope to clean up this un-savory mistake in the near future. - Jan. 18, 2018.]

Ghent in a "primary paradise" and beyond

[***As with other posts, please click on photos to enlarge them:)!]

[The "url's" of various sources, which I hope you will look up, are unfortunately not "hyperlinked", however, so you would have to "bold and paste" them into an address bar as the main part of getting to them.] 



My title here is qualified, even with "Ghent", since I'm not certain that all of my observations here will relate to the city per se. "Beyond" that, one or two observations stay within the "primary paradise" - my term of convenience for an area of perhaps just twenty blocks total, roughly running northwest from the landmarks often known as "The Three Towers", identified here, in an approximation of a view one is recommended to photograph in the tourist literature...

(from left to right - St. Nicholas's Church, the Belfort and St. Bavo's Cathedral, with, ironically, St. Nicholas's as the biggest visual presence here quite possibly being the least visited, and St. Bavo's as - I'll bet - the most visited of the trio here but the smallest part of this photo, taken from this point (or so) by MANY tourists, no discovery here!)

to the incredible row of medieval and early Renaissance guild houses on the Graslei....

to the darkly wonderful Gravensteen castle....

These may include the "top four" sites of Ghent (apologies to the beautiful St. Nicholas's if I am correct), just as a matter of widespread opinion, and within their immediate area and outside of it - including a slice of town I largely saw to the south - there is so much more that is positive, enchanting, concerning and/or disgusting, depending on one's viewpoint. For me it is mostly positive as of mid-March, 2012, I want to present its recent vitality - if only in still photos - and I hope that it continues to evolve in a stimulating way including a great deal of historic preservation.

The concern, at the same time, in my mind, is of being spoiled by success. That spoilation, broadly speaking, and from my incomplete view of the city, could grow because of huge popularity in the center, and then, in a largely 19th-century commercial area on Veldstraat and other main streets to the south, as well as an active student area, it could occur (more than it already has in terms of modernizations of first-floor space, etc.) because the crowded old streets clash with a more auto-oriented pattern, partly from witnessing the traffic pressure on main streets like Sint Jacobs-Nieuw just north of the very center of Ghent. 

For someone like me, Ghent was a joyous discovery, and truly paradisical for most of my time there, but it has BEEN discovered to some notable if not huge extent, two examples being a no. 7 ranking on world tourism sites, and a National Geographic listing as the 3rd most "authentic" travel destination in the world. (endnote 1 - please scroll down to near the end of this blog)

While a Ghent University student I met (if from the Limburg section of Belgium) said, paraphrasing here, that "we just find all of those 14th century buildings routine", it is obvious that at least a number of "Ghentenaars" know what they have, as in a window display at 5 Kapittelstraat (admittedly near the center of Ghent tourism, just a few hundred feet north of St. Bavo's), showing prominent local sites when I saw it at first....

but with one message of MAJOR pride and confidence, or at least a confident sense of humor, which you might have already noticed, to the upper right above, and can see pretty clearly here....

Further discovery could decrease Ghent being authentically a residential city in the center, for various income levels, and lead - unless this is already happening - to a "facadicization" (my term again), where, in not-so-far away Amsterdam (as I'll briefly write elsewhere), at least, clusters of  neighboring facades are kept, but within them there have been, perhaps for some time now, gutted, functional spaces for large hotels. [On a few dozen Ghent blocks in March, there at least APPEARED to be little of that effect, while a homely and very central infill structure (with an arguably "artistic" fenestration, etc.) - for the Novotel Hotel - was one of a few sizeable "intrusions" as you might agree from this partial view....

looking southwest on Hoogpoort near Stadhuissteeg

and I write this knowing how elitist my critique may sound, especially without another unoriginal if necessary thought that you cannot expect every visitor to a popular city to pay hundreds a night for premier space in some extremely classy old building. [I too would have likely $$aved had I stayed in a suburban - or urban blackhole of aesthetics as opposed to my good luck of staying inexpensively in a hotel with "character" - a euphemism in part for a budget hotel with quirks of age, etc. - see this website for that place, the "Flandria-
Centrum", if interested....http://www.hotelflandria-gent.be/en/.]


Recently, at least, though, Ghent did not seem to be at an "Amsterdam" level of "spoilation by success", so to speak, small suggestions of that being that all of the extensive labels in the Belfort were still in Dutch and St. Bavo's exterior at times showed a sootiness (actually positive in a way as more "redolent" of age), partly seen here in a lower level on its north side....

looking south on Kapittelstraat to the north side of St. Bavo's

and a few cases of maintenance concerns inside, visible even in this blurred photo....

[While I could not see this painting's identification, it was in the Rector's Chapel or the Chapel of St. Sebastian, near the northeast side of the Cathedral, on March 13, 2012.]

where I think it is valuable to note this, but also the likely contextual factors that a place such as St. Bavo's is dripping, or burdened, with an immense amount of heritage to protect and still has an active worship space which may share the widespread European context of a deep decline in church attendance since at least the late 20th century.

It was great to see the Graslei, the Koornlei, the Korenmarkt (a square where guess what agricultural product was once sold!) and other places as magnets, especially for people (largely of the 18-35 segment!) at leisure as in this view on the afternoon of  Thursday, March 15 from a rampart of the Gravensteen castle....

but a turn-off [if cleaned up by "Stad Gent" - the City of Ghent (government!), to be fair] to see somewhat trashed environments, and here again, a disclaimer for my CAMERA not having to worry about success spoilation, partly in the case of pictures at dusk or later....

looking south on the Graslei, with the back or east end of another massive Gothic church - St. Michael's, in the background

looking east to the Graslei from the Korenlei

I believe that parts of this "boardwalk" atmosphere may be slightly about living up to the "beereputation" (my term) of Belgium but are more so universal to youth entertainment, with at least a few of those young people taking breaks from a large campus and off-campus area perhaps just one to two miles south of the city center, much of that southern district fueled by the University of Ghent. 

At the risk of reading into this too much of an issue I'll touch upon in another blog - the expansion and growth wishes of the University of Amsterdam (similar Dutch-speaking culture perhaps, different country!), I sensed in walks in that busy and gently rising campus area (there in the "LOW" countries, and seen generally here....)  

from the Belfort viewing area looking south, with the central building being a 64-meter (too much of a feat to translate that right now:)!] modernist monument of 1936-42, the "Boektoren" (the Book Tower, currently, part of a Univ. of Ghent library), by Ghent architect Henry Van De Velde (1863-1957)

...that the University might be happy to expand, and perhaps to consolidate operations which are partly "downtown" on the "plateau" seen above, and that would be likely to threaten various landmarks or valuable 20th and pre-20th century blockscapes. In fairness to an institution which will be 200 years old in 2016, I do not know if this is true, but, on a walk "uphill" partly to the see the "Boektoren" (above), I noticed a small, deteriorated cluster of buildings on Sint Pieters Nieuw Straat, including another striking modernist facade where my limited language literacy (en "Nederlandse", or Dutch, with "Vlaamse" - Flemish - being very similar) - told me there was once a newspaper - the Dagblad Vooruit ("Daily Forward", in a Socialist sense apparently! - with thanks here to the possibly non-Socialist http://translate.google.com/). Unoriginally if often reliably, pardon me while I also google the newspaper name to see what comes up.... (endnote 2)

Continuing on the main street of "Sint Pieters Nieuw" on one evening, I continued to see some slightly dowdy structures, but this is often typical of low-rent student sections, and then the liveliness was heightened by a festival whose banner announced "Halfvastenfoor Gent 2012" ("Halfvasten" at least means "mid-Lent") seen partly against the contrast of a former Catholic church - Sint Pieters (makes sense!) - which now, from what I read, houses an art center....

Near the edge of this two- or three night festival, a strip of eating and drinking establishments began, partly with a type of seating I assume exists elsewhere, but it was my first time seeing it....

a comfortable inner tube and more, at a Pasta place (apologies for no exact name, but a line inside suggested it was not bad!) at Sint-Pieters Plein 42   

Just beyond that was a stretch of at least four blocks on Overpoort Straat, where the overarching theme may be beer, and my overall contributions were largest in terms of culinary consumption, including an unusual wide-mouthed sandwich known as a "Groot Falafel Mix"....

at "Snack Deniz II", one of three Turkish-run (and owned, I believe) businesses which I patronized on Overpoort, including a quiet computer & low-cost internet place, where, as this blogblob grew on two nights, the hum of partying grew outside, including scenes like this, perhaps appropriately hazy....

   looking south on Overpoort

ditto, a minute later, but thanks, people for letting the bus pass!

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In closing, and with a drawn-out curtain drop here -- from the transportation terminus where that "#A6" above may have emanated, on the west side of Sint-Pieters Station....

to the newer trams of the city....

the old ones such as this vehicle, whose "destination" is hard to forget (endnote 3)....

and its busses, noted above...

its medieval "high-rises" and 20th-century mid-rises at a distance....

the city's port somewhat visible to the north.....

a portion of its east side (if claimed here largely by one famous landmark on the right)....

and its governmental nerve center....

the Renaissance era Stadhuis seen from the Belfort to its south

...to its restful places....

Bishop Pieter Damant, Bishop of the Diocese of Ghent from 1590-1609 (endnote 4), as depicted at his mausoleum in a chapel of St. Bavo's Cathedral

...including the quiet but culinarily exciting Patershol neighborhood (taking others' word for the restaurants' level; the few that i SAW looked great)....

looking southwest on Corduwanierstraat from Karmelietenstraat

 

looking southwest on Plotersgracht just west of Karmelietenstraat 

 ...its contrasts seen and unseen, and only barely noticed I bet in my short time there, from a street where graffiti is allowed, and changed from time to time....

the north end of Werregarden from Hoogpoort

to the well-manicured space right next to it....

with a poem on a wall there in March whose presentation appeared to make it somber, but certainly not riotous like the Werregarden when I saw it (endnote 5)....

to the exciting and unphotographed "duo" seen one night, of a quiet 19th-century residential oval enjoyed by a young woman on a bench and at least two young men (perhaps of the "Universiteit Ghent") singing nearby, followed less than half a minute later - as I turned a corner - with the huge, tall, block-long (and deliberately overpowering?) "Leopoldscazerne" (Leopold's Barracks), which I have found out was a military installation built in the reign of King Leopold II, and thus easy to darkly analogize with the Gravensteen, because just as that medieval stronghold holds both beauty, fantasy and the memories of the torture which was one of the activities there, this mammoth is a joy today (and with a big chunk of it used as an arts complex) but is connected with perhaps the most infamous ruler in Belgian history - since King Leopold II presided over atrocities in the Belgian Congo during the 1890's - noting this as I fully realize that people who live in the glass houses of U.S. imperialism can't unabashedly throw stones at other nation's historic woes.[endnote 6]

[But back to the legacy of visual delight today, I hope you'll dip into endnote 7, including url's for pictures of the Leopoldscazerne which I highly recommend you click as this show-stopper calls to mind the 70's classic "she's built, she's stacked...."!!!)]

...and back as well to a busy Gent-St.Pieters station....

the image of Ghent's monuments which it presented at the time of its opening, as celebrated within the protractor-shaped image near the upper right of this photo.... 

[In an enlargement, landmark afficionados looking at the lower left part of the "protractor" picture may see the "Rabot", a late medieval fortification perhaps a mile northwest of the city center, and then, roughly near the upper left section of this history cornucopia, one can see the famous trio noted at the top of this blog of (left to right) - St. Bavo's, the Belfort and the St. Nicholas Kerk.]

....and its' ceiling's Thomas-the-Train like imagery....

this Ghent [with a nod to 20th-century American culture] - in the words of the famously flirtatious Flemish philanderer, flagrant flavenoid, flag-waving flan lover, flim-Vlaamse artist and flak-jacketed folksinger Woede Van de Guisrijk - was made for you and me!!

No, seriously, what an incredible place, with so much I did not see and so much that I hope it maintains as it continues a venerable but renewing life.

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Endnote 1 - The no. 7 ranking for Ghent is part of a list from the "Lonely Planet" travel company listing its "top 10 cities for 2011" and noting in part the "secret within a secret [that] Ghent might just be the best European city you’ve never thought of visiting, in a country that continues to be criminally overlooked." [http://www.lonelyplanet.com/belgium/flanders/ghent/travel-tips-and-articles/76165#ixzz1uKtone9V]. 

Ghent's no. 3 spot came in a 2008 survey in National Geographic Traveler ranking 109 sites around the world on their authenticity. [http://traveler.nationalgeographic.com/2008/11/nd08-historic-places-rated.pdf]

endnote 2 -Oops, perhaps, fortunately and at least preliminarily - with all the sites in question being almost entirely in Vlaamse (Flemish), Nederlandse/Dutch, take your pick - but the attractive Deco "Dagblad Vooruit" building, "imaged" here on the google gorilla: https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Dagblad%20Vooruit&psj=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&biw=1024&bih=629&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=2idpT8ClCuno0QHMptT9CA -- 

...MAY be in ok shape, partly with a reference to its being restored? - in 1990 while followed with one on its being sold (see *** below) but the two forlorn buildings immediately on its north side, found here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/16782093@N03/4818413387/, and with a dusty (construction/demolition?) area next to the rightmost one as I walked by them, looked like they might not have a long life expectancy.

[Here, additionally, is a good picture site for the "Dagblad Vooruit:http://www.djibnet.com/photo/dagblad+vooruit/redactiegebouw-dagblad-vooruit-gent-142655422.html.]

*** "Vanaf 1990 werd het gebouw gerestaureerd en omgevormd tot cultuurhuis Backstage. In 2010 werd het gebouw verkocht aan een Gentse vastgoedgroep", found at http://www.flickr.com/photos/erfgoed/4620229822/ was translated at http://translate.google.com/ as "[f]rom 1990 the building was restored and turned into cultural center Backstage. In 2010 the building was sold to a Ghent real estate group."

endnote 3 - "Moscou", seen on the "headsign" for the tram noted at this point, is a southeastern Ghent neighborhood which received its name from nearby activities of Russian soldiers in 1814 and 1815. While their total length of time in present-day Ghent was small, one of their legacies came from the fierceness of their fighting against the French of those waning Napoleonic days, under their primary commander - an 80-year old "Colonel Bishalov" - whose local nickname "Peetje Kozak" (Cossack Granny) was used to scare Ghent-area children into obedience, even in the 20th century [Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscou_%28Ghent%29.]

It appears that a bigger reknown has come to this section from a 2008 romantic comedy (in part at least) set largely in the neighboring urban area of Ledeberg and titled either "Moscou, Belgium" or "Aanrijding in Moscou" (Collision in Moscou), which apparently won several film festival awards.[Sources: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPyI9QUJU40 (where you can see a few segments of the film)

http://www.tinymixtapes.com/film/moscow-belgium-aanrijding-moscou; 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow,_Belgium; 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscou_%28Ghent%29]

endnote 4 - from a listing in a site on "The Diocese of Gent Belgium" at  http://www.gcatholic.com/dioceses/diocese/gent0.htm

endnote 5 - The translation which I have found through http://translate.google.com/, for the first four lines of the poem, reads, perhaps more awkwardly than intended....

"A truck with German children through the night on a bridge passed away at that great yesterday and I heard how the wet sail"

endnote 6, May 5, 2012 - Over a few days, I have slowly been reading about what King Leopold II did in the Congo, for the first time in my life, and, with the emphasis that this first look at his actions is very small, it definitely seems that his dark stamp on that land was very big, much of that through seizing possession of it and terrorizing and killing Congolese peoples to gain vast profits from the region's rubber resources. 

My four "resources" included one with a quotation that to me, implies the ethical challenge of many monuments, in the US and elsewhere, built on the backs of others:   "The proceeds of Leopold's looting funded many of the grandiose monuments that grace Belgium today: the Royal Palace at Laeken, Brussels' Cinquantanaire arch, Ostend's seaside arcade and golf course were all paid for with Congolese blood and sweat." [“Belgium confronts its heart of darkness” in The Independent (England), February 23, 2005, at http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/belgium-confronts-its-heart-of-darkness-484374.html]

My view, if not gained from deep study, is in large part to celebrate such beauty but know and remember what is behind it.

Sometimes though, it is time to move parts of history, with an example being the relocation of a statue of King Leopold to a less prominent section of the Brussels-area museum noted in the Feb. 2005 article above as it hosted a hard look at his rule over the Congo.

At other times, I feel that parts of history should be eliminated while keeping their primary sources. Perhaps 3-4 years ago, I was comfortable with South Carolina and Georgia removing the Confederate "stars and bars" from their flags (not honestly knowing now what the status of that controversy is) but I was not in favor of eliminating or destroying monuments such as those to Confederate soldiers, if at the same time I would be glad to see large plaques by their sides which explain them within a changed moral compass.  

My other three sources concerning "Leopold" were the articles...

-- "Belgian Congo" included in the website of Yale University's Genocide Studies Program (http://www.yale.edu/gsp/colonial/belgian_congo/index.html);

--"King Leopold II and the Congo" (http://www.enotes.com/king-leopold-ii-congo-reference/king-leopold-ii-congo) ["enotes" describes itself as "a comprehensive online educational resource" at http://www.enotes.com/help/about];

--"King Léopold II" (http://www.moreorless.au.com/killers/leopold.html) ["moreorless..." is a site more fully headed as dealing with "heroes & killers of the 20th century" and written by an Australian, Bruce Harris, who appears to be a dedicated non-historian in offering his assessments of saintly and sinning 20th-century leaders - drawing that view from his own introduction to the site at http://www.moreorless.au.com/about.html.] 

endnote 7 - Before I happily run wild in this note...you gotta see the Leopoldscazerne if you value landmarks, at least in "google images", so I'll hold this spot in a bet that I can easily call up some pictures of this Belgian big-boy tomorrow....

A few days later inside my lesser fort (on April 19) - The site below shows a view utilized for a postcard in 1939, quite likely showing the north side of the Leopoldcazerne which was my first introduction to it: http://www.google.com/imgres?um=1&hl=en&sa=N&noj=1&tbm=isch&prmd=imvns&tbnid=I1UDKFyy3oujRM:&imgrefurl=http://www.delcampe.net/page/item/id,63907628,var,leopold-kazerne-2de-linie-regiment-buitenzicht-der-kazerne-zie-foto-details,language,f.html&docid=IMkzkLWwqQAO6M&itg=1&imgurl=http://images-00.delcampe-static.net/img_large/auction/000/063/907/628_001.jpg&w=1020&h=780&ei=xdSQT_ruBOLf6QHG7fyFBA&zoom=1&iact=rc&dur=776&sig=107503107462696977728&page=1&tbnh=128&tbnw=157&start=0&ndsp=15&ved=1t:429,r:11,s:0,i:94&tx=82&ty=64&biw=1016&bih=621,

AND while I always take wikipedia with a grain of salt, and the auto-translation here has some grammatical mistakes, its history seems likely to be good and recent (with a revision date of April 3, 2011), ends with the sense of the block-long complex coming to have both an artistic and military use (at least as of a year ago) and has two photos, at http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=nl&u=http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopoldskazerne&ei=YdaQT4ynIKSN6QHYhci1BA&sa=X&oi=translate&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCkQ7gEwAA&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dleopold%2527s%2Bkazerne%2B-%2BWikipedia%26hl%3Den%26noj%3D1%26prmd%3Dimvns 

If you'd like to actually see the sites in question, my walk in this immediate area started perhaps two miles south of Ghent's center on the gently upward "Laurent Delvaux" street [on the east side of the wide intersection of Charles deKerchovelaan and Kortrijksesteenweg], bringing me to the oval, which was labeled as "Prudens Van Duyse Plein," and identifying the oval's namesake as a "[l]letterkundige - archivaris, 1804-1859" [sounds like an interesting - and short-lived - history-lover but a look-up should be coming! -- see the end of this note:) as of May 7!]; from the oval, I turned south onto Eekhout, where I was visually "hit" by the Leopoldscazerne and shortly thereafter, perhaps inspired partly by an adjacent street named after maybe the greatest Belgian architect ever - Victor Horta - a master of the "Art Nouveau" style - I thought that if this military mammoth was no longer wholly used for its original purpose (or what I thought was its first reason!), housing would be nice, and then near another corner of it, I saw that artists had officially moved in to at least a part of this grand domain.

For fellow map-lovers, one site to see is headed "Leopold Kazerne" and is within a list of tourist attractions at http://www.seeker.info/be/en/detail/Gent/poi-7e05f2c81493c08fad91a6a3a35308da--leopold-kazerne.

May 7 - Prudens Van Duyse turns out to have been a major Flemish writer and, more interestingly from an urban history perspective, was the archivist of Ghent for much of the last 21 years of his life. [Several internet sources here include a biography of him in a site on Ghent's literary culture at http://www.literair.gent.be/html/lexicondetail.asp?ID=5&AID=569 and a picture of Van Duyse within another biographical site at http://schrijversgewijs.be/schrijvers/van-duyse-prudens/ where it's noted that in 1890 the City of Ghent named (the oval above, very likely!) "Prudens Van Duyse Plein [Square]."