This is the "War" side of the State Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument in Indianapolis. This closeup shows one soldier using a dead soldier to place to perch his gun...
... and pigeons, in turn, using that gun.
August 30, 2010
The war monument.
This is the "War" side of the State Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument in Indianapolis. This closeup shows one soldier using a dead soldier to place to perch his gun...
... and pigeons, in turn, using that gun.
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Did you go inside the Civil War museum inside? Next time you're in town you need to go to the Indiana World War Memorial and make sure you go to the third floor.
Also check out the Medal of Honor Memorial down by the canal too.
WAR MEMORIAL!?!?! Good G*d Althouse, you must FLEE Meade, he's turning you into a Fascist! Union Station and war memorials AND motorcycles!?!
Good Lord people can we not tear down this horrid monstrosities in our city squares? Nothing but clebrations of violence and horror. Mere recruiting tools of the Authoritarian War State...we need more monuments to love, peace and cooperation.
And Lady Liberty is trampling on our beloved battle flag!! Darn her, I say, darn her to heck.
wv: durile - sames as puerile except durile lasts longer.
Say, Professor, if you're going to be downtown: St. Elmo's steakhouse. Every cow afficianado I talk to says it's a can't miss. Pricey, sure, but good. And it's not too far from the Circle.
Works like that are no longer in fashion. Although The Zero will probably do something the reaction to which will bring them back into fashion.
I love this from the website...
"The State Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument was dedicated in 1902 to Indiana's heroes who died in wars before World War I."
Since WWI was a dozen years in the future, specifying that was a neat trick.
Say, Professor, if you're going to be downtown: St. Elmo's steakhouse.
Which is where we ate Saturday evening for my daughter's b-day. Shrimp cocktail was outstanding as usual.
Wonder if the author of that dedication plaque made to the Convention at MIT back in '05?
wv: pattorch - just what one needs to burn down all those pesky Irish.
From the age when public works were designed to ennoble the public, not stultify them.
Today's war monuments are designed to elicit tears for the "waste" of young lives and not to encourage pride in their sacriface and accomplishment.
wv: swilsi - what a Spanish-speaking connoisseur of two buck chuck will say when offered some.
Is that the one you can walk to the top of? Did that last time I was in Indianapolis with the Son. The Civil War museum underneath it was pretty interesting, but nothing on my great-great-grandfather. Harumph.
I have heard that Indianans joined with Wisconsin boys in helping a certain Illinois President to send an Army lead by an Ohio General to invade the bucolic Southern State of Georgia that just wanted to be left alone. How shameful to see a German Monument erected to that invading Army. We would have sold you the slaves if we had known that you wanted them so bad.
Today's war monuments are designed to elicit tears for the "waste" of young lives and not to encourage pride in their sacriface and accomplishment.
And public art and architecture is only deemed appropriate if it "challenges" the values of the people who pay for it. Celebrating values is off limits.
Here in downtown Seattle we have these beautiful sculptures of things we don't recognize and are difficult to distinguish from the construction debris left by the dynamics of the capitalistic system.
It is probably against the law to put up sculpture that contains recognizable human forms.
Unless you're Lenin and you're in Fremont.
WV: Hoofies, as in "we dancing and saw some spicy hoofies."
I believe that is a dead CONFEDERATE soldier. Check the flag.
Ann, check out the Holiday Inn at the train station. You can sleep in the sleeper cars on the sidings that are part of the main Holiday Inn Hotel there at Mkt Square. An el neato experience. Also visit the old main Union terminal. Although no longer in use as a train station, it's filled with shops and restaurants w.o ceilings open to the vast arched ceiling of the terminal. A wonderful adaptive use and eating experience as well..
Almost twenty years ago we had a public art controversy here in Charlotte. The Charlotte Hornets Arena Committee commissioned a sculpture from Budd Hopkins, the guy who hypnotizes alleged "victims" of alien abduction.
About a year later Hopkins delivered the goods: an 18 foot tall cubist abstract that vaguely resembled a human form (assuming the beholder was told what to expect or was on psychedelic drugs). Since the patrons of the arena were going to be basketball fans, not an avant-garde group generally, the "giant Gumby" stirred up a minor firestorm in the local media, especially after folks became aware of the price tag: 700 kilobucks, give or take.
The Charlotte cognoscenti (a mind-bending concept in itself, btw) attacked the critics as knuckle-dragging philistines. They proclaimed Hopkins' work to be a protean cultural acquisition for the Charlotte metro area, that we should all be proud that such a renown artist would agree to let one of his major pieces languish in such relative obscurity. Hopkins himself weighed in with an opinion piece in the Charlotte Observer in which he explained how the sculpture took its inspiration from the unique Charlottean "New South" spirit that was evident in the city's architecture and cultural vibrancy.
The fire and brimstone hailed upon the committee by the sculpture critics was mostly wasted because the terms of the contract basically specified that Charlotte was obliged to buy whatever Hopkins delivered.
Time passed. The Hornet's owner, who had beat the drum for the arena and its public art space louder than anybody, decided that there weren't enough skyboxes to suit his greed, and moved his team to New Orleans. Then another NBA franchise made an offer to Charlotte, but one contingent on a new arena located downtown. So the "old" arena, built to last 30 years or more, was condemned and demolished after only nine. The giant Gumby, that landmark public art which was to testify to Charlotte's status as a "world-class" city was sold at auction for about 10 cents on the dollar. And it was learned that the Gumby wasn't "uniquely" inspired by Charlotte. In fact it was a homeless rejected design which Hopkins cleverly foisted on the rubes of the arena committee like a cheap off-the-rack sold as custom tailoring.
wv: augas -- what wafts from the Augean stables
Professor, if you're in the mood for pizza, I'd recommend Bazbeaux's up on Massachusetts Avenue. Probably the best pizza I've had in Indy and they have a good beer selection as well.
@Hoosier daddy - The World War memorial is amazing. 3rd floor looks a bit baby sacrificing alterish to me especially being 1 block from the Masons buildings and Scottish Rite Cathedral.
David said...
I believe that is a dead CONFEDERATE soldier. Check the flag.
Quite likely. Unlike The Zero, our forbears were proud of their victories.
Victory, not tired.
Quaestor/
Is Mike Skube still a critic for the local rag there--or was is/it the Raleigh Observer?
The corrosion on those sculptures has make some of them look like they're wearing clown makeup and others look menacing and malicious, or maybe it's the lighting.
@Joe, you're the one who's out of touch. Every town in the country has some kind of war memorial, even if its just a plaque naming those who gave their lives. The vocal minority like Code Pink and the likes of Cindy Sheehan are a a tiny minority.
Washington, D. C. is full of war monuments, including statues. We wouldn't be living in a free country without wars against enemies of freedom. Sherman was right, war is hell, but that doesn't mean you make things better by denying that sometimes it's forced on us, and the men and women who serve in those cases deserve to be honored.
In 1902, the Civil War and the Revolutionary War were the major wars in memory, and I don't think anyone today regrets that we fought and won both.
wv: metater - like nacho chips but for potatoes
@Joe, you're the one who's out of touch. Every town in the country has some kind of war memorial, even if its just a plaque naming those who gave their lives. The vocal minority like Code Pink and the likes of Cindy Sheehan are a a tiny minority.
Yeah and evey town is also full of bitter clingers, buying into War Machine's Hype and breeding a new generation of cannon-fodder...what's your point?
We must break this cycle of violence, for our children and our CHILDREN'S CHILDREN.
"Did you go inside the Civil War museum inside?"
This is probably my one connection with Indiana. I've never been to this museum, but I'd like to go some time. My great-great-great grandfather and his oldest son fought with Indiana regiment in the Civil War. Both died. My great-great-great grandmother later followed her other sons and moved to Los Angeles in the 1880s. So, Indiana has a curious place in my heart as being the source of the first contribution to my California roots.
Man, I've seen some memorable war memorials in my day. Good ones, too. Memorials that emphasize not only the sense of valor and what the mission was about.
But this one is fricking morbid.
I didn't know a sculpture of the music video from Michael Jackson's Thriller would include guns.
Note the Confederate flag under the dead soldier.
If only the Confederate values had died with the defeat of that treason. But southern Republicans are, even today, promoting the Confederate Constitution!
But another thing strikes me about Jeff Session’s Constitution. His views would be absolutely correct under the Confederate Constitution, adopted in 1861. That constitution is largely a word-for-word reiteration of the U.S. Constitution as then in force, with three significant deviations. It denied Congress the power to legislate “for the general welfare,” it stressed the property rights of its citizens, particularly property rights in slaves, and it forbade spending money on improvement of interstate commerce with a narrow exception for navigation of public waters.
Creepy. It's like the Zombie Confederacy, it keeps rising from the dead. Didn't they shoot it in the head?
Wow Alpha well done way to bring up an unrelated topic...
More proof of your side's failures. You guys only have "racism", "bigotry" now don't you? You ARE like the Right in the 1950's and 1960's you've nothing, just epithets.
"Hoosier Daddy said...
... Which is where we ate Saturday evening for my daughter's b-day. Shrimp cocktail was outstanding as usual."
Can't eat shrimp. So I'm automatically excluded from their signature dish. :(
But durn it, you go to a steak place for cow! FOR COW!!! ;)
Anyway... HBD to your daughter, Hoosier Daddy!
Alpha taught me a valuable lesson today. I'd always thought that what made the Confederacy bad was that it supported slavery and shot at American troops.
Now I realize that what *really* made them bad was that they supported limiting federal government power. What monsters! No wonder we had to kill so many of them. You can't let people go around promoting limited federal government -- they get all uppity.
Ritmo... Have you seen the Tecumseh Sherman on his Horse memorial at the GAR Memorial Plaza ( Where the Plaza Hotel was built at the SE corner of Central Park)? The General is riding his horse over a pine tree bough to represent his March to the Sea through Georgia where he stole ALL of the food leaving Georgians to starve.That iwhere the "Damn Yankees" got their nickname".
Ann, check out the Holiday Inn at the train station. You can sleep in the sleeper cars on the sidings that are part of the main Holiday Inn Hotel there at Mkt Square. An el neato experience.
An el neato experience is one way to put it. My wife and I had that experience in Chattanooga. You're not really sleeping in the sleeper berths, instead the train car is divided in half as two moderate size separate hotel rooms. The wall between rooms is a standard wall, but the side walls are metal and conduct sound extremely well down the length of the car.
The couple in the other half was on their honeymoon.
Ignorance Is Bliss/
LOL. The Chattanooga Choo-Choo??!! I've good friends in Chattanooga--know it well.
The General [Sherman] is riding his horse over a pine tree bough to represent his March to the Sea through Georgia where he stole ALL of the food leaving Georgians to starve.
The slaves were quite glad to see Sherman, even though the Confederacy did not consider them to be Georgians.
Plus:
1. He told the Georgians what he was going to do.
2. He gave them time to get out of the way. Damn fools if they didn't.
3. He didn't "steal" the food, he conquered it. And his troops ate it.
4. If the advice of the Confederate leaders had been followed, all the food in Georgia would have been burned before Sherman got there. The Georgians wisely declined this advice.
5. Sherman did pretty much what Lee's army did during its brief foray into Pennsylvania. But Sherman was not driven out, since he was a far better general than Lee.
The Georgians are still howling, General Sherman. It worked!
the Zombie Confederacy, it keeps rising from the dead. Didn't they shoot it in the head?
"The Almighty has His own purposes . . . . He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him?"
--Lincoln's Second Inaugural
Man, I've seen some memorable war memorials in my day. Good ones, too. Memorials that emphasize not only the sense of valor and what the mission was about.
But this one is fricking morbid.
Heh. I've met people from all over the world while hanging out down on the circle and no one even said it was morbid. Then again it's you so what else should one expect.
Then again, these people bothered to come to Indianoplace so what else should one expect?
Heh.
Nice recognition of the 'facts' of the statue, AlphaLiberal. It's hard to fully imagine today but the 'Rebels' were the elite who had ascendancy in the country for a generation. Lee's father had given a peroration at the funeral of Washington. Lincoln's 'Four score and 7' conveyed to his sympathetic listeners that they were the true sons of republican democracy who followed the rules as the elites who had defied democracy were not. We may be about to see a similar turning against the elites and their pc.
It's a "rifle."
A "gun" is something quite other.
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