I spent No Kings Day in a deer blind in North Louisiana, so I missed the opportunity to spend the day with a bunch of overweight, dyspeptic baby boomers.
However, it was a glorious autumn day, and I was grateful to spend it in the woods, even though I missed an easy shot at a fat deer. I consoled myself that evening with a plate of enchiladas and a frozen margarita in the Gonzalez Restaurant in the little town of Homer, where the dress code permits men, women, and children to dine wearing camouflage and international orange hunting vests.
Usually, I drive home through small Louisiana towns, which collectively have assembled the longest speed trap in North America. All my hunting buddies have gotten at least one speeding ticket on the treacherous route between Arcadia and Alexandria. I am proud to say that I've only been ticketed once--in the despondently named village of Dry Prong. The local cop assured me my offense would not be reported to my insurance company, and he kept his word.
Yesterday, however, I chose to return home through Mississippi. I drove east on Interstate 20 until I crossed the Mississippi River bridge in Vicksburg and then traveled south down Highway 61, following the river's course.
South of Vicksburg, I drove through Port Gibson, where a Yankee army had passed in 1863 on its way to breaking the Confederate blockade of the Mississippi River. General Grant was struck by Port Gibson's beauty, declaring the town "too beautiful to burn."
Indeed, Port Gibson is a lovely Southern town graced by antebellum and post-Civil War homes in a variety of architectural styles: Greek Revival, Federal, Victorian, Queen Ann, and Italianate Revival.
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| Presbyterian church steeple |
I've driven through Port Gibson many times, and my favorite building is the Jewish synagogue, built in 1891-1892 and now closed. As its historical marker attests, the building blends Moorish, Byzantine, and Romanesque Revival architectural styles and is topped by a Russian dome.
Temple Gemiluth Chassed
Coastal elitists deceive themselves into believing that the vast stretch of America between New York and Los Angeles is a cultural desert, which they derisively dismiss as Flyover Country. Port Gibson attests to how wrong they are.
Port Gibson's architecture is eclectic, but there is grace and beauty in almost all its historic homes, churches, and businesses. The people who built these structures had a refined aesthetic sensibility--an appreciation for visual appeal in the structures they designed and built.
Contrast the nineteenth and early twentieth-century architecture of small-town America with the ugliness of today's suburban malls and tract homes. We have created a drab and monotonous environment for ourselves, which James Howard Kunstler accurately described as "the geography of nowhere."
However, it is our society's public architecture that is most offensive. We see it on display in courthouses, city halls, and university buildings. Some of it has been pugnaciously labeled as brutalist--and brutal it indeed is.
This brings me to Barack Obama's presidential library, which is currently under construction in Chicago. This monstrosity is an insult to the eye, the landscape, and the human spirit.
Barack Obama has often been described as brilliant and almost supernaturally empathetic. Yet how intelligent and sensitive can a guy be who allows his architects and sycophantic donors to talk him into approving a presidential library so ghastly, so inhumane, and so goddamn ugly?
Maybe Barack doesn't care what his presidential library looks like. After all, he owns four homes. If he gets sick of looking at his library in Chicago, he can always fly to his digs on Martha's Vineyard or Hawaii.
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| Is Barack mooning the American people? |