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A Park Under a Bridge

21 Sunday Aug 2022

Posted by danielwalldammit in Uncategorized

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

Art, California, Chicano Park, Latino, Mexican Americans, Murals, San Diego, Street Art, Travel

As I mentioned in a previous post, I recently spent some time in San Diego. Whenever I get down to civilization, I tend to look for street art. San Diego had plenty of it. One location in particular stands out, Chicano Park. Many of the murals express explicit historical commentary, a fact all the more significant in light of the history of the park itself. It is the product of local unrest, a local community outraged at a series of developments diminishing the quality of life for its residents. The community had been separated from the waterfront by Naval installations, bisected by freeways and zoned in a manner hardly conducive to residential living. Plans to develop a highway patrol station seem to have been the final straw. It took an occupation to create the park as it presently exists.

And more of course!

Honestly, the stories I found here are a bit beyond me. So, I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves. That, and perhaps a link or two.

(click to embiggen)

A few more from around the neighborhood.

And some small pieces in the area.

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Sitka Whalefest, 2021

28 Sunday Nov 2021

Posted by danielwalldammit in Alaska, Bad Photography

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Alaska, Nature, Outdoors, Sitka, Travel, Travel Photography, Whalefest, Whales, Wildlife

The occasion was Whalefest, which was held at the beginning of this November. My colleague, Linda Nicholas-Figuroa, turned me on to this gathering a couple years ago, and I found the event both enjoyable and instructive. So, I was excited to hear that the conference was back on for this year.,

We attended most of the regular conference panels by zoom, but they still had a few in-person events, hands-on stuff (necropsy goodness!) and out-doors (whale-watching). I love the area. So, my baby and I packed our cameras and headed down there with a colleague and a couple students.

Definitely worth the trip!

(Click to embiggen!)

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In the Time of Quarantine

28 Saturday Nov 2020

Posted by danielwalldammit in Alaska, Bad Photography, Travel

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Alaska, Covid19, Denali, Glacier, Mountains, Nature, Photos, Quarantine, Travel

Between Wasilla and Talkeetna

I had already booked a work-related flight to Fairbanks when Covid19 began spreading through the U.S. I remember talking about it with Moni in the days before I flew, and especially the night before I was to go. We seriously talked about cancelling the trip, but I thought it best to follow through with my plans. By the time the plane hit ground the next day, pubic sentiment had shifted from something along the lines of “maybe wear a mask, wash your hands a lot, and avoid crowds” to something more like “don’t go out at all, definitely wear a mask, and start shutting down the businesses. By the time I left Fairbanks 3 days later, the University was all but closed and restaurants were take-out only. Touching people, even to shake hands, was not done. Needless to say, I didn’t get much done. I felt pretty relieved to get home safely.

And then there was a period when we were all just locked down and travel wasn’t really an option.

I felt this.

I felt it in my teeth.

And in my stomach.

I had already scheduled a visit with an oral surgeon. He was to take the remains of 2 molars out the right side of my mouth, hopefully before the botched cap on my left side fell out and left me on a solid yogurt diet.

Oh well!

As the time of Covid stretched on, and people began to realize this wasn’t ending any time soon, I started to think about flying south to get my teeth done after all. With the help of her sister (a nurse), Moni had the safety precautions down to a science, and we started making limited forays out of the arctic. I still cringe at the thought of leaving the state, but with a little planning, I feel like we can get down to Anchorage and get what needs doing done. We can even venture pout of our room a bit, in which case we figure it’s best to keep going right out of town.

One good thing about Alaska, some of the best things about it take you well away from other people.

Still got one last procedure before I can sink my teeth into a proper steak. I would prefer to hunker down completely for the next few months, but I may need to risk one more trip. In the meantime, it occurs to me that I haven’t done a proper poto-gallery in awhile. So, here are a few pictures from recent travels. This of course includes a few drives around town, and maybe a few from before the pandemic. Anyway, …pics!

(Click the pics to embiggen them. You know you wanna!)

Gallery 1: In flight.

Gallery 2: The Beaches of Barrow.

Sea Ice.

Skies.

Denali (and Nearby).

Matanuska Glacier

Southeast from Anchorage.

Other.

…and, oh yeah!

Whatever you are doing?

This guy disapproves!

Judging You, Judging You!

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Last Sunset of 2020

19 Thursday Nov 2020

Posted by danielwalldammit in Alaska, Bad Photography, Travel

≈ 14 Comments

Tags

Alaska, Arctic, Family, Landing, Last Sunset, Photos, Sunset, Travel, Youtube

I know! Most of y’all will get a few more of these, but no so, those of us up here in Barrow. Our last sunset was yesterday. I’m told we can expect to be overrun by vampires any moment. We hear about that every year, actually, but this being 2020 and all, it seems like it actually might happen this time.

Ah well!

Anyway, I was flying up from Anchorage yesterday, caught a couple pictures of the sunset as the plane came in for a landing. Turns out, my nephew, Danielito, was filming the sunset on the ground, and he caught my plane coming in.

Danielito is a good kid.

I hope the vampires don’t get him!

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Mileage Varies

29 Monday Jul 2019

Posted by danielwalldammit in Alaska, Travel

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Anger, Complaints, Delays, Hotel, Irritation, Perception, Satisfaction, Time, Travel

67249247_10220021150664156_1178125180153626624_oI’m at the airport in Anchorage. The woman standing next to me gets out her phone. She is visibly irritated.

“Yes, I’m waiting here for the shuttle. Another gentleman is waiting too. There are three of us. We called half an hour ago and you said it would be 15 minutes. You told the other gentleman you’d be here any minute. It’s been 30. We’ve already called you twice and nothing’s happened. We’re just waiting…”

…a group of at least half a dozen people walk up and pushes between us just as the airport shuttle arrives and opens its door right in front of them.

“Oh, he’s here already. Boy are they fast”

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A Trip or Two through the Boneyard

02 Wednesday Jan 2019

Posted by danielwalldammit in History, Las Vegas, Museums, Travel

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Advertizing, Boneyard, History, Las Vegas, Museums, Neon, Neon Museum, Nevada, Travel

 

Neon alleyway

Moni and I are back in the icebox now, having just returned from a relatively short bout of southyness over the Christmas break. Didn’t get to see near enough of our loved ones, but it was good to connect with those we could.

We made a stop at one of my favorite haunts in Vegas, the Neon Museum, otherwise known as The Boneyard. This is the afterlife for many of the old marquees used on the strip and throughout town. It’s strange for me, because I used to live in the Vegas area (Boulder City, to be exact). I remember some of these signs when they were alive and in the wild, so to speak. I should say that I sort of remember them. The Strip and much of what most people think of as Vegas was always just as foreign to me as it might be to the tourists coming through town. I don’t think that’s an unusual perspective for locals, but it does give Vegas nostalgia an interesting mix of oddity and familiarity. One of the cultural consequences of tourism, I suppose, a past rendered both intimate and alien. Of course, in this case, the whole thing comes surrounded with the faint glow of neon lights.

Moni and I took a daytime tour of the museum a couple years ago, and we’ve been planning to go back ever since. This time, we made it! Thanks to Mark Thiel of Powel’s Camera Shop for helping us to figure out a few things about our new(ish) cameras. Moni and I made the Neon Museum our testing ground, so to speak. Looking at the photos now, I can see that I have a lot of practice to do, but anyway, the place is cool enough to overcome my clumsy camera skills in at least a couple pics.

The guided tours are an interesting mix of commentary on the signs themselves and stories about old Vegas. One minute you are learning about how they bend neon tubes to make the signs, and the next you are hearing about the role of divorce tourism in the mid-century development of the city. The tours are at their best in those moments when the two themes come together in a single narrative. The stars on the old Stardust marquee are a good example of that. As I recall our old daytime tour-guide related a rumor he couldn’t quite vouch for that they might have been meant to reflect the fall of radioactive dust in the days of nuclear testing. Our night guide on this tour was content to connect them to the era of space exploration. Either way, it’s interesting to see larger patterns of history in the very objects in front of you, or at least in the stories told about them.

My favorite story would have to be that of the Moulin Rouge accord. It’s hard to get a good picture of the Moulin Rouge sign, because it’s so big and distributed in with so many other signs, but the casino played an interesting role in Vegas history. So, it features prominently in the tours. As the first of the Vegas casinos to desegregate, it quickly became a Vegas hot spot, a place where the you could see Frank Sinatra hanging out with Sammy Davis Jr. after doing their own shows. So, it was fitting that the Moulin Rouge would pay a role in the civil rights movement. Facing protests in 1960 over segregation throughout the city, hotel owners met with civil rights leaders at the (already closed) Moulin Rouge. The resulting agreement desegregated the Las Vegas strip.

The tour guides have lots of other stories, of course. I wish I could remember them all.

(Anyway, …click to embiggen!)

Out front
Out front
Beginning of the tour (You can see the Moulin Rouge sign, sorta)
Beginning of the tour (You can see the Moulin Rouge sign, sorta)
Whole lotta pink going on here.
Whole lotta pink going on here.
Vegas Vic is kinda fuzzy here. (I think he'd been drinking.)
Vegas Vic is kinda fuzzy here. (I think he’d been drinking.)
The Lucky Duck
The Lucky Duck
Stardust
Stardust
She's just relaxing
She’s just relaxing
Sahara
Sahara
This was the first openly gay bar in Vegas
This was the first openly gay bar in Vegas
Vegas Vic in a clearer moment
Vegas Vic in a clearer moment
Sometimes the neon light takes a back seat to the sunlight
Sometimes the neon light takes a back seat to the sunlight
Near the end of the night tour
Wonder if I've ever been in that one
Gold Colors
Daytime guide
Daytime guide
Frontier
From a dry-cleaner, I think
From a dry-cleaner, I think
The end of the tour
The end of the tour
Doken Eddie's
Doken Eddie’s
Neon alleyway
Neon alleyway
Cruelty to tourguides. I am guilty of cutting this one in half. (So sorry)
Cruelty to tourguides. I am guilty of cutting this one in half. (So sorry)
Now about that divorce tourism!
Now about that divorce tourism!

 

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Road Trip! (Anchorage to Valdez)

31 Tuesday Jul 2018

Posted by danielwalldammit in Alaska, Bad Photography, Travel

≈ 20 Comments

Tags

Alaska, Boats, Glacier, Harbor, Nature, Photos, Road Trip, Travel, Valdez

36063336_10216696059378952_4554756841099231232_n

Moni likes to take pictures of the road.

Between her new job and our move into a new apartment, my girlfriend and I haven’t had much of a chance to to travel together this summer. We did manage to sneak out for a week or so in mid June. What we decided to do this time was a quick road trip from Anchorage to Valdez. Of course, getting to Anchorage required a little flying time, but that’s old hat. We had to make a couple purchases for the new place, so that meant staying a couple days in the vicinity of Anchorage, so we found a lovely bed and breakfast in Palmer.  After that, we hit the road!

Not literally, of course. I ain’t got nothin’ against the highway.

AnchtoValdez.png

Anyway, the trip was about a 5 hour drive, but we made plenty of stops. We traveled along the Matanuska river for quite some time, made a brief stop a bit south of Glenallen, then headed off toward Valdez. To say that we found a number of beautiful sites along the way would be putting it mildly.

Valdez itself was absolutely wonderful. I hit a couple museums (The Whitney Museum and the Valdez Museum & Historical Archive) and we hung out at the docks for a time. We ate at the Fat Mermaid a couple of times and made stops at Mike’s Palace and Fu Kung. …suffice to say that we were well fed. We also ran into the folks from Sweet Cheeks Bakery, run by the parents of a coworker, but we didn’t get back in time to get our cinnamon buns. Still, …all of Alaska is just one small village! You just can’t travel through this state without finding connections to the people you meet. Eventually, we bought tickets on a tour boat, which of course meant that I got sick (yes I took some meds), but mostly that was just amazing. I almost never opt for a paid tour, but I’m very glad I did this time.

On the last day as Moni and I were strolling around downtown getting ready to say goodbye to the place, a random guy came out of Mike’s Palace and asked us if we lived in the area. The answer was ‘no’, of course, and then he proceeded to tell us that he had lived here himself once, 30 years ago. I cringed inside as he launched into his efforts to tell me about the good old days. A few minutes later I felt a twinge of sadness as he left us with tales of bar fights between Okies and Texan (oil workers) spilling out of the Palace and onto the street. Apparently, the police had once been disarmed so as to enable the fight to continue. Additional stories involved a pair of Korean prostitutes who paid him extra for a pizza every night so as to have a place to stay. Just how much of this was true, I have no idea, but the stories were a good deal more entertaining than I had anticipated. I found myself wishing we’d run into him before lunch rather than after and on the verge of leaving. Still, a few more eagle pics and off we went.

Hell, even the shopping we did back in Anchorage before boarding the plane back home went well.

I wish every vacation was this cool.

(You may click to embiggen!)

 

Ruins from Old Valdez
Ruins from Old Valdez
Columbia Glacier
Columbia Glacier
Mountains in the Background
Mountains in the Background
On the Wing
On the Wing
Factory across the water
Factory across the water
Snow Goose BnB
Snow Goose BnB
The chunks of ice on top got there when they were thrown up out of the water as the ice broke apart.
The chunks of ice on top got there when they were thrown up out of the water as the ice broke apart.
This juvenile whale was playing around the boat for about half an hour. ...his mom was not amused.
This juvenile whale was playing around the boat for about half an hour. …his mom was not amused.
St. Innocent, Russian Orthodox Church in Anchorage (Moni really wanted to see this one)
St. Innocent, Russian Orthodox Church in Anchorage (Moni really wanted to see this one)
Random Waterfall empties into the sea
Random Waterfall empties into the sea
Yep, lotsa bunnies too!
Yep, lotsa bunnies too!
Looks Kinda Smug for a guy that lives on the scraps tossed out by fisherman!
Looks Kinda Smug for a guy that lives on the scraps tossed out by fisherman!
When you look into the scenery, sometimes the scenery looks back at you.
When you look into the scenery, sometimes the scenery looks back at you.
Copper River
Copper River
Blues happen
Blues happen
Almost there
Almost there
Just purdy
Just purdy
Are these guys ever not angry?
Are these guys ever not angry?
Water will fall
Water will fall
Mountains over trees
Mountains over trees
This, I'm told, is an oyster catcher.
This, I’m told, is an oyster catcher.
Well hello there!
Well hello there!
Almost an island of sorts
Almost an island of sorts
Local ruffians!
Local ruffians!
Heading Out
Heading Out
That mountain was framed!
That mountain was framed!
Glacier
Glacier
Horse Tail Falls
Horse Tail Falls
Lotta little ice
Lotta little ice
Moni likes to stop and take pictures of the road.
Moni likes to stop and take pictures of the road.
Big chunk of ice
Big chunk of ice
Closest I could find to street art
Closest I could find to street art
Random roadster (Anchorage)
Random roadster (Anchorage)
Columbia Glacier has the blues!
Columbia Glacier has the blues!
Couldn't get over the color of the water
Couldn’t get over the color of the water
You otter sea the mountains!
You otter sea the mountains!
Abandoned structure along the Matanuska
Abandoned structure along the Matanuska
Local Humor
Local Humor
Athabascan footwear (Copper River Heritage Center)
Athabascan footwear (Copper River Heritage Center)
Matanuska River
Matanuska River
Bit of color
Bit of color
Model Athabascan food cache.
Model Athabascan food cache.
Columbia Glacier
Columbia Glacier
The view from the Snowgoose BnB
The view from the Snowgoose BnB
Worthington Glacier
Worthington Glacier

 

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Capturing One of the Last Wild Alaskan Blockbusters on Film

06 Friday Jul 2018

Posted by danielwalldammit in Alaska

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

Alaska, Blockbuster, Business, Photos, Retail, Technology, Travel, Videos, Wildlife Photography

Wasilla

Yes, there are still Blockbusters in Alaska, at least two of them as I understand it; one in Fairbanks and one In Anchorage. I haven’t seen the one in Fairbanks, but Moni and I visited the one on Anchorage a couple weeks back. The one pictured above was still operating in Wasilla when we passed through on our way to Talkeetna this last Spring. Sadly, it has since closed down. Almost a year ago, we stopped into another Blockbuster in Soldatna, but that one too seems to have closed down. So yes, the great Alaskan Blockbuster lives yet in the wilderness of this great state, but it is an endangered species to be sure.

Why have Blockbusters lasted this long here in America’s ‘last frontier’?

Well ironic frontier jargon aside, the issue really does have something to do with the rough edges of our state. Simply put, the internet has not fully replaced video rentals in much of Alaska. Many of us have data-caps, and net usage can be quite costly up here. This fact makes video rental a more attractive option, and along with the various rental kiosks, it enables a precious few blockbusters to do business here in Alaska. But times, they are a changing, and we’re now down to two.

It’s a funny thing when you walk into one of these stores. You can’t help but feel as though you’ve been transported back a decade or two. They look just like you may have remembered them, which is of course the impression store managers want to create. But seriously, what else were they gonna look like? You might find moose in the parking lot, but inside the store, it’s pretty much the same.They will even ask you to be kind…

(You may click to embiggen)

 

Soldatna Interior 3
Anachorage
Alaska-specific marketing
Soldatna Bockbuster
Soldatna Interior 2
Soldatna Interior 1
Soldatna Interior 4

 

Many thanks to Moni for contributing the Soldatna pics.

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Djou Know Juneau?

17 Tuesday Apr 2018

Posted by danielwalldammit in Alaska, Animals, Travel

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Alaska, Alaska Natives, Eagle, Glacier, Juneau, Nature, Photography, Photos, Travel

Well over a thousand miles separates Barrow from Juneau. It’s enough to make the place as different from Barrow as either place would be from much of the lower 48. I imagine many of my friends and family must themselves imagine the sights Moni and I have been enjoying here this last few days are common experiences. But we don’t have eagles in Barrow, nor trees or mountains. We don’t have glaciers either, unless you count the whole ocean as a glacier for part of the year. (Jokes aside, I’m pretty sure that’s not how glaciers work.) Southeast Alaska is a truly beautiful place. It’s one we don’t often get to enjoy.

Still…

Travel happens!

***

This guy was a little ways off, which is why Moni and I weren’t immediately sure what we were looking at. I was busy snapping stills of this eagle with as much zoom as I could. Moni scooped me with a vid.

…the persistence of seagulls pays off.

A needlessly hurried spin around Mendenhall Lake.

…and a short photo gallery (click to embiggen):

Chilkat Weaving demo at the Alaska Native Studies Conference
Chilkat Weaving demo at the Alaska Native Studies Conference
Governor's Mansion
Form Line Art on a Utility Box
Form Line Art on a Utility Box
Dancing at the Folk Music Festival
Dancing at the Folk Music Festival
Mendenhall+
Mendenhall+
Mendenhall Glacier
Mendenhall Glacier
Blues
Blues
Fireweed Fiddle (at the Alaskan Folk Festival
Downtown Juneau
Downtown Juneau
Sunset at the Anchorage Airport
Sunset at the Anchorage Airport
Nugget Falls
Nugget Falls
Denizens of the University of Alaska, Southeast
Denizens of the University of Alaska, Southeast
Mendenhall Glacier zoomed in a bit)
Auke Lake from the University of Alaska, Southeast
Sitting on the Dock of the Bay
Sitting on the Dock of the Bay
Juneau
Juneau
A Bit of Street Art
A Bit of Street Art
Shore of Auke Lake
Shore of Auke Lake
Mountains Overlooking Mendenhall Lake
Mountains Overlooking Mendenhall Lake
The Visitor Center and a small Pond at Mendenhall Lake
The Visitor Center and a small Pond at Mendenhall Lake
Couple friends walking under a rainbow
Couple friends walking under a rainbow
Mendenhall Lake
Mendenhall Lake
Mendenhall Lake in the evening
Mendenhall Lake in the evening
This was Auke Bay as seen from the University of Alaska, Southeast (taken through a chain link fence)
This was Auke Bay as seen from the University of Alaska, Southeast (taken through a chain link fence)

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A Trip to Central America, and to 1950!

20 Tuesday Feb 2018

Posted by danielwalldammit in History, Politics, Travel

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Banana Republics, Central America, Coasta Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Imperialism, Journal, Travel, United Fruit

I never met my grandparents on my mother’s side. Hardly a day went by that Mom didn’t mention them, but of course I have more questions about them than answers. So, it was a very pleasant surprise to find out that grandpa left behind a few travel journals. One relates the story of a trip to central America in 1950.

What caught my attention?

This.

Passenger list

Okay, so it might not be all that obvious why this should be interesting to me or anyone else for that matter. I probably won’t be traveling on the Great White Fleet any time soon, and who has even heard of United Fruit? They probably don’t even exist anymore, right? Well, they don’t. That’s true. If you’ve eaten a Chiquita Banana, then you’ve some familiarity with their progeny, but United Fruit itself doesn’t exist anymore. In the 1950s, though, they were going good and strong.

United Fruit was more than a business. It controlled much of central America and helped give birth to the phrase ‘banana republic,’ which I suppose means it has yet another descendant of sorts in the business world. In just four years, United Fruit and the Central Intelligence Agency would engineer a military coup in Guatemala, one of the nations my grandparents visited on this trip. Two of the ships in United Fruit’s Great White Fleet would later be used in the Bay of Pigs operation. Clearly, United Fruit did a lot more than grow and sell bananas. They would eventually be forced to sell off their monopoly interests in Guatemala, and then merged with another company to become Chiquita. In the meantime, Grandma and Grandpa were free to enjoy the hospitality of the company on the Great White Fleet.

It’s just a travel journal, to be sure, but a travel journal into the business end of American imperialism. Suffice to say, this was enough to peak my curiosity.

***

I can’t say the journal was overflowing with details of military juntas and revolutionary conspirators. That’s not what Grandpa and Grandma went down there to see, and this isn’t exactly my area, anyway, so I may have missed a thing or three. Most of the journal seems like pretty normal stuff for travelers. Its pages are filled with tales of mundane trips about the countryside, meals enjoyed (or simply ensured), beautiful architecture, run-down hovels, archeological sites, and countless random travel companions, most of which slide onto stage and back off without too much fuss.

Yet there are a few notable passages.

I no longer have the actual journal in my possession, but I took pictures of every page. I reproduced a number of the these below, numbering them for ease of reference. I intend to give the thing a closer reading sometime down the road, but for now, these are a few things that caught my notice for one reason or another…

***

Apparently, my grandparents hit a cow somewhere near Chichen Itza (pic 70). Grandpa also mentions meeting a young man in that area who had been to Peoria, IL during the war (pic 76). I can’t tell enough from the narrative, whether the man is even local, or perhaps an ex patriot, but I wonder if this wasn’t someone who had come up on the Bracero program (workers brought into the U.S. to replace Americans gone to war). Either way, I expect there would be an interesting story there.

They encountered the President of Honduras (Juan Lindo?) whom they were evidently told had been too democratic to live in the President’s Palace. He tipped his hat to someone in their party. (You can read Grandpa’s account of this on pic 55).

Grandpa mentions a banana shaped menu once in his journal (pic 46). Pics 14 and 15 would seem to fit the bill. Oddly enough, I don’t see bananas all over the menus, which is interesting. Under the guidance of Edward Bernays, the father of modern Public Relations, United Fruit made an effort to broaden people’s ideas about when and where to eat bananas, a campaign which included (for instance) reversing ideas about whether or not parents should encourage snacking. I really did expect to see a lot more  gustatory propaganda on those menus, but mostly the fruit (which would have been the Big Mike), seems to show up in pictures and other visual motifs.

There is an interesting little history of the Banana, according to United Fruit (pics 17-19), and nice overview of the travel services aboard ships of the United Fruit Company (29-45). Oddly enough, this does not mention any of the company’s efforts to monopolize the entire national economies of several of the countries on the itinerary.

A couple of these pamphlets include references to ‘Middle America’. (I think these were menus.) I found the phrase amusing enough, wondering what folks in Oklahoma or Nebraska might make of it, but of course our North American fashions of speaking about ‘America’ can be a little odd once you shift references to include the whole hemisphere. More interesting than that, the phrasing matches a news agency developed by Bernays for the purpose of promoting the interests of United Fruit. The Middle America Information Bureau had gone dormant by 1950, but I do find myself wondering if the phrasing doesn’t reflect some conscious reference to that project.

And then of course there are just a couple cryptic references in Grandpa’s journal to a rather large layoff by United Fruit coupled with the observation that communism is coming in fast (pic 54).

That’s it!

I could easily wish for more. I could wish Grandpa had uncovered a great big smoking gun, or that he had left behind a complete account of the political history of the region, but alas, he was just a tourist along on a vacation. His politics were not mine, and he didn’t know the history of the company. He mostly wrote about the meals and the sites, and the friendly chatter with people he met here and there. It’s me that sees these documents nearly 70 years later and thinks about all the history of the company that took him down there, but perhaps there is an interesting lesson here after all. This is what the imperialism of the day looked like to people like my Grandpa, to guests of United Fruit.

It was central Americans that witnessed the violent side of United Fruit. For so many (North) Americans this company took the form of slices of fruit may have sprinkled over our corn flakes. Or perhaps it was a quaint news story about a far away place. Living here in the United States, the majority of Americans would never have felt the blunt force of this company’s power. Neither would they have seen it in any recognizable manner. What they saw fruit.

If we North Americans heard any more about United Fruit, it was in messages carefully crafted to the company’s benefit.

Whatever else can be learned from my Grandpa’s journal, it seems likely we can learn the same was true for countless American tourists traveling through the region. United Fruit is all over the literature in this journal, but it’s all over it like Disneyland in the memories of afamily outing. Details that would one day matter can be found here and there, along with rumors that even reached the ears of a passing tourist. Still nothing recognizably nefarious pops up in the journal, at least not to the eyes of tourists such as my grandfather. What we can see is a range of pamphlets, dinner menus, and brief canned histories, all of which make the whole region seem so innocent, and so quaint. To so many (North) Americans, that banana shaped menu is precisely what our imperial age did look like.

I could of course rest happy thinking that we are better and wiser today. This is all behind us, right? Then again, we sometimes get a little reminder that there is nothing new under the sun.

Front Cover
Plane Ticket
Ford’s Air Tour

Ford’s Tour (Inside)
Ford’s Air Tour (Backside)
Great White Fleet

Menu
Honduras (Backside)
Folded Paper

San Jose
Places of Interest, San Jose
San Jose Map

San Jose (Folded Out)
Banana Menu
Inside the Bananas

United Fruit (Back)
United Fruit (Front)
United Fruit (Middle)

United Fruit Back (Folded Out)
Breakfast Menu
Menu (Great White Fleet)

Lunch Menu (Open)
Middle America
Dinner Menu (Open)

Great White Fleet Radio News
Great White Fleet Radio News again
Great White Fleet Radio News yet again

Last of the Great White Fleet Radio News
Menus
Pics and United Fruit Pamphlet Cover

United Fruit Pamphlet 1
United Fruit Pamphlet 2
United Fruit Pamphlet 3

United Fruit Pamphlet 4
United Fruit Pamphlet 5
United Fruit Pamphlet 6

United Fruit Pamphlet 7
United Fruit Pamphlet 8
United Fruit Pamphlet 9

United Fruit Pamphlet 10
United Fruit Pamphlet 11
United Fruit Pamphlet 12

United Fruit Pamphlet 13
United Fruit Pamphlet 14
United Fruit Pamphlet 15

United Fruit Pamphlet 16
Reference to the banana menu
Passenger list

Passenger list 2
Costa Rica
Random Pics

Moar Pics
Pics and Journal Entries
Pics and Journal

Reference to a Big Lay-off and threats of communism
Too Democratic for his palace!
Guatemala

Pics
Pics again
Pic and Journal

Pics and Journal
More pics and more journal
black and white pics

Panama tours (I got this one way out of order)
pics on both pages
moar black and white pics

mixed pics
wood carrier

random bit of journal
hit a cow
Mayan Lodge

Chicheni Itza
More Chichen Itza
journal entry about the game court

temples
Temple pics

Exchange Rates
Back Cover

This is hardly a research paper, but I thought it might be worth mentioning a couple sources here. I first Read Bitter Fruit as a teaching assistant to a professor who specialized in Latin-American studies. Somewhere along the way, I picked up a couple other books on the subject. Bananas makes a particularly nice quick read with a lit of interesting details on the history of United Fruit. Cohen’s books is also useful. Galeano’s book helps to draw connections between different regions and phases of history, all with a very pointed sense of significance.

The Bernays angle on all this stuff is particularly interesting. His book Propaganda, is still considered a classic in the history of Public relations. It’s a good peek into the kind of techniques the man used in selling United Fruit and its interests to the American public.

Bernays, Edward. Propaganda. Broooklyn, New Yok: IG Publishing, 1928, 2005.

Chapman, Peter. Bananas: How the United Fruit Company shaped the world. Edinburgh, New York, Melbourne: Canongate, 2007.

Cohen, Rich. The Fish that Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America’s Banana King. Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, New York: Picador, 2012.

Galeano, Eduardo. Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1973, 1997.

Schlesinger, Stephen and Stephen Kinzer. Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatelama. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1982, 2005.

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