June 2010 Archives

Expedition Madagascar--Doorly Zoo

Gary Don Luckert

on June 4, 2010 7:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This year's new addition at our #1 tourist attraction in both the city and the state is based upon the heavy investment Doorly Zoo has in research and conservation on Madagascar, where its staff have found new species of lemurs and other animals and is trying to save them from the growing threat of human populations, the largest international cause of species extinction. I finally saw Madagascar the day after Memorial Day when I figured, if I were early enough (the first visitor there, in fact) on the day after a holiday, I wouldn't have the usual summertime huge crowds. (A worker told me rough figures for the holiday weekend--14,000 Friday, 16,000 Saturday, 15,000 Sunday, 17,000 Monday--and was hoping Tuesday would be quiet.)

The block-long low building of 15 indoor exhibits is just south of the aviary's east entrance, signs telling one to go through Hubbard Gorilla Valley to reach it. While Skipper and the other penguins aren't around (all our penguins are in the Scott Aquarium or by the giraffes), there were plenty of King Julians and what must be one of the larger zoo collections of lemurs plus some other creatures, fish, reptiles, aye ayes, frogs, a large bird, and outside more lemurs and two fossas, only one out in their yard, one of my zoo favorites. I had trouble photographing in the dimness of the building, so I don't have many of those photos, but the highly detailed backgrounds, among the most intricately painted backdrops I've ever seen, are visible. The fourth photo here is a small conservatory for several orchid species and other island plants.

The mysterious fossa was formerly in the darkness of the Kingdom of the Night below the Desert Dome, where I couldn't get a decent photo. But now there are two in an outdoor enclosure. Only one was busy that morning, apparently searching for food.

Nearby is Lemur Island by two gigantic fake baobab trees. (The Lied Jungle demonstrates the zoo's expertise in creating such artificial excellence.) Plenty of King Julians, too.

Nearby is a long netted tunnel section, one for sifakas, the other for other lemurs, with no separation between spectators and animals. I don't know how that works, because it doesn't open until 10:00, and I was there shortly after 8:30, the summer opening time. Considering how a noisy uproar broke out while I was taking the two above photos, I'm not sure I'd run that gauntlet. Ironically, the reason I didn't see the new attraction when it opened was because the chilly weather kept these lemurs indoors and the netted tunnel empty.

Lauritzen Gardens 29 May 2010

Gary Don Luckert

on June 4, 2010 6:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

With Lauritzen Gardens being my favorite walking area, I had no trouble covering most of it before and after the carillon concert. The peonies were ending, but the nearby Song of the Lark meadow (named for Willa Cather's book) held short-lived poppy pleasures.

The chives and santolina were exploding bushes in the Herb Garden.

The Rose Garden suffused the air with fragrance.

Nothing further has yet been done on the Japanese Garden.

The trains still ran on time in the Model Railroad Garden.

The Garden in the Glen's green tunnel was still the lushest area.

And the Victorian Garden had its usual bright colorful patterns.

Lauritzen Gardens Carillon

Gary Don Luckert

on June 4, 2010 1:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Over the Memorial Day weekend LG had an unusual appearance of a mobile carillon (German Glockenspiel), made in Asten, The Netherlands, owned by an Ohio company. Most carillons are separate bell towers (Italian campanile) like the one on UNO's campus (with French bells) or the ones I visited in eastern Pennsylvania, though also are found in notable buildings. This one claims to be the heaviest in North America, with 48 bells weighing 10,710 pounds, the whole with the semi-tractor 5.5 tons, according to the Chime Master fact sheet. The world's largest concentration of carillons is in the Netherlands (the most), Belgium, and France, so it isn't surprising this one is Dutch with the royal imprimatur (the Konick/king/royal). Because my longtime Philadelphia pen pal had taken me to two when I visited there decades ago, I made a point of going to the middle one of the three daily hour-long concerts each day of the holiday weekend.

The bells are works of art in themselves, as the close-up photos show. The carillonneur was UNO's. The keyboard is called the baton console, played with loose fists for the treble, the bass with the feet. Loudness is controlled by how hard one strikes the wooden hammers.

Shannon Richards announced her numbers and answered any questions of too few spectators. The two pieces I enjoyed the best were characteristically classical, a Bach piece everyone taking piano lessons has played and part of Mozart's well-known Theme and Variations on "Ah! vous dirai-je, Maman" (I shall tell you, Mama), which we know as "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star." Well before her concert, a test tape was played of our National Anthem and "America the Beautiful," sonorous clanging versions I'm not likely to hear again.

Metro Fountains--Omaha & Council Bluffs

Gary Don Luckert

on June 3, 2010 10:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I spent Memorial Day sightseeing. Between Omaha and Council Bluffs, I found a number of very different fountains, reminding me of how I diligently tracked down all the waterfalls I could find when I was still traveling around the country. (Of course, I've already shown the Canada geese fountain by First National and its water wall for the office park.) I started my day at Lewis & Clark Landing on the waterfront near the I-480 bridge east of the Quest Center because I'd never approached the Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge from the south before. So the first fountain was Matthew Placzek's 270-ton Labor, using four Asarco Lead Refinery ladles as kind of an ironic tribute to the defunct polluter near its old plant site. The 30-foot grouping is one of the largest monuments to union workers in the nation. The regional headquarters of the National Park Service is at the left, back by the bridge.

Back on the other/north side of the National Park Service in its garden was a most unusual small fountain that delighted children. I guessed it to be an ancient catfish. The water shoots down!

At the curling west end of the Kerrey bridge in the small amphitheater is an action-activated fountain squealing children relish for the surprising jets that change across the circular grid. The left photo is from the bridge looking north past condominiums built and building. The right photo looks back south to the National Park Service area.

My next fountain is one of the most famous--perhaps the best-known--Daniel Chester French's Black Angel, commissioned by General Grenville Dodge's two daughters for their mother's grave. Ruth Anne Dodge had the same vision three nights in a row before her death of an angel standing on a boat, an arm beckoning to her and a bowl of water for her to drink from, as she did in her dream the third night. French is noted for his Concord Minute Man, the seated Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial, and the Standing Lincoln outside the Nebraska capitol. As usual I had to wander around some of CB's highest bluffs lost at first, but the site is actually easily found on the south edge of Fairview Cemetery at the upper, northern end of Oakland Avenue with its fine old houses. The trick is finding Oakland Avenue off Kanesville Boulevard.

In the little photo above, the Dodge monument would be to the left, while I was looking west from my pickup back toward distant Omaha with its First National Bank tower.

Then I went back downtown--literally, from the high bluff--and found this charming fountain of cupids/cherubs only a block from CB's central, much-used, handsome Bayliss Park.

Sometime I will have to try some night photos, because Brower Hatcher's Well Spring fountain, the centerpiece of Bayliss Park, is beautifully lit with a changing kaleidoscope of colors. His sculpture Oculus is west of the fountain (in another entry). A small version of the circle of spurting jets for children is near the big fountain, seen at the right in the second photo below.

First National Bank's Pioneer Courage Sculpture Park

Gary Don Luckert

on June 2, 2010 8:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Steve Jordon, Omaha World-Herald, 26 May 2010: "First National Bank's Pioneer Courage sculpture park has been honored by the National Sculpture Society in Washington, D.C. The Henry Hering Medal for Art and Architecture, awarded for collaboration among landscape architect, sculptor and owner, went to Bruce Lauritzen, chairman of the Omaha bank; to sculptors Blair Buswell and Edward Fraughton, and, posthumously, to the late Jim Reeves, landscape architect. The project, started in 1998, is the world's largest wildlife installation, with 123 bronze and steel pieces, including a wagon train, bison and Canada geese in flight. It unifies First National's nine-block office campus and celebrates the optimism of Nebraska's first settlers."

On a hot May 29th afternoon I traced out this astonishing collection angling from 1400 Capitol Street to 1601 Dodge across from the First National skyscraper dominating the skyline. I began at the rear of the wagon train, across 14th Street west from the John Gottschalk Freedom Center, where three five-story presses can print off up to 75,000 issues an hour of our daily newspaper.

The sizes of the sculptures can be gauged from the man in the red shirt at the left. The Gottschalk Freedom Center is at the right/east.

Of course, I liked the boy and his dog. On top of the hill beyond him a group of women and girls are hurrying toward the train.

I was moving from the end to the front of the wagon train curving around westward on Capitol, so this is the third wagon. Note the front tilt as a wheel goes over a rock. I like the little girl running ahead with her basket of flowers, the front woman of the hilltop grouping at the far left in the large photo below the two small ones. Notice the anachronistic contrast of this brilliantly done pioneer scrapbook amid the glassy new buildings and cars. (Across the street south/right is now a gaping hole to be filled by an all-glass condominium tower, and then the Union Pacific Headquarters, more glass, in a later photo.)

In front of the little girl is this wagon pulled by mules, with the Northwestern Bell Building in the background.

The lead wagon is a marvel, beginning with this man trying to push a wheel in grey mud, a boy leaning off the front seat to look back at him, a team of oxen rather than horses pulling the tilted wagon up the rocky hill.

Across from the left/north comes a trapper with horse problems trying to catch/keep up.

This photo shows the mule-pulled wagon again, with the hole across Capitol for the all-glass condominium building, the Union Pacific Headquarters behind it.

Across the street is a large First National office block with one of the most handsome outdoor plazas for its workers I've ever seen, a sunken space with a water wall on the south. I recommend peeking in to find out where the rushing water sounds are coming from.

From the lead wagon one goes south down 15th Street following the bison. Note in the photo below at the right the single male bull standing incongruously on the corner. He's to the right and above the lead driver. In the middle of that block, walking south, another is lumbering along, then one jumping over a low wall, and a calf at the next corner south.

Turn west/right up Dodge to the next corner where the rest of the bison herd meets the rising flock of Canada geese above their shallow rocky stream, including two perched on the corner lamp post at 16th and Dodge. That's First National's huge presence in the background in the photo at the left immediately below. At the back center of the special-effects photo showing off the geese and splashing water is the Brandeis Building, once our premier department store, now mostly condominiums.

Meg Saligman's "Fertile Ground"

Gary Don Luckert

on June 2, 2010 2:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Turning around from the 13th and Webster intersection where the Ameritrade Park sign is, you will see the third largest mural in the nation. I have shown it before, but I never got out and walked the length of it from the other side of 13th/Mike Fahey Street. This photo is for the relative size, with the truck passing. The gigantic painting of Omaha's past, present, and future covers the east side of the Energy Systems Building.

The south end starts with a familiar figure, Peter Kiewit, the familiar white-haired gentleman who founded the international construction giant. The Peter Kiewit Foundation funded this huge art project of 32,500 square feet including Omaha people the artist met during her residency.