Yearly Archives: 2017

Colgate University

Colleges

Pastoral beauty.

For an alphabetical index of the New England College series of pieces, click here.

We have visited many beautiful New England colleges but none comes close to the sheer physical beauty of Colgate, a school for 2,900 undergraduates adjacent to the charming town of Hamilton, New York. Where some schools insist on the latest architect du jour as designer of the newest buildings, Colgate sticks to its classical style and the result is glorious.

A solid endowment sees to it that nothing is cheapened and we were lucky to chance on a guided tour by two enthusiastic sophomores who showed us the ropes on a beautiful New York summer day. The school dates from 1819 and rests on an 575 acre campus an hour out from Syracuse and Ithaca. Student car ownership is permitted which makes access to these larger cities feasible.



Pastoral serenity.


The Admissions building.


The Memorial Chapel


Inside the Chapel.


Student housing.


Picture perfect.


Michael and Cassie, our enthusiastic sophomore guides.


The main dining hall, one of many dining facilities on campus.


This building was slated for demolition as a stylistic mismatch, but a student protest saw to it that it survived.


Olin Hall. Yes, yet another Olin building, this one an arts center.


Neptune’s Horn by Jonathan Kirk.


The Robert H. N. Ho Science Center is beyond magnificent.


Errant dino.


Botany and biology. Superb architecture.


In the Student’s Center. Winston at left.


Cassie and Michael frame the beautiful vista with Taylor Lake in the background.


Donovan’s Pub, yet another dining facility. Colgate has made major efforts to enhance the quality of food offered, a smart move in a competitive universe.


The Case-Geyer Library.


Distinguished alumni include journalists Andy Rooney, Gloria Borger and Monica Crowley, John Dean of Watergate fame (oops!), John Cassavetes and Bob Balaban.

Fort Ticonderoga

Photographs

A rich history.

Fort Ticonderoga was completed by the French in 1757 when they still controlled Quebec and what was eventually to become Vermont and the revolutionary state of New York. On raised ground with strategic views, it’s at the south end of Lake Champlain. The Fort featured in disputes between the French and the English and later between the English and the American revolutionaries.


For our visit to Middlebury College yesterday we stayed in Shoreham at the 1790 Shoreham Inn, a few miles north east of the Fort where the proprietors Elizabeth and Anthony made us welcome, serving a tremendous breakfast of French toast and sausages on what was the first properly sunny day we have had in two weeks.



The Shoreham Inn.


A WW1 machine gun honors the war dead outside the Inn.


We had to take the ferry into New York, which was rather fun.


The ferry prepares to dock on the New York side of Lake Champlain.


Nine cars will fit on the ferry. Ours was one of two – mid-week touring makes sense!


Trust the French to erect a statue of Cupid in the King’s Garden at the Fort.


The formal gardens are in a peaceful setting on the lake.


Guns surround the battlements and appear to be 4″ in bore. The British, under General Burgoyne, managed to take the Fort from the Americans – the latter originally commanded by Benedict Arnold – by the simple expedient of dragging cannon to the even higher nearby Mount Defiance which it was known was within range. The French may have been brilliant military engineers but geographic strategy was not their strong point …. The Americans abandoned the Fort to the British without resistance once they saw Burgoyne’s cannon atop Mount Defiance. Brilliant strategy by the British.


Fleur de Lys decorate the gun barrels.


It is never a good idea to sail down a narrow waterway with cannon above, something Churchill failed to learn from history when he sent the British fleet down the Dardannelles in 1915 to massive losses of men and hardware from the overhead Turkish cannon and the mines below the waterline. The Turkish guns saw to it that British minesweepers were rendered useless.


In addition to dozens of cannon, there is a handful of mortars which are some 12″ bore.


A long and distinguished list. Horatio Gates defeated Burgoyne at Saratoga, replacing the ineffectual Schulyer (pronounced ‘Skyler’). Amherst was named after Sir Jeffrey Amherst. Kosciuszko (correct spelling) was the very effective fortifications engineer at Saratoga. John André was eventually executed for committing treason with Arnold, who got away with it.


The far side of this barracks building overlooks Lake Champlain, facing north.


One of the supply houses in the Fort.


Fearsome stakes deter those foolish enough to charge the Fort.


Read here about the subsequent battles of Saratoga, where Burgoyne’s British Army ended up surrendering, and you will conclude that the Americans’ flight from Fort Ticonderoga was of little consequence to the outcome of the Revolutionary War.

A visit to the Fort is not only recommended to Revolutionary War buffs but also to anyone who enjoys deserted back roads through Vermont and New York which offer some glorious driving …. even in a Cadillac!

Middlebury College

Colleges

A placid setting for a great school.

For an alphabetical index of the New England College series of pieces, click here.

One hour due south of Burlington, Vermont, Middlebury College educates 2,500 undergraduates in a placid setting on a beautiful campus. This is a highly rated liberal arts school and, if not the most famous, academically it is one of the best. Chartered in 1800 it was the first college to grant a bachelor’s degree to an African-American, that in 1823. It was also one of the first schools to offer education to women, in 1883. A healthy endowment sees to it that nothing is lacking in the way of amenities, as the pictures below show.

One of the striking features is that most of the buildings on the main campus are constructed from local white and grey granite, regardless of age, making for a cohesive whole. The outliers across Highway 30, which include Admissions, the Art Museum and the very extensive sports facilities, are more mixed.

If there is a standout, it’s the library. Colleges like Dartmouth may boast a greater selection of antiquarian books, but from the perspective of a place to study and a vast choice of contemporary materials, Middlebury is outstanding. Economics and languages are the strong suits here and recent gifts see to it that improvements continue apace.



A placid setting.


White granite abounds.


The Emma Willard House dates from 1811, and was the first location for the education of women.

Centeno House, the Parton Center for Health and Wellness.


Meeker House, one of the many dorms on campus.


The Kevin Mahaney Center for the Arts.


Inside the Art Museum.


A show of Roy Liechtenstein sketches for his hull painting for the America’s Cup boat.


The hull on display in the grounds.


A small part of the state-of-the-art recreation center.


The Axinn Center is an expansion of the original Egbert Starr Library. This is now the student center.


The Reading Room in the Axinn Center is magnificent.


Placid.


The Memorial Chapel.


The interior of the Memorial Chapel is very simple.


Large expanses of lawn let the campus breathe.


The Davis Family Library is a standout.


Inside the Library.


Middlebury alumni rank 7th nationally of any school, measured by their success, and include John Deere of tractor fame, hedgie Lewis Bacon, James Cromwell, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Ron Brown of the Clinton administration and Felix Rohatyn, the man who saved New York.

The Turning Point

Photographs

The American Revolutionary War.

We visited two key sites of the Revolutionary War today where battles in August and October, 1777 marked the turning point in the war of revolution against the British.

First, a word of support for the National Park Service before the pig in the Oval Office abolishes it. While both sites we visited are free, that does not mean you should avoid supporting the NPS which does a truly splendid job of maintaining our heritage and whose sites remind us of the greatness of the American Republic. At the second, staffed, site in Saratoga, NY, we got the most insightful and knowledgeable history lesson from a Park Ranger before enjoying the equally illuminating movie.

“Where are you from?” he asked me.

“London”. Faster than explaining I have been in America longer than I was in England.

“Know what the best comment I ever got from an Englishman was when I asked why he was visiting? He simply stated ‘I wanted to find out how we lost you.’ ”

And lose us the British did, after the preliminary Battle of Bennington where the revolutionaries raided British arms and supplies, for use against their opressor just weeks later. The turning point in the War of Independence was marked at the Battle of Saratoga where for the first time in history a British Army surrendered, if you exclude the Norman Conquest of 1066. This victory allowed the patriots to buy out the Hessians (German mercenaries fighting for the British under their German king, George III, like me masquerading as an Englishman) with land grants and cash. This made them newly minted Americans, now fighting for George Washington! Ah, mercenaries.

It’s impossible to convey just how moving is the experience of walking on the very battlefields where the Redcoats and the patriots had at it, the Redcoats at Saratoga again brutally mauled by Morgan’s snipers who were as used to shooting their dinner as they became accustomed to shooting the British. And with similar accuracy.

The Saratoga NPS site is exquisite, a masterpiece of understatement. Download the iPhone guide and you are directed to ten low key sites marking key strategic locations of this epic battle, one which saw General John Burgoyne surrender to General Horatio Gates and one which saw incredible leadership from General Benedict Arnold, later to migrate to the dark side. We visited on an overcast day (what else is new in New England?) and had the whole tour to ourselves.



The approach to the Bennington monument. Simple and exquisite.


Where General Stark mauled the British.


Bennington.


Colonel Nichols of the New Hampshire Regiment headed one of the two encircling actions at Bennington. Right here!


Inside the NPS Visitors’ Center at Saratoga. The British were slaughtered in the woods outside this window.


Can you see the Redcoats?


A rare example of Polish intelligence, with but one missing preposition. The military engineer Kosciuszko fabricated ramparts which totally discombobulated the British.


A tribute to Brigadier General Abraham ten Broeck and the Albany County Militia for their key rôle in the Battle of Saratoga.


The British had many of these, the Patriots none. The remaining ones not in the National Park are now on display at Westpoint.


At this, a time when our Republic has never been under graver threat, make a visit to our National Parks and their Revolutionary War monuments a priority on your vacation. And if you make your vacation in the Saratoga area you will enjoy some of the most gorgeous landscapes on the American continent.

Rhode Island School of Design

Colleges

‘Risdee’ to aficionados.

For an alphabetical index of the New England College series of pieces, click here.

RISD is generally ranked as the #1 art school in the US, and is located at the base of the Brown University campus. The school does not confer a degree, its minor requiring studies in history, philosophy, social sciences, English, art history or liberal arts at an accredited college for a degree to be earned. Brown, as it happens, is happy to oblige and offers a dual Brown/RISD degree in exchange for five years at the two institutions.

Whether it’s photography, film, glass, furniture, graphic design, printmaking – you name it – RISD is the place to go.

We focused our brief visit the other day on some of the art on display after a busy day touring Brown. The campus is a bit all-over-the-place with no unifying quad or sense of an architectural whole, but there were lots of fun discoveries to be made. As I would far prefer my son becomes successful and buys art, rather than make art and be economically destitute, our limited visit was just right. I cannot think of a worse way of making a living than as an artist where success is as much serendipity as skill, with a healthy dollop of talent thrown into the mix. There is simply too much competition for the profession of making art to make economic sense and the barriers to entry are near non-existent, meaning too much competition.



Intent on destroying the beauty of the museum’s entrance, some idiot has affixed a bunch of painted bamboo poles using cable ties to the railings. This is not art. It’s stupidity plus a healthy leavening of pretentiousness.


Cool modern sculpture contrasts with the architecture. No magic here – a metal pole down the drilled centers of the eggs holds all in place.


By a country mile this is the finest piece on display, Manet’s portrait of Berthe Morisot, 1871. The narrative has it that the casualness of the pose shocked viewers. I think that’s nonsense. Rather, what you see is nascent photographic imagery – the missing foot for example – in a candid snapshot of a painting. Degas did this sort of thing best. The lovely pastel on the right is by the sitter, for Berthe Morisot was an accomplished painter in her own right.


With so much to show and so little space, RISD wisely throws as many paintings on the wall of this overflow gallery as it can. It may be tough viewing, but it beats leaving them in the basement.


The setting of RISD is in the city of Providence, Rhode Island.


A mess of buildings, confusingly arranged.


More of the same.


The concept of ‘teaching art’ is anathema to me. You can teach technique in certain subjects but you cannot teach talent to the talentless, so I always rather wonder about art schools. Given that techniques can be easily learned from a book or an app (photography being an excellent example) all that remains to be found is talent and that’s a binary equation. You either have it or you do not. It cannot be taught. Think about that next time you see 20 talentless fools, untroubled by original thought, all obediently pointing their cameras at the subject as dictated by their equally talentless ‘instructor’. Or, worse, imitating that supreme bore, Ansel Adams.

RISD alumni include James Franco, David Byrne, Tina Weymouth, Sam Posey (!) and many others. In no case was their talent found at school.