Philadelphia 4: John's and Schmitz

Just to recap, we drove into Philly on Sunday and visited the ESP, then went to Victory for dinner. The previous post about Mutter took place on Monday morning.  After many hours in the museum we were hungry and had cheese steak on our minds.  We've been watching Bizarre Foods lately and saw an episode that took Andrew to  John's Roast Pork.  It looked so good (and, oddly, not bizarre) that it immediately made our list.

 

The place is a little hole in the wall, and ordering is a little intimidating, but it's well worth the trouble.  We shared a roast pork sandwich and a Philly cheese steak.  Mr. Zimmern claimed that the roast pork was remarkable, and maybe it is, but we agreed that the cheese steak was the better of the two.  Lunch was simple, good, and filling.  We were energized to head out again.

 

I don't even know how many pickles we ate.  Many.  We do love pickles.

We did very little shopping on this trip; only stopping in a couple "vintage" shops, but we couldn't pass up a surprise Buffalo Exchange!  I benefited from the logical sizing of men's clothes.  30" pants are almost always 30 inches.  A medium shirt is medium.  20 minutes, in and out... unfortunately, that was 10 minutes to late for the meter.

Nevermind that parking ticket, though.  Heeeeeeeeeeres wieners!  Boo had told us about this German restaurant first, and then Erik sent me a text that said, "If you do not take your lady friend to Brauhaus Schmitz, you are a [jerk]".  The boys were right, Schmitz is amazing.  We shared a couple beers that can't be found anywhere else in the United States and a nice big plate of wursts with mustard and knödeland cabbage.  And we ate under the glow of the German purity law (Reinheitsgebot)!  That's not as scary as it sounds; it dictates the ingredients in a good beer. 

I'm not sure if there is a German law about sausages, but the beer and the wursts were both fantastic.  

Sarah did all the driving while we were in Philly, which was great for me.  I don't feel like I have a lot of room to complain, but that hasn't stood in my way before.  The bumper sticker says it all.

So glad we live where we do.

Philidelphia 3: The Mutter, the cheese steak, and the Brauhaus

The title sounds like a the title of a Tom Robbins book, but don't get that excited.  Despite reading all his books and envying his prose, I'm still not capable of clever metaphors to tie the story together and reveal the deeper understandings of the human condition.  Rather, expect more of the same, quasi-coherent sentences slammed together in a way that implies competence.

Sarah reminded me about the awesome couple who flagged us down on our way into the Eastern State Penitentiary.  They had purchased a parking permit for $20 that was still good for the time we would be in the ESP and offered it to us for nothing.  It was such a kind gesture.

So, onto the Mutter Museum.  This is a place that Sarah and I have been talking about visiting for many years, and it did not disappoint.  It is set up like a curio, or an old school display museum with huge cabinets.  There are many permanent exhibits, and the installation was about Civil War medical practice... chop chop.  Since we weren't allowed to take any pictures, the one's below are gleaned from the internet.  I'll spare my readers the viscera and mostly focus on the skeletons.  If you want the full experience, you can try the following keywords added to Mutter Museum: giant colon, teratoma, syphilis, pimple, fetus, soap lady, human foot, human hand in jar, pickled human skin, bilateral cross section of human face, dried penis... On second thought, you probably shouldn't google any of that.  Just enjoy the following.

 

This is the Hyrtl Skull Collection.  There are 139 skulls here that the anatomist Joseph Hyrtl collected during his lifetime.  They all predate 1874 and are incredibly varied.  Some are from older people, some from the very young.  He was focused on collecting from the Caucasian population, but in a way that showed the variability in that group.  Looking at this collection is akin to looking at any of Darwin's collections of animals.  Looking at the shapes of the eye sockets and the width and height of the craniums, and the brow ridges, and etc. really shows you how evolution occurs.  You'd think that a skull is a skull is a skull, but they certainly are not... especially when it's been trepanned, lost its teeth, been shot, or contracted syphilis.

 

There were lots of incredible collections which through comparison and juxtaposition encouraged a deeper understanding of our physiology.  Left is typical, center is the "Mutter Giant".  Right is a dwarf.

 

The wax models throughout were really impressive.  These models were used before preservation techniques became more effective.  We couldn't believe how realistic the models were.  I would've loved to've touched one.  It's hard to believe it wouldn't be slippery with fat and fluid.

 Trephined skulls!!!!!!!!!

Ok.  That's it for now.  I'll separate this post from the two about eating (mostly just tired of writing at this point).  Hope you enjoyed this little trip through the curio of the weird and depraved.  It was certainly worth the trip to Philly.

Philly 2: Quick Post

Mostly, I'm just procrastinating.  It's Thursday, and I really don't want to do school work.  Have this book sitting next to me about the Korematsu case, but I just can't dig into it. 

I forgot to add this incredible monument to ex-President Reagan in the last post.  The ESP museum is doing an admirable job bringing attention to the grotesque American penal system.  Like obesity, gun violence, and unaffordable health care, we find ourselves head and shoulders above everyone else (and I mean everyone, not just developed nations).  All other western democracies are more of  a juxtaposition than a comparison.  We find ourselves in the same neighborhood as Rwanda when it comes to ratios of imprisoned citizens.

So, as I insinuated at the end of the last post, we needed to wash away some of the heartache, so we headed to Victory Brewing Co.  This is a long time favorite of mine.  Their Hop Devil and Prima Pils are perennial summer favorites.  The establishment was very nice, with lots of copper and wood, and the food was as good as the beer.  What was really fun was that they had a large number of brews that were only available at the brewery.  Sarah and I shared a few to get the flavours.  Their Moxee Session IPA was quite good, but the Rausch beer was a stand out.  I only got a 4 oz. taste of it, but that was a perfect size to sip the smokey, bready beverage.

I had a picture of the awesome pretzel we split,  but I managed to capture Sarah in such a way that she looked cross eyed, so I think maybe we won't share that image.  The pretzel was really good, though.

The next morning I got up and went for a much needed run.  It was cold, and running in the city isn't my favorite thing, but I got a good 5 miles in and felt better for it, so there ya go.  I saw this scene on my return.  The guy in the car is walking his dog.  On a related note, Philly is always a contender on the fattest cities in America list, which means it's always a contender for fattest city in the world.

Next installment, the long awaited trip to the Mutter Museum!!  This was, ostensibly, the reason that we went to Philly in the first place!

Philadelphia 1: Eastern State Penitentiary

Sarah and I went to Philly for spring break this past weekend.  We have a great time wherever we go together, and it's always nice to do something new.  We did a lot, saw a lot, ate a lot, and shot a lot of pictures, so I'm going to post these in installments (maybe 4)

On Sunday we drove into Philly and went straight to the Eastern State Penitentiary.  ESP was the first of its kind in the world and, in many ways, progressive for its day.  The website is phenomenal and worth exploring.  From that website:

"In the vaulted, skylit cell, the prisoner had only the light from heaven, the word of God (the Bible) and honest work (shoemaking, weaving, and the like) to lead to penitence. In striking contrast to the Gothic exterior, Haviland used the grand architectural vocabulary of churches on the interior. He employed 30-foot, barrel vaulted hallways, tall arched windows, and skylights throughout. He wrote of the Penitentiary as a forced monastery, a machine for reform. But he added an impressive touch: a menacing, medieval facade, built to intimidate, that ironically implied that physical punishment took place behind those grim walls."

To be sure, the prison was a step up from holding cells full of all sexes and all ages left to destroy one another, but the idea that solitary confinement and labor would lead to reform seems laughable.  But then, the belief that godlessness and sin led to criminality rather than societal pressures, mental health, and poverty was even more common then than it is today.  As always, there were people who saw through the smoke.  Dickens wrote after visiting that,  "In its intention I am well convinced that it is kind, humane, and meant for reformation; but I am persuaded that those who designed this system of Prison Discipline, and those benevolent gentleman who carry it into execution, do not know what it is that they are doing....I hold this slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain to be immeasurably worse than any torture of the body; and because its ghastly signs and tokens are not so palpable to the eye,... and it extorts few cries that human ears can hear; therefore I the more denounce it, as a secret punishment in which slumbering humanity is not roused up to stay."  Solitary confinement ended in 1913 for as good a reason as it began.  The prison had become overcrowded.

Anyway, Sarah and I found it to be an interesting, eery, and melancholy place to wander around.

One of the most amazing realities of this fortress/prison is that it's in the middle of the city!  The outer walls soar  over thirty feet up into the air; the turrets are taller, obviously.  It covers over ten acres and has walls eight feet thick.

Amazingly, this prison was closed in 1971.  Keep that in mind as you look at the images.  1971.

These doors are found in the original halls built in 1829.

By 1913 the Pennsylvania system officially ended (although my guess is it had unofficially ended some time before, as all politics are like to do) and multiple beds were added to rooms designed to house one individual in solitary confinement.

 1971

The doors were insanely small.  As far as we saw, they were all more or less this size.

Haviland designed the cells to have one source of light coming in from heaven.

This is the yard.  After 1913 prisoners could use the yard together.  Before that they had individual six foot by eight foot cells with ten foot high walls and an open roof that they were brought to for one hour a day to exercise. 

Again, these skylights were designed by Haviland to remind the prisoners of god's grace.

Of course the hospital area was super creepy. 

There were several "famous" prisoners, including Willie Sutton, but the one that everyone knows about is Al Capone.  His stay was short, for carrying an unlicensed .38 in the city.  He went to great lengths to assure everyone that he had not been deliberately arrested to avoid escalating mob wars in Chicago, but the rumor persisted.  It probably didn't help that he somehow obtained incredible treatment, both from the guards and for his cell.

This is just a barbers chair, but darn if it doesn't look creepy.  Sarah took this great photo of it.

The guards used these huge mirrors for surveillance.  We stayed for several hours and probably could have stayed longer, but were getting hungry and thirsty, so we headed to Victory for a much lighter fare. 

Is spring coming?

Well... It's snowing again, or still, or whatever.  Anyway, the permafrost is still in effect.  We're surviving though, and having a good time. 

I don't even remember where we were going here, probably Brookton's Market.  Indy loves to ride in the car and be the special child.  This was one of those days where it was wintery in look, but warm in feel.  Windows down, blowin' the stink off.

Rambo continues to be the man.  We see him every weekend, often for grooming and hanging out.  We give lots of hugs and get lots of snuffling.  I'm feeling pretty melancholy about the upcoming spring.  It's so different without Murph, and while Rambo will still go, we're doing short rides on the road where he is safe and won't trip.  Riding Bodie is a lot like work, too.  Still, it's great to have him around, and he continues to bring happiness into our hearts.

Jonas and I are both getting a little chunky, so we have gone for a few walks recently.  Obviously I wasn't keeping pace.  You can see the impatience in his stance. 

One morning a couple weeks ago I went for my final x-country ski trip of the season.  It was warm and all the snow was packed down by the snowmobiles so I decided to carry my skis to the top of the hill and ski down.  It was pretty fast and good fun.

We really live in a beautiful place.

The next day, Nathan came down and we went out to Pat's to play in the woods.  Marjie got Nathan a pair of snowshoes for Christmas or something.  He hadn't used them much, so we got suited up and went out scouting for trees and practicing on the snowshoes.  Nathan found them cumbersome and awkward and decided not to wear them to carry the saw out on the next trip.  He stuck with that plan until his first step into the snow when he sunk thigh deep.  I guess those things really do work!

Nathan bought a two-man cross cut saw from a guy on e-bay, and we were super excited to use it.  It's a vintage piece, but in great condition.  It's about 4 and a half feet long and looks really impressive.  So we found a tree that Pat and I had marked, and I used the axe to open up a face cut.  Then we busted out the saw and took half a dozen powerful strokes before the handles fell off.  Turns out the threads in the handles were stripped... So... now we had a standing tree half cut through and no saw.

So I got the opportunity to cut down my first tree with an axe.  Things were going pretty well until the axe head sheared off and sent flying.  After retrieving my other axe, I finished the job.

In the end, the tree fell perfectly and had one of the better hinges I've ever cut.  It's clear why someone thought up the chainsaw, though.

On another recent day, we met up with Sarah's friend, Amanda, and her family out at GP.  Paiton (Amanda's daughter) had never skied before, so we spent the day on the green hills.  It was a lot of fun, just skiing around casually together.

Jonas and I went for a little walk on Cayuga Lake.  Here's a picture of the puppy-man making snow-dog-angels.

These two pictures are from the Carnegie Library on Syracuse University.  Vinnie and I went up there for a social studies conference last weekend.

"New" project.

The sheared double bit.

Shaping the handle.

 

Hanging the axe.