Scandal as hundreds of historic treasures go missing

by Sean McLachlan on


An audit of the Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission has revealed that more than 1,800 historic artifacts can’t be found. Officials aren’t sure what happened to them but assume many have been stolen and others misfiled.

Missing treasures include a Kentucky rifle like those pictured above, an Ottoman ring that’s almost 800 years old, one-of-a-kind paintings and photographs, and other irreplaceable objects.

Officials hope most are simply lost in the system, which has been added to for almost a century with various filing systems being in vogue at different times, making for much confusion and sometimes leaving an artifact with more than one accession number, or the same number being used for more than one object. Anyone who has worked with historic archives will be familiar with this annoying phenomenon. Archives and museums rarely have enough funding to do a complete overhaul of the system and therefore problems get compounded over the years. The Pennsylvania commission has been especially hard hit by budget cuts, seeing its funding reduced from $58 million to $26 million in the past four years.

Another problem is theft. Artifacts such as Civil War memorabilia or an image of Daniel Boone (another MIA) can attract big money in the illegal antiquities trade. This encourages thefts from Paris to Baghdad. I conduct research at Madrid’s Biblioteca Nacional and security there was upped a couple of years ago after they caught a guy cutting out 17th century maps from old atlases and selling them on the black market. This sort of selfishness is great for private collectors who don’t mind breaking the law, but bad for the general public who have their nation’s legacy taken from them.

[Photo courtesy Antique Military Rifles]

North Korea sends meth users to firing squad, marijuana still OK

by Tom Johansmeyer on

Not that you could get there for this reason anyway, but North Korea is cracking down on narcotics use in a most North Korean way, which means you don’t want to get busted trying to score there.

Open Radio for North Korea reports:

According to a source in Hamkyungbuk-do, a declaration entitled “The Crackdown on Drug Use” was issued in Hoeryung (Hamkyungbuk-do) by the People’s Safety Agency. The declaration was posted on the window of a busy store and states that ‘any drug users will face a firing squad should they be caught. The declaration has been issued throughout the nation, the source said.

This is the first time the regime has announced a crackdown on druggies, but the sentence isn’t all that unusual. The big problem right now is meth, which is produced in Hamheung, and “even middle school students are openly using meth.”

The report adds, “North Koreans have lost hope and are depressed by the reality that they are living. They would rather be happy under the influence of drugs.”

Meanwhile, the land that the Kim family built is rather loose in its definition of “drugs.” Opium and marijuana, it seems, don’t count.

[photo by Stephen_AU via Flickr]

Eating and biking in Italy: The feast of Emilia-Romagna

by Jeff Greenwald on
If aliens had orbited the Earth during the Roman Republic, they would have spied a technological marvel: an arrow-straight highway, 162 miles long, beginning at the Adriatic coast and slicing through the farmland communities south of the Apennines. More than 2,000 years later the Via Emilia still connects the same neatly spaced cities-including the cultural gems of Parma, Modena and Ferrara.

The modernized Via Emilia (SS9 on motoring maps) feels like Italy’s answer to California’s Highway 49. Transecting the region called Emilia-Romagna, it’s a conduit rich with history, linking the past and present. It’s poetic justice that the ancient thoroughfare now hosts the titans of Italy’s automotive industry: Maserati, Ducati, Ferrari and Lamborghini all have factories here. But it also happens that everything I love about Italian cuisine, from pancetta to parmesan, originated along this road.

“Food in Emilia-Romagna is not a joke,” our guide declares as we sit down to our first dinner, in Parma. She’s dead serious. This is where tortellini was created, modeled after the navel of Venus; where the width of a tagliatelli pasta ribbon was decreed to be exactly 1/1,270th the height of Bologna’s Asinelli Tower; where pork rumps are aged in dungeons. And this was where a 19th-century silk merchant named Pellegrino Artusi, abandoning the family trade, created the concept of “Italian cooking.”

Food in Emilia-Romagna is a religion-and to visit is to worship.

[Flickr photo credit: Charles Haynes]

First, a bit of disclosure. Though this is ostensibly a cycling trip, arranged through Colorado-based ExperiencePlus!, we won’t be biking very much. It was never our intention to ride along busy SS9 itself, and heavy spring rains have washed out many of our side routes. Instead, we get around mainly by minibus and consume about 6,000 calories for every 1,000 we burn. Normally, I’d be distraught — but these are very beautiful calories.

* * *

Parma is an ancient city, but it’s so cosmopolitan you know you’ll never catch up. A late afternoon stroll is filled with contrasting impressions: low sunlight illuminating the 13th-century Baptistery, with its weathered walls of pink and white Verona marble; organic cotton jackets and state-of-the-art espresso machines gleaming behind polished shop windows.

Parma was on the old Apennine pilgrimage route during the Middle Ages, and relics of that era remain, like the ceramic bowls mortared into the façade of the Bishop’s Palace, a sign that this was once a good place to get a bowl of soup.

After sundown, the cobbled streets of the old town swell with students and couples. Some huddle in tight groups, while others gather around tables covered with a dozen varieties of pizzas. Nighttime will bring the bar-to-bar pilgrimage that locals call La Movida, literally “the nightlife”-a far more civilized phrase than “pub crawl.”

* * *

The next morning we mount our bikes and set off. A country road carries us past farm fields exploding with red poppies, through small towns clustered beneath broken clouds and vivid blue skies. Scarecrows slouch in the fields, warning the birds away from the cherries. After an hour, we reach our lunch stop: Al Cavallino Blanco, famed for its dried meats.

Countless cured hams come from this region, but the most prized and expensive is culatello: a cut from the center of the pig’s rump (culo). Unlike prosciutto – the dried haunch of the hind leg – culatello is hung in dingy cellars along the foggy banks of the Po river until it is coated in a revolting green mold. This mold sets up a chain reaction that, as with cheese, breaks down the protein chains. In this restaurant’s subterranean vault, an obstacle course of culatellos-some 5,000 in all-droop from the low ceiling. The choicest cuts are marked with small signs, already reserved for their buyers, a highly exclusive club that includes Prince Charles and Armani.

Lunch is a cold cut orgy. We dine on salumi, pancetta, two kinds of prosciutto, warm spalla cotta (cooked pork shoulder), and lardo: pure white fat with a mild, melt-in-your-mouth flavor.

The famed culatello arrives, shaved thin as onion skin and equally translucent. Aged 18 months, it has a powerful, almost fishy taste that requires many goblets of the sparkling red Fortana Rosso to wash away. Pig butt meat, apparently, is where my taste buds draw the line.

* * *

Just west of Modena and slightly south of SS9 lie Reggia-Emilia and Rubiera, famed for their balsamic vinegars. At small factories, the boiled must of the local grapes is aged at least 12 years, and distilled in a series of wooden barrels of ever smaller sizes. It’s a careful, complicated process that Giovanni Cavalli, the passionate vinegar master, must explain five times-but once I understand it, the 80 Euro price tag on a three-ounce bottle makes perfect sense.

Cavalli leads us among the barrels, and offers us samples served in tiny spoons. The aceto balsamico is thick, and the color of molasses, but the taste transcends description. Sweet yet sharp, pungent and woody, it is the most complex and delicious flavor I’ve ever experienced: the world’s most sophisticated candy.

* * *
We awaken the next day to heavy clouds, and race through the rain to a parmesan co-op located halfway between Reggio-Emilia and Modena. Here cheese master Giulliano Lusoli oversees the production of some 20-25 wheels a day, on behalf of the local dairy farmers.

The factory floor is spotless, with a long row of cone-shaped copper vats in which milk is mixed with veal rennet. Heated and stirred, the liquid separates into siero (whey) and cheese, which Lusoli tests by hand until it reaches the perfect texture. It’s then pulled from the vats in cheesecloth slings, placed in molds, and dropped in a tub of brine for a couple of months.

We sample three varieties of parmigiano reggiano, aged 12, 22 and 34 months. Along with age, there’s pedigree: upland and lowland. The difference, Lusoli explains, is diet. While lowland cows eat alfalfa and wheat, the upland cattle (living at about 4,000 feet) dine on a mixture of grasses, wildflowers and herbs. Dribbled with balsamic vinegar, the parmesans are a revelation, with aromas and finishes distinctive as any wine. After dozens of tiny portions, I have eaten about a pound of cheese.

“We’ll ride it off,” our guide assures me.

Someday, maybe; but not in Italy.

* * *
The massive drawbridge of the vast Este family palace, in Ferrara, barely squeaks as scores of families cross the once impenetrable moat. I’m staggered by the thought that a single family ruled most of Emilia-Romagna for 350 years. It’s as if the same family had ruled America’s Eastern seaboard since The Dutch New Netherland colony renamed itself “New York.”

But Ferrara’s most welcoming attraction is found on Via degli Adelardi, an alley just behind the cathedral. Brindisi is the oldest documented bar in the world, providing refreshment as early as 1435. Ancient flagons of port are displayed in one corner, vintage Jack Daniels bottles in another. Musical instruments hang on the walls, along with an autographed photo of Miles Davis-a nod to the musical stylings of owner Frederico, who plays blues harp in a jazz band.

I order a glass of Sangiovese-the “blood of Jove,” a well-loved regional wine-and flip through the Guinness Book of Worlds Records, which Frederico keeps at the bar for skeptics who (like me) initially doubt this humble bar’s pedigree.

* * *

When we do ride, it’s wonderful. Cycling from Faenza to Brisighella we pass rural vineyards and olive groves, and grind up curvy hills lined with wildflowers. Then down we fly, the wind in our hair. Pulling up in Brisighella’s piazza, we’re lured immediately into the local gelateria, where the feisty proprietor claims she’s just made “the best banana gelato in the world.” Banana-it’s got to be good for you, right?

Famous for its spa waters, Brisighella-surrounded by sheltering hills- also produces the region’s best olive oil. We are called into a tasting room to sample several varieties, including Nobil Drupa, the town’s signature product, a costly EVO with the pungent aroma of newly mown grass.

“This oil speaks for us,” expounds Giulliano Manduzzi, who may be the most passionate olive oil artisan in Italy. “It speaks about our people, about our farmers, about our ancient agricultural tradition. This oil is like our flag!” He swells with pride. “We’re very proud to show you this oil from our medieval village.”

Manduzzi’s enthusiasm is contagious. Sipping the oil, I feel like an honored ambassador. I’m tempted to set up a consulate-right next to the gelateria.

* * *

Via Emilia knits all these towns together, giving them a shared history. But on a culinary level, it was one man-born in Forlimpopoli, just south of SS9-who gathered Italy’s flavors and created the very notion of Italian cuisine. Pelligrino Artusi (1820-1911) was a marvelously engaging writer who crisscrossed the Italian Republic during the mid-1800s, collecting hundreds of regional recipes in his venerated Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well. As wonderful as the dishes are, it’s Artusi’s commentary that makes the book:

“Life has two principal functions: nourishment and propagation of the species. Those who turn their minds to these two needs of existence, who study them and suggest practices whereby they might best be satisfied, make life less gloomy and benefit humanity.”

The recently opened Casa Artusi is a state-of-the-art culinary institute that serves as a research center, restaurant and cooking school. As one of our final activities, our group is invited to try our hands making piadina: a simple, round Italian flatbread. Our “laboratory” is an industrial kitchen, where each of us is assigned a chef-tutor. Under their exasperated eyes we mix, pound, roll and fry our little parcels of dough.

This might seem a simple task, but-as is often the case with cooking-it’s the simple things that get you. My result might not have pleased Artusi, but I found it delicious-smothered in a thick preserve made from local figs.

My visit to Italy, like all visits to Italy, is too short. When I return to Emilia-Romagna, I’ll spend more time in the saddle-and much more time at Casa Artusi. Because cooking, I find, is a lot like cycling: No matter where you end up, it’s more satisfying to have arrived there yourself.

* * *

Jeff Greenwald is a writer and performance artist. His books include Mr. Raja’s Neighborhood: Letters from Nepal, Shopping for Buddhas, and The Size of the World. His new book, which was published in October, is Snake Lake. He has written for The New York Times Magazine, National Geographic Adventure, Outside, and Salon.com, among other publications. For more, visit jeffgreenwald.com.

Great Chicago neighborhoods: Three ethnic odysseys

by Claire Bushey on

Mayor Richard Daley liked to say “Chicago was a city of neighborhoods.” What he didn’t say was how easy it is to get trapped in your own neighborhood, treading the same streets, picking up the “el” train at the same stop, eating the same massive burrito from the same corner joint month after month after month. Maybe that’s because Chicago takes up 234 square miles – whether due to traffic or the vagaries of public transit, it takes 45 minutes to get anywhere in this town. Or maybe the explanation lies with the peculiar nature of travel activation energy: the farther the destination, the easier it is to summon the willpower to get there. Whatever the reason, the fact of the matter is that in three years I’ve lived here I have failed to cross the city to Avondale.

That trek across town, I am fast realizing, has been an oversight. Today I am dedicating to exploring three Chicago neighborhoods where ethnicity is blazoned on neon signs; whether they’re advertising sausage in Polish Avondale, tacos in Little Village or curry along Devon Avenue.

At the moment I am poking around St. Hyacinth Basilica, which has served the Polish community centered around Belmont and Milwaukee Avenues for more than a century. I slip in a side door kept open for the faithful. The architecture is an ordered pile of domes and half domes, of small but brilliant stained glass windows set off by beige marble. Though 2,000 people attend Mass here on the weekends, this afternoon only a few singular souls sit in the wooden pews. One woman prays her rosary aloud in a breathy mush of Polish. Four old-fashioned confessionals, which look like wardrobes, are tucked away in corners: two for Polish, one for English, and one for Father Stanislaw, whose name is on the last one and who presumably speaks both. I briefly ponder the convenience of confessing to a priest who can’t understand you.

[Flickr photo credit: ncarling]

It’s highly inconvenient, however, not to understand a bookseller. Located on Avondale’s main drag a few blocks from the church, Eva’s Bookstore is chockablock with Polish titles. The only books in English are the language guides that teach them. A 50-ish looking woman with dyed auburn hair, Capri pants and severe glasses is tending the stacks when I arrive. She greets me, and we realize fast that this conversation will have some built-in limits. I can blunder along in French and Spanish and fake a little Greek, but I’ve got exactly one word in Polish, the name of Poland itself, and only that because a Polish-and-proud college classmate used to get drunk at parties and charge around yelling, “Polska!” The bookseller’s vocabulary appears only slightly less limited.

“Eva?” I ask, and point to her.

“No,” she shakes her head. “Elizabeth.”

She pulls a book off the shelves and shows it to me. The cover is a familiar image of outstretched white hands holding an apple: “Zmierzch.” Twilight. There’s Gossip Girl and Harry Potter, too. I want to ask Elizabeth how many books she sells on John Paul II; the Polish pope gets three shelves to himself. But there’s no way. Instead, I ask, “How many?” and sweep my hand around the store. She picks up a children’s book and shows me where the price is written inside: $2.50. How much.

“No,” I say. “How many?” I grab at spines, counting off, “One, two, three …”

She shakes her head again and responds; I have no idea what she says. I consider throwing my hands in the air with a big smile and yelling, “Polska!” but decide this will expand the language gap, not bridge it. Instead, I say, “Thank you,” smile gravely and leave the store, passing by Danielle Steel’s latest, “Duża Dziewczynka.”

The Poles came to Chicago in three waves, starting in the 1850s and ending with the “Solidarity” wave in the 1980s. They’ve since lost some of their old territory to new arrivals. Little Village was once Polish, but Mexicans have supplanted the Poles, as the Poles themselves supplanted the Germans and Czechs before them. Red, white and green pennants crisscross the air above the neighborhood’s main commercial strip, 26th Street, leftover decorations from a recent parade celebrating Mexico’s Independence Day. Concession carts are parked on the corners, selling agua fresca and bags of fried pork rinds flavored with chili and salt. Technically illegal, the city unofficially tolerates the carts, except for occasional ticketing spates that put a considerable dent in the food vendors’ profits. The vendors have been trying to organize for more than a decade to force the city to license them. A sign backing U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez for mayor hangs on one of the carts. Perhaps the vendor figures he’ll have better luck under Gutierrez than the outgoing Mayor Daley.

My plan is to eat my way through Little Village from cart to cart. One man serves me a Styrofoam cup of purple agua fresca that he calls “flower” – probably hibiscus. From another I order an elote. He slices the kernels from an ear of corn and pours them into another Styrofoam cup, the vendors’ dining ware of choice. He squirts mayonnaise on top, then butter, then dusts the concoction with chili powder and cheese. A spoon mixes the ingredients like a sundae. It looks revolting, but thankfully it’s not. Sitting on the curb in the warm September sun alternating between bites of elote and swigs of hibiscus, all seems right with the world. Why can’t these guys set up in my neighborhood?

I buy one of the bags of chicharrón for a dollar from a smiling teenage salesman only to find that, just as if we were in Mexico and not Chicago’s West Side, he can’t break my $20 bill. Next time, he tells me in Spanish as he pushes the bag into my hands. Mortified at taking a freebie I escape to the bank across the street, where, despite the fact I am a resident of the city of Chicago, I whip out my best hapless tourist act, and it works. Though I am not a bank customer, the teller flouts protocol and makes change for the pitiful fool away from home.

It’s fun playing tourist in my own town. I feel like I’m getting away with something. Traveling to neighborhoods I know little or not at all liberates me to be the traveling version of myself, the woman who smiles more and talks to strangers, who operates with a hair more patience, who is the antithesis of my head-down-on-the-train city dweller self.

Still in tourist mode, I head to the city’s northern edge. Devon Avenue is lined with Indian and Pakistani restaurants, video stores, hair salons and textile shops. The street looks best at night when traffic snarls like a pale imitation of Delhi’s thoroughfares and store windows glow with colored cloth. Maybe because it’s after dark, or maybe because there are more people on the street, Devon feels the closest of these three neighborhoods to their corresponding countries. Faces on the sidewalk are subcontinental brown; the white people who come here don’t stroll, they go straight to the restaurants to eat. A few women wear saris, and clumps of teenagers chat in a language that’s definitely not English. Traffic seems worse here than in other parts of the city, but am I just making that up? A van and sedan nearly collide as I dodge two boys riding bikes on the sidewalk. Nope. Not making it up.

Kiran Bajw manages one of the fancier dress shops, Be-Jee Collection. The special occasion outfits are made by hand in Pakistan and, depending on the elaborateness of the beading, take anywhere between a week and three months to produce. They start around $300 and go into the thousands.

“I just love clothes,” Bajw says, laughing. Three years ago she cajoled her husband into giving her the money to open the shop. “I said, ‘I swear I won’t waste your money.'”

In general, Devon is a good place to not waste money. The restaurants are inexpensive, but the real deals are in the grocery stores. World Fresh Market stocks South Asian staples like lentils and chilies. You can buy a whole baby goat here. But it’s the spice aisle where I start hyperventilating. Garam masala is just $3.99 for 14 oz., and when I spot precious cardamom for roughly $10 a half pound, I silently vow to never buy spices anywhere else again.

It’s a small discovery, on par with the day’s other revelations. Chicago’s neighborhoods will never eclipse downtown as a touristic draw, not as long as “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte” hangs in the Art Institute and flowers bloom in the boxes outside the high-end stores on Michigan Avenue. Nevertheless, it’s exciting to realize that going just a few miles outside my usual radius can induce a mild form of the vertigo of international travel: a different language, unfamiliar foods, new architecture. All that, and no need to buy a plane ticket. Chicago has more than 200 neighborhoods. Maybe it’s time to stay local. But certainly not to stay put.

[Flickr photo credit: uBookworm]

Claire Bushey is a freelance journalist based in Chicago. She writes about an odd assortment of topics, including but not limited to, travel, workers’ rights and the Catholic Church. She is also a professional modern dancer, which never ceases to amaze her. Her website is www.clairebushey.com.

Traveling with Edgar Allan Poe

by Gadling Staff on


— “Quoth the Raven, ‘Nevermore.'”

Now those are words to conjure with! They are, of course, from Edgar Allan Poe’s most famous poem, “The Raven.” Poe casts a uniquely powerful spell among American writers. Even people who have never read him have probably heard bits of his poetry or know the titles of some stories, such as “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Fall of the House of Usher.” Although he is most famous for dark and gloomy tales and verses, Poe was also the inventor of the modern detective story and a pioneer of science fiction.

If you’re a true Poe aficionado, you owe it to yourself to make pilgrimages to some of the important places in his short, strange life. And when you do, get a sense of the author by reading works that he wrote in those places. Castle Books’ Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe is a handy volume to travel with. Or you can use your laptop to access all of Poe’s writings at The Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore’s website.

What follows are some suggestions for visiting the important spots in his life, and some corresponding reading…Born in Boston in 1809, Poe was abandoned by his actor father in 1810. After his mother died in 1811, he became the foster son of John and Frances Allan in Richmond, Virginia. Richmond’s Edgar Allan Poe Museum is one of the finest shrines to his life and career. Although Poe never lived in the museum building, it is the oldest structure in Richmond, so it’ll give you a feeling of what life was like back then. There, you will find Poe’s actual furniture and a model of how Richmond looked in that time. While visiting, start dipping into Poe’s only novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, which he wrote in Richmond. You’ll have trouble putting down this bizarre and seldom-read fantasy that influenced Herman Melville’s much more famous Moby-Dick.
Poe spent a short time studying at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. The university’s Raven Society has preserved Poe’s student living quarters at 13 West Range (contact the society about visiting this room). While there, read “Song,” a short poem written in Poe’s youth.

Poe also lived in Baltimore, Maryland, where his home at 203 Amity street is now the Baltimore Poe House and Museum. It features videos, Poe memorabilia, a portrait of his wife Virginia, and a lock of his hair. During your visit, read Poe’s delightful science fiction story about a moon voyage, “The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall,” which he wrote while living there.

Poe spent some of his happiest and most productive years in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. At 532 North Seventh Street, you’ll find his only surviving Philadelphia home. Maintained as the Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site, the house has been left eerily empty and unpreserved. But in neighboring houses, you can view a film about Poe and visit a reading room furnished in a style advocated by Poe himself. It was here in Philadelphia that Poe created the modern detective story. Indeed, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle — the creator of Sherlock Holmes — called Poe’s mysteries “a model for all time.” So while roaming Poe’s empty home, read his detective story “The Purloined Letter.”

In 1844, Poe moved with his sickly young wife, Virginia, and her mother, Maria Clemm, to New York City’s Greenwich Village. His first Manhattan residence no longer exists; it is now the site of O’Hara’s Pub at the corner of Greenwich Street and Cedar Street. Stop in, buy a drink, and read “The Balloon-Hoax,” a playful work that Poe wrote while he was living at that very spot. First published in the New York newspaper The Sun in 1844, it describes the first-ever crossing of the Atlantic in a powered balloon. Thousands of readers believed the tale, even though Poe made the whole thing up!

While in Greenwich Village, Poe and his wife and mother-in-law also lived at 85 Amity Street. The facade of this house has been moved about a half a block to 85 West 3rd Street. While standing in front of it, be sure to read a stanza or two of “The Raven,” which he wrote while living there.

Poe’s last residence was a charming and cozy cottage in the Fordham section of the Bronx in New York. Although it has been moved to its current location at Kingsbridge Road and the Grand Concourse, it is excellently preserved. Unfortunately, the house is closed for renovations during 2010-2011. Check its website for news about when it will reopen. When you are able to visit, you’ll be able to see Poe’s own rocking chair and the bed where his wife, Virginia, died of tuberculosis at 24 in January 1847. Have a handkerchief handy as you read Poe’s great poems of love, loss, and mourning, “Annabel Lee” and “Ulalume,” which were written after her death. Poe himself outlived Virginia by only two years. He died under mysterious circumstances in Baltimore in 1849 at the age of 40.

Wim Coleman is a poet, playwright, and novelist, who recently edited a unique collection of Edgar Allan Poe’s works, The Poe You Don’t Know: Humor and Speculation. Read his blog on Red Room.

[Photos: Flickr | chucka_nc; RTLibrary; RTLibrary; Gruenemann]