At the Churchill Museum on the campus of Westminster College featuring Hitler, posters, replicas of trenches, and the famous table of the Prime Minister…
Browsing ktravula – a travelogue! blog archives for November, 2010.
These are a few photos from the College that hosts the Winston Churchill Memorial and Museum (Churchill is perhaps the only British Prime Minister with a Memorial and Museum in the United States). I’m going to put the other photos from the Museum on Picasa whenever I can.
Along with short films, photos, and some other artifacts that tie this college to Winston Churchill, we also saw a replica of the Berlin Wall which the Prime Minister had referenced in his “Iron Curtain” speech. The “wall” had striking similarities to the real one, and had graffitis and other paintings on it.
At the time of the speech at Westminster in 1946, Churchill had seen far ahead of his many peers as it regards the ambition of the Soviet Union, but it would take years for the rest of the world to catch up.
It didn’t promise to be easy, so it wasn’t. It even took taking turns moving the Nissan beast across the stretch of tar from one end of the state to the other, but we did make it here in one piece. “Here” is Kansas City – a city that stretches across two state boundaries. (It didn’t make much sense at first that Missouri would have two big cities on the two ends of its stretch from east to west). The part of the city that is replicated after much of Rome and Paris is on the Missouri side of the state line while the other side that gets the “What the hell are you looking for out there” is in the state of Kansas from where I’m typing this, my back against the soft sheets of a cozy but affordable hotel bedroom. One good thing about being in a remote part of the country is the affordability of the hotel rooms. Now that’s it…
NOT!
We did stop by at the Westminster College at Fulton (MO) to see the spot where Winston Churchill delivered his “Iron Curtain” speech. It was such a delight. More than just a private college, the campus bears many markers to the prominence of Churchill’s 1946 visit to the place. A larger than life sized casting of the man stands at the back of the Westminster church (pictured above with three of my c0-travellers). There is an enormous collection of pictures, videos, short films and documentaries, and artifacts in the Churchill museum (even though, now that I think about it, I doubt that it was called the “Churchill museum”). It all put the progress of the world from the First World War to the Second one, and later to the Cold War, into perspective, especially from the role of Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, Truman, and Hitler. It was such an awesome place to see. After taking plenty pictures, we took off and headed off to Kansas City. Later today, we’ll complement our knowledge at the World War I memorial in the city.
The other parts of the evening that include dancing cowgirls, drunk young men, delicious fries and cole slaw, cool drinks, warm patios, unexpected faces from Edwardsville, music, dance and laughter will remain impossible to adequately express so I won’t even try. Not tonight at least with sleep bags under my eyes. I’ll just go to bed. Thank you for reading my rants. The daily stats on the blog has always amazed me.
Greetings from flyover country, halfway across the land.
It snowed here yesterday, for the first time this season. The last time I saw my first snow was Christmas day 2009 and I’d wondered if the snow always timed itself for a special occasion. Yesterday was Thanskgiving and the snowfall was just as appropriate a blessing. I spent much of the day as a guest of a family my friend and fellow student linguist in St. Louis playing pool, getting stuffed (in a good, gastronomically pleasant way), laughing, meeting new people, and just being a good young boy in pleasant company. I haven’t done this in a while so it was a good break out of the stress of chasing the trees of syntax or the twists of ESL teaching assessment procedures.
Now I’m back home listening to George Lopez monologue of race jokes: “Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. And if you’re Native American, happy Thursday…” It was a wonderful day.
Tomorrow will find me on the road with three other gentlemen on a trip across at least two state lines. We are heading to the state of Kansas in search of knowledge and treasures. On this trip, we intend to visit the famous World War I Museum at Kansas City as well as the Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, where British Prime Minister Winston Churchill delivered his now famous “Iron Curtain” Speech in March 1946. There are no train routes from Edwardsville to Kansas City as there are between the many states of Europe because this country built its own treasures in Interstate roads rather than rails. And what a shame that would have been in the absence of a true pleasure of driving across town. And it is for that reason that this road trip will serve two main goals: one, to discover what lay in the westward side of the country while passing through the countryside with our feet virtually on the ground; and two, to spend the rest of our free time undertaking an endeavour more productive than remaining at home to stare out the window at migrating birds.
Fortunately – or unfortunately, depending on who’s talking – snow has begun to fall and promises to make the journey even a little more colourful. See you at the end of the weekend, except of course we also get a chance to use the internet. And Happy Thanksgiving to you.
PS: Kansas City, not particularly a famous tourist destination reportedly has more boulevards than Paris and more fountains than any other city in the world except for Rome. (Source: Wikitravel). This explains why EVERYONE we’ve told of this trip had responded with “What the hell is in Kansas City?” I guess we’re about to find out.
Rifling through a sheaf of e-papers bearing lines almost already forgotten, I came across these I wrote a few years ago. They were published on Concelebratory Shoehorn Review Journal in June 2007. Happy Thanksgiving everyone in the US
__________________________________
IF THESE WERE WRITTEN IN TIMES PAST 
They would smell of rum, maybe wine
Of a pristine dance on brown keys that tapped,
Rasped in echoes across father’s dusty lounge.
They would reek of innocence, shy lines
Of the toddler whose eyes lay only in the silence,
laden trivia of books, and old record sleeves.
They might show relics of a hopeful child lie
Within a bulwark of rage in the silence of night,
Quiet when adults slept with ears apart, dead to the world.
They would try to hide the author’s disgust
for past bustles, home noise and day jobs,
Useless rants that mainly deter than fuel a budding muse.
But it wasn’t written then, and so the past remains
Bilked in bits of old rum in even older flasks, and pains.
MACEDONIA
Lagos again, December
Speak you must, muse, in taps, raps –
Drum, tat-a, rolls of a furious key.
The tongue to rile a fog of blabbing naps.
As with a lost wing, flap on white winds –
Serrated dots of letters, dice dials of thought
Move the night with mares of omen rinds.
Why do you forget yourself so? Soul-
Journer of a sea of words and flaming fate?
It is I who call. Grant the bearing role.
Speak you must, muse, in raps, taps –
Drum, tat-a, rolls on a furious key.
From this fringe of meagre dream of wraps.
(c) 2007. All rights reserved