Charles Lindbergh

A fistful of festivals to head for this summer

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Festivals worth planning a summer trip around

My story for CNBC this week is a round-up of festivals and events around the country that could lure you out of town. Here is a slightly edited version of that list.

Jazz in Atlanta

Credit_Matt Alexandre

The month-long Atlanta Jazz Festival is underway, with jazz concerts taking place in neighborhood parks, MARTA stations, city museums, clubs and bistros and even at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.

The festival caps off Memorial Day Weekend (May 25 & 26) with a free concert at Atlanta’s Piedmont Park featuring more than a two dozen noted jazz performers. 

Chicago’s Festival Season

Ruthie Foster, photo Ricardo Piccirillo, courtesy Chicago Blues Festival

Chicago is chock-full of festivals each summer.

There’s Lollapalooza (August 1-4), of course, but also the Chicago Blues Festival (June 7-9), Chicago SummerDance (June 27-August 24), the Windy City Smokeout (BBQ, country music and beer; July 12-14) and the Chicago Jazz Festival (August 30- Sept 1), to name just a few.

Shakespeare in the parks


The Public Theater’s Free Shakespeare in the Park_ photo Tammy Shell

Around the country, Shakespeare and summer go together very well.

In New York City, The Public Theater’s free Shakespeare in the Park season kicks off May 21 with “Much Ado About Nothing.” Shakespeare Festival St. Louis will offer “Love’s Labor Lost” in Forest Park May 31-June 23. Chicago Shakespeare in the Park brings its free (abridged) performance of “Comedy of Errors” to city parks July 18-August 19. And the Commonwealth Shakespeare Company in Boston offers free performances of Shakespeare’s “Cymbeline” July 17 – August 4 on the Boston Common.

Celebrate the Grand Canyon Centennial

National Park Service photo

This year is the centennial of Arizona’s Grand Canyon being designated a national park. There are special events taking place all year long to help celebrate the milestone, but one major summer event will only take place after dark.

The Centennial Star Party  (June 22-29) is a night-sky celebration that takes advantage of the park’s dark skies and clear air and takes place on both the North Rim and the South Rim of the park. Amateur astronomers and park rangers set up telescopes nightly and offer constellation tours, lectures and free viewing tips to help spot planets, star clusters and far off galaxies in the sky. The week caps off with the Centennial Summerfest and Grand Archeology Fair on June 29.

Make Music – Even if You Can’t Carry a Tune

Courtesy Make Music Day

More than a thousand cities around the world will be celebrating Make Music Day on June 21 with free outdoor concerts, music lessons, jam sessions, “Mama Mia!” Sing-along trucks and other and music-making events.

“Mass Appeals” in many cities are musical performances all played on the same instrument, i.e. kazoos, ukuleles, guitars or accordions. “Sousapaloozas” will bring together hundreds of brass and wind musicians to play marches by John Philip Sousa. And in many cities, drum shops will set up two full drum sets out on the sidewalks and invite passersby to sit down for drum set duos.


 Flores Mexicanas by Alfredo Ramos Martinez – courtesy Missouri History Center

The Missouri Historical Society in St. Louis houses a large collection of Charles Lindbergh and Anne Morrow Lindbergh artifacts and on June 1 will open a new exhibit at the Missouri History Museum featuring photographs, historic footage and many rarely seen artifacts.

The exhibit, Flores Mexicanas: A Lindbergh Love Story, centers around the recently restored, 9-by-12-foot Flores Mexicanas painting by renowned Mexican artist Alfredo Ramos Martinez, which has been stored away for 50 years.

The Lindbergh – Mexico connection for this painting?

According to the museum:

“In 1929 Mexican president Emilio Portes Gill gave the Lindberghs the Martinez masterpiece as a wedding gift. Mexico was significant to the Lindberghs as the place where their love story began. For the Mexican government, the gift was a chance to impress the daughter and son-in-law of the United States’ respected ambassador to Mexico, Dwight Morrow — Anne’s father.”

Straight to the Moon – 50th anniversary of Apollo 11

Buzz Aldrin on the Moon – NASA photo

Cities, attractions and museums everywhere are getting ready to – or have already begun to – celebrate the 50th anniversary of NASA’s July 1969 Apollo 11 mission and the first time humans walked on the Moon.

A few to set your sights on: Seattle’s Museum of Flight is hosting the Smithsonian Institution’s traveling exhibition, Destination Moon: The Apollo 11 Mission, featuring the Columbia command module and other artifacts, through September 2.  The Smithsonian Institution’s National Air & Space Museum has five days of Apollo 50 events and exhibits planned July 16 through July 20. At the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, NY, the exhibit Journey to the Moon: How Glass Got Us There, opens June 29 and runs through January 30, 2010. And there are Apollo 50 events scheduled at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center Visitor Center, at Space Center Houston and in many-other communities around the country that have direct or casual connections to the space program.

Lost airport amenity: Lindbergh’s monocoupe leaving St. Louis airport

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For years, the 1934 Model D-127 Monocoupe once owned by aviator Charles Lindbergh has been on display at St. Louis Lambert International Airport (STL), over the Concourse C security checkpoint in Terminal 1.

But the airplane, which has been on loan to the airport from the Missouri Historical Society since 1979, is coming down for good on Tuesday June 12 and put away for what is described as a “much neeed rest.”

“The 1934 Lindbergh Monocoupe is an exceedingly rare aircraft in that it still retains its original fabric covering,” said Katherine Van Allen, managing director of museum services for the Missouri Historical Society, in a statement, “In order to ensure that this unique piece of history is preserved for future generations, the Missouri Historical Society is removing the plane to a humidity and climate-controlled storage facility in accordance with present-day best practices in collections care.”

 

According to the Missouri History Museum, which received the plane in 1940, Lindbergh flew this airplane regularly, but didn’t really love it.

And even though he’d had it personalized extensively, he wrote that “It is one of the most difficult planes to handle I have ever flown. The take-off is slow…and the landing tricky…[it] is almost everything an airplane ought not to be.”

Still, it is an aviation treasure. And one that could have been lost to history back in April 2011 when a tornado hit the airport, doing millions of dollars of damage. By luck, Lindergh’s monocoupe had been moved to a storage facility just a few weeks before, in preparation for scheduled terminal renovations.

Here’s a video of the plane being rehung in the airport in 2013:

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When you visit STL,  you’ll still see an airplane suspended from the ceiling over a Terminal 2 checkpoint. That plane is also owned by the Missouri Historical Society, but it’s a 1933 Red Monocoupe 110 Special with no link to Lindbergh.

 

Smithsonian offers eye-level view of Spirit of St. Louis

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Spirit of St. Louis Image by Mark Avino, Smithsonian Institution

Spirit of St. Louis Image by Mark Avino, Smithsonian Institution

The “Spirit of St. Louis” – the plane in which a 26-year-old Charles Lindbergh completed the first solo transatlantic flight in May, 1927 – is one of the most popular artifacts at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum.

The plane is usually suspended from the gallery ceiling, but for the next five months the plane will be on the floor at eye level while it undergoes preservation work in preparation for an updated exhibition in the museum’s central space, also known as the Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall.

The last time the plane was lowered to the gallery floor was in 1992.

Spirit of St. Louis. Image by Mark Avino, Smithsonian Institution

Spirit of St. Louis. Image by Mark Avino, Smithsonian Institution

Fancy a flight to Paris? Charles Lindbergh did.

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LINDBERGH_SpiritofStLouis

Spirit of St. Louis courtesy Smithsonian Air & Space Museum

So much chatter these days about amenities we want on long trip from say, New York to Paris, so let’s just take a moment today to tip our hats to Charles Lindbergh, who left New York for for Paris on the morning of May 20, 1927.

Thirty-three hours, 30 minutes, and 3,610 miles later he landed safely at Le Bourget Field, near Paris.

He was flying alone. So no one brought him a meal, a pillow a blanket or even a tiny bag of peanuts.

Read more about the plane and the flight here.

Lindbergh’s plane back at Lambert-St. Louis Int’l Airport

Aviation history,

You may remember the tornado that hit Lambert-St. Louis International Airport in April, 2011, causing millions of dollars in damage.

The repair bill might have been much more had not Charles Lindbergh’s plane – a 1934 Model D-127 Monocoupe which had hung in Terminal 1 over the C Concourse checkpoint since 1979 – been moved to a storage hangar just a few weeks earlier in preparation for terminal renovations.

STL_LindberghMonocoupe

According to the Missouri History Museum, which received the plane in 1940, Lindbergh flew this airplane regularly, but didn’t really love it. And even though he’d had it personalized extensively, he wrote that “it is one of the most difficult planes to handle I have ever flown. The take-off is slow…and the landing tricky…[it] is almost everything an airplane ought not to be.”

During the 30 years the airplane had been suspended from the STL ceiling it gathered a great deal of dust and was subject to a great deal of stress. So while the monocoupe was in storage, the museum gave it a conservation make-over and on Sunday, October 20, 2013 returned the plane to its original spot in the airport.

The nine-hour installation process is documented in this time-lapse video.

Re-hang of the Lindbergh Monocoupe at Lambert International Airport from Missouri History Museum on Vimeo.