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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https://vimeo.com/77450464

 

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.

They didn’t call him Lucky Lindy for nothing

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Talk about luck.

For more than 30 years Charles Lindbergh’s 1932 Monocoupe D-145 hovered over the Concourse C checkpoint at Lambert-St Louis International Airport (STL).

But just last month, to make way for the relocation of that checkpoint, the plane was lowered to the floor, removed from the airport and put in storage at Missouri’s Mount Vernon Municipal Airport.

According to the owner of the company that moved the plane, “Had it still been inside the St. Louis airport when the tornado blew through last Friday, the plane would have taken a direct hit.”

Lucky, right?

That’s what the folks at the Missouri Historical Society are probably thinking. The organization received the plane from Lindbergh back in 1940 and planned to have it restored and put on display at the Mount Vernon Airport while renovations were underway at Lambert.

The timeline for restoring and returning the plane to Lambert airport may be altered a bit by the aftermath of the tornado, but at least the plane is safe and still around.

Tornado closes Lambert-St. Louis Airport indefinitely

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We’ll be getting more details today, but Friday night, April 22nd, an apparent tornado ripped through the St. Louis area and caused so much damage at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport that the airport is now closed indefinitely while they figure out what to do.

Here’s a story from the local TV news station KMOV:

 

Airport spokespeople say at least four people were transported to area hospitals with minor injuries and that:

“At this time, it appears that Terminal 1 and Concourse C suffered the most damage from the storm with high winds that blew out up to 50 percent of windows and caused roof damage as well.  There is also considerable storm damage at the entrances of the airport and along roadways.”

KMOV has also posted a gallery of photos showing what the area looked like after the tornado:

See the rest of the KMOV STL airport tornado damage photo gallery.

The damage is heartbreaking. Especially for those who have been looking forward to all the new features and amenities that were being put in place for a major restoration project.

Let’s hope the Lindbergh 1934 Monocoupe D-145 is safe. Charles Lindbergh’s personal plane hovered over the STL Concourse C checkpoint for 30 years and just last month was lowered and moved to the Mt. Vernon Municipal Airport to make way for a concourse relocation project. The plane is owned by the Missouri History Museum and is scheduled to return to STL when renovations there are complete.

Daylight Saving Time: where to watch the clock

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Clock turn back time

(Boston: courtesy Marriott’s Custom House)

Daylight Saving Time (DST) ends at 2 a.m. Sunday morning when we “fall back” to standard time by turning our clocks back one hour.

As you rush around resetting the clocks on the microwave, the TV and the bedside alarm, imagine yourself watching time fly in one of the clock-worthy cities I included in the slide-show-style story I put together for msnbc.com this week: How time flies! Where to see the world’s clocks.

Grand Central Terminal clock

(Courtesy Metro-North Railroad)

The story includes the information booth clock at New York City’s Grand Central Station, clock and watch museums in Pennsylvania and Connecticut, what may be the oldest continually running town clock (in Winnsboro, South Carolina), and the Bily Clocks Museum in Spillville, Iowa, which is home to 43 intricately carved clocks, some more than ten feet tall, made by Joseph and Frank Bily over the course of 45 years.

Dvorak clock Bily Brothers

The Bily Brothers’ clocks have themes ranging from art and religion to history and culture. The collection includes an American Pioneer History Clock, an Apostle Clock, a violin-shaped clock honoring Czech composer Antonin Dvorkak (above) and an airplane-shaped clock (below) made to commemorate Charles Lindbergh’s trans-Atlantic flight. (That propeller moves!)

Lindbergh Bily Clocks Museum

(Courtesy: Bily Clocks Museum)

In researching the story, I also came upon this film documenting the incredible video mapping project done to mark the 600th anniversary of Prague’s astronomical clock in Old Town Square.

Museum Monday: Looking for Lindbergh

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There are more than 700 aviation and space-related museums in this country.

Each Monday we profile one of them. Eventually we’ll hit them all.

This week: Looking for Lindbergh

Charles Linbergh

Aviator and explorer Charles Lindbergh died on August 26th back in 1974, so it’s as good a time as any to take a look at some of the museums around the country that display items relating to Lucky Lindy.

First stop: The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., which displays Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis airplane in the Milestones of Flight Gallery.

(Photo by Eric Long/NASM, National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution)

Next stop: The Missouri History Museum, which has an ongoing exhibition dedicated to Charles Lindbergh’s life. The exhibit includes some of the medals and gifts that Lindbergh loaned to the Missouri Historical Society for ten days back in 1927, shortly after the famed aviator completed the first solo, transatlantic flight.

Lindbergh, Missouri History Museum

Crocheted, stuffed airplane made for Charles Lindbergh

“The Missouri Historical Society exhibited the items on top of the archaeological cases in an attempt to display the items as quickly as possible. The exhibition opened on June 25, 1927, and a local newspaper estimated that 116,000 people viewed the Lindbergh items during the first four days of the exhibition. The exhibition’s popularity led to Lindbergh agreeing to extend the loan of the collection; five years later, Lindbergh and his wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, donated the extensive collection to the Missouri Historical Society.”

There are plenty of other museums around the country that display a community’s link to Lindbergh, but for today our final stop will be the Stanley King Collection of rare Charles Lindbergh commemorative memorabilia at the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center down the road from Washington Dulles International Airport.

Stanley King Lindbergh collection

(Photo by Eric Long/NASM, National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution)

Do you have a favorite aviation or space-related museum you’d like others to know about? If you do, please write a note about it below and it may be featured on a future edition of Museum Monday here on StuckatTheAirport.com

Bonus features on Oakland Int’l Airport website

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Poke around on some airport websites and you’ll find some fun, surprising and educational stuff.

Case in point: the Oakland International Airport (OAK) site, which has a link to the Exploratorium’s instructions on how to fold a paper airplane, information about the Oakland Aviation Museum, which sits on the airport’s North Field,

and a great historical video about the history of the airport and its connections to Charles Lindbergh, Amelia Earhart and other aviation pioneers.

You can watch the entire 20-minute video, or see bite-size segments of the film on the OAK website.