Return of The Armchair: Salute to Churches

Churches are everywhere. Big ones, small ones. New ones, old ones. Ones with gargoyles and flying buttresses and ones with digital billboards and frank and bean suppers. Cathedrals, chapels, minsters, meeting houses...the list goes on. And for someone who isn't particularly religiously inclined, I feel like I've seen a lot of them.

...Which is not to say that I’ve never gone to church for church’s sake. My first memory of participating in organized religion, like most of my vivid memories, is 1) embarrassing and 2) involves a boy.

It was probably 1992. The boy in question was my very first real crush. We’ll call him “Scot,” because that is his actual name and I can't think of a good reason to give him a fake one. Anyway, when I was young, my family went sporadically to the local Congregational church attended regularly by Scot and his family. The part of the service I dreaded most was the rounding up of the children for Sunday School. I was having none of it. My parents, probably because they felt just as out of place and uncomfortable as I did, indulged me. I would crouch low in the pew until all the little kiddies had filed out and I knew I was safe. But once, just once, my plan was dramatically foiled. Shouting across the sanctuary with the fervor of a true zealot, Scot said, “Julia! Julia! Aren’t you coming?”

Yeah, okay, it's really not that mortifying viewed through the lens of adulthood. But it was mortifying back then. Incidentally, Scot would go on to feature prominently in a number of my more humiliating moments over the years, including getting stuck in a bathroom stall at summer camp, losing a toenail in his hot tub, and (my favorite) on my 19^th birthday, after confessing to years of (not so) secret admiration, falling spectacularly to the floor when the chair on which I was sitting inexplicably snapped in two.

Anyway, I could go on for ages about humiliating missteps and the crushes that caused them, (a likely autobiography title, so don’t steal it) but we’re here to talk about churches. I don't really know why. Just an idea I had. And I happen to have taken a lot of pictures of churches over the years. So why not.

This is St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Foley, Alabama, the only church featured in our Salute that has palm trees.

Westminster Abbey. Old. Gothic. Expensive to get inside. In short, a classic.

This is somewhere in the vicinity of Eureka Springs, Arkansas. I absolutely love this church, mostly because I know nothing about it except that it's creepy, isolated, and has two recent gravestones. I wish I wrote short stories.

Bratislava, Slovakia. Another church I knew little to nothing about. I just remember that I really liked the way it was lit. Anyway, I've since done some Google research and discovered that it is St. Martin's Cathedral. A couple of interesting facts (for nerds): This was the place to have your coronation if you were an Austro-Hungarian emperor. Maria Theresa was crowned here! AND it was the site of the first performance of Beethoven's Missa Solemnis. Although, I think it was officially premiered in its complete form in St. Petersburg. But still...neat.

This is a wee wooden church in the Österreichisches Freilichtmuseum (Austrian Open-Air Museum) in Stübing, Austria. It's exactly what it sounds like- a huge sneeze. No, just kidding. It's an open air museum filled with replicas of traditional Austrian homes/farms/etc. Pretty neat. It's near Graz. Check it out.

Basilica Cattedrale Patriarcale di San Marco. St. Mark's. Venice. The Doge's Palace. Monteverdi. Pigeons. You know the deal. It's really shiny inside. Chiesa d'Oro. Church of Gold. All that.

This is the one of a kind Mariazell Basilica in Mariazell, Austria. It's part pink! It's also called the Basilica Mariä Geburt or the Basilica of the Birth of the Virgin Mary. Big pilgrimage site, mostly to do with the presence of a particularly powerful wooden image of the Virgin Mary. Also the site of the orientation session for my study abroad program. Whole different thing.

Ah, Amsterdam. This is the Oude Kerk, or Old Church. The fun thing about this church is that it's in the Red Light District. That, and about 10,000 people are buried underneath it. People with awesome Dutch names like Jacob van Heemskerck and Cornelis Hooft and Frans Banning Cocq. (Apart from having a sweet name, that last guy is the main dude in Rembrandt's The Night Watch.)

York Minster. The Cathedral and Metropolitical Church of St. Peter. It's in York. That's in England. The UK. THE UNIVERSE. Anyway, here's another classically awesome cathedral. The second largest Medieval Gothic cathedral in the world, in fact. The biggest is Chartres. In France. Also, Dame Judi Dench is from York. Now you know.

Tintern Abbey. No jokes to be made here. It's too beautiful and poetic. Ok, one joke. Did you know there was a psychedelic 60s rock band called Tintern Abbey?...and that their hit song was called "Vacuum Cleaner?" Vacuum Cleaner?? Somebody go find it on YouTube and tell me what it's all about.

Back to London and back to St. Martin. This is St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Very Anglican. Very English. Very... Sir Neville Marriner.

Paris. Montmartre. Basilique du Sacré Coeur. Basilica of the Sacred Heart. It stays white because of the special kind of stone they used to build it. Interesting.

So there you have it. The Armchair's Salute to Churches. It's good to be back. Fair warning: I have enough material for a Salute to Churches II. See you next time?

Spring Break Foley, Alabama

You know that song "Gary, Indiana" from The Music Man? It's okay if you don't. I only ask because it's been stuck in my head for the last few weeks- with one important textual difference. Instead of the words "Gary, Indiana," I've been singing the words "Foley, Alabama." I know, I'm a wordsmith. Will the real Julia Snowden please stand up?



While you're at it, watch this. It has nothing to do with anything apart from the fact that we're sort of talking about American musical theater. One of the most beautiful songs ever written.

Anyway, the city of Foley is in southern Alabama, just a short drive from the lovely beaches of the Gulf Shore. You know the little nubbin thing at the bottom of the state on the left hand side? That's where it is.


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It was founded in the early 20th century by a Chicago businessman named John Burton Foley. Apparently, before he became a fancy land developer he was manufacturing something called "Foley's Pine Tar and Honey Cough Remedy." Nothing says early 1900s like a good "remedy," am I right? You know, dudes in striped suits twirling canes and saying things like, "Pardon me, Cornelius, but I must go to the druggist for Beckham's Essence of Wheat Germ." "Ah yes, Reginald, I do believe I'll join you. My wife asked that I buy her a vial of Whitmore's Licorice Vapors." Then they would die of Tuberculosis.

Back in this century, you'll find a sleepy and refreshingly unpretentious downtown Foley. There are gift shops and antiques galore. I'd like to recommend the adorable old-fashioned soda shop(pe) but for some reason it smelled unbelievably disgusting inside. It was weird. There were all these smiling kids and grandparents sitting at cute wrought-iron tables with ice cream sundaes as though it smelled like rainbows and gumdrops and not the most vile of Gary's sewers. Hopefully it was just a fluke.

South of downtown is the ubiquitous strip of mainstream stores and restaurants. This is where I visited my first Piggly Wiggly. My grandmother on my father's side was born and raised in Alabama and my Dad, as a result, likes to wax poetic on all things Southern. I'm fairly confident he once said, "You've never been to a Piggly Wiggly? Oh, Piggly Wiggly is the best! They don't have stores like that up here." Actually, Dad, Piggly Wiggly is horrible. Sorry. You're right about Wegman's, though. Now that's an excellent grocery store.

Continuing south, after you pass the snazzy outlet mall and just before you cross the bridge that takes you to the beach, (and the ritzy city of Gulf Shores, Alabama) you'll pass a wee amusement park with three go-kart courses, miniature golf, and an elaborate arcade. I recommend the wooden go-kart track. It had three levels. Just don't do what I did and get distracted trying to keep your skirt from flying up. You may get in a small accident and suffer minor whiplash. Yes, I live on the edge.

We also managed to squeeze in a side trip to Pensacola, Florida where we had some really incredible seafood at a place called The Fish House. I'd love to go back in the summer. You might be surprised to learn that Pensacola has been around since 1559. Well, kind of. There was, in fact, a settlement created in 1559 but it was almost immediately destroyed by a hurricane and nobody really came back until 1696. But still.

To close, a sampling of my very average photography:

Downtown Foley

One Horse Town

Orange Beach

I don't care if it makes me less of a New Englander- there are a lot of things I love about the American South.

(This isn't one of them.)

Until next time...

Eureka Springs Teaser

I would say I feel like a cliché sitting here in this coffee shop with my cappuccino and my MacBook but for one important fact: I'm in Arkansas.

I think Eureka Springs, AR might be the strangest place in America. And yes, the abbreviation is "AR" and not "AK." "AK" is Alaska's. I was surprised too. The "k" in Arkansas somehow seems more important than the "k" in Alaska. Maybe this would be a good moment to try and work in "What did Delaware? Idaho, Alaska." I'll resist the temptation.

Anyway, you'll have to check back in late July for the sure-to-be-legendary-in-its-own-time post about Eureka Springs. It's part perfectly preserved Victorian spa town, part modern-day Christian pilgrimage destination, and part biker haven. A huge statue of Christ looks over a town that once very seriously tried to legalize marijuana. It's fascinating and beautiful and totally WEIRD. Get excited.

Los Angeles

I'm a New England girl. I've seen Doris Kearns Goodwin at the Lexington and Concord Battle Reenactments. The small Massachusetts town where I grew up (West Newbury) is best known for its important role in the early American decorative hair comb industry.* My childhood best friend lived in a house built around 1780. John Kerry once stepped on my foot at a store in Harvard Square. I even have a Revolutionary War era ancestor named Thankful Bennett. I wonder if I could be in the Daughters of the American Revolution? My family probably isn't wealthy enough. Good thing. Otherwise I'd be a real nightmare.

*In my cursory search through The Internet I failed to come up with any foundation for that claim, but I choose to believe my 4th grade teachers, the nice ladies of the Historical Society, and the old sign that said "Welcome to West Newbury: Home of the Comb."

You'll also be interested to know that I share my hometown with noted professional wrestler John Cena, who is apparently a big enough star to host the Australian Kids' Choice Awards.

As far as I know, his mother still works at the West Newbury Food Mart. Somewhere along the line my family took to calling it the "The Food Fart." Catchy, I know. In fact, my father usually takes it a step further and just says "The Fart." Though it may imply otherwise, this is in no way a comment on the quality of the establishment. Mostly it says something important about my family.

Anyway, like most East Coasters, I grew up assuming I lived at the center of The Universe. The world was predominantly Irish-Catholic (which made me a minority), the only city in the world more important than Boston was New York, WBZ-TV's News Team (including my former idol, arts and entertainment reporter Joyce Kulhawik) was God's gift to journalism, and California was a land of make-believe.

Beaches looked something like this:

Plum Island, MA

Or this:

New Harbor, ME

Or this:

The Kennedy Compound

A California beach, were I to give it any thought, probably would have looked something like this:

Despite the raw, bronzed sex that is Hasselhoff, there was a time when I swore I would never go to California. I was probably about 10 or 11 and we had recently learned about fault lines at school. Naturally, I became convinced that the moment I went to California it would break apart from the contiguous United States. Not even the fact that Kelly Kapowski and Zack Morris called it home would change my mind. Incidentally, Mark-Paul Gosselaar is much more interesting than you might think. Check out the link.

When I did find myself in California for the first time (older and wiser) I was most excited to finally see the Pacific Ocean. I spotted it from the top of a hill as we drove toward Hermosa Beach and it was just as glittering and expansive as I had imagined.

I ran down and dipped my toes in the surf, relishing the cold majesty, reveling in the sweet glory of nature!

I was filled with such innocent joy and excitement that I even allowed this Hallmark moment of a picture to happen.


Then, in the form of a toxic goo, reality struck:


This goo is hard to explain. Let me begin by saying that this picture really doesn't do the problem justice. At first it didn't feel like anything worse than a piece of seaweed. Calmly, I bent to peel it off. But whatever it was had thoroughly adhered itself to the bottom of my foot. Then I smelled it: motor oil with a hint of burning rubber. Scraping wildly seemed like the logical next step. Unfortunately this only resulted in getting it lodged underneath my fingernails. It would ultimately take the next 20 minutes and a combination of suntan lotion, sharp seashells, and the elbow grease of three people to get it off.


Kinky? Maybe a little.

Pollution. Leave it to Los Angeles, right? I felt like one of those ducks you see getting cleaned off after an oil-spill. But guess what? It's natural! Not only that, but apparently this happens to dumb tourists all the time. Awesome. It's certainly not the first or the last time I'll fall into that category. It brings to mind a night in London when some drunk girls leaving a club looked at my friend and me and said, "Get out of the way you...TOURISTS!" A low moment. For the record, they were the ones in the way. And if I did live in London who's to say I wouldn't wear shorts and hiking shoes around town? Ah, but this is another post for another time.

Beach adventures aside, Los Angeles is a strange place.


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The smog, the sprawl, the freeways- it feels like a different planet. The purpose of this particular journey was mainly to see a much-missed friend who now attends the University of Southern California. (Her name is Sarah and you can catch her on The Price is Right on May 22nd. Spoiler Alert: She won an air hockey table!) Experiencing the city was, in this case, my second priority. And anyway, Los Angeles is a difficult place to explore. My first instinct when I go somewhere new is to take a walk to get my bearings. Even if taking an exploratory stroll were a real option (it's not), I'm not sure I would ever get my bearings in LA. A car is obligatory and driving strikes me as a little bit frightening. I don't want to be on the freeway with Paris Hilton, do you?

Still, we squeezed in some excellent highlights. Here's the boring slideshow:

This is me (duh) outside of Grauman's Chinese Theater doing my best to reenact my favorite scene from Moonstruck. You know, the part when he yells, "I LOST MY HAND! I LOST MY BRIDE!" Here's the whole scene, check it out. It's one of the few moments in film during which I don't loathe Nicolas Cage. Moonstruck also features the never-loathable Olympia Dukakis, who has now made her second appearance in The Armchair.

Here we are outside the Griffith Observatory in Griffith Park. It's named after a guy named Colonel Griffith J. Griffith. No joke. As you might imagine, he was quite a character. Enough of a character that I think we need to take a moment to talk about him.

Griffith Jenkins Griffith was a Welshman. He was also nuts. He came to the United States as a poor teenaged immigrant in the 1860s and, thanks to various enterprises having to do with mining, promptly became a millionaire. In his adopted home of Los Angeles he purchased and then donated the huge swath of land that would ultimately become Griffith Park. In his spare time he went around town spreading his particular brand of crazy. You know, gold-topped cane, outlandish overcoat, delusions of grandeur, the whole bit. Then he shot his wife while they were on vacation in Santa Monica. It was something to do with the Pope.

Mrs. Griffith J. Griffith managed to avoid a fatal wound by jerking her head away at exactly the right moment, launching herself out the window onto an awning, and crawling to safety. Unfortunately, though she came away from the ordeal alive, she was left partially blind and rather disfigured. A zany trial ensued and he spent a couple years in jail making burlap sacks. Ah, the 19th century egomaniacal self-made man. He spent the rest of his life trying to get the city of Los Angeles to take his money and fulfill his grand vision for the park. They demurred for a few decades but eventually gave in and broke ground on the observatory in the 1930s. Did I mention he wasn't actually a colonel?

Anyway, the observatory is in Griffith Park, up in the Santa Monica Mountains in the Los Feliz neighborhood of LA. There are great views of the city, the smog, and the ubiquitous Hollywood sign.

There's also this sweet tunnel that was used in Back to the Future. Like so many other places in Los Angeles and environs, Griffith Park has been used as a location for a slew of movies, including Rebel Without a Cause, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and The Rocketeer. That's right, The Rocketeer.


On St. Patrick's day we celebrated at our friend Greg's place in Redondo Beach. This is Molly, Greg's Girl Friday and Goo-Getter-Offer Extraordinaire. If friendship isn't helping you scrape s*** off the bottom of your foot, I don't know what is.

We had our obligatory stroll down Rodeo Drive (followed by a no-regrets splurge on high tea at the Peninsula Hotel) but didn't do any real retail damage until we stopped at a Marshall's on our way home. You haven't been to Marshall's until you've been to Marshall's Beverly Hills. I got a pair of Italian-made suede heels for $10. Just saying.

There's so much more to say about LA. For that reason, I'm going to call it quits here. Out of necessity I've left out quite a bit but I'm sure it will all surface in future posts when I'm trying to talk about Equatorial Guinea or something.

Equatorial Guinea is a country in Africa. That's as much as I know about it. Curious? Me too.

Going to California with an Aching in my...Stomach

I don’t generally like to complain. Seriously. I have a sort of militant loyalty to the "seeing the best in everything" philosophy. Pretty dumb, I know. It certainly hasn’t done anything good for my love life. Am I right, ladies? Just kidding with that last sentence. The one before it is still true though. Anyway, the point is that I would like to take a moment to complain about air travel. Bear with me, I know we've all heard these rants before.

The main problem on the flight from Indianapolis to Charlotte had to do with the previous night's ill-advised merriment. In fairness, I can't blame that on anyone but myself. Still, the woman sitting next to me could have been a lot nicer. Whatever lady, I wouldn’t want to interrupt you in chapter 43 of your James Patterson book. What’s the deal with that? She wasn’t even a third of the way into the book and it was already chapter 43. I can’t decide if she bought it at the airport or rushed out to Target after she saw the TV advertisement.

I guess that's rather elitist and hypocritical. I too have been known to enjoy a good page-turner. And it's not as though I've ever actually read James Patterson, mainly for fear of actually liking it. Hell, I liked the Da Vinci Code. I was also 18 and on the beach in Aruba. That makes it okay, right? It’s okay that I liked it, right? Right, guys??

By the way, did you know you can take a Da Vinci Code tour at the Louvre?

,

Kind of depressing. I think that might be James Patterson Lady with the straw bag.

Anyway, what I really want to complain about is the flight from Charlotte to LAX. First of all, it smelled like body odor. Fine, it's not the first time I've had to deal with body odor while traveling and I'm sure it won't be the last. My bigger problem was the food situation. There were over 200 passengers. It's a six-hour flight. How much food do you think they had on board? I'll tell you. Seven pastrami sandwiches ($7) and seven cobb salads (also $7). Oh, and an undisclosed number of "snack boxes" ($5), of which I saw a total of one (1). Apparently these boxes of food included, among other things, tuna salad. So to recap, that's airplane versions of pastrami, cobb salad, and tuna. I don't know about you, but I don't think I could come up with three more disgusting options.

Still, I was ready to eat pretty much anything. I was even ready to fork over the cash. But, as I was in an exit row about halfway down the aisle, my only option was one of the three remaining pastrami sandwiches. At the last minute, I chickened (pastramied?) out and didn't buy one. The thing is, I'm very particular about sandwiches. I didn't even regret it until the guy next to me pulled out a cookie and some kind of roll. It was just supposed to be the sandwich! Foiled! This is how happy that guy was:

This is how happy I was:


Luckily, I had purchased a bag of pretzels before boarding (probably for about $9- I'm not sure because I willed myself not to look) so I was able to survive until In-N-Out Burger, about which I will write next. In the meantime, check out these websites I found about airplane food:

Vintage Airline Meals
Airline Meals in Miniature (I don't understand, but I know I want one)
One Man Resorts to Violence