Jax Stumpes: May 2025

Saturday, May 31, 2025

Matilda Joslyn Gage Center (5/30/2025)

Friday, May 30, 2025

Shuffling off to Buffalo with a stop at the Matilda Joslyn Gage Center, with the House Museum and Center for Social Justice Dialogue.

Historical Marker outside her home in Fayetteville, NY

Gage House at 210 East Genesee Street

Photo of the original parlor, and the December 2024 issue
of Smithsonian Magazine that featured an article on
Matilda Joslyn Gage and her influence on her
son-in-law, L Frank Baum, author of The Wizard of Oz

The parlor today focuses on L Frank Baum
and his wife Maud Gage

Yellow Brick Road quilt (2010, by Towpath Quilters Guild
and Calico Gals especially for the Gage Foundation
is sharpened by the camera

The former dining room displays a Women's Rights
Timeline that starts in 909 with the founding of the
indigenous Haudenosaunee Confederacy with its
matriarchal society where women have equal political voice
with men, and rights to their own bodies and possessions;
Matilda Joslyn Gage advocated for Native Americans
and spent time with the Haudenosaunee, learning from
them and becoming an honorary member of the Wolf Clan

The Center was setting up for a tea, and had a few
of these Votes for Women cups and saucers

Copy of the book Women, Church and State (1893, by
Matilda Joslyn Gage) where she criticizes Christianity
for fostering the inferiority of women and strongly
advocates for separation of church and state

The timeline continues; you will note in
the previous Timeline photo that is "ends"
in 2023, when women still do not have the
equal rights guaranteed in the Constitution
and 100 years after the introduction of
the Equal Rights Amendment/ERA

Period dress for Haudenosaunee,
and American suffragists

Sprout (c 2010, by Akwesasne Mohawk artist
Natasha Smoke Santiago) is one of three paintings each
illustrating one of three trimesters of pregnancy,
three seasons of crop growth, and three generations

Rofanies: a "new" art form combining the
Tuscarora beadwork of Rosemary Hill and
quilt-maker Stephanie Drehs to honor Gage's
friendship with the Haudenosaunee women

Missing Matilda Joslyn Gage, one of the
Matilda Effect series by Lynette Charters

The "Matilda Effect" was a label originally created by historian Margaret W Rossiter, referencing suffragist and author Matilda Joslyn Gage (1826-1898) who publicized the work of important but forgotten women in science, that is, women erased from history. Matilda herself suffered this effect after she worked with Susan B Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton in the leadership of the National Woman’s Suffrage Association/NWSA, and also with whom she wrote History of Woman Suffrage, and Declaration of the Rights of Women. Gage left the NWSA when it merged with the Women's Christian Temperance Union, a move Anthony believed would more quickly gain the right to vote, but Gage wanted separation of church and state.

The Gage family was involved with the
Underground Railroad and this ceiling
mural lists Freedom Takers

A bench from the Ontario County Courthouse, the location
of the 1873 trial of Susan B Anthony for voting in the
1872 presidential election; Gage spoke in her defense

Sunday, May 25, 2025

Tyler Arboretum Pink Hill Trail (5/25/2025)

Sunday, May 25, 2025

Because there was a Tyler Arboretum organized walk to Pink Hill in May, I thought that this was when the hill would be pink.

At the Tyler reception, a couple seemed to be pondering the $15-each admission, so we invited them as our guests. Turns out they are from New Jersey! We had a specific goal today, so left them on their own.

We don't get to see these blossoms still on the
Liriodendron tulipifera/Tulip Tree

Passing the Sequoiadendron giganteum/
Giant Sequoia

Gate 7 let us through the deer fence surrounding
the area of Tyler Arboretum with gardens

We had to cross Painter Road

Deutzia gracilis/Slender Deutzia, a non-native

Small fording of rain runoff?

Plank bridge over a feeder to Dismal Run

Rope railing for steps

Gate through another deer fence
surrounding the Pink Hill area

Hmm, dry grasses on Pink Hill

Partially cleared area?

We did not think to take a photo of the partially burned section; however, Tyler Arboretum is conducting controlled burns in order to restore this unusual area of serpentine barrens. The serpentine barrens are a geological rarity occurring only in patches, mostly in the northeast United States, and particularly in Maryland and southeast Pennsylvania. They are remnants of an ocean floor that was pushed up over 200 million years ago, when the African continent collided with the North American continent.

Here the soil is unable to support the usual plants, animals and insects in the way that other areas of the Arboretum could. Its soil contained high concentrations of minerals, such as magnesium, nickel and chromium, and not enough of the nutrients (especially calcium) needed to support new growth. Aside from that, beneath the thin layer of soil was a rare, green-cast stone, named serpentinite. Thus was created an ecosystem that was home to an extraordinarily diverse group of plants and animals, including several rare, threatened and endangered species. Today those grasslands are quickly disappearing and even Tyler’s plot has been reduced, mostly taken over by spruce and juniper, from the original 14 acres to its present three acres.

The upper part of Pink Hill close to the fence on
Barren Road, may be a restored section; we learned from
another hiker that the Phlox subulata/Moss Phlox actually
blooms in April, giving the hill a pink color

Pink Hill Trail is a lollipop trail,
so the loop takes us through another gate

A section of a bordered path leads to
a plank bridge crossing Dismal Run

Despite many days of rain, the amount of
water in Dismal Run is, apparently, dismal

Strong fragrance from Lonicera japonica/
Japanese Honeysuckle that is invasive

The small plank bridges over run-offs heading to
Dismal Run were often overgrown with greenery

The photo does not do justice to the 'pop' color of
Rhododendron calendulaceum/Flame Azalea

Flame azalea blossoms at peak

Kalmia latifolia/Mountain Laurel

Why was that father holding up his daughter
at the base of this tree: oh, a tiny bird nest

Wister Rhododendron Garden

Gnome entomologist at the pond

A nesting tube that last year held
Anas platyrhynchos/Mallard Ducks

Cornus kousa/Kousa Dogwood

Pollinator Preserve

Cornus kousa 'Miss Satomi'/Pink Dogwood

Sedum kamtschaticum/Orange Stonecrop;
orange?

The aftermath of flame azalea blooms

Functioning water fountain and
water bottle filling station

Sunday, May 4, 2025

Venice, Italy (5/4/2025)

Sunday, May 4, 2025

Our last full day, but because we had to sail an extra 200 km/124 miles to Venice, we did not arrive until 13:00.

Tugboat, one of two that rotated the Viking Saturn 180 degrees
to reposition at a different dock

Fusina Hydro Power Station

Our 16:30 included shore excursion was
organized by TrumpyTours

We took a 30-minute shuttle boat ride towards St Mark's
Square; once on shore we abandoned our tour group

The leaning campanile/belltower (1587-1603)
of San Giorgio dei Greci/St George of the
Greeks, which is a Greek Orthodox Church

Monument to Victor Emmanuel II
(1887, by Ettore Ferrari)

Palazzo Ducale/Doge's Palace (10-15C)

Lion of Venice Column (1172-1177);
the lion is actually an altered chimera/
mythical creature statue from China

St Theodore Column (1329) is actually a
statue of St George and the Dragon dating
to Roman Emperor Hadrian's time in 1C CE,
but taken from the Greeks by the Venetians,
who turned him into the patron saint of Venice
(before they decided on St Mark as patron)

Basilica San Marco/of St Mark (1063-1094, in Byzantine style)

Caffè Florian (founded 1720) is considered to be the oldest
coffee house in Venice and one of the oldest continually
operated coffee houses in the world

The interior was redecorated in 1858
by Lodovico Cadorin

Caffè Florian room

Another Caffè Florian room

One more of the seven Caffè Florian rooms

Then there are the al fresco/outdoor tables
entertained by a quartet

Piazza San Marco/St Mark's Square with
campanile/bell tower (1912, after collapsing)
was a watchtower and landmark to guide
Venetian ships into harbor

Basilica of St Mark with three flagpoles (c 1505,
by Alessandro Leopardi)

Basilica of St Mark main portal with a statue
of St Mark the Evangelist at the top, the
Quadriga/four chariot horses that were taken
from the Hippodrome in Constantinople,
and a mosaic of the Last Judgment