Wonder & Rochambeau Statue, DC

On Christmas Eve we went into DC to visit the newly renovated Renwick Gallery. The WONDER exhibition is very cool and highly recommended. The exhibition closes between May and July 2016.

Photo by Patrick Jones. John Grade's Middle Fork, Renwick Gallery, DC.

Photo by Patrick Jones. Jennifer Angus, In the Midnight Garden, Renwick Gallery.

Yes, those are bugs in the photo above. A whole room in the Renwick features these critters. Other rooms allow visitors to see a woven sculpture suspended from the ceiling of the gallery depicting the energy waves from the tragic Tohoku earthquake and tsunami (you have to experience this by viewing the installation from the floor looking up) and a rainbow made up of nearly 60 miles of thread. The exhibition is likely to be one of the most Instagrammed spots in DC for the next few months.

After the Renwick we walked past the White House and through Lafayette Park. On a corner of the park is the Rochambeau Statue, created in 1902 by sculptor Fernand Hamar. Jean-Baptiste-Donatien de Vimeur, Comte de Rochambeau, was a French military commander who aided America during the Revolutionary War, playing a key role in the Battle of Yorktown. While the top of the statue shows Rochambeau, the part that caught my eye was the lower portion showing Victory defending the American Eagle. There are other statues in the park, but this was the first time I had taken a closer look at this one, and I was interested to learn more about the statue in the National Park Service webpage linked above.

Photo by Patrick Jones. Fernand Hamar's Rochambeau Statue.

Photo by Patrick Jones. Victory and the American Eagle. 24 Dec 2015.

2015 recap, 2016 look ahead

My end of the year recap post has become a blog tradition (see last year's post and 2013's post here), providing an opportunity to look back over the year and think ahead to the some of the exciting events to be in 2016.

Painting at Terra Restaurant, Columbia, SC.

As with the past few years, I started 2015 with meetings in Los Angeles. In February I returned to Singapore for meetings, and found time to see some cool street art. I then made a quick visit to Cairo in March. Later in the month, we took the kids to St. Kitts for Spring Break. In April I was in Istanbul and Seattle. 

May brought a return visit to Istanbul and a memorable trip to Tashkent, Uzbekistan. In June I returned to Buenos Aires, Argentina, with an amazing layover visit to the Wynwood Walls in Miami along the way. I didn't travel in July and August, but I did enjoy a solid summer of training for my first half marathon in September. Prior to Labor Day I had another set of meetings in Istanbul, and an opportunity to see the Asian side of the city. 

October included by first trip to Dublin. November took us to Columbia, South Carolina for a family wedding. December included a whirlwind set of meetings and talks in Warsaw, Vienna, Bratislava and a return through London and Dublin.

From a family history perspective, 2015 has yielded some breakthrough research, from finding an early connection to Los Angeles, a previously unknown first wife of my great-grandfather Harry O'Brien, seeing photographs of my 2nd-great-grandfather Thomas Robert Jones and 2nd-great-grandparents Vicente Campuzano and Maria Jesus Vasquez. 2015 has also uncovered some of the mystery behind the parents of my 2nd-great-grandmother Mary Alice Cain Read, opening up the research on her mother Nancy Jane Flatt and the Flatt family. I am hopeful 2016 will continue bringing these types of historical detail back to the surface for sharing on the blog.

2016 is already shaping up to be an exciting year, with some new places on the horizon, including plans for my first marathon. I am extremely thankful to have good health, a great family and the ability to experience the world.

O'Tannenpalm

Image from Corona's 1990 O'Tannenpalm commercial, source YouTube

The weather in DC feels more like Miami this Christmas (we hit 74 earlier today). It's perhaps fitting to use the image above from Corona's classic O'Tannenpalm ad for my Christmas Eve post. Until today I didn't know the ad was 25 years old in 2015. If you're interested in the story behind the ad, Corona created this YouTube video last month.

The cabana in the ad is located in Akumal, Yucatan, between Playa del Carmen and Tulum. We visited the area in January 2004 during a trip from Merida through Yucatan.

Have a safe and merry Christmas with friends and family!

Wordless Wednesday - Merry Christmas 1911

Source: NYPL Digital Collection. Postcard, 1911.

Back to Evansville

Continuing with a recap on the life of Robert A. Halter, brother of my wife's great-grandfather, around 1942 Robert returned to the Halter family home base in Evansville, Indiana with his wife Alma and daughter. They appear in the Evansville City Directory in 1942, with Robert working as a salesman.

Two years later, Robert and Alma divorced, and Robert married Nellie Mae Puckett of neighboring Henderson County, Kentucky. Robert and Nellie appear together in the 1945 Evansville City Directory, showing Robert had become President of his own sales company, Halter's Sales and Service. By 1950, his company appears as a real estate brokerage, large enough for the extra cost of bold type in the city directory.

1950 Evansville City Directory.

Robert operated his real estate brokerage for over the next 30 years. He died at the age of 90 on 4 May 1989.

Source: Browning Genealogy database, Evansville Library.