Easy Pickin's: The Gerald R. Ford Museum

Last week, a business trip took me to Grand Rapids, Michigan, home to 38th President Gerald R. Ford. The museum was just across the Grand River from my hotel, so I couldn't pass up the opportunity, even for someone considered to be a caretaker president.

As is typical, the museum starts off with a 20-minute video, in which the late president himself takes some credit for ending the Cold War. While this may sound like an overreach, in reality, foreign policy regarding the Soviet Union was actually a consistent thread from Truman through George H. W. Bush. Reagan had great follow-through in knocking down what had been teed up for him by previous presidents. No doubt Ford getting Brezhnev to recognize the principle of human rights at Helsinki further eroded the foundation of Stalin's legacy.

The exhibits themselves started off with a cultural check of the mess that was the 70s. Personally, I could have done without the reminder that white guys wore Afros in the days that disco was king, as well as the persistence of bell bottoms. I suppose, however, a museum devoted to the 5th-most-short-lived presidency has to have some filler.

The next space is devoted to Watergate, the genesis of Ford's ascension. It doesn't pull any punches in detailing the disaster Nixon created, while detailing the justification of Ford's pardon of Nixon. I honestly think Ford truly believed it would help move the country forward.

Interspersed with the story of how Ford became the first person not elected as president or vice-president is the requisite biography. The most interesting detail is LBJ's insistence that Ford serve on the Warren Commission (and that Ford and JFK had been friends in the House).

The foreign policy area is the most compelling. During his tenure, Ford had a hand in the following:

• Overseeing the hasty evacuation of Americans from Saigon to close out the Vietnam War. Interestingly, he pushed to open America's borders to 130,000 refugees of South Vietnam, something Congress was reluctant to do. He saw it as living up to our commitment to those who support democracy and freedom. (The museum includes the stairwell used to get to the rooftop helipad of the American embassy...again, a symbol of freedom to Ford.)
• Evacuating Americans from Lebanon after the assassination of the American ambassador.
  
• Conclusion of Sadat's initiative for Egypt to sign peace with Israel. Kissinger had an active role, and Ford did his part by keeping all of Nixon's cabinet that remained at Ford's inauguration.
  
• The Helsinki meeting with Brezhnev and signing of Salt II.
• Starting the Group of 7, forerunner to today's G-20. Ford saw the G-7 as a way to figure out a way to break OPEC's lock on oil prices. Some people see the G-7/G-8/G-20 as a financial cabal, but we're probably better off when the world's richest countries try to coordinate efforts.

There were a number of displays that were not functioning during my tour. Again, probably the cost of maintaining a museum for a president that doesn't stir the passions of partisan supporters the way Clinton or Reagan does. However, the critical exhibits were functioning, and they were enlightening.

A section is devoted to Betty Ford as first lady. The one point that interested me was her support of the Equal Rights Amendment.

On the domestic front, Ford faced the following problems:

• Blowback from not writing a blank check for NYC's bailout. He tied any federal assistance to budget reforms that helped New York cut much red ink. Congressman Ed Koch blasted Ford, but the President foresaw other municipalities lining up if New York got its bailout.
• 9.5% unemployment and 15% inflation. The Democratic Congress wanted to tackle unemployment with more government spending. Ford dropped a number of vetoes on spending bills. The end result was expanded unemployment assistance, but less spending than Congress initially wanted. This paved the way for inflation to fall under 6% in Carter's first year. Fortunately for the current administration, inflation is not tying their hands.
  
• 2 assassination attempts in less than a month, one by a Manson follower. Did I mention how much the 70's sucked?

The John Lennon Museum, Saitama

When we arrived to the museum very near the Saitama's Super Arena, there was a sea of Japanese teenage girls - thousands of them - waiting to enjoy a concert from S. Korea's hottest boy bands, TVXQ (Tohoshinki in Japan). Sadly, the picture above is of the museum as we were leaving (when the show was already in progress). It was a curious juxtaposition between a pop icon from 40 years ago to a spectacularly popular boy band in Asia that I'd never heard of. I wandered how many of these teenage girls would shriek in tears when Joongie showed his muscles?

John and Yoko spent time around the Saitama area when they were in Japan and in 2000, Yoko established the John Lennon Museum and adulation center there. It is a nice modest museum located very near the station and can be fully appreciated in about two hours.Despite many many worldview differences and the fact that I find may of Lennon's lyrics (mostly latter solo stuff) totally wrongheaded and occasionally reprehensible, he is still my favorite Beatle...on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. I'm a fan, but I never paid too much attention to his personal life beyond the main points. The museum provides a pretty basic depiction of his life and career that may be redundant for true aficionados, but was informative for me. I learned several things about the man (and the woman) that I had not known before, though nothing that changed my overall impressions. As a die-hard Dylan fan, I did note there was only one brief mention of Bob (a cliche reference to him as a protest singer) and no mention at all of him in describing John's transition from pop star to "serious" artist, which was a central theme of the museum. An even more noticeable omission was any narrative regarding his first wife, beyond a cursory mention. Nevertheless, the exhibits touched on most of the significant stuff - particularly where it concerned Yoko and John's deliverance from unhappiness.

The early period, too, was well represented with school aged notebooks and his first instruments lovingly preserved behind glass. I noticed that his handwriting was much nicer as a lad than it was as a Beatle (something I imagine was by design). His artwork, too, was a little more interesting to me when he was a boy, like the shot below, than his later minimalist scribblings that graced his books.I had never realized that, despite coming from a broken home and raised mainly by his aunt Mimi, John grew up in a nice comfortable and spacious home that his fellow Beatles did not enjoy. This combination seemed to make John the least-happy and most self-centered Beatle.

Several display cases covered the early pre-Please Please Me years of the Beatles. The most handsomely laid out display case is shown below. Heavy use of black leather and brown brick convey the atmosphere of the night club days.
Here's the two track recording machine used during the Sgt. Pepper sessions.
Here's a replication of sorts of the zany Yoko ceiling art that played a part with John and Yoko's initial meeting. One must climb the steps to get an insight into Yoko's genius.The genius, of course, was a plain word printed on the ceiling which made the trek up and down the staircase hardly seem worth the effort. Not only did I not fall in love with Yoko upon ascending the stairs, but I was a little resentful that she played me for a fool. I must say, when thinking about Yoko, I'm always reminded of a joke Dave Foley said on the show Newsradio. Foley's character was trying to provide solace for one of the other characters, who considered herself a Yoko-type figure. He tried to defend that stigma by offering, with a studder (quoting from memory): "Well, there are those that think her work on Double Fantasy wasn't...completely...destructive." The stuttering made the joke. I've always thought she was a poor artist, but an interesting character. I can't say I understand what attracted Lennon to her, but I can kinda understand his later obsession with her. She is a weird and fascinating person - probably just as bizarre to the Japanese as she is to Americans like myself. And just when I think I might warm up to some of her antics, I see stuff like "Bagism" which makes me wonder what anyone sees in either of the two.It's impossible for me to separate the irreverent stupidity John often displayed with his irreverent cleverness. Bagism seems to be on the side of stupid. I've often tried to look into John's eyes, but can never get past the glasses.

Here's the Primal Scream book that influenced John's first (and best) solo album. I haven't read the book, but I can't help but think that the way John sang earlier songs, like "Twist and Shout", he was achieving a similar cathartic release.
The "seal" of John's country. Ar! Ar!A pipe John enjoyed while in Japan. I was hoping the picture of John in the background was his own creation but it was not. The spare style of Japanese art - especially silk screens and ink on paper - is infinitely fascinating. Occasionally, John's own scribbles remind me of that.The second to the last room of the museum was very white and had a wall of his lyrics written in Japanese with a clear plexi-glass wall showing the same lyrics in English. This room looked like something John would have come up with (kudos, I guess, to Yoko and her contractors) and was a good place for photos.Throught the displays, I was reminded time and again just how selfish John and Yoko seemed through most of their lives. John seemed to go through phases so fast that today he would be accused of having ADD. And Yoko - I don't even know where to begin with her.

Enterprise (Square) is dead

Recently, I was updating the List of Stuff I Want to Do with My Life, an idea I stole from John Goddard. As my updates center around showing my 3 boys things around the country, I went searching for Enterprise Square, a museum befitting one of the most conservative states in the nation. To my dismay, the Oklahoma Ciy museum shut its doors in 2002, probably more due to mismanagement than to the 2001 economic downturn.

And what a shame. I visited the museum only once, but anything that starts off with a hall of dead animatronic presidents sticks in your head. There were a number of video games centered around traditional kid entrepreneurship - how much money to charge for mowing lawns or a cup of lemonade, given the costs. Alas, the experience exposed my lack of business saavy that firmly tethered me to a career of working for the Man.

The pinnacle of my failure at free enterprise was the final challenge - as CEO of a car company in postwar America. Not realizing that my expenses had to be divvied up across several areas of the business, I sunk my entire budget into advertising. I didn't have a product to sell, but my company sure made some entertaining commercials. We held on until 1948.