Author Archives: stevebuttry

The wrong train songs rumble through my head on Alpine journey

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One of many scenic views on our train ride from Lyon to Solothurn

When I’m riding a train from France to Switzerland, why does “City of New Orleans” run through my head?

We never got within 250 miles of old Orleans, though we did roll along past houses, farms and fields. And chalets, vineyards and peaks. Majestic, snow-capped peaks.

I definitely felt the wheels rumbling ‘neath the floor, but every time the tune took me to “Good morning, America, how are you?” I came up short. Neither France nor Switzerland had the right number of syllables, and I’m not a native son. Continue reading →

An ideal day in Lyon

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Here’s an ideal travel day: Sleep in. Enjoy a pleasant breakfast in a French bistro. A friendly cabbie explains why Lyon has the world’s best cooking as he drives you to a silk shop. A charming clerk helps you make your silk purchases. Walk down the quaint narrow streets of the Presq’île district to catch the parade of a Renaissance festival. Ride a funicular up a hill. Enjoy spectacular views of the city and the snow-capped Alps beyond. Browse the historic Basilica de Fourvière. View ancient artifacts in the Gallo-Roman Museum. Wander through the ruins of a Roman amphitheater. Enjoy a glass of wine outdoors, with views of the Alps in the distance. Sniff your way through the food stalls of Les Halles and buy some macaroons for the relatives you’ll be visiting the next day. Get back to your hotel for a brief afternoon nap. Accompany some new friends to dinner for melt-in-your-mouth seafood with more fine wine. And write a blog post. That was the Saturday my traveling companion and I enjoyed.

My traveling companion and I enjoyed a fabulous day in Lyon, including a walk across the Rhòne.

The quaint streets of old Lyon are more fun to walk, I’m sure, than they are to drive.

Where people in Lyon go when they’re feeling les miserables?

We happened upon a parade that appeared to be part of a Renaissance festival, starting in Place Bellecour.

I was not quick enough to catch the flag twirlers when they tossed their flags in the air.

The most amazing part of the parade was these women on stilts.

A huge statue of Louis XIV dominates Place Bellecour.

 

My woeful ignorance of the French language kept me from reading what this garden honors, but I did appreciate les fleurs.

The basilica towers above Lyon.

Basilica de Fourvière

Inside the basilica

The basilica ceiling

Huge mosaics cover the basilica walls.

Views of Lyon and the distant Alps from the basilica are breathtaking. That round tower in the center is our hotel, the Radisson Blu.

My companion enjoys fish art. Apparently the Romans did, too. The Gallo-Roman Museum displayed antiquities more than two millennia old, from the Roman city of Lugdunum, on the site of present-day Lyon.

The Roman faces captivated me most in the museum. This was Emperor Caracalla.

Roman gods (and planets, for that matter) are well represented in the museum’s faces. Here’s Mercury.

And Neptune

And, of course, Jupiter

These were apparently a mother and daughter.

The Roman museum is built adjacent to the ruins of an amphitheatre. Some theatrical masks are among the artifacts that have been found.

Yeah, the masks are kinda creepy.

Even creepier were the funeral masks. This one’s a cyclops.

Another funeral mask

And another

I told you they were creepy.

This mask is sad, apparently from the funeral of a young girl.

This container is huge. With walls that thin, could it have held water. If not water, what would you use an urn that large for? It had no plaque to explain.

I wonder if Red Rocks will hold up as well in 2,000 years as the Amphitheatre of the Three Gauls. With the view of the city and the mountains, it reminded me somewhat of Red Rocks, which we visited in October.

Friends, Romans, countrymen …

 

Holiday greetings from Steve and Mimi

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Madeline Burke Buttry (granddaughter #2), born February 1, 2012

Holiday greetings to our friends and family! 2012 has been a year of important life events in our extended family – the joyous birth and baptism of our granddaughter Madeline and weddings of nieces Meg and Liz and nephew Jon and the heartbreaking death of our nephew Brandon.

On the professional front, the big news is the publication of (and lots of positive reviews for) Mimi’s novel, Gathering String. I had a busy professional year, but nothing that big. Heck, I didn’t even change jobs.

Madeline and Susie

Madeline appeared the day before the legendary groundhog, Feb. 1. We have been delighted to get four visits this year with Madeline and her sister Julia (below), who turned two in March. We visited their home in Edina, Minn., right after Madeline was born, then again in April for her baptism, then in July. And in October, we met in Colorado for Meg’s wedding (more on that shortly). Madeline is crawling, standing and starting to speak. Julia has an active imagination and loves to pretend. They will both get lots more attention from Granny and Gramps on a Christmas visit to Edina. Mike and Susie are both doing well, too, and don’t seem to mind that Granny and Gramps pretty much ignore them in favor of the cutest members of their family. Grandpaparazzi thoroughly documented each of our visits. Granny does a fair amount of shopping for her little girls. We shipped two boxes of gifts out to Edina for Christmas because we couldn’t fit them all in suitcases. Continue reading →

Remembering Brandon and Patrick and a special day when their futures looked boundless

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Brandon Buttry and Patrick Devlin at Starved Rock State Park in 2006

Today I’m remembering — fondly, but through tears — a special trip we took in 2006 to Starved Rock State Park in Illinois.

We chose that as the location for a family reunion, probably the biggest gathering my extended family has ever had. My younger brother Don came in from Iowa, joined by 13 of his 14 children. My brother Dan came in from the Detroit area. Sister Carol came from Vermont with her two children. Mom came up from the Kansas City area, the last long trip she took by car (Mom’s in a memory care unit now). Cousins that we hadn’t seen for decades came in from around the Midwest.

We had good-natured fun with roasts to note Don’s 50th birthday, coming up that fall, and a granddaughter put together some slides as an observance of Mom’s 80th birthday, which would be that December.

One of my favorite memories of that gathering was the bond between two of my nephews, Brandon Buttry and Patrick Devlin, both 13 that summer. They hung out together pretty much all weekend. When we hiked the rocks and canyons of the park, they scrambled together up the steepest inclines, exploring the park more aggressively than their younger siblings and cousins or their older siblings, uncles, aunts and parents. No one enjoyed the park more than Brandon and Patrick did. Few people enjoy life with the gusto that Brandon and Patrick did.

Dan and I, both Eagle Scouts, took Patrick and Brandon to the nearby Ottawa Scout Museum. Patrick was a Scout, determined to join his uncles as an Eagle. Brandon wasn’t in Scouts, but he tagged along because he and Patrick were pretty much inseparable that weekend. They are together time and again in my photos of the gathering.

And they will always be together in my heart — nephews we lost too young. Neither of those wonderful young men made it to their 20th birthdays. We lost Patrick to leukemia in 2009, a year after climbing mountains at Philmont Scout Ranch, but before he could finish his Eagle Scout project. We lost Brandon today, killed in action less than a week after earning his Combat Infantry Badge in Afghanistan.

I don’t have much more to say. It’s hard to write even this much. Just this: Cherish the special young people in your life. They have so much promise, but you never know how long you will have them.

From left, me, Patrick Devlin, Brandon Buttry and Dan Buttry at the Ottawa Scouting Museum.

Brandon and Patrick behind a waterfall at Starved Rock.

Brandon Buttry in May, graduating from basic training at Fort Benning, Ga., in May 2012.

Patrick Devlin in Scout uniform.

 

Visiting the Georgia mountains, I celebrate family past and present

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Sunrise from Bella Vista cabin, Helen, Ga.

I have lived in more than a dozen places around the country and abroad, none of them in the Appalachians. But each time I visit these mountains, especially in the South, I know I am getting close to my roots.

My father’s people came from the mountains of eastern Tennessee. The mountains around the Chattahoochee River in northwest Georgia are some 200 miles to the south, but somehow this feels like our family belongs here. And indeed we are here for a Buttry clan celebration, the wedding of my nephew, Jon Buttry, to the love of his life, Jamie Mayo. Dad was a country boy who grew up in Chenoa, Ill., but we knew the “can’t hardly” that occasionally snuck into his speech was a reminder of his family’s backwoods roots in Sneedville, Tenn. He went off to seminary in Chicago, got a master’s degree and saw the world as an Air Force chaplain. But he always was a country boy at heart.

Perhaps in the same way that my son Mike loved the Dukes of Hazzard when he was growing up in a Midwestern city, I feel drawn to these mountains I have only visited. (We did see signs for Dukes Creek on our drives this weekend, and would not have been surprised to see Bo and Luke — that was Dad’s name — shoot past us in the General Lee.) Continue reading →

Even though we’re not high rollers, we win on a visit to Vegas

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A lovely Chihuly in a lounge isn’t enough for the Bellagio …

To do things up in Vegas style, you need a full Chihuly ceiling.

Las Vegas did not build all this glitter in the desert based on the wagering of the likes of my companion and me.

We just spent five days in Vegas. I don’t think we bet $100 between the two of us.

We did take in a show. We ate and drank at Vegas prices. We spent a night in a penthouse suite. We took in the Vegas lights and sights, where even something as beautiful as Chihuly glass art must be done to excess.

But this was mostly a business and family visit to Vegas. I attended a conference, as lots of visitors do. But when my day at the career fair was over, instead of heading for the casino, I headed for the home of my son, Joe, and his wife, Kim. Continue reading →

The Pacific and the redwoods: I felt tiny

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The Pacific Ocean from a turnout along the Shoreline Highway

I spent the weekend feeling small. And it felt great.

In the song, “I Hope You Dance,” Lee Ann Womack sings, “I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean.” Well, Saturday, I stood beside the ocean. And then beside giant redwoods. And then drove down roads darkened by so many redwoods they blocked the sun at midday. Then I drove through mountains. Finally I looked down on the Pacific from atop cliffs. Sunday I was back beside the ocean. As I write this, waves thunder on the beach outside our hotel room.

I felt tiny and insignificant all weekend. And grateful.

Work brought me to Northern California last week, visiting Digital First Media newsrooms in seven different communities, ending Friday in Eureka on California’s northern coast. I resume the newsroom tour today in Monterey, nearly 400 miles south of Eureka. But we had the weekend to make our way down the Golden State’s shore. Continue reading →

The bike ride: John’s version

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This is a guest post by John Johnson, Mimi’s brother. At our invitation, he and his wife, Kim, are sharing a “2 Roads Diverged” view of their recent trip:

Kim had suggested a bike ride a couple times in recent weeks.  I love that she wants to do these things together, but I also know this is one of the angles she’s working to encourage me to get out and exercise more – a lot more.

A couple weeks ago we were staying in the city for our anniversary and walked north along the bike trail from Scioto Audubon Metro Park to Scioto Mile, a revitalized area of Columbus along the Scioto River with a great riverfront park and restaurant we’ve become fond of. That’s when she first wondered aloud if there was a trail we could ride from the north suburbs all the way to downtown.  We often talk about spending more time in the city. I’m continually surprised by how vibrant Columbus is, and equally surprised we don’t spend more time enjoying the city now that the kids are gone.  A bike ride to downtown sounded like a great idea.

Olentangy – Scioto Bike Trail Information (warning – video is 8 minutes):

Starting at the trail head in Westerville, a suburb north of the I-270 beltway, makes about a 15-mile ride to the city, most of it right along the river and passing through several parks along the way.  It’s a perfect early summer Saturday.  As I’m putting the bikes in the truck I’m thinking it wasn’t that long ago I was biking a lot, and a 30-mile round trip is nothing.  Then I realize it’s been almost a year since I’ve ridden and 2003 since I really cycled regularly.  Is that possible?  Where did the time go? Continue reading →

The bike ride: Kim’s version

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This is a guest post by Kim Johnson, our sister-in-law. At our invitation, she and her husband, John, Mimi’s brother, are sharing a “2 Roads Diverged” view of their recent trip:

I recently discovered that a nearby bike path leads to one of our favorite downtown restaurants. My husband, John, without batting an eye, replied yes when I asked if he’d be up for the ride. Despite that the route is 15 miles one-way, and given that John’s idea of exercise is smoking a cigar on a neighborhood stroll while walking our dog, Marley, I thought this either naive, or adventuresome … probably the latter as that’s just the kind of up-for-anything guy he is.

So, flash forward a week and we load up our bikes. We let the nav lead as we don’t know exactly where the trail starts. We are instructed to “turn right” and arrive at the parking lot of a plastic surgery center. I wonder if this is some kind of divine intervention and as we drive through the lot looking for a trailhead, I ponder all kinds of procedures I could have done. It’s Saturday, though, and they are closed, but still, a girl can dream.

After no luck finding the trail, I turn to my iPhone nav, which directs us down the road a ways telling us to again “turn right” — this time into the parking lot of a specialty grocery store. Thinking we will never find the bike route, I eye the sign for the day’s cookout – soft-shell crabs – and imagine John and me sitting at a sidewalk picnic table drinking crisp white wine and picking flecks of shell from our butter-soaked fingers. But, at the very moment my mouth starts to water we see a car with a bike rack in tow and follow it to the back of the shopping center. Lo and behold, there — next to the dumpster — is the unmarked trail.

Regardless of its meager beginning, it’s a beautiful bike path. Continue reading →

Embracing (sort of) the legend of my travel jinx

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I started my last blog post saying that I believe in facts, not jinxes. That bears repeating after this tweet from my traveling companion:

Here are the facts:

  • I tweet a lot.
  • I travel a lot.
  • Travel often sucks, but not always.
  • One tweet is sufficient to say that you arrived on time.
  • A travel delay prompts more tweets.

When flights or trains arrive on time with no problems, one tweet suffices:

My tweeps yawn, if they notice at all. But a delay needs a little explanation and, well, I have time to explain. If the delay lasts hours because of a fatality on the tracks, I livetweet the whole thing. People retweet and spread the word and a Twitter mini-legend is born. Continue reading →