Category: Travels

See? Everything is bigger in Texas.

Took this photo in West Texas on my recent trip to Dallas.

Texas started upping the speed limit to 80 for stretches of West Texas highway earlier this year, meaning many people who were previously speeding now . . . aren’t (or aren’t as much).

This is the fastest speed limit I know of in the U.S. at present, though Arizona and New Mexico have 75 zones and California has a lot of 70 zones.

There’s talk, though, about having a corridor that would actually allow 85, though that’s controversial.

How did people ever deal with it back in the 55 mph days?

The mystery photo I published earlier today was of the site of President Kennedy’s assassination.

The X on the pavement marks the spot where the fatal headshot occurred.

I visited Dealey Plaza recently during my trip to Dallas to give a talk on The Da Vinci Code.

During the talk, I explained that in the novel Dan Brown portrays the Catholic Church as conducting the largest conspiracy in world history.

Then I added, "Now, I don’t know if y’all have had much experience with conspiracy theories . . . here in Dallas . . . but I’m here to tell you about Dan Brown’s."

The audience appreciated the line a lot since Dallas has been the epicenter of conspiracy theories for the last 40 years as a result of the Kennedy assassination.

The last time I was in the area, I got to visit the 6th Floor Museum of the former Texas School Book Depository (where Lee Harvey Oswald is alleged to have shot the president from) and which presents the Warren Commission version of events.

This time I got to go to another, rival museum a couple of blocks away: the Conspiracy Museum, which presents or tries to present . . . well . . . every other side.

It also has displays on other alleged conspiracies, including the assassinations of Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Abraham Lincoln (the last of which is known for certain to have been an actual conspiracy, though the question of who was behind it is still debated).

I also got some better pictures of Dealey Plaza than those I posted last time, so I hope to post those soon.

In addition, I took a number of other photos on the trip and will be posting some new mystery photos soon.

Earlier today I posted a mystery photo and offered a hint about where I was.

By the time this post goes up, someone may have already guessed where I was. But if not, here’s another clue:


BTW, ignore the stupid virtual pushpin with the letter A on it. That has nothing to do with where I was. I simply haven’t found a way to get Google Maps to turn off the stupid pushpins.

If anyone knows how, please let me know in the combox!

Where was I?

Answer later today.

Need a hint? Well, I’ve been to this spot before and have blogged about it and even published a picture of me standing at it.

The mystery photo from earlier today was a site that I’ve written about before. In fact, I’ve even published a picture of it before–but it was a picture taken from orbit.

Here’s that photo:

In case that doesn’t jog your memory, what you’re looking at here is a geological feature outside Binger, Oklahoma known as the "Ghost Mound."

Ghost Mound is one of a number of mounds that have names in Caddo County, Oklahoma–though there seem to be an even larger number of mounds that don’t have names.

It also appears to be the basis of the mound that is featured in H. P. Lovecraft’s story The Mound, which he (appropriately enough) ghostwrote for a woman named Zealia Bishop.

The Mound is considered the most impressive of all of the stories that Lovecraft is known to have ghostwritten for others–so impressive, in fact, that it’s often grouped with the stories that he published under his own name.

Lovecraft was given a minimal plot kernel to work with on this story. Here is all Bishop gave him to work with:

There is an Indian mound near here, which is haunted by a headless ghost. Sometimes it is a woman (S. T Joshi, H. P. Lovecraft: A Life, 467).

Lovecraft hated having to solve plot problems, and it particularly irked him that he had to write this story basically from scratch. (The fact he had trouble getting Bishop to pay him for the stories he ghosted for her also irked him.)

But the fact that she gave him so little to work with probably made the story what it is: one of Lovecraft’s best. The more he was given to work with by his literary clients, the worse the stories usually turned out. It was when he was left alone to wrestle through the story on his own that he did his best work, and The Mound is definitely one of his better stories.

It doesn’t actually feature ghosts, though. By this point in his career, Lovecraft was doing more science-oriented weird fiction and less supernatural-oriented weird fiction, so he doesn’t have conventional ghosts in the story. Instead, he provides an entire ancient, technologically-advanced civilization underneath the mound in his story.

To find out what the ghost-like entities actually are, you’ll have to

GET THE STORY.

If you do, you’ll note that Lovecraft’s description of the mound varies considreably from what it looks like in real life (because Lovecraft hadn’t visited the site and certainly wasn’t going to for the piddling wages he stood to make from the writing project–if he could even collect them).

In the story, he describes the mound as

a huge, lone mound or small hill that rose above the plain about a third of a mile west of the village—a mound which some thought a product of Nature, but which others believed to be a burial-place or ceremonial dais constructed by prehistoric tribes. This mound, the villagers said, was constantly haunted by, two Indian figures which appeared in alternation; an old man who paced back and forth along the top from dawn till dusk, regardless of the weather and with only brief intervals of disappearance, and a squaw who took his place at night with a blue-flamed torch that glimmered quite continuously till morning. When the moon was bright the squaw’s peculiar figure could be seen fairly plainly, and over half the villagers agreed that the apparition was headless.

He then has his protagonist climb up on top of the mound and start digging:

As I turned up the soil with my trench-knife I could not help wondering at the relative thinness of the reddish regional layer. The country as a whole was all red sandstone earth, but here I found a strange black loam less than a foot down.

Most of this doesn’t correspond to the actual mound the story is based on. First, it ain’t a third of a mile west of the town (not village) of Binger. It’s miles away and is actually closer to Hydro, Oklahoma. It also is clearly natural rather than artificial, and there is no soil–red or otherwise–up on top of it to be dug, if one could even get to the top of the thing.

I was disappointed when I got there and saw that I wouldn’t be able to climb the thing (not without way more time than I had, special climbing gear, and the permission of the landowner on whose property it is located). I’d hoped to go to the top of it, like the character in the story, and retrieve a soil sample.

Still, the mound is still the basis of a ripping weird fiction story!

Here’s another mystery photo from my recdent trip. Can you guess where I was this time?

This one’s kinda hard, because the site I’m at is not that famous.

Need a hint?

Okay, try this one:


Answer later today!

The recent mystery photo I did reveals that I recently took a trip, though up to now I haven’t mentioned the purpose of the trip.

The purpose was so that I could go to Arkansas for the confirmation of one of my godsons, which as you can tell is what is going on in this picture.

I am presenting my godson Colin to Bishop James Sartain of Little Rock, who is confirming him.

Colin is an smart young man who shows a lot of promise. He takes his faith seriously, he’s got some great friends, and he’s got a lot of interests, including music and video games, as well as reading. In fact, he recommended a book to me that I’m going to get and read myself.

It was a real pleasure to get together with him and his family, and I extended my trip by an extra day so I could spend more time with them. It was a really special time for me.

I was also impressed with Bishop Sartain. He’s a Tennessee boy, and before the service I went up to him to make sure I was going to pronounce his name correctly during the service (that’s something that’s important to me, the way my last name gets mangled). Turns out his is pronounced SAR-tan, though he says he’ll answer to other things.

While I was waiting to ask him the question, he was telling some folks about a hunting trip he went on with friends down in Mississippi, so that scored him points in my book.

Incidentally, I have reason to think that this photo of us may show up in the diocesan newspaper, The Arkansas Catholic, so any blog readers who get the paper might keep an eye out for it.

Thanks for all the guesses about where I was in yesterday’s mystery photo. I hadn’t heard of most of the other giant crosses that folks mentioned.

The answer is that I was at the giant cross in Groom, Texas–population 587 (Saaaaaa-lute!).

The Groom cross site advertises itself as the world’s biggest cross (which it was, though another town has apparently built one that is 8 feet taller now) and also "A religious experience like no other!"

The latter is a tag line you see on a roadsign on I-40 to get you to stop at the cross, which is run by the innocuously named "Cross Ministries" (a.k.a. Cross Of Our Lord Jesus Christ Ministries).

What happens when you stop and get out of your vehicle is that you find there is a whole bunch of stuff at the cross. In fact, once you get there the real focus ceases to be on the giant cross itself, which comes to seem more like something impressive and visible from the roadside (from miles away!) designed to get you to stop and see the real religious content of the site.

Most of that religious content consists of life-sized statues forming the Stations of the Cross (above), though there are also other items, like a large plaque of the Ten Commandments with Jesus’ commandment to love at the bottom of it and a life-size replica of the Shroud of Turin and a life-size Empty Tomb (with an angel in it) and a pro-life memorial with Jesus holding a tiny, aborted baby in his hand.

Now, "Cross Ministries" is a name that sounds very interdenominational, and it’s nice to see an interdenominational group including something as Catholic as the Stations of the Cross (especially in the form of life-sized statues).

Only as you start working your way around the stations, you start suspecting that this group isn’t as interdenominational as it seems.

There are certain Catholic touches. . . . like when right before you get to the statues depicting the Crucifixion, you have to walk past another statue of Jesus celebrating the Eucharist at the Last Supper, emphasizing the link between the Cross and the Eucharist. And then there are these plaques on the ground explaining what the statues are, with Bible verses for you to meditate on, and the plaques around the Eucharist statue are all Bible verses emphasizing the Real Presence.

And for the Fourth Station (Jesus Meets His Mother, Mary) one of the Bible verses on the plaque is from Revelation 12.

And one of the plaques on the way to the gift shop (after you finish doing the stations) is titled "Pillar of Truth" and cites 1 Timothy 3:15.

And right in front of the gift shop is a huge fountain with a statue of Jesus and the plaque says "Divine Mercy Fountain," and the statue of Jesus is posed just like he is in the Divine Mercy devotion (only he doesn’t have rays of light streaming from his chest).

And in the gift shop there are not only tons of the kind of gift items (not books) that you’d find in a Protestant bookstore, there are also Divine Mercy posters (with the rays of light) and pictures of Mary and books by Cardinal Ratzinger and pictures of John Paul II and Pope Benedict.

Given the "Pillar of Truth" references that crop up more than once at the site, I half expected to find copies of Pillar of Fire, Pillar of Truth in the gift shop (which would have been cool, since I’m a co-author of that booklet), but I didn’t. I’ll have to contact the folks who run the site and see if they’d like me to send them some.

But all the Catholic stuff is doesn’t stop Protestants from being able to find meaning in this.

While I was there I spoke with a black lady truck driver from L.A. who had stopped and who gave every sign of being Protestant, yet who agreed with me when I said how much I liked the fact that they included the Stations of the Cross.

And then on the wall in the gift shop there’s a photo of Charlie Daniels (who is Protestant as far as I can tell, though he has Catholic-friendly themes in his songs sometimes, as in his "El Toreador" song) that the singer has autographed to the guys who run the site.

So I was really impressed!

Not only was the site moving to me as a Catholic, but it is intriguing and non-in-your-face enough that many  Protestants will find meaning in it, too.

What a wonderful way to help Protestants driving by on I-40 to stop and have a spiritual experience that puts them in touch with aspects of Christian spirituality that they otherwise would never experience.

Kudos to Cross Ministries!

Incidentally, I got pictures of the whole site and may do a web presentation on it for those who can’t make the trip to Groom–if there’s sufficient interest in that (and if I could get some help splicing and sizing the photos for the web).

MORE ON CROSS MINISTRIES.

Mystery photo. Where am (was) I?

(Click to enlarge.)

Mystery photo. Where am (was) I?