Seemingly OT--but not at all

[TEPaul]

I just noticed on AOL that the identity of Mona Lisa has apparently been almost undeniably proven.

Athough the identity of the woman has been suspected for years it was not proven until now and some thought it could've been Leonardo's lover, his mother or even him!

It was Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a rich Florentine merchant Francesco Del Giocondo.

It was proved relatively recently by a German researcher by margin notes in a contemporaneous book (1503) owned by a friend of Leonardo's who mentioned he was working on three portraits at the time and one of them was Lisa Del Giocondo.

The reason it's not OT to this site is because so many of us are into information that requires some really good and provable research material and uncovering it and even identifying it, particularly as provable, is something of an art in itself and also pretty exciting if and when it happens.

For instance this quest we are on to find the actual identities of a couple of pseudonym writers from the teens in Philly newspapers on Philadelphia golf who wrote some interesting stuff noone recalled for years looks sort of deadenish at the moment and I doubt we'll find it anywhere near any of those newspapers either then or now for obvious reasons.

But it would not surprise me if we find proof in some contemporaneous letters and such from that time because the writer and the receiver probably thought no one else would ever read it or care and so they never would've been concerned with keeping the pseudonym writer's identity covered.

Sometimes I think architectural research is every bit as much fun and as interesting as just knowing and understanding bona fide architectural information from long ago.

[wsmorrison]

Speaking of portraits, do you have any paintings or know of a collection of paintings by your ancestor, Francis Martin Drexel?

Here is one I found online by your famous banker/painter relative:

[TEPaul]

Wayne;

Yes, I do sort of know about those paintings or portraits.

Francis Drexel, a peripatetic Austrian wanderer and the father of A.J. Drexel, mega financier of the 19th century and the only man on earth that J.P Morgan answered to his entire life (even though noone seemed to know that or why until recently) did have a lot of art out there somewhere and Drexel University (and I guess Drexel family members and heirs) began to really seek it out and try to acquire it with or for Drexel U.

Of course they did solicit contributions from family members all over the lot to establish a fund to buy those Francis Drexel portraits.

To be honest with you Wayno, like a lot of things with me today I can't really remember if I contributed or not and it's probably just better left that way.

[Norbert P]

Sometimes I think architectural research is every bit as much fun and as interesting as just knowing and understanding bona fide architectural information from long ago.

I would have to say more so. Then again, my database is not as rich as yours, so most of my neural activity comes from discovery, not recantation.

[TEPaul]

Sorry about that Slagheap, but one pretty much oughta just go with what he's got.

But if I ain't got it I'm probably not too bad at making it up.

I got Wayne on my tail all the time on golf architecture research and he's a stickler for honest and accurate research. Matter of fact, he's sort of a pain in the ass that way because he won't let me lie about anything.

One time I was speaking to Friars Head's Kenny Bakst and I was telling him I was having a hard time coming up with things to write about Flynn (something I ended up not doing as much as Wayne by a factor of about 1600) and Bakst told me if I couldn't come up with provable information just lie because everyone else did anyway.

Took me about a day and a half to stop laughing.

[Kyle Harris]

On another topic...

...sometimes the mystery is more alluring than the fact. How much of the appeal of Mona Lisa was the mystery as to just who (or what) the inspiration was?

In what cases has the mystery or aura of a golf course's history overcome the truth? Did uncovering and disproving a myth take something away from the appeal?

[Norbert P]

On another topic...

...sometimes the mystery is more alluring than the fact. How much of the appeal of Mona Lisa was the mystery as to just who (or what) the inspiration was?

I always thought the real mystery of that painting was WHY she was smiling.  

[Norbert P]

(Wayne's) a stickler for honest and accurate research. Matter of fact, ... he won't let me lie about anything.

 

Thank Heaven for Wayne's integrity, as I can't imagine the social and historical implications that would resonate through GCAdom if your words ever became invalidated.  I fear one day that you will one day come under scrutiny on 60 Minutes for story-telling performance enhancers.  

[TEPaul]

"On another topic...

...sometimes the mystery is more alluring than the fact. How much of the appeal of Mona Lisa was the mystery as to just who (or what) the inspiration was?

In what cases has the mystery or aura of a golf course's history overcome the truth? Did uncovering and disproving a myth take something away from the appeal?"


Wow, Kyle, what a good thought at this point. Something else to chew on or deflect with.

You know what, I really did feel that taking away the mystery of what really happened to Crump was a real shame and shouldn't have been attempted. It made me mad, really mad, that someone would go to the length the guy that proved the truth about his death went to. And as most know on here we got into a real blowout tussle over the whole thing. I definitely questioned his reasons and motives, and certainly his methods in even trying to do it and in a way I guess I still do.

For years that story that he died from poison to the brain from a tooth abcess was extant but that sub rosa rumor that he committed suicide was there for so many years. It was a mystery, that's for sure, but anyone from the club or otherwise certainly could have petitioned for his death certificate or whatever, but obviously noone wanted to for all kinds of reasons, maybe some good and maybe some not so good.

But I'm always willing to consider other points of view and on that one I'm still trying to do that. Somewhere in my mind I think the wishes of his family way back then for doing what they did with that story should be honored, whatever their reasons were.

But some of what changed my mind is the way Pine Valley took it and dealt with it. I thought they dealt with it just so fair and even-handed by taking the truth into a board meeting and reporting it, as sad as that must have been.

I wish the mystery could've remained but in the back of my mind I guess I know the truth should always win out.

[Mark Bourgeois]

Hey, is that guy is painting in a, well, I guess Tuxedos weren't invented yet, but still, is that guy painting in a Tuxedo?

Mark

PS If people really want to claw out the ID of an anonymous writer there are algorithms that analyze writing styles.  You just need writing samples from your suspects.  I can't remember who, but a university professor and his class outed Joe Klein some years back as the anonymous author of "Primary Colors."

[Peter Pallotta]

TE -

the other interesting thing about this proof is that it wasn't needed at all. Scholars had known for centuries about a roughly contemporaneous account stating very clearly that DaVinci had painted a portrait of Lisa Gherardini. But that account was written about 50 years later, and somewhere along the line art historians started deeming it not authoritative enough (it being written 'so long' after the fact). Yet as the years passed, historians seemed more willing to buy-into a theory developed two hundred or four hundred years later than they were that original account.  Off Kyle's point, it may be the human beings simply like mystery more than fact. But I think it's also a sign of our modern intellectual arrogance that, in this as in so many other areas, we tend to think that the very earliest reporters must have been biased or stupid or misinformed, while we instead are clear sighted and objective.  

All of which is to say, in golf course architecture research, we should really try very hard to listen to those who were there at the time instead of letting our own theorizing run away with itself. I'm sure guilty of that myself, and it's really fun to do, but it tends to move us, I think, ever further away from the truth, or at least from the facts.

Of course, that assumes that we're more interested in facts than we are our own agendas.  

Peter

[John Keenan]

The story on Mona Lisa made me wonder what "notes" and margin writings will be left from our world of e-mail and IM's Will discovery of this sort become impossible as hard disc crash and are lost or broken?  

How will the small yet critical details of our history be found or preserved. My suspicion is they will  

[JSPayne]

On another topic...

...sometimes the mystery is more alluring than the fact. How much of the appeal of Mona Lisa was the mystery as to just who (or what) the inspiration was?

I always thought the real mystery of that painting was WHY she was smiling.  

Or why she has no eyebrows?

[Mike Sweeney]

But I'm always willing to consider other points of view and on that one I'm still trying to do that. Somewhere in my mind I think the wishes of his family way back then for doing what they did with that story should be honored, whatever their reasons were.

Tom,

Of the things that have been discovered on GCA, I think that Tom MacWood's article on Crump and Gene Greco finding the original routing by Colt of Pine Valley on ebay were two of the most interesting things ever here on GCA.

Now I am not a member of the club obviously nor do I have the relationship that you do, but as a Philly guy it actually added to the legacy of Pine Valley for me. The one and only time that I played there I was amazed that it (specifically the 18 holes) were as great as they were. Growing up across the river, one is suspect of everything in New Jersey!

After Tom's article, I could start to understand what it really takes to build a magical golf course and hole. Lots and Lots of time, and in this case hardship. Now you begin to understand how the other architects came together without ego to finish the course after Crump's death. Back in that era, people did not talk about suicide, so his friends and family naturally protected his legacy. The same thing appears to have happened here at GCA when an architect died that was a friend of GCA.com, and that is okay.

Hopefully it did not hurt any of his family and it is still a small circle that discovered this information, but for me personally, it did add to the already enormous legacy of Pine Valley Golf Club.

[TEPaul]

Peter:

I think you're absolutely right that some of us get into trying to promote some agenda or interpretation of something from the past and in sticking to something too much in the face of contemporaneous opinion of the time to the contrary we probably do distort history.

I remember a thread on here a few years ago where the poster was apparently trying to promote the idea that Tillinghast was selling out his principles, selling his soul in fact, by going on that architectural tour for the PGA.

It wasn't too clear to me from that poster what principles Tillinghast was selling out. It may've been just that he recommended removing so many bunkers from courses all over America where 10 or 15 years earlier he may not have recommended such a thing.

But times change, economics change, architectural opinions change and obviously architects change too along with their opinions on things at particular and different times. I'm not sure that poster should've adamantly stuck to that characterization of Tillinghast with so much contemporaneous evidence to the contrary.

The more I get into this stuff the more I appreciate just how much we need to always remember to strip away everything that came after those people back then that we know that they never could've known. If we don't do that I don't think we can ever read them accurately.

[Anthony Butler]

One time I was speaking to Friars Head's Kenny Bakst and I was telling him I was having a hard time coming up with things to write about Flynn (something I ended up not doing as much as Wayne by a factor of about 1600) and Bakst told me if I couldn't come up with provable information just lie because everyone else did anyway.

Took me about a day and a half to stop laughing.

If it doesn't come up in the first 10 pages of a Google search, you have to question whether it actually happened.  

When you are a member of a course designed by one of the ODGs, you will constantly be sorting myth from reality anyway.

[TEPaul]

Mike Sweeney:

I hear you on your post #13, I really do, but I'm still ambivalent about that whole thing and I guess I always will be. I'd probably be more adamant that it shouldn't have been done if Pine Valley took it badly but they didn't, they took it so well. It was pretty touching to me really.

But one thing about it all and Crump's suicide should be pointed out that most who aren't that familiar with the place may not know. That is that rumor that he may've shot himself was always around. I heard about it maybe thirty years ago. I even spoke to Geoff Shackelford who suspected it maybe five years before Tom MacWood ever got involved. Later I asked Shackelford where he heard about it and he said he thought he saw a reference to the rumor in some old magazine. So it was not Tom MacWood who came up with that story on his own. All he did is prove something a number of people suspected for years may've happened.

And since a number of people have suspected that for years and plenty from the club it's also pretty obvious that if any of them had ever wanted to prove it they most certainly could've done exactly that. All anyone had to do is just go petition the township or the state to release his death certificate.

No one ever seemed to want to do that until Tom MacWood, a guy from another state who's never even been there came along and did it without even asking the club's permission or talking to them about it first.

Somehow I guess I will always have a bit of a problem with that---eg not just that he went to the trouble of trying to prove it but the way he went about it regarding the club, and also some people at the township.

But everything worked out well in the end with the revelation and with the club, so that matters to me too. If they can live with it as they did then I certainly should be able to as well.

There still is some interesting mystery left in the whole thing though such as both how and why the family or whatever could get a story like the cause of his death that they gave (poison to the brain from a tooth abcsess) going and keep it going that long.

And not just that, but the death certificate says that Crump shot himself in his home in Merchantville NJ.

I am almost positive he shot himself in his cabin in Pine Valley and they moved his body to Merchantville before calling the police.

The rumor I heard about thirty years ago was that he was found dead in his cabin with a gun next to him. And then in the last five years I found an article from a small Kentucky newspaper with an interview with George Govan, the son of Jim Govan, Crump's constant foreman during the building of PV.

The Govans lived at Pine Valley in the teens and George Govan in that article that was written in 1990 said he remembered so well when he was a kid the time they found Mr Crump dead in his cabin. Of course he didn't mention how he died.

That's a child's memory and someone who was apparently right there. I just don't see any way or any reason he would've made that up.

I don't know, if the club or a whole host of their members could've proved it fairly easily over the years if they'd ever wanted to but apparently never did want to, I guess I still wish it never had been proven, and that  it could've remained a mystery to this day.

Maybe I'm like Kyle, I guess I just like the mystery better.

[Sean_A]

Mike Sweeney:

I hear you on your post #13, I really do, but I'm still ambivalent about that whole thing and I guess I always will be. I'd probably be more adamant that it shouldn't have been done if Pine Valley took it badly but they didn't, they took it so well. It was pretty touching to me really.

But one thing about it all and Crump's suicide should be pointed out that most who aren't that familiar with the place may not know. That is that rumor that he may've shot himself was always around. I heard about it maybe thirty years ago. I even spoke to Geoff Shackelford who suspected it maybe five years before Tom MacWood ever got involved. Later I asked Shackelford where he heard about it and he said he thought he saw a reference to the rumor in some old magazine. So it was not Tom MacWood who came up with that story on his own. All he did is prove something a number of people suspected for years may've happened.

And since a number of people have suspected that for years and plenty from the club it's also pretty obvious that if any of them had ever wanted to prove it they most certainly could've done exactly that. All anyone had to do is just go petition the township or the state to release his death certificate.

No one ever seemed to want to do that until Tom MacWood, a guy from another state who's never even been there came along and did it without even asking the club's permission or talking to them about it first.

Somehow I guess I will always have a bit of a problem with that---eg not just that he went to the trouble of trying to prove it but the way he went about it regarding the club, and also some people at the township.

But everything worked out well in the end with the revelation and with the club, so that matters to me too. If they can live with it as they did then I certainly should be able to as well.

There still is some interesting mystery left in the whole thing though such as both how and why the family or whatever could get a story like the cause of his death that they gave (poison to the brain from a tooth abcsess) going and keep it going that long.

And not just that, but the death certificate says that Crump shot himself in his home in Merchantville NJ.

I am almost positive he shot himself in his cabin in Pine Valley and they moved his body to Merchantville before calling the police.

The rumor I heard about thirty years ago was that he was found dead in his cabin with a gun next to him. And then in the last five years I found an article from a small Kentucky newspaper with an interview with George Govan, the son of Jim Govan, Crump's constant foreman during the building of PV.

The Govans lived at Pine Valley in the teens and George Govan in that article that was written in 1990 said he remembered so well when he was a kid the time they found Mr Crump dead in his cabin. Of course he didn't mention how he died.

That's a child's memory and someone who was apparently right there. I just don't see any way or any reason he would've made that up.

I don't know, if the club or a whole host of their members could've proved it fairly easily over the years if they'd ever wanted to but apparently never did want to, I guess I still wish it never had been proven, and that  it could've remained a mystery to this day.

Maybe I'm like Kyle, I guess I just like the mystery better.

TomP

Just remember, Pine Valley doesn't have proprietary rights to the legacy of Crump.  The nature of information is to be uncovered and shared.  The fact remains that Tommy Mac did uncover the truth about Crump and he should be congratulated rather than scorned.  It doesn't make any difference if somebody else could have done it - they didn't.  

Ciao  

[TEPaul]

"TomP
Just remember, Pine Valley doesn't have proprietary rights to the legacy of Crump.  The nature of information is to be uncovered and shared.  The fact remains that Tommy Mac did uncover the truth about Crump and he should be congratulated rather than scorned.  It doesn't make any difference if somebody else could have done it - they didn't."


Sean Arble:

In my opinion, you are totally free to feel however you want about that, that's your prerogative. It appears I may feel quite differently about it and I may always feel that way and that's my prerogative. I believe it makes a whole lot of difference if others could've done it and chose never to do it. And I don't see that I'm exactly scorning Tom MacWood. I certainly did tell him after the fact that he wrote a good article about Crump's suicide and his life. You can find my mention of that on here in the back pages. I don't call that scorn, do you? What I didn't like and said so then and said so in this thread is the way he went about it and I still don't. I believe that if somebody, particularly somone who has never been there and does not know a club, is going to write something about a place, certainly something like that, they should at least talk to the club about it first. I just think that's the decent thing to do, but apparently there are plenty of people who believe that in the mad search to produce facts and truth, and to perhaps make a name for themselves in the doing of it, that decency isn't important. Well, it's important to me! Of course if someone like MacWood did talk to the club first and they asked him not to do it, that's another matter altogether and obviously he must have been aware of that. At that point, he or anyone else would have a pretty interesting decision to make. Again, I don't scorn Tom MacWood for trying to do it or for his article, just the way he went about it. That most certainly was a huge issue between us at that time and I'm never going to pretend I agree with the way he went about it or that I like the guy because I don't and he doesn't like me and that will probably never change. That's just the way things go sometimes but I sure don't mind that you have an entirely different opinion from mine on the entire thing. That's your prerogative, just as it was his prerogative.

[Sean_A]

Tom P

I am glad you have mellowed a bit over the situation.  It was one of the most anguishing threads to read and I don't wish to revisit it - so I will happily take your word for it and retract my earlier reference to "scorn".  I still hope that Tommy Mac does come back one day because I think he has a lot to offer.

Ciao

[TEPaul]

"I still hope that Tommy Mac does come back one day because I think he has a lot to offer."

Sean Arble:

I think he has a lot to offer this site too and I hope he comes back but like anything else that's his prerogative. I don't think he should've left, and certainly not for the apparent reason he did. I think that was silly and an over-reaction but what's done is done. There are a lot of people on here with strong opinions and they don't mind expressing them. I just think one has to deal with it and stay on here.

[Kyle Harris]

Tom:

I've spent most of the day with this thread in the back of my mind, in fact, I thought about it before going to bed last night as well.

Without delving too much into the metaphysical, I think part of the mystique of the golf course is that the sheer scale of the "art" lends itself to a lot of mini-discoveries and mystery over the time of ones relationship with the course.

I remembered a night back in the summer of 2002 where I first really felt the "pull" of the golf course architecture mystique. For as long as I can remember, I've studied maps. Road maps, topographic maps and even tourist maps. I don't know, but I find the graphic representations of man's progress to be intriguing.

Anyway, on this particular evening, a non-golfing friend of mine had recently acquired Microsoft Streets and Maps and a GPS unit for his Laptop. Being a nerd, we both wanted to give it a whirl and I decided to suggest we use the GPS to find several area golf courses that I had never bothered to go find. I knew of their existance from simply reading maps.

As we drove near the course, I began to feel a knot in my stomach as though we could be stumbling upon something. I began to conjure up thoughts of an "ultra-secret" golf club which mirrored the Skull and Bones Society in terms of secrecy and the NSA in terms of information. Could it be possible to stumble on such a place in the suburbs of Philadelphia? Probably not, but my imagination started to run wild.

We approached the golf course, as per the map - but around us was nothing but houses...

We turned on the street which I thought contained the entrance road, but again.... new development.

An NLE.

I pulled over and got out of the car. In the streetlight of 11PM, I could get a sense of the terrain the course sat upon and began to walk, my imagination wild as to how the old golf course could have been routed when my eyes caught something across the street.

There lying in the moonlight was the unmistakable form of an old tee box, just a dead flat square pointing off down the hill.

The point is, like most art, golf courses have both the time test and scale to inspire the imagination. How often have you looked at old features of a golf course and wondered what was? Grown over bunkers, old tee boxes, former green sites.

Should I be blessed to design courses, I'd love to build in little curiosities that get the imagination of the golfer paying attention going. The other, I was just thinking about what it would be like to grade and design an alternate green on a hole, with full irrigation, and then to let it just grow into rough and gate off the irrigation loop until someone finds it years later....

Wouldn't it be fun to find an alternate green by accidentally opening up the gate valve on an old irrigation line?

[TEPaul]

Kyle:

Nice post, and certainly a unique and interesting perspective--ie finding vestiges of old holes and courses and such and being so interested in the mystique.

I came upon something like that on Fort George Island across from the Naval Base in Jacksonville. Very early in the morning around sunrise I came upon an old nine hole Ross course going back to nature. If you looked carefully you could make out all the old holes and tees and fairways and greens among the live oak trees and Spanish moss. The clubhouse which was in a terrible state of disrepair (and has thankfully been restored by the state) was magnificent architecture of the early Golden Age of wealth and style.

If you ever get to that area don't miss this as well as the natural dunes and blowouts on A1A for about a three mile stretch north of the Naval Base on Talbot Island. Anyone interested in natural dune-like bunkers should see this stretch. I've spent hours in there and taken numerous photographs.

I had the same kind of feeling of things gone by when I happened to go down to the end of Daytona Beach where I lived as a kid and came upon the vestiges of the old beach/road track of the Daytona 500. Those were the very first days of Nascar, Fireball, Bill France and all. It'd been goning back to nature at that point for well over thirty years.

But the ultra mystique time for me was looking over the spires and the beach club with the ocean behind at Maidstone from the back porch of the clubhouse one beautiful August evening at a time of the day my mother used to call the "gloaming". I think it was during the dinner of the Maidstone Bowl and all of a sudden it was like the generations and all the people through the ages were sort of flowing by including their murmurings. It was a time and the kind of thing my sister calls "a moment"----very powerful though.

But just so people don't think I'm completely nuts I think by that time I'd already had a couple of drinks or three.  

I know what you mean about mystiques. It's refreshing to know people think that way and certainly about golf courses and time.

[Peter Pallotta]

Kyle, Tom - nice stufff, thanks.

It made me think that it's important for a golf course to be able to accomodate "change" if it's to maintain any natural look it may have started life with. I'm thinking mostly of naturally occuring change as opposed to man-made changes like lengthening of holes. A site-natural approach wouldn't have much legs if the site around the course evolved/changed over time while the golf course didn't.

Peter  

[BCrosby]

Tom/Kyle -

Good stuff.

Central to the pull of golf architecture for me is a fascination with history. And not just golf history. That pull of history is shared among many participants here. It is a big part of what makes this site special.

Bob