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Places to see Reinhold Marxhausen’s art in and around Seward

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This post is currently a work in progress, and I would welcome additions or corrections in the comments below. If you have actual pictures of any of these, please send them to me. I’ll try to get a map together after we get the list nailed down. Oh, and I’m very open to anyone who wants to rewrite any of these descriptions.

  • Grain Elevators of Seward County. Cattle Bank, on the courthouse square in Seward has a collection of about 20 watercolor paintings that they commissioned Marxhausen to do in the late 1900s. (The quickest way to get someone to give you the correct information on the internet isn’t to ask a question; it is to post incorrect information and wait for them to correct you.) They are hung in a conference room upstairs, and the person at the information desk has always been willing to open it when I’ve asked.
  • There’s a very nice mural at Jones Band on the Southwest corner of the courthouse square in Seward. The very large and fascinating burnt wood and tile mural can be seen in the West entrance to the bank.
  • Holy Spirit / Open Book, On Concordia University’s campus, there is a large art installation to the West of Link Library that you can see as you drive past Weller Hall. 1959
  • Are the carved brick benches that were in the basement of Weller Hall still there? I’m 90% sure I saw a picture of Marxhausen and someone else working on them.
  • Note: I’m not sure what the Marxhausen Gallery in Jessie Hall (to the South of Weller) has on display. As I recall, it is just a little bit as you go into the gallery (which typically displays student or faculty work, but occasionally shows items from their permanent collection).
  • The Center for Liturgical Arts is located due South of Concordia University and stands on the location of the Marxhausen residence. The front door of the center is the original burnt wood front door of the Reinhold and Dor ris’ house. Well worth stopping to see. The Marxhausen Studio is on the South side of the property and has been restored to once again be a working art studio (video of the studio when Marx used it). The Center also has several of Marxhausen’s works on display. They would be happy to show them to you.
  • The entire side of the ??? building on the South West corner of the courthouse square is a huge painted mural by Marxhausen with the text from his friend, Pulitzer Prize winner, Ted Kooser. It was restored about 20 years ago, but could probably use some TLC again.
  • At St. John Lutheran Church, the altar, pulpit, and baptismal fonts are ceramic tile mosaics created by Marxhausen. He also did the communion cross which is generally on the altar during communion services. I also think he did the processional crosses and the stained glass windows, but I could be wrong about that.
  • The Law offices next to Red Path Gallery on the Seward courthouse square have about 20 Marxhausen pieces on display in the front window. I rotate them when I remember and can get back to Seward before they close. While you’re there, why don’t you stop by Red Path Gallery, have a drink, look at the art, and ask them why they don’t have a little Marxhausen display.
  • St. John has a fairly extensive collection. It is not housed in a state that is really fit for viewing, but if you’re in Seward, drop me a line, and we can probably arrange for you to see it. You can also view about 70% of the pieces online.

Have I missed anything? Do you have any corrections or additions? Just rewrites to make this sound better? Links to photos? Please add them in the comments.

Dance from the Past

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Beth and Tim came over yesterday. Beth dropped off a present for Lauren earlier in the day and stopped by to see it in action. But that’s a story for another time.

While the girls were trying it out, it was making a sound like this: tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick. Tim and I started dancing to the driving techno beat.

That reminded me of the last time I saw Tim dancing to a driving techno beat. So I felt like I had to share.

Unfortunately, he isn’t dancing to Russell Mosemann’s driving techno beat anymore. I couldn’t get Russ’ tunes to play automatically, so I had to punt. But if you can still listen to it.

Note: well, it looks like the audio doesn’t autoplay in all browsers. If you are using Safari or Firefox, you’ll probably have to click play. Sorry for the inconvenience.

No world wide web

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The internet was (actually still is) down at Lincoln Lutheran for most of the day today. I told Windstream of our woes around 10:30 and bothered them every hour for an update on what they had found. Finally, at about 3:00, the 7th guy I talked to said that they had been, “really busy” and no one had actually even looked at my problem yet. Thanks Windstream.

Being without internet is more of a thing than it was even two years ago. Our teachers and students use it for getting assignments, working on them and turning them in. I spent most of the day in conversations like this:

everyone at school: When is the wi-fi going to be working?
me: The wi-fi is working.
everyone at school: Did it just come back?
me: No, it’s been working all day.
everyone at school: huh?

At this point I generally just walk off. Usually –here I’m just assuming– they figure out the difference between the wi-fi and the Internet. But if they don’t, I don’t really care at this point.

Eventually Jim from Windstream came by (I told the last Windstream guy I talked to to change our business hours to 8:00am to 8:00pm, because today was Awards Night, and I would be here anyway.) He couldn’t figure out why they had dispatched him without first doing some off-site diagnostics. I theorized with him that it was done mostly in an attempt to slow down the rate at which I was calling them.

Jim was nice, and seemed to know what he was doing, but a series of unfortunate coincidences (including, but not limited to a tornado warning) kept him from actually fixing the problem. He did, however, diagnose the problem.  There was evidently a light that won’t light on one side*. He took it back to his workshop to fix it up there and bring it back here. He’s actually going to try to bring it back tonight.

I’ve arranged a secret knock between Jim and our custodian Todd, so Todd can, at least theoretically, let Jim in. Jim says that best case scenario is that our internet might be back up in about two hours. Worst case scenario is, in his words, “a while”.

 

 

 

*It is actually quite surprising how accurate a description of the problem this turns out to be. The SFP that converts the light in the fiber optic cable from light to electrical impulses is receiving light correctly, but is failing to turn the corresponding electrical impulses back to light for the return trip.

Typical Day

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Lauren told me that I get to write today’s post. It’s never a comfortable thing when she says that, because I always wonder if I’m forgetting something. Is today Lauren’s birthday? Is it our anniversary? Is it some other day that, while not technically our official anniversary, is the anniversary of something that I should remember anyway? Did she recently do something really nice for me that I should have taken pictures of and be ready to tell the world? Probably yes to one or more of the above, but I’m not sure which one.

Instead, let me tell you how I spent MLK Day 2016. I like to think that I celebrated it in typical fashion. I started off by sleeping in, because we didn’t have school. I found out later that Seward Public, St. John and –and here I’m just guessing– Concordia all have school, so I was basically the only person in Seward with the day off.

Next I read a little bit. I’m still embarrassed to write that I’ve been reading some fan fiction. If you’re a passingly familiar with Harry Potter –and by this point I think that probably includes just about everyone– and if you’re familiar with Role-Playing games –and by Role-Playing games I mean the 3.5 edition of Dungeons and Dragons– then there’s a good chance that you’ll feel like Harry Potter and the Natural 20 is a complete travesty and makes both of those things you like worse. I myself am not a Harry Potter fan, and haven’t played Dungeons and Dragons for something like 20 years, so it all worked out for me. Your millage may vary.

After that I played Railroad Tycoon II, which is a video game for about 1995 where you, you know, build a railroad. I get a surprisingly large amount of entertainment value out of laying out some track between cities and hauling passengers and cargo around. I don’t actually have the manual for the game. So, while I think I’m doing well and things are coming along nicely with my railroad empire, eventually the game ends and the computer starts trash talking me about how poor a job I did. You don’t know, computer. I did just fine.

Eventually I had to do things like talk to the electrician who was adding another circuit to the room at school where the servers are, so we wouldn’t embarrassingly come to a screeching halt during the school day when we plug in 9 computers and 18 monitors in the Tech Center. I also did a little cleaning and made supper, but I do not consider those to be part of me MLK day celebration.

 

Lloyd saves the day. Again.

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Our internet at work keeps dying. I do all that these weary hands can to fix it – trying to pump life back into a dying, aged router, helping it gasp for one last breath of Wi-Fi before it goes into that dark night (unplug it and plug it back in), but to no avail.

Then Lloyd swoops in with his ‘new’ router with ‘working parts’ and ‘passwords’ and ‘skill’ and just saves the day again.

No one like a show-off, Lloyd.