Good enough -- for now

The new VMFA sign will be half as tall as the original proposal called for, and a hi-def video screen will not be included -- for now, anyway. (Rendering courtesy VMFA)

Half a loaf is better than none.

With a major international exhibition of works by artist Pablo Picasso set to open Feb. 19, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts has caved and decided that half a sign is good enough for right now.

The problem is that VMFA has a brand new wing, but there's no sign out front that tells you what this spectacular building is all about.

The original plan was for a 15-foot sign incorporating a lit-from-behind VMFA logo on a frosted acrylic panel, topped by a changing hi-def video screen announcing current exhibitions and events. With a reported price tag for the Picasso show of more than $5 million, the museum wanted out-of-towners to be able to easily find the museum.

State officials had approved the sign, but when the museum announced that it would be going up, a few members of the all-powerful Fan District Association predictably got their knickers in a knot and raised cane. Some members of the Museum District Association followed suit.

After a contentious meeting with neighbors and an apology from museum director Alex Nyerges, VMFA agreed to review its plans. The museum announced last week that it will be developing its Boulevard sign "in phases."

"A decision about the changing exhibitions component of the sign will be considered [later] and includes a variety of solutions such as lit-from-behind color transparencies and high resolution imaging," the museum said on its blog. (That's a cobbled-together sentence, but I suppose correct syntax is not a requirement in a PR statement.)

Installation of the revised sign on the Boulevard began last week. At least passers-by will now be able to identify the building, although they won't know what's going on inside.

There was nothing wrong with the museum's original sign proposal. As I noted in a previous blog on the topic, the museum is not noted for tacky solutions to problems. There was never a question, in my mind, that the original proposal would have resulted in a tasteful identification of the museum and its exhibitions.

The museum's grumpy neighbors should keep in mind that if they really are proud, as they claim, of the expanded VMFA and the cache it brings to their neighborhood -- and we can safely presume that the museum was one of the factors that made the area attractive to residents when they moved in -- they shouldn't object to letting everybody know what's there and what's on view.

Or are the few stentorian and disgruntled members of the two neighborhood associations determined that VMFA will be merely their little secret?

Having a world-class museum at your doorstep and then making out-of-town visitors hunt for it is just so very Richmond.

Cassie, the plugger

(Don Dale 2011 photo)

Cats have a refined, civilized sense of where they look good. Cassie, my six-year-old calico, apparently thinks she's related to Chessie, the C&O Railway cat from a few decades back.

Cassie looks good on the bed with the white spread in the guest room.

She knows it.

She also looks good in the wing chair in the dining room, and sprawled on her back with all four paws in the air on the wool rug next to the radiator in the living room.

Cats know these things. If you have a cat, you know they know these things.

Cassie is doing well. We're headed down the final stretch as we fine-tune her medication. She's had a tough time since a year ago when she was picked up as a stray in Chesterfield, taken in by the Richmond SPCA, then adopted by me last March.

Cassie has a chronic upper-respiratory infection. We don't know how long she's been fighting this problem, but it surfaced quickly at the SPCA. She's been off and on antibiotics since then.

Once I adopted her, my vet continued antibiotics for three weeks. When the infection returned, the vet suggested I take her to a specialist. Cassie spent three days being poked and prodded, having cultures taken, and having a fiber-optic probe inserted up her nose and into her sinuses to see if there were polyps, a foreign body, or perhaps cancer. (She was anesthetized for the exploration of her sinuses.)

There were no polyps, no foreign body, and no cancer. But the specialist narrowed down the bug that's bugging her, and started her on antibiotics known specifically to kill it. She also prescribed a steroid. The antibiotics worked. The steroid didn't.

Cassie had about 2 1/2 weeks of relief, and then the violent sneezing returned. So she was back on the antibiotics for 21 days. She has a week more to go today. (The steroid made no difference in the length of time she could go between bouts of symptoms.)

Cassie and I will see the vet this week. I hope to stop the steroid (which has to be done gradually to avoid uncomfortable side effects). I plan to suggest we try "pulsing" the antibiotic, which will mean putting her on it when she shows any symptoms and taking her off of it when the symptoms go away. It'll take some time to figure out the best on-and-off schedule that will keep her feeling up to par.

Cassie is a fighter. Through all of this turmoil, she just keeps plugging away. She loves a warm lap. She purrs whenever anybody pets her or cuddles her. She doesn't resist taking her medications -- not too much, anyway. And her appetite has remained strong throughout. She's lucky. Some cats just give up and shut down when they feel bad.

Not Cassie.

Sometimes she wants to be alone and sleep, but she always has time for a stretch and a purr if you rub her head in passing.

And when she's looking for a place to spend a little down time by herself, she picks a spot where she looks her best.

Just in case somebody should notice.

More signs

(Don Dale 2011 photo)

The VMFA sign proposal got me to thinking about another sign I've been seeing lately.

It's a bad sign. It's bad because it doesn't -- indeed, it can't -- do its job.

Henrico County has replaced the usual "Welcome to Henrico" sign on Westwood Avenue near Broad Street with this confusing mess. It seems to have been designed by a committee -- a committee more interested in making its points than in communicating with the public.

Let's start with the message.

Then again, what exactly is the message?

I looked at it as I drove by at least a dozen times without understanding it. Reading such a crowded jumble of ideas is almost impossible if you're traveling at 25 or 30 mph. It's an info-blur.

I assume the county is trying to make the point that it's now 400 years old. But the message is lost in a fog of 14 words and 9 numbers. The sign includes "400" twice (the largest is in a dismally stylized version). The words "Henrico County" are on there 3 times. The date of the county's founding is given 3 in three places. And at the bottom is a slogan: "Proud of our progress -- Excited about our future."

To see what a good sign looks like, shift your focus to the lower right: two words and an arrow. Simple. Direct. Understandable.

I'm not saying that Henrico's 400th anniversary sign should be as stripped down as a one-way sign. But it should be simpler.

So let's get down to the essentials. "Henrico County," "Welcome" and "400th anniversary" are necessary. We don't need a basically meaningless slogan about the past and the future. And we don't need the county seal, the dates and all that other folderol.

Any designer who knows about signs that are meant to read by drivers would be horrified by this camel-that-was-supposed-to-be-a-horse.

The sign should say "Welcome to Henrico County, Celebrating 400 Years, 1611-2011." That's the essence after all the junk is stripped away.

Less really is more.

"Here we are!"

Hats off to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and to the "irreverent friend" who sent VMFA an image of an "alternative sign" (above) for the museum's front lawn. The spoof sign, posted on the VMFA blog, evokes a Holiday Inn aesthetic, and I'm delighted to see that the museum is letting its humorous side shine through.

When the museum announced its plan for a sign to accompany its new $150-million wing, it was as though the fox had been set loose in the henhouse. The sign would be 15 feet tall and feature an eight-foot wide video screen with static images promoting special exhibitions and events. (You can see the real sign proposal by clicking here.)

The museum's plan for marking its presence on the Boulevard is in keeping with the design of the new wing, of which the neighborhood seems to be quite proud. But there are those fussbudgets who live in the Fan District and the Museum District who call it garish and inappropriate.

Poppycock.

The sign was developed well after I retired in April of last year, so I wasn't involved at all in its creation, but I do know this: In my 33 years there, nobody ever accused the museum of being tacky. Good taste at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts? That's pretty much a given.

The proposed sign is tasteful, even impressive, and just as contemporary as some of the art inside. With the blockbuster exhibitions now on its schedule, VMFA needs some way to let out-of-town visitors -- and there will be many of them -- know, in effect, "Here we are!"

I live about a mile and a half from the museum, and I drive by on the Boulevard almost daily. I think the few grumpy neighbors who oppose the sign should reflect instead on the cache and status and the intellectual opportunities that the august and accessible VMFA brings to their districts. It's safe to assume the museum was one of the reasons they chose to live where they live. The museum has been a good neighbor since 1936, when it opened. And that's not to mention the great economic opportunities that the museum creates for the city and the commonwealth.

And congratulations, also, to VMFA for having the guts to poke fun at its own mini-crisis on its blog.

The parrot made me do it

U.S. Navy Capt. Owen Honors clearly thinks he has a good sense of humor and sees himself as a regular guy.

Honors is the Navy officer who was relieved this week as commander of the aircraft carrier Enterprise.

Trouble is, humor is not nearly as important in a commander of a U. S aircraft carrier as is ... say ... good judgment.

His mission with his extraordinary TV performances for his crew was to "boost morale." But when I watched the three videos that were posted online this week, it was like watching a goat rodeo. Honors and his crew were having a great time as they stepped blithely over the line between funny and nasty.

I took a special interest in the videos because of my experience in the late 1960s at American Forces Television in Germany. I can just imagine the "fun" that Honors and his production crew had as they thoughtlessly broke the rules of common decency in the name of "boosting morale" -- for an audience that's "just us guys."

The mayonnaise hit the Mixmaster when the videos were posted online. Honors lost his job.

As he should have.

In the clips that brought down a commander, the world saw female sailors in a shower stall pretending to wash each other, male sailors parading in drag, simulated masturbation, a simulated rectal exam, and a scene that implies that an officer is having sex with a donkey. Honors proves what he must see as his "regular guy" fighter-jock persona by casually tossing off repellent anti-gay slurs.

(If you click on this link and watch the video, imagine just for a moment what it must have felt like for the carrier's lesbian and gay crew members. And remember that they were forced by Federal law to remain closeted. The No. 2 officer on the carrier was making shamelessly crude and immature jokes for the sake of "boosting morale." Many gay men and women have the self-confidence to handle such a situation. Others don't. It's certain that none of them felt their morale had been boosted.)

I have no doubt that Honors thinks he is a decent man. He has a right to be proud of his many accomplishments in service to his country.

But what behavior was he modeling for his straight crew members? And who was "boosting the morale" of the gay and lesbian minority under his command? Honors certainly wasn't.

The ugly attitudes that Honors perpetuated in his Enterprise videos were certainly more prevalent in the military 40 years ago. Good taste kept them off the air, but anti-gay prejudice still contaminated the culture.

But that was 40 years ago. Prejudices have faded. Or have they? Honors has done his best to keep anti-gay slurs alive and well.

The Navy so far has acted wisely, if incredibly slowly.

But the investigation can't end here. Honors' superiors have known about the videos for several years. They did nothing that we know of, and even promoted Honors from executive officer to commanding officer of the Enterprise.

The search for answers must go deeper and higher. As the Virginian-Pilot said on its editorial page yesterday, "With their silence, his superiors failed the Navy even more grievously than Honors did."

Osa Lee Yates slept here

The former Home for Needy Confederate Women, now the VMFA Pauley Center, was designed using the original plans for the White House in Washington. (Don Dale photo, 2010)

I never saw a ghost walking the hallways of the Pauley Center at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts -- not once in the 10 years I worked in what was once the Home For Needy Confederate Women.

I do remember a security guard telling me one morning that she had heard muffled footsteps in the middle of the night. She said she looked all over the building and never saw or heard anything more.

The Home for Needy Confederate Women was chartered in 1898 by the Virginia General Assembly to provide a home for impoverished widows, sisters and daughters of former Confederate soldiers. The home originally opened at 1726 Grove Ave. In 1904 it was moved to 3 E. Grace St. After a fire in 1916, the home's board decided it needed a much sturdier structure. They rebuilt in the early 1930s on what are now the grounds of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Facing Sheppard Street, the new stone-and-concrete Home for Needy Confederate Women was modeled after the White House in Washington.

By 1989, only nine women remained, and the residents were moved to a nursing home in Chesterfield. The building reverted to the state, which conveyed it to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

When the museum assumed responsibility for the property, it was in bad shape. In a basement food-preparation area, dead cockroaches literally covered the floor. Paint was peeling in sheets. Electrical and fire-suppression systems were outdated.

Beginning in 1995, the museum spent millions of dollars to refurbish the grand old building and retrofit it to house offices and educational facilities. In 1999, I was among those assigned offices in the "new" building's north wing.

(We called it the north wing, because it was truly on the north side of the building. When the Confederate women were living there, it was called the west wing. If they had called it the north wing back then, none of the Confederate women, ardent Southerners all, would have agreed to live in it.)

We quickly fell in love with our new home. It was bright, airy, and completely up-to-date.

In the central portion of the building, the reception rooms were decorated with antiques, and an enormous Persian carpet was installed in the parlor. The formal dining room was furnished with reproductions, including custom wallpaper based on an 1815 French design. (The office staff surprised me with a birthday celebration in the dining room one year; we used paper cups and plates.)

Because of its exterior resemblance to the White House, a few movies were filmed in the Pauley Center while I worked there. Filming sometimes meant problems. We were forever being told not to make noise during the filming of "The Contender," for example, and sometimes we had to go outside to get from one wing to another because film crews had taken over the central formal rooms.

But life was pleasant for those of us with offices in the Pauley Center -- away from the faster pace of the main museum and less open to constant interruptions.

I posted a sign on my office door that said, "Osa Lee Yates Slept Here." Mrs. Yates was one of the last of the Confederate women to live in the facility. I have no idea which bedroom was hers, but I wanted to make some connection between us state workers and the building's history.

Ten years later, as I was taking down that sign and preparing to retire for good, another long-time VMFA employee suggested that he and I were probably the last staff members who even knew who Osa Lee Yates was.

Mrs. Yates and hundreds of other needy Confederate women have long gone to their rewards. And if any ghosts inhabit the building on Sheppard Street these days, they are quiet, well-behaved, and shy.