I miss history field trips. After spending most of the summer cooped up to write a book (and most of the fall re-assembling my life), I have been eager to start making excursions again — to cemeteries, parks, historic markers, battlefields, the woods.

But it seems my time has started to free up just as the weather turns icky. And that will hamper my adventure-taking plans — at least until I invest in a warmer winter coat and some snow boots.

But before I condemn myself to the library for the next four months, I want to explore another repository of Detroit history treasures: the Detroit Institute of Arts.

The DIA was founded as the Detroit Museum of Arts in 1885 by a gang of wealthy donors and art collectors — who wanted to make Detroit into the artistic hub of the Midwest — and many of their contributions remain central to the DIA’s collection. (More on the history of the DIA at HistoricDetroit.org.)

As one of the top six art collections in the U.S., the DIA is a pretty worldly place. But throughout the museum there are little peeks into the history of its city, including local artists, local artifacts, and local moments in history. Here are just a few of my favorites.

Helping Angels — from the Unitarian Church, Woodward Avenue

This luminous work of stained glass, which takes up an entire gallery wall, is so compelling; I’d seen it a dozen times before I noticed the names of famous Detroiters lettered upon it. Surprise! This beauty is from Detroit — it once adorned the First Unitarian Church of Detroit on Woodward Avenue, now abandoned (more info here). You can see from the street where the windows used to be.

Charles Merrill, whose name appears in the medallion at the top, was a lumber baron who came to Detroit in 1848. He was a founding member of Detroit’s Unitarian Society. His daughter, Lizzie Merrill Palmer, named a fountain after him, which is now in Palmer Park.

John Judson Bagley, bearded wonder, tobacco magnate and Governor of Michigan 1873-1877, was raised Episcopalian; I do not know when he joined the Unitarian Church but several writers of the day indicate that Gov. Bagley was ”not confined to that denomination … Wherever good men and women met and worshiped the living God there was church,” as George Hopkins said in a memorial address.

The windows were designed by New York stained glass artist John La Farge in 1890.

First State Election in Detroit, Michigan, 1837

I rarely visit the DIA without stopping for a visit with this painting. I have discussed it on the blog before and dedicated a whole chapter to it in my book, in which I call it Detroit’s Washington Crossing the Delaware, except everyone in it is drunk.

Many contemporary writers vouch that this painting is a faithful depiction of that rowdy election day in 1837 when Democrat Stevens T. Mason defended his governorship against Whig challenger C.C. Trowbridge. But during my research, I read a persuasive analysis that the painting may have in fact been an artifact of Whig propaganda, showing a clammy, crooked-faced boy Governor (normally so handsome!) buying votes from drunken rabble while a parade of Democrat fops rides into the Capitol square, led by a silly gilded pony.

I buy it. And I still love this painting. Maybe even moreso, now.

Julius Rolshoven

My first acquaintance with Julius Rolshoven was through tales of his nude ”Brunette Venus,” which hung at Detroit society bar Churchill’s until Prohibition. Then it moved to the Detroit Athletic Club; as Malcolm Bingay wrote in Detroit is My Own Hometown:

Now the lovely lady,who seems always just to be awakening from a deep and peaceful sleep, with an odd kink in her knee, looks down again through the blue haze of a smoke-charged room where men alone forgather — except on such gala occasions as New Year’s night — as they did in the long ago at Charlie Churchill’s, a mystic tie between the Detroit that was and the Detroit that is, between the roaring decades of our youth and the forties of our maturity.

(I love that, by the way. Mystic ties.)

Rolshoven was born a Detroiter, but left the city when he was 18 to study art in Europe. Later he settled in Taos, New Mexico, and joined the Taos Society of Artists.

This painting of his at the DIA strikes me as a hilariously far cry from the scandalous brown-haired naked lady that made him so notorious in social circles. Also, does anyone know if the brunette Venus is still at the D.A.C.?

John Mix Stanley

[John Mix Stanley, Indian Telegraph, 1860. More here.]

Consider this goal for 2012 hereby set: I have to know more about John Mix Stanley. First of all, what kind of a name is Mix? The kind of name I love, that’s what. Then there’s the fact that Mr. Stanley’s life includes so much dramatic American history: chief artist for the Pacific railroad survey, portrait painter of Hawaiian King Kamehameha III, and dreamer-upper of  a never-completed illustrated atlas of the American Indian. For an extra dimension of tragedy/mystery/loss, most of his work was destroyed in a massive 1865 fire at the Smithsonian.

Born in Canandaigua in 1814, Stanley first came to Detroit in 1834 and started painting here (though he evidently had no formal art education) the following year. He spent most of the next 30 years on expeditions and exhibiting, but returned to Detroit permanently in 1864, and died here in 1872. The DIA has a number of his works in their collection.

Gari Melchers

Perhaps the most famous painter ever to come from Detroit, naturalist Gari Melchers is responsible for these murals at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. (among many other works). Gari Melchers was the son of cigar-store Indian sculptor Julius Melchers.

Take your pick from any of his paintings at the DIA! This is not one of them, but it is a Gari Melchers portrait of Teddy Roosevelt. NICE!

(Source)

And Hitsville USA.

We laughed a lot.

We danced a lot.

And we went home feeling like the luckiest kids alive.

Oh, and then we went to New Orleans!

I can’t wait to tell you all about it, but I’m still feeling kind of dreamy, disoriented and at a loss for words. So check back next week! We should be in full swing. We have things to discuss: the centuries of history Detroit and New Orleans share; Pontiac’s rebellion; Zug Island.

Meanwhile. Ben Blackwell wrote a song about Elmwood Cemetery for Esquire. THIS IS NOT A JOKE. Name checked: Parents Creek, the Battle of Bloody Run, Lewis Cass, Coleman Young. And it’s also about the natural topography of the city.

This might be the best thing that has ever happened to the national profile of early Detroit history.

The wedding pictures are courtesy the ever-fabulous Kat Berger, from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, who also wrote a sweet post about our wedding with a trove of beautiful photos from the day.

But while I’m convalescing, here are some things you might like to know:

The Night Train now booked (on your FACE)

We’re on Facebook. Befriend us and enjoy more photos, delightful commentary, daily links to interesting things, friendship.

Old Detroit footage at MOCAD

Films from the Prelinger Archives: Lost Landscapes of Detroit is tomorrow night at MOCAD, so get out your shovel and some tough winter boots (no, I still haven’t bought any) and resist the temptation of your warm couch. This should be great. From the press release:

… An eclectic montage of rediscovered and rarely-seen archival film clips exhibiting life; cityscapes, labor and leisure from ‘vanishing Detroit’, as captured by amateurs, newsreel cameramen and industrial filmmakers from the 1920’s to the 1960’s …

“How we remember and record the past reveals much about how we address the future” points out archivist Rick Prelinger, who will be on hand to preface the screening with a brief talk on the value of ephemeral films, on the changing nature of historical memory, and what consequences will arise from the emerging massive matrix of personal records.

You know what’s great? The Prelinger Archives are available for free on the Internet Archive under a Creative Commons License.

Bottled Monsters

If you like Letters of Note, you may or may not love A Repository for Bottled Monsters, the blog of the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington, D.C.

Among the many papers published near-daily on the blog are letters home from army surgeons, correspondence from the Surgeon General’s office, thank-yous for donations, inventories both routine and outlandish and requests for authorization to purchase artifacts. Some of this stuff is tedious but a lot of it is absurd and delightful, like this 1878 letter from Francis Atkins, Army Surgeon, to the Surgeon General:

Sir

I have the honor to enclose copy of receipt issued this day to me by Post Quartermaster for one box addressed to the Army Medical Museum.

The contents are,

1)      One Golden Eagle – shot near here Dec 2, 1877. I have roughly dressed it so as to leave the plumage on the skeleton, that the curator may use it as preferred, applying salt or alum.

2)      One skull & bal. [balance] of skeleton of a male Raccoon found dead here Dec 2, 1877.

3)      I also send in behalf of Asst. Surg. W.E. Whitehead the skin & extremities of one whooping crane (I believe) shot near here in fall of 1877 – arsenic and Plaster of Paris were used.

Once in a while this blog also publishes freaky medical photography, intriguing books and fun facts, like: did you know that Alexander Graham Bell wrote a book about eugenics?

I have Suzanne Fischer, Public Historian, to thank for this fabulous discovery.

So, we’ll see if this sticks. But for this Friday, at least, welcome to Fridays with General Friend Palmer. If you hate this I’ll stop it, but I don’t think you’ll hate this.

This week: The General has a whole chapter on Detroit fires that he remembers, specifically fires that destroyed famous buildings. When a wool mill on Randolph street caught fire in the summer of 1832, Friend writes, it “lit up the whole county of Wayne and parts of Canada, apparently … Out where we lived, on Woodward at John R., the illumination was so great one could see to read by it.”

I was really taken with his account of the fire on the steamer Great Western, which went up in flames while it was docked in Detroit sometime around 1838 (his memory was bad when he wrote his book and he died before his editors could help him do rewrites):

One important fire, and so considered at the time … and that was the partial burning of the then finest and most magnificent steamer on the lakes, the Great Western, while lying at her dock, Gillett & Desnoyer’s, near foot of Shelby Street. It happened about 1838 on a summer Sunday afternoon, about 5 o’clock. I have forgotten the exact date. She had arrived that forenoon on her down trip from Chicago to Buffalo. I was present at the fire with engine company No. 4 (that far off time, it seems but yesterday). She was the pride of the lakes, and of her owner and commander, Captain Augustus Walker. She was the first steamer to have her cabins on the upper deck, passengers heretofore having had to dive down between decks if they had any idea of sleeping or eating, and most of them had.

The news that this steamer was ablaze spread like wildfire and hurried everyone to the scene; indeed, all Detroit was on hand. The engines hustling down Wayne and Shelby Streets came near running over the men and boys who had hold of the drag ropes, so wild was the excitement. No. 4 engine company came first in this encounter. It had its station on the dock between the warehouse and the burning steamer, and three of its members had the post of honor during the fire. William Green, the foreman who had the pipe, was assisted by Barney Campau and Kin Dygert. They held the fort, so to speak. They were stationed on the upper deck of the steamer abaft the wheelhouse.

The scene lives in an oil painting by Thomas Burnham, a well known local artist of that day. This painting is now the property of some citizen of this city who should, it seems to me, donate it to the Art Museum or to the present fire department. The upper cabins of the Great Western abaft the wheelhouses and the ladies cabin below were badly wrecked; otherwise the steamer did not sustain much damage. But it was a most exciting fire while it lasted as any one now living who was present at the time will I am sure bear witness.

Okay. I love a sleuth. Where’s this Thomas Burnham painting? Did “some citizen of the city” give it to the now-DIA as General Friend Palmer thought he or she should? Not sure, although an online collection search turns up another Thomas Mickell Burnham painting, First State Election in Detroit, Michigan, 1837 (timely, right?):

And the man was apparently known for his marine and maritime paintings as well, like this one, An English Cutter Gives Chase to a Smuggler, 1836:

So where’s the burning Great Western? Does it indeed belong to the fire department? Is it in some art historian’s special collection of boat paintings or a museum’s American Art gallery?

I’ll put out some feelers. I haven’t really looked yet, having just learned about this painting about a half-hour ago, so if it’s somewhere obvious, tell me now.

Katie Barkel makes neat videos

The MetroTimes music department was kind enough to have me back last week for a feature profile about a precocious lady filmmaker who loves “little kids shredding and old bikers smoking and throwing bottles at each other at the bar.” You can read about her here. I had a really great time working on this; it was the rare story that didn’t make me wonder, “Why didn’t I get a degree in something vocational, like ballroom dancing?”

I also really enjoyed this sweet and funny story about Leroy Haskins by Detroitblogger John, but then again, I am a total sucker for local eccentrics.

We went to the DIA

We are contented little birds in the tree of DIA membership, but as a long-time museum-goer and museum-lover and former museum-employee, I feel like I sometimes hit a plateau with certain collections, where I kind of feel like, “well, I’ve seen all of my favorites 100,000 times, and then there’s all that other stuff there that doesn’t excite me as much.” It’s like round two of the average visitor’s “What do I even do here? Where to start?” dilemma.

This weekend we broke our stride and just ambled around like kids at the zoo, nudging each other and whispering “look at that thing!” and “that guy’s face is blue!” and “wow, this stuff is old!”

We also remembered to go up to the third floor, which is way bigger than either of us ever remember. Usually we just visit the Rembrandt and call it a day. But there’s so much (!!!) more up there, like this room that’s reconstructed to look like an 18th-century French parlor, and when you press a button, it fills up with ambient noise — the strum of a harp, teacups, the clock ticking — and loads of other French decorative artworks and a room full of “fainting lady” paintings. We had a lot of fun, and not just in an intellectually stimulating way. We relaxed and enjoyed ourselves and kidded around. Sometimes art museums are great for that. I also enjoy taking bad, shaky pictures in them.

Also: the exhibition of WPA prints from the 1930s is striking and substantial.

Cocktails

I’m glad Model D is back on a weekly publishing schedule.  This feature about local signature cocktails is a little bit history, but mostly booze. The way I like it.

Tumbling down

Buildings of Detroit is doggedly covering the Lafayette Building demolition (and risking lung disease and dodging falling debris). Citizen journalism at its brave best.

American History Reading Room

The fiance and I got in some dumb argument about the Mexican-American war, or something, then realized that we’ve both forgotten substantial portions of our U.S. History education. Plus, that stuff was kind of boring when I was a teenager and did not understand or respect, you know, time.

We’re thinking about putting together a casual (albeit terrifically geeky) American History book salon to get up to speed. How should we carve out a curriculum? Should we take it chronologically, or thematically? One major event at a time, or through smaller, more regional perspectives? Or through an interpretive lens, like agriculture, or a specific industry, or art?

And what are some contemporary, engaging must-reads?

So, that’s all I’ve got. What have you got? Hopefully not the flu.

This weekend, for the first time since moving back to Farmington, we finally made it to that chapel of childlike astonishment, Marvin’s Marvelous Mechanical Museum.

My many, many visits to Marvin’s — as an awestruck child, a teenager with nowhere to go on a summer night, an adult with friends in town to impress — all feel indistinguishable, like they’re stitched with the same shiny thread. But my memories of Marvin’s are deeply sowed. The promise of a fortune, a glimpse of the future, just a hint of the naked and lurid that Marvin’s antique peep shows, carnival attractions and terror games offer are all just a little forbidden, and so alluring. With an always-clanging 55-piece mechanical orchestra, dozens of noisy pinball machines, fit-inducing flashing lights, skee ball, fun-house mirrors and the intoxicating smell of popcorn, the place is a perfect storm of sense-pounding entertainment.

Crammed in with giant vintage circus posters, neon bar signs, kitschy wall art, muppets, puppets and huge old fans is a life-size statue of the tallest man who ever lived, Robert Pershing Wadlow, born in Alton, Ill. in 1918.

In front of the statue is an old color TV. Drop 50 cents in and you can watch a flickery video about the brief and extraordinary life of Robert Pershing Wadlow who, due to a hypertrophic pituitary gland, never stopped growing. He was as tall as I am now — about 5’4” — by the time he was five. At 13, he was the world’s tallest Boy Scout at 7’4”. When he died in 1940, he was 8’11”.

In the middle of this whirring palace of diversion, we watched in sad amazement. Robert Pershing Wadlow lived, on the one hand, a fast, charmed life. An American celebrity, Wadlow traveled the world, making public appearances on behalf of the Ringling Brothers and the International Shoe Company. He took photos and collected stamps; his family and his community adored him.

But in every photograph and video of Robert Pershing Wadlow, he looks so fresh and young. He was so young — he was just a giant, unwieldy kid. What it must have been like, as awkward and gut-wrenching as it is for anyone to grow up, to grow up gigantically? Most people know what it’s like to not fit in, but what was it like to literally not fit in to the world around you? How lonely was that?

When the video was over, I was shaken, and Scott had tears in his eyes. Marvin’s was still yowling behind us, but it took us some time to regain our composure.

The next day, a friend came to town from Switzerland via Milwaukee via Harvard. Over sandwiches and coffee on a windy patio in August, I’d promised to give him the best tour of the city I could if he visited me. And visit he did, with a lecturer friend in tow from the University of Michigan school of architecture.

Neither of them had been to the city, and we had some grandeur planned. But by the time we finished a warming round of Manhattans at my friend’s house in Corktown, dusk was taking hold of the city, and it was already bitterly cold.

We drove out to the east side, not sure if we would even have the chance to get out of the car. We didn’t. But it was the first time that I’d ever seen, in person, the Packard Plant, an enormous, persistently photographed legend of Detroit urban ruin.

1915. National Automotive History Collection; Detroit Public Library

Designed by Albert Kahn and built on almost 40 acres, the Packard Plant was one of the largest and most advanced automotive factories in the world when it opened in 1903. Eleven-thousand workers used to build cars there. When Robert Pershing Wadlow was breaching seven feet, the Packard was the best-selling luxury car in America, outselling Cadillac, Lincoln, Peerless and Pierce-Arrow combined. Now the factory, I’ve read, is the most expansive abandoned industrial site in the country.

As we approached the complex, I held my breath.

It was giant.

On our way back, we stopped at the Heidelberg Project, which is a pretty creepy place at night — lumbering figures in the trees, sentries in the grass, big signs scrawled with the word “God.” We crunched down the middle of the snow-caked street, barely speaking to each other, just watching the shapes and shadows. A pheasant whistled overhead. At the end of the block, kids roughhoused on their porch.

Robert Pershing Wadlow was just 22 when he died of an infection from a leg brace. The Packard Plant closed in 1957.

I’m usually quick to get snorty about a fixation on our ruins, even though I tended to fantasize about them when I was living away. And with the national media lens focused tight on the city, it’s de rigueur right now, in some circles, to tell only positive truths about Detroit — as though every blown-out photo essay of decay is a betrayal.

It took Robert Pershing Wadlow, the gentle Alton giant, for me to accept the mesmerizing reality of Detroit’s out-sized wrecks. With every other layer stripped away — pity and sadness and politics and symbolism — there’s an immense sense of marvel, with all of the danger and fear that comes with it. Standing under a towering statue of the world’s tallest man in a busy arcade, and gazing up at the Packard Plant on a still, icy night, you feel a silencing, sensory rush.

Greetings, team blog readers:

Today I’m taking a reprieve from my usual task of writing about statues and old cemeteries and bringing you something a little different: the story of the music blog that brought me back to Michigan at the end of August.

The best part: it’s also a mix CD.

You can visit the music blog that brought me back to Michigan, read the post and download the mix CD here.

And while we’re talking collateral, you might also be interested to know:

1. That my mom, Joan Ginsberg, is running a comment drive over at her blog, HR University. She’s brand new to the blogosphere, so stop over for a visit if you’re interested in human resource practice, HR and the law, social media and the law, best practices for social media in HR policy or the new wave of human resource philosophy in general (and if you didn’t know there was such a thing, I definitely advise you to learn more, starting with my mom and her blogroll).

If you leave a comment on her blog or my blog (it’s her way of saying “thanks!” for my persistence and enthusiastic suggestions that she get involved with social media) before January 2, she’ll enter you in a drawing for $100 and a copy of Zingerman’s Guide to Better Bacon.

And you thought the world was upside down when your mom asked to be your Facebook friend.

Seriously, though. Blogging moms are the best moms.

2. That an article I wrote about Jason Stollsteimer of The Von Bondies and The Hounds Below ran in the Metro Times last week. It’s my first byline for Metro Times since they published a poem I wrote in their 2003 Summer Fiction issue, which I think was my first byline ever.

Happy reading. We’ll be back in a couple of days to celebrate the birthday of Mad Anthony Wayne.

Well, well. If it isn’t the internet, up to its old tricks!

During my usual late-night internet scrounging — browsing lazily for Detroit Christmas artifacts — I found an incredible Flickr haul of old photos, which had themselves been found somewhere between Detroit and Hamtramck. Besides a lot of great mugging in front of tinsel-draped tannenbaums, there are mirthful ballroom dancing scenes, sexy vintage cars, kids’ birthday parties, coquettes in curve-hugging flowery dresses, army men, saucy diner waitresses and of course multitudinous bridal tableaux.

Who are these people? Someone somewhere in Hamtramck (or anywhere!) has to recognize a face from at least one of these photos. I kept waiting for the specter of a great-aunt on a tacky couch to jump out of the social media sphere and shout something at me in Polish.

And you know what I realized? This is the Flickr set of Hamtramck Mayor Karen Majewski! Whoa!

So who wants to start one big family album blog? I do. Let’s talk logistics.

Our destination: the beautifully renovated University of Michigan Museum of Art. We arrived with no particular art-seeing aims, just the need to give our brains something to do besides worry about the week to come.

The first painting we saw was on a lamp post flag outside the building, inviting us to get inspired — a handsome face, a gilded uniform.

“Who is that?” I asked.

“Oliver Hazard Perry?” I think he was half-joking; Perry has been on the brain.

The larger-than-life portrait hanging gloriously in the Museum Apse is actually of General Maximilien Sébastien Foy, a French military leader and statesman who led campaigns in Portugal, Spain and served in the Battles of the Pyrennes and Waterloo. Foy was severely wounded an astonishing 15 times during his career; during the Battle of Orthez, he was left for dead on the field.

Maximilien Sébastien Foy was an adored public figure, according to his obituary in an 1826 issue of the British Register of Literature, Sciences and Belles-Lettres, perhaps due to his career as a writer and eloquent public speaker after he retired from the military in 1815. He also seem to have been suspicious of Napoleon’s absolutist aims; one anecdote has him refusing to toast to the Emperor’s health:

After one of Buonaparte’s victories, he was at a diner of the officers, when, upon “the health of the emperor” having been given, he alone declined drinking it. In vain was he pressed on the point. “I am not thirsty,” said he.

More than 6000 mourners attended his funeral procession, including the Duc D’Orléans Louis-Phillipe III, who would become the last King of France, and the founder of French romanticism, the Vicomte de Chateaubriand.

Baron François Gérard, a distinguished painter and portraitist and a student of Jacques-Louis David, made this post-mortem portrait on commission from Foy’s widow, but refused payment, as the General was a personal friend. Maybe it’s projection, but to me the portrait seems emotionally bright, affectionate; set against a broiling storm, Foy’s face and hands are ethereal, his aspect resolute but peaceful. His decorations are fabulously wrought and, although they were earned on earth, they radiate as though they were adorned from on high.

And of course, it helps that the painting is almost eight-and-a-half feet tall, hung a few feet off the ground so the General towers over you from the mountain, his black cape swelling in the wind, enfolding the General in the warmth and transcendence of death.

It’s a lush, grand-manner military hero portrait, but it’s so strangely moving. You should go see it.

These are The Four Tops. In October 2008, I was squeezing into a bright red ballgown and doing my hair up huge when I heard on the radio, over the strains of “Baby, I Need Your Loving,” that lead singer Levi Stubbs had died. I started to cry. Then I called my dad, but he didn’t answer the phone. It takes a lot to move my dad out of his modus operandi of total apathy (except maybe thinly-sliced lemon wedges in his iced tea, which drives him to rage); I found out later that my dad had been beside himself for days.

When I was in high school, my parents sprang for front-row seats to a Four Tops concert. Levi Stubbs was already in a wheelchair by then, although they brought him on stage for a song or two. Dad sang along with every song; at one point — was it during “Sugar Pie?” — one of the singers — was it Theo Peoples? — crouched down and held the mic in front of him so he could sing a phrase. Although I am an ardent lover of Motown music for Motown music’s own sake, and even though I didn’t grow up with it the way my dad’s generation of Detroiters did, it’s been a huge part of my life.

This weekend, The Motown Museum wraps up its 50th Anniversary celebration on Saturday night with a Golden Gala. Performances by Stevie Wonder, The Temptations, Aretha Franklin (who, fun fact! never sang on the Motown label) and … Kid Rock. What? And the whole shebang is hosted by SINBAD.

No wait … this Sinbad.

I won’t be there, because I don’t have $700 to spare for a pair of tickets, but I will be dreaming of being there while it’s happening. Motown!

Instead I will be at the Detroit Urban Craft Fair at the Majestic Theater, buying handmade one-of-a-kind stuff from all over the world for the holidays (and for ME!). I do not need to tell you to attend this as you are probably already planning to do so, but if you are looking for guidance once you get there, Handmade Detroit and Perfect Laughter have good recommendations for your craft-fair-navigating pleasure.

The Campus Martius Christmas tree lighting is tonight at Campus Martius Park; I’m thinking about doing an expanded “Christmas in Detroit” post in a couple of weeks, but I’ll need to put my photo archives pants on for that. But I just made friends with a Detroit Public Library librarian, so maybe he can help me out. Here’s Christmas at the Hudson building, 1962, from the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan:

Also this week in Christmas and history, the Chrysler Heritage Museum in Auburn Hills opens its fifth annual “Cars, Trees and Traditions” exhibition, featuring holiday decor and nostalgia from the turn of the 20th century to the 1980′s paired with classic Chrysler and Chrysler-inspired cars, wrapped with vintage photos, publications, advertisements and other style relics.

Anyone up for a road trip? … in my Nissan? In fact, has anyone ever been to this museum? I didn’t know it existed until today.