And, Now, for Something Beautiful

Even in the most difficult of days, there is beauty to be found in the world.  I must tell you, after going to the 9/11 Memorial/Museum, the spring edition of the Brooklyn Botanical Garden was a balm to the soul.  It was filled with laughing families, children enjoying a perfect day in their strollers, and two young couples setting out on their married lives.

You'll find pictures of gorgeous flowers, and I even managed to find a bird or two to photograph.  It's late springtime in New York City, the Borough of Brooklyn.  The rose garden was in full bloom as were some lovely rhododendrons,

which I always think of as azaleas on steroids.

New Yorkers have small tucked away public green spaces, but the two great parks:  Central and Prospect are cherished by all.  The Brooklyn Botanical Garden is a portion of Prospect Park.

https://goo.gl/photos/hf62tXeFXyCaRD3B7

September 11th

Drake and I have been to so many places in Manhattan and Brooklyn it's getting hard to find 'new stuff' to visit.  Part of the problem is I can't seem to come to NYC and not go to the Met and the MOMA.  Those two museums can suck up days just on their own.  Coming here this time, Drake's one request was to visit the 9/11 Memorial and Museum.  I was so reluctant to visit this place and have consciously avoided it.

When we went to Hawaii, we visited the Pearl Harbor Memorial, and it was very moving.  However,  I knew visiting the site of the World Trade Center was not going to be the same for me as Pearl Harbor.  I've only heard about the shock of the 1941 attack since I wasn't alive then.  However, September 11, 2001 is etched into my memory.

Americans today are still fighting the war that started that September day.  In this conflict the citizens who gave 'the final full measure' were just regular people, all colors, all creeds, all ages who were just going about their normal lives.  Not a single person suspected when they awoke that morning they would be called upon to sacrifice their lives and by doing so change the lives of all their loved ones forever.

There were hundreds of people visiting the Memorial and the Museum.  Outside in the plaza it was a typical American scene with all kinds of people taking pictures, talking, eating, chasing down children, wandering around trying to find where to buy tickets, what line to stand in.  Good natured milling around.

The actual Memorial is composed of two large pools which are difficult to describe.   The names of the dead surround the pools.  One pool is for the South Tower and the other is for the North Tower.  Seeing the names, so many names, was just chilling.  

We headed into the Museum.  Initially, there are photographs of the twin towers showing the total normality and the beauty of that September morning.

Then, as you descend down into the museum, the first thing you see is a lone steel girder covered in memorial graffiti and these strange steel squares set into the floor.  Slowly, you begin to realize the 'squares' are the remains of the steel girders set down into the bedrock that underlies Manhattan.  This bedrock is what makes the super sky scrapers possible.  At this point, it dawned on me this wasn't a museum, but a multi-media memorial to all the people who died that day and all the people who excavated the remains of both the buildings and the people.

From this point forward, there were areas in which there was no photography allowed.  For example, there's a huge room filled with 10x13 inch pictures on each wall from the ceiling down to waist height.  The pictures of the dead.  There are  tables set up around the room  The tops are a large interactive, touch screen. You can touch a 'face' on the table top, and there are more pictures of that person as well as a video from a significant other in his/her life telling us about their loved one.  We stood there for 15 minutes simply touching faces and looking at a small presentation of each person's life.  It was chilling to realize we could have stood there for hours on end.  

The second thing which is overpowering is the 'memory' wall.  The same people from above in the Memorial Plaza are now wandering around and looking.  But the entire mood is different. No one is talking.  I mean no one.  Even young children are quiet.  There is almost total silence.  And it's a sad and contemplative silence in front of this wall.  And it doesn't stop after a few seconds or minutes.  It's all pervasive throughout this place.  These are sheets of paper covering a gigantic wall.  They are artist's representation of the sky on the morning of September 11th, and they also symbolize each of the dead and their diversity.  Superimposed over the sheets is a simple quote from Virgil:   "No day shall erase you from the memory of time."  The quote is a reassurance for the families and other loved ones of those who died.

There are many other reminders of who died that day.  

Another part of the museum is a recreation of the awful event itself.  I can only equate it to a house of horror.  There is film, voice overs and pictures, including the hideous pictures of the planes hitting the towers.  The presentation is chaotic and recreates the confusion of not knowing what was happening that day with news reporting clips, together with reactions of people watching it happen. and both still and moving pictures as you move through this presentation.  The same feelings of horror and disbelief I experienced that day were running through me.   Every few steps there would be something more difficult to relive.  It's all happening all around you with overlapping voices and pictures.  Frankly, it was terribly realistic at recreating the horror and chaos of not knowing what was happening and why.  This area of the memorial was much, much worse than I feared.  I knew going into this place it was going to be hard, but it was so much worse than I thought it would be. Apparently, I wasn't the only person who found this presentation too overwhelming.  There was suddenly a door marked, 'early exit from this exhibition', and we took it.

One of the best parts of this memorial is the outpouring from people around the country who empathized with the families, and who wanted to honor the dead.  Here's my favorite:  A quilt made by four women in Pennsylvania.  The squares contain names of the dead and also honors the 'first responders'.   

I found myself reliving my personal September 11th as a result of visiting the 9/11 Memorial.  It was my great fortune to have my school principal ban all news and TV's in our school building.  He announced what happened over the intercom, and he asked for calm.  He then had all the TV's around the school taken to the library. As he rightly guessed, we would see the horrible pictures and films over and over again, and there really wasn't any point in having children watch the chaos firsthand at school.  I wish my daughter's high school principal had been so astute.  When my school day ended, I made a beeline to LD Bell High School in Hurst to gather her up.  This was not normal.  I never picked her up at school, but I needed to see her and check on her.  Lots of parents in America did exactly that on terrible day. 

I knew this day would hit her very, very hard.  As I pulled up to the curb, her face was the color of a sheet of typing paper.  Just two months previously, she had stood at the 'Top of the World' observation deck on one of the towers, and had taken pictures of herself in front of the globe in the courtyard between the  two towers.  We were both haunted at how close she had come to death.  

Knowing it could have been her as part of the innocent tourist group who perished on September 11th, made me grieve all the more for the other families who weren't as lucky as mine.  This memorial brought it all back.  

You'll find additional pictures at:  

https://goo.gl/photos/HSsUTNFr4KDamzKx8   

Hoofing it in NYC

Have you ever hoofed it around NYC?  It's an exotic adventure.  No, people do not 'run into you' if you aren't walking fast enough, but they will very nimbly circumvent you.  You 'stroll' in the parks. You WALK on the sidewalks.  Walking in New York is always entertaining.  There's no end to what you will see or smell.  Mostly, but not always, if it's not outright pleasant, it's definitely interesting.

I'm beginning to wonder how long a woman has to live in New York City to obtain what I think of as the New York patina.  There's sort of a 'finish' for want of a better word which makes the women who live here easy to pick out.  If you're on the upper West or East sides (the areas on each side of Central Park), yes, there's an element of money which is quite obvious.  The purses, shoes and scarves are dead give-aways.  There are no Payless BOGO's there.  However, it's not being able to drop four figures on your accessories which define a New York 'look'.  It's a pulled together sort of fashion statement which extends to your coat, your scarf, your shoes, your haircut, your jewelry and your hat.

And, yes, it's true:  New York women wear basic black for every season.  They wear all black in the winter/fall, and they wear black bottoms with lighter colored tops in the spring/summer.   The New York black thing makes the tourists stand out like dandelions on the lawn.  In other parts of the country, it's all about 'color'.  You wear white, beige, and pastels in the spring and summer.  You wear black, brown, forest green, maroon, and burnt orange in the fall and winter.  Not in New York.  It's all black, all the time.  If you want to blend (somewhat) with the natives, only bring black clothes when you visit.  Sometimes I amuse myself by checking out the 'ladies in black' when I'm walking somewhere.

We are staying (and cat sitting the family cat)

Jackson

at the crossroads of Brooklyn - the center of downtown.  Downtown was the center of the retail world in Brooklyn until it fell on hard times.  Flight out of the 'city' to suburbia happened everywhere in country during the 50's and 60's leaving behind blighted downtown areas.  Now, that trend is reversing with the millennials who are eschewing suburbia and looking to live inside large cities with easy access to transit which takes them to everything they want or need.  Downtown Brooklyn is reviving by leaps and bounds thanks in large part to the transit:  9 separate subway lines connect it to everywhere in NYC. There's a huge multi-use tower planned within spitting distance of this apartment.  Ironically, it will be attached to the "Dime Bank" which is this massive, ornate rotunda of an early 20th century building.  The facade of the rotunda will be retained, and the tower will be its appendage rising like a slender needle over 1000 feet into the air.

I've also learned that New York is NOT Seattle.  People are miserable in the rain here.  They walk around hunched over, and little doggies don't get walks - instead, it's the ever popular 'poop pad'. Umbrellas are everywhere, and you can actually see business depressed by the rain.  Restaurants which are usually packed are almost vacant.  When it rains, people add a 'take home' dinner box to the bags and backpacks beneath their umbrellas.   Apparently, children in strollers still get walked by the nannies even in the rain.  The nannies look miserable and wet, but the kiddos are strapped into their strollers then encased in see through plastic.  They seem quite happy to be out and about in the rain as was I.  It doesn't take long living in the desert before you appreciate every raindrop.

One of the outcomes of all walking, all the time is  the striking absence of fat people.  There are 'big boned' people who wouldn't be thin if they ate absolutely nothing, but there just aren't a lot of obviously overweight folks.  I'm convinced another reason for the lesser number of hefties is the New York craze for 'small plates'.  Think salad plate instead of dinner plate.  This small plate thing is happening because little plates cost less, and partially because it's just the culinary fashion at the moment.  The only place there are no 'small plates' are in the delis.  No one at any delicatessen is serving smaller sandwiches. Thank heaven....they are so delicious.

After the sidewalks, the best people watching in New York can be found by riding the subways,  but that's a whole other blog.  Got to take off.  It's time to walk to the subway, and then walk to the MOMA.

Out of the Closet

Dear Faithful Readers,

I'm coming clean and announcing I'm a closet birder.  I think when you have 259 pictures of birds, it's time to open the closet door.  Unlike real birders, I do not have a life list.  I can't spontaneously recognize any except the most common birds.  The only bird call I can be absolutely sure of is 'cock a doodle doo'.  I don't subscribe to Birds & Blooms or any other birding publication.  Nor do I have an Audubon Society card.  So, with my lackadaisical attitude, I'd be drummed out of official birder gatherings.

All those birder trappings don't matter to me.  I now have my heart's desire.  Three bird feeders, each one uniquely designed to attract some of the birds which hang out in this arid furnace.

It took this Bendire's Thrasher a little bit of time and acrobatics before he could steal hummingbird nectar.  However, he's much easier to spot and photograph than the hummers are who are actually quite shy.  The hummers appear sporadically usually morning and evening, but this thrasher named for the man who first recorded spotting him is huge and not shy at all.  When I first saw him trying to figure out how to get the nectar, I couldn't imagine he'd succeed, but as you can see, he did.

We have two really common birds in our 'back yard'.  One of these is the mourning dove. For the past four years, a pair has mated, built a nest and laid eggs in our orange tree.  Excitingly, this year the female chose a perch which is eye level, and in front of an opening in the leaves of the orange tree.  By  looking out our picture window, we can see her quite clearly.  Here she is feeding her two chicks.  I think they are about two days old in this picture.  You could actually see her throat moving up and down as she regurgitated partially digested food into them.

 I was happily photographing these two chicks as they grew, when mother nature got involved.  Unknown to me, one of these chicks fell out of the nest and was almost immediately killed and eaten by the other birds - especially the thrashers with their long needle like beaks.  I could not bear to take a photo of the dead chick with it's guts hanging out.  The closest chick in the picture below was starting to 'flap' its wings, and I think it just tumbled out.

By the next morning, the chick's body was completely gone - thanks to my animal garbage patrol (aka the coyotes).  Now, there's just one chick in the nest. Speaking of which, if I'd known about the fall, I could have restored the chick to the nest.  It's not true a bird mother will reject a chick who has been handled by humans.  Here's our one remaining chick.

I swear this chick is having a hard time.  On Saturday the tree trimmers attacked all our trees.  Drake rushed out to get them to leave the orange tree alone, but, of course, as soon as he went back inside, they went for the orange tree.  The mom flew off, and we are hoping she's going to return.  Fingers crossed.  Yea!  After two hours gone, she just returned, and the chick is still in the nest.

We hung a cylindrical feeder for the other common bird in our back yard: the house finch.  This is a wild bird who's real name should be the

Western Finch except it's not, anymore.  It was originally only found in the Western United States.  In 1940 trappers illegally sold Western House Finches to pet stores in New York.  As the sellers began to be prosecuted, pet dealers released their illegal finches who immediately found Long Island to their liking.  Now, 77 years later, the eastern cousins have almost rejoined their western relatives as they've spread westward.  They are now one of the most common birds in the United States.  It's illegal to trap and sell United States native, wild birds.  Here's a male house finch at our new feeder.  Unfortunately, the trade in exotic birds is very widespread in the rest of the world, and there's quite a bit of abuse.

These little finches are  very entertaining.  The females aren't brightly marked.  They look more like sparrows, but they don't back down.  I've seen the males face down birds three times their size.  Everyone is fighting over the cylindrical feeder.  Not just finches, but two other kinds of birds I can't identify, are trying to chow down..  Here's one      

Some birds are ingenious at getting both a meal and a drink. Here's a Bendire's Thrasher again; this time he's drilled a fallen naval orange.  He's eating the pulp and drinking the juice.  He attacked this orange for a good ten minutes.

Our back common area was already really popular, and now we've added easy to get food.  Here's our third feeder which Drake designed and built based on my sketchy idea.  We were trying to give the bigger birds a place for them to feed.  This feeder has now survived 35 mile per hour winds, so we feel it's here to stay.  Drake also had the great idea of hanging the feeders with bungee cords.  We can move the feeders back and forth in front of the pictures windows.

We are fortunate to have grass surrounding our house.  The grass is much cooler during the summer.  Small rocks make it 10 to 15 degrees hotter around your house.  We irrigate our grass, and that means water for the birds.  This robin (and the other birds) have learned this metal box set into the grass holds water after the sprinklers run.  I've watched other birds get a drink from this 1/2" of standing water.

In our travels, I've been entertained enormously by seagulls, stellar jays, gray jays, a whole variety of ocean birds, and even ducks on ponds.  I've seen a great blue heron, an avocet, pelicans, grebes, cormorants, and my all time favorite:  the magpie.

I wasn't kidding when I said I have trouble identifying birds.  So, here's the reader's challenge:  What is the name of this bird?  I swear the coloring and eye color are faithful to what I see out the window.

AND, if you haven't seen enough bird pictures, here are my two albums of birds, birds, birds.

https://goo.gl/photos/E6KCRTv9ZUMNxqEj7

https://goo.gl/photos/YbCYp5A7qBxxGA3K6

I think I'm definitely out of the birder closet.  

The Constant of Change

Which of us ever thought 50 years ago that 'change' would become a constant in our lives?  The Boomers came of age at the dawn not of the Age of Aquarius, but of the Electronic Age.  Most of us didn't notice.  The only reason I sort of did was my honey was in Numerical Analysis as part of his Math Degree, and he was using a computer the size of a room when he was learning how to program.  We were 20 when we were walking to that building to pick up his 'program cards'.

Now, in just two generations - there has been  a one trillion fold increase in the processing power in our electronics.  I found a nifty website that shows comparison of 'floating operations per second' across various drives and devices.  Not only does it compare the speed, but also the miniaturization of our electronics.  http://pages.experts-exchange.com/processing-power-compared/    I spent several minutes looking and deciphering the comparisons.  The time-lapsed presentation was really effective.  This website illustrates the pace of change.

In 1965, Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, extrapolated computers would increase in power and decrease in cost at an exponential rate.  Most people have distilled this to 'processing power will double every two years'.   Now, there's even a prediction that "Moore's Law" will become obsolete about 2020 - physics finally limiting how small our transistors can shrink.  Moore was certainly prophetic, but even he couldn't imagine the speed at which our lives would become dominated by electronics. How many of us feel today we are metaphorically running as fast as we can and still falling behind?

Is this is how people felt as they streamed away from the farming life into the urban life where they changed how they worked, how they obtained the necessities of life, and where they lived?  In two generations in the 1800's clothes were mass produced, food was processed (canned and bottled), housing pre-fabricated and built (pre-cut lumber and pre-made uniform bricks), and mechanics was the electronics of the age.  I suspect those changes must have seemed too fast.  Lots of sentences could have begun:  'In my day...'

Prior to 2007, we could all see the unrelenting march of electronics into our businesses and homes.  Livings were made writing programs which automated accounting, payroll calculations, business forecasting, inventory, job costs and so forth.  Every automation seemed to breed three more.  Entire industries have gone into freefall due to automation: publishing, and the postal service to name two. However, in 2007, Steve Jobs debuted the iphone, and our lives can now be measured into pre-iphone/post-iphone existence.

There's no need to list the hundreds if not thousands of overt and subtle ways the iphone has accelerated change.  Products which have been around for a hundred or more years have vanished seemingly overnight. (Think land line phones, phone books, day-planners, paper maps, calendars, cameras, alarm clocks, and wrist watches.)  All of this is happening so fast, we poor humans just can't keep up no matter how hard we try.  Talk about anxiety producing!

And that's what's happening:  Change is morphing into anxiety.  The more change we personally register, the more anxiety we feel.  And fear is certainly one of the handmaidens of anxiety.  If we are young, we wonder (and sometimes fear) what the world is going to look like as we age.  If we are of working age, we fear loss of our livelihood.  If we are retired, we feel the frustration of being left behind and fear being left out of this increasingly incomprehensible world.  I've always thought change was a positive agent, and part of me still thinks it is, but even an optimist like me has doubts about the rate of change we are all experiencing.

I think the boat has sailed for the retired of this world leaving us pretty much behind.  We can try to 'keep up' to a limited degree, but that's about it.  For the middle aged, staying ahead of the automation curve is the name of the game. For the millennials it's all about how much education can they get.  For the post-millennials, the dice are still rolling.  It's all our jobs to help our post-millennials be 21st century people since the Electronic Revolution (the true revolution which is going on all over the world), has killed the 20th century completely.  

In 1938...

In 1938 The Study of Adult Development, a part of the Harvard medical school gave physicals to 268 sophomore men; then followed the mental and physical health of these men for the next 80 years with the aim of determining what makes a person have a happy and healthy life.  The original study has been expanded to include women, the offspring of the original group, and a group from the lower socio/economic strata of society.  Guess what makes a happy life?   It's not money.  It's not good genes, and it's not where you live.  It's not fame.  It's not work. What makes a happy life are your relationships.  OK, now every woman reading this is thinking, "Oh, duh."

Since I've been thinking about life constants, the whole idea of relationships has been floating around in my mind.  We went out for lunch with friends recently, and I asked the woman what she thought were constants in her life.  She promptly said, 'family'.  That's too narrow for me.  Significant relationships have had as much and in many cases more influence in my life than my family.  Relationships have always formed an expanding web around me.  I know lots of women can say that.  There are very few women who live in mental isolation.

I think one of the unusual ways we expand our relationships is what I call 'your friend is my friend'.  Here's what I mean.  Last year when we were in Colorado Springs, my sister-in-law called me and said, "We are going to be within spitting distance of you in the cabin we go to every year."  I asked, "Who is 'we'"?   It turns out they are an entire group of friends she met in elementary school who all socialize together in a getaway at least once a year.  Naturally, Drake and I went to see her and met all her friends.  Several women in the group said to me during the day we spent with them, "Oh, I know you.  J talks about you all the time."  Now, one of those women has had a health crisis, and I've started writing her.  My friend is your friend.  

The internet has helped us reconnect or stay connected.  In the pre-electronic age, when you moved away, you lost all your friends. Oh, you had the best of intentions.  You vowed you'd write at least once a week since you couldn't imagine your life without that person. (One had to write because 'long distance' was expensive and reserved for the direst of emergencies or the most wonderful of news.)   And you tried; truly you did.  But those letters petered out pretty quickly.  The reality was at best you might maintain a Christmas card relationship with an annual letter tucked inside.

I so admire those 18th century letter writers like John Adams and Thomas Jefferson who maintained their relationship with letters from 1777 to 1826.  (FYI - If you go to Monticello, Jefferson's home, you can see his invention of a device which wrote two letters simultaneously, so he would have a copy of what he wrote.)  Franklin was famous for his correspondence with women.  I currently have a snail mail correspondent who writes me two or three times a week.  I'm in awe of her.

Personally, I think faster than I can write by hand, and my handwritten letters are often gobbley-gook with missing nouns and verbs.  I'm much, much better at typing, so the computer with email AND the ability to write and save snail mail letters to print, AND send e-cards is a big winner for me and my relationships.

Even with the computer, social networking, texting, and phoning you can't always consistently maintain extremely close relationships.  It seems like the closer you are, the more emotionally charged the relationship.  These are the people who know you down to your bones.  Like your mother. Like your aunt.  Like your sister.  Like your best friend(s).   My oldest friend (oh, how she's going to love that designation) and I met when we were eleven. Oh, she certainly knows all my flaws as I know hers, and we've fallen in and out with one another over fifty plus years.  Sometimes I think having periods of not speaking to someone is a yardstick of how close the two of you are.

I also have a significant number of relationships which I do not have to nurture.  These are not casual relationships, but steady constant friendships in my life.  If you asked us to rate our closeness on a 1-10 scale, we would rate our relationship as extremely close. Yet, I don't have to live in these women's hip pockets.  Close enough that I could call this handful of friends and say, "I need you." and they would appear as quickly as they could even if it meant planes, trains and automobiles.

I pick up casual relationships like other folks eat jellybeans.  Frankly, I find people fascinating.  Drake says this shows like a neon sign above my head.  Must be so because even I sense people are drawn to me.  It's all about being open.  Mostly I like meeting new people and getting to know them and learning about them.  One of my best friends had a 'you must meet 99% of my friendship criteria before I will waste my time with you' attitude. Not only did I find that baffling, but frankly, a very undesirable part of her.  I think every person has something to offer.  Look at it this way, everyone has talent, and I enjoy looking for it.  

One of my worst characteristics involves relationships.  I guess it's best described as, 'when I'm done, I'm done'.  If you do something which I consider beyond the pale, and continue to do it, then I'm finished with you.  Here's an example from my own family.  My extremely self-centered brother contemplated moving to Florida from Oklahoma when his son was young.  (He had been divorced a year or so.)  It was clear he planned to abandon his child - if not financially, then certainly emotionally. My relationship with him was always very difficult, and our adult relationship had evolved at that point to he disappointed me and I forgave him. When he extolled his Florida plan, I looked him straight in the eye and told him, I knew he was planning abandonment, and if he went through with the move, then he was to never contact me again.  Well, nobody knows you like your sibling, and he decided it wasn't in his best interest to move to Florida.  

Writing this blog has nurtured relationships which otherwise would have evaporated. Several people, who I've met fleetingly, read this blog, and they have become friends.  I sat next to one woman at church in Mississippi seven years ago, and she started reading and commenting and sharing.  Now, we are friends.  I also have what I think of as ghost readers. They read, but they seldom let me know they are reading.  Whenever I hear from them, it's always a pleasant and gratifying surprise.

Now, I have empirical evidence which validates what I've known all along.   You just can't have too many friends, and I mean the real kind, not the Facebook or Linkedin kind. Cultivating friendships and spending time with people either in the flesh or electronically and using real communication are the basis of relationship, and ultimately you will be happier.  If you don't believe me, read the Harvard study.  
    

Samurai Exhibition

The Phoenix Art Museum was a stop of a traveling exhibition of Samurai armor and weapons collected by a Dallas real estate magnate.  I looked in vain for a description of how he assembled his collection, but I couldn't find any information about how these pieces were acquired.  I couldn't help but wonder why Japanese individuals would sell family heirlooms some of which would have been passed down through several generations.

Japanese was extremely feudal until the late 19th century.  The Samurai culture developed as warring clans fought over the limited resources of the Japanese islands.  In 1615, one clan managed to unify Japan and that family ruled Japan from 1615 to 1868.  Richard Clavell wrote about this unification in his magnificent book of historical fiction, Shogun.  The book was dramatized in a made for TV mini series in the late 1970's.

Japanese armor was effective, but very differently constructed from European armor.  European armor was an iron suit soldered or welded together and worn with chain mail (little interlocking iron rings).  Japanese armor is constructed of small pieces of metal woven together with flat silk cords - some of which look like shoe laces.  It is beautifully decorated with natural elements such as flowers.

The armor quickly became completely ceremonial when there was an effective peace imposed by the ruling clan for over 200 years.  Armor became more elaborate and more decorative. Families would take a helmet made in the 15th century and 'update' it with decorative elements they added over the next three centuries.

Highly colored armor, elaborate helmets, and oversized fans were used to help commanders be more noticeable on the battlefield, and the fans were used to signals to move troops during a battle.

Also very interesting were the long bows.  Bows over six foot tall were the weapons used by cavalry prior to firearms.  They used arrows which were almost too pretty to shoot, but you can see how deadly they would be when fired from the back of a horse.  There were four mounted samurai with their horses displaying their own armor.  There were even specialized bows and arrows designed to be used when the samurai rode in palanquins as they moved between their fiefdoms and Edo - the seat of the government.  Each clan was required to travel to Edo twice a year and demonstrate their loyalty to the ruling clan.  Armor was worn during ceremonies and parades.    

We attended the exhibit with another couple, and you will find their pix in the mix next to their favorite pieces.  As always, the pictures tell the story

https://goo.gl/photos/jkwyJMuKnoK8q9MNA