A Trip to Tinkertown

One of my many interests is finding and enjoying the off the wall museums you run into on the road.  I was really thrilled today when Drake found one of these jewels, and THEN, he actually suggested we go tour it.  These types of outings go all the way back to when we first moved to Texas in the early 1970's, and I discovered "The Beeville Museum".  This was the outcome of the Beeville Texas historical society (which no doubt met around someone's kitchen table) trying to preserve their local history through collecting and displaying pioneer family artifacts.

It was carefully curated in a surprisingly sophisticated way.  I've seen this style of museum all over the United States, and even in Twillingate, New Foundland.  Some are successful, and others less so. They all have one thing in common:  They are a community's vision of who their people are.

First, you have to admire the execution of a pretty complex idea which involves lots and lots of people having to agree.  Second, these kinds of places have a 'vision' of who they think they are.  Third, to sustain these museums takes real dedication to the idea and vision their history is important.

It's a step farther to see the display of one obsessive person's collection. There was the "Fairbanks Museum of Natural Science" in Vermont which was the collection of a self proclaimed naturalist who gathered monumental amounts of everything that came into his path.  There was the bird carving museum in Nova Scotia.  And who could forget "The Christmas Museum" in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.  The Tinkertown Museum, on the Turquoise Trail between Albuquerque and Santa Fe is this kind of museum

RJ Ward (1940 - 2002) was a 'whittler'.  For those of you who have never tried whittling, you take a pocket knife and a block of wood and carve out 'something'.  It could be a person, a thing, a building, an animal - well, you get the idea - the world's your oyster.  Mr. Ward whittled and whittled and whittled.  He carved an entire circus.  He carved an entire New Mexican pioneer town.  He carved a boot hill.  He carved a doll house and all the furniture.  He cared horses, wagons, carts, and just about anything else you can think of.  He just kept whittling.  

When he wasn't whittlin', he was collecting license plates, bottles, and horse shoes to name a few things.  He was constructing his museum out of concrete which he used like modeling clay.  There are embedded shells, stones, bottles, pieces of turquoise, broken china and just about anything else you can  push into soft cement before it sets up.  And, there are the old 'booth' fortune tellers, grip measuerers, love meters, and one man band each of which you can get to play for just a quarter.  If you are mystified, think the 'booth' fortune teller Tom Hanks encounters in the movie "Big".  

Then, hand paint signs which offer all sorts of witty advice generally said by other people over the ages.  Connect the various 'rooms' with a boardwalk painted barn red.  Stir it all together and you have The Tinkertown Museum.  It was a hoot and a half.  It's still being run by family members, and all these obsessively whittled and collected objects so carefully arranged are slowly rotting away.  I think cleaning the place and the objects would take two full time people working 52 weeks a year.

The pictures tell the story:  Prepare to be amazed.

  https://goo.gl/photos/YZYN7sKoCWt7MP3e6      

Can You Cook an Egg on the Sidewalk?

It was officially 120 degrees this afternoon in Sun City according to NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration).  The station which recorded this is two miles from our house, so the reading is about as accurate as it gets.  I'm still trying to wrap my head around the temperature, and, oh, now a bit anxious about whether our local power grid can sustain all the Valley of the Sun air conditioners going full blast 24 hours a day.  That's the official nickname of the Phoenix area which sits in a valley surrounded by mountains.

NOAA is the national weather service.  It's the origin of all the weather you see on TV whether it's from your local weather person or on The Weather Channel. If you read your weather on your phone, or somewhere else on the internet, in your newspapers, or idly peruse the temperature listed on the local bank marquee, the source of all that info can be traced back to NOAA.

Here's what's really funny.  Although the local weather people make all their forecasts based on the NOAA projections, they are not above moving the temperature up or down a degree or so to make 'better TV'.  Example:  It's more dramatic to proclaim today's temperature is going to be the first 100 degree day of the summer rather than the 99 degrees forecasted by NOAA.  Those television weather wanna bes must be dancing with delight today to have such a juicy story.  I mean 120 degrees doesn't come along every day.  You should see their long and serious air time faces.

Well, I suppose they are right.  This kind of weather is quite dangerous.  We went out before 11 am this morning, and it was 105.  I pity any one trying to cope with these temperatures without air conditioning.  According to Popular Mechanic, the development of residential air conditioning was a result of the post WWII economic boom.  First, window units, and then in the 1970's centralized air conditioning was invented.  This town wouldn't exist without it.

You had to expend a lot of energy to cope with the heat prior to air conditioning.  First, and really foremost, people acclimated.  (Even today, people who are 'year rounders' get cold when the temperature hits 70 degrees.)  Acclimation actually involves physiological changes in your body to adjust to a new climate.  Extreme climates need drastic acclimation.

If you live at high altitudes, you actually make more red blood cells, so you can access more oxygen.  That acclimation takes about three months.  When you live in a place where you can have 23 hours of sunlight during the summer, you learn how to train yourself to sleep when you're tired instead of reacting to the cue of darkness.  In places which experience extreme high temperatures, people actually route blood and open the veins in their extremities as a cooling mechanism.  Conversely, in a cold climate, acclimation involves keeping blood circulating close to the body's core to keep those vital organs warm.  Thus, when the lifers here say, "I'm freezing!" it really means their body's blood flow is circulating in their arms and legs, and their core is cold - even at 70 degrees.

Acclimation is the first tool in the arsenal of how to keep cool in a hot climate.  Architecture was the second weapon.  The older houses here have strategically placed windows and doors to take advantage of air flow.  And all the oldest houses here are built of thick, thick adobe which trap and hold colder air indoors especially with a little help.  Relocation was also an option.  Anyone with a lick of sense and the financial wherewithal went north up into the mountains when it got hot and came back down to the desert floor when the snow started to fly.  

If you had to stay on the valley floor for the summer, one trick to survive the heat was to soak sheets and place them over doors and windows.   Another was to take those wet sheets, wrap them around yourself at night and sleep outside.  It was pretty common for people to get up when it was beastly hot (like it is now) and actually re-soak the sheet, re-wrap it around their body, and then lay back down and return to sleep.  With the advent of residential electricity came the house fan - either on the ceiling or via an oscillating fan sitting on the floor circulating air.  Prior to air conditioning people use the evaporative cooler to cool their houses.  It worked great as long as the humidity stayed low.  All of these electrical appliances must have seemed sent by God.

Another trick to stay reasonably cool was to get up the instant the sky began to turn gray (about 4:30 AM), and do any necessary physical work, then retire during the heat of the day to rest.  You can see this schedule still happening all over this town even in the winter.  Tomorrow morning, the yard crew that services our common area will be running loud, whining blowers and mowers in and around our houses beginning about 6:00 AM.  Every single Wednesday it happens.  When it's this hot, it's hard to complain.

Prior to refrigeration it was hard to keep milk from souring, butter from outright melting, and other fresh foods from becoming dangerous to eat in an impossibly short period of time.  And, lets don't talk about the water. First, it had to be strained through cheesecloth - too much dirt in it to drink, and then you had to wait for the 'mud' to settle to the bottom of the pitcher or bag before drinking it.  The high mineral content must have made the water here almost undrinkable - but take my word for it,  you get excessively thirsty in desert heat, and thus much less picky.

Even today, you have to fight this climate.  Currently, my hands have that 'pruny', wrinkled look - not from being in the water, but from the lack of moisture in the air.  Everyone I know wears some kind of lip stuff - otherwise, your lips crack and bleed.  The tops of my feet have been itching as if I have poison ivy - again the skin is drying out.  I coat myself in a product that's mostly mineral oil designed for skin use after every shower.  When I smooth it on, I can watch it literally sink into my skin. Within 20 seconds you'd never know I'd used any product.  I use eye drops for my dry eyes, and a product to moisturize the inside of my nose. It's an insane and annoying ritual which if not religiously practiced results in cracked and bleeding skin as well as nose bleeds.  And people wonder why I hate the desert.

Circumstances have stranded us here for this bizarre heatwave. However, if you look at the climatic forecasting of NOAA for the next three months, this may be the first heatwave, but it won't be the last.  It's going to be a brutal summer here.  San Diego here I come.  When it was 120 degrees today in Sun City, it was 71 in San Diego.

Tomorrow, we are going to do the 'egg on the sidewalk' thing.  I can hardly wait to see if the heated pavement will really cook it.      

Letting Go

There are two major difficulties to raising the average child.  (Yes, I know, you're thinking right about now, "Only TWO????)  But, as I see it, it's two: Letting go and saying no.  Perhaps, that's my own parenting speaking out of my head.  We all understand saying no, but letting go is not so straightforward.

When you have a baby, it's overwhelming.  We just dropped off dinner and a gift to the new three week old baby in the family, and the mom confided, "Well, our first was already sleeping five or six hours a night at this time, but this one is a typical newborn; he eats every three hours!"  We all remember those days.  Getting a shower was a major accomplishment, and sleep deprivation was just the way it was. However, once that newborn phase passes, and you get the rhythm and routine of caring for the baby down, you're mentally high fiving and thinking, "I've got this baby stuff knocked and locked!"

Then, the second year starts, and you have to learn the painful, parental lesson of  'let go'.  It starts easily.  You let go of chubby fingers and the little cruiser learns to toddle.  Remember the wincing, vivid outcome of some of those first efforts to step back? It's the first truly bad fall that left the lump, or even worse, a scar.  Little did you know that was the easy training wheel phase of letting go.

Remember the, "No, I do it!" knowing letting go of some control even if  'it' would take three times as long.  The wheedling for the sleep over you knew they weren't ready for, the movies you knew would cause nightmares, and gulp, the first time you stepped back and allowed deliberate failure.  I'm not even going to mention the minefield called, "getting a driver's license."

Finally, there's the letting go dance of 'I am not my parents.'   I think the parenting Gods save the worst for last.  It's that final teenage separation. I'm sure it must happen seamlessly in some families, but it was agony for me.  Having an 'only' makes it all so dramatic.  Am I doing this right?  Is she going to hate me like this forever?  Can I kill her and get away with it? If she's driving me crazy when I'm stepping back as fast as I can, why am I so sad?

We just returned from a visit to the home of our adult child and hubby, only, we didn't actually see them.  People were amazed, and I could tell, just a little shocked.  We've been asked repeatedly, "How were the kids?"  And, our answer, "We don't really know. Fine, we assume.  The cat was great!"  Then, people have looked a little befuddled and replied, "Oh, well, good.", while inside their heads, they are thinking, "I wouldn't have flown all the way to New York and not seen my kids!"

Doesn't that phrase my kids just say it all?  Where's the line when you shouldn't be using the possessive pronoun anymore?  Yes, of course, your children will always be the products of your family, but when do they belong to themselves instead of to you?  It's an arrogant assumption and a failure to let go to think because you are the 'parent', you should automatically have first call on their time and resources.  

 A true final 'letting go' is accepting adult children don't need parents so much as considerate friends who are their parents. Insisting on playing the 'parent' card is not going to endear you to adult kiddos juggling their increasingly complicated lives.  It means babysitting the cat and being glad you get a free apartment in New York City for your own vacation.

 It means not insisting on their time when entertaining you is just one more chore to be squeezed into the 'to do' list.  Know when it's time to 'let go'.

       


     

Visiting the Guggenheim

One of my favorite activities is to 'look at pictures' which is shorthand for "I never met a museum I didn't like".  This obsession started really late in my life since the only decent museum in the town I grew up in was Gilcrease   This small Tulsa museum was ahead of its time since it specialized in collecting Western and particularly Western Indian art.  I was a teenager before I even found out about it.  Art was not a big interest in my working class household.  Gilcrease was the first museum I took my 18 month old daughter to see.  (My mother thought that was crazy.)  

I really got turned on by 'pictures' when I was in my late 20's.  We went to Washington D.C. in January, no less, and toured the virtually empty Smithsonian Museums.  In the 1970's the big deal was the new air and space museum which was breathtaking.  They actually had a moon rock!  As exciting as that was, it couldn't hold a candle to the National Gallery of Art.  For the first time I understood that art book pictures, cards, and other reproductions of famous works of art were like candles are to 100 watt electric light bulbs.  The originals were electrifying!

Seeing is learning.  Wanting to see more 'pictures' was a major reason behind our massive month long trip to Europe in the early 1980's.  And, yes, I thought all I wanted to see were the originals of all those famous Impressionist paintings by Monet, Manet, Renoir, Cezanne, Hassam, Cassatt, and Van Gogh.  Instead, the trip turned out to be a crash course in Art History, and suddenly I liked that awful Modern Art!

The Guggenheim Art Museum designed by Frank Lloyd Wright was to display Solomon Guggenheim's modern art collection.

Guggenheim and his daughter, Peggy, were the first people in the United States to seriously collect this 'new art'.   He began collecting about the turn of the century, and she continued collecting even smuggling her collected painting out from under the noses of the Nazi's in the late 1930's.  Wright's building is certainly striking both inside and out.  It's a widening spiral which can be climbed either on stairways or by going up a continuous ramp.  The building is also an acknowledged piece of art.  It opened in 1939.

When we plan a trip to New York, one of the first things I do is figure out what exhibits I want to see at the museums.  The current exhibit at the Guggenheim was my #1 thing to see this time.  It was a display of 170 works of Solomon/Peggy Guggenheim's collection - and specifically several Kandinsky paintings (my most favorite modern artist).  This exhibition was a who's who of modern art.  It was dazzling.  See what you think.

https://goo.gl/photos/WTMQVMSvLMVCAg2B9

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.