Another County Fair

I'm up to my old tricks.  Last week we attended the Saratoga County Fair.  Drake claims I've dragged him to at least twenty of these, but I think the number is closer to ten.  My fascination with county fairs runs deep back into my childhood.  At its root it's all about greed.  My mother believed sugar was the devil incarnate, and she ruthlessly controlled her childrens access to soft drinks, candy, ice cream, and even desserts.  I could count on one hand the times in the calendar year I could satisfy my sweet tooth, and the Tulsa County Fair was one of those times.

Most kids would have looked forward to the midway, but I was a fast learner and realized early on the carnival games just emptied my pocket rather than rewarding me with the big purple bear.  My sweet tooth was also helped along by my irrational fear of all but the mildest of the midway rides.  My speed was always the carousel rather than the rocket cages.  I was even afraid of the swings which rose you progressively into the air as centrifugal force spun you faster and faster.

If I wasn't consuming funnel cakes, cotton candy, or a Dr. Pepper, I was collecting as much free stuff as I could put into my plastic advertising bag.  I loved getting rulers, pens, pencils, band aids, combs, erasers, magnets, clips, and free reading material.  I've never been picky - I'll read anything.

In between sugar fixes, I also inspected every animal pen and cage.  As a city girl, the exotic smells (animal manure, I'm sure) and the lovely animals seen close up seemed to be from a different planet than the one I inhabited.  Hard as it is to believe, as a child I was very shy and timid.  Life for me was mostly solitary observation seeing and noting things I had only read about.  There was nothing about a county fair I didn't love as long as I didn't have to ride anything.

Perhaps that's why it's so easy for me to be eager to 'see another one'.  This time I met some people who made this fair wonderfully unique.  There was Carter, the eight year old who was entered into the sheep showmanship contest for the first time.  We love watching 4H kids working with their animals.  We've watched kids show pigs - that's mostly a free for all.  We've watched kids work young oxen teams.  We've watched five year olds show young cows bigger than they are.  We've watched llama packing - really hilarious - and totally one of a kind in terms of showmanship.  We've watched kids show horses, and we've watched kids show sheep.  We've even watched kids show house cats.

Carter, alternating between being excited and being scared, pointed out his idol to me - a 17 year old boy who, according to Carter, knew absolutely everything about showmanship.  As we worked our way from the 16 - 18 year old class down to Carter's 8 - 10 year old class, he carefully explained to me all the different breeds of sheep we were seeing, why some looked 'rough wooled' while others looked like they'd just seen the sheep barber.  When I asked him why he chose a lamb to raise and show at the Fair, he replied his family farm needed the lawn mowed! 

Carter getting ready for the show ring

I wish I had a happy ending to this story, but, alas, there were two people in Carter's age class - him and a cute little girl with French braids.  He came in second.  Oh, well, there's always next year. 

Moving on, we next encountered a female fly fisherwoman.  I talked to her for about about fly fishing.  When you talk to people who have a passion, it's easy to get a lot of information.  She started fishing about age four, and quickly found out she loved fly fishing.  She's been practicing her craft for more than fifty years. 

For a long time, she fished for trout in fast running streams, but as she aged, she changed her focus to fly fishing on small glacial lakes for small and large mouthed bass.  Her preferred mode of transportation while fishing is not the flat bottomed bass boat with trolling motor of Texas and Louisiana, but rather a one person kayak.  Now, for her it is all about tying interesting flies to catch a fish's interest, then enjoying the utter peace and quiet of the lake as she casts, catches and releases.

I bypass most Fair food these days - unless a really, really good looking corn dog crosses my path.  I also blame New England for putting me off my very favorite Fair treat:  cotton candy.  Well, that's not exactly accurate.  I still eat cotton candy, but only the gourmet variety.  And, you ask, "What is the gourmet variety of cotton candy?"  It's the kind spun from maple sugar.  Once you go maple, you never voluntarily go back to the yucky pink stuff.  The Saratoga Fair didn't let me down. There was a sugar shack, and they were serving up maple cotton candy.  I did rein myself in, though, and only ordered the small size.

Just as I was cleaning the sticky off my hands, I was just in time for a demonstration event.  Now, usually these involve sets of knives slicing and dicing, or waterless cookware, or some cleaning gizmo.  The demonstration at his Fair was so much better.  A woman from the Cornell Extension Service gave a demonstration on how to arrange flowers. 

She had a lot to talk about, and I learned much more than I thought I would when I sat down.  Since there were only me and three other women taking in her talk, it was pretty interactive.  Ok, so I made it interactive. When she started talking about using  greenery from your yard to augment rearranging your grocery story bouquet, I quipped we had to resort to theft in the dessert to find yard greenery.  Everyone started laughing, and when the presenter started asking questions, everyone started answering.  These things are always more fun when the presenter doesn't have to pull teeth to get the interaction going.

Another demonstration which is unique to places with TREES was the timber demo.  This involves sawing, ax throwing, and unique to the Saratoga Fair - log rolling.  In the 19th and 20th century, these skills became logging contests at local gatherings and fairs.  In log rolling, two competitors try to unseat the other from a large log rolling in water.   When it wasn't a competition,

Competition between a father/daughter team

this was the most dangerous part of timber cutting - using a river or large stream to float large cut logs down the mountain to the wagons, and later to the railroad spur to haul the timber to the sawmill.  Men would climb onto the logs to spin them out of log jams and snags as the cut timber floated down the river.  One wrong step and a fall off the floating, spinning log would leave you either crushed, drowned, or mangled.  

A final highlight of the Saratoga County Fair was the eight horse draft/wagon competition.  That's all about driving eight harnessed draft horses pulling a wagon. 

The 'winner' of the driving competition

The predicted rain dampened the entries in this competition, but even though the rain didn't materialize, seeing the two teams drive these horses took one right back to the 19th century when harnessing and controlling teams of these huge horses was a skill in high demand. 

We finished the day at a delicatessen in the town of Ballston Spa,

Main drag of Ballston Spa, New York

the county seat of Saratoga County.  This tiny burg was serviced by four railroads in its heyday.  This is the place where the manufacture of the paper bag with the square bottom was invented.  Who knew?  I tell you in this life there's always something new to see and new to learn.  You just have to be curious.

As always, there are more pictures.  Click the link if you want to see them.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/gW62R2Nt6giPvoG49       

        

Slice of American Lives

Mostly, I like life west of the Mississippi.  That preference is because of my Oklahoma childhood.  Northeastern Oklahoma is rolling hills covered with tall trees, so perhaps that explains why I'm so enamored with trees.  It's also an itch the dessert never scratches.  This area is blanketed with second and third growth trees.  All of upstate New York as well as New England has been 'clear cut' multiple times to fuel agriculture, the timber industry, and the paper industry.  And, the trees still keep coming back.

We visited "the Berkshires" this week.  This is Western Massachusetts.  It's filled with rolling hills covered with trees which are part of the Appalachian Range.  One half BILLION years ago when Africa rammed North America, the Appalachians were created.  They've been losing height ever since, and now "The Berkshires" are worn down into a series of  undulating hills.  Embedded are very small towns who have revitalized themselves with the tourist industry.  This is the center of summer cultural tourism (theater, music and dance) with the Tanglewood Festival being the most well-known.  People flock to The Berkshires from New York, Philadelphia and Boston for short summer vacations.  This has been happening since 19th century railroads made 'getting here' easy.

Naturally, wealthy people picked out nice hills and built summer getaways.  These were actually fairly modest family summer homes rather than the ostentatious mansion'cottages' of Newport.  We visited one such Berkshire home this week called "Naumkeag".  The house is named for the American Indians who were displaced and decimated by the 17th century settlement of Massachussets.

This was the summer retreat of the Joseph and Caroline Choate family (old New England name).  It was designed and built by Stanford White (yes, the infamous one) in 1885 at the height of the gilded age.  It was lived in by the family until 1959 when it was turned over to a trust which preserves and maintains it.  Everything in this house is original.  Nothing is 'of the period' which makes it quite unique.  (In all the 'houses' I've toured, this is only the second one with all its original furnishings and bric a brac - the other being in Richmond:  May Mount.)

This time it turns out the house and contents were of secondary interest.  The Choate family were much more fascinating than the dwelling.  Here's Joseph Choate, the owner of the house we toured.   

In his era (1860 - 1917), he was incredibly influential and very famous, and as is the case with so many famous people - his fame only lasted his lifetime.  He was a lawyer and partner of THE New York City law firm, and his cases included some of the biggest litigation cases of the late 19th and early 20th century.  This man was perhaps the first 'corporation' lawyer, but to be fair, he also argued on behalf of some surprising non-corporate clients.  He was also a founder of the Metropolitan Art Museum.  He hobnobbed with Presidents, and McKinley (who visited Naumkeag) named him Ambassador to Great Britain where he and his wife charmed and cemented the American/English political bond.  Hilariously, he also brought back to the United States a bevy of English servants.  Boy, I would have liked to have been a fly below those stairs.

His wife was equally interesting.  Caroline Dutcher Sterling Choate had to be extensively pursued before she would agree to the marriage.  She really wanted to be an artist and was set to go to Paris when he finally won her over.  She was famous for her lifelong activism in the cause of education for women - sparked by her own desire to attend Harvard which was closed to her because she was a woman.  

This couple seemed to have had everything - wealth, position, friends, and power.  However, in one of the most important ways, their lives were misery.  They had five children, all of whom lived to adulthood.  However, three of them died very early.  Their eldest son committed suicide at age 20, their second son was mentally ill.  I'm guessing schizophrenia based on the guide's description, and he was institutionalized from the time of his late teens until he died. Their eldest daughter died in her early 30's of colitis after being bedridden by the disease.  Their two remaining children - one son and one daughter lived productive lives, but not to the level of fame of their parents.  Thanks to her mother's progressive views, Mabel, the surviving daughter who never married, inherited Naumkeag which was her primary residence.  She extensively remodeled the gardens over decades, and created the 'trust' which administers and preserves the house today.

 Our other destination was the Norman Rockwell Museum (which is housed in the summer home originally built by one of Joseph Choate's law partners).  Rockwell, long poo-pooed by the fine arts community as 'an illustrator', thus not REALLY a true artist has been reassessed by the art world, and his star is justly rising.  He was famous for his entire adult lifetime as a magazine cover illustrator.  His first cover at age 19 was for "Boy's Life", the American Boy Scouting magazine.  He became famous for his "Saturday Evening Post" magazine covers.  He was assigned twelve to fifteen covers each year for this weekly magazine.  For each cover,  he created a full sized painting.  The painting was then photographed for the cover.

The idea for each painting was conceived by Rockwell.  He often created 'studies' which he executed in either charcoals or oils, then re-evaluated and created the final painting.  Look at the 'photographs, the 'study' and the 'final' for this cover.  This is the same kind of work a 'fine artist' invests in a painting.

Now, see the study.  The cop's uniform and pose is chosen, as is the setting, as well as including the soda jerk behind the drug store counter.

Now, in the final painting, there are other differences in the boy's pose, his possessions on the stick, and the soda jerk has morphed into a counter man in a diner.

This is an example of 'setting up' people he knew in a tableau, then photographing them in various poses and costumes.  He routinely commissioned his Stockbridge, Massachussets neighbors as models for his magazine cover paintings.  The paintings exhibited in the museum were often four by five feet in size and painted in amazing detail.

One large gallery were his 'covers' arranged in chronological order.  I picked out several from each decade to give you a flavor of his work.  This one was my favorite.  It was painted and photographed in 1947.  Here's the cover followed by the painting.  This really show's Rockwell's genius:  It's topical; it's humorous; and it's filled with clever details which hit the mark.  (My favorite person in this painting is the 'grandmother' in the back seat - notice how she's the same going and coming.)

In addition to his own paintings, the summer exhibition was a display of painters who influenced Rockwell.  Two of these painters were Maxwell Parrish and N.C. Wyeth.  I had to laugh when I saw this Parrish painting - it's owned by Crystal Bridges, the Alice Walton museum we toured in Arkansas on our way to New York.

Another piece I really liked was the idea of 'the family tree' - a theme which Rockwell explored in many of his covers.  Here's his take on what an American family tree would look like starting with the buccaneer marrying the Spanish princess, splitting into the "North" and the "South" during the Civil War, splitting again in the "East" and "West" post Civil War, and culminating in the ideal child who is modeled on Peter Rockwell, one of Norman Rockwell's sons.    

Here's another take on that same theme:  This is called "Veterans of Two Wars", a cover for The Red Cross Magazine.

Rockwell definitely saw himself as part of the family tree of artists.  He particularly admired any artist who painted real people doing real tasks.  One of the other exhibitions of the museum were presentations of artists who built their own art on the foundation of others.  First, you saw individual paintings, then a 'family tree' was presented.  Here's the one which culminates in Norman Rockwell.

This was a fun day, OK, my idea of a fun day.  If you want to see more of Naumkeag, or Norman Rockwell covers, here are the links to ALL the pictures.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/cX417KBLkpF5T6799

https://photos.app.goo.gl/ST2sCd1MWZnJ4DkBA

         

Calling all Readers

This week I've been learning about memory.  When we recall specific events in our lives, these are called 'explicit memories'.  Sometimes they are BIG like our wedding days, funeral days, birth of children days, or holidays.  Sometimes they are small such as visiting your favorite pizza restaurant with your friends last week.  They are your memories of specific events.  Some of my oldest explicit memories involve books.  Specifically, the impact certain books had on me as I was reading them and beyond.

A few days ago I was watching a mindless reality show on PBS - I'm hung up on 'The Great British Baking Show' - ironic since I hate to spend time in the kitchen - but, they advertised an upcoming program called 'The Great American Read'.  Well, how could I not check that out?  Apparently, 100 books have been chosen by national survey, and there's one 'launch program' you can stream now, with a series beginning in September discussing these books in an up to date way.

The 100 books are all fiction.  An author can only have one book on the list, but some books belong to a 'series'.  They must have been published in English.  I agree with MOST of the choices.  I think "Huckleberry Finn" is missing.  I don't think either the "The DaVinci Code" or "The Twilight Saga" deserves the term great.  Overall, though, it's a pretty good 100.  Here's the list if you want to take a look at it:

https://www.pbs.org/the-great-american-read/home/

Now, here's what's really fun:  You can vote for your favorite book.  The purpose being to choose the 'great American book'.  You can vote for one book a day, so if you feel strongly about one certain book, you can vote for it every day between now and October 18th.  My strategy is to vote for the books which I remember had the most impact on me personally.  Memory is a great trickster, but even so, some books are unforgettable to me.

I've read a lot of the books on the list.  Slightly over one-half, actually.  My first vote went to "To Kill a Mockingbird".  My second vote went to "Lord of the Rings".  My third vote went to "Atlas Shrugged".  Today, I voted for "Lonesome Dove".

This whole idea is right on my sweet spot.  So, if you love to read, check this out and start voting!  I'd also love to hear which books you cast your votes for.  

We the People

I read a disturbing opinion piece, which suggested the United States in on the verge of another Civil War.  The piece alternatively angered and terrified me.  Have we really forgotten the bitter lessons learned during the Civil War?  War, especially one which tears a country apart, is horrible even for the best of reasons. 

We were looking at a Civil War monument in one of the towns around here last week, and we calculated the town had 25% of its young men killed during the Civil War.  25%.  And, that doesn't count the ones wounded.  Can you even imagine what that kind of loss does to a community?  In 1865 that meant at the very least 1 in 4 young women wouldn't be able to find husbands.  In a time when women married for economic support, well, what were they supposed to do?  The labor market was decimated.  Old people had no one to care for them in their old age.  Land had no heirs.  Entire towns withered.  And, it was worse in the South for everybody.  The economic system based on the enslavement of people was smashed, sort of.  Even though actual slavery ended, and some historians say it took a war to make that happen; virtual slavery arose which lasted another 100 years.

Second, I find it very frustrating when we collectively decide to forget our own history.  I'm in my late 60's, and in the prime of my great-grandparents' time, they were struggling with an astonishing communication revolution, increasing mechanization of labor, the population shift to cities, an exploding urban manufacturing economy, and the change in the demographics of the population. 

The chaos caused by swift change and societal pressures were so overwhelming; fear ruled us:  We had a corrupt political system drowning in special interest money, racial and cultural fear and distrust, labor/management clashes, and the Anarchists, don't forget those idiots - think 19th and early 20th century terrorists - setting bombs to explode indiscriminately across the country). 

My point is this:  We've survived an economic revolution before.  We've survived a political system going off the rails.  We ALL come from somewhere else unless your ancestry is pure Native American, and even you came from somewhere else - just farther back than the rest of us.  As a country, we are still a unique experiment of a society based on ideas instead of blood lines.  We are:

       
We believe:  You don't have to agree with me, but you must be civil when you don't. 

We know:  Bring us your customs, your food, your values, your religion, and even your language, but our public education system will change your children into Americans. 

We should remember:  We have nothing to fear except fear itself. 

We are ALL Americans because we are 'we the people'.  All of us.  Smart, stupid, no matter what color, or who we worship, or how wrongheaded we appear to someone else. 

Happy Fourth of July.  It's more than a day off work for beer, BBQ, and fireworks. 

Hyde House and Museum, Glens Falls, New York

Occasionally as we've toured around the country, something unexpected pops up.  When it happens, it's always so delightful.  This week we stumbled onto an attraction which I was already interested in, but only mildly. A historic house with art hits a lot of my sweet spots.  I didn't expect my jaw to be dropping in every room.

Mrs. Hyde's bedroom

Wealthy people who turn their personal residences into museums usually have more $$ than taste.  You wind up with a copy of a European style house (Italian villa in this case)

stuffed with second rate paintings and sculptures scattered around some decorative arts.  Much of the art seems to be bought on a whim, or to fit a requirement.   Philbrook in Tulsa fits this bill.  This was the house of the founder of the Phillips Oil Company, and the grounds are gorgeous, but the art, (in my opinion) not so much.

Therefore, I didn't have any high expectations for the Hyde House and Museum in Glens Falls, New York.  This town is small and without the tourist recognition quotient of Saratoga Springs or Bar Harbor.  So who were the "Hydes"?  First, no relation to the Roosevelts.  They were a New England family named Pruyn whose fortunes were the result of owning a paper processing plant which turned New England logs into paper for about 100 years.  The Pyrun founder had three daughters, the oldest, Charlotte, managed to marry a Harvard lawyer (Louis Hyde) and eventually bring him home to Glens Falls to take over running the paper mill for his father-in-law.  They were the town's largest employer, and the big movers and shakers of this tiny town.  Well, he must have run the paper mill well, because  Charlotte established a museum of her house and art in 1952, and guided it for 11 years.  When she died at the age of 90, her self-perpetuating museum was and still is funded by her personal fortune.  It is a gem.  They claim, and I believe it, that there aren't ten museums in the country in this class.

Charlotte and her husband were both very interested in art, particularly the Renaissance, Baroque and Rococo eras.

A French tapestry from the 1600's

  They made buying trips to Europe, sailing over on the Cunard line. She filled the house, using the art advice of the man who eventually became the curator of the Detroit Institute of Art, with first rate paintings and decorative arts.  Their collection includes Rembrandt, El Greco, Rubens, Titian, Tintoretto, and many others.  The decorative arts are just as impressive with tapestries, medieval chests, and Rococo furniture.  The collection has grown since Charlotte's death to include more modern artists including Renoir,

One of two Renoir's

Eakins, Picasso, Hassam, along with some lovely modern sculptures.

In addition to the 'rooms' of the original house, there are two additional 'built on' art galleries which have rotating exhibitions.  This entire place just blew off the top of my head.  It felt like a 'warm up' to our Italian trip.  As always, I took pictures.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/3K3nePsJpVF8TVMC8

Investigating Iconic Saratoga Springs

We are finally, finally settled.  We headed out to investigate one of the iconic areas of Saratoga Springs – Congress Park which is smack dab in the middle of town.

  It’s also the site of the city’s historical museum.  Naturally, it was in an old building (1870) – about one hundred years after the town had one European resident.  The 'Hard Rock Spring' attracted a British officer in  who had been wounded.  The Iroquis led him to the spring, and his wounds improved.  Shortly thereafter, an inn was built on the site, and Saratoga Springs (not so named at the time) was born.  We had dinner at the Old Bryan Inn which is the oldest building in town.  The history was better than the food as is so often the case.   

As you know, it’s sometimes the small stuff which decides whether one city is a big deal while one 10 miles down the road is just sort of sad and struggling.  Well, one deciding point for Saratoga Springs was the ‘springs’ of which there were over 20 in 1870,  People flooded up here from New York City via the railroad to stay in a resort hotel for a couple of weeks in the summer to ‘take the water’.  The second chance happening which rewarded Saratoga Springs was John Morrisey – a New York prize fighter turned gambling entrepreneur.  He chose Saratoga Springs as the town where he built a casino (building where the historical society museum is today),

and he also built a horse racing track.  Now, husbands could gamble, drink liquor, and race/bet on horses while the wives ‘took the waters’. (Here’s the building.)

After WWI when people had cars, they went farther afield on vacation, and the ‘waters’ trade dropped like a stone.  It was gambling that propped up Saratoga Springs until the Keefaufer Commision in the 1950’s outlawed gambling in New York in an attempt to get control over the Mafia.  And there was definitely organized crime in ‘the Springs’ including Myer Lansky and Lucky Luciano.     

   The powers that be in town reinvented the tourist trade using horse racing as well as the ‘outdoors’ to lure people back. They built a performing arts center and attracted top NYC classical entertainment to come to town throughout the summer.  Something must be working.  This town is so prosperous, cute, and friendly, it could be Beaver Cleaver’s hometown.  By contrast, Glens Falls/Queensbury just 20 minutes down the Interstate looks old, tired, and struggling. 

   The reason I know is we went to the annual art festival there yesterday.  It was really more of a crafts festival crossed with revolting fair/carnival food.  We did sniff out the ‘Strawberry Festival’ shortcake local dessert, and that was delish.  I skipped the crab cake sandwich, the clam roll, the Texas cheeseburger, the sausages, the fried dough, the cotton candy in a bag, etc. 

   I did get a new piece of jewelry – a great looking agate set in sterling silver.  This woman had a real feel for stone.

To sum up our early days, this is going to be a fun town.  Drinking the spring water isn't going to be part of the fun, though.  As always, if you want to see some MORE PICTURES, well, just click the link.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/bAtEuRcUwzStThFr6       

Thank Heaven the trip wasn't by Covered Wagon

We've traveled across the continent, so I felt like we should have been using a covered wagon.  However, if we had, we would only be  outside of Grants, New Mexico, assuming we made about 20 miles a day - which would have been the covered wagon equivalent of flying down the highway at 90 mph.  Instead we took sixteen days on the road with a week prior to leaving Arizona to get ready to go and a week after arriving in New York to get set up.  We drove a bit over 3000 miles during that sixteen days, and we stopped for two day pauses three times.

I will never, ever complain again about the 'new' Jeep which replaced our Aviator after the terrible wreck. Thanks to the factory installed tow/haul feature, and better torque (whatever that is), Drake was able to use cruise control for about 80% of the trip.  He certainly found the drive to be less arduous than he feared.

Our two day pauses were built in for family reasons, as well as a cushion in case of some type of trouble on the road.  We had no trouble other than having to get a windshield repaired (while still in Arizona) due to a kicked up rock outside of Winslow which started a star crack.  Easy/peasy in terms of road trouble.  These types of problems make our hand held computers invaluable.

What we did do on our two day pauses was go to art museums - big surprise, right?  The first was Crystal Bridges in Bentonville, Arkansas.  I've been reading about this place for a few years now, and I've really wanted to see it.  This is the museum Alice Walton has assembled using the Walmart fortune she inherited from her Daddy, Sam.  First, and foremost, it's a museum of American art from native American times forward.  She's scoured the country and purchased some surprising paintings and sculptures.  The initial gallery is called:

This is a piece of art comprised of all different types of shoe laces.  The artist is Narl Ward who uses found objects to create sculpture. 

Here's a section of the above sculpture

Included in the initial exhibition are paintings and sculptures which are representative of all citizens of the country across our history.

George Washington by Gilbert Stuart; circa 1795. This was a surprise.
Who's able to score a Stuart portrait of Washington?
 Alice Walton, apparently

Jaren by Jordan Casteel

In addition to collecting amazing artworks, she commissioned and paid for a world class building to house the art.

If the art and the building aren't enough, the setting which has walking trails and outdoor sculpture is open from dawn to dusk.  This museum is interactive on so many levels - not just inside the museum, but with the community.  There's a musical performance space as well as yoga classes, art classes, kid classes, astronomy and nature offerings.

The 'guards' are called 'protectors', and one of their main jobs is to interact with the people at the museum asking what they like, where they are from, and how can they be helped to make their experience with the museum better.  The museum is also free, yes, free.  And, if you bring a classroom of kids, well, the museum pays for the bus and the gas.  The people coming here don't look like 'museum' people.  They look like the McDonald's crowd.  Kids are excited.  They talk and ask and point and tug on clothes to show their significant adult what they've discovered.

And this place isn't standing still.  There's an enormous additional museum planned for working artists to create pieces on site.  Ground will be broken for that within the  next couple of years.  People will be encouraged to talk to the artists.  This is an interesting place.  It's obvious Alice Walton's mission is to have a world class museum which attracts everybody because the art is great, nobody is 'priced out', and it's fun to come.  Don't miss it.

After driving through Indiana AGAIN after we promised ourselves we would never do that, we arrived at Detroit.  (Indiana doesn't maintain their roads, and the interstate is filled with potholes.  Driving the interstate in Indiana is like playing reverse whack-a-mole.  Drake was tense the entire length of the state dodging major potholes while driving 70 mph)   Anyway, we stayed at the Dearborn Inn outside of Detroit in Dearborn.  The hotel built by Henry Ford in 1931.  It's a grand old hotel, which is technically a Marriott, but not really.  This place is immaculate with impeccable service, and it's close to the Detroit Institute of Art, and the Henry Ford Museum of Innovation.  The Henry Ford has the greatest collection of cars I've seen.  It was a walk down the history of the automobile.  There were also several other interesting exhibitions besides autos. 

1956 Chevy Convertible in front of a working diner
under an original McDonald's neon sign

The Detroit Institute of Art is owned by the City of Detroit.  Because of the enormous amount of $$ which flowed through this town for about 100 years, there's some amazing art here.  My favorite was the Diego Rivera fresco - painted on wet plaster - there're no 'do overs' when you use this technique.  Imagine an atrium surrounded by 20 foot walls, and those walls were Rivera's 'canvas'.  It was painted in 1931, and it shows industrial production at the time, and specifically the Ford auto plant.  Here's a sample:

There was a great docent who helped us look at this fresco - and remember, this is only ONE SIDE OF FOUR.  We spent about an hour looking at this piece.  It was difficult to photograph, and I could write a lot more about it.  I hope my pictures will help you grasp this enormous work of art.  Here's one of his most controversial panels.   People were outraged he included 'the nativity' in the fresco, and put it in a modern, scientific setting when he represented it.    

The other 'famous' piece in the museum is by one of Drake's favorite artists.  It's called "The Wedding" by Pieter Bruegel, the Elder, and it was painted in 1566.

        

Can you find the bride?  Here she is:  the only woman without her hair covered, and she's wearing black.  "White" didn't become the Western Europe wedding color until Victoria wore it on her wedding day.

This museum has quite a few other great pictures which you can see by clicking on my photo link.  I loved the flower pictures.  Here's one by Jan Bruegel, the Younger painted in 1600.

When we were planning the cross country trek, Drake decided it would be prudent to built in a couple of days for emergencies.  That's why we spent two days in Buffalo, New York.  We didn't have any trouble, so Buffalo stayed on the itinerary.  However, when we arrived, we found another surprising art museum.  It turns out the fine art museum in Buffalo, New York, had a curator around the turn of the century who bought those new fangled Impressionists, and Expressionists (ie VanGogh), and the museum marched forward buying contemporary and modern art.  The Erie Canal and the resulting boom in trade and shipping made Buffalo a very rich and influential city in America for most of the 19th century.  In 1901 it hosted the Pan American Exposition, and this is where President McKinley was shot and died.  Roosevelt was sworn in here in a friend's house.  As for the art museum,  here's an example of what we saw: 

Van Gogh - The Old Mill - 1888

It sounds like we just museum hopped across the country, and I suppose we did.  However, we also spent an awful lot of days driving seven hours a day, checking in and out of hotels, and figuring out where we could do our laundry.  And, truthfully, the worst part was the food.  We had one decent meal in Dearborn, and that was about it.

We are settled into Saratoga Springs, and it's a really nice town.  I already have my library card, and we've toured a couple of places.  This weekend we attended an art festival in the next town over.  This is going to be a great place, and we are going to have such fun.  This coming weekend, we are kicking off our performance tickets by going to New York City to see the American Ballet Theater perform Swan Lake.  Oh, and we will be visiting our still in the oven grandson who is weighing in at about 13 ounces these days, and who will be arriving in the world in 136 days.

As always, here are the pictures.

Crystal Bridges, Bentonville, Arkansas 
https://photos.app.goo.gl/NtMTQvobYRgVby3s7

Detroit Institute of Art, Detroit, Michigan
https://photos.app.goo.gl/e61R7Qbr88wNNeuDA

Theodore Roosevelt's Inauguration House
https://photos.app.goo.gl/f1tpKdtKDqZ1tAZE9

Buffalo Museum of Fine Art & Buffalo Historical Museum
https://photos.app.goo.gl/JQEgGH4dmNvTnNVS9

Theodore Roosevelt Inauguration House - 1901
https://photos.app.goo.gl/f1tpKdtKDqZ1tAZE9