Sweets and Farewell

This is my final post.  I want to thank everyone for following me.  I hope you have had half as much fun as I have.  I will be home with hundreds of stories after I read my own bog.  Everything seems to run together right now.  It has been an extraordinary experience and I feel privileged to have been able to do this.  Thanks for making the trip with me.

 I spent this morning at Hershey's Chocolate World.  It is very slick and well coordinated leaving you in the retail store after your free tour of the process of making candy.  You can pay for a tasting session, which was very well done.  They give you a selection of Hershey and other chocolates.  Everyone then snapped the bar and listened to the difference between milk and dark chocolate.  We smelled the pieces for hints of other flavors, then we tasted the chocolate to see if we could get more flavors.  The older you get the less sensitive your tastebuds.  Well mine are pretty shot.
Anyway you can take a trolley ride or see a 3D movie.  They even have different amusement parks.  They don't miss a trick.

I went to Hershey with my parents when I was young.  As you approached the town all you could smell was chocolate, that is all gone.  The tour you took was of the actual factory and there weren't too many people taking the tour.  You got to see the huge vats of chocolate and the real machines making the chocolate and then the candy.  It really meant something, now it's all fake.  But now that's all anyone knows.  We have to keep things sterile and away from people.

I then went in to Philadelphia to see the new Barnes Foundation Museum.  Well they are just as strange as ever.  You need to have known in advance to have ordered tickets.  They set none aside for walk ups, those people not in on the secret.  Of course I have no idea how many tickets they sell but today was all sold out.  It looked like the museum was empty but you can't tell as all the art is upstairs.

Since I couldn't see that collection I thought I'd go next door to see the Rodin Museum but that was under renovation.  I took all this as a sign to get out of Philadelphia.  I thought I would go to Chadds Ford to see the Wyeths.  Then I thought about my luck so far and decided it was time to call it quits.

I am on the first leg of my trip home.  Tomorrow I wind up with Ginger and Gene and Gillian and Genevieve.  Then it is home.

Buggys

I drove across Pennsylvania today and all I saw was part of a Buggy Museum.  By the time I got there it was too late to take a full tour of the buggy barn.  I did see a DVD of the story of Mifflinburg and the buggy industry.  They supplied so many buggies to so many parts of America that they were known as Buggy Town.  They had to build houses for all the workers that were brought in to work on the buggies.  They flourished until the horseless carriage took over.  The automobile condemned the town.

The town has gone through a major restoration project.  They built the Buggy Museum and have restored a lot of the old buildings.  Many of the buildings are now residences and have been restored by the occupants.  The buildings have historic markers.  It is a charming town and I was glad I made the trip even if it was so short.

I realize that I am very depressed.  My trip is almost over and I am going home.  I'm sorry I didn't spend more time in the West.  I particularly miss the openness of the dessert.  My planning is becoming sloppy and I am missing things they I planned to see and I don't really care.  If I have to come home I  might as well come home.  I am currently in Hershey, Pennsylvania and there are millions of children running around.  I knew there would be but to see the reality is something else.  I'll be home before the 30th.

Toys,Toys and more Toys

Today I was a child playing among the toys.  My first stop was the Toy Museum in Wheeling, West Virginia.  They had all sorts of toys but I realized that most toys are designed for boys.  There are more soldier types, cowboys and Indians and knights of all sizes.  They have all the extras like forts, castles or ranches.  Then there are the trains, every size, every type of car or engine that you can imagine.  They had two different setups, one seemed to be a night scene of a city, the other was a simpler scene which was well lit.  I'm not sure whether they had just not turned the lights on in the "night" room.

They were doing a special on Monopoly.  They were showing some of the many variations that Milton Bradley has created for Monopoly.  I didn't see any other games but I may have missed a whole floor.  The book said there were three floors but I only found two.

There was a whole room for Barbie in her various iterations.  They also had Barbie imitators.  Then there were several walls worth of Doll Houses.  The houses changed through time but the ones they had were the more modern types.  One was a ranch style house with Swedish modern furniture.  Another room had stuffed animals and plastic animals.  There was a lovely older woman volunteer and we got to talking.  For some reason I told her the story of my mother giving my brother my favorite lamb toy when I was very small.  My brother threw the lamb out the car window and that was the end of the lamb.  Why they had to give him mine never made sense to me and my mother would never discuss it.  They didn't have a single stuffed lamb in the entire museum.

I followed up the visit to the museum with a visit to a museum of the largest toy manufacturers from the 1950's to the 80's, the Marx Co.  The company was started by Lewis Marx from Brooklyn.  They made a lot of plastic toys that were recognizable, like a huge series of Roy Rogers sets, a few Lone Ranger and a Zorro.  They even had a stuffed Flintstones series.  They also had a series of Doll Houses.  I wound up talking to the docent at the Marx Museum in Mountville too.  I was counseling her on decluttering.

I realized how few toys I had as a child and how it never bothered me.  I looked at all those toys and didn't want any of them nor did I feel like I had missed anything.  I did have games and as a family we would occasionally play them together.  Books were always more my thing.

Busy, Busy,Busy

Today I seemed to be everywhere at once.  I started my day trying to see the Stan Hywet Hall and Garden in Akron but the house didn't open until 11:00 and it was 9:00.  The house is considered one of the finest examples of Tudor Revival architecture in the US.  It would have been nice but not necessary so I moved on.

I went to Cambridge to look at glass objects being formed.  The first place, Boyd Glass, was not working the glass today.  They showed me a DVD about the family and the company.  Unfortunately what they made was tsotchkes (dust collectors), many were very cute however.  The other company was Mosser Glass and they were working the glass and giving tours.  They were making milky white 9" cake stands.  It was really fascinating, knowing how much molten glass goes into the mold for the top.  They flip the mold over and a guy has to catch it just  so on a two tine implement.  They do the same for the pedestal and then they put the two together. There is trimming, checking for level and cool ing.  I have always been interested in glass work, ever since I went to Corning, New York and saw them make Steuben Glass.  At least at Mosser they made a lot of very practical items, like plates, salt and pepper sets, bowls and of course the cake plates.

I stopped in at the James Thurber House in Columbus.  There wasn't a lot there, it was an old house but they had a lot of Thurber's cartoon posted around.  They had awards and magazine covers.  His old desk was sitting there with all the rips and stains and you could almost see him sitting there.  They leave the front door open and just let you wander in and out.  It all fits together.

My afternoon was set aside for the Columbus Zoo.  I have looked forward to seeing this zoo for years.  I remember as a little girl watching Marlin Perkins on the Today Show and Jack Paar with exotic animals.  He was followed by Jack Hanna.  I expected this zoo to be a combination of the Bronx Zoo and the San Diego Zoo.  Well I was incredibly disappointed.  There were very few animals in the zoo.  What animals were there were almost impossible to see because there was so much foliage, most of it served no purpose.  Most of the zoo was made up of playgrounds, rides, food stands and gift shops.  On top of everything else I stumbled on to the Great Apes, which always depresses me.  People are so stupid and make such fools of themselves with the Great Apes.  The apes just sit and stare and then walk away.  You can't blame the children who kiss the glass and talk to the apes.  But the adults!

Anyway my day ended on a down note but then I remember the wonderful times I have had in other zoos and it washes away the bad taste that this left in my mouth.  There was one highlight.  A dog and a cheetah share a cage.  They were raised together and they just enjoy each others company.  They think they are the same whatever that means to them.  It's cute because they are always checking where the other one is.

A Musical Day

Today was all about music and it turned out to be in chronological order.  My first visit was to Hitsville, USA, which was the first Motown studio.  They do a very comprehensive tour of the of both the genesis and the growth of the industry.  Berry Gordy Jr's family history is discussed, how he started with $800 and made $2,000,000 the first year.  How everyone did multiple jobs, the contributions of people like Smokey Robinson.  Many of the early great performers were friends from the neighborhood and school where Berry Gordy grew up.  The tour guide discussed the growth of the business until it out grew the buildings that they kept buying in the neighborhood.  They moved the production part of the business to California but left much of the business end in Detroit.

My next stop was the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio.  The last time I was in Cleveland I was busy selling UU Communion wafers, aka Biscotti.  I wandered around the Hall of Fame for about 90 minutes and some of it made me very nostalgic.  They had a huge display for Elvis which didn't interest me at all.  I have never been an Elvis fan and so of course the largest exhibit was for Elvis.  They had a short film about the roots of the Rock & Roll going back to early, early Black music and then what was Country Western music, to the Blues.  They had costumes from all sorts of people, which are called uniforms by the Motown group.  I took pictures before I found out I wasn't allowed to take them.  They had a great exhibit from the 60's, including Janis Joplin's porsche.  The Jimi Hendrix exhibit was very impressive and I wish I hadn't already been caught taking pictures.  I got there late so I couldn't do the whole museum as they were about to close.  But the Kaplan ears had had about all they could stand anyway.  The music was way too loud.  But it turned out to be a great day.

Today I was Dutch.  I went to the Delft and Wooden Shoe factory.  The factory does all the processes by hand just as they are done in the Netherlands.  They get their paints from there as well.  They have one older woman who does all the painting.  She has very steady hands.  It is water based paints so that it is absorbed into the clay.  Delft started in the 1600's by copying Chinese designs, over time the designs changed to more Dutch themes.  It used to be only blue and white now they have expanded to other colors.  I must say I prefer the blue and white.

The wooden shoe part was really interesting.  They use a very green poplar wood because it has less of a tendency to crack as it dries and is lighter.  They explained that the Dutch turned to wood because leather was hard to get and very expensive.  Also leather tended to rot because of the dampness.  There was a machine that bored out the inside of the shoes but needed the hands on direction of a person.  The machine work, polishing and finishing are fast, the longest process is letting the shoes dry naturally.

Next door is a garden center where they, of course, specialize in tulips.  I missed the Tulip Festival so there was nothing blooming in the garden.  I did run into a couple from North Carolina and we discussed what grew and what didn't do well in our gardens.  Very chummy.  I again bought nothing.  I am getting really good at this.

I then went to find the Dutch Village with canals and everything.  Well when I found it it was tiny and cost $10 to get in.  I figured since I had been to the Netherlands I could save my money and skip this particular treat.  I took a few pictures from across the river and left.

My next stop was to the Motown Museum which was the original studio.  Once again I misread the book and read July for June and then discovered that the museum was closed on Monday when I showed up.  But this time I'm stubborn and I'm going back tomorrow morning.  It shouldn't take much time.  The place is tiny.  It's hard to believe that so much talent produced so many hits from there.  But more about that tomorrow.

Nature Reserve

Well I had a disappointment today.  I thought there would be lots of things happening at a Nature Reserve.  Maybe they would be rehabilitating birds or animals or have herds of some sort of native animal but no.  It was like, no not like, it was taking a walk in the woods.  I saw three dragonflies, three butterflies and a chipmunk.  I see more wildlife in my own backyard.  It's not as though I didn't need a walk after sitting for 8 hours yesterday.  I can't say that I'm having a great time in the North Central states but I'm not giving up.

It is interesting to start seeing Black people again.  It is as if they aren't allowed across the Mississippi.  Except for a few exceptions there were so many states where there were no people of color at all, except for Asian tourists.  It was eerie.  The awareness creeps up on you slowly when you don't even hear spanish being spoken by the maids in the hotels.