Happy Birthday to Me...The Rusty Bucket, Huffman Prairie, Hofbrauhaus, Cincinnati Art Museum

I count the short visit with Ray, our oldest son, as the start of my birthday celebration this year.  He was here to pick up his youngest son, Steve, and take him back to London, UK for a visit.  Tom, Ray, and I had lunch at The Rusty Bucket where Ray's oldest son is the chef.  Afterward, Ray continued on to Steve's apartment.

Tom and I drove to Huffman Prairie where the Wright Brothers conducted many of their flying tests. This is the time of year when sometimes we are lucky enough to see bobolinks on the prairie.  We saw two.

Tom didn't have his camera with him so I used my little Olympus Tough to get a picture.  Seeing the bobolink made me smile the rest of the day.

June 13 was alternately rainy and overcast.  Since we were inside during most of the rainy times, the rain didn't  stop our plans.  We ate lunch at the Hofbrauhaus in Newport, Kentucky which is across the Ohio River from Cincinnati.  Both of us enjoy German food.  Tom bought a piece of German chocolate cake to take home for a late afternoon snack.

Newport has been building a lot of expensive-looking high rise condos and apartments in the area.

The Newport Aquarium is near by and so are other restaurants and shops and entertainment.  

We always admire this beautifully carved cabinet just inside the front doors of the Hofbrauhaus.  The dining area is set up for friendly, casual meals.

After lunch we drove back across the Ohio River to Eden Park.  The Cincinnati Art Museum is high on a hill there.

The Burning Man exhibit has been at the museum for some time.  It was in the special exhibit galleries for several months but now the various sculptures are spread among the museum's regular exhibits. Coming up on the sculptures is a bit of a surprise.  There is no mistaking them.  They are unique.

The first one we found was The Five Ton Crane.  It reminded me of an old-time movie theater set up in a street car.  It was an interactive piece of art.  People could climb up into it, sit down and watch movies mimicking the silent films of the twenties.

Since Tom is in a power chair we watched the movies while standing beside the structure. The movies were projected on a screen beyond The Five Ton Crane as well as on the screen with the green curtains framing it.

A "professor" instructed us via a blackboard on what might cause a woman to float into the air after a discreet kiss from a lover....

                                             1. Gravity Allergy

                                             2. Electro - Magnetic Polarity

                                             3. Blood Holds Helium 

This was just one of many silly demonstrations continually flipped through as we watched.

Tom and I stopped to look at some of the museum's regular exhibits, too.  Tom especially liked a painting of sailing ships in a harbor because it was so precise and true in the details.  I liked this one by Robert Henri.

One of the Burning Man sculptures that has been used a lot in the publicity shots is this one.

The dancer is made of triangles covered by a translucent skin. Here is a close up of her thigh.

This photo gives you an idea of her size.

The Burning Man is a temporary art installation set up in a desert between two mountain ranges.  It's name comes from the effigy of a gigantic man which is traditionally burned on the last evening of the exhibit.

This is an facsimile of the effigy.  It is bigger than life size, but not as large as the one that is burned.

The day following the burning of the effigy the entire art exhibit is taken down and moved away.  The goal is to leave the desert exactly as it was before the exhibit. If you google "Burning Man" you can find out much more about the mindset of those who participate in the exhibit each year.

Tom and I wandered around the museum for a little less than two hours.  By the time I have looked at exhibits for a couple hours, my brain is stuffed full.  So many ideas, so many ways that art can be presented.

The drive home was sometimes drizzly. Sometimes rain was pouring down.  We were happy when we arrived home. 

In the mailbox I found birthday cards from my sisters.  Better still were the letters enclosed in the cards.  I am glad I am part of the generation that writes letters.

Tom and I ate our piece of chocolate cake and I enjoyed reading the notes. 

Memorial Day, 2019...A Memorial Day to Remember

Steve visited with us on the Memorial Day weekend.  The morning and afternoon of Memorial Day Monday were beautiful but a trifle humid.

In the morning, Steve and I went to Herrlinger Park, a little park in Troy where he celebrated several birthdays when he was younger.  A railroad track runs beside the park and everyone who knows Steve knows he loves to railfan.

This year he has a short-wave scanner so he can hear the railroad dispatchers and engineers talking as the trains pass various points along their routes.  The scanner was a birthday gift from his dad.

Listening to his scanner made railfanning much more interesting to me.

After lunch he was picked up and headed home. The afternoon was a quiet one for Tom and me.  And so was the early part of the evening.  Tom was already in bed when our evening became more scary than our evenings usually are.  Our cell phones blasted out warnings.  Tornado warning.  I turned on the local TV channel.  A tornado had touched down north of us.  Later in the week the National Weather Bureau listed it as a EF-3

The meteorologist could barely keep up with what she was seeing on her weather displays.  Tornado after tornado.  Tornado to the west, to the east, to the north and to the south.  All this happened Monday evening.  It took until Thursday for the newspaper to report what the National Weather Bureau had decided had occurred.

Below is an enlargement of the diagram of where the tornadoes hit and their strengths.

Since this newspaper was published one tornado has been upgraded to an EF-4.  The number of tornadoes has been increased to at least 14 after more checking by the National Weather Bureau.

We haven't had a severe tornado since 1974 when one destroyed a portion of Xenia, a nearby town.

Unfortunately our granddaughter's house was one of those severely damaged.  She and her pets are temporarily staying with friends.  She thought one of her cats was lost but it showed up on Saturday.  It was hiding among the debris in her damaged attached garage.  Friends have been helping her clean up the trees and utility poles and the rest of the mess.  She called today.  She says there is a lot of cleanup still to do but a lot has been cleaned up and a lot taken to the disposal site.  She says she is alternating between feeling lucky she still has a house and feeling overwhelmed by the entire experience.

And despite severe weather  in all directions, Tom and I never lost electricity  and no branches fell from any of our trees.