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. 

Our Anniversary...Number Fifty-six

Our anniversary is November twenty-second.  This year the date was the day before Thanksgiving, just as it was the year we were married.  That year we didn't have Thanksgiving Day dinner to prepare for but this year we did.  It was wonderful to see all the Ohio clan except Jacquie who had to work.  ( She is a manager for a restaurant.)  Twelve of us are below.  Three more arrived later in the day.  The other six live in North Carolina and had Thanksgiving there.

Tom and I decided to celebrate our anniversary the following Wednesday.  We went to Schmidt's German Restaurant in Columbus and then to the Columbus Museum of Art.

My dinner.  Tom chose the buffet but I enjoyed having my food brought to me.

Our waiter, Dave.

Looking out the window.

First new item in twenty-five years.  We didn't try it.  We have our old favorites.  Next time I plan to try it.

Afterward we took a short walk in the village.  Normally this time of year the weather would be unpleasant but on "our" day, the sun shone and fifty degree temperatures felt like early fall.

The homes and businesses were decorated for Christmas or in the process of being decorated.  If you look closely, you will see a black and white dog behind the gate enjoying the day.

We stopped at The Book Loft and bought a Christmas CD which included Christmas songs sung in German.

Our next stop was The Columbus Museum of Art where we enjoyed comparing many Pointillist paintings. in the Post Impressionism special exhibit.  There were also prints done in a variety of techniques.  

Grandma Moses Paintings Now at the Dayton Art Institute

Tom and I celebrated our fifty-fourth anniverary by going out to eat and then to the art museum to see American Sampler, Grandma Moses and the Handicraft Tradition.

Both of us enjoyed the show.  Tom had never seen crewelwork and was impressed by the beautiful pictures Anna Mary Robertson Moses (1860-1961)  made with worsted wool.  One crewelwork picture is on the cover of the flyer advertising the exhibit.  I scanned both the front and back so you can read about some of the upcoming special events associated with the exhibit.  Click to enlarge.

 Both of us enjoyed the farm scenes she painted. Tom was raised in the country and though I was raised in what would now be called a suburb, I had many aunts and uncles who lived on farms.  Every time we visited the farms, I did things I never did at home...played in the cornfields, jumped off the loft into mounds of straw. When I was six I even fell into a fresh cow pie.  I expect you know another name for cow pie.

Grandma Moses didn't begin painting until her hands were too gnarled to sew.  She used housepaint in the beginning and whatever she could find that she could paint on.  One of her first projects was painting on her wall because she ran out of wallpaper.  She was fond of using glitter on her winter scenes to give the snow the effect of sun shining on it.

I had a hard time deciding what to buy in the gift shop as a memento of the visit.  Even now I'm thinking, "If I go back, I'll buy the children's book with a spring poem by Robert Frost and pictures by Grandma Moses."  What I bought was a children's book about Grandma Moses.  I have about a dozen other books in this series.  They are inexpensive, have nice reproductions of the artist's work and give a brief overview of the artist and his or her work.  There are amusing cartoons to accompany the text as well. One of her paintings is on the cover. Click to enlarge.  These books are written and illustrated by Mike Venezia.

In the hall leading to the exhibit hall there were "thread paintings by Mary Borkowski, a Dayton folk art painter.  These were mostly silk embroidery on silk.  They are very different from Grandma Moses crewelwork but are still considered folk art because Mary Borkowski was untrained in the fine arts and had a unique vision just as Grandma Moses did.

The last section of the American Sampler exhibit includes text that explains how some of the embroidery stitches are made.  It also includes samplers made by young children and women  who used the samplers to decide what stitches to use for future sewing projects.  The samplers are another example of folk art.

The exhibit will be in Dayton until February 21, 2016.  I hope you live close enough to visit it.

Garst Museum in Greenville, Ohio

This is the parlor of the Garst House, now part of the Garst Museum.  Twenty years ago, Pat took Ceceila and me to this museum which is noted for its display of memorabilia of  Annie Oakley.  What I remembered most were Annie's beautiful clothes, the costumes she wore in the Wild West Shows and the evening gowns she wore when she was presented to presidents, kings, and queens.  I asked Tom to take me to the musum as part of my birthday celebration.  Here are photos of some of what we saw.

The museum doesn't look like it did twenty years ago.  There have at least two large additions built.

 Because Tom uses a scooter, we entered through the handicap entrance which is at the end of the usual tour.  The people in the office were pleasant, gave us maps and explained a bit about what we would see.

In the same area which was a large meeting room, we saw the first mention of Annie Oakley, little Miss Sharpshooter.

Greenville was originally a fort in the Northwest Territory, number 5 on the map.  It was here that a treaty was signed by "Mad" Anthony Wayne and native chiefs which opened Ohio to settlements by the new country of  the United States.    One section of the museum is devoted to the treaty and the events about it.  A nearby room gives information about native American cultures.

But back to our tour path.  Since we were walking the tour backward, we came first to the large display about transportation.

Twenty years ago, I don't believe this section of the museum existed.  Some of the vehicles were shown but not in an organized way as they are now.

The Iddings Special, a racing sprint car made in 1947 by Henry Meyer and originally powered by a 4-cylinder Offenhauser engine.

1947 model "Servi-Car" , a three-wheeled motorcycle made by Harley-Davidson for use by the Greenville Police Department.

The next large wing was called The Village Wing .  There were many shops whose windows we could look through to see an earlier way of life.

                                          The dentist's office

                                         The post office

Beyond this area were two rooms and a hall devoted to Annie Oakley.  (The musical, "Annie, Get Your Gun", is a fanciful version of her life.)  Her riding habit worn in later years was there and so was a robe that Frank Butler, her husband, gave her after they retired.  Here is her traveling trunk with show business memorabilia  displayed on it.

One room was centered around her personal life and the other room, around her professional life. 

A hall was filled with commercial products featuring Annie.  Here is one display.

BUT, all the beautiful gowns she wore when she was presented to the great people of her day were missing.  I was told they were..." being preserved in storage so they will not deteriorate."  I have seen much older clothing on display in other museums.  I am sorry to say I let not seeing the clothing affect my mood. I actually felt like crying.  I told both women I talked to I felt a portion of Annie's life was missing.  I had no idea she wore such beautiful stylish gowns until Pat brought me to the museum years ago. 

Canon's Cigar Shop, London, Ohio

When our friends took us to the Madison County Historical Society Museum, I was amazed. It is much bigger than most I've seen in small towns. It also has a number of outstanding displays. Tom suggested that I take photos for my blog. I took a lot but now I remember other displays I wish I had photographed. Since we visit our friends fairly often, I hope we can arrange to visit them on Wednesdays since that is the only day of the week that the museum is open.

This is the exhibit that Chuck especially wanted us to see, the M. B. Cannon Cigar Store. Mr. Cannon owned the business for over forty-five years.

The entire store was moved to the museum and reassembled. What makes it special are all the furnishings which came with it. Chuck pointed out that the cigar display case even has the original humidors to keep the cigars in perfect condition.
 

And there are five-cent cigars that gave rise to the saying when inflation appeared , "You can't even get a good five-cent cigar anymore."
 

Mr. Cannon gave Christmas turkeys to the newspaper boys who picked up their papers at his store. Behind the boys you can see another view of the outside of the store.

On the counter are old newspapers, their headlines proclaiming historic events.

And back in a corner is the classic cigar store Indian that stood outside the store when it was in its original location in downtown London, Ohio.

Political Buttons

Wednesday, November 14, Tom and I visited friends in London, Ohio. Because it was Wednesday, the Madison County Historical Museum was open. Our friends told us we would like it and we did. The guide filled us with lots of interesting information and I took enough photos for five or six blogs.

I wasn't thinking of using this display for a separate blog but because we have just suffered through a mighty windy election campaign, this seems appropriate. It is a reminder that we have survived a great many other elections in the past and are fortunate to live in a country where we can decide who our leaders will be.

Do you remember these elections?

Or these?

Or these?

Click on the pictures to get bigger pictures of the buttons.