Montreal Museum of Fine Arts - Rodin exhibit

While Ashley was at Upper Canada Village's Time Traveller's Camp, Don and I had some fun in Canada. On one of the days, I took the train from Chris's neighborhood to Montreal to spend the day with Marlene. 






Marlene invited me along as her "plus one" to see the Rodin exhibit at The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Rodin has been one of my favorite artists ever since visiting the Musee Rodin in Paris while studying abroad during my Junior year of college. I gladly accepted her invitation.

As it was an overcast day in Montreal, we were not the only ones with this idea. 

The exhibit contains over 300 pieces, including over 170 sculptures, sketches, photographs, and other ephemera. It is quite an extensive exhibit.

Marlene commented that the museum does not typically have traveling exhibits of sculptures which is why they had no idea how to set up a decent travel flow. Unlike pictures, sculptures are best seen from all angles. In order to do that, though, the exhibit ended up with a bunch of dead spaces. Add into the mix some of the sculptures on display were made from plaster, and, according to the descriptions on the wall, are highly fragile, you have a potential recipe for disaster.

Although I have been to the Rodin Museum in Paris, and the one in Philadelphia. this was the first time I could really appreciate just how prolific Auguste Rodin was in creating art. The exhibit contained over 300 pieces. I think it is safe to assume the museums in Paris and Philadelphia are still open to the public. Additionally, other pieces have been destroyed over the years because they are fragile. This means he created a boatload of artwork. Of course he had assistants, such as the infamous Claudette Camille, but he was still in charge of these projects.

My favorite displays were of the same pieces, but in different sizes and materials. I enjoyed studying the transformations. 

The end of the exhibit had a neat video of the Vancouver exhibit entitled "The Burghers of Vancouver." A mysterious patron hired six people to temporarily recreate Rodin's "The Burghers of Calais" as a live statue in front of the Vancouver Art Gallery. The video told the story of these people -- an anonymous poet, and old Asian lady who only speaks her native tongue, a smuggler, and athlete, a laid-off worker, and a former junky. They meet every day, dress up as the statues, and pose, then go home at the end of the day. The video shows the reactions of the people, most of whom just ignore them. It made me think of J. Seward Johnson statues coming to life.

At the end of the exhibit was a room where you could touch some of the statues. It reminded me of being back in Paris. There were a group of blind students touring the day I went. They were touching the exhibits, so I touched one, too. A guard came up to me and, after catching my eye, explained they could touch because they are blind, but that we, no matter how much we wanted to, could not touch the statutes. Made sense, but I thought it was some sort of European rule that you could touch the statues, after all I had been to museums with windows wide open and sunlight and bugs entering rooms of what looked to me like masterpieces.

By the time the we were done with the exhibit the sun came out and we escaped the museum's crowds by walking around Montreal and heading to the train station.

Thank you for the fun day.

Bike-Train Thingy

I know my title is less than proper English, but I don't know how to describe it otherwise. They use the term "Railbike." On our way home from Canada we made a stop in the Adirondacks to take an hour-long ride on the Rail Explorers -- a bike-train thingy.

So, what is a "bike-train thingy?" Let's start with a picture of us on it:

In our case it was a four-person vehicle powered by pedaling along an abandoned rail line. There are also two-person models. It is the first of it's kind in the United States.

The six-mile ride goes from Saranac Lake to Lake Clear and back. We recommend going from Lake Clear to Saranac Lake, not just because that is what we did, but because it is a little more downhill in that direction, and because there is a restaurant at Lake Clear with cheap home-style cooking. There did not seem to be any food options near the Saranac Lake Station.

We were scheduled for 5:30 PM -- the last ride of the evening. We arrived before the last group from the other direction arrived, giving us a chance to watch them flip the cars around. Don took tons of pictures, but I'll leave you with just this one. There are about a dozen cars altogether. Each one ride independently of the one in front of it, but (if need be) can be connected. Reasons for connecting it could be because of tired legs or empty cars. Or to push the car ahead of you because the guide gets out to stop traffic and can't both pedal and stand in the middle of the street. Once you start, there is no way to pass another car.

Don wisely hopped to the front of the caravan so we were the car behind the guide. The guide, who makes this trip multiple times a day, can really hoof it. We were going at a decent pace (unfortunately we both forgot to wear our GPS tracking devices which would have given us more information) to the extent at the end the people behind us said they could not keep up. This gave us the feeling of being all alone in the Adirondacks.

Our six mile adventure included passing a lot of trees, a giant lake, and going through another lake.

We crossed the road four times. Each time a SAG team came out to stop traffic for us. Made me wonder what the locals think about this program.

We ended up at our destination as the sun was starting to hide behind the trees.

The experience includes transportation back to the start, or you park at the finish and take the ride back to the start. Transportation are a bunch of minivans.

In our car ride back, I asked our driver, who turned out to be the owner, for the story behind the bike-train thingy (he calls it a Railbike -- I like my name better). The owner and his wife are from Australia. He is in marketing. She watches South Korean soap operas on-line (as well as having a real job). In one of the episodes, the happy couple took a ride in one of these contraptions in South Korea. It looked like fun. The idea sparked an idea. By this point, they were living in Brooklyn and were American citizens. They still thought it would be fun to market this back in Australia and move closer to family. They could find abandoned rail lines in Australia, but could not convince anyone to let them try this. It was deemed too experimental.

They regrouped. Friends had vacationed in the Adirondacks and raved about the location. They started to look at Google Earth for the right location. They discovered this rail line that had been abandoned since 1980. Rails to Trails was interested in turning it into a trail. The owner of the line was not yet ready to abandon the rails. He jumped on the proposal to start Rail Explorers. Within six months (mostly winter months at that) they were up and running.

The plan was to run these from July 3 through August to see if there was interest. They sold out. We heard about it through a friend's FaceBook post of a newspaper article. As we were traveling through the area (a generous use of the phrase "through the area") we decided to detour and ride it. During our chat back to the car, we learned they just decided to expand the season through Columbus Day in order to catch the fall foliage. Wise move. As we were riding on it, I couldn't help but think how spectacular the views would be in another month or so.

Future plans include hopefully expanding 20 miles in the other direction and turning it into more of a day excursion than an hour plus long ride. 

The experience got three thumbs up from us.

If you decide to go, have fun! It is in the middle of nowhere, but they are so nice we want to go back and do it again sometime, hopefully once they expand the route in the opposite direction.

Archaeology Camp at Howell Living History Farm

As a mom I admit to drooling while looking over camp and after school activities for Ashley. There are so many options out there today that were not available when I was a child, or just not on our family RADAR at the time. Over time Ashley has explored horseback riding, singing, being in plays, drawing, painting, gymnastics, dancing, a circus class in silks, a trip to Europe with People to People, history camp at Upper Canada Village, and other activities that are not coming to mind at the moment. I look through the catalogs and think "that looks like fun," but most often the same camps are not available to adults.

A few months ago we read that Howell Living History Farm was going to have an archaeological dig near the school house. It was open to high school and college students ages 14 to 21. I'm too old and Ashley is too young. While at the Barn Dance during our time without Ashley I asked if they still had any openings. I learned they were expanding their pool in both directions -- meaning Ashley and I could both attend.

The camp was spread over three weeks of three-day camps. We went the last week. The Trenton Times had a nice article and photo spread about the first week. We recognize one of the campers. We went the third week.

In 2013 Hunter Research conducted a preliminary study of the ground near the Pleasant Valley School. They determined the cemetery next to the school house had about 94 bodies buried in a family plot. That is NOT where we were digging. Their goal was to find the original foundation for the John Phillips House that pre-dates the school house by at least 100 years. John Phillips was one of the earliest European settlers to the area. His house would have been erected circa 1732 directly across the street from the mill (which they discovered on a different archaeological dig). 

This was REAL archaeology. Not the pretty version sometimes presented to children. The week earlier Ashley was exposed to archaeology at Upper Canada Village Time Traveler's Camp. The campers were given a tub of dirt and were educated in the proper way to dig for artifacts. In her tub they found a skull and other really neat artifacts. After three days of real archaeology she realized they had been set up. Our finds were not nearly as jaw dropping.

On our first day we got excited every time we found a scrap of coal. Then we learned we were digging in the area where the school house dumped their coal. We got excited over bits of slag. Well, the mill was across the street from the school house.

Our "before" shot. We picked up at a potentially promising site unveiled by campers during the second week. Within a day, they expanded this 10 foot x 2.5 foot trench and added a 5 foot by 2.5 foot trench. 














Day two we had this:

Day three we ended with this hole:

The professional archaeologists, Jamie, Jim, and Josh, were ecstatic to find what appears to be the corner of the house. They will use this, plus other data, to try to determine the size of the foundation. Farm historian Larry Kidder was on hand to offer the historic perspective and follow along with progress.

What did we actually do during camp? The professionals were very patient with us and exposed us to all aspects of archaeology.

We dug:

We sifted and identified artifacts:

We took measurements:

We cleaned and sorted artifacts:

We played "is this a rock?" Most of the time it was.

The archaeologists talked to us about what we found, and guided us to interpret the findings. 

In addition to the corner of the house (their true goal) we also found 18th century artifacts including pieces from a wide variety of plates (different patterns, different styles, different quality, etc.), a silver spoon, many necks to bottles, animal bones, a hinge, pieces of metal, lots of coal, a couple of buttons, some bricks, nails, roofing slates (with holes), shells, etc. Together they tell us the family was probably fairly wealthy (the silver spoon was the biggest clue in that), and that the house was made out of wood with a slate roof.

After we left Jamie, Jim, and Josh were going to finish up what we had worked on and bury it all again. It is not safe to leave open holes where people can get hurt. They will return to the office to finish cleaning and sorting our finds. Josh commented for every one day in the field (this project was nine days, plus their wrap up day) he spends five days in the office cleaning, sorting, and doing paperwork -- the less glamorous side to archaeology. In the end, Howell receives all of the artifacts found and can decide if they want to create a display with them or keep them in storage.

Howell Farms is hoping to continue the project next summer after they find more funding. In life, it often boils down to funding. The archaeologists were happy to work on this project because the hope is once completed, this will turn into a site where people will see the stone foundation and learn about what happened in the 18th century. Often they are hired to do a quick archaeological study before a gas station goes in, or a highway (such as Route 80) is extended. Those jobs are then buried in macadam. This one, at least, is only covered in dirt. 

The Gates of Evangeline

Disclaimer: I received this book in exchange for writing a review, but the opinions stated are all my own.

A couple of weeks ago Janie, a local librarian and friend, emailed me to ask if I would be willing to read a book in exchange for writing a review on my blog, or (even better) for US1. I couldn't pull off US1, but I can write whatever I want here and hope some of my friends read it.

Janie gave me the following information from the publisher:

Quick Take: Sometimes a dream is simply a dream, a manifestation of daytime adventures and anxieties. But dreams can also deliver premonitions, a phenomenon eerily familiar to writer Hester Young. In fact, Young’s grandmother had an inexplicable premonitory dream of her four-year-old’s tragic and fatal fall and decades later, Young’s own dreams would foreshadow a local tragedy. These fascinating slices of real family history are the inspiration behind THE GATES OF EVANGELINE. When grieving mother and New York journalist Charlie Cates begins to experience vivid dreams about children in danger she’s sure that she’s lost her mind. Yet these are not the nightmares of a grieving parent, she soon realizes. They are messages and warnings that will help Charlie and the children she sees, if only she can make sense of them. After a little boy in a boat appears in Charlie’s dreams asking for her help, Charlie finds herself entangled in a thirty-year-old missing-child case that has never ceased to haunt Louisiana’s prestigious Deveau family. Armed with an invitation to Evangeline, the family’s sprawling estate, Charlie heads south, where new friendships and an unlikely romance bring healing. But as she uncovers long-buried secrets of love, money, betrayal, and murder, the facts begin to implicate those she most wants to trust—and her visions reveal an evil closer than she could’ve imagined.

About the Author: Hester Young holds a Master’s degree in English with a Creative Writing concentration from the University of Hawai’i at Manoa, and her work has been published in literary magazines such as The Hawai’i Review. Before turning to writing full time, she worked as a teacher in Arizona and New Hampshire. She lives with her husband and two children in New Jersey. 

Not only does Hester live in New Jersey, she lives in my hometown. She will be speaking at Princeton Public Library on September 2, the day after her book becomes available to the public. I am looking forward to meeting her.

I can best describe "The Gates of Evangeline" as haunting. Charlotte "Charlie" Cates is visited in dreams by children who are dying. As she unravels the mystery behind the messages she is able to help the children and their parents, though not always with the happy endings Americans (in particular) like. Charlie herself is a grieving mother and can relate to those in similar situations.

Charlie heads south to help solve a 30-year-old mystery about a presumed dead child. The book takes on some good plot twists -- some anticipated, others that made me gasp as I was reading it on the train. I found the book fast-paced, but not too fast. As I was nearing the last page, I tried to slow it down, but Hester Young's writing drew me in tight and would not let me go until I reached the very satisfying conclusion.

Someplace I read this is the beginning of a new series. I hope so, though it also works as a stand alone book. While I want to grow with the characters over the years, the ending did not leave me hanging.

Overall I loved the book. People who love "The Girl on the Train" will devour "The Gates of Evangeline." Young's characters are rich and well-developed. Her timing and pacing are spot on. Set aside some time to read her book because once you start, you will not want to put it down.

You can buy her book HERE

Wings of Freedom Aviation Museum, Horsham, PA

On the flight home from Florida during our 20 Child-Free Days I met a really interesting gentleman named Dave. We flew Southwest, which means we got to choose our own seats as we boarded. I took one look at Dave and thought he would be a good conversationalist. I was right.

Throughout the two and a half hour flight to Philly Dave and I talked about a lot of things. About his attempt at walking across the country. About his military service during the Vietnam era. About his mother celebrating her 90th birthday. I also did my fair share of talking telling him about Ashley flying home from Europe. I enjoyed his ease of conversation. The flight certainly flew by quickly.

Dave also told us about the Wings of Freedom Aviation Museum, an air museum where he volunteers once a week. Located in Horsham, PA it is only 40 minutes from our house. A couple of weeks after coming home, we had a free day and drove out to the museum on a day when we knew Dave would be there.

I grew up visiting the NJ Aviation Hall of Fame, an air museum my grandfather (Grandad, Irving Koetting) helped create that is located at Teterboro Airport, where my dad used to work before he retired. It is a nice museum, and reminded me a lot of this museum.

After years of working on a donation basis, the museum recently started charging admission. At $6 for adults and $4 for children it is still a bargain.

When you walk in you are greeted with this gorgeous mail plane from 1931: a Pitcairn PA-8 Super Mailwing. Even though it is indoors, it is the only plane that still flies. It is back in the hands of the Pitcairn family and on loan to the museum. It sparkles.

We came to see "Dave's plane," a Grumman C-1A "Trader" he flew to the USS Independence as a Carrier on-board delivery (COD) post Vietnam. It was the closest to a 9-5 job offered by the navy at the time. It was cool enough that Dave could teach the public about his service in the navy. It became even more meaningful when he learned he flew this exact plane for about one of out ten missions. Because he flew this plane, he has the key to the padlock on the plane and can give tours to the public. All of the other planes are sealed to the public, but this one is open (when Dave is there) to see the inside and learn things only someone who flew her could share.

Dave is an excellent and patient teacher. He asked us questions about why we think this plane (and the others) have different attributes. He said he has heard all possible answers, so guess away. When we gave up (which we often did) he gave us the right answer in layman's terms. We walked away learning how you can tell a navy or marine plane from others (by the tail hook, which is necessary for landing on a cargo ship). How to take off from a cargo ship (by catapult or by using every inch of the runway). The importance of wearing safety gear in his life. And much more. It was overwhelming in a good way.

By the time we were done with our tour of the outside planes, we had 15 minutes left to enjoy the inside exhibits. My favorite was the case on women in aviation. Turns out Amelia Earhart went to finishing school near the airfield and used it often. There was also a case dedicated to the Blue Angels. Dave said a Blue Angel recently visited them and corrected the zipper height on their model.

Overall it was a fun outing. I recommend visiting the museum and helping to keep it open.

NYC Summer Streets

As it has been pointed out to me recently, we have gone to NYC a lot lately. Our latest adventures were for something called Summer Streets -- Park Avenue is closed to vehicular traffic from 7 AM -1 PM on the first three Saturdays in August. Nearly seven miles of roads are open from Central Park to the Brooklyn Bridge. It is open to cyclists, runners, walkers, people on scooters, wheelchair riders, recumbent bike riders, and even this lady: 


We drove into NYC. The original goal was to drive close to Central Park and find street parking. As soon as we got out of the Lincoln Tunnel we saw a sign offering an Early Bird rate of $16/plus tax for up to 12 hours. We snagged that and went on our merry way.

The first part was the trickiest. We had to get from the parking garage to the start of the route. Have you see my bike? I bought a bike for the kind of riding I planned to do (and do when I am on my own): ride on the Lawrence Hopewell Trail, not ride on streets. Oh well. My turquoise bike with the cute basket ridden by the lady wearing a pink helmet and a Sparkle Skirt still had a lot of fun (I originally wrote "we were a hit," but did not want anyone to misinterpret that as "we were hit.") 

We rode (okay, I walked part of the way) up to Park Avenue. The hardest part was actually getting onto Park Avenue. We came in at Grand Central Station where the road is elevated. Some nice tourists took our picture. We went north through the swanky part of town, before turning around at Central Park (the roads were closed up to Central Park), where we decided to turn around and go the other way.

This is when the fun day turned even more fun (I so wanted to write "funner"), at least in our world. Don found a Citi Bike Bingo card and played. The rules were simple: look for the items on the card, take digital pictures of the items, bring the card to the CitiBike tent and win prizes. 

We took our bingo card and headed south toward the Brooklyn Bridge. Along the way passed famous sites like Grand Central Station, the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, and City Hall. We also passed a pop up beach, people ziplining, and a bike store (yeah, go figure). Don went in to shop while I hung outside with the bikes and a tent with really reduced merchandise. I bought padded bike shorts with cover shorts for only $30. I'll find out next week if they are any good.

Let's get back to the Bingo game. The very first square was easy: pink helmet! I knew my girly pink helmet would come in handy someday.

Most rows had four items I would rate as very easy: cyclist stopped at a red light (about 1/3 to 1/2 of the cross roads were still open to vehicular traffic), coffee shop, museum, Calatrava sculpture (well that one was easy when you realized most of the the sculptures on Park Avenue were by Calatrava), famous NYC building. spandex (um, it is a cycling event), etc. 

Someone in costume

There were the challenging ones (someone in costume, small dog, scooter, and tandem bicycle) and the surprisingly challenging ones (FDNY firetruck and kid's bike with training wheels). In the end, we had enough for Bingo two ways (one for each of us) which scored us a free pass to ride Citi Bikes next time we are in NYC, which at this rate will be soon.

Small dog

After completing our challenge we went back again to enjoy the sights without the challenge of also taking pictures for Bingo, instead we just took pictures for fun. 

Three hours after we started I decided I was tired. When we arrived at 9, the streets were very quiet and it was nice and cool. By 11 it started to get warmer. By noon (with only an hour left), I was done. Fortunately at about this point we noticed Christ Church set up a free refreshment stand with water, lemonade, iced tea, and small cookies -- which was great because that is about when I ran out of water. They were not set up when we passed them around 9. It was nice they came out just as it was getting warmer out and there were more crowds.

On the way to the car I snagged a picture of Don in Rockefeller Center at the "new" Comcast Building.

We rode back to the car. It seemed easier this time. After securing the bicycles we found lunch at a Thai Restaurant on Restaurant Row (46th between 8th and 9th) in the Theater District. 

After riding for 15 miles (a lot for me, a drop in the bucket for Don) and lunch my favorite portion of the day began - we walked another 7 miles. I like seeing NYC at a walking pace. I find it much easier to take pictures and study what I am seeing. 

We cut through Times Square and took a selfie (I don't take many of these, but they are the rage and I was having some fun with it). At this point many of the theaters were about to open their doors for Saturday matinees, so we just wanted out of the theater district. For lack of a better plan, we returned to Park Avenue (I know, how boring). By this point the road was open. I wanted to study how we got around and through Grand Central Station.  We played tourist and went inside the station. The pictures won't line up with the rest of the story, but bear with me. 

We followed the Summer Streets route a couple of miles until we reached the farmers market at Union Station. We thought about buying some treats, but realized we would have to carry it another hour until we returned to our car (too nice a day for mass transit). That is one of the benefits to cycling -- my bike basket.

A couple of observations:

1) Amazing how quickly neighborhoods change in NYC. One minute we were walking down Park Avenue, then through the park in Union Station, over to 5th Avenue. Broadway splits off from 5th Avenue at the shops change dramatically. Noting scary, just price tags we could afford.

2) It is still possible to find pay phones in NYC. A point I wanted to note because someday it won't be possible and I'll wonder when I last saw one. They are also still a quarter  (another note for when I wonder "someday.")

3) Hell's Kitchen is not at all where I thought it would be. Enjoyed the flea market. I hope to visit it again someday soon.

With sore and tired legs we found our car and drove home and went to a family birthday party. 
 

Union Station farmer's market

This is about where the shops changed from
"way out of our price range" to "downright cheap."

Still only a quarter

If I were an artist, I would paint this scene.
I love the juxtaposition of the different styles of buildings

Hell's Kitchen