The Magical World of Museums

Thought for the day:  Too much of a good thing can be wonderful. [Mae West]

From April 26 until May 1, Atlanta held its first Museum Week, in which entrance to a whole bunch of museums was buy one, get one free... or simply free. Doesn't get much better than that, right? What can I say? As far as this space cadet is concerned, our week was... outta this world! (The astronaut suit in that picture is located at Tellus Science Museum.)

How's about a few highlights of some of the museums we visited? Just some stuff you might find interesting. I will acknowledge, even though we visited some terrific museums, the Smithsonian in D.C. is still top dog for me. Never been there? How'd you like to take a virtual tour ? Woo HOO! (Almost as good as being there!) HEY! Wait! What ya doing? Don't go NOW... read my post first. Sheesh. (I knew I shoulda put the link at the END of the post...)

Real museums are places where Time is transformed into Space.  [Orthan Pamuk]

This is an unusual piece of pottery found in the Atlanta Historical Society's museum. (The Swan House, pictured in the header, is also located on the Society's grounds.) Anyhow, back to the pottery. As you can see, it has candle holders, making it a candelabra of sorts, but that isn't why this piece made me smile... it's the common name for this piece. See the face? Well, there's another face on the other side, too. Ergo, it has two faces, so it was commonly know as... (ready?) a politician jug.

Talking about politicians, check this out. Would you believe that wooden box is a ballot box used by soldiers during the Civil War? It's hard to tell in this picture, but that pulled-out drawer contains two different colors of balls... one for each of the two presidential candidates. The soldier/voter would drop his preferred color of ball through the hole in the top of the box to cast his vote. Neat, huh?

It's one thing to read in the pages of a history book about the systematic destruction of Atlanta's railroads and factories during the Civil War, but seeing this railroad tie brings it home. Ties like these became so hot in the fires, they were purposely bent out of shape around huge tree trunks so they couldn't be re-used.

One more thing from the Civil War. It's a little boy's set of clothing. The tag hanging down on it reads, My father was a soldier. 

Sad, isn't it? A hundred and fifty years old, and it's still sad...

No more sad.

Yeah, I know this cut-out at Fernbank Natural History Museum is for kids... but hey! I'm just a big kid at heart.

One of my favorite things about Fernbank is its IMAX theater. When we visited the museum about five years ago, we took a realistic trip through the Amazon rain forest on our anniversary, courtesy of the magic of IMAX. This time, Smarticus treated me to two different movies: one about humpback whales, and the other, called Mysteries of the Unseen World. All about stuff normally invisible to the human eye, whether because it exists outside of our visible light spectrum, or because it moves too fast, moves too slowly, or is just itty bitty. Through time-lapse photography, high-speed photography, an electron microscope, etc, we got to see some really cool stuff. The whales movie was terrific, too, but I reeeeally enjoyed seeing some of the usually unseen things of our world.

Luckily, we caught a temporary exhibit at Fernbank about poisons before it closed down a couple days later. Lots of interesting stuff. I wonder how many people were compelled to say,  Double, double, toil and trouble, fire burn, and cauldron bubble when they saw these three witches. (I was!)

One interesting tidbit from the poison exhibit: It seems there was an actual basis in fact for Lewis Carroll's nutty Mad Hatter character. Denton, England, where Carroll was born, was a prime center for hat-making in the 1800s, and the consensus of opinion was that the hatters were generally irritable and peculiar. And for good reason, too. Although I'm not clear exactly how or why it was used, mercury was used extensively during the hat-making process, so most hatters acquired their peculiarities courtesy of mercury poisoning.

Just one more pic from Tellus Science Museum, since I covered this museum at length in an earlier post. (Wherein this old poop touched fossilized dinosaur poop!) Anyhow, this is a 1912 Shaw motorcycle. One of the things I found interesting about it is the chain... it's made of leather!

Okay, only one more museum, and it's one of my favorites. Booth Western Museum. It's part of the Smithsonian, and much to my surprise, is the largest Western Museum in the country, which is especially surprising, considering its off-the-beaten-path location  in a small city. (Cartersville.)

There's tons (literally!) of bronze sculptures, both inside and out, and amazing paintings and relics from the western U.S. Although they were all terrific, that wasn't my favorite thing about this museum. My favorite thing wasn't even about the West. It was about...

presidents! (Um, no I wasn't grabbing JFK's butt in this photo... it just LOOKS like I was...)

Actually, there are two exhibits about presidents at Booth. One, a permanent collection, includes an original signed document from every single president... along with some little-known facts about each one. Some really interesting stuff!

And the other, a temporary one, showcases photographs taken by numerous presidential photographers. Some GREAT photos! Some candid, some marking important events, some posed... but all great.

This is the only picture I took of one of the photographs. In general, I chose not to do so, in spite of the fact that other people were taking pictures left and right. But this one, I couldn't resist.

It shows a photographer named Mike tying then-VP Bush's shoe. Reagan and Bush later signed the picture, in which Reagan wrote: Mike! A simple curtsy would have been enough. And Bush added: P.S. There's a 25¢ tip in this for you if they really shine.

So there ya have some of the highlights from our week. I'm only including this one last picture of a wax figure (He looked like a live person... even close up!) just so I have an excuse to use this terrific quote from Dean Martin: There's a statue of Jimmy Stewart in the Hollywood Wax Museum, and the statue talks better than he does.



Before I forget, I'd like to wish all of you moms out there a very happy Mother's Day. (Hmm, I wonder if the Atlanta zoo is offering free entrance to moms again this year.We haven't seen their new state-of-the-art reptile house yet...)

                            Until next time, take care of yourselves. And each other.

One time I went to a museum where all the work in the museum had been done by children; they had all the paintings up on refrigerators.  [Stephen Wright]