We left our house in the morning on Sunday August 9 and went to Philadelphia. The destination was the Franklin Institute (aka Science Museum of the Franklin Institute). We had purchased tickets in advance for the Mongol artifact exhibit but had some time until our entry would be valid.
We used the time to go to some parts of the museum that we hadn't looked at closely previously. The first image shows us at an image of brain tissue.
While Ann was resting from that and awaiting our time to get into the Mongol exhibit, I went to the sky bike exhibit which lets you ride a bike across the upper part of an atrium (second image).
The bike has a counterweight so if you lean in one direction the weight leans in the other and prevents you from falling (and also they have a net just in case). The passenger weight limit was 250 pounds so I easily (cough, cough) was eligible for the ride.
After that it was time to go to the Mongol artifact exhibit, which was the first public showing of this exhibit in the world with artifacts from over a dozen different collections.
In the third image, Genghis Khan is seated with a white and black decorative banner (goat fur on a post). The white one was for peace, the black for war and Genghis was the great Khan for both.
The Mongols had several things going for them in their conquests: they had better offensive weapons, e.g., their bows could propel arrows 300 meters vs. 50-150 meters for their opponents; they had better defensive weapons, e.g., lighter chain mail (see fourth image below)
they
had better tactics and could execute those tactics well, e.g., the
pretend retreat and then attack from the side; they had better
logistics, e.g., each warrior had up to 5 ponies so if one got tired or
killed, they kept moving and apparently, their armies frequently
traveled 75 miles in a day.Two of the pieces in the exhibit were of significant historic importance. One was a sword that was presented to a guard by Marco Polo (below -its the one at the bottom - fifth image from the internet)
to one of his guards. The other was a manuscript (no image) describing the use of a gunpowder fired weapon (the first of this kind of device).
After the time at the institute we drove north to visit the Droars in Morristown, N.J. and then to Suffern, NY where we had a hotel reservation. (image is a scan from a letter sent by the Droars - click on image to enlarge it).
We drove from Suffern to West Point to tour the US Military Academy there.
The first image shows a bend in the Hudson river. This is why a fortified position was established there during the revolutionary war. The point of the position was to deny the British full use of the Hudson as transit on the premise that ships would be most vulnerable at the bend. Although General Benedict Arnold, who commanded this position gave the details of the fortifications and weapon stations to the British, it didn't seem to do them any good.
This location was eventually chosen for the military academy.
The monument (images with and without Ann) located at this point is said to be the tallest piece of polished granite in the western hemisphere. The monument has the names of 2000+ soldiers of the regular army who died in the civil war. According to our tour guide, of the 60 biggest battles of the civil war, West Point graduates commanded both sides in 55 and one side in 5.
We came on what is know as 'M' day, when new cadets complete a 12 mile march back to the Academy from where intensive training was being given them.
We drove north a bit from West Point to Hyde Park, NY. We went to the National Park operated Roosevelt Home and Presidential Library. The image is of Ann and me with Franklin and Eleanor.
I was impressed with the simplicity of President Roosevelt's tomb (second image). It had no titles or accomplishments on it, just names and dates which I think is classy.
One of my favorite exhibits was a first draft of the 'Day of Infamy' speech with annotations (image is from the internet -US Archives). One of the annotations was actually the word 'Infamy' which was a substitute for the phrase 'world history'.
It is thought that the first draft was typed as Roosevelt dictated it to a secretary and the annotations are in Roosevelt's own hand writing.
There were also a lot of original documents dealing with Executive Order 9066 which was the vehicle that led to the creation of internment camps for US citizens of Japanese ancestry. Several people in the administration opposed this for example J Edger Hoover who wrote a 17 page memo dealing his reasons against it.
We drove from Hyde Park to Liberty, NY and stayed at a hotel there. It was a few blocks from Grossinger's Resort Hotel. The hotel is abandoned now and looks pretty bleak (image from the internet).
Interestingly, however is that a few miles east of Liberty there are a number of summer camps for Jewish kids and several yeshivas and even some villages that are populated by youngish Chabadniks. We ate dinner at the kosher pizza place in one of those places.
We left Liberty and went to Cooperstown, NY. This is the home of the baseball hall of fame and museum.
The first image is of Ann and me in front of Ebbets Field. which was demolished in 1960 after the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles. Oddly enough, the architecture of Ebbets field has become the blueprint for a number of neo traditional baseball stadiums that have been constructed in the past few decades.
One of the things about baseball is that there is so much to know that you never run out of things that are interesting. The museum had a exhibit dedicated to the change in the rules of baseball. This is not something I have thought about much. However, back before about 1870, a fly ball that was caught on one bounce was an out. Also, a ball that hit a batter was just a 'ball'. Also, if you overran first base you could be tagged out.
The most aggravating thing was the shuttle between the parking lots and the in town attractions. After we parked we had to wait 40 minutes for a shuttle that was advertised as coming every 25 minute. On the way back to the parking lot we waited for about 40 minutes and found out that one of the shuttle buses was out of service. I began the 1.5 mile walk to the parking lot and about 1 mile (and 20 minutes) later met the shuttle bus. I boarded it and called Ann and told her we were on our way (the shuttle company hadn't communicated with the museum, the company's phone wasn't answering and there was nothing on the company's website about the situation - also the town had an ordinance prohibiting taxicabs).
While we were on the shuttle, the other shuttle was placed back in service and caught up with us (see last image) so the at the time of the picture, the shuttles, which should have had about a 25 minute headway between shuttle stops at any given point, had more like a 10 second headway.
We left Cooperstown on Aug 11 and stayed over night at Norwich, NY. On the way there I stopped to buy something and the sales clerk asked where I was going. After a while, he said that I was making a mistake going to Norwich on the way to Corning and that I should have stayed over night in Binghamton, NY. As I went through the byways to Norwich, I realized he was probably right.
One of the things I wanted to see in Corning was the new contemporary glass exhibit added to the Museum of Glass (first image - from the internet).
It is a minimalist structure which is designed to show off the glass sculptures and downplay the structure itself. All the walls and roof of that wing are made of translucent or transparent glass.
The second image is a close up of a sculpture in this new area.
The sculpture is by Javier Pérez (Spanish, b. 1968). It is called Carroña (Carrion in English) and was done in Murano, Italy in 2011.
The next (third) image (I got this from the internet as flash photos were not permitted and I couldn't get this w/o a strong flash) is from the older part of the museum (translucent or white walls but opaque ceiling). It is a chessboard where Hasidim are battling Franciscan priests and the Pope.
The artist of this is Gianni Toso who was born in Murano, Italy. He converted from Catholicism to Judaism and lives across the street from my brother Irwin in Baltimore near Greenspring Valley (Irwin asked if I saw Toso's work and then told me that the artist was his neighbor). The museum has several other of Toso's work.
The next (fourth) image is Ann and me in front of a sculpture by Harvey Littleton, then of the University of Wisconsin when it was done in 1987.
It is called Gold and Green Implied Movement. Littleton has quite a few sculptures in the museum as he was one of the founders of the contemporary glass movement when he became an art professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison campus in the early 1960s.
The fifth image shows the Littleton sculpture by itself with other Littleton creations in the background (the lighting was better here and in the previous image and I could take a picture without a flash).
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The next (sixth) image is Ann and Martin in front of a Dale Chihuly sculpture in the lobby near the admissions area. This sculpture is called "Fern Green Tower". It was made in 1999 to a height of about 11 feet. In 2013, Chihuly dissembled it, replaced the steel frame with a stronger frame and added 4 and a half feet to the sculpture.
Mr. Chihuly has similar large sculptures elsewhere including in Grand Rapids at the Frederick and Lena Meijer Sculpture Garden (next, seventh image, which was created in 2003 and called "Lena's Garden" ) which we visited in the summer of 2014.
One of the nice things about our visit to the Corning Museum of Glass was that the regular parking lot (which has shuttle service) was full and we thus got to park (for free) at the VIP parking lot adjacent to the museum.
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We drove south from Corning, NY and stopped at Danville, PA for the night. In the morning, we drove to Hershey, PA. These images are from the 'World of Chocolate'.
The first image shows Ann awaiting her turn to design a chocolate bar (actually the options are somewhat limited). The chocolate making equipment is visible on the left of the image and shows the various steps in the process (FORM, INCLUSION, ENOBER).
The second image shows Ann's chocolate bar getting some butterscotch pieces (the 'inclusion'). My design was chocolate chips inside the chocolate form which doesn't make much of a picture.
We also got to design a cover for the chocolate bar. The choices are limited here also and we both went with the 'classic' design.The third image show the final product.
After the chocolate manufacturing, we saw the 4D movie they had. The plot was that a super villain, Victor Von Sour (in green in the image from the internet) was working to ruin Hershey products using the yellow robots (in the background). Hershey bar, Kiss, Reece and Twisler foiled him and also converted the robots and Von Sour to 'good and sweet'.
As part of the movie, the characters seem to approach the viewers and they also use other effects, e.g., when Twisler showed up they sprayed a strawberry perfume in the theatre.
We left our house in the morning on Sunday August 9 and went to Philadelphia. The destination was the Franklin Institute (aka Science Museum of the Franklin Institute). We had purchased tickets in advance for the Mongol artifact exhibit but had some time until our entry would be valid. 
While Ann was resting from that and awaiting our time to get into the Mongol exhibit, I went to the sky bike exhibit which lets you ride a bike across the upper part of an atrium (second image). 
In the third image, Genghis Khan is seated with a white and black decorative banner (goat fur on a post). The white one was for peace, the black for war and Genghis was the great Khan for both. 
