Events leading to Clifftop

The two weeks after Ken left passed pretty uneventfully. I watered the gardens (hot & no rain meant no lawn mowing tho) and went to the Wednesday night Pretty Shaky Band jam sessions. I’m going to miss those people. I’d been plagued by hand problems the last year and couldn’t play my guitar as much as I had opportunity to, but I could always go and listen and play just a little bit. When I get settled out there, I’ll have to hunt up another group to play with. It might take some doing - there’s a lot of bluegrass in the Phoenix area, but Appalachian old-time is harder to find. Love that old time fiddle music.

The premier event of that music style occurs every August at Camp Washington Carver (near Fayetteville WV) – the Appalachian Stringband Music Festival (aka Clifftop): http://www.wvculture.org/stringband/. This is a gathering of nearly 3 thousand people who are there primarily to camp and play music. Yes, there are contests and nightly shows of the the contest finalists, but that’s not the real focus – it’s really about meeting old & new friends from across the country and playing music together. I had been attending Clifftop almost every year since 1998 – shortly after learning to play guitar and falling into this type of music.

Anyway… I typically would head down there the Friday or Saturday before the official start of the festival and just hang out with friends. Ken & Guy were returning from England Wednesday afternoon the 25th. Sooo, I decided to head down to Ohio on Wednesday and spend a few days in Springfield with Ken before continuing on down to West Virginia. (No, he wasn’t coming with me. We had a deal – I wouldn’t attend NASCAR races and he wouldn’t come to music festivals.)

I planned on meeting Ken & Guy at the airport. It was just for the emotional high since I didn’t have enough room in the car to drive them back to Springfield. There was plenty of time so I had a leisurely start mid-morning and was southbound on Waverly toodling along in the right lane when a major glitch in the plans happened. I was side-swiped. Just a mile into my trip. ARGHHHH! A woman in the left hand lane switched to the right lane but didn’t allow for the fact that I was there. I could see her in my mirror but couldn’t speed up to avoid the collision because there was another car right in front of me.

As you can see, not major damage, but I just didn’t need that. Not only was I leaving on a two and a half week trip, I was going to sell the car shortly before we planned to head back to Arizona and the time it would take to repair the car would eat into my advertising time. So back to the house to contact the insurance agency and find out what I was supposed to do next. It was early afternoon by the time all the statements and phone calls were made and I had the repair quote (and the assurance the car was OK to drive) and got on the road again. I left a message for Ken briefly saying what happened and that I would see him at Guy’s house around 6pm instead of at the airport. I must have still had a lot of adrenaline in my system then since he said I sounded real panicky. I *was* speaking pretty fast.

The rest of the trip was uneventful and I spent a couple of days in Springfield with Ken and Guy. Guy’s a lovely person and I can see why Ken likes him.

Alone again

Ken took off for Ohio this morning. He’s got his 50^th high school reunion this weekend and had volunteered to help with the prep work. After that, he’s taking long time friend and mentor to England for 10 days. Guy is 86 and has been wanting to go to England to see a few of the more out of the way places. Ken will be his companion and chauffer.

The house seems empty.

Frederik Meijer Sculpture Park

The last outing before the crazy time begins is to the Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park in Grand Rapids. This was another of my “meant to do”s I never did. (Don’t tell me you don’t have a stack of them, too.)  My sister, Alice, also wanted to go so we met up with her there on a hot, hot Sunday.

We took the tram ride around to start – it gave us an overview of the sculpture park. Unfortunately, we were towards the rear of the end car and the guide was at the front of the first car. That meant that while the tram was stopped and the guide was talking about the particular piece, we frequently couldn’t see it. It did give the overview we wanted, however. Afterwards, we walked the main loop and took pictures to our hearts’ content.

Here are the three of us by the waterfall garden – a very pretty place.

 

Towards the end, Alice and I posed with Fred & Lena Meijer. Actually, we were glad just to sit down.

To finish up the day, we had an early supper up the road at the Twisted Rooster. It was recommended by my niece-in-law and proved to be an excellent choice.

		Frederik Meijer Gardens VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Sparty

Hung out around Lansing today – or rather East Lansing. Roadside America only listed two sights of interest in the Lansing area. The first, the R. E. Olds museum, had already been visited. The second was “Sparty” the Spartan. Michigan State’s mascot. This was billed as the World's Largest Free-Standing Ceramic Figure. So of course we had to go see it.

It turns out there are two Sparty statues – the original ceramic sculpture and a bronze replica. The latter is the more public one and was made because the original was getting damaged.

Here’s the original 10.5’ terra cotta statue (in the lobby of the stadium)

and the bronze replica.

After viewing both versions, we had to go over to the Dairy Store for an ice cream cone. Mmmm, good. Way back when, the cheese and ice cream were made from the milk of the campus herd (MSU is a land-grant college and still has a big agricultural aspect). But no longer, they don’t produce nearly enough milk for the demand.

An aside – I am both amused and appalled by the cluelessness displayed by many public statues. Sparta was a Greek city-state, but the Sparty statue has the most Nordic looking facial features imaginable. Granted, it was made (dedicated at least) in 1945 by L. D. Jungwirth, but still…

I ran across something similar in 12/05 when I visited a museum at Fort Huachuca in Sierra Vista, AZ. The display was dedicated to the Buffalo soldiers that had been stationed there and the mannequins were all dark skinned. But they also had Nordic features.

Detroit

I had been wanting to go over to Detroit to see the Diego Rivera murals at the Detroit Institute of Arts but had never gotten around to planning the trip while I lived in Lansing. So another outing is born.

From the DIA web site: “The Detroit Industry fresco cycle was conceived by Mexican muralist Diego Rivera (1886–1957) as a tribute to the city's manufacturing base and labor force of the 1930s. Rivera completed the twenty-seven panel work in eleven months, from April 1932 to March 1933. It is considered the finest example of Mexican mural art in the United States, and the artist thought it the best work of his career.”

It was just as impressive as I thought it would be. We spent a lot of time looking at the details because we signed out an iPad (free) and went through most of the multimedia presentation. A bit too much explanation of art symbolism for us, but that’s just us. Definitely worth the visit.

Diego Rivera VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

We spent a little time in the rest of the museum and then headed to Dearborn for the rest of the outing – Ken wanted to stop at the Henry Ford Museum and look at the cars.

I had been to the “The Henry Ford” (ridiculous name) in 2007. I spent a day each at Greenfield Village and The Henry Ford Museum. So I wasn’t terrifically interested and was perfectly content with just tagging along following his interests. The Museum is a huge place with lots to see but the afternoon on just the cars was about right. We’re only good for about 2 - 3 hours museum time max.

We planned on stopping to eat lunch on our way from the DIA to the Museum but didn’t pass anything that caught our eye. It was raining pretty heavily by then, a cold, nasty rain, so I convinced him to eat at the Museum rather than driving around Dearborn looking for something else. Bad mistake. I had eaten at the Eagle Tavern in Greenfield Village when I was there before and it was very good. I assumed the Museum would have equally good food, but the stuff we got from the Michigan Café was pretty blah.

I didn’t bother taking any photos but here are some pics that Ken took. He didn’t take photos of the signs for the race cars so I can’t caption them for you. You will just have to go there yourself.

Henry Ford Museum VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

A tip for those going just to the Museum. Skip the ticket booths and lines in the main lobby and head directly in toward the Michigan Café. You can buy Museum tickets at the several entrances along the long hallway.

More rain as we headed home but it cleared up before we got to Lansing.

R. E. Olds Transportation Museum

I guess Ken had enough of sitting around and watching me dither about so he suggested we go down to the R. E. Olds Museum in downtown Lansing. I’m not terrifically interested in motor vehicles but an outing sounded good. And it did turn into an interesting and enjoyable day.

Ransom E. Old’s first production gas powered motor carriage

The Curved Dash Runabout is considered the first high production automobile.

REO’s Model B

I thought this last car looked familiar so went back to look at scans my sister had made of old family photos. This is a 1910 photo of my Grandfather (on the right) in a car very much like the one above.

Here’s a link to a slide show of the above photos if you would rather look at them that way: REO.