First Week in August

I’ve never really been a big fan of August.  Too many family members have died in August. And the minute it hits, my eyes start itching, the air feels yucky, and the worst part is, I didn’t know how cold it was to swim in the evening in August.   I thought September would be the month I wouldn’t be able to swim anymore, who knew August was it?  Unless it really warms up.  So now I have to find another form of exercise.  But I love swimming so much – wah!  And swimming in the pool at the Y is just *not* going to be the same.  Which reminds me, I need to go to Dicks and get a swim cap and goggles so the chlorine doesn’t kill my eyes and hair.

Anyway, we went up to Sylvan Beach for the car show again, and it is getting boring because we’re seeing the same cars every week, so we’ll give it a rest this week, unless Oneida Lake is still very warm and I need to go swimming there.

This is a sweet Ford Fairlane that we haven’t seen before.

Don’t you love the simplicity and largeness of the interior, and that bench seat, good for smooching at the drive-in.

Love the T-Bird insignia on the sweet, light blue T-Bird I showed you last week.

Afterwards, we went looking for the old bathhouse that was converted into something that we had to figure out, and we finally found it!

The bathhouse was cut in two and made into the Laff House. So of course we had to take the ride, and laughed our butts off because it was so hokey. But as a kid, I’m sure it’s scary as all get out. Or not.

I don’t care, I love the amusement park:

It reminds me of Suburban Park in Manlius, where my Mom used to take us every summer until it was closed.

We saw the tugboat Urger which I guess is an educational tugboat.

I wonder what those horns sound like. Nobody was around to “educate” us! But I guess it used to be a steam-powered tug in it’s day.

The tug was sitting in the canal:

Saw a big, puffy cloud:

And blazing, hot, sunset:

Saturday evening we tried to go swimming and froze our buns off – well not froze, but I was shivering even though I was moving. So Sunday we went to the Polish Festival, got sauerkraut and potato pierogies (yummy!), and ate them at the Inner Harbor,

where we saw a dredge:

And behind where we sat to eat are these things in the cement:

An apple,  LaFayette, where I grew up, is known as apple country

The Weighlock Building in downtown Syracuse.

Canal Boat

Salt Evaporation Vats; Syracuse was known as “The Salt City.”

One of the few buildings for boat repair still stands here:

I took a much needed nap on my new sleeping bag (nice and comfy) and when I woke up, the sky looked like this:

And this week, I have to get the camera batteries all charged up, cuz we’re going someplace I’ve never been to before!! I’m so excited!

Advertisement

Camillus Erie Canal Park

This past weekend the Camillus Erie Canal Park had a Grand Celebration to dedicate the restored Nine Mile Creek Aqueduct, but since I work on the weekend, we couldn’t make it out there until Sunday after work, after all of the festivities were done.  It doesn’t matter, because I don’t really enjoy crowds, anyway!  And by the time we got there (after eating Luigi’s  pizza, mmmmm), the sun was in that perfect place in the sky to shed an orange glow on everything.

Here’s a replica of the Sims’ canal store, now known as Sims’ Museum, which wasn’t open. I do want to go back when it is open, soon!

Sims’ Museum

A long bed of iris along the canal bank were all so beautiful!

This is an old lock:

As we were examining the lock, Midnight, the resident kitty, came over to greet us, and then to perch himself underneath one of the bottom valves of the lock:

Buoy Boat 159 is on display here:

This is a replica of a Lock House:

We then went a mile down the canal to Nine Mile Creek Aqueduct:

If you click on this Nine Mile Creek Aqueduct link, you can see progress pictures of the restoration:

This looks great!

The aqueduct over Nine Mile Creek:

Of course, we had to walk down to the little waterfall of Nine Mile Creek:

Assuming that this is the old wood which was taken out and replaced with the brand new wood:

There is a steam engine exhibit that we need to come back and see sometime, soon, too! This is one of the steam engines outside of the exhibit area:

The back wheels are taller than me!

I took this shot of the sign for the hours, so we can visit when the museum is open:

And the last thing I noticed was this wildlife refuge sign!

I always love to see areas for wildlife!

More Decorating!

This week our cute little snowman got some arms:

And Scott’s toboggan is done in our very popular Nifty Fifties Toy exhibition so we have it in our little display:

We decorated for Valentine’s Day with old fashioned things:

Ugh, I need a closer photo of this wall:

which has Currier and Ives prints from old calendars and old valentines.

And an updated, closer view of the ice skaters on the Erie Canal:

Note to Self:
Never come up with an idea for an in-between newsletter mailing to keep members informed, because you end up creating the mailer and assembling it by yourself. Collating and putting stickers on the mailer to keep it closed, then adding mailing labels, is very tedious and boring. This is only a portion of what I was working on:

But of course when I see the need to do a mailing again, I’ll end up doing it all over again. Because I love working there and I want everything we do to succeed!

Still Redecorating!

Wow, okay, I can’t believe I haven’t blogged in so long.  And I can’t believe we haven’t finished decorating yet, but we squeeze it in when we can. So here’s the area where the Christmas tree was.

Scott found a dead tree and we decorated it with birds and berries. We’ll be adding his toboggan this week. And another old fashioned lamp, like the one in this photo:

Most of the pieces of the outfit on the mannequin Scott got this week from an older couple who had these clothes in their basement from their ancestors. The skirt is so silky, and the burgundy and black tops are velvety. Imagine having clothes from your ancestors. Our family gives all clothes away when someone passes away.  I actually just have one shirt from my Dad because I just had to have it.

We had some problem with this woman’s boobs. They were too big for the tops, so we had to add a contemporary but old-fashioned looking blouse.

The slip is peeking out at the hem. I should have taken photos of us when we were assembling this to show you all of the crap that is underneath this skirt – ouch! Maybe when we disassemble it. Anyway, it required our four hands to just make it come together!

This is one set of bookcases decorated with skaters on the Erie Canal:

to simulate the real skaters that used to skate on the Erie Canal:

Photo courtesy of Onondaga Historical Association

I realize I should take close-ups, but I was taking photos in-between dealing with a bunch of excited young girls.  Some of the buildings will be lit up hopefully by the time I go back to work!  Stay tuned for more!  We have Black History Month and Valentine’s Day decorations we’re working on.  Imagine, before I got there, at this time of year these areas were all. . . blank and boring.

One of my Favorite Things

One of the favorite things I received for Christmas this year is Seeing America, a book of 82 of the permanent items in the Memorial Art Gallery – including Thomas Cole’s paintings of the Genesee River and surrounding scenery – yummy – in case you haven’t figured it out yet, I love landscape artwork. I’ve been drooling over this book every time we go into the MAG store, and Mom is always on the lookout for present ideas.

The artwork on the front cover is by George Harvey (1800-1878), Pittsford on the Erie Canal – A Sultry Calm, 1837, Oil on panel.

You can’t see it, but the mules on the towpath are pulling the boat along. Want to know what happens when the mule driver encounters a switch in the towpath to the other side of the canal? You can read what I wrote about the Aldrich Change Bridge here.

I just noticed the Memorial Art Gallery has an exhibition on World War I posters – in my opinion from the posters I’ve seen at OHA (that I would like to put into the image database so people can buy reproductions) and now on the MAG website, these are some creative posters, and some are pretty provocative for the times – like this one from the MAG website:

I hope you enjoyed your Christmas and you received something very special to you, too!

P.S.  I think I finally figured out why I’m getting bad comment spam.  I had a title which referred to horseback riding and working hard back in November (the MONY building post) and some nasty sight took it as something dirty.  I removed the post and re-entered it under another title, so hopefully that will remove the nasty site linking to my post.  We’ll see.  Lesson learned – be careful what I put in my titles!

Bridges From the Past

Today I attended my regional Archives Week Celebration at Genesee Country Village & Museum in Mumford, NY. Here’s the cover of the program:

And this was my nametag:

My name on a NY State historic marker – how cool is that? Hee hee.

All of the speakers were awesome! First up, Joan from the Nunda Historical Society who discussed the birth of an historical society; next Joe from The Museum of Wayne County History who discussed how to build an audience through artifacts, and how he and his volunteers totally redid the museum; then JoAnn from Heritage Square in Ontario who, among many things, boasts the oldest Sugar Maple tree in NY State (which I’ll be checking out); Leonora from the William Pryor Letchworth Museum which has been redone (remember my previous post about Letchworth Park on Labor Day weekend); and Connie from the Genesee Country Village & Museum (link above) who discussed Interpretive Planning.

Lunch was phenomenal – people – they had a vegeterian dish, along with cooked zucchini and yellow squash, and mixed greens salad – I was in heaven! (Last spring I went to an event at the same place and they had turkey and beef sandwiches – yeah, were does that leave me (previous post mentions I’m a vegan vegeterian)? Yup, I was left pretty hungry). Lunch hour was actually an hour and a half, so I went to the John L. Wehle Art Gallery and saw some really cool landscape art and African animal art and birds of prey statues (sorry, I don’t think I could have brought my camera inside the museum).

After lunch we heard from Peter, a Seneca Indian of the Heron clan, who is eight generations removed from Mary Jemison (now I have to read about Mary Jemison’s life, and you may want to also) – he was from the Ganondagan Historic Site, which is on original Seneca Indian land (here you can really see drumlins and kames from glacial activity) – he opened his talk with a Thanksgiving using the Seneca language (why is it I could listen to the Native Americans talk all day – probably because they have much to say); Carol the Town of Ogden and Village of Spencerport historian who discussed a Trolley Depot that has been restored and moved to it’s new home on East Ave. along the Erie Canal in Spencerport and about to open up to the public – I’ll be going (I couldn’t find a website for her historical society – hmmm, I’ll have to find out about this, because Carol showed some awesome photos today); and Ove and Gerry from GAGV Library and Archives. and last, but not least, James L. who is the regional DHP person who put this whole thing together.

Susan Gets Native asked what she could do to celebrate Ohio Archives Week, which is this week also! Happy Ohio Archives week Susan! Basically, by photographing your daily events and blogging, you are recording your history and creating your own personal archives! Pretty cool, huh? Also, does the RAPTOR Center have an archives, even just a filing cabinet of stuff?

I’m so excited, I have two more days of exciting events going on – tomorrow has nothing to do with archives week, but a trip to a local museum with my Mum to see a travelling exhibition of . . ., well, I’ll blog about it later! Friday is a trip to OHA with my Dad for, well, that’s for later, too! For now, I have tons of emails and blogs I’m behind on reading.

Hummingbird, Erie Canal, Onanda Park

I took a JavaScript class today, and felt all boxed in by the time I got home from being inside all day, so I went out on my deck for a few minutes before dinner and I saw a hummingbird feeding on the orange cosmos for a minute, and then it went onto the powerline and sat there for what seemed like f-o-r-e-v-e-r. If I went in to get my camera it would have been gone. It’s like I need to walk around with the camera around my neck *all* of the time. I would like to catch one before they leave for the winter. If not, there’s next year.

And as I was leaving class I realized I should have brought my camera there, too, because the building I was in is right on the Erie canal, and as I was leaving in my vehicle I had to wait for the lift bridge AND a train. Way to really back up traffic, but it would have been enough time to take some cool photos!

So since I was so bad about not photographing my day’s events, I’ll leave you with these photos from Onanda Park in Canandaigua that I took on March 4, 2004. This is the Lower Falls of Barnes Creek that flows into Canandaigua Lake:

And I turned to the east and took this photo of Canandaigua Lake. I’ll share other better photos of and from this park later:

Aldrich Change Bridge, Palmyra

Today we went to Palmyra to see the Aldrich Change Bridge. This bridge was originally built in 1858 by John Hutchinson in Troy, NY, and spanned the Erie Canal at the Rochester Weighlock in the 1860’s. In 1878 the wooden Aldrich Change Bridge collapsed and this wrought and cast iron Whipple Bridge replaced it. This bridge was rammed by ice and timber on January 19, 1996 which removed it from its abutments, landing it in the Ganargua Creek. This bridge was rescued and rebuilt and is now located in the Palmyra / Macedon Aqueduct Park.

The abutments were rebuilt exactly as they were in their previous location near Foldpak in Newark:

A change bridge allowed the mules to cross from one side of the canal to the other without having to untie them from the tow rope.

Here’s a photo I took of the information located near the bridge on how a change bridge works:

We also saw the Mud Creek Aqueduct:

We first smelled these old fashioned roses – a wonderful aroma – and then saw them along the canal banks:

We also saw quite a bit of Dame’s Rocket:

And Fleabane: