Greenfield Village

Yesterday was a birthday in our house. Jon got the day off for his birthday, and we, deciding to make the most of that and the beautiful weather, headed to Greenfield Village. Calvin has been talking about the Village since we visited the Henry Ford Museum last week. Greenfield Village is outside on the grounds behind the museum and is a collection of authentic historical buildings, like Ford's birth home, Edison's laboratory, The Wright Brother's shop and home, and slave quarters from a brick "plantation" in Georgia. The homes and buildings were purchased and actually moved to the park and set up to give visitors a chance to experience life from a time long ago.

Houses and buildings are not from any one time period, but provide a look at many eras throughout the history of the United States. This is another great place to find serious reenactors at work. We walked through the farm field where farm hands were seriously plowing like mad, trying to get the fall crop planted before the first freeze, then inside the house we met the two women who were preparing the midday meal that would be eaten by all farm workers, and a woman out back who was doing the laundry and hanging it out to dry. These people are for real.

Not all of the village employees are reenactors. Reenactors are always in period dress, while "experts" are dressed in a village uniform. Experts are not in character at any given time, but were wonderfully knowledgeable about their respective positions. Some are mainly docents, like the lady in the printing press and the tinsmith, while others are actual tradesmen, like glass blowers and train restorers. We got to see all of them performing their trades.

We took a wagon ride through the village part of the village

We played in the beautiful fall sun.

Calvin loved the round house—an authentic building, but also one of the only buildings on site that went "out of character" with a museum style room. It also allowed us to go down in a pit underneath a fabulous steam engine.

There is so much to see that, like with the museum, we know we'll have to go back. We didn't spend much time on the village street in the shops, but we did take a trip through town in a Model-T.

We enjoyed midday birthday celebration meal at the mid 19th century Eagle Tavern, Calvin J. Wood, proprietor. We met Calvin Wood on our way in—a truly enjoyable reenactor who loved our own Calvin and offered him a job planting corn in the spring at nine cents an hour, twelve hours a day. We sat at community tables, ate traditional dishes prepared with local foods, mostly organic, and sipped drinks through noodle straws. Really delightful.

We took a train ride all around the park, and watched them fill the ancient steam engine with water at one of our station stops. Calvin loved watching the bell ring, and I loved feeling the moisture of the steam, and getting slightly dotted with soot.

The guys rode on a carousel made in New York almost a century ago.

Covered bridges, scarecrows, beautiful fall folliage, beautiful day. We had such a great time.

Visiting history—Henry Ford Museum

My camera has two—TWO—sd card slots, but do you think either one had a memory card in it when we went to the museum today? No.

The Henry Ford Museum. At just about forty minutes from us, it's going to be a great hands-on, real-as-life tool for our U.S. history exploration. Build a mini car on a mini assembly line, build a real honest-to-goodness Model-T; design, create, and test fly your own paper air planes; climb into the cabin of a plane, the engine of a Steam train, the driver's seat of a car, even the very bus from which Rosa Parks made history; and peruse hundreds of artifacts from the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries in the U.S., like the Wienermobile! I see regular field trips in our future.

And thank goodness for camera phones.

In his words:

Home again Monday

We arrived back at home tonight after spending a long weekend with my family in Chicago. We were there courtesy of my parents, who gathered us all to celebrate their 40th anniversary, and of my brother and his girlfriend, who live there and are always kind enough to open their home to us and show us a great time in their big city.

I never find the time to post while we are there because without fail our time is packed with fun activities, good company, and delicious food. This weekend, it was a matter of grilling on the rooftop while an orange evening sun lit up our city view, of sipping wine at a sidewalk wine bar, of Italian, and sushi, and when we weren't eating we were at the Brookfield Zoo or the Field Museum, and today we even made sure Calvin had his chance to ride the El before we headed for home.

We spent Saturday at the Brookfield Zoo, which is a beautiful zoo in the suburbs. Lots of room to move, for both animals and observers, and a few more exotic species that i have seen only rarely in the zoo setting, like Mexican Gray Wolves, and the Okapi, which happens to be one of my favorite animals, thus it gave me great joy to be able to share him with my son and my family. Sloth bears are pretty cool, too, and they had unique and enjoyable desert and rainforest buildings with even more animals I haven't seen since I studied their skins and skeletons back in my college days (and they are oh so much more fun alive). We ate bison burgers outside the bison enclosure, and Calvin played with a seal through the glass of her underwater exhibit. We spent hours there under a warm sun and blue sky and came home deliciously exhausted.

Slide Show—hover over the sides of the photo to reveal slide show controls, then click through to see the pictures from the Brookfield Zoo. Vertical pictures don't render properly yet (this is a new feature from Squarespace), so click here if you want to see the photos in the Chicago 2011 gallery.

Sunday we spent at the Field Museum. The hours we spent there are another example of how much Calvin has grown. The last time we were here he was not quite two yet; he sat in a stroller for what ended up being a disappointingly brief dash through the museum while we balanced our own interest with his toddler sized patience. This time around he walked the museum for almost six hours, and while his attention wasn't rapt for the entire time, he had enough pre-seeded information to give him at least some interest in every exhibit, from the taxidermy section, to the walk of Evolution, to Ancient Egypt, and finally to the Native Americas. To do it right, of course, we would have to spend several days there, visiting just one exhibit per day, and preferably over time. I guess that means we will have to visit each time we start to explore and study any of the subjects for which they have a permanent exhibit.

Slide Show—hover over the edges of the photo to reveal slide show controls, then click through to see the pictures from the Field Museum. Vertical pictures don't render properly yet (this is a new feature), so click here if you want to see the photos in the Chicago 2011 gallery.

And our quieter moments were good, too; Oregon Trail on the iPad, grilling on the roof in delightful weather, celebrating 40 years and the family they created with toasts and dinner.

Wine before dinner, celebrating 40 years and the family they created

Sushi on Sunday, learning to use the chopsticks

coloring with Uncle curtis

Riding the El...in the front car nonetheless

And now we're home and attempting to get back into the swing of things. If we're lucky we'll actually get there some day, or maybe the point is avoid that kind of mundane existence after all.

Field trip—UofM Museum of Natural History

Calvin had his five year old doctor appointment today, only almost two months late. We're late because when I called to make the appointment his pediatrician was booked for the next three months, and we didn't go through a ped selection process in order to see some other doctor the one time each year we end up in the office. I love our pediatrician, and the wait was well worth it. He's always put Calvin at ease, and been happy to answer any questions I may have. I've always figured that we're doing our job right if the visit is merely an affirmation of things that are going on at home, and he has always been conscious and supportive of our decisions.

But no matter how fantastic of a visit it was, there were two shots waiting at the end of it. I knew they were coming. Calvin knew they were coming. When we talked about them yesterday I was honest in telling him that they would hurt for a short while, probably not even as long as the wasp sting he had gotten last Friday and had forgotten by Saturday. I offered him, as something to look forward to, as a reward for braving a tough situation, his choice between going to the splash zone, going to the movies (his first time), and going to the University of Michigan's Museum of Natural History. I was kind of looking forward to a movie (they are very air conditioned, after all), but he chose the museum. And that's my boy.

During the latter of my college years the Museum of Natural History was my home away from home. I attended several classes in the rooms down those hallways, dissected animals and identified species by their skulls in the labs, and had long, drawn out conversations with professors, T.A.s, and other students while sitting in the rotunda. These are my favorite memories from school, and walking back into the building, which has hardly changed, was like being transported. Except for the overly excited five year old who had too much innate curiosity and unquenchable exuberance to be anything like the kids I went to class with (or myself).

Mastodons

Calvin loved the exhibits. The museum has the feel of something assembled almost as an after-thought, as you walk in amidst signs warning you from research wings and labs and classrooms left and right. You pay by honest donation, you take your own tours, some things are behind glass while others are not, and only some are touchable, but it is up to your own guess as to which those things are.

Proboscideans

Basilosaurus isis

Basilosaurus isis

But the mastodons and the Allosaurus are right there, two feet away, as large as life, and they are oh so impressive that way. And the fact that they are squeezed into an overcrowded, un-air conditioned room along with 70 year old cases of even older fossils, sculptures, and drawings, gives them a purely academic feel that is inspiring.

Allosaurus

Allosaurus

Tyrannosaurus rex skull

There is no real flow, but each section is a world unto itself, full of things to discover. The writing also has the flavor of academia, as in long winded and excessive to read, but Calvin actually absorbed quite a bit of it before succumbing to exhaustion (or heat stroke, one of the two).

Pterosaur

Hadrosaur

There are two more floors, current Michigan fauna and biology, and a planetarium that we have yet to explore, but that's the great thing about being close: we can come back. He was so thrilled with it that I think I see it again in the near future, which is actually better than trying to go during the school year anyhow.

For more info:

The University of Michigan Museum of Natural History

Log Cabin Weekend

When I think of log cabins I think of prairie trains, and bad Westerns and tall, tall waving blades of grass. And just thinking about that era makes me feel tired, hot and dirty. This past week Calvin read a book about the Western prairie. He'd picked out the book, Twisters on Tuesday, because of his recent obsession with tornadoes, but the story was about the pioneer days, a coincidence that turned out to be fortuitous because this was Log Cabin Weekend at the nearby Waterloo Historical Society farm grounds and museum. The weather was beautiful, so after garage saling (side note—we got a telescope!), of course we drove out to Waterloo.

There was a bit of period mixing going on. While the original log cabin was built in the 1830s, the rest of the house was finished 20 years later, and the Civil war encampment on the grounds was not only physically misplaced, but also another decade on down the timeline. That's okay, knowing that the war motif was part of the weekend, and having luckily picked up a copy of Civil War on Sunday at one of the garage sales we read it on our way to the farm (side note again—I love garage sales).

Strangely enough I didn't take a single picture of the actual log cabin while we were there, but the German family who lived in built this house directly onto it, and later is was removed to further away.

Then a tour of the inside of the house...

Back outside we watched the creation of a wooden mallet with a really old engine. And in the background, a blacksmith hammering out hooks.

The Union soldiers were camped just down the hill...

And when we were done on the farm grounds we drove around the corner a few miles to the one room school house, which was in use as an area school until 1963. Really, 1963! That's just two years before my parents graduated from their large and age dedicated high schools in larger cities elsewhere in Michigan. I find that fascinating.

This had been our first trip to the Waterloo Historic Society grounds, and we'll go back for a few more events this year. The buildings are as well kept as those at Greenfield Village, which is farther away and more expensive, and I enjoyed the quiet of the day, wandering through history without fighting crowds. In fact, there were only a handful of visitors like ourselves there, while the rest of the people wandering around were reenactors taking advantage of a beautiful weekend to hang out with other reenactors. There were times, in fact, when it felt as though we may have been intruding on their foray into the past, like when we went down to talk to the Union soldiers in their camp.

We took the scenic roads both to and from Waterloo and stopped for more Michigan strawberries from a stand on our way home. After dinner we had a fire and roasted s'mores and talked about living in a time when fires were the only way to cook, myself decided that the gas stove with electric start is worth having. And that rounded out a nice Saturday.