Cleveland, OH: Cleveland History Center Revisit

The only other museum I visited during my trip to Cleveland was the Cleveland History Center, also located in Cleveland’s University Circle (museum and university district), and also strictly enforcing mask wearing. I went to visit this with my mother the day before I left, when I was already stressing about the flight, the Covid test, and having to say goodbye to everyone (complete with the inevitable guilt trips about living so far away), so visiting a museum was actually a very nice distraction for a couple of hours. The Cleveland History Center, formerly the Western Reserve Historical Society and Crawford Auto Aviation Museum (you can see why they changed their name) is up there with the Cleveland Museum of Art in terms of my most visited museums in Cleveland. I went to the art museum loads in my teens and twenties because it was free and a good way to spend a Sunday afternoon, but I went way more to WRHS as a kid because it had something for everyone. Not to play into gender stereotypes, but it typically would be my father, grandpa, and brother looking at the cars, whilst me, my mother, and grandma checked out the fashion gallery and the 1911 Hay-McKinney Mansion, which is attached to the museum. Except for the car collection and the mansion, which weren’t open during our visit, the Cleveland History Center primarily hosts temporary exhibitions, all included in the $15 admission price, along with unlimited rides on the carousel (yes, a museum with a carousel inside! Shame it wasn’t there when I was a kid, or I’d have loved this place even more).

 

Because we’re both interested in historic fashion, we started with the Chisholm-Halle Costume Wing, which was home to “Amanda Wicker: Black Fashion Design in Cleveland” at the time of our visit. Amanda Wicker was a Black fashion designer who moved to Cleveland in 1924, where she lived until her death in 1987, and was very active in supporting the Black community, both by working with groups like NAACP and the National Urban League, and by mentoring Black women who were interested in fashion design. There were only fifteen outfits in this exhibition, so it was a bit more spread out than usual, but the clothes here were gorgeous. I loved the dress with the fur shrug and the wedding dress, which had a beautiful collar.

  

The next couple of galleries were a bit confusing, because they weren’t obviously a part of any of the exhibitions, but they were also different than the things that were there the last time I visited. I assume they were just a rotating display from the museum’s permanent collections, but a bit of context might have been nice. At any rate, it was a display of hats from now-defunct area department stores and paintings by local artists, though this didn’t seem to be a part of the Cleveland artists exhibition that was in its own gallery quite a distance away, so who knows? I especially liked the painting of the West Side Market, done shortly before it opened in 1912.

  

We did go to see “Honoring Our Past: The Golden Age of Cleveland Art 1900-1945” next, which I had read about in The Plain Dealer before our visit. I’m kind of obsessed with all the art deco posters of Cleveland made to advertise various air shows and the Great Lakes Exposition back in Cleveland’s heyday in the 1930s, which the museum has hanging above their car/plane collection, so I guess I was hoping for more of that sort of thing, but that was not what I got. Instead, it was art by people who lived in Cleveland, but not necessarily images of Cleveland, which meant a lot of it was fairly meh landscapes. However, there were a few pieces I did like, especially Margaret Bourke White’s photograph of the Goodyear Blimp Hangar. I love her photography – I have her photo of the Terminal Tower whilst it was still under construction hanging on my wall at home.

 

There were also quite a few pieces here by William Sommer, who lived near to where my parents live, in the Brandywine Valley of Ohio (not to be confused with the more famous Brandywine Valley in Pennsylvania), and we enjoyed trying to see if any of his landscapes matched up to areas we knew, but I think they would be unremarkable if you weren’t familiar with the area. I did like the art deco tea set though (not by William Sommer).

 

“Women and Politics: Empowered to Vote, Empowered to Lead” was a small exhibition about the women’s rights movement in Cleveland. There were some great artefacts here, particularly the fab outfit worn by local women’s rights activist Mertice Laffer to a suffrage parade in 1914 (below), the collection of first lady dolls, and the homemade banners. There was an old-school voting machine on display as well, which honestly would have confused the crap out of me if I had to use it. I can see why it came with an instruction manual for first time voters! Honestly, I’ve never voted in person in America, so I don’t even know what the system is, but judging by the overseas voter ballots I have to fill out, I get the impression it’s more complicated than in the UK (I was still in anarchist “the whole system is evil and I’m not taking part in it” mode when I moved to the UK thirteen years ago, so I didn’t actually vote for the first time until I was well into my 20s, and it’s always been by postal ballot for US elections. I have voted in person in British elections since becoming a citizen in 2016, however).

 

Because the auto museum section is currently undergoing renovation, the only other exhibition here I hadn’t already seen was on motorcycles, but my interest level in those is pretty damn low, so I didn’t really take pictures. How great is that Cleveland Car poster though? Finally, even though I get pretty bad motion sickness, I knew my mother wanted to ride the carousel, so I agreed to go on once with her. The carousel is from Euclid Beach Amusement Park, a beloved Cleveland institution that went out of business long before I was born, but my grandparents had a book about it that I used to read all the time, and it’s exactly the sort of old-timey amusement park I wish I could have visited. I guess the carousel is the closest I’ll get, and I love that the interior is decorated with illustrations of Cleveland landmarks (I ended up right next to the Garfield Monument in Lake View Cemetery, one of my favourite places in Cleveland, though it wasn’t at all intentional because I picked my spot based solely on the horse I wanted). It wasn’t moving all that fast, so it wouldn’t have been that bad had some creepily overzealous employee (or volunteer?) who approached my mother and I before we got on to bore us with facts about the carousel that were already on the signage, not been standing alongside the gate leering at me for the entire ride, so that I had to studiously look away from him at the mirror next to me which meant I felt a bit sicker than I would have otherwise, but I was basically fine. Just a little woozy. Creeper then proceeded to follow us off the ride and start trying to tell us even more about the collections, and when we finally lost him (or so we thought), he reappeared one final time, when my mother for some reason felt compelled to tell him my whole life story, so I sincerely hope he doesn’t turn up on my doorstep in London. Ugh.

 

Other than the creepy volunteer or whatever he was, this was a fun visit, and a good way to spend my final day in Cleveland for a while. This is another museum in Cleveland I’d definitely recommend visiting – we haven’t got too many of them, but the ones we do have are mostly pretty decent!

Cleveland, OH: Temporary Exhibitions @ the CMA

Christmas tree at the Cleveland Museum of Art

So, I was able to make it to the US for Christmas in the end, though both the US and UK governments seemingly conspired to make it as stressful as possible by requiring testing before and after arrival on both ends, yet simultaneously having a shortage of tests that made this almost impossible (only for the UK to scrap the requirement for testing before entering the UK about a week after I got back). The US was by far the worst – Marcus and I spent several stressful days searching high and low for a test (we had brought some NHS ones with us, and I’m glad we did, because I was obsessively testing the whole time I was there, but those aren’t valid for travel) and eventually just ended up testing at the airport right before our flights back to the UK, because that was the only place that still had tests, at the hefty price of $95 each. And considering how stressed I get before a flight anyway, the combination of flight plus waiting to see if I would even be allowed to board said flight almost killed me. My stomach was a disaster that day – I don’t think I would have even physically been able to make it to the airport without the help of my friends Imodium and Pepto Bismol. All was well in the end, but jeez, maybe make sure that tests are actually available first before requiring people to take them.

My brother’s adorable dog.

I know that I’m the one who chose to travel during a pandemic, so I only have myself to blame, but this was the first time I’ve left the UK in two years. I hadn’t seen any of my family or American friends since Christmas 2019 (though I know many people are in the same boat, or worse off!)  – and Omicron wasn’t yet a thing at the time I booked my flight, so at time of booking, I felt the benefits outweighed the risks. And even though it was super stressful, I loved getting to meet up with a couple of close friends, spend lots of time with my brother, and most importantly, finally meet my “niece” (my brother’s dog) who is so sweet and adorable – I’m definitely going to miss her!

 

Anyway, because I was pretty paranoid about getting Covid whilst I was there and not being allowed back in the UK, I didn’t do a whole lot on this trip other than see family and friends, but one place I did feel comfortable going was the Cleveland Museum of Art, which was rigorously enforcing mask-wearing (unlike almost anywhere else…). The CMA is one of my favourite museums, so I always like to see what’s new when I’m in Cleveland. On this occasion, they had one major special exhibition that was charging an admission fee, and a few other free temporary exhibitions (in addition to the extensive permanent collection, which is always free). Since I wasn’t super interested in the paid exhibition (it was about a statue of Krishna the museum had restored), I opted to just check out the free ones.

 

The first was “Collecting Dreams: Odilon Redon”. I’ve really only heard of Redon from the Lewis Barnavelt book series by John Bellairs. Lewis’s neighbour, Mrs. Zimmerman, is a witch obsessed with the colour purple, and in every book, you get to hear about another purple painting on her walls, allegedly all gifted to her by famous painters when she was living in Europe in the early part of the 20th century (the books are set in the 1940s-50s). One of these paintings was a purple dragon by Redon, so I got the impression that he was probably into the metaphysical, and this exhibition confirmed it.

Redon used a number of different materials to make his art, including pastels, oil, and charcoals (he went through different phases with each) and my favourites by far were the charcoals, which were inspired by both fairy tales and his own dreams, and were splendidly weird and creepy. Apparently, the CMA has one of the largest collections of his works outside of France, and I’m all for it. Good stuff!

 

I also wanted to see “Ashcan School Prints”, so we headed there next. I wasn’t really familiar with the Ashcan School before visiting, but after hearing they were urban realists who depicted major American cities from 1900-1940, I was completely sold. This exhibition contained more pieces than the Redon exhibition, and I particularly loved the lithographs by Mabel Dwight of people at an aquarium and the various lithographs of flappers going about their business in the city. We seemed to have caught it just in time, as it closed shortly after Christmas, but you can still view a few of the pieces on their website.

 

We also saw Derrick Adams’ “LOOKS”, which only contained nine paintings depicting various wigs, but it was very bright and colourful. And after seeing the fabulous Peru exhibition at the BM, I had to check out the ancient Andean textiles they had on display here, which were not quite as well preserved as the ones at the BM, but were still great (yep, more severed heads!). I also loved the Peruvian animal figurines in the same gallery.

  

Finally, we saw “Fashioning Identity: Mola Textiles of Panama”. I have to confess that at first glance, I thought they were all abstract patterns, which is not really my thing, and was about to walk away, but then I looked closer and realised that each piece actually had animals and people cleverly hidden in the design, so I had to take the time to peruse the exhibition. Helpfully, the museum even provided instructions on how to look at a mola, so people don’t accidentally miss the best parts like I almost did. Mola blouses have been made since the early 20th century by the Guna women of Panama, and were used as a symbol of independence during the Guna Revolution of 1925. They’re really fascinating, and worth a closer look! I think the exhibition has now ended, but you can view quite a few of them on CMA’s website.

 

I always enjoy a visit to the CMA, and I’m glad I got to see it on this trip. We also swung by Lake View Cemetery so I could get yet another photo of the always spooky Haserot Angel, and went to my old favourite East Coast Custard (which I ended up visiting three times on this trip – I really cannot get enough frozen custard!), so it was definitely worthwhile going out to the east side. A bit more Cleveland coming next week.

Columbus, OH: Wexner Center and the Billy Ireland Cartoon Museum (Again!)

Every so often, I have one of those posts that is basically just a long angry rant about how much I hate something, and I’m afraid this is going to be one of them. I went back to Cleveland for Christmas, as is my custom, and my mother bought us a night at the BrewDog hotel in Columbus as an early Christmas present (for Marcus, I hasten to add). We drove down early that day so we would have time to see a couple of museums before meeting up with my uncle and his partner for dinner and drinks in the evening (we weren’t going to have time to do anything the next day as we had to drive back right after checkout so I could meet Hanson that afternoon!!), and one of the museums I chose to see, solely because I hadn’t been there before and it was in a convenient location, was the Wexner Center for the Arts, located on OSU’s massive campus. I think the Wex is also a venue for film screenings and performances, but the museum is what I visited, so that is what my ire is directed towards.

I knew we were off to a bad start when we were charged $9 each for admission, despite the website clearly stating it was $8. I didn’t question it because the woman at the admissions desk wasn’t very friendly, but I wasn’t happy. The exhibition at the time of my visit was HERE: Ann Hamilton, Jenny Holzer, Maya Lin and I foolishly assumed that HERE was merely the temporary exhibition, and there were other, permanent exhibitions. Nope, HERE is all that was THERE. The exhibition consisted solely of two rooms with words written on the walls, a room full of marbles, and another room full of tables of copies of images from OSU’s archives that you were meant to tear off and mail to yourself or a friend (it wasn’t clear if postage would actually be provided, and also this was a huge waste of paper). I was annoyed enough at having paid $9 for something that took all of ten minutes to see, but I was about to get even more annoyed.

Do you see all those marbles in the picture above left? They were all glued to the floor in some formation that was meant to look like rivers or some shit, which I guess was kind of cool, but they were just standard glass marbles of no real value, plus they were affixed to the floor, so were unlikely to be disturbed by footfall. Well, I walked to the end of the exhibition and tried to leave by stepping over the marbles at their narrowest point, which was only a few inches wide, because there was no other obvious exit. A guard ran up and started yelling at me and forced me to walk all the way around the exhibition to get out. She was accompanied by not one, but two other guards, all seemingly employed solely to guard the marbles. Although I didn’t say anything at the time, aside from a remark to Marcus about not disturbing the precious marbles, this is where I got angry. Leaving aside the fact that the exhibition probably shouldn’t have led you up on the wrong side of the marbles if you weren’t meant to step over them, or at least have a sign saying as much, I just can’t get over how many security guards this museum had working there to guard what was essentially a valueless artwork.

I don’t talk that much about the museum where I work for various reasons, and I’ve agonised over posting this, but I need to be honest about the realities of working in heritage for myself, my colleagues, and doubtless scores of other people throughout the UK. To say circumstances are not ideal is an understatement. Most of us spend years volunteering before we manage to land what will inevitably be a low-paying job not commensurate with our levels of education (and generally the bigger the museum is, the less they pay because people will settle for anything just for a chance to work there). And once we get that job, we put up with so much crap because we’re relieved that we have paying jobs at last – in my case, working in an office with horrible strip lighting that literally gives me a migraine every time I turn it on, so I have to work in the dark; getting verbally abused by mentally unstable visitors; having to stop what I’m doing fifty million times a day to direct people to the toilets that are just beyond my office (yes, we have many signs pointing the way, but people don’t look at them, and no, I’m not allowed to close my office door, so any member of the public can just walk right in at any time and demand things, yell at me, or make creepy comments); and despite the existence of the public toilets, sometimes even cleaning up after people who puke, pee, or shit inside the museum because our cleaner only comes once a week and we can’t just leave it there (I’m talking drunk adults doing these things, not children). I could say more, but I think it’s better if I don’t publicly post the rest. Now, I have been working in customer service in one way or another since I was 16 (not by choice, but I can’t seem to get a job that doesn’t involve it), so these are more or less all things I’ve had to deal with at some point in the past, as has probably anyone else who works with the public, but when I worked in retail and events, I at least knew there were always security staff on the premises if I needed help. At the museum, we are an entirely female team with no security staff, so we have to deal with any incidents ourselves. We don’t even have front of house staff – our welcome desk is entirely volunteer-run, by one volunteer at a time, and as their manager, I do my best to deal with any issues myself so they don’t have to, which means that even though I technically have an office job, I spend a lot of time in front of house dealing with any problems that occur. And despite all of this, I know I’m lucky to even have the job at all, since more budget cuts are imminent, and the future of the museum is currently very uncertain. So when I look at my working environment, and then I look at a museum that can charge $9 so they can employ three people to guard marbles, I get angry. And then I write a long rant like this one.

I’m going to end that rant there (even though I could go on for longer) but suffice it to say I definitely will not be returning to the Wexner! 0/5. Fortunately, my old favourite, the Billy Ireland Cartoon Museum, was there to save the day, as it is located in the building right next to the Wexner. Not only is it a free museum, but their temporary exhibitions at the time of my visit were very much up my alley. These were Drawn to Presidents: Portraits and Satiric Drawings by Drew Friedman and Ladies First: A Century of Women’s Innovations in Comics and Cartoon Art.

Any longtime readers will know how much I love presidential history, and I also love political cartoons when done well, and Friedman’s were pretty great. Not only did he draw a portrait of each president for his book All the Presidents (I didn’t buy it because it is literally just pictures of all the presidents) which all managed to be accurate yet hideously unflattering, he also drew cartoons for MAD, SPY, TIME, et al, and many of those were in the exhibitions as well as a whole section devoted to each of the presidents from Reagan through to the current President Fart (as I like to call him). I loved this.

 

I also liked the exhibition on female cartoonists, with works ranging from late 19th century cartoons advocating women’s suffrage to modern graphic novels, and everything in between. Many of them were funny, but there were also some thought-provoking and emotional cartoons, including one about a woman discovering the story of her older sister, who died when the cartoonist was a baby from a scalding accident, and how it affected her mother. I’m not going to go into too much detail on the Cartoon Museum because I’ve blogged about it a couple of times before and I’ve already made this post quite long by including that rant, but it is a fabulous little museum and I highly recommend visiting (and ignoring its neighbouring museum). The current exhibitions are great, but I’ve honestly never seen anything here that’s been a dud.

 

Rochester, NY: The George Eastman Museum

The final stop on our trip to upstate New York was Rochester, home of the George Eastman Museum. One of the curators at work had just been there to do research a few weeks before and had recommended it to me, and I also wanted to see Mount Hope Cemetery, where Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass are buried (along with 350,000 other people). So after fortifying ourselves with very delicious waffles from Funk ‘N Waffles in Syracuse (I can highly recommend the banana bread waffle), we made tracks for Rochester.

 

The museum was very large from the outside, consisting of a theatre building, the museum building, and George Eastman’s former mansion, so I was expecting the inside to be huge! However, it wasn’t quite what I was anticipating. Admission was $15, and I’m not sure if it was because the site was undergoing construction at the time of our visit, but there didn’t seem to be quite as many galleries as the exterior would have implied, and virtually no permanent collections on display, which was a surprise. Because Eastman was the founder of Kodak, I was expecting the museum to have more of a comprehensive history of photography, and it didn’t really. But let me tell you about what actually was there.

 

Because the museum building solely has temporary displays, almost nothing that we saw is still there, save for Tanya Marcuse’s “Woven”, which was a collection of photographs of leaves and other things taken from nature. Her pieces were actually quite cool and tapestry like, but it was a small gallery, so it didn’t take very long to see (and by the way, I hope you appreciate the fact that there are photos in this post, since my brother took photos there with his fancypants camera (so I didn’t bother to take many photos with my phone) that I then had to spend the subsequent two months asking him to send to me. He finally did the day before this post was published).

 

The museum does admittedly have a History of Photography gallery, but it is only one room, and also has changing themed exhibitions of artefacts taken from the permanent collections. At the time of our visit, it was all about the moon, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11. There were some very cool images in here, but we didn’t spend as much time as we would have liked due to some very annoying fellow visitors. We tried coming here right after entering the museum, but it was full of a very noisy tour group, so we decided to come back later. But when we returned, there were a couple in there who were basically shouting at each other about the photos, and then a tour guide came in, and they shouted questions at her too. So irritating. There was also a display of historical cameras in here, which I suspect is probably here all the time, but I didn’t spend much time looking at them because I couldn’t wait to get away from the shouty people.

 

This meant we headed to the special exhibition pretty quickly, which took up all of the museum’s main galleries. This was “The Art of Warner Bros. Cartoons,” which wasn’t necessarily photography related, but obviously did relate to moving images, etc. I had mixed feelings about this going in. I absolutely loved the classic Looney Tunes growing up, and spent many a Saturday morning happily watching them. But then there was some weird Warner Bros. revival in the mid-90s, where everyone got obsessed with Taz and got lame tattoos of him, and it just kind of put me off. There’s also all those wartime cartoons that Warner Bros. produced that are hella racist. But this exhibition reminded me of all the good things about the classic cartoons, and I was quite happy to stand and watch some of the best ones, which were being projected on screens throughout the exhibit.

 

The exhibit mainly featured the cartoons themselves and a lot of animation cels, along with captions explaining how each character evolved over time. For example, Elmer Fudd was originally called “Egghead,” yet bizarrely, had hair at that time, and also simply wanted Bugs for a pet, rather than to shoot him. Porky Pig is the oldest continuing Looney Tunes character, and he went from being a child to an adult, and from being Bugs’s antagonist to sometimes being on his side, though those cartoons where Porky was hunting never made any sense to me. Why would a pig hunt a rabbit? My favourite Looney Tunes were always the ones with the monsters in them, like Witch Hazel and the Big Red Monster, who is apparently named Gossamer. We both really enjoyed this exhibit, and also the fun photo ops throughout (especially appreciated because you weren’t allowed to photograph any of the animation cels).

  

These exhibitions were all that was in the main museum building, but we still had to visit Eastman’s mansion. This was an attractive Colonial Revival building accessed by cutting through the garden behind the museum. The building itself is interesting because Eastman decided to enlarge the conservatory about fifteen years after the house was built, but he didn’t want to ruin the symmetry of the house so his architect cut the house in half, jacked up half of it and moved it forward 9 feet on tracks, a process that took three months. This should give you some indication of how much money Eastman had to burn.

 

The house itself was nice, but nothing really stood out in way of decoration except for the pipe organ. If I had one in my house, I would definitely wake guests up every morning by playing some kind of Phantom of the Opera music, and I swear there was a sign that mentioned Eastman doing something similar, though I can’t find proof of it! This was the only place in the museum where there was biographical information about Eastman himself, and he seems to have been an intriguing man. He never married, but had a long-term platonic relationship with a woman with the unfortunate name of Josephine Dickman. The museum did seem to be implying that Eastman might have been gay, and based on the evidence that does seem likely, but I’m not about to posthumously out someone. He gave to a number of philanthropic causes which strangely included both dental clinics for underprivileged children and historically black colleges, but also the American Eugenics Society. So in some ways he was kind of a shit, but in others not. He killed himself at the age of 77 as he had developed a number of degenerative health conditions and didn’t want to lose control over his own body. His suicide note, which was inside the house (in facsimile form), read, “To my friends, my work is done – Why wait?”

 

On a less depressing note, the house was also home to an interactive room probably intended for children that included a giant zoetrope and a room sized camera obscura (the earliest form of camera, basically a pinhole in a darkened room that projects an upside down image of whatever’s outside inside the room) and one forlorn room at the back of the second floor that (finally!) had some information about the history of Kodak. Other than the rooms downstairs, which you could peek into, the rest of the house is used as a research room accessible by appointment only, so we headed back to the main museum building.

 

There is of course a shop with some pretty good camera themed merchandise, and a small cafe that we did not visit. Although it wasn’t at all what I had expected, I really enjoyed myself, though I probably could have done with some more examples of early photography, which is what I had been hoping to see. Because the exhibitions have changed now, your experience will be different from mine, but hopefully it will still be worth the visit! I also have to mention the car that was parked outside during our visit, which is apparently not Eastman’s (per the sign attached to it), but belongs to a member of staff. Based on the sign and the skeleton astride the car, I suspect we’d get along. 3.5/5 for the museum.

 

We did also briefly visit Mount Hope Cemetery, and it was a bit too manicured and sunny for my tastes, but still worth seeing, though the map I found online wasn’t much help when it came to actually finding the graves of famous burials (I only managed to find Susan B. Anthony). We were disappointed in our quest to find ice cream in Rochester when the pretentious chocolate shop downtown only had the grossest of flavours (fig and wine? Blech!), but we did manage to grab excellent doughnuts outside Buffalo at Paula’s Donuts, which were a sweet end to our road trip, and helped keep us from starving to death when stuck in traffic most of the way back.

Syracuse, NY: The Erie Canal Museum

After leaving the disappointing Women’s Rights National Historic Park, we headed over to Syracuse for the Erie Canal Museum. I was super excited for this mainly because of my love of the “Fifteen Miles on the Erie Canal” song (apparently its real name is “Low Bridge”) which we learned in elementary school, and which I still catch myself singing at odd moments; but also because I grew up near the remains of the Ohio and Erie Canal, and spent a lot of time walking the old towpaths that have been turned into hiking trails (usually not walking by choice. I was not an outdoors kind of kid. Or adult).

 

We found parking in a lot nearby and headed on in, as we only had a little over an hour before the museum closed. We were already enticed by the canal boat inside we could view from the street, and the excellent mural painted opposite the entrance. Admission to the museum is free, though they do recommend a $5 donation, and we were the only visitors for most of our visit, which was lovely, though probably not great for the museum. The museum is housed in an original 1850 weighlock building, the last building of this type standing.

 

The layout reminded me a lot of the museum I work at, sort of narrow and labyrinthine, but the contents most definitely didn’t, because this museum was actually kind of fun! They had quite a few interactive things where you could see how a canal works, and even a computer game where you had to weigh various canal boats and then assess fees based on the weight. Unfortunately, the game that looked like the most fun, pictured above (badly, because the lighting was not conducive to taking photos without glare), was out of order, but at least we got to enjoy most of the things. As you might expect, the museum was primarily about the building and operation of the canal, which was completed in 1825. Labour standards not being great at the time, conditions for the men building the canal were horrendous, particularly when building through the Montezuma Marshes, which we had visited earlier in the day, but conditions for passengers were mixed, based mainly on how much money they had to spend. Some of the boats actually looked pretty luxurious.

We got to experience canal boat lives a bit ourselves by boarding the replica canal boat that we had glimpsed from outside the museum. Though accommodations on this model were spartan, the boat felt more open than a proper seafaring ship, and there was definitely a lot more head room! Of course I plopped myself down on the privy so I could show you my patented fake pooping face (again). On canal boats, men and women were typically forced to bunk separately, even if they were all part of the same family, though since canal boats weren’t all that large, they would have usually been in the same room with just a curtain pulled across the middle. The canal originally ran between Albany and Buffalo (though later canals would pass through Pennsylvania and Ohio and link up most of Lake Erie), and took about a week to travel in a boat pulled by mules, about half the time of the overland route.

 

The upstairs floor of the museum was all decked out like ye olde Syracuse, and you know I love a fake historic town. Disappointingly, you couldn’t actually walk through the shops, as you were separated from them by an alarmed rail, but it was still pretty OK. My favourite thing up here was the sign on the saloon till reading, “All Nations Welcome but Carrie,” which was a total history nerd joke I had to explain to my brother (Carrie Nation was a famous temperance advocate who was famous for smashing up bars with a hatchet). There was music playing in the background – all songs about the Erie Canal, though “Low Bridge” didn’t come on, at least not whilst I was standing there.

 

The last room of the museum contained a temporary display on the different types of canal boats, which felt a little half-assed to be honest, as it was just a handful of sign boards in the middle of an empty room, but I did enjoy looking at the images of people travelling along the canal (especially the boats that had become completely snowed in, because New York gets lake effect snow just like Ohio). I also enjoyed trying on hats in the hat corner, even though I wasn’t totally sure if you were supposed to.

  

My other favourite thing in the museum, which had nothing to do with the museum itself, was the poster advertising the “Eerie Canal Run” – you guessed it, fifteen miles on the Erie Canal! I hate running more than most things, but if I lived here, I would had to have done it. Halloween and Erie Canal puns? Yes please! The shop, though small, had some rather charming merchandise, and I couldn’t resist the Christmas ornament painted with a very crude mule. For some reason I always thought “Low Bridge” was written from the perspective of the mule, though the museum taught me it was meant to be the guy leading the mule singing it. Either way, I really like canal mules, so lucky for me that there was a statue of one right across the street from the museum! I thought this museum was totally fun and interesting, and the fact that it was free made it even better (it’s not a very big museum, but to be honest, it was bigger than I was expecting). 3.5/5.

Seneca Falls, NY: Women’s Rights National Historic Park

After leaving Corning, we headed north along the edge of Lake Seneca, one of the Finger Lakes, ultimately Syracuse-bound. Since this was very much a Russell (my brother) and Jessica (me, obviously) trip, we made the following pit stops: a cider farm, so we could get freshly made cider doughnuts; a brewery called Climbing Bines, so we could split a taster of their beers (this was a Russell stop); an ice creamery that uses duck eggs in their ice cream rather than chicken eggs (as in, they make their custard with duck egg yolks, not that they put whole eggs in the ice cream. That would be gross) where we got an actual flight of ice creams (so much better than beer), and finally Seneca Falls to see the Women’s Rights National Historic Park.

 

I remember reading an article about this area in the Plain Dealer a few years ago which made it sound as though the museum had been recently redone, and suggested that a long weekend would be an appropriate amount of time to spend in Seneca Falls in order to see all its attractions. Because of this, my expectations were somewhat different to what was actually here. Apparently the “historic park” consists of four different building sites, but since we hadn’t properly researched it in advance, we ended up at the main visitors’ centre. Like many NPS sites, admission was free, so that at least was a step in the right direction. We were greeted by the collection of bronze statues downstairs that initially looked like they were made out of chocolate, but in the first of many disappointments, they were sadly not.

 

The museum was located in the upstairs part of the building, and was much smaller than I had been expecting. It consisted of a number of very visually appealing displays containing information about women’s fight for equality, but the overall impression was that it was that it was style over substance, as the displays were a bit short on content. I was also disappointed that every single interactive element was no longer working – maybe I had misread the newspaper article, but it certainly didn’t look as though it had been redone in the last few years (though not quite as outmoded as though it hadn’t been touched since 1980, when the site opened).

 

There was also a small section on the Seneca Falls Convention, which after all, is the whole reason the museum is here! Held in 1848, it was the first women’s rights convention, and produced the Declaration of Sentiments, a version of the Declaration of Independence that included rights for women. It was held in Seneca Falls because many suffragists lived in the area, including Elizabeth Cady Stantion, the oddly apostrophied M’Clintocks, Lucretia Mott, who was visiting Stanton at the time; and Susan B Anthony and Frederick Douglass, who lived in nearby Rochester. Although it didn’t immediately accomplish anything, it did introduce the country to the women’s rights movement, and clarify that the main goal for women’s rights activists at that time should be women’s suffrage. Again, I could have done with more information about this on the site, as the text provided seemed to be a somewhat patchy account (I couldn’t quite work out how Amelia Bloomer, who also lived locally, fit in to all of this).

The museum also had a very small temporary display on Sojourner Truth. The role of black women in the women’s rights movement is often a depressing one, because despite the presence of Frederick Douglass at the Seneca Falls Convention, and the abolitionist stance of most of the suffragists, some of them were still hella racist, and thought it was appalling that black men were granted the right to vote before white women had it. So if black men were looked down upon, black women didn’t really stand a chance. Despite that, women like Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth still got involved in the fight for women’s suffrage. One of the most interesting sections here was on Truth’s famous “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech. Although several sources reported on her speech after it was delivered (in Akron, Ohio, by the way), which originally did not contain the words “ain’t I a woman,” a version of it that was published twelve years later did, and the name stuck. This same inaccurate version also gave Truth a stereotypical black Southern dialect, though she had actually always lived in the North, and spoke Dutch as her first language, so it is highly unlikely that she would have had a Southern accent. Because of this latter, inaccurate, but most famous version of her speech, her actual words have virtually been wiped from history.

 

The Methodist church next door, where the convention was actually held, is also part of the historic site and is free to enter, though there was no one in there at the time of our visit, and virtually nothing to read. The other sites that are part of the park are the Elizabeth Cady Stanton House, and the M’Clintocks’ house, though as no one at the park actually spoke to us or provided any information, I didn’t realise this until I was researching this post. We did stop, however, at the “When Elizabeth met Susan, plus Amelia!” statue (not its official name), which I only discovered existed after picking up a tourist brochure in the church. Although there was a map included, it was still a total pain to find due to a road being closed, and we had to park (probably illegally) across the road so I could run over and grab a photo whilst wearing my new suffragist sash (not as good as the suffragette sash. Green is better than gold). It depicts Amelia Bloomer introducing Stanton and Anthony. The statue was great (after we found it), but I’m sorry to say I was very disappointed in the visitors’ centre, particularly since NPS rangers are usually super friendly and helpful. Not here. 2/5 for the portions of the park that we saw.

 

Corning, NY: The Corning Museum of Glass

Long time readers are probably familiar with the awful family vacations I used to have to go on whilst growing up, because I complain about them a lot. I suppose I should be grateful we got to go anywhere at all, as I had some friends whose families never travelled, not even to other parts of Ohio, but honestly, most of the time I would have much rather stayed home with a good book. Memorable (for the wrong reasons) trips include the year we drove all the way to North Carolina to go to a really big furniture factory outlet, and my parents didn’t even buy anything; the trip to Washington where the only museum we were allowed to visit was the Air and Space Smithsonian (the one I had the least interest in), the trip to Vegas when I was 16 and had to spend the whole time hanging out in the hotel’s crappy arcade with my then 9 year old brother, whilst getting hit on by the unattractive nerd that worked there; and of course, the trip to the Finger Lakes region of New York (known for its wineries, because 15 year olds love nothing more than going to wineries where they can’t legally drink, just like 16 year olds love nothing more than going to Vegas where they can’t legally do anything) where we stopped at the Corning Museum of Glass, but couldn’t actually go in because my father was too cheap to pay the admission fee (my policy is if you’re not willing to pay to do anything when you’re on holiday, you’re probably better off not going anywhere at all). Well, on my recent visit home, my brother and I decided to take a road trip together, minus the ‘rents, and since he travels to upstate New York a lot for work and knows the area well, we thought we’d give ourselves a redo of that Finger Lakes trip, only this time, we would go to the glass museum, and plenty of other places besides. And not a single winery!

 

Corning was our first stop, and having gotten an early start, we arrived around noon. We first headed into the quaint (albeit small) downtown for some tasty pizza by the slice and seriously one of the best ice creams I’ve ever had (if you find yourself in Corning, you must go to the hilariously named Dippity Do Dahs. Get the Butternut Toffee in one of their homemade cones, which comes with the option of hot fudge in the bottom, which of course only a fool would refuse. Don’t be a fool), and then to the museum in time for our glass blowing session. Yes, glass blowing. Having been denied the joys of the Corning Museum of Glass the first time around, this time we were taking advantage of everything they had to offer, including glass blowing! Admission to the museum is $20 (which is admittedly on the steep side, though I’m quite sure it wasn’t nearly so much nearly 20 years ago), and the glass blowing classes were another $32 per person on top of that – we booked ours in advance to be sure of a place.

There are various things you can choose to make, including ornaments and jewellery, but since we were visiting during glass pumpkin season, the choice was obvious! There are some more intensive classes where you actually learn how to shape the glass yourself, but in the class we chose, the instructor shaped the pumpkin for us – all we did was the actual blowing (ha) and we got to choose the colours we wanted to use. Although I would like to take a proper glass blowing class one day, this is a good choice if you just want a quick taster, and honestly, not that expensive considering pumpkins in the museum’s shop were at least $32, and at least this way we got to customise them. My brother and I were thrilled that we got chosen to go first so we didn’t have to hang around watching everyone else make theirs (you can’t collect the pumpkins until the next day, as they obviously need to cool down in a controlled environment, but they do offer shipping within the US if you’re not going to hang around that long). My blowing technique was semi-ridiculous, but it seemed to work fine, and I’m super happy with my purple and blue pumpkin (which survived the trip back to the UK intact!).

 

And then it was time to explore the museum, which was huge! I think there are six main galleries, with a couple extra in the outbuilding where we did the glass blowing. Some of the galleries have scavenger hunts that you can access via the Glass App available on the museum’s website – these were fun, but the museum’s wifi kept cutting out without my noticing, so I ended up accidentally using quite a bit of my expensive overseas data, which is a bit annoying.

 

Coincidentally, not long before visiting here, Marcus and I had watched the Netflix series Blown Away (which I like to call Blow Master), which is a glass blowing competition that is strangely compelling. I super hated the woman that won because she seemed ultra-pretentious and kept referring to everyone else’s pieces as “pedestrian,” and since the grand prize was a year’s artist in residency at the Museum of Glass, I was really hoping there’d be some of her work here so I could stand in front of it and call it pedestrian. To be honest, I quite liked her sausage chandelier (meant to be some kind of metaphor about the patriarchy), but I called it pedestrian anyway out of spite. Unfortunately, we were a week too early to see an exhibition of work from the show (I would have planned the trip differently if I’d known), but I was glad I at least got to see one thing.

In addition to the modern glass art, the museum also had a huge gallery of glass throughout history (entitled, rather overwhelmingly, “35 Centuries of Glass”), with pieces dating back to the Ancient Romans. This was a bit too large to take in properly all in one go, but they had a paper version of a scavenger hunt in here, which was definitely intended for children, but my brother and I of course still did one, and at least it gave our visit some sort of focus. I loved the crazy intricate miniature glass tableaux, which were mostly religious in nature. I forgot to grab a picture of the captions, and can’t find them on the museum’s website, so I can’t tell you more about them other than that they were early modern European, but they were definitely my favourite things in here, and the museum had at least ten of them.

 

There was also a gallery on the science of glass blowing, and that was where all the fun interactive stuff was hiding. This included a lot of different mirrors, science experiment things where you could see the different ways glass refracts and reflects light, and even a thermal camera so you could see how double glazing helps to hold heat in (I’m always more interested to see how cold my body is compared to other people’s – my nose and hands are always freezing!). This was also the area where they gave science demonstrations, so we hung around to watch one on glass breaking (demonstrations are free and offered throughout the day) – my brother and I took strongly against the obnoxious kid who was picked to assist, and cracked up when the woman worked there kept referring to him as “Garius” instead of “Darius”, which was actually his name. We now call all obnoxious children “Garius”.

The shop, which was all we were allowed to see of the museum on our first attempt to visit all those years ago, is also really big (seriously all the glass pumpkins and gourds), though as we had already made our own glass pumpkins, we didn’t feel the need to buy anything. Since Corning is where Corningware comes from (hence the glass museum being located here), they had a whole separate section in the shop just for that. $20 is definitely a lot for a museum visit, but we spent three hours in the museum, and could easily have spent more if we had been bothered to read all the information in “35 Centuries of Glass” (it was so much information though), so I think it was a worthwhile splurge, and of course I love my pumpkin! 4/5, and I’m glad we got to remedy this failure to visit at last! I also liked that our hotel was within walking distance of the museum, as was the downtown area, so it was that rare American city where you didn’t actually have to use a car. Bonus points for that and the amazing ice cream.

 

Cleveland, OH: Grays Armory

Grays Armory is meant to be one of the most haunted buildings in Cleveland (right up there with Franklin Castle, which is not open to the public), and it’s certainly one of the coolest looking ones. Even though I grew up in Cleveland and went downtown with reasonable frequency (considering there’s not actually much to do in downtown Cleveland), I don’t recall ever seeing this building before. It is open to the public for tours on the first Wednesday of every month from 10-4, which happened to coincide with my recent visit to see my family, so my mother and I decided to check it out (though we were not optimistic about actually seeing any paranormal activity).

 

We managed to find metered parking on the street behind the Armory (we were short on quarters, so we paid for an hour, which was cutting it close – I’d probably pay for at least an hour and a half to be on the safe side) and headed in, only to be greeted by one of the biggest dogs I’ve ever seen (picture does not give sense of scale). I can sometimes be a bit scared of big dogs, so walking in to see one the size of a wolf waiting for me was initially a little intimidating, but he was very friendly, and I was happy to give him all the pats once we’d gotten better acquainted and I realised he was a total sweetheart. Tours normally cost $8 per person, but the day we visited was free for some reason (though we did leave a donation at the end).

 

We were initially the only visitors, but after waiting a few minutes with no one else turning up, the guide was happy to start the tour (a couple came in about a third of the way through, and she offered to recap for them at the end, but they just left immediately after the tour finished). Since I was keen to see the building, I thought we’d start walking around it right away, but most of the “tour” was actually just a talk delivered in the reception room (which also served as the ladies’ waiting room back in the day before ladies were allowed to join), which was fine, just not what I was expecting, so the whole time we were sitting there I was anxious that we wouldn’t actually have time to see the rest of the building.

 

I didn’t really know anything about the Armory going in, and the poster behind our guide was a little misleading because of its incorrect punctuation, which read “Gray’s Armory,” so I reasonably assumed it was named after someone called Gray. Nope. It should actually be Grays’ Armory, or Grays Armory (as they call themselves on their website), because it is named after the Cleveland Grays, one of America’s oldest militias, and it is America’s oldest independent armory. I’m not really down with the whole militia thing, especially given what it’s become today (weirdos with a million guns living in compounds in Idaho), but I can concede that there probably was some need for law and order in the days before a police force when Cleveland was essentially frontier. The Grays were founded in 1837 and the current building dates to 1893, its two earlier incarnations having burnt down. This building actually partially burnt as well, but the thick stone walls saved the front portion of the building where the reception room was located. I guess after the third burning, they finally learned to stop using fire in a building where gunpowder was housed, or they just stopped housing gunpowder there.

 

Given the armory’s reputation as super haunted, I would have assumed some people died in the fire, but apparently no one did (which is good news, but not great for alleged paranormal activity!). So maybe the whole haunting idea stems more from the fact that some of these men did serve in the American Civil War, where undoubtedly some of them died, and maybe they returned to this building in the afterlife. The Grays were named after the colour of their uniforms, so you can imagine that caused some confusion in the Civil War, what with being a Northern unit and all! They were pretty quickly switched to the standard Union blue, and veterans of the war were subsequently allowed to wear a blue uniform to militia related events, including standing guard over Lincoln’s coffin, which they did when it passed through Cleveland on the funeral train and was laid out in Public Square. They were meant to take part in the Spanish-American War, but by the time they completed training, the war was basically over. And the US government got rid of independent militias in 1903, so that was the end of the Grays as a fighting unit.

 

However, the Grays still exist as a social and historical organisation, which women are allowed to join (the tour guide gave us a bit of a hard sell, but since I don’t even live in Cleveland (and am not much for clubs), I declined), and they still have their original uniforms, which is pretty bad ass! When we were finally allowed to leave the reception room, one of the rooms our guide took us to see was the uniform room, which had been ingeniously designed with flip down seats in front of each locker, and air vents at the top to keep things ventilated (not great for keeping out clothes moths, but I don’t think they’re as much of an issue in the US as they are in Britain). They also still have some of their original bearskin hats, which look very similar to what the Queen’s Guard wear in the UK. The guide mentioned that the type of bear they’re made from is now endangered, so they will fortunately be switching to a synthetic version when they need replacing.

 

I’d like to really emphasise the social part of the organisation, because when the militiamen weren’t off fighting, they just seemed to party. The Armory, although it did house weapons, was basically a big clubhouse, and I get the impression the men just hung out upstairs drinking and smoking. Women were allowed to attend certain events here, and the large drill hall was the perfect space for dances and performances by the Cleveland Orchestra. It has housed a 1930 pipe organ since 1969 when Warner Brothers decided to donate it, so they still put on concerts using it, as well as hosting lectures and “haunted evenings,” none of which took place during my visit to Cleveland, sadly.

 

We were eventually allowed up to the first floor as well, which had some uber masculine wood panelled rooms, one of which is meant to be haunted by a cigar smoking former member (the only ghost mentioned by the tour guide). I don’t know about all that (definitely didn’t smell any cigar smoke, and to be fair, the guide pointed out that a smoke smell likely seeps out of the walls when it gets hot outside, so she wasn’t exactly credulous either, which I appreciate. I like to learn about ghosts, but people who take them seriously are a bit much), but there was a splendid little collection of taxidermy, including a furry deer butt, and a goat in a sailor hat.

 

Unfortunately, the second floor is currently closed for restoration, so that ended our tour. Considering it was free, I think it was really pretty informative – though there were a few incorrect facts (general historical ones – I don’t know enough about the Grays to know if that information was accurate) and of course the irritating punctuation mistakes throughout the signage (at least get your own name right!), it was definitely interesting to learn about this lesser-known piece of Cleveland’s history, and the building was of course fantastic. I can’t say if it’s actually haunted (probably not, since ghosts aren’t real), but it sure looks haunted, and that’s really all I care about. I will say that there are various Haunted Cleveland tours that will take you in here, but they are about ten times the price of the Armory’s tour (when it’s not free), and they have pretty crap reviews, so I think this is your best way in to the building, and at least this way you know the money is going to preservation. 3/5 for the Armory tour. As I said at the start, you can’t go inside Franklin Castle, which is meant to be even more haunted (if ghosts existed), but it is nearby (Ohio Cityish, past the West Side Market), so if you want to grab a shot of the exterior whilst you’re downtown, it is definitely doable. You can see my photo of it below. Spooky!

Cleveland, OH: “Medieval Monsters” @ the CMA

I think this week is less of a stretch than last week in keeping with the Halloween theme of October. C’mon, monsters?! Scary! But obviously the Cleveland Museum of Art doesn’t agree with me, because this exhibition closed well before Halloween, on 6th October. So you can’t visit it now, but I couldn’t have blogged about it in time anyway because I didn’t see it myself until the week before it closed, what with not living in Cleveland (frankly, I was glad I got to see it at all, after longingly watching CMA post about it for months on Instagram).

 

“Medieval Monsters: Terrors, Aliens, Wonders” was a free exhibition, as is the museum itself, but good luck finding parking nearby other than in the museum’s $10 lot (and public transport in Cleveland? Forget it!), but I can’t really begrudge them that income before it is such an excellent museum. However, they could have had better signage, because it took me ages to figure out where this exhibition was (I could only find paper maps, when a big mounted map somewhere would be much more eco-friendly), and I couldn’t even find a member of staff to ask. Eventually I realised it was downstairs, opposite the main special exhibition that you have to pay for (on Michelangelo at the time of my visit. I skipped it).

 

As you may have guessed from the title, the exhibition was divided into three sections: Terrors, which was meant to be about how monsters “enhanced the auras of those in power,” though I seem to recall it being primarily about saints and the ways in which they were tortured to death (admittedly, many of those pictures and manuscripts were originally owned by various kings and queens, hence the power I guess); Aliens, which was about marginalised groups in medieval European society; and Wonders, which was more in the vein of teratology, and included fabulous beasts and anomalous (and imaginary) humans.

 

The museum had also produced a rather fabulous free Field Guide to Medieval Monsters, which included images of all the monsters featured in the exhibition, with a brief description of each. This included some of my old favourites like Blemmyae (the supposed race of headless people with faces on their chests) and the Hellmouth (literally a mouth that was meant to be the entrance to hell); and others I’d seen but never knew the names of, like Gryllus (a human head on horse-like legs. Different from a centaur, because Gryllus is just a head sitting right on top of legs, no body) and the Ziphius (meant to be a horrible sea monster, but he’s grumpy and adorable! I want one as a pet. Please go look at him via the link at the start of this paragraph).

 

Even considering that much of the art was religious in nature – which is not normally my thing – because it was for the most part so weird and gory, this ending up being so my type of exhibition. There was thoughtful text in each room describing how the idea of monsters shaped the medieval world, and covering serious themes like mental illness and xenophobia, but I have to admit that I was mainly in it for the illuminated manuscripts and the promise of marginalia, and that is what has stuck with me the most when it came time to write this post. Though I probably shouldn’t, I find many medieval pictures depicting the martyrdom of saints completely hilarious, and my favourite here was the piece above left depicting St. Bartholomew keeping his chin up with a jolly grin whilst being flayed alive (and clearly the medieval church had a sense of humour just as sick as mine, because he is the patron saint of tanners, leather workers and butchers. Talk about black humour).

 

There was also some charming marginalia here, including my personal favourite, a man mooning some sort of ceremony (I forgot which) with his thumb up his butt to indicate disrespect (in case the mooning wasn’t disrespectful enough). Not quite as good as a butt trumpet, but close enough!

 

I also loved all the beasts – even the real ones like elephants and crocodiles appeared to have been drawn by someone who had never seen such things in person, and I find the naive nature of their illustrations endlessly charming. This exhibition was an absolute joy to look at, and I’m sorry you won’t be able to see it too, but I hope my (poor quality) images at least gave you a sense of what was there. My only complaint was that the postcards in the gift shop didn’t feature the best of the monsters, but I know having custom postcards made is always a bit of a gamble, so I can’t bitch too much. 4/5.

 

Whilst I was here, in addition to visiting my favourite Henri Rousseau (Fight between a Tiger and a Buffalo) and Jacques-Louis David (Cupid and Psyche) paintings, I also popped in to see their “Color and Comfort: Swedish Modern Design” exhibition, which was in one of the small galleries upstairs. Based on the name, I was expecting something IKEA-esque, but it was so much better than that. This was actually about textile design, and though it was a bit light on signage (perhaps because it had been put together by grad students at Case), the fabrics themselves were absolutely lovely, as you can hopefully see from the images below. It only took me about ten minutes to view, but it’s worth the detour if you’re here anyway. Good old CMA!

 

 

Canton, OH: The MAPS Museum

I’ve mentioned before how my brother is not necessarily the biggest fan of museums (which isn’t to say that he won’t visit them, just that he doesn’t get excited about them like I do), but he does like military museums (if you couldn’t tell from my Belgium posts), and there is one right in Canton, Ohio that I hadn’t yet been to (though he had, on multiple occasions). So, we decided to visit it together, and go see They Shall Not Grow Old right afterwards (since I liked it so much when I watched it on the BBC I was more than happy to watch it again on a big screen) for a full-day of war-related fun (if war is ever “fun”).

  

The MAPS Museum is primarily an aviation museum (MAPS is an acronym for Military Aviation Preservation Society), but they do have some galleries on Ohio troops from all branches of the military.  Admission to MAPS is $10, and includes the option of a free guided tour, though as we had to leave at a specific time to catch the film, we opted to guide ourselves. (Also, they have one of the cutest mailboxes ever, as you can see above.)

  

We were still greeted by one of the volunteers right after entering the museum, and he told us more about some of the objects we showed the most interest in. It was nice to see such friendly and passionate volunteers (without being scary, like the woman on the USS Cod). My attention was grabbed right away by the Sopwith Triplane 1916, since the Sopwith factory was in Kingston upon Thames, which is where I work (Kingston that is, not the Sopwith factory, which has been defunct since the 1990s). According to the volunteer, it was built (or restored? I don’t remember which) by a man in Ohio with advice from former Sopwith people in Kingston. We don’t even have a Sopwith in our museum, just some models and an old time clock from the factory (I mean, that’s partially because we don’t have room for a plane, but it would still be cool), so it was good to see one here.

  

I’m no aviation buff, but the hangar was full of an interesting array of aircraft, including a couple planes you could climb into, and the gondola from a Goodyear Blimp (Goodyear have a massive blimp hangar not far from the MAPS Museum. They usually have a Christmas event where you can drive through it. It’s neat!). There are even more aircraft housed outside, which you can view in the summer, but the gates were locked when we visited. Apparently many of the planes are on loan from the Air Force, so the MAPS Museum can restore them and send them back, which is really pretty cool. Also cool (temperature-wise) was the hangar, a little too cool, frankly, as they tend to be, so my brother suggested heading into the gallery at the back to warm up a little.

  

This turned out to be about aviators in a number of wars, but primarily WWII. There were a lot of great newspaper clippings and artefacts in here – in fact, almost too many, as there was too much text to read it all on one visit. But I would rather have too much information than not enough, and there was interesting stuff, like the story of the unfortunately named Lt. Reamer “Buzz” Sewell (I can see why he went by his nickname, but it was evidently a family name, as his father was a Reamer too), who was captured by the Germans and served out the remainder of the war in a POW camp; and that of the “Romanian Princess” who helped to save 1200 airmen during the war (there was a sweet little article about how they threw her a party after she moved to the US in 1955, and she was thrilled to see all her “boys” again).

  

Oh yeah, and there were some fantastic mannequins. Just really superlatively doofy, as you can probably see. And Dilbert the parachute dummy.

  

There was also a gallery upstairs, and this was a more general history of wars that Ohio troops had some involvement in, going all the way back to skirmishes between Native Americans and some of the earliest settlers (obviously not a shining moment in Ohio’s history), up until roughly the present day (I can’t remember where exactly it finished but there was definitely stuff about the Vietnam War, and possibly the Gulf War as well). There were also displays about the Civil War, which were of more interest to me (the Civil War is great for social history, because it had such a huge effect in shaping the country America became (for better or worse) and totally changed American death practices, in addition to being fascinating from a medical history point of view), including a small display about Harvey the dog, who I encountered 5 years ago at the Massillon Museum (not the real dog, obviously (though I suppose he could have been taxidermied), but a display about him).

  

I liked the section on WWI also, though I could have done with more stories about individual soldiers from Ohio, like the one about Eugene J. Bullard, the first black fighter pilot (he fought in the French Foreign Legion because he was living in Europe when the war started, having found that it offered many more opportunities than still segregated America), and less general history, though I suppose most Americans aren’t particularly well versed in WWI (since we were only in it for about a year) so perhaps it’s for the best that it’s there. I did enjoy the display about failed WWI inventions, like the poor fellow who had to wear the giant headset shown below (captioned simply and amusingly “didn’t work”).

  

I also have to mention the story of a teacher named Eva Sparrowgrove, because it made me tear up a little. She wrote to all 310 of her former students that enlisted during the war, and made a window banner to commemorate their service, including gold stars for the 9 who died in combat.  There was a fire at her house in 1950, but another one of her former students who became a fire fighter was able to save the banner, albeit with a little water damage. Lest you worry, Eva also survived the fire and continued to teach until 1973. She died in 1985 at the age of 82.

  

The museum was more on the scale of the Wings Museum than that of some larger aviation museums I’ve visited, but had far better (and more coherent) content than Wings (though sadly, nowhere to put my ass where Damian Lewis’s ass had been). Because we did have to leave to see the film (and get frosty chocolate milkshakes after!), I didn’t read everything completely thoroughly (honestly, it was just too damn much to read), but I guess that will give me a reason to return (my brother informs me that their displays also change regularly). I think they could be a little more discerning about the amount of material they’re including (as in, there doesn’t need to be quite so much of it!) but I get the sense that they are largely volunteer-run, and the volunteers were all super friendly and helpful, so I’ll cut them some slack. 3.5/5.