Florida, Texas, & Tennessee 2000-01

Dec. 30, 2000

Hi.

We've been in Florida about ten days.  The weather has been
cooler than normal and we've had a bit of rain.  We're not just sitting and freezing
in the van, however.  We've been making good use of our museum memberships
and visiting places along the way.

In Savannah, GA we visited the home of Juliette Gordon Lowe, the Museum of Art, and
a ship museum.

In St. Augustine we looked at the majestic 'Golden Age' hotels which were built
in Spanish and Moorish styles. They are no longer hotels, but have been
recycled into government offices and Flagler College. One old street in town
had homes from the Spanish colonization of Florida as well as the oldest wooden
schoolhouse still standing in the U.S. In the area, we visited the St. Augustine
Lighthouse and walked to the top


On the way south, in the Palm Beach area, we toured the winter
home of Henry Flagler. Flagler was a partner of J.D.
Rockefeller in the development of Standard Oil Corp. and the developer of the
Florida East Coast Railway. Also nearby, we visited the Norton Museum of Art.

In Ft. Lauderdale, we passed up the Science Discovery Center
because of the crowds.  Bad weather brings lots of people to museums, especially
those with children on their hands.  Instead, we went to the Museum of Art.
We really lucked out here!  The current exhibit  "The Treasures of the Topkapi
Palace' displays art treasure from the Ottoman Empire of the 15th and 16th century.
A Highlight of the exhibit was a presentation dagger which had several
large emeralds.  It was also encrusted with diamonds and other precious gems.
The film 'Topkapi' fictionalized the theft of this valuable piece.

This morning we visited 'Vizcaya,' the Italinate winter home of
International Harvester VP James Deering.  Currently, we are at the Miami Museum of
Science and Space Transit. The computer is slow, but workable.
The special exhibit this season is 'Raptors.'

We're on our way toward the Keys.  We hope  to get some of
Florida's famous sunshine and some scuba diving.  We're looking forward to
some warmer weather after tonight's predicted freeze.

Regards,

A&S

Florida Keys
January 12, 2001

Hi!

We got down to Key West and got to do some scuba diving.  The weather
was good, but the seas were a little rougher than I
had been told.  Two anti-sea-sickness tablets, a handful of antacids,
and half a pound of ginger snaps got me through the two
dives.  I didn't hang over the rail until I came up from our last dive
of the afternoon.  I didn't even get a chance to get my air tank
off when I got rid of what was left of the ginger snaps.

Under water, it was interesting.  We got to see a Giant Manta Ray
[about 12 feet in length and more than half that in width].
We saw dolphins on the surface.  We also saw hundreds of jellyfish,
some as large as serving platters.  Unfortunately, we had to
surface through the swarm to get back to the boat.  Sarah got several
stings, but didn't react too badly.  The marks are mostly gone now.

We spent several days in Key West.  We visited many shops [mostly
selling the same kinds of t-shirts] and the Audubon House and Tropical
Garden Museum which was the home of a 'wrecker.'  James
Audubon visited here and made many of his drawings of tropical birds
while here.  Some of the original coloured works are
on display. [It's 'coloured' rather than 'colored' because
they were produced in London.]  Wreckers salvaged ships which
were wrecked on the reefs.  They saved people first, ships
second, and cargo last.  There is, however, some dispute on the priorities
of some of the wreckers.

The wreckers had very well furnished homes [note:  furnished
with valuable salvaged items] and nice clothing [see previous
note].  Due to the enterprise of the wreckers, Key West had the
highest per capita wealth in the U.S. in those days.  Today's
entrepreneurs garner wealth by gouging tourists.

We're on our north toward Miami; moving slowly.

Regards,

A&S







Islamorada Key, FL
January 13, 2001

Our scuba diving experience with Captain's Corner gave us a
feel for the coral reef.  Florida has the only living coral reef
in North America

The Overseas Highway, which connects the mainland with Key West, was
built in 1938 on the right-of-way of Flagler's Florida
East Coast Railroad which had become defunct.  The 100+ mile drive
is very scenic.  Driving over many keys, one has the
opportunity to see palm-lined coves, harbors, and small
maritime villages. The ride, itself, is enjoyable and easy.  Seafood restaurants, dive
shops, and other sea-related establishments abound; we've visited some.

We're now working our way toward the mainland; but slowly

Regards,

A&S


Cross City, FL (in the north western part of the peninsula;
referred to as the 'Nature Coast')
Feb. 15, 2001

We spent a week in Manatee Spring State Park.  The spring
is 72 degrees year-'round.  We've been to this park several
times before, but didn't swim this time.  I wanted to
keep out of the water until the cuts on my hand, from being
hit by a car while biking into town, healed.

A motorist failed to give me enough clearance and hit my left wrist and handle bar with
his side-view mirror. I was not thrown from the bicycle, but was taken to the
hospital (the only one in the county) for x-rays of my wrist and to treat the cuts.
No bones were broken.

We took the following day off, but were back biking two
days later.  We did most of our biking on the 8.5 mile
trail system in that park.  Although relatively flat,
the sandy soil of the trails often give plenty of
resistance and offer the same opportunity for
exertion as going up hill.  Of course, this lacks
the exhilaration of speeding downhill, hopping the roots
and dodging the trees.

We're now heading north and west.  We'll see where we end up.

Regards to all,

A&S




Howdy!

We're now in Texas traveling southwest along the gulf coast.

We enjoyed our sojourn in Florida, but felt that it was
time to move on.  Some things of note that we appreciated
seeing along our route include:  the Punta Gorda Museum, a museum so
small that it could fit into our living room, but
which had a Holocaust display composed of the personal
remembrances and mementos from area servicemen and women
who were involved in liberating some of the concentration camps.
One was from a nurse that had to be returned to England
after a few weeks because she become too stressed to
continue her job due to thehorror of the situation.

The Salvador Dali Museum
St. Petersberg.  I do not like Dali's works, I always felt
that they were a put-on.  But here, I learned that his
earlier works were more to my liking.  He had real talent as a technical artist.

In Tampa, we visited the Tampa Museum of Art.  We saw an exhibit of
Greco-Roman urns and statuary.  It was interesting to see
the influence of Greece on the fledgling Roman Empire.

In Tallahassee, a museum combines science and art:
The Mary Brogan Museum of Art and Science.  Although still in the process
of development, there were several exhibits that
we appreciated, especially the Noh theater masks from Japan, a special exhibit.

We're starting to see some duplication:  In the Museum
of Fine Arts, Houston we saw a special display of the works of William Chase who
painted scenes of Brooklyn, NY during the 1880s.  This was from a collection arranged by the
Brooklyn Museum of Art.  The duplication was the Smith College Collection which was being
installed for a March opening date.

We recognized some of the paintings from our visit to an art museum in Palm Beach two
months ago.  Special exhibits get moved around.  Part of the MFA-H's permanent collection
includes an extensive collection of gold objects from Ghana and Cote d'Ivorie.

The objects were primarily from the 19th and 20th centuries due to the African tradition of
recycling gold objects.

In the South Florida Science Museum in West Palm Beach we saw The Secrets of Egypt featuring
TUTANKHAMUN 'Wonderful Things' from the Pharaoh's Tomb. This stimulating
exhibit featured museum-quality object:  replicas made by the University of Texas which
duplicate the color, chips, cracks, and stains of the originals as they were
recovered from King Tut's tomb in the 1920s.

An exhibit of another collection of Tut replicas from
the U of Texas was in the Exploreum in Mobile, Alabama.  We were going to pass this one by,
since we had just seen another set of these replicated artifacts 6 weeks earlier.

We went to the Exploreum, anyway, because Sarah wanted to revisit (from another trip) the
electromagnetic 'Dancing Haystacks."  Since we were in the museum already,
we took another look at the Tut exhibit.

It was about the same.  Off to the side, however, was a mock-up of a pyramid entrance.
We expected to see a small collection inside.  What we found was an
entrance to three large room of large replicas:  items too big for the South Florida exhibit.
This additional collection contained lounges, a gold chariot and life-size
statues.  We were certainly glad that we went here and entered the pyramid.

In Houston's Museum of Natural Science, a place that we have visited several times before.
We were very pleased to find a additional floor of exhibits:
Native Americans from the northwest to Chile.  Also there at this time was an exhibit of the
failed Shackelton Antarctic Expedition and a display of actual Egyptian artifacts.  Of special
note:  The malacology (shell) display at this museum has more shells and
a better system of displaying them than the Bailey Shell Museum that we visited on Sanibel
Island, FL last month.

On the health front:  On a single-track bike trail outside of Mobile, the bike pedal cut into a log on a sharp turn.
The bike stopped short; six feet later, so did I. No real injuries, only cuts.

As an outcome of biking in the forest, we also found
a cluster of 8 ticks feasting on my vital juices in
the area of my upper thigh and lower abdomen.  Sarah removed those suckers with her trusty
tweezers. I found only one tick on her.

Regards,

A&S


Howdy!

Today is the first day that we've had without rain for
a week.  We went from Houston to Galveston, along the coast
to Corpus Christi, and then inland to San Antonio.  It will
be a circle of southeast Texas when weget back to Houston
[later this week, we hope].

In Galveston, we visited a decommissioned deep-sea
oil drilling rig that sits in Galveston Bay and is
now the Ocean Star Museum.  In addition to
touring the rig, there are displays, diaramas,
and models which explain theprocesses of extracting
petroleum from the sea bed.

Also in Galveston, we visited the Rainforest pyramid of Moody Gardens
which recreates rainforest areas of Africa, Asia, and the Americas.  Birds,
butterflies, lizards, and large fish have been included to enhance the
experience.

After a brief visit to the Texas Zoo in Victoria which houses only
Texas critters, we went to see the exhibit of artifacts recently excavated
from Fort St. Louis, the French colony in Texas and the spur to Spanish
expansion.

When we were here several years ago, the big news was the discovery of
the 'La Belle,' the ship of French explorer LaSalle, the discoverer of the
Mississippi River.  After sailing from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of
Mexico, LaSalle claimed the entire Mississippi River watershed for
France.  This area extends to Wyoming.  On a successive voyage to the New World
in 1686, LaSalle had trouble locating the mouth of the Mississippi and
landed on the Texas coast.  Here his ship, La Belle, was wrecked and LaSalle
was killed by his own men as he was travelling up the Mississippi to get help
from the French colony in Illinois.  Before he left Texas, LaSalle
established Ft. St. Louis and tried to establish a French colony to extend
the lands of Louisiana Colony already claimed by France.

The remains of Ft. St. Louis were discovered about a month after we
were here last looking at the artifacts recovered from the La Belle.

We saw several exhibits about the LaSalle expidition and Ft. St.
Louis.
The first, at the research center in Victoria, at the Maritime Museum
in Rockport , and the Corpus Christi Museum of Science & History.

While in Corpus Christi, we also visited the Art Museum of South Texas which is small,
but had a special exhibit by a local artist who works in both paints and fiberglass statuary.
He has been creating art for 30 years and his work is found in many states.

As it stopped raining briefly last evening, we took a walk on San Antonio's
famous Riverwalk, a picturesque stone path that follows a diversion of
the San Antonio River as it wends its way through the downtown area.  The
path is lined with small shops and, mostly, restaurants.  We dined al
fresco with only a few drops falling on us from the over-hanging trees.  We
hoped that the week of rain had already washed the bird droppings from the
leaves.

While downtown, we also visited the Alamo.  Remember that?

We took advantage of today's sunshine to do some outdoor stuff.  We visited
the Japanese Sunken Garden which was constructed in an
abandoned quarry.  The work was begun in the early 1900s by an
horticultural architect from Japan.  His family continued his work after
his death.  In the 1940s the name was changed to the Chinese Sunken
Garden, but changed back in the 1960s.

Nearby is the San Antonio Botanical Garden  which
recreates three of the recognized ten ecological regions of Texas.
Milllions of cubic feet of soil had to be brought in to permit the
Piney Woods and Hill Country plants to thrive.

We are now in the Witte Museum, a very compact
science and natural history museum.  This museum features the 'Science Tree
House,' interactive exhibits in a separate building designed as a tree
house.

Regards to all

A&S



Today, it was sunny



The Institute of Texan Cultures   is a division of the University of Texas at San Antonio
that has displays and exhibits about the dozens of ethnic groups that are in Texas.
This museum goes a long way in helping Texans understand their neighbors.

As for duplication, at the Witte, the current special exhibit is a good
one that we have seen before. it is 'The Atoms Family.'  It is a series of
room which explore energy through the use of populat horror-movie
characters.  You can tour the exhibit at
http://www.miamisci.org/af/exhibits.html which it the site of the museum
which developed this exhibit and the place where we first saw it a few years ago.

Regards,

A&S

                                 Nashville, TN
                                 March 22, 2001

We're on our way home.

After leaving Texas, we went to New Orleans along the 'Old Spanish
Trail,' U.S. 90.  It took us through the bayou country of western Louisiana.
We were surprised to find synagogues in two of the small towns along the
route; one is now the headquarters of the annual 'Shrimp and Petroleum
Festival' in Morgan City, LA.  These are two items that we had thought
people consume separately.

We spent several days in New Orleans visiting museums and wandering around
the French Quarter.  The New Orleans Museum of Art featured an exhibit by
Judy Chicago.  An ardent feminist, Chicago, nee Cohen, produces works
in several mediums which are forceful and vibrant.  Her opus, The Dinner Party,
which is on exhibit here, will become a permanent installation at the
Brooklyn (NYC) Museum of Art in 2007.

In and near the French Quarter we visited the six buildings of the
Louisiana State Museum. (Entrance fees are individual or available at
discount for multiticket purchases.)  Some of the museum buildings serve
double duty:  The old New Orleans Mint is also the Museum of Jazz, the
old Presbytere was also the Mardi Gras Museum, and the Cabildo was the
History Museum.

The unofficial philosophy of New Orleans is:  Eat early and often.  We
tried to comply.  Unfortunately, one restaurant (which we went to
twice) served such large lunches that we were barely able to finish our
beignets and cafe au lait at the Cafe du Monde at the French Market.  We
persevered.

By the way, beignets are rectangular doughnuts without holes; my
cafe au lait is almost all lait, I'm still growing.  For some reason, we
seemed to have ended each day at the Cafe du Monde munching beignets al fresco
and watching passers-by; they mostly look like tourists!

In Jackson, MS we visited the Old State Capitol and learned a lot about
Mississippi and it answered some questions.  For example, why do many
people consider people from Mississippi as uneducated?  At the
beginning of the 20th Century, the school year was only 4 months and public high
schools did not exist.

Outside of Jackson, we visited the Museum of the Southern Jewish
Experience.  In the mid 1800s, Jews from Alsace-Lorraine migrated to the
Mississippi Valley to escape the frequent wars which led to German
unification and the local anti-semitism.  At the museum, we got a guide to
two routes which visit towns along the Mississippi River which have signs
of current or former Jewish communities.  We followed the northern route
from Jackson, MS to Memphis, TN.

We saw old synagogues, some from the 1800s; cemeteries; and store-fronts
with'Jewish' names.  In some towns, the Jews are gone; in some, the
communities are aging and shrinking.  In Vicksburg, MS, we attended
services at Anshe Chessed and had dinner with the congregation in a
local restaurant afterwards.  There are only about twenty couples active in
the 160 year-old congregation; the rest have moved away, mostly to the big
cities.

Memphis boasts the largest Orthodox congregation in the U.S.  We
visited their 15 year-old Baron Hirsh Synagogue and their older building, now
a church.  We also visited Reform Temple Israel and the Solomon Schecter
School which is celebrating its 'Bar Mitzvah' this year.

We spent several days in Memphis visiting the Museum of Art which has
a special exhibit from the Art Museums of Scotland.  It was the usual
art-museum stuff.  Unfortunately, someone vandalized two of the paintings,
one of them a Gainsborough, the day before.  Security was heightened, they
claim that this was the first vandalism in the museum's history.  The
damage is repairable and covered by insurance.

We're now moving east along I-40 and plan to be home within a week.

Regards,

A&S


March 31, 2001

We're home!

We were concerned the last few nights of the trip north that the water
pipes in the van would freeze, but we kept the van's thermostat at 45 and we slept indoors.

It took two days to get through the accumulated mail, including filling out
accident reports for the two insurance companies involved in the collision
with the car and me (while on my bicycle)in Florida.  The car hit me before
it hit the bicycle.  Ouch!

We found that there are varying values to museum visits.  For example:  It took us two hours to
see that Treasures of the Topkapi Palace in the Ft. Lauderdale Museum of Art but we spent the
entire day at the Johnson Space Center which charges the same admission ($15.00 p.p.)

As for bangs-for-the-buck, one year in NYC we saw BOTH the Faberge Egg Collection at NYC's
Metropolitan Museum of Art AND the Amber from the Russia's Winter
Palace for the same price and got to see the rest of the two museums as well.

You get the most bangs-for-the-buck at a lift-off at the Kennedy Space Center,
but that's another story.

Houston, we found, has the most reasonable museum admission costs that
we've seen:  more paintings per dollar than anywhere else except NYC [and the
Smithsonian in D.C. (no admission) which is paid for by our taxes]; and a good size
natural history and science museum, too.

NYC, however, lacks a first-class interactive science museum.  The Hall of Science in Flushing
Meadow Park and the Liberty Science Center (NJ) pale besides the Ontario
Science Center inToronto and even the Exploratoreum in San Francisco.

We celebrated Purim while in Houston.  We went to the synagogue closest to
the Johnson Space Center:  a congregation of petroleum engineers and
rocket scientists, and regular people, too.

On the way home, we visited the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.
It was the first time that we had seen the permanent exhibit.  It was a
moving experience for both of us.

We got our photos back Thursday.  We took more pictures during the last two weeks than the
previous three months.  Mostly, the pictures were of the synagogues that we visited along the
Mississippi from Port Gibson, MS to Memphis, TN.  Some are still active,
some are closed, andsome are something else.  While dining is the now
up-scale dining area of Memphis' oldwaterfront area, we noticed that
the nightclub across the street had been a synagogue.  It was
not on our list of places that we got from the Museum of the Southern
Jewish Experience, but it was very obvious what it had been built to be more
than 100 years ago.  We plan to send photos of that synagogue to the MSJE and give them
the address when that roll of film is processed.

In Memphis, we visited the Peabody Hotel to watch what we were told
was the 'World-Famous Peabody Ducks.'  Each morning at 11:00 five mallards
leave their penthouse abode, take the elevator to the lobby and spend the
day swimming in the lobby's fountain.  At 5p.m., the red
carpet is again laid down and the ducks go back into the elevator and
return to their penthouse.  Lots of people come to see this routine that
has been a daily event here since the 1920s.

We also took the opportunity to visit the ducks in their apartment on the roof.
Sarah spoke with the Assistant Duckmaster for details.  The Duckmaster
gets 2 days off per week and this was one of them.

Originally, we had thought that the Peabody Ducks were only World-Famous in
Memphis, but Beryl told us that she had seen them on television.

Sarah has spent the past few days shopping for Passover; I've spent
the past few days eating up the chumatz (foods forbidden on Passover).

Spring is here
The grass has riz
I wonder where
The flowers is

Best wishes for good weather and a happy and healthy holiday.

Allen & Sarah