Category: Uncategorized

Aw, c’mon now. Everyone knows Mark Twain, a.k.a Samuel Clemens, grew up in Hannibal, Missouri, then learned to pilot steamships on the Mississippi River, right?

Right.

But, when he married and settled down, he moved to Hartford, Connecticut. Which is where he wrote most of his books. How else could he write A Yankee in King Arthur’s Court if he’d never been a Yankee?

Today we toured the Mark Twain House & Museum in Hartford. The house was more than I wanted to tackle but Dave took the the Main House tour.

While I spent my time in the museum.

The museum has a film, two galleries, and a gift shop. We both started with the film which was excerpts from the Ken Burns documentary thus was very well done. Then, while Dave took the 1 1/2 hour house tour I spent more than an hour in one gallery then toured the gift shop. Did you know Garrison Keillor once broadcast A Prairie Home Companion from the Mark Twain House? I listened to a sample of that program on their CD sampler system. It was, of course, funny.

Neither of us made it to the second gallery.

If you go, allow more than the two hours we did. But leave your camera at home. They allow no picture taking in either building. The photos here are lifted from their website at http://www.marktwainhouse.org/. But do go. I promise you’ll be entertained.

TTYL,

Linda

Not just a “get out of town” sign:

Truckers can have a sense of humor even if they don’t mean to:

Protect the wildlife?

So how dangerous is that pair of shoes?

This one is stolen from Dennis Hill’s blog:

TTYL,

Linda

We are at Riverdale Farm Campsites in Clinton, Connecticut.

Big park. Big campsites.

But still a challenge to get parked.

Why? They poured raised concrete patios very close to the sewer hookup. And they assigned our shorter than many RVs the shorter site.

The patio is on the passenger side. The neighbors offered to move that picnic table for me as they watched me guide Dave into the site but I said it would be fine there and it was–close but fine.

The sewer hookup is between Dave’s right foot and the RV.

We could have backed up a little more but then our back wheels would have started climbing up into the tree roots which would have made leveling more challenging.

So we stopped closer to the road than we would really like.

But, we really do have a big site. That gray thing on the left is our fire pit.

And we have full hookups for a whole week, our Internet connection is good, and there’s a lot of exploring to do so we are happy here.

TTYL,

Linda

Opened in 1796 Connecticut’s Old State House now looks like this:

OK. That’s a LEGO model of it but it’s pretty accurate. The real building houses the original chambers for the state legislature, a courtroom, some offices, and a collection of oddities from around the world for those who couldn’t travel themselves to come and see. The rooms have been restored to reflect various eras. There’s a lot of history in this building.

But the exhibit that drew us here is called “History is All Around Us.”

It helped me think about all the things we do every day that become part of our history.

When we gather with our families and friends and tell stories about growing up or even stories about last week we are replaying our history.

When we use slang or other saying from our youth, we are replaying our history. In your era were things hot, cool, awesome, or something else?

Bob Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel, the Beatles, etc. were part of my history. What music do you consider yours?

How often do we pay attention to the history of our towns; history we see every day? I spent my childhood in a town named for Stephen Decatur and my youth in a city with major streets name for explorers Pere Marquette and Father Hennepin.

This was an interesting exercise.

Those red pieces on the board represent the town of Hartford’s development in the 1640s. The flat pieces represent pasture land where animals grazed. The rounded ones on the lower right were wigwams where American Indians lived when they came to trade. At the top, along the river were mills and tanneries. Downtown were houses and the market.

Look carefully at the background and you can see bins holding pieces of other colors. You added blue pieces to the red ones to represent the next time period. Then added green pieces for the next era. Of course, as you added some pieces you had to take off old ones to make room for the new ones. We didn’t do this all the way through but a docent told me that when you get done adding the purple ones that represent modern times there is only one red piece left. The cemetery. Towns grow and change and sometimes die just as people do.

What did you add to your history today?

TTYL,

Linda

Just a couple miles up the road from Louis’ Lunch we stopped at the Eli Whitney Museum in Hamden, CT.  http://www.eliwhitney.org

This is a great stop! IF you are an elementary age student. Two busses of school kids were having a great time.  First they saw a presentation about inventing things. Then they moved to the wood ship where they built model canal boats. They they moved to the water park where they played with exhibits that helped them learn such things as how water wheels and canal locks work.

They were in the water park when we arrived and gathering up their stuff to leave when we left. We were there, oh maybe, ten minutes. If you want to enjoy this place, you really need to be a kid.

TTYL,

Linda