I need to buckle down and write a review

[xiphias]

Lis and I saw two plays this weekend; she's going to review one, and I agreed to review the other. But I'm procrastinating.

So, instead, I'll mention that, while we were in Lee (a town out in Western Mass, in the Berkshires), we stopped at a diner for lunch, which we discovered was the diner in the Norman Rockwell painting "The Runaway" -- that's the one with the police officer sitting on one diner stool, and a little kid sitting on the stool next to him, and they're talking (the kid has a little bundle of stuff on the floor by the stool). At the next table was a half-dozen college-age kids, who were talking about, among other things, their religious upbringings. In the course of this, one of the women mentioned a Jewish joke that neither Lis nor I had heard before -- this is a rare event.

Q: How do you get rid of rats in a synagogue?
A: Give them bar mitzvahs. You'll never see them again.

Pittsfield, Massachusetts has a really neat museum. It's the town art/science/history/aquarium museum. It's, like, three floors including the basement. Top floor has some paintings and sculpture, including some plaster casts of Famous Statues (Venus de Milo, Winged Victory of Thrace, that sort of thing), and some gorgeous Italian nineteenth century stuff. It also has space for temporary exhibits, which is what drew us there -- it was a traveling exhibit of Toys Of Our Childhood -- Slinky, Spirograph, Mister Potatohead, Matchbox cars, Easy-Bake Oven, you know the sort of thing. Mom -- you have to go out there in order to take a picture with the human-sized cutout of Barbie.

I suspect that they cleared out exhibit space for that, because there was also a room with just exhibits piled up. They had a mummy. And lots of other stuff that you couldn't see because it was basically jumbled together like in someone's attic. So I suspect that all those exhibits and paintings and stuff are SUPPOSED to go in the rooms where the traveling exhibit was.

The main floor has rocks, including radioactive ones, dozens of taxidermied animals and birds, dioramas of the wildlife of different environments, collections of seashells, and the like.

The basement is an aquarium, with a few other animals besides -- a good selection of snakes, a scorpion (with a black light -- did you know that scorpions are fluorescent under ultraviolet light?), a (Judy, avert your eyes) tarantula, frogs from around the world, toads, turtles . . .

We also went to the Norman Rockwell museum. There are a few Norman Rockwell paintings I'd like prints of, some to send to other people. For instance, I think my niece needs a poster of "Shiner". That's the one of a girl sitting outside the principal's office, clothes torn, hair messed up, with a huge black eye, and an even huger grin on her face.

Comments

[gilmoure.livejournal.com]

I'm still looking for a Wham-O Magic Window. Coolest toy eveh!

Also, is fairly quiet, doesn't require batteries and will keep a child occupied for almost an hour at a time. Great car trip toy.

[rebmommy.livejournal.com]

I remember this toy - or at least something like it. Your link says that it was produced in 1973, but by then I was having kids of my own! Was I playing with their toys, or was there something similar produced in the late 50's and 60's?

[stickylatex.livejournal.com]

I forgot all about that toy, but I had one, and it was great!

[cheshyre]

Don't feel too bad.
I'm procrastinating, too...
It doesn't have to be finished today.

[marquisedea.livejournal.com]

I told the joke to Josh and he laughed ^_^

[fibro-witch.livejournal.com]

I love Pittsfield, so much to do, and so many cool things to see. The day I went to the Rockwell Museum the woman who posed for 'Shiner' was there. She said he saw her walking home from school, took her home and told her mother that he needed to borrow her for a painting. Then he took her to the high school, posed her took some pictures and then took her home.

She won the fight, and said 'you should have seen the other kid'. The fight was after school, so the principal was really not involved.

What did you think of his studio?

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

We didn't actually look at the studio.

Oh, but the aquarium had piranahs, and a woman near us was asking how come there were piranahs in the tank, but there were also other fish as well, and I told them that one of my friends keeps piranahs and says that they're nowhere near as agressive as their reputation. She said that she'd once dived with barracuda, and I told her that she'd therefore been with MUCH more dangerous fish, and I told her the story about Wolfie and Byron, and how Byron now keeps Purrball away from the tank. . .

[fibro-witch.livejournal.com]

Blackie passed away two weeks ago. I miss him but do not know if I want to start with another pod or not.

[nolly.livejournal.com]

I did know sporpions fluoresce! That was one of the things my ditzy 10th grade bio teacher taught us -- and demonstrated.

[ashnistrike.livejournal.com]

Sorry I'm late to the thread (way behind on LJ). I grew up in Lenox (two towns over), and remember the Pittsfield Museum tolerably well ... do they still have a live armadillo in the basement? It sounds like they've expanded the 'live stuff' selection considerably since the '80s.

Now I miss the Berkshires (more than usual) ...

-Nameseeker

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

No armadillo, more's the pity. Nothing warm-blooded, basically. Fish, reptiles, arachnids, amphibians, and the like.