Armed Forces Day Open House

The Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve (ESGR) sponsored an open house

in honor of Armed Forces Day at a hangar at the airport today. Although it felt a little

like a recruitment open house, it was fascinating to see the planes, boats, 

and helicopters, and to chat with some of the military personnel.

Some were friendlier than others and I guess I’d put that up to “why would I want to talk to that old lady with the camera”?  :) Many of them looked so very young but no one refused a picture.

 

Guns could be explored and explained.

Boats could be climbed into and discussed. 

Sit in a Blackhawk helicopter as pilot or passenger.

Look through an L-RES surveillance tool and see 6 miles away.

Meet an actual sniper and his platoon leader and discover that their camouflage

(you’ve seen it in movies) has a name: ghillie suit. 

There are eight B-17s still flying and one of them, the Yankee Lady, was here today.

We were allowed to climb into it near the cockpit and walk (not comfortably) towards the rear.

It was awkward climbing the ladder, carrying a purse and a camera, 

and trying to maneuver into and through the plane. It made me feel

ancient and less than agile. Then I met the guys

that fly the plane. That didn’t help  :)

Here’s a little background on the holiday:
In the U.S. it is celebrated on the third Saturday of May (many other countries celebrate an Armed Forces Day as well). The day was created in 1949 to honor Americans serving the five U.S. military branches: the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, and the Coast Guard. The holiday was first celebrated on Saturday, May 20 in 1950.

The armed forces had recently been unified under the Department of Defense and this day was intended to replace the individual military branch celebrations. In 1962, President Kennedy established Armed Forces Day as an official holiday.

The intent of the celebration is to honor those Americans serving in the armed forces and it also provides an opportunity to the military to display and explain equipment to civilians that results in increased public understanding of the role of the military.

Some wars are just and others not so much, but cheers to all military personnel who do and sacrifice so much on both the war and home fronts.

Arts In Ada

Set Up

This annual event brought in around 60 exhibitors this year and as in year’s past,

live entertainment was provided throughout the day that included various musicians

and many tiny dancers.

The Ada Farmers’ Market sponsored a booth for its fundraising that featured baskets made in West Africa (Ghana). Created out of elephant grass, the baskets are colored with local dyes, and goats’ hides are used for the handles. They were the hit of the event and soon dotted the landscape, dangling from hands everywhere.

Booths lined both sides of the street and offered a very eclectic but

interesting variety of items.

Arts In Ada T-Shirts

Texting while minding the store

 

 

Walking Sticks

 

Money changed hands...

Plenty to see, plenty to eat, and many wonderful people to
photograph make for a good day.

What's in this bun anyway?

A Little Face-Painting Going On

An Artist with his work

Audubon at the GRAM - 4/26/11

Today in 1785, John James Audubon was born, and as it happens the Grand Rapids Art Museum has a small visiting exhibit featuring 30 of his bird prints, on loan from the Shelburne Museum in Vermont (photos not permitted but this wall was okayed; I also snagged one print in the photo, not intentionally I assure you :).

John Audubon has a fascinating personal history but that is not dealt with in this exhibit. The emphasis is on his work and the art of print-making. Two rooms feature his prints and another room provides information on the art and the tools of print-making, along with some background on subsequent editions of Audubon’s work and bird illustrating predecessors.

The introductory room contains a short summary of Audubon, a letter written by him, and a map showing his travels in the U.S. where he obtained his drawings over a 17 year period. 

To its credit, the museum does state that Audubon hunted and killed his subjects before drawing them. Today that may be a bit of a shock but in the 1800s, it was de rigueur.

“He drew the majority of his subjects on the spot after killing and posing them in a life-like manner...”  Actually he spent hours and sometimes days wiring the specimens before drawing them, and he also hired hunters to go out and kill birds for him. Here's an image found on the internet that is included in the exhibit.

Audubon drew from 1820-1826 and after being rebuffed by at least one American publisher, he took his work to England and received enough attention and funding to begin publishing his “Birds of America.” He also sold subscriptions to his work.  King George IV was a subscriber.

In 1829, Audubon returned to America, and made repeated trips during the 1830s. By 1838, over 400 plates were made, “drawn from nature by J.J. Audubon”, “engraved, printed and colored by R. Havell, London.”  Most prints in the exhibit have a print date visible and a few do not coincide with the date on the museum tag, which reflects the best guess as to when the drawing was done. About a third of the displayed prints are from the 1820s, and the rest are from his 1930s trips. 

The Havell Company traced the original Audubon drawings onto copper plates, and used etching and aquatint to engrave into the plate a detailed replica of the original watercolor. They then hand-colored the engravings. One print, the Wild Turkey, also credits W. Lizars with the printing. And that is an interesting back story. Originally, Audubon brought his work here but was not satisfied with the ten plates engraved by W.H. Lizars. He brought his work to Havell, where it remained. A Havell print now sells for thousands of dollars, and a complete folio, into the millions.

With new technical advances in color printing, Audubon and his sons attempted a less expensive edition in the 1840s, hand-colored lithographs, known as the Octavo Edition. One of these volumes is displayed in the museum, under glass.

John Audubon died in 1851. A few years later, his sons began work on another version of his work, produced by the Bien Printing Company. They produced and sold color-printed lithographs of part of Audubon’s work, but with the onset of the Civil War production was halted.

Unfortunately for the family, it became destitute and John Audubon’s widow sold his original water color drawings in 1863 to the New York Historical Society, who presumably still have them. She also sold most of the original copper plates for scrap.

There’s much more to say and read about this fascinating man and his work, and the information provided in this exhibit was not enough for me. It drove me to find out more, and that’s not a bad thing to take away from any exhibit. It’s definitely worth a visit, maybe two.

This peacock photo was taken in 2006 at the Oakley Plantation in Louisiana where Audubon spent four months in 1821, teaching the owner’s daughter and roaming throughout the area. He drew 32 bird pictures while here and the plantation is now an Audubon State Historic Site.

Approaching Armageddon And National High Five Day

Imminent Armageddon ideas have been around for hundreds of years, and National High Five Day for just ten. But today they coalesced in downtown Grand Rapids.


I noticed the motor home and other vehicles first, parked on Monroe Avenue. Then the man on stilts with his sign caught my attention and I pulled over to read the sign. As I did so, the stilted man was approached by someone from the Grand Rapids Press who was asking him why he was doing this.

Neatly pulling it all together, a few shouting people with a bull horn were informing everyone within earshot that the end of the world was 30 days away. Standing in front of the Civil War Memorial on Division, they could be heard several blocks away on Monroe Center.  

So make someone happy with a high five, or be very afraid. I think I’ll stick with this guy who just played on.
 

If you really want to know more, check out these sites:


http://www.nationalhighfiveproject.org/about-national-high-five-day

http://www.familyradio.com/index2.html

It's now May 22, 2011 and we're all still here. Whew!

Ice Chess and a Sousaphone - 1/11/11

A chess set sculpted out of ice sounded too interesting to miss. Local ice sculptors, Randy Finch and Derek Maxfield, are starring in a new television series on the Food Network, called “Ice Brigade.” This event is to be one in that series.

A chess board was painted on the ice rink at Rosa Parks Circle and the huge chess pieces stood on the board. One set was milky white and the other was crystal clear. They were beautiful and quite impressive.

The chess game was to begin at noon and the film makers wanted around 1000 people there as onlookers/extras.  When I arrived shortly before noon, there were just a handful of people present. A few more showed up as time went on but it couldn’t have been many more than 100. It was cold, in the twenties, windy, and snowing. 

A short while later, the ice staff (brigade) started moving all of the chess pieces around. Apparently they weren’t set up on the proper sides. Time continued to tick away with movie cameras and official photographers intermittently shooting on the ice rink. When moving the pieces again to prevent them from being stuck to the ice, one member of the brigade pushed a little too hard and a piece tipped over with a loud crash. Oops!

More shenanigans by the ice brigade were all we had to watch. That included dragging one of them across the chess board to clear the snow, and polling the audience to find someone who actually knew how to play chess. At one point Finch was being filmed carving a block of ice. Immediately the film crew, official photographers, and the brigade circled around him, pretty much blocking the view from everyone else (I did manage to get one picture).

About 45 minutes later the game finally began, and lasted about 5 minutes. Ah well. By that time I was freezing and ready to go. The funniest thing I saw, however, was this sousaphone player who would occasionally blow a few notes. She certainly gets into the spirit of things! But I don't think she liked having her picture taken.