Trip to IU

On Friday, we (meaning Dr. J, Merkin J. Pustart and I, Dudeboy) went to Bloomington because Dr. J. had a conference there. And in Bloomington we stayed at the Indiana Memorial Union Biddle Hotel. While Dr. J was at the conference, Merkin and I went to the IU Art Museum where we saw a Roman mosaic, an Egyptian mummy case, Greek vases, and other neat things in that exhibit. In a different exhibit, we saw things ranging from some very old cups made almost entirely out of ostrich eggs to modern art like cubes stacked on cubes. In a different art exhibit I saw African art including a gong made out of a tree trunk; it looked like a weird canoe to me. There was an exhibit of paintings of boats and landscapes like Mt. Vesuvius and ruins at night by Thomas Chambers. We then went to the Lilly Library which is a rare book and special collections library. They're having a new exhibit called "Of Cabbages and Kings: Unexpected Treasures of the Lilly Library." Here are some of the things we saw: an early edition of Through the Looking Glass, a first printing of "The Star-spangled Banner" sheet music, some of George Washington's hair, some math problems done by Abraham Lincoln, and a Gutenberg bible. They had a room called the Lincoln room with books about Lincoln and a writing desk he used while he was a lawyer. I got to touch a medieval manuscript of a book of hours. The vellum was so smooth on one side and had a bit more texture on the other. I got to hold the Oscar of John Ford for best director of How Green Was My Valley. I didn't actually feel the surface because I had to wear gloves or the gold coating would come off. The Slocum Puzzle Room has puzzles collected by Jerry Slocum. Mostly the puzzles were mechanical and some of them you could actually work. One of the puzzles that was behind glass was this one (I can only tell you it verbally): a farmer wanted to ferry a goat, a cabbage and a wolf across a river, and he could only ferry them across one by one. But if he leaves the goat with the wolf, the goat will get eaten, and if he leaves the goat with the cabbage, the cabbage will get eaten. So you have to figure out how to get them all across without any getting eaten. (Post your answers in the comment section and I'll tell you if you're right.) All of the Lilly Library seems too great for me to sum up. It has seven floors in all (but I only got to see the third floor by the main entrance) and that can hold a lot of rare books.

On Saturday I went to Wonderlab, a children's museum. There was a whole entire exhibit about dinosaurs and it had real dinosaur bones that you could really touch. They had other fossils including coprolites, giant shells bigger than your head, and a large ammonite. Downstairs they had a whole room about bubbles where you could see bubbles forming an uncontrolled sheet of several hundred bubbles. They also had a few bubble walls and a bubble speed comparer. There was also a fog table where you could make anything from a dam to a house and see how the fog moved around it. I made chimneys, and the fog poured out of the chimneys and looked like smoke. In a different part, I made a cannon with a mechanism where air would blow a ball through tubes. There was also an animations table and a light circuit table.

The last thing we went to in Bloomington was the Mathers Museum of World Cultures where I saw a reproduction of a kitchen and living room in Bloomington from the 1960s. Love currency? Then you'll love to see these throwing knives that were used as currency in the "Money Is An Object: African Currency" exhibit. We also saw decorative weapons that looked very scary. It's so much fun visiting other college campuses. I want to go back!

Dudeboy

Looavill Part 2

Second day of our trip to Louisville . . .

On Friday we went to the Louisville Slugger Museum. I saw the first bat they made. It had a very thick handle compared to bats today. Bud Hillerich was the originator of the Louisville Slugger bat. On a day when a baseball player broke his bat, Bud jumped onto the field; he said, “I think I can make a better bat.” And he did. His father tried to talk him out of making baseball bats, but making butter churns like his father suggested wasn’t enough for Bud. We also did a factory tour.

Then we went to the 21c Museum Hotel. And we saw weird art. Sometimes I liked it, and sometimes I didn’t. There was a film called In G.O.D. We Trust that reminded me of the Yellow Submarine. I liked a piece of art that had falling letters called Text Rain (pictured below). There was portrait of Obama made out of wax that I really liked. That might of been my favorite piece of art at the gallery.

We also went to the Louisville Science Center and saw the imax movie named Shackleton's Antarctic Adventure that actually had parts from old films in it.

It was a very busy day!

Dudeboy

The world's largest bat built to scale from one of Babe Ruth's Louisville Sluggers.

Dudeboy needs to eat a few more hotdogs to really pull off this portrayal.
Big leaguer?

Signature row.

"Text Rain"

Orange is in this year.

Louisville Part 1

First day of the trip . . .

Last week we (meaning Merkin J. Pustart, Dr. J, and me, Dudeboy) went to
Louisville for an English conference for Dr. J, actually spring break for us. First we went to the Thomas Edison house; he rented a room, slept in the room, and did experiments there. He left Louisville because he spilled acid on the floor at work. The acid ate through the floor and to the boss’s desk below. I bought a working replica light bulb. I need a base for it though. I liked the museum a lot!

We also went to the American Printing House for the Blind. I made Braille in two different ways: by hand using a Braille slate and a Braillewriter. We went on a factory tour to see where they made Braille books and talking books. I liked it so much I made us miss lunch.

We also went to Zachary Taylor’s grave. Did you know he was moved from
an underground tomb to an above ground mausoleum?

That day was jam packed. I liked it! Dudeboy


The Thomas Edison House in Louisville's Butchertown neighborhood.

Edison's room (decorated with period pieces).


The American Printing House for the Blind.

Using a Braille slate.

A braillewriter.

The Zachary Taylor National Cemetery is located on property originally owned by Taylor's parents. His boyhood home is nearby (unfortunately it is privately owned).

Zachary Taylor's mausoleum.

Old Blood and Guts

On Saturday after the Pinewood Derby, Merkin and I went to Louisville to see Creation and get whacked by the twins (just kidding). On Sunday we went to the General George Patton Museum: we saw his ivory pistols, death car, Patton's watch that stopped when he died, and tanks galore! I can't believe that they are moving 85% of the tanks to Fort Benning, Ga. At home, I watched Patton the movie with George C. Scott; it was a really good movie.

This is a French tank from WWI that was found by a US soldier in an Afghanistan scrap yard. Of course, it has gone through extensive renovation!

A doughboy . . . or should that be a d'oh! boy.

Go see them while you can. The museum is headed for major changes.

"I am a jelly doughnut!" A section of the Berlin Wall. Of course, the Eastern side was perfectly clean.


Patton's death car.

Darwin Day and his rEvolution

On Friday February 12, Merkin, Dr. J, and I went to Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal to see an exhibit about Darwin: Darwin's rEvolution. My favorite parts of the exhibit were a first edition of the Descent of Man and small metal Darwin and Galapagos tortoise figurines. After that, I went to the history museum which had a re-creation of Cincinnati with scale model trains and trolleys. They also had a real trolley car you could get on. Seeing the trolley car made me feel like Pa when he was a kid, like the time when he entered a car, threw a firecracker under a seat, and said, "Mister, there's a firecracker under your seat." And right when he said that, it exploded. I next went to the kid's museum. It had a scavenger hunt where you followed the purple bottles in the wall to find some gold (it wasn't real).

We stopped in Covington on the way to Louisville to eat at Wertheim's Gausthaus, a German restaurant. I ate some real wurst, schnitzel, sauerkraut, and potato pancake. When we got to Louisville, we shared our Darwin day cookies with the Stone family. It was a completely fun Darwin day. I can't wait until next year.

Darwin's (edible) Tree of Life

Darwin's rEvolution

Birds of Paradise and insects . . . variation and adaptation

Jefferson's Ground Sloth . . . common to the Big Bone Lick area

"Hey mister, there's a firecracker under your seat!"

Darwin Day with the Stone-cold-Birkett family

November Round-Up

November has been a very busy month for me. I want to inform you about Super Saturdays Forest Fun which just ended last week, and I am still thinking about trees. I made several things: a bird's nest, a squirrel footprint in plaster, tree slime, and recycled paper.

Thursday night I went to the Cub Scouts' telescope viewing at WKU. At first before we went to the roof other Cub Scouts thought there was a ghost in the dean's office. When we went to the fourth floor, we had to climb scary stairs which looked unstable but actually were stable, which led us to the roof.

When we were on the roof we saw the moon: it looked orange. When you look at the moon or sunset close to the horizon it can look orange or red because you're looking through more dust in the atmosphere. First we looked at Jupiter and three of its moons through a refracting telescope. Then we looked through the big telescope which was a reflector. We saw Jupiter and its moons then the Andromeda galaxy which is a spiral galaxy like the Milky Way.

On Friday we went to the Nashville zoo for one of its homeschool events. This one was about animal wrappings like: fur, scales, skin, exoskeletons, and feathers. When we went to see the lorikeets, they were pleased to see us. They chewed my sweater, combed my hair with their beaks, and untied my shoes.

We went to the Frist and saw exhibits about "Thomas Hart Benton in Story and Song" and "Georgia O'Keefe and Her Times." Most of the Thomas Hart Benton artwork was taken from his illustrations of Mark Twain stories and pictures of songs like "Frankie and Johnny." Then we went to Artquest where I made a watercolor painting of a train which I called "Train of the Imagination." And I worked on some animations. Several had turkeys being run over, and dinosaurs coming out of the sky over temples. The first one I did was funny because dinosaurs were all around the screen and a cow came and the dinosaurs all ran away.

On the way home we stopped at Cracker Barrel in Franklin and met Kenny Perry and shook his hand. He's one of the top golfers in the world.

We went to the Frazier Museum in Louisville Saturday and saw an interpretation of John Wilkes Booth, his sister, and other people like Major Rathbone and Boston Corbett. After that we went to a play of the Legend of Sleepy Hollow with one tall person who made a great Ichabod Crane. In front of the interpretive stage I saw a model of the USS Louisville which was new to the Frazier.

I'm heading to Wartburg, Tennessee (isn't that a funny name?) for Thanksgiving and will report back afterwards.

Dudeboy has had his photograph taken with 4 or 5 Lincolns. So, here he is posed with John Wilkes Booth and his sister Asia.

Dudeboy with Ichabod Crane.

Titanic Exhibit

On Thursday two weeks ago, we went to the Louisville Science Center to see an artifact exhibit on the Titanic. There were plates from a cupboard that had rotted away in the ocean. Then we saw perfume bottles which you could still smell the perfume. You could see egg cups that did not break.

They also had recreations of third class rooms and an iceberg which was made of real ice! A museum guide told stories about people on the Titanic. John Jacob Astor IV was the richest passenger on the voyage. He let the dogs out of their kennels so that they could survive. It was a great exhibit!

The Nina, Pinta and the Falls of the Ohio

The end of last week was very busy. Friday we went to the Nashville zoo for the Homeschool Afternoon. I learned about animal husbandry: raising domesticated animals. We met a skunk, an owl, and a rabbit.

On Saturday we went to see the life-size replicas of the Nina and Pinta that were docked in Louisville. I got to go aboard both. The Pinta was bigger and faster. I was able to go on the top of the Pinta and then on the lower part of the deck but not inside the ship. On the Pinta there were two models of the ship: one of it being built and one of it finished. The Nina was the smallest ship. They said that this is the most historically accurate replica ever made of a Columbus ship. I was surprised at how small the ship was, just 65 feet long.

Then we went to the Fossil Fest at the Falls of the Ohio. It's supposed to be one of the largest deposits of Devonian fossils. We walked to the fossil beds to get to the tents set up for the festival, and I couldn't take a step without stepping on a fossil.

At one giant tent we bought several fossils and rocks: a fish fossil, a coprolite (fossilized tortoise poop), a shark's tooth, and a piece of malachine ( a green mineral from Zaire). I almost went for the green goldstone which is man-made. We could have spent a lot more money on fossils.

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Hart County Civil War Days

Saturday we went to Hart County Civil War Days. First we went to the Woodson house by the real battlefield. We saw a display of artifacts found by a man who finds relics from the Civil War and before: glasses, bullets, and anything else a metal detector can find. He had a large collection of bullets and even a metal star from a Revolutionary War uniform, and he gave me a bullet. We got to use an apple cider press. A basket-maker showed us how he uses honeysuckle vines to weave very, very small baskets. We walked around the trail that circles the real battlefield.

After we went into town, we saw the model of the Hunley ( a confederate submarine) that was there. We even got to turn the crank that powered the submarine. When they raised the Hunley, they discovered a rubberized cloth hose, rubber gaskets and elastic suspenders. Isn't that a surprise!

Next we went to a tent they had set up like a confederate hospital. We saw medical tools that helped give anesthesia. We learned that 98% of Civil War operations used anesthesia. Mostly they amputated when the patient was asleep, not like I had thought.

We went to the museum and saw Lincoln give a speech about his life, and I got to have my picture taken with him, again. After we saw Lincoln, we went to the reenactment which was inaccurate because it was not at the site of the original battle.


Then we went to Kentucky Stonehenge. I stood on the stone in the middle decorated with a compass.

Daufuskie Island

In mid-August we (my cousins, my aunt, my grandmother, two uncles, their dogs. and I) went to Daufuskie Island, South Carolina. First we went to Hilton Head and at four o'clock took the ferry to Daufuskie Island. No visitors are allowed to have cars on the island. On the ferry I could walk around on the deck because this was a large ferry. Some of us went on a golf cart to the house and some took the trolley. The trolley was quicker than the golf cart.

The first three days I went to the beach and built a sand fort and a sand castle with my grandmother. Then I went to the pool and took swimming lessons from Clynton. The first day of swimming lessons I got used to putting my head under water. Eventually I worked up to swimming under water for a few feet. Then one of my uncles found a shark's tooth. I competed against Rachel and Harvey to see who would be the most improved swimmer and win the shark's tooth. First I walked over to the five-feet with Avi. We both got in and held onto the ladder. Then we held our noses and climbed down using the ladder and sat on the bottom. Then we let go of the ladder and rose to the top. That guaranteed the shark's tooth.

When Victor and I went to the beach for an adventure, we had one. We found a dead horseshoe crab. Walked a little further and saw a hermit crab, an alligator in the ocean and lots of fiddler crabs. Then Victor broke his flip-flop. It was an exciting week.

Home for the Mansfields and Dudeboy for a week.

Roadtrip '09 Part 6

*This is the last post for our summer road trip. Check back next week to find out about Dudeboy's trip to the beach with the Mansfield clan.

Day 7-18-09

We saw the lighthouse at Bodie Island. Because they are restoring the lighthouse, we couldn't go up in it, but we could go in the base and look up. We drove to Asheville that night.

Day 8: 7-19-09

We went to King's Mountain Battlefield. I did the activities to become a junior ranger there. A leading British commander named Patrick Ferguson was killed there by seven or nine shots fired almost at the same time from American rifles. He fell out of his saddle, but one foot caught in his stirrup so his men had to cut him free.

At Cowpens, General Morgan, the American commander, thought up an idea. First he had his untrained militia fire two rounds and retreat. Then he had cavalry and continental regulars surround the British. Then the militia reformed and closed in on the open side. After that, the British commander Banastre Tarleton barely escaped. He had been the commander of the British at Waxhaws where the Americans tried to surrender but were massacred instead. So at Cowpens the Americans shouted, "Remember Waxhaws!" Cowpens was an important victory for the Americans and helped force the British to Yorktown.

Bodie Lighthouse


Spot where British Major Patrick Ferguson met "The Over Mountain Men."


I, Dudeboy, do swear that I will well and faithfully serve in the office of Jr. Ranger.


Banastre "Bloody Ban" Tarleton gettin' his comeuppance.


Decisive victory.