Time for SPOOKY SHITE - 2010

Spooky Pumpkin at Whole Foods Store, Baltimore MD
Hurrah, it's the time of year to look back and reflect on all the spooky, weird & unexplained stuff of the past year.

Last Spring, a friend of mine came to spend a weekend at my place. The morning after her first night at my house, she told me, she woke during the night. She was of course, in my guest room. She told me, she could hear voices coming from the living room and the hall outside her closed bedroom door. She said she had trouble at first deciding if she was hearing the television, or live people talking - perhaps some of my neighbors had come by the house. She couldn't quite make out what the voices were saying but she could hear laughing and a lively conversation. She said she could hear someone, she assumed was me going up and down the hallway, and then she heard someone running in the hallway.

I explained I had gone to bed and was out cold till morning; there was no TV watching, nor, for once, had I gotten up even once during the night to hit the bathroom.

My friend thought I was pulling her leg and was insistent she heard several different people talking in the living room, me walking in the hallway.

Later that day I got out the white sage and smudged the crap out of my house and my garage. The purpose of the smudging was to let whatever uninvited dead types that were laughing in my house and treading in the hallway know they needed to get the hell out of my home, because it is MY house, not theirs. That night, my friend was also awake for a while, but this time the house was dead quiet – as it should be.


So by now you’ve concluded that I am nuts, and so is my friend, or you’ve had spooky shite happen to you and/or family/friends, so you know what I’m talking about. In my experience the only ones who know there are ghosts out there are the ones that have to put up with them or who have well trusted people in their lives who have dealt with them. Anyone who hasn’t dealt with such things are bound & practically required by law to remain stubbornly insistent that ghosts and such are just figments of one’s imagination. That spooky stuff must ALWAYS be explained away by heavy draughts, rats in the attic or dreams that are mistaken for as being supernatural.

That’s fine by me. As a matter of fact, I wish I were still in the same state of disbelief. Unfortunately, after loads of things happening to me & or family, friends, I have had to give up all pretenses and face up to reality, even if that reality is supernatural. Happily for 'moi' nothing very bad has happened, just weird stuff. May I spend the remainder of my life with nothing worse to pass along than the odd weird tale. Tomorrow – more spooky shite.

Oooh, I have a special Halloween event I will post on Monday November 1st. What is the event? I bet you're just dying to know - Bwah ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Hurrah! My Visit to D.C.

Kirk and Sydney head up to the trains

Hurrah! Today is the day Kirk, Sydney and I were off to Washington D.C. To get there we drove to a 'park and ride' lot at the metro train station.



The Metro
We took a 20 minute ride to downtown. The train was clean and the scenery was interesting. Before long we made it to our destination.


Washington D.C. Metro

Guess where we were!
We walked off towards our destination and on our way enjoyed a short, fun stop with the goal of staring at the sun without melting our eyeballs.


The mini-planetarium offering safe and free peering at the sun

Sydney & the Sun - in a brightness contest,
Sydney would win, hands down
After our brief view of the sun spots, we walked another block or two arriving at our destination.


And there it was - HO!
The National Museum of the American Indian, a place I've wanted to visit since it opened back in September of 2004. It represents all American Indians, from Alaska to Argentina. First up here are the impressive bits that give the museum its panache. There was a planter filled with the crops of the southwest tribes – maize, beans and squash. Which brings up the question, did the Southwest Indians have trouble getting their kids to eat their veggies?

"Don't play with your squash Little Hawk, eat it!"

"Aw Ma...."


The Three Sisters: Corn, Squash, Beans
I was totally excited when I entered the museum, particularly as our first objective there was - lunch. We headed straight to the museum’s famous, Mitsitam Cafe. I knew nothing of the Mitsitam, which I've found out means, "Let's Eat". Immediately on entering the place I was flabbergasted - no McDonalds type fare, corn dogs or milk shakes. Instead there were Native western hemisphere foods, served in creative dishes that paid homage to the original food of the Americas. The various cuisines were represented by a kitchen for each geographic area.


In the Great Plains you could have bison chili on fry bread
with mesquite pinion cookies for dessert 

The 'Northwest Coast' serves up the yummies shown above,
washed down with Chia Seed Lemonade
You can imagine how hard pressed I was to decide what to sample. I stood in the center of the room with my empty lunch tray, spinning like a top as I tried to settle on which region's food to sample. The final decision the 'Northeastern woodlands' and the shores of New England. I went for a yummy cup of Quahog Clam & Corn Chowder with Parsley Foam. I had the appetizer for my entree - roasted duck with wild sprouts (below on the right). I've heard of Quahog clams and was amazed they could be purchased at all. I wondered if the shells of the Quahog clams were saved to make wampum and jewelry as in the olden days.


Yummmm....
My nephew Kirk opted for the Great Plains, having a spicy bison stew - I nicked some - delish! I also sampled Kirk's wild rice with cranberries, pinon nuts, pumpkin seeds and such - I am so going to get that recipe! Kirk also had a nice bit of fry bread, which was served as a dessert, sprinkled with powdered sugar. Niecelette Sydney went for universal Indian children's fare - that is, chicken tenders with fries.


Kirk found the bison stew a tad too spicy

Sydney enjoyed her chicken tenders with fries
When adequately stuffed, as advised we headed to the fourth floor to start our museum tour. The museum building is built to move its visitors in gentle circles that flow like the seasons. There exhibits detail the old and modern lives of many, many tribes from Northern Canada and Alaska to the tip of Argentina. Looking over my photos I wasn't surprised to see what mostly caught my eye was the Plains Indian's things and the treasures from Northern tribes like the Athabaskan and Inuit.


Friendly little Inuit dolls - I love the
knowing looking doll on the left - what a face!

Charming and warm Inuit boots

Children's toys from the Central Plains of North America
But there were other things I hadn't expected. For example there were many animated movies that told classic Indian tales. They often just played by the displays and dioramas, giving the feeling you were being told your history by a village elder - fascinating.


tale of the 7 brothers
After touring the floor, we came out where we could look down onto the first floor. There was a man playing a hand drum down there, where there were various Indian boats on display, and plenty of casual seating.


Looking down 4 levels to the drumming
One of the exhibits I loved was on traditional clothing worn by Canadian Inuit. The video was about the 'old fashioned' seal skin gloves and how they were gradually replaced by manufactured gloves that added no additional warmth and detracted from the tribe's traditions of having the women produce gloves with seal fur for their families - really, I didn't stay long enough to hear the whole presentation.

Click to see the incredible detail of turtle,"
wolf and bear at statue base

One more thing, in an alcove on each floor there was a single statue. One was an Indian firing an arrow into the air, but my favorite was this one here on the left - a present from Oneida Indians to the museum, and it is entitled Allies in War, Partners in Peace. Awesome statue.



The museum has gift shops on the second and first floor, and it took all my self-restraint to not go nuts and spend all my retirement money. Life is cruel when you are among the newly frugal.



When we had toured all four floors I decided at some future visit I will have to spend a full day at the museum. I also decided I will bring a folding chair so I can sit and listen to the various exhibits. Yes. I'm now officially an old fart.

Beautiful entrance - that's Sydney in front in the striped top 
We decided we had time for one more museum. Even leaving the museum was interesting. There were fountains and ‘streams’ surrounding the building.

On the left, you could look over the waters and into the Mitsitam Cafe
After visiting the National Museum of the American Indian, we didn't have much time left but we decided to stop at the National Air and Space Museum. The entrance was changed since my first visit back in 1985 - how dare they!


Just inside the front doors of the Air and Space Museum

Sydney takes that one giant step, no,that's one giant smile for mankind

The bit of the museum dedicated to the first flight

We visited a room that saluted the Wright Brothers - having been to Kitty Hawk last February, it was nice seeing the exhibits.

The Wright Brothers in a facsimile of their Ohio home town

After a quick tour, it was time to head back to to Kirk's house. There was more scenery to give a look-see on the walk back to the Metro.


The green turrets - far left -  are the Smithsonian
The fun didn't end with our return home. Later in the evening, Kirk, Nicole and the kids & my sister Dolores, and my niece Bea and her husband Avon, all headed over to the condo home of Nicole's parents, the Colemans. Very chic building! No photos, so you must use your imagination. The Colemans had a dinner - in my honor - can you believe that! I was floored.

It was a pleasant evening. Ok, I hate to focus on food - and you KNOW I do! - but the dinner was to die for! The stand outs of the meal were the best crab cakes that ever floated over my tongue, and an okra/nibblets corn veggie dish I adored & got the recipe for. I have got to post it with my favorite recipes some day.

So it was my last evening in Baltimore - I was flying back to California in the morning. I can't believe it took me so long to take up Kirk's invitation to Baltimore. I won't be waiting long for a revisit. You can count on that, as sure as the maize grows, the rivers run and the bison roam the plains.

A Wet Thursday in Baltimore

Dolores, Ain and Nicole, headed for the Baltimore National Aquarium

As my niece Ain says, it wasn't raining but 'spitting' when she picked up Dolores and myself for a day at the Baltimore National Aquarium. The area has a Nicole met us there, as she had the passes we needed to get in.


Modernistic Baltimore National Aquarium at the wharf

I was agog at the size of the aquarium and most of all, the split level set-up. In Monterrey, the aquarium is 2 level and sprawled across the waterfront. But for the heavily developed waterfront of Baltimore, the aquarium has a small footprint and with so many levels I lost track of them all. The bottom layer has the jelly fish displays.


Lovely Clot of Upside Down Jellies

From there you take an escalator up another level to see various reef fishes, pink anemones and coral beds.


Looking at Ray Tank from upper level


Little 'Nemo' fish in Corals


Reef Fishie


Dory fish and Yellow Tang swim in and out of the Reefs


Weaving Through the Exhibits

Another escalator gets you up to the fresh waters of the Amazon with shifty cayman, huge turtles, pancake sized angelfish and loads of HUNGRY piranhas.


Piranha eye you back


Authentic looking Amazon Shore, complete with terrapin

My favorites was display of poison dart froggie after poison dart froggie in rainbow hues.


Green and Black Poison Dart Frog


Rare Panamanian Golden Frog


Blue Poison Dart Frog

Another escalator ride got us to the Rain Forest where stairs could be hiked to get up on the level with sloths, scarlet ibis, cardinals, Sun Bittern and Parrots. And check out this noisy bugger!




Ain and Dolores in the Rain Forest

The ride back down the escalators has as many levels and exhibits on the way back down as on the way up. There are twisting walkways and circular giant tanks with busy schools of fish that swim fast moving marathons around visitors.

Time to head back down the escalators


Loved the lit silhouettes of sharks on the downward ramps


The long ramps back to the ground floor

We made it through the Aquarium in time to see the 1:30 Dolphin show. The indoor arena was huge.


The Dolphin Show


"Hey you! Got any dolphin food?"


We had a great time at the aquarium. There weren't such aquariums on the Eastern coast when I was growing up in New York City, back when dinosaurs ruled the earth. After a nice lunch of 'real food' at Chipotle next to the aquarium, I asked Ain to drop me off at the nearby Phoenix Shot Tower.


The Phoenix Shot Tower

Kirk told me in the old days, they used to drop blots of molten lead from the top of the tower, to a vat of water at the bottom of the tower. The lead blobs formed into perfect circular spheres, cooled and formed by the water. It is wonderful the tower was left intact, as it was only actually ever made bullets and cannon balls from 1828 to 1892. Happily as it was once the tallest structure in the U.S., it was spared the indignity of being flattened in the name of progress.


Loved the Tower's Olde Sign


Lovely old cobblestones line the streets around the Tower


Shot Tower's Stats
Following my quick exploration of the Shot Tower - which is closed - we finally headed home. Ain left, the kids got home and then Kirk got home from work. Hurrah! The next thing I knew, Kirk, Dolores, little Sydney, James and I were off to the movies to see The legends of the Guardians - which is about owls - in 3D.


What ends a day perfectly? Cool Owls in 3D!

I think seeing such a cool movie with my eensie little Great Niecelette & Nephew had me so happy I was particularly blubbery and I got all misty when the owlettes learned to soar and when the heroic Soran saved the day. Perfect end to a perfect day!