fauxklore

All of us were leaving Niagara Falls on Friday. I’d arranged with Ed and Doug to get a ride to Buffalo. I’d originally thought of just flying back from there, but then I had a moment of inspiration and checked minor league baseball calendars. And, not only was there a Bisons game that night, they were playing the WooSox! (That’s the Worcester Red Sox, the AAA affiliate of the BoSox.) A little further research revealed that I could easily take a short trip in Western New York state that would get me to three AAA ballparks and allow me to see a few other places I was interested in.

First, we had to get back to the U.S., which was made slightly complicated by Ed overexplaining why we’d been in Canada. All he really needed to say was that we’d been touring Niagara Falls. Instead, he tried to explain Loserdom. I successfully persuaded the border crossing agent that I was not being abducted by Texans and they dropped me off at my hotel in downtown Buffalo.

I had plenty of time to settle in, have lunch at a reasonably good Jewish deli several blocks from the hotel, and walk around the area. Buffalo City Hall is a rather grand Art Deco building.

There is a statue of Grover Cleveland (who had been mayor of Buffalo) in front of it. But the statue I was more interested in is decidedly not of a former mayor.

Shark Girl was created by Casey Riordan Millard in 2013 and is supposed to symbolize a fish out of water and the longing for normality. I think this photo makes a fine addition to my collection of pictures of weird public art.

As for the ball game, Sahlen Field was pretty nice and the Bisons fans were definitely enthusiastic. (I was, of course, rooting for the WooSox, who, alas, lost.) I was, however, annoyed that their mascot sometimes blocked the action while the game was in progress.

There were fireworks after the game, which I only watched a little of, before walking back to my hotel.

In the morning, I took a Lyft to the airport and picked up a rental car for the next couple of days. My first stop was a little under an hour away, in the town of Le Roy. I had picked up a brochure for the Jell-o Gallery Museum ages ago and I finally got to go there.

They have lots of info about the history of Jell-o, along with displays about the Jello Girl, a place to vote for your favorite flavor (lime!),and displays of Jello molds.

They also have recipes. This one, for “Savory Vegetable Salad Mold” is especially for spikesgirl58.

I should note that I did not buy any of the cookbooks for sale in their gift shop. All in all, the museum was reasonably amusing and worth a little under an hour. There is also an historic house in front of it that you can tour, but I had other plans that I thought were a better use of my time.

Specifically,, I had learned that the National Toy Hall of Fame is housed at the Strong Museum of Play in Rochester, just about a half hour further east. This is an absolutely amazing museum and I could probably spend days there. In addition to the Hall of Fame, there are displays about pretty much every aspect of play - including story books, sports, games (including board games), dolls, building toys, transportation toys, etc. It would be hard to go through it without stopping to ooh and aah over things you grew up with. There’s a theatre where a small music group played songs that were composed to match some of the hall of fame toys. There’s an area where (at extra cost) children can climb structures and ride a zip line and so on. There’s even a carousel.

Here are some of the hall of fame toys:

Barbie is just about the same age as I am, but she seems to have aged better. I suspect plastic surgery.

One fun thing I did was have their etch-a-sketch draw a portrait of me. Since I was wearing a mask, I think I came out looking a bit ape-like.

After a few hours at the museum, I went to my hotel and checked in. A friend who lives in the area picked me up and took me on a driving tour around Rochester, including passing the Eastman Mansion (as in Eastman Kodak), Lake Ontario, and crossing the Erie Canal several times. We also went over to her house, which includes acres of land and a little vegetable farm. It’s a very attractive part of the country, but I doubt I would want to spend a winter there.

In the evening, I went to my second baseball game of the trip. The Rochester Red Wings are the AAA affiliate of the Washington Nationals. They were playing the Scranton / Wilkes Barre RailRiders, who are the AAA affiliate of the Source of All Evil in the Universe. Alas, Rochester lost. Frontier Field was a pretty average ballpark in my opinion.

The really unique thing there was Milo the Bat Dog, who was definitely cute. (And popular.)

In the morning, I was off to my final destination for this trip. Syracuse is a little under an hour and a half east of Rochester. I didn’t really have time to do anything touristy there because I had to call into a meeting relating to some volunteer work I’m involved in.

Anyway, the Syracuse Mets (who are the AAA affiliate of the New York Mets, duh) were playing the Omaha Storm Chasers (AAA affiliate of the Kansas City Royals) at NBT Bank Stadium. The ballpark was pleasant enough, though it is located in what appeared to be a semi-industrial neighborhood. I was pleased to recognize Nick Plummer, who I’d seen play in his major league debut at Citified when I was there in late May.

After the game, I drove to the airport and returned my rental car. I then took a shuttle bus to my hotel. In the morning, I flew home, complicated by a 4+ hour flight delay due to a mechanical problem with the lane the night before. Fortunately, United had notified me of this before I went to bed, so I got a decent amount of sleep. It was good to get home after the back to back trips, fun as those had been.

I went to Atlanta for the weekend. My primary motivation was checking out the new ballpark, but, of course, that wasn’t all I did.

I had no issues with my United flights either way. In fact, I got upgraded both ways, though they failed to email me the upgrade notification for the return. It is also a big advantage to fly an airline other than Delta to/from ATL because you come in and out of the T-gates and don’t need to take a train to your plane.

I had contemplated staying near the ballpark, but decided that didn’t really make sense because it is the middle of nowhere in deep suburbia. Staying in midtown was actually more convenient, allowing me to take MARTA to and from the airport. More significantly, it also allowed me to do some important sightseeing on Saturday morning.

The High Museum of Art is one of the major art museums of the country. It is normally fairly pricy, but I have a Bank of America credit card, which gives me free access to various museums on the first weekend of the month. I find that if I have to pay to go to a museum, I feel like I need to see everything. But getting in free means I can just pick and choose a few parts to see without feeling like I’ve wasted money.

My main priority was the African art selection. There is an interesting mix of both traditional and contemporary pieces from several countries. My favorite – actually, my favorite piece in the entire museum – was one named Taago by El Anatsui, a Ghanian artist. It consists of pieces of aluminum from the tops and necks of local liquor bottles, joined with wire, to form a sculpture reminiscent of kente cloth. There was also a special exhibit of works by Ashley Bryan, who illustrated a lot of books based on folklore.

I moved on to the contemporary art, which includes a large collection of works by folk artist, Howard Finster. Other notable works include a painting by Richard Estes, whose photorealism I’ve admired for some time, and Insect Icon Tapestry by Jon Eric Riis. All in all, I spent a few pleasant hours at the museum, before heading off to the Cumberland area to meet up with friends for a late lunch / early dinner at Copeland’s. The food was good and the conversation was intelligent and wide ranging. Eventually, we left and they dropped me at the ballpark.

My first impression of SunTrust Park was that it was chaotic. They are still developing The Battery, a shopping and entertainment complex around the stadium. From what I could tell with the crowds, it is pretty much a collection of high end restaurants and watering holes. I fought my way through to the Right Field Gate, where there was a long and chaotic set of lines to get into the ballpark itself. I had bought a ticket package for Star Wars day, which included an R.A. Dickey Stormtrooper bobblehead, so my first stop was to redeem my voucher for that. The instructions they had emailed actually told me the wrong place to go to do that, but it was easily enough resolved. I should probably note that I am not really a big Star Wars fan, but it is always fun to add to my collection of ballpark gimmes.

That accomplished, I went to check off their monument garden, which has various exhibits on the history of the team. Of course, much of that history is pre-Atlanta – both in Boston and in Milwaukee – but that is fair enough. The statue of Hank Aaron is the centerpiece, as it should be. Overall, it is a reasonable exhibit, though the crowds were a bit of a pain.

The actual stands were not crowded. There were a few people at the entrance to the seating area taking photos with costumed Star Wars characters, but not so many actually sitting down to see the game. The Braves were playing the Cardinals, so this fell into the class of games in which I didn’t care who won. It looks like the Braves have a fair number of loyal fans. Unfortunately, those are generally identifiable by the tomahawk chop, a particularly obnoxious method of cheering. I appreciate the enthusiasm, but would prefer a non-racist way of showing it. On the plus side, several people sang along with the national anthem, and, later on, with "Take Me Out to the Ball Game." (Singing along to the latter is one of my three primary ballpark rating criteria, along with local character and a general level of fan engagement.)

It was actually hard to gauge fan engagement, because the weather sucked, with a few brief rain showers, which weren’t enough to affect play, but did send many people scurrying for cover. I’ll also note that there appeared to be particularly long lines for the concessions (none of which seemed particularly local or interesting). They don’t have any vendors in the stands, either, which doesn’t help.

As for the game, the Cardinals won, largely because Julio Teheran’s pitching was not up to snuff. I’ll also note that I was impressed by a couple of nice catches that Randal Grichuk made in right field. And Aledmys Diaz hit a three-run homer which pretty much clinched the game for St. Louis. Overall, it was a reasonably exciting game to watch.

I’d rate the ballpark in the group of vast group of middling ones. It’s a pleasant enough place to watch a game, but lacks soul. It also loses significant points for difficulty of access. Their website claims the Circulator bus connects the ballpark to the Cumberland Transit Center, but that bus actually appears to stop running at 9 p.m. and does not run at all on Sundays. The transit center is a long walk from the ballpark. There is a closer stop to a Cobb County Transit bus, though the ballpark staff misdirected me on how to get to that stop. And that bus runs infrequently, so was very crowded, largely with fans complaining that it is supposed to be the Atlanta Braves, not the Cobb County Braves. I should also note that the ballpark website pushes Uber as their transit solution, but the Uber pickup location had a line three blocks long. That is, of course, in addition to the cost and moral issues associated with Uber. When the team played at Turner Field, they ran shuttle buses from the Five Points MARTA station, which was a much better solution.

The really important thing is that I have, again, been to a game at every major league ballpark. One does, after all, have to keep up one’s standards when it comes to obsessions.

As for the rest of the weekend, I got home in time for a much needed nap, followed by dinner at Tachibana for a friend’s 50th birthday. What I didn’t get done was any housework, alas.

Crossposts: http://fauxklore.livejournal.com/384069.html

Celebrity Death Watch: Jean Redpath was a Scottish folk singer, who frequently sang on Prairie Home Companion. Sandy Wilson wrote the musical, The Boy Friend Andrew Kay was a leader in the early computer industry with his company, Kaypro.

Of course, the big name was Joan Rivers. I saw her guest hosting on The Tonight Show in the early 1980’s on a trip to L.A. with a friend. For a good look at her life and career, I recommend the documentary, Making Trouble: Three Generations of Funny Jewish Women, which also has segments on Fanny Brice, Molly Picon, Sophie Tucker, Gilda Radner, and Wendy Wasserstein.

Tunnel Book Workshop: I did a weekend workshop at The Art League and produced my first tunnel book. Most of Saturday was making the cover and general planning for the interior, while Sunday involved putting the interior together. The overall concept is sort of like a pop-up book and sort of like a diorama. I went with a futuristic, space travel theme. Mostly because I am me. It was a fun class, though I was a little irritated with the instructor’s political commentary while we worked on things we didn’t need her help with. One of the reasons I do stuff like this is for the opportunity to actually finish something, so the overall experience was satisfying. I still need to take photographs, but that means clearing out some of the space in my house with better lighting, so it is not happening soon. I should also mention that I have ideas for at least two more tunnel books – one involving baseball and one involving shoes.

The Big Maze: I went with a couple of friends to the National Building Museum to do The Big Maze, which was this year’s summer installation there. It was pretty cool, though not as cool as last year’s miniature golf. We solved it reasonably quickly and went through a second time, before going up to the second floor to photograph it from above. Afterwards, we looked at a few exhibits and had dinner at the Hill Country Barbecue pop-up outside the museum. Overall, that made for a pretty entertaining evening.

By the way, one of my friends drove. And we discovered that the area near the museum has the most confusing parking meter signs on the planet. Let’s just say there was a lot of ambiguity about whether you had to pay after 6:30 p.m.

Rolling Down to Old Maui: Then I flew to Maui for a few days. This was a good use of a United RPU (a type of upgrade certificate). The second leg, from SFO to OGG, got delayed a couple of hours for a mechanical issue. It’s annoying, but I do want them to have a fully functioning navigation system, especially when flying over the ocean. The other annoyance was that google maps had omitted a critical step in the directions to my hotel, but I figured things out.

My primary sightseeing goal was Haleakala National Park. The drive to the summit was slow and twisty, but interesting. (I did not attempt to do it for sunrise.) I was feeling the altitude a bit, so I did just a couple of short hikes, including part of the Shifting Sands Trail. The actual summit had an interesting view of the Maui Space Surveillance Complex, too. There was another lookout point with a lot of amazing silversword plants. I am a big fan of the national parks and this was a good example of why.

My other sightseeing mostly involved wandering around Lahaina. You can buy a brochure that details a walking tour, with various historic plaques along the way. The Baldwin House Museum was not particularly interesting, but the Wo Hing Temple was more interesting. The Lahaina Heritage Museum was the highlight of the actual sites, with a lot of information on local history. Lahaina is portrayed as a whaler’s port, but the whaling industry lasted only about 40 years there. It’s still a pretty cool town.

By the way, there are two gelato places in Lahaina. The lilikoi (passion fruit) gelato I had at Ono Gelato was better than the coconut gelato at Hawaii Gelato. Neither was particularly outstanding.

Overall, it was a pretty relaxing long weekend. There was even an internationally configured 757 on the way back, with lie flat seats. Unfortunately, that was a late afternoon leg and the red-eye from LAX home was a crappy domestic plane. The really annoying part of that, though, was the 2 guys in the row in front of me, who spent the whole night whining loudly about the lack of entertainment on the plane and what were they going to do for all those hours and why had they paid $21,000 for this trip to have this one leg in a plane like this and so on.

The Happiest Place on Earth: I got back on Tuesday morning and left on Wednesday for a business trip to Orange County. The trip wasn’t too bad, overall, but I learned that IAH apparently no longer has any sort of wifi (i.e. not even pay wifi). And Avis gave me a Chevy Captiva, which is a full-size SUV, and, hence, a pain to park. It was also really difficult for me to reach the ticket thingie on the hotel parking lot because I was about a full arm length above it.

My Birthday: The meeting I’d traveled for was on my birthday. So the company bought me birthday dinner (at a Mexican restaurant near Disneyland). When I came back to the hotel, Marriott had left me a small bottle of champagne and two chocolate covered strawberries! Loyalty does have its rewards.

Rose Valley House Concert: I came home on Friday and then drove up to Philadelphia on Saturday to go to a storytelling house concert at the home of Megan Hicks and Jack Abgott. They were, as always, gracious hosts. The two tellers were Granny Sue, who I’d met before, and Tommy Pryor, who I hadn’t. Granny Sue sang a couple of ballads and told a mix of stories – an excellent variant on "The Walking Catfish," a ghost story, and "Rindercella." Tommy read a couple of pieces from his book, I Hate the Dallas Cowboys and told a ghost story. Overall, It was a lovely evening and I’m glad to hear they are planning more house concerts.

LimmudFest Baltimore: I stayed up in the Philly area Saturday night and drove down to Baltimore on Sunday, for LimmudFest, a Jewish learning event. I had the usual dilemma of wanting to be in multiple places at once. The best sessions I went to were one on genealogy and one on Jewish-themed Broadway musicals of the 1960’s. For example, I had completely forgotten about the existence of The Zulu and the Zayda and I’d certainly never heard any of the music from it. There was only one session I was very disappointed with, largely because the presenter didn’t stick to any given topic, much less the one the session was advertised as addressing.

Whew! No wonder I haven’t had time to write anything for the past couple of weeks.