Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia - Sneaking History Into Your Vacation

We just returned home from a vacation in Williamsburg, Virginia.  Williamsburg is a lengthy drive from our house, but it's still short enough to do in one day.

Visiting Colonial Williamsburg is a great way to sneak a little bit of education into your vacation. My kids have now both learned about the settlement at Jamestown and the birth of the United States, so Colonial Williamsburg (which is what you see in the picture above) now has some significance for them.

There are lots of short, educational demonstrations and talks you can see in Colonial Williamsburg, and it's a beautiful place to look at as well.  There are dozens of refurbished colonial buildings, some of which are shops of various sorts, and some of which are outfitted as if people of that day still lived there...

As an occasional photographer, I loved this scenery.  I tried not to linger too long to keep the kids from getting bored, but I found that if I mixed a bit of this...

with a bit of this...

...they did just fine. 

If your kids are like my kids, they will find something they want to buy, even if it's at "sort-of" historically accurate places such as this:

And then of course, there are the conventional souvenir shops, where you can buy things like this:

Don't worry - he didn't shoot his eye out - it just looks like a real gun.  

Although, if you cut the string on the cork of this pop gun (out of sheer frustration, due to SOMEONE popping it INCESSANTLY), you could see how it might have the potential to shoot someone's eye out...

Don't ask me how I know this information.

We visited the church some of our founding fathers attended while they worried about the fate of the colonies.  One of the guides informed us that you can still attend mass here.  I believe she said it is the oldest continuously attended church in the nation.

And, if you're a bacon lover, like my daughter, you'll probably appreciate this plaque in the church vestibule.

If you're interested in weaponry, be sure to visit the armory.

And visit nearby Yorktown, where you can see a canon fired just a few yards away.

It is my estimation that you can't spend a whole week doing this stuff, but don't let that deter you from visiting.  There are lots of other things to do in Williamsburg.  

More in my next post!

Dredging Yaphank Lake

Dredging Yaphank Lake

When I was a kid, (as my kids would say, "back in the day") people used to go swimming in Yaphank Lake.  It was probably the sort of place that mothers liked to come with their small children due to the lack of waves and the fact that the deepest part of the lake is only about 6 feet.  In the mid 80's, when I worked at the preschool just down the road, a bunch of us used to go down to the lake, plop our towels by the "shore" and work on our tans while we watched the neighborhood kids splash around in the water.  It was almost like having part of the day off.

Dredging operation at Upper Yaphank Lake

Some time around then, according to speculation, someone dumped a fish tank, or maybe just a fish from a fish tank into the lake, and invasive waters plant took hold in the lake.

Over time, those plants made the lake go from this:

(minus the black tubing, which keeps the silt from spreading while they dredge) 

...to this.

Lower Yaphank Lake - "Lily Lake"

This is not the same lake, but it's attached to the same lake via a short stretch of stream. Lily Lake or, Lower Yaphank Lake, is just as much of a mess as its sister lake.

 Luckily, a clean-up has finally begun.  I didn't realize it would take such a monumental effort to fix this mess.

First, they rake through the water with this steam-boat looking thing, and pull out the weeds...

Then they pile it onto the shore.  

After the Upper Lake is done, they'll move on to the Lower Lake.

They use this tubing to hold a big screen in place.  It's supposed to keep the silt in a smaller area while they work.  See the massive pipe coming out of the water on the right side of the picture above?  It runs underground and dumps out in the lower lake.  I guess they are filtering out the smaller particles, so pieces of the weeds-from-hell don't spread again.

Look at the massive quantity of this stuff.  

Before they started, the whole lake was literally covered in this stuff

They've pulled multiple piles of this stuff out of the lake so far.  

It's a wonder fish can still swim through it. 

Looking forward to the day when there are kids here again, playing in the water.

If you want to know more about the Yaphank lakes, check out these links...

http://www.dec.ny.gov/outdoor/24204.html

http://www.dec.ny.gov/outdoor/24179.html

http://www.newsday.com/long-island/towns/3-7m-bond-okd-to-clean-up-yaphank-lakes-1.4987973

http://www.savetheyaphanklakes.org/initiatives.html

http://yaphankcivic.org/Lake_Invasives_Species.html

Gem and Mineral Show

I went to a gem and mineral show this weekend.  I used to go to these things very often when I used to make beaded jewelry.  Now I just go to oogle the jewelry and buy stuff I'm never going to make into anything.

I'm being honest, here.

I thought I'd bring the kids with me but they were too interested in sleeping until noon.

Here's what they missed:

A gigantic fossilized dinosaur foot. 

... a jawbone with teeth and tusks attached.  Cool.

No, it's not turds.  It's a group of dinosaur eggs. 

An Irish Elk.  

Shark Teeth.  There was also a REALLY big tooth - about 8-12 inches across.  Don't know why I didn't take a picture of that - sorry.  What was I thinking?

On second thought, I was probably thinking about this. Sterling silver with an amber center.

Or THIS, my favorite of the day.  

I think it's supposed to be horse stirrups, which is cool.  $180.00 cool, which was too cool for my budget.  I guess I was so excited, I couldn't hold the phone still enough to take a good picture.

So long, stirrup bracelet, maybe I'll run into you again at the next show.  It was nice wearing you for a minute...

And now you know why I usually just call these events JEWELRY shows. ;-)

Bored at the Beach or, you can take adolescents to the beach, but you can't make them have fun...

FINALLY, it's not so blasted hot outside!  I decided to take the kids to the beach.  Silly me, I thought they might like this idea.  It was a fairly recent year when they enjoyed spending the whole day collecting shells and fiddler crabs in a bucket, splashing each other in the surf and playing in the sand.

Now, it's a whole new world.


"We're going to the beach today."  I remind them, first thing in the morning.

Oh.

"Do you want to go to the beach?"

I guess.  Which beach?

"The one with the small waves."

Oh good.  I don't want to see anyone there.  If we go to the other one, we might see people I know.

This reminded me of when I was their age and I went to the beach with my mom.  I had BEGGED my mother to take us to the beach year after year, and she would only take us once or twice a summer, it seemed.  She was not a beach person.   I remember once, when I must have been about 13 and she did take us... or did she just take me, since I am the oldest, and probably the only one begging to go?  She marched to a spot on the sand with her piles of stuff while wearing what I thought was the weirdest, most prim and proper bathing suit in the world, and I trudged along behind her, enduring the stares and comments from the older teenagers in their micro bikinis and cut-offs.  How humiliating, to be there with your mother!  She settled on her towel and did not look happy OR comfortable (perhaps we were there because she had finally given in to my relentless nagging?)  A very short time later, I couldn't wait to go home.  It was a silent disaster.  I don't think I EVER asked her to take me to the beach again.


Today, upon arriving at the beach...


I don't want to sit here, let's walk further away from the lifeguard, you know, so I have less of a chance of seeing anyone I know.

(Am I that embarrassing?)

"Why don't you go in the water?"

I don't want to go in the water by myself (it was 15 feet away from our chairs - egad!).

"But the water is RIGHT THERE."

Well, there's too many people here.

"How about you?"

I'm not going in the water.

"You're not?"

No, I don't like to go in the water.  I just want to get a tan.

And so we settled in, somewhat, and I read about a dozen or so pages in my book while they splashed each other with water from their water bottles, and irritated each other in general.  I ignore most of their complaining as I ignore most of their nagging, so I wasn't really paying much attention when my son, who had been nagging me for french fries, started burying one of my feet in the sand.  My legs were crossed, since I was trying to tan my side as the sun went down.  My book was engrossing
(And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini), and quite honestly, I was trying to tune him out...


"Mom..."

"Mom..."

"Mom..."

"Mom..."

Suddenly, I became aware of what he was doing.  I looked like I was getting some sort of spa treatment with hot rocks.

"Mom.  I'm bored."

"Can we go home?"

After another hour, I relented, and took them home.  But not before I somewhat successfully dunked my son in the surf.  I say "somewhat" because he is now bigger than I am, and the only reason I was successful at all is because he stubbed his already injured toe on a rock in the process.

Ah, beach memories in the making...

 

Too Damn Hot for Anything...

It's too hot for anything.  Even my air conditioned house is still pretty hot.  This is why I live where I do, and not in Florida.  Except, oddly enough, right at this moment, it's cooler in Florida.  

I have a whole list of things I want to do, but this heat is sucking the motivation out of me so that I'm just sitting around like a slug, watching the dog pant.  She's too hot, too.

It's too damn hot for anything except maybe catching a water-mohawk on film...

It's harder than it looks.

Catching it on film, I mean.

Plus, there's one crucial thing you need...

hair.

I mean, LONG hair.  Sorry, Son.

Still, it's more fun than watching my electric meter spin.

And I do mean spin...

See the blurry dial under the large word, "Kilowatthours" ?

It's blurry because it's moving so fast. 

There should be a little coin-jingle noise to go with that spin.  

I do believe that maybe I need to spend some time making water-mohawks.

Stay cool, friends. 

The things you find while cleaning out your junk drawers...

     The other day, while cleaning out some junk drawers in the kitchen, I came across this lovely item.  It's my grandpa's pepper grinder.   I've had it in various drawers since he passed away in 1995.  It needed some repairs that I just hadn't gotten around to doing so there it sat, in the kitchen drawer of my various kitchens until just the other day when I took it out, put it back together (with the help of the two perfectly fitting washers you can see under the handle that I robbed from my husband's parts-stash).  Perfect!  It grinds pepper like a champ - I suspect, exactly the way it did 60 years ago when it was new.  My dad remembers it from when he was a kid in the 1940s.  

     From the time I was very young, my grandmother would ask me to help her set the table for dinner, and after everything else was on the table, she would say to me, "... and put this next to Grandpa's plate."  I loved this little thing - its small size, the fact that it looked like a miniature barrel, the sliding lid for the peppercorns, the simple mechanics of it - I always thought it was just perfect.  Now it reminds me of dinners there at my grandparents house, with everyone sitting around the table chatting, passing plates of course after course of wonderful food.  

     My grandfather spent much of his time in the backyard garden in the summer.  In the winter he painted.  Great, big oil paint portraits of unknown people, posing in robes and postures of people from the Renaissance.  

     I always like this lady best.  My grandmother wouldn't let him hang the pictures upstairs, so their finished basement looked like an art gallery with pictures lining all the walls.    In defense of my grandma, they were rather large...   I found a place for this one in my own house, hanging on the wall in the stairwell - visible to all those going down the stairs.  'Hello, lady,' I sometimes think when I'm walking down the stairs, 'you look happy today.' 

     Still, the pepper grinder holds a special place in my heart, because while the painting was his solitary hobby, the eating reminds me of the family.  Once, when my grandmother asked me to call Grandpa to dinner, I walked a few steps down into the basement and yelled, "Grampa! Come uppa stairs!" in perfect imitation of his Italian accent.  He found this endlessly amusing, and the family laughed about it for years.  

     He had a good sense of humor.  I was not very old when I grew taller than him - he was only about 5'4" or so, and age shrunk him a bit, I'm sure.  He started calling me Shorty.  

"Hey, Shorty!'

"Hey, Grandpa!"

    So Grandpa, consider this a tribute from your Shorty.  From now on, whenever I grind fresh pepper onto my food, I'll think of you.