The day after Christmas I ran away from home to peruse the booths at Antiques Village in Dayton, Ohio. I used to love treasure hunting in antique malls and junk shops but haven’t made the time to do so lately.
The name is sort of misleading because this vendor mall is 80,000 square feet and filled to the brim with vintage pieces, crafts, books and all manner of items beyond the advertised antiques.
I skipped the rows of glass cases mainly because they tend to make my eyes glassy and still managed to spend half of the day there. Honestly, I wrapped it up because I found the one thing I wanted and it was well past lunchtime. Plus, my cart was sort of full.
I’m always intrigued by the things you see in these places.
Like the family photos that have been discarded.
The collections!
The artistry!
And the weird stuff.
Sometimes I like the weird stuff best.
I came home with a few of those photos as well as several small things including a bust of Mark Twain, a side table with a shelf for books, and a silver teapot with nice patina to put flowers in. It was quite the haul of treasures!
If you go, wear your walking shoes and get a cart. It can be inconvenient but anytime I have not gotten a cart, I’ve had to backtrack to retrieve one. The restrooms are clean and there’s a place to sit and rest or to leave your spouse when they get cranky because you’ve been there too long. That day, the rest area looked like time out for middle aged men.
Most of all, go with an open mind and remember if you see something you want, you need to grab it before someone else does!
Welcome back to this week’s series on the National Museum of the United States Air Force. I had a lovely visit there last Saturday and one blog story didn’t do justice to all the interesting things that I wanted to share. I have a few stories planned for this week and today’s topic is something truly unexpected.
I was delighted to see that there are some resources for the visually impaired that seem quite new. There is a ton of signage in this museum but some of the aircraft now have signs with the narrative told in braille. Each sign has a textured image of the plane and a 3D printed model of the plane.
This museum is so interactive and engaging for those of us who are fortunate to have our eyesight but I imagine it would be terribly dull for visually impaired visitors unless you had a truly great friend or guide to assist. Imagine the quality of life improvements that would be possible if there were more accommodations like this.
Long ago, I was the fair housing officer for my community. This experience gave me a different perspective on this world of ours because I see the value of providing accommodations that give equal access to housing, learning, employment and the other parts of life that contribute to independent living. Providing equal access is such an easy thing to do and it makes a tremendous difference for those who need it.
Museums are absolutely part of that and I was proud of whoever decided to make this a better place to visit. Come back tomorrow. I have a story about a survivor you’ll want to know.
Last minute cancelled plans Saturday left me with nowhere to go even though I was dressed and ready to leave the house by about 7:30 a.m. It was shaping up to be a beautiful day so I asked my fella if he was interested in a different adventure than we had planned. We opted for a trip to the National Museum of the United States Air Force and some bookshopping, because well, bookshopping is what we do best. It was a true adventure day complete with an unexpected stop for a pre-museum snack at Tudor’s Biscuit World and lots of cool museum stuff to appreciate.
Dayton, Ohio is the well documented birthplace of aviation and the Dayton/Cincinnati region made quite the hub for the innovative technology that is necessary for aviation and aerospace development. We are fortunate to have so many cool aviation related spots in the Dayton area and the grandmama of them all is the Air Force Museum.
As many times as I go, I still stand in awe of some of these planes, missiles and artifacts. I still seek out the stories of the people who bring the legends of these great machines to life. I still become overwhelmed by the awesome amount of knowledge and inspiration accessible in one place.
And it’s no wonder. This museum dates to May 1923 and it is a world-renowned center for what the museum calls “air and space power technology and culture preservation.” Friends, there are 20 indoor acres as well as outdoor spaces to explore.
You know something? It’s all FREE. Admission, the parking, the tours – all free. There are ways to spend money – you can buy tickets for some simulators, you can buy food and there are museum souvenirs as well. But you can also pack a picnic to eat outside, skip the gift shop and make this the most extraordinary frugal adventure day you’ve ever encountered.
IF you like history and airplanes, of course. If you hang out here with me, I assume you like those things because I talk about them all the time.
Every time I go, I think I should spend a couple of hours exploring a single area of the museum like just early aviation or just Vietnam. It would be less overwhelming and I could absorb more information. Of course, I never manage to do that because I want to see everything! Plus, they do sometimes rotate items in and out so there’s a good chance there is something new to see when you only go occasionally.
I always look forward to seeing this fifties era experimental aircraft called the Avro Canada VZ-9AV Avrocar. It was part of Canada’s effort to develop a supersonic, vertical takeoff and landing fighter bomber and it looks like a flying saucer! Read more about that here.
Seeing this display of World War II era bomber jackets always makes me wonder what happened to the men who wore them. Did they make it home safe? Did they ever dream their jacket would be exhibited in a world renowned museum?
And then there are new things like the Apollo 15 Command Module Endeavour which is on loan from the National Air and Space Museum in Washington.
Of course, I don’t always approve of their changes. I told you a few years ago about the Memphis Belle being permanently installed here. I took my dad and we had a fabulous day including the exploration of the Memphis Belle exhibit which included biographies and pictures of all the crew and a thought provoking explanation of why this plane is so important.
They seem to have taken away all of those extras and have downgraded to just a small sign that makes the Memphis Belle seem like any other plane. Hopefully they will rotate all that back in at another time because the story is important. Read more about that here.
I have written about this museum some here but there are a few specific stories I want to tell so I will spend this week highlighting some of them. Come back tomorrow to get started.
Dayton’s Woodland Cemetery and Arboretum was founded in 1841, winning them a reputation for being one of the oldest and best rural garden cemeteries in the country. At over 200 acres, it’s too much to see in the afternoon we had to explore last week. With over 3,000 trees, it’s one of the more impressive cemeteries I have seen in person.
The fall foliage was mostly golden and was completely breathtaking.
You enter through a Romanesque gateway that was completed in 1889 alongside a chapel and office. We didn’t stop at the chapel but I wish now that we did to see the original Tiffany stained glass windows. Another trip.
There are some interesting people buried here including Julia Reichert who I wrote about last week. The Wright Brothers are buried here along with their younger sister Katherine who was a suffragette and an important part of her brothers’ business. She deserves a story of her own.
Poet Paul Lawrence Dunbar, humorist Erma Bombeck, inventor of the folding stepladder John H. Baisley, inventor of the Yellow Pages Loren M. Berry and freed slave and writer Jordan Anderson are among the notable people who lie at rest here. For every one of the well known individuals buried here there are thousands of normal people, souls who lived quiet lives for whom the bell tolled but there’s no one left to remember them. I suppose that’s why some of the wealthy have enormous monuments and obelisks to grab your attention as you drive or walk through. They’re hoping to outsmart short memories and the unforgiving march of time.
We parked near the Wright family plot and explored from there. It’s interesting that the fathers of flight, the people responsible for one of the most important inventions in world history, are buried with a rather humble marker.
It wasn’t lost on me that they are buried in the flight path of Wright Patterson Air Force Base as we watched from this hillside as military planes took off and landed. It made me wonder if Wilbur and Orville Wright ever imagined how prolific flight would be, how enormous the planes could grow, or how they could be used as weapons of war and tools for peace.
It was quite an experience to stand here and contemplate these questions.
If you like cemeteries as much as I do, Woodland is worthy of your time. I hope to return another day and perhaps in another season when we might see snow or spring blooms.
Want to see more? Check out Make The Journey Fun on Facebook. I’ll share some more pictures!
Wednesday found me admiring the gorgeous fall foliage in Dayton’s Woodland Cemetery. I’m on vacation this week and, after days of doing what other people wanted me to do, it was nice to roam freely.
We wandered around this enormous cemetery on the hill where people have buried their loved ones literally for centuries. We found the graves of pioneers and soldiers, infants and the very old, and of people both famous and forgotten.
Adam found the grave of Julia Reichert, a 76 year old who died two years ago. I snapped a photo to remind me to Google her. Here’s what her epitaph reads:
She believed in love and justice
And the power of story
She fought for women and workers
And a better world.
She lived bravely and fiercely across all her years.
What a tribute. I just had to know more about this woman and expected to find an obituary online. What I didn’t expect to find was a series of newspaper articles from publications in Ohio, New York City and Washington D.C.
The Yellow Springs News wrote “A documentarian with a career spanning more than fifty years, Reichert’s oeuvre includes more than two dozen works as director and producer. Her work in film will be remembered for holding a megaphone to the voices of women and the working class – a thematic thread that ran through many of her most important works.”
Her first film Growing Up Female was released in 1971 and was considered one of the first films of the women’s liberation movement. The list of her accomplishments and accolades is impressive and hers sounds like a life well lived.
It seems to me the world could use more people like her. Imagine being described as someone who “lived bravely and fiercely across all her years.” What an amazing thing to say about someone.
Oh, the power of story.
Be curious about the world around you, friends. Go looking for stories. Ask questions. Look for more about the things that pique your interest. You may get a story out of it. You may learn something. You may be inspired, empowered and delighted by what you find.
This is my advice but I hope Julia Reichert would approve.
