bone ships, puppets, closing summer
QUILT UPDATE
I finished the thing! Many new lessons with fabric were learned (whatever synthetic stuff that pink bedsheet I used was not a good choice - it melted when pressed and frayed like crazy) and I'm mostly happy with it. It hangs over my bed.
There's no way to type this without sounding like a crazy person but it's about consciousness, and the parallel world to ours we get sparkles of here and there. I find mine through meditation mostly.
BONE SHIPS
I went to the Naval Academy Museum this past weekend as a little solo trip. I had an unexpected chunk of time and wanted to drive out of town and really do something with these last gasps of summer, and I heard there was a wild collection of model ships made out of bones by prisoners of war in Annapolis. So I went.
The experience of just getting on the campus is weird - you have to go through a security checkpoint and I believe be a citizen to go through security. It's ultimately a military base that's also a beautiful college campus.
There's a very cool crypt for a naval commander from the American Revolution, and the chapel is really more of a cathedral. Women were arranging flowers for a wedding in it when I walked through.
The vibes are bizarre. The tourists seemed to lean extremely white, conservative-appearing, and with a military bent. Doors were held open, everyone's posture seemed perfect, but people were friendly. Students in uniforms and casual clothes milled about among the tourists. I certainly stuck out with pink hair.
Like being at the Smithsonian, sometimes I look at institutions and think "wow look what we can do when we want to pull our resources together and do the right thing" and feel pangs of a maybe misplaced nostalgia of a "before times" that wasn't that long ago. It's harder to do so at the Naval Academy as a long-time critic of the military industrial complex. But! I wanted to see the bone ships and I wasn't paying them any money I don't already pay them. As far as I'm concerned, those are my ships as much as they are those of the retired Navy tourists.
First, some dockyard models:
"The Rogers Ship Model Collection includes 108 ship and boat models of the sailing ship era dating from 1650 to 1850. It contains scale models built for the British Admiralty and original display cabinets from the 17th century. The collection, bequeathed to the Naval Academy in 1935 by Colonel Henry Huddleston Rogers, is one of the most valuable of its type in the world" USNA website
Dockyard models were commissioned to be made by actual shipwrights to comply with a 1700s law requiring scale models to be created for review before construction of the actual ships.
For some reason the concept of an "advice boat" tickles me.
Many are displayed in modern museum cases, while some are in custom made mahogany cases.
I have so many boat pictures! But let's get to the bone ships (no "tiny guillotines!" to report)
Annapolis has some delightful architecture. Big on the cedar shingles! Baltimore is almost entirely brick, so cute wooden houses still delight me.
Toy Theater Festival
We saw a couple puppet shows at this event organized by Black Cherry Puppet Theater, an org that's been clicking on for 46 years! Toy theater takes place entirely on a tiny stage and is several hundred years old as an art form.
This one features a teeny-tiny revival:
And this one had moveable characters but also depended on a flashlight to light up different settings, which was fantastic
And that's all folks! If you made it to the end, thanks for suffering through grainy footage of my weird little life and I hope your week is off to an easy start.