Pumpkin Farms and Skeletons

Holy crow! This week has been insane...

We had another Pack Meeting, which David continued to hate. This time it was the Rain Gutter Regatta, in which you needed to make a boat out of a plastic hull, some clay, a straw and a paper sail, then put it in a long gutter they had all set up and blow it to the end of the race course. Since there were a lot of boys doing this, David wanted to opt out. The more Doug and I tried to convince him (or threaten him, whatever) the more he resisted. His Den Leader tried talking him into it, at which point I backed way off. We didn't seem to be making any headway. Eventually, under tremendous duress, he managed to participate. Of course once he actually DID the boat race, he thought it was fun, and he volunteered to do it again. Dad swears he's going pull the boy's spleen out of his nose if he keeps up the "I'm too shy" routine.

The next day was a trip to the Art Museum with the homeschoolers. There were about 30 of us all told, but they split the group up into age divisions, and ultimately we were in a group with only 5-6 kids in it. They did a tour for us with a Halloween theme, going around and showing all the various "scary critters" in the artwork. This means there were a lot of African masks, Mayan pottery, lots of tribal stuff. Duck Grandma had sent everyone large envelopes for Halloween, and both kids got black Halloween t-shirts. Since this was the Halloween tour, they deemed it totally appropriate to wear the shirts to the museum, so both of them were running around with a skeleton theme going. (I put a black bow in Lauren's hair to match her shirt. Then she wanted her face painted "like a skeleton," so I put a band of white across her eyes and then filled in "eye sockets" with black face paint, and painted her lips black. Sounds awful, but matched with her little skeleton shirt and black bow, she really was quite a hit.

Since there were so few kids in the group, the tour went very quickly (they're used to classes of 30 or so, where you're always trying to settle everyone down and take a nose count), so the guide says, "Hmmm, looks like we're done early. So...uh...I guess you can--"
"Do you have any Greek art?" The kid was in perhaps 3rd or 4th grade.
"Greek? Well...yeah. It's over in ... uh ... well, do you all want to go?" Everyone said sure, and we got to go trooping over to a section of the art museum with lots of sculptures and pots. The tour guide started to explain one of the pieces. "Now this one is of a baby, and his name was--"
"HERCULES!" This must be the kid's obsession du jour.
"Right, Hercules. Now he was the son of a mortal woman and Zeus, so when he was born, the legend says, Herra was very angry with the baby to she sent--"
"SNAKES!"
"Right again! She sent snakes to kill the baby."
"But Hercules was so strong that he STRANGLED them!" said the boy triumphantly.
"Exactly. And we think that if these arms here hadn't broken off, we would see the baby Hercules with his arms around the snakes, presumably killing them." She went on a little more about how the sculptures were made, and tried to wrap up the tour again.
"Do you have any swords? For, like, knights?" This time it was a different boy.
"Um...sure. Do you all want to go again? We have time." The kids all said sure, and on the way down the stairs we stopped and looked out the window into Forest Park, where a perfectly leafless, silver tree stood.

Lauren was thoroughly enchanted.

Apparently there's an artist who makes stainless steel trees and gets them installed in parks all over the world. That's an interesting job to have...make sure that the world is populated by mythic, silver trees. Beats pushing paper around all day.

Down the stairs we went into an ornate room with gorgeous wooden floors and cases full of plate armor, swords and cross-bows. Most of the boys immediately plastered themselves against the glass with "oohs" and "aahs" and comments like, "Oh, man, that would SO hurt!" or "Wow, look at THAT one!" Ah, yes. The boundless ability of man to figure out different ways to kill himself. This would be the hacking, slicing and piercing phase, as opposed to our later preferences for puncturing and exploding.

She talked for awhile about knights, the weight plate armor, the role of squires, the role of chainmail, and then absolutely ended the tour with, "OK, time's up, if you'll just follow me to the lobby..."

Lauren had a wonderful time, but she expected to be able to paint, for some reason. David was less enthusiastic, but he figured it was at least alright. Being able to throw coins into the fountain helped make up for that a little bit.

We got one more day off, and then we went to an open house that was put on by the local branch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). We got to tour their offices and look at the software programs they use to predict the weather, how they issue weather warnings, and we got to see the doppler radar up close and get an explanation of how it works. There was also a contingent of ham radio...oh, wait, I mean Amateur radio operators, all wearing pins that said, "When all else fails...amateur radio works!" We also had someone from Emergency Management bring their portable command center...essentially a trailer packed with computers, radios, and whatever else you'd need to coordinate a bunch of people. The Red Cross was also there, and they explained to the kids about how they make sure that they're there whenever anything bad happens. I think they liked the idea that there are a lot of people out there wanting to help out others. We also got to talk to the meteorologists, and play a little bit with an evaporation pool and an anemometer (anyone? Little flippy thing that spins around and measures wind speed).

And wouldn't you know it, the next day was another Scout event, and this time David went to the Pumpkin Farm. I, on the other hand, was suffering from a stunning splitting headache (bordered on a migraine) and did NOT go, but Dad said a wonderful time was had by all.