Troy

We have come up north for our traditional Thanksgiving Weekend family get-together.  Cheryl, Dave and Bennett settled into cousin Ed and Leora’s while we returned to the Olde Judge Mansion.

Jerry and I contributed wine while everyone else created the always delicious and always ample traditional and unusual Thanksgiving meal, including Jello.

This was the best year yet with everything tasting outstanding (exceptions taken by some who don’t like sweet potatoes or Brussel sprouts).  The great thing is there is so much the meal lasts more than two days.  Between eating, watching the parade and football, and playing games, the day exceeded expectations.

 All this work took a toll.

On Friday everyone went to the movie theater but saw different films.  Coco, Wonder, Justice League and Thor all received good to top reviews.  Can you match the viewer to the  movie?
(Jerry, Anna Lee, Jeff, Dave, Cheryl, Bennett, Ed 49, Leora 40ish, Edan 16, and Liat 14).

Saturday is Troy Farmer’s Market day, a must for our purchasing maple syrup.   The market moves indoors during the winter months but is still a local event.

Jeff added a new twist.  We, excluding Jeff and Bennett who had their own time together, participated in an Escape Room.  You are “locked” in a room and have to use a series of cryptic clues to solve a mystery.  It is fun and we were very poor at it but we are willing to try it again.

Sunday the DC trio went home.  We went to lunch at A Better Bite, a Mediterranean restaurant with a sandwich named Hadassah.  We then went to the Albany Institute of History & Art.  The exhibit Well-Dressed in Victorian Albany showed the finely detailed clothing worn by middle and upper-class women. 

Note the stitches, beadwork and lacework.

The exhibit on Anti-Suffragettes is a bit charming.

In Albany, many women of means opposed women getting the vote because they thought it would lessen their commitment to home responsibilities.  It seemed if you were rich you could afford to cede your opinion to your husband but what about poor women who labored under harsh conditions?

At the New York State History Museum was a 9-11 exhibit that has a fire truck, the first one on the scene, all but destroyed on that horrible day.  Nearby is an exhibit of vintage fire trucks.

Our cousins joined us for a luscious meal at Shanghai then we bid them farewell until next year. 

We had breakfast with Jeff before he drove us to ALB airport.  Our time in DC and Troy was wonderful as usual, full of loving family doing so many things together.  We look forward to a repeat next year.

Back in DC

We enjoyed a lovely lunch and wonderful conversation with cousins Conne and Mark at the Carlyle Restaurant in Shirlington, VA.

Back in DC, Jerry enjoyed playtime with his grandson.

DC is a city filled with museums so, of course, we met our responsibility.  We went to a mysterious exhibit at our favorite museum, the Renwick.  On the way there we paused to ponder this installation.

Murder is Her Hobby is an exhibit of miniature crime scenes developed by Frances Glessner Lee.
Lee created Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Deaths to help teach forensic investigators to look for clues in murders.  These dollhouse-size boxes are “exquisitely created miniature death scenes.” showing how a room looked at the time of the crime.

She is considered the godmother of forensic investigation by the Harvard Department of Legal Medicine. She taught her students to try to determine if the death was homicide, suicide, accident or natural causes.  While she meant these for serious study, the visitors enjoying her work acted as amateur mystery writers developing plots (this writer included).

This lifesize The Final Stop was another exhibit at the Renwick.

We finished with some of the regular displays at this unique American crafts museum.

After enjoying the art we headed to the Kennedy Center for a wonderful play called Me Jane.  It is the story of young Jane Goodall and her childhood interest and deep curiosity about animals.  Her childish desire to go to Africa became a lifelong commitment to studying apes.

Harper's Ferry

We went to Harper’s Ferry to meet with friends Don and Barbara for a tour of the historic town and to spend time catching up on each other’s lives.

After lunch and phase one of conversing, we drove to Harper’s Ferry NP to meet our guide.  Jim, divided our tour into three parts, the town’s role during the Civil War, the battles fought in this area and John Brown (the part of the story that is best known).

Harper’s Ferry and the adjacent Bolivar Heights are at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers. 

They are adjacent to Maryland, West Virginia  and Virginia .  The view, somewhat clouded over on our visit, covered all three states.

At the time of the Civil War, the hills were denuded of trees to provide a clear field for rifle and cannon fire.

Back in the early 1700s few settlers lived in the area.  One settler ran a rickety ferry boat across the Potomac. Robert Harper came to the area and bought that ferry service along with 120 acres of land  The town was then named  Shenandoah Falls at Mr. Harper’s Ferry.  George Washington chose the area to build an armory for the construction of rifles, which made the town prosperous then vulnerable.  The armory was 600 yards long and made weapons with interchangeable parts, a revolution at that time.  Merriweather Lewis got rifles for the Corps of Discovery in his journey across the continent.

When the Civil War broke out, the position of the town along the two rivers and surrounded by mountains made it the most fought-over area in the war.  More than 1300 battles were fought on land that kept changing hands.  Early in the war, twelve thousand Union troops surrendered to Thomas (Stonewall) Jackson.  Toward the end of the war, U. S. Grant burned the area to clear it of Confederate Troops.

The event that has made Harper’s Ferry a well-known part of history occurred in 1859.  John Brown was a strong and vocal opponent abolitionist.  He railed against it in churches. 

He was sure that he could get the slaves to rise up and follow him.  Along with twenty-one followers, his plan was to  attempt to seize the arsenal where over 100,000 rifles made at the armory were stored and distribute the weapons to slaves.  This is all that remains of the arsenal.

His thirty-six-hour raid failed and he, along with most of his men, were either shot in the battle or hung.  Union soldiers later destroyed the armory rather than risk the weapons being used by the rebels.

The John Brown Museum that tells his story in three parts while viewers sit first on church pews, then on rifle boxes and lastly in a jury box.

  Following his execution Southern anger increased while Northerners revered him.  Brown’s actions helped rip the North and South apart and helped Lincoln get elected.  Our guide theorized a formula that Brown led to Lincoln which led to Civil War.  He posed a question: Was Brown a hero or a terrorist?

Following our guided tour we climbed the narrow street of Harper’s Ferry seeing the remaining stone buildings, some displaying artifacts of earlier times or information about wildlife in the area.

Above town was the site of Storer College (1867 - 1954) which was open to all students, regardless of color or gender.  At that time, in the South, it was still illegal to teach former slaves to read or write. 

Robert Harper did not live to enjoy his home on a knoll above town. 

This railroad bridge has been in operation since before the Civil War.

The steps to the church are carved into the rock.

We all had a great time learning history, seeing the sights and, mostly, conversing.

Washington, DC

DC, Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania all before lunch on Saturday.  We chased leaf color but the trees were a bit past peak.  The drive through all these areas was still lovely. We stopped at a farm stand where we found huge gourds as well as jams, honey and other produce.

We left with a supply of apples and other goodies.

Our next stop was Frederick, MD for a really good lunch at Pretzels and Pizza and then wandered the town.

The town is now an art center and features lots of bakeries.  We think it has German origins because almost every one sells pretzels.

This mural adorned one of the town buildings.

Maryland was a slave state right next to DC.  Because of riots in Baltimore, the capitol was moved to Frederick for consideration of whether to secede.  To prevent the state’s secession, Lincoln used his suspension of the Writ of Habeas Corpus to arrest and hold  pro-Confederate members of the general assembly to stop them from voting to secede.  Later in the Civil War, the North and South traded possession of the city.  Bankers paid $200,000 ransom to the Confederacy to ransom the city and keep Southern troops out.

Back home, the evening was for playing, while Bennett played with his friend, the adults played cards.  Everyone got along nicely, even the adults.

Sunday was family day.  We spent a lovely afternoon and evening with Barbara and Bob and Ron at Lauren and Howard’s home.  Lots of talk, laughs and good food.  Bennett enjoyed playing with Hess trucks with his cousin Robyn.

And there was also some Zadie time.

We Finish with Justin

Late each afternoon of this trip we gather to enjoy tasty bites along with BYO drinks.

This was the sky as we ended our third day in Paso Robles.

A great climax to a great trip is more wonderful wine.  On our fourth day, we drove up through rolling hills lined with rows of grape vines.  Our destination for the afternoon was Justin Winery.  We began with a delicious lunch accompanied by a light Sauvignon Blanc and provided by charming servers.

The ladies pose for a group photo

while the men fiddle with their cameras.

We then relocated to a nearby Justin location for a private tasting of their outstanding wines.  We started with malbac and each succeeding red was better than the previous.

We left Justin with wonderful additions to our past days’ collection of wines.

This has been a fabulous trip thanks to the careful planning by Noreen.  We will continue to thank her as we return home and enjoy our liquid souvenirs.