Shriver House, Gettysburg, PA

Some of you might be thinking it is about time I talked about where I am working, well, here it is--The Shriver House.  I am proud to say this museum has a very distinguished reputation for being a quality museum with an excellent tour provided--by me, of course.  Well, there are a few others who do a very nice job of giving the tours here too; but I had to brag a little at least.  I have even been getting a number of tips at the end of my tours.

To the left is a picture of the kitchen and just below is a picture of the sitting/dining room.  Please notice all the attention to detail.  You can easily imagine that the family members just steped out of the room.                                      

The Shriver House is the one place in Gettysburg where you hear the story of what happened to the civilians during the battle of Gettysburg.  It is a poignant story, even rather sad; but it does leave you with the knowledge of what the people here in 1863 went through.  The house was built between 1860 and 1861 and was continually lived in until 1966.  It had laid vacant for 30 years before being purchased by the current private owners, who did all of the restoration and decoration.  All of the antiques inside are of the 1860's time period, but none of these are the Shriver belongings.

There are occasions when the Director likes us to sit outside because it attracks attention and gets people interested in coming in for a tour.  Sometimes while sitting outside I even have a chance to work on some of my varied sewing projects.  My latest project is what they would have called a penny rug.  This was a 19th century craft item for ladies to work on by using scraps of wool cut in circles and sewn together to form a rug.  Today's version of this is still made out of wool, but are more like little scenes/still lifes created on a background of wool fabric.  Shown below is one of these works of art in wool that I completed last year.

When I was outside the other day three fellas were passing by, and one of them commented, "You make me hot."  I wanted to get all flustered at first, but then realized all he meant was that my attire made him feel like he would be uncomfortable if he had to be dressed in the same style of clothes.  Oh, well.  Guess the old sex appeal has vanished!

Strasburg, PA

 Strasburg is one of my favorite places to see.  This town only has one street light so you know it is small.  And at that street light there is the Strasburg Creamery, an old fashioned ice cream parlor with really good ice cream.

Also in this area are several things to see concerning railroading.  There is the Strasburg Railroad, where you can board an old fashioned steam driven train for a ride through the farm country.  Across the street from this site is the Pennsylvania Railroad Museum.  This is an enormous building with full size restored locomotives and other rail cars on display.  Combination tickets for both of these sites are available.  Also in this area is the Toy Train Museum, which is a lot of fun too, where you see numerous different scale toy train displays. 

My last stop on this  day trip was to Rock Ford Plantation.  Unfortunately, I got there too late to get in on the last tour.  However, there was a really nice man there from the staff who had been cutting the grass and he stopped what he was doing to tell me about the place.  This was the home of General Edward Hand who served with George Washington during the American Revolution.  I had really wanted to see this place because close to 30 years ago I had been here just before they lost all of their furnishings.  You see at that time most of the furnishings on display were on loan from an elderly woman, who had promised to give the furnishings to the museum, but never put it in writing.  So, everything had to go back to the estate because she had passed away.  I am happy to say that even though I could only see a couple of the rooms through the windows of the house, it has now been refurnished and is looking rather nice.  Just be sure to go there before 3PM so you do not miss the last tour of the day.

Before I leave this subject of the Amish country, I would like to mention that there are a number of farms in this area where you can stay over night.  My favorite has always been the Neff family farm, which is just east of Strasburg.  The rooms they have do not have TV's or phones, but they are nicely decorated and comfortable.  I have very fond memories of taking my children and at least one of my grandchildren there while on vacation.  Every one of them enjoyed seeing the farm animals.  I had always worried about how they would be entertained in the evenings without television, but I found that after a day of touring the countryside, a good meal at the end of the day and a little time in the yard on the swings or petting the cows and they were fast asleep by 9PM.  Who says you can't enjoy life without electronics.

More about Amish Country

My next stop is a fabric shop called Burkheim's.  It is a little out of the way, but really worth the trip.  It was made a "little" harder to get there this time due to a detour, which did not take me too far out of the way.  This fabric shop is just getting bigger and bigger.  When I got there, I could see they had once before enlarged the store and today they were adding an additional three feet to the one side of the building.  They have hundreds of bolts of fabric for any type of quilting or sewing you could imagine.  I picked up a few small pieces of fabric to work on the housewives (Civil War soldiers sewing kit) I am making.  And, then there was this wonderful wall panel piece with pumpkins and mums all over it--had to get this to quilt on this winter and make into a window warmer.  I only learned about window warmers a couple of years ago.  A window warmer is a small size quilt piece that you can put loops on the back and hang on your window in the winter to help keep out the cold.  They really are pretty effective, and there is usually enough light coming in around the edges of the quilt so you do not have to feel like you are living in a cave.

My next stop is one of my favorite museums--the National Christmas Center.  If you really love the holiday of Christmas, this is the place for you.  Plan on spending at least a couple of hours in this place to really see everything. 

You start out by seeing a family scene, done much like it would have looked in the 1950's; awh those memories of my childhood.  Then there is a large room filled with life size Santa's from around the world.  The next room is a replica of a F. W. Woolworth Store.  I am old enough that I can remember that store, and this one is such fun with all of the plastic Santas, original boxes of the first silver strands of tinsel, candles in the shape of 3" high carolers and bottle brush style wreaths.                                  There has been a recent change to the really huge Santa's Workshop scene.  It now has a walkway leading behind the scene where Santa's throne is located; this walkway allows you to get up close to some of the back part of the scene and see all of the walls covered in toys.   There are also room after room telling the entire story of a Tudor Town Christmas where all of the citizens in the town are actually animals dressed to look like the Mayor and the townspeople.  And, of course, we could never take the Christ out of Christmas.  There are more than 400 nativities on display and the last part of the museum is a life size walk through Bethlehem with Jesus in the manger at the end.

And, tomorrow will bring another segment on Lancaster.                                                                        

Awh, the Amish Country

With a Friday off from work and the sun expected to shine all day, I was ready for a day trip.  Up early, and ready for some of those breakfast items the lodge provides.  But wait.  There is a bus load of teenagers getting ready to leave--how did they get them up sooooooo early?  Almost all fruit is gone, there is one lone mini muffin in the container, five limp looking waffels; but, yes, there are some pre-packaged omletes.  Kids, that would have taken them all of 60 seconds to heat in the microwave; way too long to have to wait for a meal.  As I sat down to enjoy my two eggs and cheese, two of the teenage girls started horsing around.  Before you know it, one shoves the other and they almost knock the rack with the microwave on it down a flight of stairs.  The rack hits a painting on the wall, and it falls to the railing and is dangling there.  I get up to move the painting before it hits the floor and shatters the glass.  One of the chaperons is in the lobby on the floor before us, but all they get out of him is a nasty look.  Kids today--so many of them think the world is their personal playground.  I am sure that the hotel staff AND all of the guests on the first floor where the bus was running it's engine for almost an hour where glad to finally hear that busload pull out.

The road to Lancaster is Rt 30, which has equal measure of moving fast and moving at a snale's pace to get from Gettysburg and Lancaster.  An hour and a half later, I am in Lancaster.  The day is so very beautiful, but a little windy today.  My first stop this morning is the Green Dragon Farmers Market.  So many good things to enjoy.  At the Amish vendor shown above there are Shoe Fly pies, strawberry pies, several flavors of whoopie pies and plenty of pecan and pecan raisin covered cinnamon rolls.  It was really hard to decide what to select.  One tray of pecan raisin cinnamon rolls to enjoy for tomorrow morning and a slice of what turned out to be a scrumptious pumpkin roll with cream cheese filling that I enjoyed after dinner later in the evening.

What I really enjoy are the prices at some of these places.  There were baskets of yellow peppers--three huge peppers per basket--for a $1!!!!!  And, red peppers of the same size for $2.  You betcha I got some of those.  The tomatoes SMELL like juicy tomatoes, and again, check out those prices!  You almost want to just take a bite right now.

And, then I found another bonus.  There was a vendor selling kitchen towels with some decent designs on them.  These have been to hard to find any more.  Most stores are only carrying the plain colors of kitchen towels with no designs at all.  All I could think was WHAT A FIND.  I bought 16 towels to make up for the craft shows for this fall.  I'm sure you can see I was not the only one getting in these bargins from the crowd showing up in the picture.

                                                                               There is so much to tell you about this area, it will have to wait for another day.

Apple orchards of Adams County

When getting into the country side of south central Pennsylvania, it just amazes me all the hills and little valleys everywhere, and almost every hill side is covered with apple trees.  The man giving the narrative during the bus tour was very well versed.  He is an entomologist--I think that means bug guy.  But he talked about how they are now doing different kinds of plantings and the ways they have to keep bugs and deer away from the trees.  One style of planting that is shown below is the "V" type.  This was introduced from Europe.  If I remember it correctly, they do it this way so that they can have more trees per acre and more fruit on the     branches that still exist.  It made me feel a lot better to know that in this part of the country, they use very little pesticides.  The guide even said he is frequently out in the orchards in this area, and he would not hesitate to just pick an apple off a tree and eat it.   He also spoke about the dwarf planting they do now where the root ball is very shallow, and the tree only grows about 7 or 8' high.  He said this works out well during those years when they have drought conditions.  However, there is an extra cost for stakes that hold the trees up.  With such a shallow root ball and with the weight of the apples in the fall, the trees would just fall over if they were not secured to a pole.

The good news this year is that even though there was a heavy frost after all that really warm weather in March, the crops should still be substantial.  That is as long as the weather  continues as it has in the past couple of weeks.  And, since the blossums were almost three weeks early, the crop of apples should also be a few weeks early for picking.  I want to keep a watch for this, as I found out last year a really good apple is the Early Fuji.  Their season is very short, and I want to get out there and get some of these before they are all gone.
One last item for the end of the tour--we each got a free apple!

It's Apple Blossum Festival time!

The skies have been somewhat overcast, but the rains have held off.  Apple Blossum Festival is one of the bigger events here in Adams County.  I was lucky enough to be off of work and headed over to the fair early in the morning.  They had a lot of the usual stuff at a fair like a LOT of tractors and engines.  As I stepped into this area, there were two fellas sitting under a canopy.  The one man sees me looking at the big tractor and he says, "You ought to buy that for your husband."  I replied that I had not had one of those things (a husband) in more than 35 years.  He replies, "Well, then for your boyfriend???"  "Haven't got one of those either, Mister."  We bantered back and forth some, and I finally admitted that I had just not found the right guy, but I felt I could still be HOPEFUL!  Didn't some man come up with the comment that it was easier for a woman of MY age to be taken by a terrorist than to find a man?  Feels like that a lot though.

Moving on to other funny things, I next got to see the alpacas.  They really did not ever stop moving around so I was lucky to get this picture taken.  Silly grin on him!  The bunnies in this area were really cute too.

I found the same ladies who make the soap I love, and, of course, bought three bars.  Really nice, fragrant soap is one of those little luxuries I allow myself.  This time around it was Lilac, Orange Sage and Ocean Breeze.  If I am still here for the fall festival, I'll be back for more to take home with me for the winter months.

This vendor had these unusual hats.  Most of the time I have seen tweens and teens wearing them, but I have no idea why.  Youngsters in those age groups are always so self-conscious, I have no idea why they would hear such a silly thing to have more attention drawn to them.  Anyway, my favorite is the Smurf Head--second one in on the left.  An't it a hoot?                                           

Now, this vendor had something really unusual.  These works of art are made of all inlaid woods, and even some mother of pearl.  Such intricate work on each piece.  No way could I afford one of them; some of the prices were $1,600.  That's a lot of money, but he did put a LOT of work into each piece.  Well, after enjoying some of the food and the music at the outdoor theater, I next boarded the school bus for a ride through the country side to hear about the apple orchard industry and see some of the farms in the area.  This is a really nice feature of this festival, and is included in the price of admission.  But more about that on another day.

Something a little different

Today I had time to finally go see the National Museum of Civil War Medicine.  This museum covered two floors of an older building in downtown Frederick, MD; and I thought it was a well laid out and maintained museum.  It was very clean and the artifacts on display were in excellent condition.  I have attached a couple of the scenes:  one showing a hospital room and the other the loading of a patient on an ambulance wagon.

You probably could not say there was anything beautiful about this subject, but there were some interesting facts:
1.  During the Civil War it became an accepted premise that women could work away from their homes as nurses.
2. Because they were in a hurry for enlistments, only cursory entrance physical examinations were done on the men; and many of them entered the service already ill with something.
3.  95% of all surgeries done during the Civil War were done with anesthesia--chloraform or ether.
4.  2/3 of the deaths during this war were due to illnesses and infections, and not necessarily the wounds received or the surgery being done.
5.  It was due to the efforts of a Dr. Letterman, Union surgeon, that triage was developed.

One other thing I saw that amazed me were two photographs of a man: the first one showed him looking very grotesque after having surgery on his face to stop a horrible infection.  The second photo showed him looking much better because he had actually had plastic surgery done on his face.  I had no idea they were doing plastic surgery that long ago.

Since I am on the subject of medicine, let me talk about Henry Langdon, MD.  I learned about this man while working at a different museum in Ohio.  He was a Civil War surgeon, who had survived the war, and picked up his practice once again after the war.  He was very respected in the community, and he was doing research to find out why people had strokes.  I figure he must have been doing the research because dying from a stroke could have run in his family.  Unfortunately, while only in his 30's, he died of a massive stroke in his office.  Now, here is the interesting part--in particular for my friends who are interested in the spirit world--on one occasion I had a friend, who is a medium, come out to the museum to help me with a project.  She quickly picked up on Dr. Langdon's energy as we stood in his office building.  He had a message for all of us, and that was that before we are born, we know how many heartbeats we have until we die.  Of course, once we are born we do not remember this.  But, he continued to say that we should avoid stress as much as possible,  as stress uses up those heartbeats, and, of course, also uses up our lives all the quicker.  So, please try to remember the doctor's advice to let go of stress as quickly as you can.