Visiting the Colonial Frances Land House in Virginia Beach with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting the Colonial Frances Land House in Virginia Beach with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

The eighteenth century Frances Land House in Virginia Beach (Virginia) provides another trip back in time for young visitors.

Before I could even purchase our admission tickets, my little daughter Florence found a colonial toy called a Jacob’s Ladder whose three pieces constantly climbed towards the ceiling in the gift shop by turning over and over.

I bought Florence the Jacob’s Ladder and let her play with it during our visit and a wooden bear on two strings that climbs up on two strings that you attach to the wall.

The Frances Land House has the best display in the Hampton Roads area about the stages that flax goes through to become linen.  Our guide encouraged us to crush a flax bud between our fingers and feel what the flax feels like after it has been combed out.

The most interesting display upstairs was a puddin’ cap, a sort of cloth helmet, which children wore in colonial times when they were learning to walk.

Children can also smell rosemary and lavender used to freshen up clothes and touch a leaf of lamb’s ear that was used as a bandage in colonial times.

After visiting a colonial house, it is always interesting to hear what your child has to say about it.

I liked to ask my little Florence, “What is the same and different about this house and our apartment?” to train her to be observant.

Florence and I agreed that indoor plumbing, air-conditioning, and TV were good things about modern houses.

By Ruth Pennington Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Visiting the Forces Exhibit at the Contemporary Art Center of Virginia by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting the Forces Exhibit at the Contemporary Art Center of Virginia by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

It was easy to indulge Florence in art exhibits in Virginia Beach.  We took a brisk walk in Virginia Beach and then entered the Contemporary Art Center of Virginia.

They had a neat exhibit called Forces: Art of the End of the 20^th Century about work with non-traditional materials called “Basic Life Forces” as the brochure called it.  The work Laurent liked the best was called Russian Constructivism via Venice Beach 1994 by James Ossi.

This rectangular pane of glass spouted bubbles inside its sculptural framework.  Florence, the bubble princess, tried bursting the bubbles by reaching for the bubbles.

My favorite exhibit was Bubis Vekris’s work called Split Particles of Rain, 1995.  This work required you to enter a darkened room.  Red lights that looked like cascading particles of rain fell down around you in this room.

This rain exhibit led directly to Shu-Mia’s Holographic Floor, 1996.  We amused ourselves by walking around and seeing what emotion would be on a face popping up from the floor.

The faces in the holographic floor were all Asian, which brought back the prediction of my high school art history teacher, who said that “art will cross all national, racial, and gender lines in the 21^st century.” (Dr. Cletie Tyler – Cass Technical High School Art History Teacher and later Director of Art Instruction for Detroit Public Schools.  Susan Rice was also one of my Art History Teachers at Cass Tech.)

By four, Florence’s favorite exhibit was an entire room dedicated to the three-dimensional strobe light artwork called Mother May I? by Gregory Barsamain.

The strobe light whirled away to the side of the room and hanging from the ceiling in the center of the room was blue blob.

As the strobe light turned, a green hand would reach in and out and take out a ping-pong ball.  We danced in the room to the rhythm of the ping-pong ball.

Florence also rolled on the ground and ran into Laurent and me.  Then, we all got on the ground, crawling around, laughing.  Some serious art lovers came by and left the room, making us laugh even more.  We left, so they view the work.

Florence was certainly developing a love for modern art that day.

Later in the evening while I was sipping some Darjeeling tea, I thought of how expensive it is to produce modern art.

Holograms do not strike me as a cheap medium.  Who financed modern artists?  You had to be rich just to start out.

By Ruth Pennington Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Visiting Virginia Beach's Colonial Lynnhaven House by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting Virginia Beach’s Colonial Lynnhaven House by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

After eating a grilled seafood lunch at the Boathouse with motorboats pulling up for meals, my sister, Florence, and I went to the colonial Lynnhaven House.

The Lynnhaven Houe has two rooms downstairs and two rooms upstairs.  The guide told us the Bible box and the baby cradle were kept close to windows in case of fire during colonial times; you could toss them outside quickly that way.

Our guide showed us how Dutch ovens worked.  The cast iron pot was surrounded by hot ashes on top, around, and under the Dutch oven in the kitchen fireplaces.  The heat from the ashes cooked the food in these covered pots.

The heat from the ashes cooked foods like cornbread.  (Cornbread is Italian polenta in a sturdier form.  Most people make it with milk in the South and eat it with salads using apple vinegar dressing, which prevents pellagra from occurring in their families unlike the situation in the Italian Veneto region.)

The Lynnhaven House was continuously lived in from 1725 to 1970 our guide told us.  The house retained its cute sloping roof throughout the centuries to deal with all the rain in the Tidewater area.

In the upstairs portion of the house, we saw flax in all its various stages of production from coarse plants to soft threads that the lady of house would weave into multicolored threads.

The store had a bunch of colonial toys in it like bears that would climb up to the ceiling on string and Jacob’s Ladders.

After visiting the Lynnhaven House, we went to Pizza Hut for mushroom-cheese pizza and salad before heading out to the USS Austin’s Halloween party. 

The captain’s wife was happy when I told her that Laurent and I were going to help with Florence’s school’s Halloween Party.  The captain’s wife was able to get some more volunteers out to Norfolk (Virginia) schools.

Florence’s teacher loved it that I would be an “unofficial grapevine” and tell ombudsmen, Military doctors and nurses, and officers’ wives about what was needed in the community. 

By Ruth Pennington Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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How the French Comte de Grasse Helped Win the Revolutionary War by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

How the French Comte de Grasse Helped Win the Revolutionary War by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

I washed dishes while Laurent collapsed into bed after a long week on the ship.  Then, I ironed clothes, swept the floor, and checked on what Florence was doing outside.

When that was all done, I curled up in bed and read Zola’s Au Bonheur des Dames in French about the mythical origins of Paris, France’s Printemps Department Store with its stock on shelves with the same price for everyone listed on a shelf next to the item.

Florence came in and out of the apartment and finally sat down to read.  I picked up books at library book sales, used bookstores, independent bookstores, and chain bookstores over the years, so Florence had a nice library.

I went into Florence’s room and wrote down sentences on paper and taped them to the walls for her to practice reading.  I sat at her kiddy table with chairs, and we read sentences that described objects in her bedroom.

When Laurent woke from his nap, we decided to do some sightseeing close to home and went to the First Landing Seashore State Park.  We walked over bridges in the swamp area complete with drooping Spanish gray moss.

One of the educational billboards said that cottonmouth snakes were native to the area.  The mosquitos chased us away from explaining the swamp fully to Florence.

We went to 64^th Street Exit and watched a boat launch into the narrows of the Chesapeake Bay.  Florence amused herself by trying to pull oyster shells off of the rocks.

We drove to the beach. It was 75 degrees outside and sunny – my Wisconsin weather vane still had a hard time registering that this was October weather in the South.

Laurent had the great idea to picnic on the beach.  We took out our picnic basket and spread out our tablecloth.  I loved our wicker picnic basket with real China.  Florence liked playing in the surf.

On the way home, we stopped at the Cape Henry Lighthouse.  We took a picture of the cross at the First Landing Site where Captain Newport first came ashore in 1607.

We learned from a historical marker here that the French Comte de Grasse routed the British at Cape Henry in 1781.

General Cornwallis could not receive any food, because the Comte de Grasse cut off supplies at Yorktown.

Cornwallis, the English commander during the Revolutionary War, had to surrender, because he could not feed his troops or his officers.

Laurent left for another two-week cruise later that week.  I came home from dropping Laurent off at the ship and played the card game War with Florence to teach her which numbers were bigger than the others. 

The higher number wins in War.  I left in the face cards, so Florence would learn their numerical values for games like Euchre (also called Napoleon) to make fast smear plays.

When Florence got tired of playing Euchre, I did sneaky teaching by asking her questions like “How much bigger is seven than five?”

She was working on subtraction at school, but I wanted her to be able to do quick calculations in her head, so I worked with her at home, too.

We did easier games, too, like checkers, pick-up sticks, Mille Bornes, dominoes, and tic tac toe.  If she had her friends over, I would set up the living room for Duck, Duck, Goose and teach them string games like Jacob’s Ladder, how to snowflakes from paper cutouts, and make butterfly paintings with finger paints and a sheet of paper. 

We ate real popcorn with Parmesan cheese from a can sprinkled on the popcorn and drank lemonade.  Various moms and dads would come in. 

I sent people home with bags of popcorn and told them to just follow the directions for the kernels they bought.  Virginia is a peanut-producing state, so I made my homemade popcorn with peanut oil. 

I liked the education, games, and snacks we had in the Norfolk apartment.  I learned how to organize a pantry in Norfolk and make menus for the following week based on what I found at the grocery store and what was in the pantry.  I did not want the ghost of Comte de Grasse to come and starve me!

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France


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