Touring the Chrysler Museum (Norfolk - Virginia) by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Touring the Chrysler Museum (Norfolk – Virginia) by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Norfolk (Virginia) has a gem museum called the Chrysler Museum.  It has free days for families to visit, which I made use of.  I put in a few dollars, though, when I could as admission fee.

Laurent, Florence, and I went to this darling place as often as we could.  On one of our visits the museum had Impressionist paintings on loan from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and Dutch paintings from the National Gallery of Art.

The Impressionist paintings came from Boston and showed scenes of merry-go-rounds by terrace cafes in Paris.  Florence liked those. 

I took her out for walks and field trips in Paris and always paid for her to go on the merry-go-rounds, called ménèges, at La Défense in Puteaux, Ménilmontant, and at the medieval theme park at Puy du Fou (near Les Sables d’Olonne in the Vendée on the Atlantic Ocean).

The Rembrandt portrait sitters’ identities were unknown.  Neither of the sitters with their rigid lips struck me as very interesting people despite their ruffled finery, showing their wealth.

Looking at those portraits did make me want to check out some books about Rembrandt, Franz Hals, and Vermeer at the library, though.  I paid for some to be obtained from a university through inter-library loan on Vermeer. 

I eventually took out Simon Schama’s book about Rembrandt and thought that was the last the word on the subject for several centuries.  Maybe I would indulge in books about Dutch and Flemish painting while Florence was in France for the summer.

Winslow Homer painted my favorite piece in the museum called The Song of the Lark.  In this painting, a man holds a scythe and looks off in the distance at the sunset.  I stopped and put a hand up to my ear and asked, “Do you hear the lark?”

Laurent’s favorite works in the museum were the dainty, Tiffany glass lamps, especially the ones that looked like individual flowers with a bulb inside where the stamen would have been.

The art nouveau furniture collection from the late 19^th century made me wish I were rich enough to buy some of it.

Two artists from Nancy (France) had works in the museum’s decorative arts section – the French artists Majorelle and Gallé.  My favorite piece used two kinds of wood to show inlaid ducks on a bombé chest.  The burnished polish made it look soft as silk.

It is unfortunate that Art Nouveau faded away.  It was expensive to make and hard to industrialize, which may explain why it is gone.  (Laurent and I later visited the Art Nouveau Museum in Nancy – France and both agreed that Art Nouveau is lovely and almost a sedative to look at for its undulating beauty.)

I planned to come back to the Chrysler Museum and make a safari art game with items to look for like:

-mummies

-ducks

-pretty plates

-glass bottles (there is a large collection of glass at the Chrysler Museum from ancient Roman times to the present)

-porcelain

The mid-sized collection at the Chrysler Museum meant that styles varied from room to room, giving visitors a complete picture of art through the ages.

After a visit to an art museum, I always asked Florence to make art projects.  I made an art box for her, which included starter items such as:

-tape

-sidewalk chalk

-crayons

-pastels

-colored pencils

-different-colored paper

-glue

-scissors – used with supervision if the child is small

-simple drawing books using geometric shapes for flowers, insects, faces, and human figures

-origami instruction book and origami paper

The ship family association raised money to purchase art kits for children at our holiday party at the end of the year.  These are nice gifts, but you have to do some planning to put them together, because you have to order merchandise that has to produced in some cases.  

If suppliers know you have an order for 300 children and you are paying in advance with cash, you can get your supplies and have them all wrapped without a huge fuss.

In Monterey County (California), Michael’s and JoAnn Fabrics carry all of those items above.  I bought a portable file cabinet at Office Depot to store these items in using different kinds of plastic bags.  I use this kit now and stashed some magic trick kits in there, too.

Savvy Moms are actually kind of Peter Pans for buying stuff for grandkids.  J

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

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USS Austin Cruise (For Spouses) - Part 2 - by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

USS Austin (Dependents’ Cruise) by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

After learning about charts versus maps, we went into a dark, secretive room where they have all the gadgets to detect any menace to the ship.  Weapons control happened there.

Outside on the deck, we looked at the laser-operated guns.  Mild-mannered Ruth just had to try on one of the vests attached to the guns just to see what looking through the scope was like.

I checked out the grenade launchers, M-14-, and M-16-rifles while everyone was eating barbecue elsewhere on the ship.  The weapons look heavy, but they are actually lightweight.  An officer came and said, “We have a demonstration that’s going to take place” and all the seamen ran to see it giggling. 

The day’s show was a helicopter crash simulation on the deck.  This show was even better than a NASCAR accident.  (Yes, it was that hideous.)  Five teams in silver suits approached the burning helicopter from two sides to put out the flames.

Once the flames were out, the firefighters held up the hoses to make a water screen for the men in the heat-resistant suits to enter the fire to rescue casualties and disable the helicopter batteries.

The casualties pulled out of the fire during the mock presentation were treated by the medical team and were walked off by a stretcher team.

We ate grilled hamburgers, hot dogs, and chicken.  The barbecue sauce tasted of catsup and brown sugar and pleased my sweet tooth.

One of the sailors brought out juggling equipment and entertained us all.  He looked like a cute Pulchinella character from Venice’s Commedia dell’Arte.  Laurent learned how to toss three juggling balls into the air and catch one from his shipmate.

I helped Laurent prepare the Officers’ Wardroom (dining room) for dinner.

We threw away garbage, vacuumed, wiped tables and counters, put tablecloths on tables, folded cloth napkins, set the table, and put condiments out on the tables.

One of Laurent’s shipmates took photos of us with our chefs’ hats on for the ship’s newsletter.

The sun came out for our ride back into port and warmed us up.  My face reddened with a sunburn, but I did not care.  I was having fun.

Who would have thought that visiting a Navy ship could be like visiting a state fair.

We picked up Florence, who talked non-stop about how much fun it was to sing to Lee Anne Rimes and went to Pizza Hut.  I fed the jukebox quarters and sang along with Florence to Lee Anne Rimes, Madonna, and the Spice Girls. 

The USS Austin spouses and kids went roller skating and made the Spice Girls song “Wannabe” our song.  We all think Ginger made a good choice marrying Beckham and like how soccer promotes all-around fitness and stamina.  Roller skating and dancing to songs is hard and our ship could do it.

Even though I did not like mess crank, I loved being a US Navy spouse for on-the-ground war games with Army. 

We were so war-ready, that Navy could have fun and promote peace through fun.

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

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USS Austin Cruise (For Spouses) - Part 1 - by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

USS Austin Cruise (For Spouses) by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

We never went to truly fancy restaurants when Florence was a small except for holidays and when grandma visited.

I liked Pizza Hut for its salad bar buffet, various European pizza selections, air-conditioning, and jukebox selections for a quarter a song.

We usually ordered a meat and vegetarian pizza each with the salad bar and Diet Cokes.  I saved a change purse full of quarters, so Florence could listen to her favorite songs several times and try some new ones that mom thought might be good.  We sang along to the songs and chair danced to Madonna songs.

It was such a treat for me no matter where I ate to order food, have food magically appear, have my Southern iced tea full of sugar delivered, and watch the dishes go bye-bye.  I washed dishes at home.  Laurent did offer to do the dishes, but I was blunt and just said, “You don’t know how, so we won’t catch colds.”

I stretched out in the cold, air-conditioned restaurant and felt pampered and liked my juke joint.  Florence would eventually stop chair dancing and go play in Pizza Hut’s miniature kitchen play area while I sipped a coffee.  I knew Pizza Hut was a clean Naples (Italy) experience with easy parking. 

(Laurent and I visited Naples as one of our honeymoon stops.  I wanted all the beautiful buildings cleaned and loved leaving town for the Isle of Capri and Salerno.  There was obviously no trickle down money from the European Union to this town yet for development in the late 1980s.)

There was going to be a dependent’s cruise soon.  Florence could not go, because she was too young.  I found her a babysitter through church, who had references.

I called our ship’s ombudsmen after dinner, who said the cruise was still a “go” and that the weather looked fine for a deck top picnic.

I had a whole evening to myself and sat in silence reading Chicago cook Ken Hom’s book Fragrant Harbor Taste: The New Chinese Cooking of Hong Kong.  (There is a recipe for shark fin soup in the book, which put it on weeding lists in many libraries.)

My boss lent me the book, saying I would love the recipes.  I knew sharks were hated on the Atlantic Seaboard and wondered if people made the shark fin soup out there. 

Before it was outlawed, I had eaten it several times in Chicago at PRC functions.  I did not know what it was until I read the recipe in Hom’s book and saw the seasonings in this cookbook.  The Chinese probably view sharks as pests for their shrimp food supplies, too.

I liked reading about Guangzhou in Southern China, where most of the Chinese immigrants to the US came from who built the railroads here.  I thought all world citizens might like to know about “dim sum.”  That word means “touch the heart.”  These bite-sized morsels are the bistro fare of China.

You usually sample 6 – 8 dim sum for a brunch and drink a pot or two of tea with it.

Dim sum are sometimes called “yum char” for “drink tea” meal.  I slept well, dreaming of dim sum.  In Norfolk, we had Polynesian restaurants that served “pu-pu” platters that were like dim, but with more conch, coconut sauces, and spam sushi. 

Filipinos and Pacific Islanders form a large minority contingent in the US Navy, so we had Filipino and Polynesian restaurants in Norfolk.

I woke up at 6 am and drove to the Amphibious Base where I took an amphibious boat out to the USS Austin along with other dependents.

The overcast sky made it cool and perfect for a picnic on the blacktop landing pad of the USS Austin.

Laurent showed me around the ship.  The first place we visited was the bridge where the captain holds forth.  No joking goes on there – not when you were driving millions of dollars’ worth of ship through a bay like the captain was doing.

Triangulation is the order of the day.  Measurements are taken from both sides of the ship.  The officer with the charts (water maps) says exactly where the ship is.   Another officer determines whether or not they need to move the ship.

If the ship’s course must be changed, the following events take place:

-the triangulation officer explains where the ship is

-another sailor says if the ship should change course

-the captain approves the change or not

-then, the order is repeated three times before the change is made

I asked the man doing the triangulation, if he had maps for every bay in the world.

First, he corrected me by saying, “Maps are for land.  Charts are for water.”

Then, he said they had charts for every piece of water that they sail in.

“If we don’t have a chart, we don’t go there,” he said.

Despite my “map” faux pas, he continued to explain how ship traffic works:

-you stay to the right of buoys

-green buoys should be to your right when you head out to sea

-red buoys should be on right when are heading back into port

More about the USS Austin Dependents’ Cruise to follow….

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

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Touring the Virginia Beach Marine Science Museum in Virginia Beach by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Touring the Virginia Marine Science Museum in Virginia Beach (Virginia) by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

After our crêpe lunch, we set out for the Virginia Marine Science Museum in Virginia Beach.

Huge water-filled tanks that extended over our heads lined the entryway into the Museum.  Seals swished back and forth.

Florence tried to outrun them and squealed as she banged on the tank walls.  The seals liked racing Florence.  It took us thirty minutes to enter the museum.

The IMAX movie Into the Deep made Florence excited about visiting the rest of the museum.   The stingrays had a large, circular touch tank.  They had no stingers, so you could pet them as they wheeled around the tank.

Florence plunged her hands in the water and said, “ew,” when one of the rays slid under her fingers.

After Florence’s pioneering efforts, I tried my chances and had to agree that the ray felt like slimy velvet.  I learned that the small, black sacs that we found on the beach were called “mermaid’s purses.”  Their hard container covers contain the stingray eggs.

My favorite exhibit was a pair of giant tongs that you plunged down into a pool of water from above to go “tonging” for oysters.

I liked the exhibit on sand dunes as well, but found it hard to believe that the three- and four-foot high dunes in Virginia Beach were a true defense against hurricanes.

The Museum had lots of creatures that you could pick up and examine.  Florence tried to catch a hermit crab out of its shell.  She caressed the rough surface of a starfish and gently picked up a sea urchin.  She thought the sand dollars were boring, but, at least, she knew what they were.

Florence cringed when a docent knew what they were.  She cringed when a docent offered her a baby crab to pick up.

Then, the docent fished the horseshoe crab out of the tank and flipped it over, so we could touch the wiggly, spiny feet.

We learned that horseshoe crabs are scavengers, so they lack “fighting equipment.”

The Coastal River Room held even more treasures.  Florence watched turtles swim around and asked if she could have one.

Naysayer mom said, “No and stop that” when I told her not to rile the copperheads and rattlesnakes that were behind a glass case that she was lightly knocking on to see if they would move.

By this time, we had been in the museum 3 ½ hours.  Florence and her parents were losing patience with one another.

We would visit the marsh exhibit and the nature trail at a later date.  Fun and education collided in this museum.

Laurent slept in the next day and enjoyed it immensely.  We still had 4 a.m. mess duty.

I read magazines while Florence made chalk drawings outside with her friends.  They played other games, too, like Hide ‘n’ Seek, Red Light 123, Simon Says, and sang songs.

I cracked up when I remembered making the French Club at Cass Tech in Detroit (Michigan) play those games as a social activity when we did not have money.  We all speak French pretty well, because people in Detroit are often “short of funds."

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

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