greenfield village
August 28, 2007
I have some vague memories of a childhood visit to Michigan and Granny Fisher insisting on a trip to Greenfield Village. Very sketchy. But I think that was the last time I was there until today.
Keith has a friend who works there and the place is completely rife with stock footage (and photography) possibilities. Since the boys are with us all week, we decided to take a trip out there today - both for family fun and for work. We didn’t have to spend money to get in, but did buy lunch and a ride on the train.
What a strange place, oddly interesting and mind-numbingly dull at the same time. Keith filmed his friend scything and I strolled around with the boys. We saw farm stuff - chickens and cows and so on - and watched some women making a farm lunch in their 1850’s style kitchen. Vegetables and a haddock stew. We visited the pottery shed as well, and walked through a saw mill.
The boys snagged the clear highlight of the day: radioactive marbles. Yes, really. We watched the glassblowing guys for quite some time, and the boys engaged the docent with lots of questions. As it turns out, one adds metal to glass to make it turn colors - copper for blue, iron for green, gold for pinks & reds. The docent quizzed them on their glass knowledge and the ‘prizes’ he handed out were some small marbles with a pretty yellow-green color - created with uranium. Further fun: put them under black light and they fluoresce. (This was all a benefit of being there on a hot day with few people in attendance.)
The thing I enjoyed most was the printing shed. Got to see typesetting and newspaper production equipment. The weekly paper (two sided, large tabloid size) took 5 days to set, and one day to proof and print. It cost 3 cents - 5 cents for the special monthly edition that included national news. I was intrigued with the actual setting - the lines of lead type set into a frame, packed with typesetting ‘furniture’ and tightened up with a key so that it could be safely carried to the press. I am totally loving the ‘furniture’ and the key tightening. There simply has to be a way to let that inform my CSS layout.
But man, oh man, there was vast space between stuff and lots of walking and dullness between these little flashes of interest. We rode the train around the park before we left and got to at least peek at all we didn’t see and I’m feeling kind of glad about it. I don’t know whether I can recommend a journey out there or not - like I said, boring with some small, but very cool, experiences sprinkled in there. Maybe if you’re a big history buff it might be better.
woo, uranium marbles.
for some reason this gets referred to as “vaseline glass” - see
http://vaselineglass.org/
for something that looks like a geeky collector / history page.
I like it a lot! It’s just a different pace of things to me…plus there are far more nooks and crannies of stuff than there ever were. The blacksmith is generally fun, and there are frequent events which do, oddly enough, give a nice 19th-century small town feel. It’s certainly far better going there now than when I was growing up.
Loved your description of the typesetting!
I’ve always loved the place. It was one of the few places my father would actually take the family. I do remember how he loved the “muzzle-loading festival”. I found that event to be overly loud, repetitive, and yes, boring. But running through the grass, tiptoeing uninvited into a house, appealed to the voyeur in me. I do think it was a more interesting place when I was a child. There seemed to be more docents and the houses had more artifacts. I credit Greenfield Village with enticing me to learn weaving and spinning.