Museum Brunch

I work at a historic site, but I'm usually busy enough that I don't get to all the other museums around town. So the Visitor's Association people invented Dollar Days for local goobs like me who pull off the road to see where Stonewall Jackson's arm was buried (yes, separate from the rest of his body) but don't get around to the sites in their own town. Sunday morning I decided to go on a bit of a marathon and see 4 sites for a buck each before it was time to cheer on the Shriners on their souped-up go-carts in the Hampden parade. It's wonderful to pay only a little to go to a museum, because then I don't feel like I need to take in every exhibit to get my money's worth, like eating some of every dish at the Chinese Buffet. I usually walk out stumbling and blurry-eyed, not even remembering what I saw or did when I've paid full price. Instead, this Sunday I spent about a 45 minutes at every place and I actually some pretty great facts for the mental card-file at the places I hit.

At the Fell's Point Maritime Museum I learned that Edward Fell died a year after purchasing the area that's Fell's Point, and his widow Ann Fell made most of the development decisions that grew it into a town that rivaled Baltimore. After the American Revolution, Fell's Point became the leading shipbuilding area in the country. Since I work at a women's history site, I'm going to make sure we give Ann some props in our education programs when we talk about Baltimore women of the past.

I was really happily surprised by the Baltimore Public Works Museum that's housed in the most beautiful building you didn't know was a sewage pumping station. I used to test for (literally) shitty water with the Jones Falls Watershed Association, so this quote from the Baltimore Sun in the early 20th century made me laugh: "Baltimore's sewage enterprise is already world-famous. Experts have thousands of miles to see it." Then I read that the mother of Abe Wolman, the Baltimorean who invented the water purifying system still used today, used to put cheese cloth over their faucet to keep rocks and dirt from coming out with the water, and I didn't feel as bad about Baltimore's current water system.

I climbed on the Taney for the first time and learned that the ship helped set up the fueling stations on islands in the Pacific for the first Pan Am trans-Pacific flights. It made wish I could take an ocean crossing trip in a sea plane back then, when stewardesses gave out meals with real china and silver ware. (......and ear-plugs and barf cups).

I was running out of time, but I still made it to the Constellation where I learned that it was re-commissioned in World War II. While docked in Norfolk, it was used by the commander of the Atlantic fleet at the beginning of the war as his flag ship for 6 and a half months where he made battle plans. This seemed really strange to me, and then it hit me: if you worked for the Navy your whole life at the time of metal boats, would you even have to think twice about a chance to command a giant sail boat as your personal office space? I bet all the parties were at his place.

I'm going to be really embarrassed if it takes me another year to visit 4 local sites, but I'm enough of a museum geek that I wouldn't mind spending the day playing catch-up like this again.