I woke up to a Pearl Harbor movie, probably Thirty Seconds over Tokyo. I was less-than-thrilled that the priest called it the "third sunday of Advent" when it had to have been the SECOND Sunday.

We said goodbye to the family and headed to Harrisburg to the State Museum.

Rich immediately asked at the desk about the Merci Train album. "Huh?" was the expected response. They called the curator, who said he'd be down in 15 minutes with it. It's in storage.

When he turned up, he apologized. The building is undergoing renovation and they just covered the boxes with tarps today. Oh, well. He invited us up to his office to look at the inventory of the album. Then it turned out there is also an article in the CURRENT edition of Western Pennsylvania History about the Freedom and Merci trains. The curator gave me a photocopy and I've learned a lot more about the trains. Drew Pearson (hey! *I* remember Drew Pearson!) came up with the idea for the Friendship train. By the time all the donated food and clothing arrived in New York, there were over 300 boxcars worth. Some of the stuff was sent to Italy, but they never sent a Gracie train! The French boxcars, from the Franco-Prussian war, have a different gauge, so they were distributed across the country on flatcars.

Well, the way to get treated like royalty is to ask esoteric questions, it appears. When we left the curator, we started on the third floor with geology. The docent who was the living exhibit digging out Little Dinosaurs of Ghost Ranch invited us into his room to look more closely. We had a nice talk, and felt pretty darn special.

On down through natural history and prehistory, then Pennsylvania history.

"When I see how eagerly men will run to a fire, whether in warm or in cold weather, by day or by night, dragging an engine at their heels, I am astonished to perceive how good a purpose the love of excitement is made to serve." Thoreau, Journal, June 1850.(near a hand-powered fire engine.)

Between 1715 and 1775 more than 80 iron furnaces were built in 9 colonies, 20 in PA. The colony had 1/7 of world's production of iron. There were displays on the French and Indian War, the Revolutionary War (Valley Forge), and a big exhibit on Gettysburg.

Back on the first floor, there's a travelling exhibit on Levittown which was fascinating. The idea was to have affordable housing, all standardized. I'd thought the "Little Boxes" song was about Daly City, but it could have been for Levittown. Houses were at $8990 for a 2 story in 1953. This IS really affordable: my Mom and I moved into a 2-bedroom tract house with an unfinished basement for $9000 three years earlier. Since all the houses looked alike, the streets in each neighborhood began with the same letter. Levitt was proud to be "the Henry Ford of housing."

On June 23, 1952 John and Philomena Daugherty became the first people to move in. The first baby was Theresa Marie Dunn, born 7/10/52. There was a $25.00 prize. (They all wanted lots of children and admired large families.) There were four separate townships, which tried (and failed) to incorporate in 1953. In 1957, a black family moved in. This endangered their lives. The "neighbors" broke windows and yelled, and the family needed police protection. John Keats wrote THE CRACK IN THE PICTURE WINDOW in 1956 about Levittown.

Just last week the museum took down this exhibit on Flight 93 in the lobby.

We were there at least two hours, and still were to see the Capitol. This is the second Capitol, built in 1905 or 06. The first, occupied from 1822 to 1897, was destroyed by fire. We went in through the metal detectors and discovered the Green candidate for senate leading a dozen-person antiwar rally. One woman read a poem which said something about "what if we'd spent that money [that pays for war] helping these people?" My thought was "how sweet. But hey, even if it would have worked, which I doubt, we DIDN'T. It's TOO LATE NOW, idiot. That TIME IS PAST!" The religious left, in the person of Linda Fuller, of Habitat for Humanity, asked, "Can you imagine the difference if we voted, as a nation, to pray for Osama bin Laden?" Ooooooh-Kay. Idiots.

We got with a tour and saw the Senate (green), and the Supreme Court. They have lovely murals painted by Violet Oakley from Philadelphia. The Senate has two of George Washington and two of Abraham Lincoln. "Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair -- the event is in the hand of God" --George Washington. The chandeliers are 2 tons apiece. William van Ingen did the windows. The drapes, 30-40 feet long, are cleaned in place and there have been only 2 changes of them since since 1906.

The legislative year runs September to June, so the makeup of the lege changes with an election. (That really doesn't make sense to me.) There are seven justices with three Supreme Court venues; here, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Violet Oakley took 25 years for the murals about the law which circle the Courtroom. The main one, over the door, is a rebus/illuminated letter setting the theme of "Love, Law, and Wisdom." Other murals depict natural law, Christian law, English law, Blackstone, William Penn the lawgiver, Pennsylvania law in 1722, International law, and disarmament.

The dome of the Capitol was made by Alfred Godwin.

Then our tour guide was going to show us the assembly(Blue), but went to take a group picture with the mentally-challenged special needs group we were with. Rich and I didn't realize this till we were back on the lobby floor, and we decided not to brave the elevators again to go up and have more than a peek. The Assembly is blue. Rich and I went off to lunch, and took a bit of a view of some of the floor tiles.

We were in Harrisburg a lot longer than I thought. Then it was back onto the Turnpike and home through the rain. We got to the motel about 7 and went over to Bob Evans, the restaurant next door. My sister-in-law had told us that this place gave a discount if you showed your room key. I know Denny's would do that four years ago, so I asked. The manager went nuts. He first said "no", which was OK with me, then said he'd take care of it. He tried to give us a 50% discount, which we refused. We settled for 10%. What was up with that?? I didn't argue when he said "no!" Then we went over to the house to say goodbye to my sis-in-law, who is off to Hilton Head tomorrow, and to hang out a bit.

The warbloggers are a lot more disturbed about Jimmy Carter than I am (after all, the Nobel committee has "honored" Arafat, it's obvious they don't necessarily have much of an idea.) Jimmy Carter on human rights. Good things. 50+ reasons why Carter was better than Clinton (1993) (This has gotta be driving Clinton nuts, though he's going to be in our faces even more now, in the hopes of getting the Peace Prize in the future. Since his Middle East accords have fallen apart so thoroughly, he's going to have to do something good in the future. And stay away from interns!)

Nemmine, It's punkin chunkin time!