Moving on from Scranton, we knew we wanted to visit Lady Liberty. We looked into it from Scranton, but just couldn't figure out the logistics. So on to Jersey, right? Right! And with us came the rain... Instead of spending the day outdoors getting wet and cold, we opted to go to the
Liberty Science Center, another ASTC member museum. Our membership has been worth its weight in gold this year!
Truly amazing how loud school groups are. Loud, loud, loud. We're very blessed to do things out of peak times, so when we're in the middle of the action, it can be quite painful. But we also outlasted the school groups, so we got to see most of what we wanted. I wonder what the kids on those field trips get out of a visit like yesterday. I'm a big proponent of getting out there and seeing and doing, but I'd love to be inside the minds of these kids. It just seems to be so whirlwind. Something I'll be thinking about for a couple more days...
One of the first things we did was to check out the illusions exhibit. A lot of what we saw we've seen in books before, but the ones we hadn't seen before were really cool. The room was pretty dark, and the explanations were kept hidden--you had to use a blacklight flashlight to read the signs. That added another level of cool to the whole thing. As you can probably tell from the picture, the face is in segments, and as you look through the hole, it appears together. The slices are stepped back from each other, so you can walk down the table and look at each different layer.
Absolutely amazing what your mind will do for you. The kid in the background is reading a colorful sign. Each different color contains a color word. In the beginning, the word red is inside the color red, the word purple is inside the color purple...you get the picture. At the end, they've mixed up the words and colors, so you're reading the word purple inside the color green. That's hard to do, it turns out.
There was an exhibit on skyscrapers, something we hadn't seen before in others of our journeys. We've experienced aspects (build an earthquake-proof structure and such), but this hall had a lot of new things for us. This beam is one that was found at the WTC site after 9/11. The exhibit certainly wasn't about 9/11, but it was good to see this beam and one other they had. It was interesting to read that they had a full on investigation as to why the building collapsed. I would not think that you would expect a building to NOT collapse with the damage that was done that day. But there was also a large section on how skyscrapers are the way for future cities, so increased safety makes sense. Made me a little sad, though. They talked about walking from one building to another on elevated walkways, flying cars that park in elevated spaces....all I could wonder was, would people lose their connection to the physical ground? Lots to ponder.
And we did get to see the Statue of Liberty! We may not have made it actually into NYC, but we got to see the backside of the Lady. It was cold out, so we didn't do a whole lot outside, but I was glad we got the opportunity. We went to Liberty State Park, just around the corner from the museum, and poked around for a bit. K was sad we didn't go into NYC, didn't take a ferry, didn't get a stamp in her NPS passport. It was all about what we didn't do for her. That's hard, especially for Bill, who takes it as a personal failure. But life is about choices. She'll make her own choices when she's older, and we do make choices that make her happy. Choices suck.
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