A GLASS MUSEUM AND TO MASSAPOISETT

A glass couple relaxing in glass chairs in front of a bookcase of glass books is an unusual piece for any museum, but a perfect fit for the new glass museum in New Bedford, Massachusetts Located at 61 Wamsutta St. A bit hard to find,  it shares an entrance with a wonderful antique store and is well worth the time to find it.

I will parade for you some pieces I found particularly beautiful, and/or unusual like this golden fruit bowl.

A blue plate.

A hand-painted pitcher with gold accents.

A painted vase.

Clear and colored glass mixed in the same piece.

A goblet you wouldn’t drink from. So why make it so?  There is something so appealing about seeing light through prisms of cut glass whether colored or clear. All glass lovers will know what I’m talking about.

I haven’t room nor money to assemble a collection of pieces like these, so I collect pictures of beautiful items.

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And, again, the unusual, a crystal chair with red cushions and arm rests. The makers did it just to prove you could, but it caught the eye of an Eastern buyer and they became popular sellers to wealthy estate owners from India and Asia.

When this piece was donated to the museum, the owners said it was a fountain but they could never get it to work. The curator here figured it out and you can go to the New Bedford Glass Museum website and see it work.

Some glass ware was made in the 1800’s with bits of uranium when no one knew of its danger. Here it is contained in a case with black lights showing how it glows. One glass expert explained to us that people in those days when they discovered this glowing property made it into  paint for clock hands. The women who painted the hands would lick the brush because saliva added a sticky quality to the paint, not knowing they got sick and died from the practice as did the glass workers making the glass.

They own a huge collection of uranium ware, this case plus another.

They have unusual art pieces like this iridescent glass painting that changes color and hue with the light.

The same painting now half in shadow by holding a magazine above it.

Isn’t this glass spider perfect?

It looks like this glass has been welded together.

The museum has many glass maker’s tools and shows the process of glass making. The lid above is shown with it’s wooden mold.

From the wooden mold, a plaster of paris mold is made. A metal mold is made from the plaster before the molten glass can be poured into it.

This gun is blown glass where it is blown into the mold. These were cheap pieces filled with candy and sealed with paper. I remember miniatures like these filled with candy when I was a kid.

Of course, most glass made was utilitarian like this light globe.

And before the light bulb was invented, whale oil lamps lit up the dark.

Kids played with glass marbles.

Glass perfume bottles came in many shapes. Donna, Jim and I enjoyed the museum while Bob taught a morning class. If you want to see a slideshow of many more pictures, click the link below:

https://picasaweb.google.com/106530979158681190260/201381GlassMuseumNewBdfrd

After lunch, Bob returned and we all headed out to Massapoisett where Bob’s sons both live and were raised. His oldest son, Danny has a beautiful daughter just graduated from High School and headed off to college.

Marissa was the only one home when we arrived for our visit. She got us each a bottle of water and asked about our travels.

For an 18 year old, she has done a good bit of traveling herself. She has hiked in the Grand Canyon, she went to France and climbed the Eifel Tower. She has met some famous people and appeared on television. She recently went camping for the first time where it was necessary to sleep on the ground on a tarp with a mattress pad and a sleeping bag. This is her wall of accomplishments.
Her grandparents, Bob and Donna Parker, are very proud of her.

She excells at competitions that involve the blind. Here she is pictured after winning the Braille contest. She and Helen Keller have a lot of personality in common.

After or visit, Bob gave us a tour of the community of Massapoisett where he lived for many years.

This is his son’s boat. He loves the water, the area, the boats, clamming, fishing. In fact, when he lived and taught school here, he volunteered as a shellfish warden. He loved the job because he was often rewarded with a bucket of quahogs.

Like Murphys, it has a major hotel.

Years ago, people built their summer cabins here.

Now those cabins are being replaced by million-dollar mansions.

Bob took us to see all of his old haunts and then we had dinner at the Chowder House.

A perfect day with lovely weather much appreciated as I type and look at pouring rain through my window this morning.

YAQUINA BAY LIGHTHOUSE-OLD TOWN NEWPORT

Old town Newport is called Bayfront. Remnants remain of  old rotting docks if you look hard.  A few old buildings remain to remind you of its much busier and more colorful past.  A working dock, still,  but gussied up for tourists such as we to enjoy dockside restaurants,  art galleries, quaint shops and souvenir places.  Multiple murals or bright paint cover up the old warehouse look of the place and its kitschy and fun.

We watched this very modern shrimper come in with the tasty morsels packed in ice and mechanically moved dockside.

Workers then loaded them into a refrigerated truck.

Crab rings stacked around town gave evidence that crab is still big business here. Dungeness. We spotted a crabber advertising live crabs for sale.

We walked down the ramp to buy one,  but no crabs.  Only a phone number for their other boat. Crabbing is slow right now. They were available in the store, but we forgot to stop and pick one up before we returned to the motor home.

A story board about Mo’s restaurants is on the street. Mo was a hard-working, big-hearted, chain-smoking woman,  who opened a seafood restaurant of some renown. There are now six of them up and down the coast.  We stopped in for delicious  bowl of chowder. A woman once crashed into her restaurant with her car. Mo simply covered it up with a working garage door and turned it into a sidewalk cafe in summer.

I swear this batch of seals was trained to amuse us, they posed, barked, kissed, cuddled and basked for everyone on their own little dock; methinks, waiting to be thrown a morsel of some type. A walk around this part of town is a must if you visit. The place is full of murals. It was hard to pick a favorite.

We moved on to the Yaquina Bay Lighthouse which is the smallest lighthouse on the coast. It was one of only four built of wood with the house and the lighthouse the same structure.

Poised on a bluff on Yaquina Bay overlooking  the Yaquina River as it dumps into the ocean, the small light- 8 to 10 mile range- was invisible to ships approaching from the north. It was commissioned, built and put into service for only three years, from 1871 to 1873. It was replaced by the Yaquina Head Lighthouse we visited yesterday which has a bigger light with a 21 mile range.

The inside of this two-story “house” is charming . The Charles Pierce family of nine that lived here had to be in tight quarters even so. Cooking on a wood stove, pumping water up from rainwater in a cistern. It has four bedrooms and no indoor plumbing.

The furnishings are not original, but indicative of the times.  The chamber pot, the rope bedstead. Trunks held clothing and linens. People spent more time outside than they do now. I’ve seen a lot of lighthouses, many on the East Coast last year, but this is my favorite. I’m so thankful that the citizens of Newport rose up and protested its demolition and formed a historical and preservation society. It had several uses before it fell into disrepair. Saved in 1946, it didn’t get restored until 1976. It’s now on the National Register of Historic Places. What a treasure.

LAST DAY ON MARTHAS VINEYARD

Our last day, cool and sunny, we decided to go for a bike ride in this beautiful place. Its clean, slow paced beauty will linger in memory long after we leave, as will my favorite food, the stuffed scallops at Larsens Fish Market. We drove out and unloaded the bikes just above West Basin, near the clam gardens.

I’ve never been clamming before and decided I’d like to try it, but Jim was sure you have to have a license to clam. The sign was unclear, and we didn’t have a bucket nor a shovel, anyway.

I’d never heard of a shellfish warden. Sounded a bit like, “We’re Watching You.”

We biked the Farm Shore road for a bit, but it was rough going and we turned around and headed for the
Gay Head Cliffs, a steady uphill pull, but on smooth asphalt. Great exercise, little traffic. We cooled on a big rock. The ride back down hill was exhillarting.
We loaded the bikes and headed for Larsens at Menemsha. Another great lunch. Chowder for Jim, Mussels and stuffed scallops for me.

On the way back to camp, we stopped to visit the oldest general store on the Island at West Tisbury. Alleys, established in 1858, is still a working store, though supported by the Marthas Vineyard Preservation Trust. The old wooden floors and casings are intact, but, its surprisingly modern. They’ve incorporated an ATM machine, a fancy coffee bar with fresh muffins, sweet rolls and quick-eat treats like any Seven Eleven;

They still cut glass, sell nails and just about any hardware item you can think of. At one time, they were also the local post office.

I’m old enough to remember stores where the clerk stood at the counter and asked you what you needed and then went and got it for you. The counter is still there, but you can prowl around and find what you need. Lot of nostalgia here for me. A rack full of aprons, greeting cards, old penny candy, only higher priced, toys…

I didn’t see the old wood stove with chairs around it, but they did have an inviting hammock on the porch.

And, an annex with produce.

Quite fittingly, they have fresh basil and a tomato plant in a pot out in front.

The one and only really rainy day we spent here we did the laundry and took a short jaunt to town for a ride on the oldest operating carousel in the nation.