Morris Museum

Last Friday, I had a chance to drop by the Morris Museum. Haven't been there in quite some time. It is one of those little museums which, even with their limited resources and exhibition space, can still harbor a golden nugget of wonder.

In this case, it is probably one of the best exhibitions this museum has ever had - Musical Machines and Living Dolls: The Murtogh D. Guinness Collection of Mechanical Musical Instruments and Automata.

Fascinating excurse into incredible mechanical prowess of XIX to early XX centuries. The "living" dolls were like little snapshots of their time period. But the musical machines were particularly interesting. I loved the timeline presented at the end of the hall, placing the mechanical musical machines as the forefathers of the music carriers that followed (i.e. vinyls, tapes, CD's).

The Millionairess

What a fantastic performance!!! Truly exceptional! Even though this was not an actual play - it was a reading, not a full production - the actors were still playing. Amazing! Kate Mulgrew was incomparable and brought the house down on several occasions!
This was one of the monthly Project Shaw readings (the 65th one, by the way), and was held at The Players Club in Gramercy Park.
There is some more information, as well as helpful links and wonderful photos here.

Lots of Plans

Lots of plans for this fall. Generally, this has turned out to be one eventful year...

...sigh...I really need to do more posting.

September 26th - The Millionairess with Kate Mulgrew
October 6th - Shatner signing his new book at Barnes & Noble on 5th Ave - MISSED :(

October 7th - Adele's concert in Atlantic City (Borgata!) - CANCELLED :(

October 12th - Scenes Behind Paleontology visit to AMNH with Carl Mehling

October 16th - a fossil-collecting trip to Saint Claire, Pennsylvania with the Rutgers Museum of Geology
October 19th - potentially (no confirmation yet), a site visit to Ground Zero as part of a AACE meeting
October 28th-30th - yet another Morristown Antiques Show

November 5th - Explore Lower Manhattan walk with AMNH's Sidney Horenstein

November 28th - Andre Rieu's concert in Newark

Hopefully, between all this, I'll be able to fit a trip to Philadelphia I have been promising my relatives for a while now. And then we nicely move into the holiday season! Can't wait!

The 10th Anniversary

The 10th Anniversary of 9/11 was yesterday. Feeling restless and uneasy, couldn't make myself settle down and actually do something, including even making this post. The memories are still heavy. Watching the television programming was almost unbearable.

Wow, What an August!

This has certainly been an extraordinary month!

The 45th Anniversary Las Vegas Star Trek Convention has been incredible, fantastic, simply out of this world!!! An absolutely unique experience!

Then there was the 5.8 magnitude Virginia earthquake that shook the entire East Coast.

And then, of course, there was the hurricane Irene....sigh....what a mess! My family and I got lucky in so many ways compared to people in other states, other New Jersey counties and towns, even our own neighbors. But still, this is one experience I do not want ever to repeat again.

I intend to dedicate separate posts to everything mentioned above and in the previous entry in the future, so I am not going to go into further detail here.