Civil Rights Tuesday

Tuesday we stopped in Birmingham, Alabama at the Civil Rights Institute.  Across the street is the 16th Street Baptist Church which was the sight of the bombing in 1963 that killed 4 little girls.  On the other corner you can find the Kelly Ingram Park which was the home to many demonstrations in Birmingham during the Civil Rights Movement.

Here we are in front of the Civil Rights Institute.

Statues from the Kelly Ingram Park.

One of the displays inside the Institute showed a classroom for white children and a classroom for black children.  Notice the difference in desks and supplies.  Also notice the pictures hanging on the wall in each classroom.

Another display-a KKK robe and hood and the plaque beside it.  It reads "Anonymous Donation."  I thought that was interesting.

Read this carefully.  Near the bottom a sentence stuck out to me....about purchasing supplies...Guess not much has changed in education...cause I know we all purchase most of our classroom supplies.

Another bit of interesting information.

Displays about the church bombing.  That's one of the stained glass windows from the church.

The statue of the little girls.  One is reading the book with a poem from Yeats.  

Picture of the church.

My favorite portrait of MLK Jr 

 This guy painted with his hands.

 This is what he created.

 To end this post....a favorite quote by Nelson Mandela

Vicksburg National Military Park

The J & L Roadshow is on the road again.  

Day one was spent driving with a quick stop at Horseshoe Casino in Shreveport where both J & L won money.

Day two was spent at Vicksburg National Military Park. Here are pictures from our drive through the park.

 Memorial Arch at beginning of drive

 Shirley House-only surviving wartime structure in the park

In the park, each state has built a monument to its lost soldiers.  This is the Illinois Monument.

Other state mouments

other sights from our drive

This is the Ironclad USS Cairo that was the first ship sunk by a torpedo (what we would call a mine now days).  It was pulled up and is being restored.

These two pictures are from the Vicksburg National Military Cemetery. Over 17,000 soldiers are buried here.  If the bodies were unknown, they got a number like the one in the picture (4244 Unknown US Soldier).

It was a very sobering experience but also very interesting.

Tomorrow we are headed to Birmingham's Civil Rights Museum.  Stay tuned.

 

The Last of Amsterdam

I am back home in Austin and Mom is back in Phoenix.  Just a few more pictures from our trip that I found interesting and then that will be it for this adventure.  I had a great time and I believe Mom did too.  So here are the last photos.

Someone is having a birthday!

 

A water fountain

 

A bride at the Keukenhof Gardens

 Yes that is a car on top of the houseboat.  There is also a dinghy up there.

Stacks of cheese

                                                             I loved this dog's ears.

 This played music similar to a jack in the box.  He had a tin can collecting coins.

 Saw this the first day from the taxi.  Unfortunately never got back to try it.

Paddle boats on the canal

 

The official boy with his finger in the dike.

This Santa was sitting on the edge of a house boat.

                       This says something about doing the poo tour and
                       discovering what poo can do.

Lovely matching shoes for him and her and a matching bag.

I think that is pretty much it.  I hope you enjoyed being a part of our adventure to Holland.

Painting Fun

Today, our last day in Amsterdam, we went to a painting workshop at the Dutch Costume Museum. Here they have a variety of Dutch costumes or clothing on display. Supposedly there is a village in Holland where they still wear this type of clothing. We received instructions on the dot painting technique they used and we were set free to paint a black tote bag. The first one is mom's bag. The second is mine.

Here are some examples of the clothing. I remember reading that some of the hats or headpieces the women wore had 17 parts and used up to 60 pins.

Later we met my cousin Dianne for dinner in Vondelpark. This park is like New York's Central Park. We sat outside at a restaurant and had dinner while visiting, catching up on our families, and laughing about memories of growing up, especially at our grandma and grandpa's farm. Dianne lives in Atlanta and we haven't seen each other in probably 20 years. She was in Amsterdam for work this week.

Crazy how life works!

Headed back to Houston in the morning. Will spend the night there Thursday and mom will fly back to Phoenix on Friday morning. Then I will head back to Austin. I've had a fabulous time and I think Mom has enjoyed it as well. Hope everyone has enjoyed following along with us on our adventure.

Delft, The Hague and Madurodam

After a relaxing morning, we went on a tour to see the Delft China Factory in Delft, Holland.  This is the famous blue pottery/china that is handpainted.

In the pictures above, you see two artists working on painting pieces.  The bottom two pictures show the display of Christmas plates and the plate created for my birth year.  There was not a plate for mom's birth year because of it being during WWII.

Our tour took us through the workshop where our guide showed us the steps for creating a thimble. In these pictures you see the area with all the molds, the kilns, and an employee sanding a plate.  Our guide showed us how they pour the clay into a mold, wait, and pull out a thimble.  Then it is put into the kiln for 20 hours. Afterwards, once it has been sanded of irregularities, the painters begin their work.  The piece is fired in the kiln a second time.  There are also pieces created using a pattern transfer and are not painted by hand.

Hand painted designs will have markings on the bottom similar to the poster.  It includes the initials of the artist. Our guide held up two plates and asked if we could determine which was hand painted and which was transfer work?  Do you know?

The plate on the left in the picture is hand painted.

After leaving Delft, we drove through the political seat of Holland called The Hague.  Our tour guide pointed out all the  embassies of the different countries, the Yugoslavian Tribunal (where a war criminal killed himself in front of the judge), and all the other UN buildings.  This picture shows the Peace Palace.  Money for this building was donated by Carnegie and each country provided something as well.

Then we traveled to see Madurodam.  This depicts a version of Holland that is 25x smaller.  Since we have not been all over Holland some of it was unrecognizable to us.  So we sought out those places we could recognize.

In these pictures, you will see canal cruise boats actually floating through the water, the monument from Dam Square, Anne Frank's house, and Westerkerk.

Here we see a tulip farm, windmills, a beach on the North Sea (we did not visit ), beautiful flowers, and mom's new friend.

These things made for an interesting day.