| Submitted by: Mark R. Leeper United States |
| Submission Date: 15 February 2005 |
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A bunch of the exhibits show you that while NASA can design equipment that stands up to the rigors of space, they cannot yet build equipment that stands up to small children. Also they demonstrate the inter-cooperation of the museum with any number of sponsors who get various product placements around the museum. 'This number of M&Ms is the whole United States budget and this small number of M&Ms is the amount that goes to the space program.'
Another section has models and mockups from the history of space flight. You see Mercury and Gemini capsules up through a full-sized walk-in section of Skylab that was used as a trainer. It makes you feel you almost could float. Just about wherever you go you hear dramatic background music to set of mood of excitement toward space exploration. And all the staff, even the guys who sweep the floors get astronaut coveralls to do it in.
To test how well you would do in weightlessness they have a chair on an air cushion. You have a mission to do certain manipulations on a device over your head. When you try to turn it you go spinning off in the opposite direction. I immediately realized that was going to happen and countered with the other hand. I finished the mission with so much time to spare the operator suggested I just play with the chair and try docking it to use up the rest of my time. Okay, I'm ready to take on Mars.
We tried the various computer simulations including the shuttle lander. The problem there is everybody crashes the shuttle. The stick is just not responsive enough and everybody I saw crashed the shuttle in the swamp. Something else I read suggested that this is actual astronaut training software. I suspect it is darn rare anyone untrained lands the shuttle safely.
The final exhibit was a short IMAX film called To Be an Astronaut which showed the training process. The whole thing was not as real as I was expecting, but it was a decent space museum and probably made for one of the best days of the trip. I will have to compare it to Huntsville.
We had the time so went to the Menil Art Collection. I don't understand my attitude toward art museums. I do not think of myself as someone who likes art museums. I almost never go into an art museum expecting a good time. Yet I almost always enjoy going. I don't think I picked up a lot about art in school. Yet a bit at a time I seem to have acquired knowledge of the major artists. I frequently can tell an artist by his style and there must be a lot that I like. In spite of myself I must like art museums.
The surrealism section starts with Marcel Duchamp including some pen and ink, some metal sculpture. Some Max Ernst. There are a few especially nice De Chiricos, a small room with three Magrittes. Included in the next room is the original 'Treachery of Images,' the picture of a pipe labeled that it is not a pipe. Further there are two Picassos, a familiar Man Ray 'Imaginary Portrait of the Marquis de Sade.' A later room has several very familiar Magrittes including his 'Golconde' showing functionary businessmen floating in air.
To the other end is a collection of art starting with antiquities. There were horses from Greece, there was ancient Egyptian. There was Roman.
There is a room of Georges Braque, whom I did not know. Well, I do now. To finish they had some Leger and some Warhol. Again a small museum, but with some nice pieces.
On the way back to the motel we stopped for dinner at Joe's Crab Shack. It is a relatively inexpensive and popular seafood house. We had really good service. I had the Fisherman's Platter. We also had an appetizer of fried jalapenos. Evelyn found them too spicy to eat. Food has to be really piquant to bother me at all these days. I could eat only about half of the main platter so we had it packaged. We put it on ice in the room. I don't know when I will eat it.
I think we went to sleep about 10:30 PM.
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09/04/97--Southern Louisiana:
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Well, it was another uncomfortable night. I must have been up five or six times. I thought I was handling the heat pretty well until I got to Houston. Maybe after all I said, the thermostat really is working in the air conditioner, but it is not sensitive enough. There are times when the room feels too cold and times when it is too hot. The mean is fine, the variance is way too high. Evelyn was up at some time in the night. I woke up and she was in the bathroom. A little while later I looked and she was back in bed. I can tell that she went into the bathroom because she could not sleep. There is a chair in the bathroom (nice touch that) and it is pulled out, which means that it has been used. So she must have had trouble sleeping also.
Today is an even day of the month so I will not change clothes. The way we handle the clothes situation is to do a wash every eight days. But I did not bring eight changes of clothes, I packed four and wore one. I wear a set of clothes two days. In August I changed clothes on even days; in September it is odd days. I am very systematic about traveling light.
Well, we packed up the car. We had the motel's continental breakfast. At this writing we are headed east on Route 10. We have gotten a really atmospheric day. The sky is more haze than sky. Occasionally the white disk of the sun shows through. The scenery is greener. This is marsh country and oil country. Today the sun generates more heat than light.
Ironically, when you drive the country rather than fly you realize it is smaller than you thought. Places I thought were really distant you can get to with a few hours of driving. The terrain changes quickly.
We were looking for something representative of Texas to put on the chachka table. Just before the border we stopped at a grocery store and got a bottle of mesquite smoke marinade. Not a great choice, but we were desperate. In Louisiana the roads have a lot of ads for casinos. I guess Louisiana has legalized gambling. In Lake Charles we pass a garish hotel and casino called Player's Island. It has a riverboat in back. Not too far down the road are some really dilapidated houses. It looks like the wealth has come but has yet to be spread. That was pretty much the experience in Atlantic City. These places vote in gambling in the hopes it will bring prosperity, but it brings it to only a few people.
On the radio we here 'God gives us principles on how to invest our money.' Investing from a Biblical perspective is the subject being discussed. Always invest to the greater glory of God and God will protect your investment. When you see someone who lost money in the market, you can always find someplace he broke God's law. That is the claim. Hard to falsify that one. Who do you know who could not be interpreted as breaking God's Law?
I would guess when you see someone fail at anything if you look hard enough you will find someplace where they broke God's law. If you find someone successful you will also find where they broke God's law. If you look hard enough you will find where William Jennings Bryan broke God's law. My guess is that the best policy is to not invest in something that is going to do a lot of damage (and I am not sure where to invest that would do damage) and otherwise just use sound investment strategies. I think letting religion guide you where to invest is about as intelligent as letting religion telling you what to investigate in science. You have to keep your priorities straight.
The road is mostly two lanes going in each direction with a wide grassy strip between them. There seems to be a lot of different things, car dealers, etc., called Thibodeaux. At least there is a lot on the road. It must be a powerful family around here.
Avery Island is a ninety-foot dome of salt, not an island at all. It was the first rock salt deposit discovered in North America. This is where for the last 129 years there has been a factory to make the most famous of Louisiana hot sauces, Tabasco. We pass fields of sugar cane and some mobile homes. There is a stream beside the road. A fish jumps from the water trying to catch a butterfly. Further there is a long-necked bird. I would guess an egret. (P.S. Yes, this area has lots of egrets.) There is a house on the stream and a small boat labeled E. McIlhenny.
You have to pay a fifty-cent toll to get onto Avery Island, home of Tabasco. Tabasco is one of the most popular hot sauces in the world, probably because it has a tang without really being deadly. There is a newspaper clipping that says that after Hurricane Andrew, the residents of Guam were particularly worried that the hurricane might have damaged Avery Island. On Guam you put Tabasco sauce on
everything from corn flakes to popcorn. I put hot sauce on popcorn myself. And sometimes vinegar. Edward McIlhenny was a banker in New Iberia, Louisiana, who had a small farm on Avery Island before the Civil War. The Union captured Avery Island. When McIlhenny got the land back after the war, there
wasn't a lot left on the land that he could turn to profit. His old pepper plants were still blooming. He made a pepper mash, aged it, mixed it with vinegar and put it into French perfume bottles. He sealed the bottles with green wax and a cork. The first year, 1868, he sent it out free. Food had been spoiled by the war and people ate what they could get. The sauce brightened up the flavor of bad food or good. The second year he charge a ridiculous dollar a bottle. For some people that was a week's pay. But he established himself. The label is printed in eighteen different languages. The peppers, McIlhenny's own hybrid, have been recognized as a separate strain and called Tabasco, an Indian name for 'land of heat and humidity.'
A personal note here. I myself am beyond the time when I consider Tabasco sauce to be a hot sauce. Now Dave's Insanity Sauce qualifies, but Tabasco is more just a seasoned vinegar. But I am grateful to the McIlhenny people for giving me a taste for the finer things in life.
The tour is not much of a tour. You have the guide tell you a little of the history of Tabasco Sauce. Then you see a film that tells you a lot of the same things. Then you walk past a glassed-in area where you see the prepared sauce being bottled.
The tour lets out in a Tabasco shop with samples of sauces, cook books, decorations, candy, and so forth, all on a Tabasco theme.
We got done about 2 PM and Evelyn figured there should be good eating in New Iberia, what with the Tabasco plant near. Forget it. We ate at a Popeye's Fried Chicken. Not terrible, but not great eating either. I suppose I had to have fried chicken at some point in the South. It could have used some Tabasco sauce.
This territory has a bad reputation for speed traps. Or what is even worse than speed traps, fraudulent accusations by police who get a chunk of the fine as bounty. By some accounts it is still a problem, by others publicity on 60 Minutes and in the AAA guide have remedied much of the problem. But we are driving carefully.
The drive to Thibodeaux includes going through marshland. All the telephone poles seem short. This is because four feet or so is under water. What looks like ground vegetation will be absolutely flat as if cut by a giant sword. The plants will, of course, be only inches high and floating on the surface of the marsh.
Other places we pass huge fields of sugar cane, much like at home we would see fields of corn. Sugar cane is a big crop down here. We used to get Coca-Cola made with cane sugar in the United States. I think they still did in Israel last I checked. Now we get Cokes made with corn sweeteners. Israeli Cokes are a lot better and I think the reason is that they still use cane sugar.
I guess the old name of the town was Thibodaux and it is now Thibodeaux. |
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