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 Swirling Rainbows
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by Kirk House
 Down in the gorge, the mist swirls and dances. Rainbows rise and fall and dance, shifting and shimmering as the mist boils, scattering the light of the sun through 360 degrees. At Niagara Falls, you look down as well as up for rainbows. At Niagara Falls, the rainbows dance.
When you stand on the edge of the gorge at Niagara, the earth itself trembles and rumbles and shudders under your feet. The roar never ends, never hesitates. The first paleoindians, and the first French explorers, must have staggered when they came across this titan of nature. Nowadays Niagara Falls is world-famous, a staple of cartoons, post cards, great art, bad art, and comedy routines. Everybody knows Niagara Falls. And they're still staggering.
America's oldest state park sprawls along the riverbank, the gorge, American Falls, Bridal Veil Falls, Goat Island, American Rapids, Horseshoe Rapids, and numerous small islands. You can get around much of the park by car, all of it on foot, and most of it by "trolley" shuttlebus.
Some of it you can even explore by elevator, up to the Observation Tower or down to the Cave of the Winds. The Cave of the Winds trip brings you out well below much of Bridal Veil Falls. If the experience at Prospect Point above the gorge is staggering, imagine being almost under the Falls themselves, gazing up at an ocean of water screaming its way down the cliff, again shaking the earth underfoot but this time blanketing you in spray. Here in the 21st century, we often assume that we've got nature under control. You might change your mind under Bridal Veil Falls.
 Wandering the trails, or hopping the shuttle, you get to know the Falls and their ecosystem. Take the pedestrian bridge out to the Three Sisters, small islets off Goat Island, and feel the river's strength as it rushes by and around you.
As you wander, you'll probably spot black squirrels -- actually a natural variant of the commonplace gray squirrel, unusual overall but fairly common in this area. The river is also a birder's paradise -- by some reckonings, 10% of the world's freshwater gulls stop here every spring. You'll never be out of earshot of the Falls, and, on a sunny day, you'll almost always be walking with rainbows.
- Enthusiastic volunteer Park Ambassadors help visitors get the most from their experience.
- The Maid of the Mist boat ride carries visitors into the very spray of the Falls.
- Privately-chartered helicopter rides are also available, along with other boat experiences.
- Ice often lingers in the shaded gorge until mid-summer.
- Fireworks displays usually go off on summer Fridays and holidays (US and Canadian).
- Rest room, information, gift, and eating facilities are available in several locations.
Niagara Falls State Park
(716) 278-1796
www.niagarafallsstatepark.com
More Than a Park...
More than a park, more than a cataract, Niagara Falls is also a busy city.
The downtown area is bustling through revival and reconstruction, with numerous up-to-date accommodations and every level of dining experience. The Aquarium of Niagara explores the watery world that covers two-thirds of the earth and draws millions of visitors to the city. Niagara Aerospace Museum commemorates the region's four big aerospace firms -- Curtiss, Curtiss-Wright, Consolidated, and Bell. You can find everything from biplanes to rocket planes at the museum, and try out closed-cockpit flight simulators that actually move in response to your controls (up to a point -- you're just about certain to walk away from your landing).
Stimulating much of the downtown revival is the Seneca Niagara Casino, operated by the Seneca Iroquois nation. The casino features almost 3000 slot machines, Keno lounge, non-smoking casino, high-stakes room and entertainers such as Bill Cosby. Seneca Niagara boasts several eating places, most impressively including the Thunder Falls Buffet, where mountains of king crab legs make an experience as staggering, in its way, as the falls themselves.
The aquarium, casino, and aerospace museum are all within walking distance of the state park.
 Seneca Niagara Casino
(877) 8-SENECA;
www.senecaniagaracasino.com
Niagara Aerospace Museum
(716) 278-0060;
www.niagaramuseum.org
Aquarium of Niagara
(800) 500-4609;
www.aquariumofniagara.org
...More Than a City
The even larger city of Buffalo lies just a few miles south of Niagara Falls, while Niagara Falls, Canada is on the river's west bank. But to the north and east lie farms, small towns, and villages that clearly show the New England heritage of the early white settlers.
Moving north down the Niagara River, Lewiston and Youngstown offer walking tours, small shops, and cheerful restaurants. These villages are home to Old Fort Niagara and Our Lady of Fatima Shrine.
The Erie Canal made this one of the first boom regions in the new United States. East of Niagara Falls, the canal harbor at North Tonawanda hosts outdoor concerts and activities throughout the summer. Farther east, Lockport was named for the stunning 1820's engineering feat of five double locks in one spot, scaling and descending the slope of the Niagara Escarpment. Modern engineering requires only two locks here. You can take canal cruises, or an underground boat ride in the 1800's Hydraulic Tunnel.
Five wineries anchor the Niagara Wine Trail, while the Greater Buffalo-Niagara Regional Transportation Council has laid out extensive bicycle routes. With cities, small towns, farms, and countryside... with natural wonders and engineering marvels... the Niagara region is New York state in miniature.
www.northofthefalls.com
www.youngstownnewyork.com
www.the-tonawandas.com
www.NiagaraWineTrail.org
For all city and county information
Niagara Tourism and Convention Corporation
345 Third Street, Suite 605
Niagara Falls, NY 14303
(800) 338-7890
www.niagara-usa.com
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| What's Cooking
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by Gwen Chamberlain
Cooking classes are a great way to bone-up on new techniques and escape from everyday stress. It was a perfect day for soup. The air outside was crisp and cool, so retreating to the warmth of a kitchen was welcome and comforting.
Inside the kitchen, there was a relaxed pace as I joined a group of about 20 people on a Saturday morning to bone up on tips from professional chefs as we created some genuine comfort food using New York agricultural products.
The hands-on kitchen at the New York Wine and Culinary Center was the perfect setting to escape from a digital world and focus on the centuries-old skill of teasing the flavors out of meat, fish and vegetables to create stocks and soups.
 The class is one of a regular series in the professional-grade kitchen at the new center, which celebrates the state's food and wine in as many ways as possible.
Taught by Chef Ted Ganster and intern Jon Taylor, the course - presented in two Saturday morning sessions - was an opportunity for people from a variety of backgrounds (and a wide spectrum of skills) to learn the basics of creating broths, stocks and soups.
While pulling a can of chicken or beef stock off the shelf may seem like the most convenient way to start a substantial home-made soup, and while experienced cooks who don't hesitate to tackle intricate recipes may still shy away from making broth or stock, the process is quite easy.
The final product - whether it's a hearty, rich soup that can melt away the winter chill, or a basic broth - is worth the few minutes of preparation time before the long, slow simmer fills your kitchen with wonderful aromas and the promise of what's to come.
The first session began with a chicken de-boning demonstration, and progressed into teams of two or three individuals working together to make a stock from vegetables, poultry, beef, fish or from left-over roasted meats.
My teammate Marlene Cornell and I were assigned an easy-enough vegetable stock. We sliced, cut and chopped leeks, onions, carrots, turnips, garlic and mushrooms as we caught up on family news. Within minutes, the ingredients were simmering with a bouquet garni (a bundle of fresh herbs) in the stock pot.
Eight teams worked around large kitchen islands outfitted with professional-quality equipment. Ganster and Taylor roamed the room, answering questions, demonstrating professional techniques and sharing ideas, and every now and then, one of the chefs from the center's kitchen would stop by and share some thoughts.
The kitchen filled with conversation, and with wonderful aromas from the different projects the eight teams were creating. The women next to us (one of whom raises bison and wanted to learn new ways to prepare the meat) were making a brown stock from veal bones. The team across the island prepared another vegetable stock using a different process. On the other corner of the island, two women from the Syracuse area worked on a chicken stock.
At the other island, four more teams tackled beef stock and more, and as the class time sped by, visitors to the center peered through the large windows into the kitchen, watching us work.
As our stock pots simmered away, we got acquainted with classmates and even had a chance to slip out to do some quick shopping in the center's gift shop and to check out the other areas in the building.
Next door to the hands-on kitchen is an exhibit area where visitors can learn more about the agricultural products in New York state. In the educational theater, visitors can attend sessions featuring guest chefs preparing specialties or winemakers demonstrating or discussing some of their techniques. They can even participate in the popular taste tests or other classes.
The gift shop offers high-quality professional equipment, tools, cookbooks, kitchenware and more, and at the other end of the building, the wine tasting room staff present flights of New York wines in addition to retail sales of the featured wines.
Upstairs the Taste of New York Lounge provides a menu of delicious foods along with New York wines and beers by the glass. The grounds are landscaped with a garden featuring varieties of grapes, fruits and herbs grown in New York. Benches there or tables on the second- story deck outside the lounge provide a view of Canandaigua Lake for a perfectly relaxing rest.
At the end of the first class session, the stocks were still simmering, and some still had a few hours to go, so Ganster and Taylor finished them up and saved them for the next week's session. During the second session, we teamed up to make seven different soups - cream of cauliflower, harvest cream of onion, mushroom barley, butternut squash, Mediterranean white bean, minestrone and French onion. Marlene and I worked with two others to make the butternut squash soup, a very easy recipe that I used again for our Thanksgiving dinner first course a couple weeks later. Around the kitchen, mouth-watering aromas soon filled the air as onions slowly browned in butter and olive oil, squash roasted, and a variety of vegetables and seasonings blended. For anyone who enjoys the therapy of creating a good, wholesome meal, the experience was a relaxing, informative opportunity to get away from the daily rush of work or simply putting a meal on the table. It was more than a class. It was an experience that will linger on whenever I pull a container of stock from the freezer and warm up the memory.
Within another couple of hours, we were tasting each other's creations and enjoying the rewards of new friendships formed over the cutting board and stock pot. And aside from the rewards of enjoying the flavors of seven different soups, learning new cooking tips and meeting new friends, the best part of the whole class was this - someone else washed the dishes!
The New York Wine and Culinary Center,
800 South Main St., Canandaigua,
offers several hands-on experiences throughout the year as well as the demonstrations in the educational theater. For more information, including the center's hours of operation,
visit www.nywcc.com
or call 585-394-7070
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| Freedom Fighters: John Brown
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by Kirk W. House
I have stood by the grave of John Brown and his sons in the Adirondack winter, and bared my head.
The 19th-century freedom fighter made his home in North Elba, outside Lake Placid, to be near a settlement of African Americans. But in 1859 he slipped away to Maryland, crossing the Potomac by night into what's now Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. There he and his comrades seized part of the federal arsenal, hoping to arm a slave uprising.
Despite his courage and idealism (and his initial success), Brown managed the project badly. A file of marines commanded by Robert E. Lee and J.E.B. Stuart fought its way into the engine house where Brown made his last stand, and Virginia hanged him for treason. His body went by train to Vergennes, Vermont, then by ferry across Lake Champlain; there family met him for the weary wagon ride home.
Fellow Upstater Frederick Douglass called Brown "the meteor of the war," and in time his fellow citizens grew to appreciate him more. He stood for liberty, equality, and brotherhood, ideals that provoke a smirk today and a snarl in his own day. Even the plaques honoring John Brown and his men segregate his black comrades to the bottom of each list, which would have disgusted the Captain, as he was known.
John Brown State Historic Site has restored the house to its 1859 condition, but the true magnet is that rich earth where John Brown's body lies a moulderin' in the grave -- while his soul goes marching on.
John Brown Farm State
Historic Site
2 John Brown Road
Lake Placid, NY 12946
(518) 523-3900
www.nysparks.com
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I was Transported back to the 1800's
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by Leta Polito
 Opening up the front door made me feel like I had been transported back into the 1800's. Mills Mansion has been renovated many times but original artifacts, like the original keyhole, still remain. The key itself is framed, hanging on the wall inside. Unlike today's keys, it is huge, and I asked how they carried it around; it looked like it would be very heavy. Next to the key is an oil painting created in 1863, depicting a man and woman in a horse-drawn carriage during the winter. Behind them was a house that happens to be on the road I live on; General Mills and his wife were on my road almost 150 years ago.
Then I went into the east and west parlors. Why did they need two? Since there wasn't electricity they had to use candle light and light from the sun. Since the sun rises in the east and sets in the west they needed parlors on both sides so they would always have a place to sit and entertain. Connecting the parlors were beautiful original solid cherry pocket doors. All of the original windows in the house are 6 by 6 panes. This is because if you tried to transport any bigger piece of glass it would have a higher risk of breaking on the bumpy roads. Later on after the canal was built they were able to transport fragile things like pottery and glass much easier.
 Going on to the kitchen and dining room brought more surprises. Nothing in the dining room was original, which to me made it not as interesting, but the china plates caught my eye. Although they were bought to restore the house they looked exactly like part of a plate that the archeologists had found deep in the back yard. It was a special piece, called feather plated because they dipped a feather in blue ink and decorated the edge of the plate with it. Also in the back yard they found the earliest type of pottery made by the region's Native Americans.
In the kitchen the original bake oven was still there -- it's amazing that they cooked with just a big hole in the wall! Also on display were stone tools found in the back yard archeological dig. In addition they recovered silverware, which looked a lot like ours today, except that the forks instead of being four-pronged were three-pronged, and the handles were made of bone.
 The main staircase going to the upstairs was beautiful. Unlike any staircase I have seen it had double rails, with the second rail along the wall, just for show. Although no one knows for sure how it worked the theory is that half of the upstairs was for the family and the other half was for servants. First off there is a door and a step down in the hallway, where it would have been separated. Also a second staircase comes through the kitchen which would be where the servants would have been.
 Upstairs in one of the bedrooms was a chair, which looked normal except for one thing; it had a toilet bowl in it. This would not have been very pleasant, but the lady docent asked me, "Would you like to go outside in the middle of the night when it's snowing to use the bathroom?" I guess my answer would be no.
The archeologists use infrared light to help them see where big piles of dirt would have been moved this is how they found the outhouse, well, and cistern. Thy also discovered two stone-lined hearths almost four feet into the ground, which probably means that they were used well before the general's time. Some of the tools, including javelins and spear throwers, were from 4000 to 5000 years ago. One of their newest finds was the cobblestone walkway, which they dismantled so that they could dig underneath it. They put the stones safely away in the order that they were uncovered, so that they could replace the walkway when they were finished.
We watched the archeologists for a little bit. They use little tools and brushes to dig away at the dirt so that they don't break anything. It's really quite amazing how they are able to do that. Afterward they have to carefully label everything, make sure that they keep what they found carefully organized by layers of soil, clean the artifacts and then write up a report on them. In one room upstairs they have a lab to do all this.
Although the house is extremely beautiful, I will surely never complain about any house I live in. At least it will have heat, electricity, and running water. The people back then must have been very hard workers. What they have is amazing, and I will never forget my visit there.
General William A. Mills commanded militia from six counties defending the Niagara Frontier during the War of 1812. He then became an extremely prosperous farmer and in 1838 built his mansion in Mount Morris. The house included 14 rooms, six fireplaces, and a large kitchen. The mansion was built on former Seneca land, very fertile as it used to be a hanging river delta. Mills's friends included Mary Jemison, "the White Woman of the Genesee;" Robert Morris, who was at the time the wealthiest man in America; and renowned painter John Trumbull.
General William Mills Mansion
14 Main Street
Mount Morris, NY 14520
(585) 335-3500
While you might not think of visiting local history museums on your travels, dropping in for an hour or so can be an easy way of getting to know the community you're visiting. Besides that, each community makes a snapshot of a growing America. Why not check out...
Tennie Burton Museum (Lima). One engaging artifact is the old Lima telephone switchboard, with a note tacked on: "If a fire is reported, blow whistle, then call fire chief."
Elm Cottage Museum (Steuben County Historical Society, Bath). Children's room features a rotating exhibit of historic toys and playthings. Memorabilia from the Home for Orphan Girls, a Post Office bicycle, and a torchlight scrim used to taunt William Jennings Bryan.
Benjamin Patterson Inn (Corning). Preserves a 1790's hostelry, local one-room school, and various outbuildings. Sometimes you get to enjoy hearth cookery.
The Depot (Painted Post). Besides capturing the community's life, this small museum also spotlights the railroad's influence on the area.
Brick Tavern Museum (Schuyler County Historical Society, Montour Falls). Watkins Glen and Montour Falls were busy shipping and manufacturing towns in the days of canals, railroads, and steamships... not to mention a world-renowned resort destination. The museum recaptures life in those elegant days.
Oliver House Museum and Underwood Museum (Yates County Historical Society, Penn Yan). Besides restoring a well-to-do nineteenth-century doctor's home, Oliver House also exhibits memorabilia and history of Jemima Wilkinson, the frontier prophetess who ruled her flock with a rod of iron in the late 1700's.
Chemung Valley Historical Museum (Elmira). Located in an old bank block, CVHM includes material on the city's most famous summer resident -- Mark Twain.
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| Hip Hop Hooray - It's Time for Play
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by Kirk W. House
My favorite part was the butterfly habitat. Dozens of lepidopterae floated around the two-story enclosure, while under glass we could see hundreds more in chrysalis stage, or just emerging to spread their wings for the first time. Outside the semicircular glass walls, Rochester goes about its business. Inside, we wend our way through tropical vegetation, spotting resting and flitting butterflies; some are as big as our hands.
Curators release 500 butterflies week into this space... since the typical lifespan is two weeks, there are some 800 about at any given time. There are so many, in fact, that when we leave we walk under jets of air, then into a passageway mirrored on ceiling and walls, to make sure that none of them are hitching a ride with us. If they were, the visitors would probably welcome them.
 For years the Strong Museum has been one of our family's favorite places, and over the years we've watched the museum rethinking and reinventing itself. With several recent multimillion-dollar additions, the Strong National Museum of Play is one of the busiest places in the Finger Lakes. It was certainly busy on the day we visited, with children and families enthusiastically throwing themselves into their learning and their play.
And the word into fits perfectly. I stepped into a slanted house, barely able to keep my balance, stumbling and failing to walk a straight line. I watched myself on a TV monitor as I shuffled from wall to wall in the Exaggerated Perspective Room, experiencing the apparent changes wrought by changing dimensions and backgrounds. I paced through a giant kaleidoscope. And we have frequently done what millions of kids wish they do, but can only manage at Strong - we strolled through Sesame Street.
 Joyce is a children's librarian, and her favorite section was the new Reading Adventureland. Here we opened a secret doorway set into a bookcase to enter hidden passages in the Mystery Mansion (we could have crawled through the fireplace, but left that to people with less stature and less arthritis). In the Fairy Tale Forest I had to wait my turn, but once the little kids got out of the way I finally had my chance to pump levers operating the arms on a giant - and I even got to supply his gruff, forbidding voice.
Upstairs are galleries with setpiece exhibits familiar to those of us who remember the museum from days gone by - cases, for instance, with huge 19th-century dollhouses and other playthings. Timelab uses toys, games, costumes, and other period items to help recall the past (yes - YOUR toys are now museum pieces!). Beatles records keep company with a kid's space helmet labeled Macauley... rare memento of an early, and vastly underrated, TV science fiction show called Men Into Space.
Also upstairs is the National Toy Hall of Fame. Each year two new toys are inducted, and nomination forms are available! Here you come face to face with Mr. Potato Head (wearing, among other things, a Darth Vader costume - very impressive). You'll find the Frisbee, the yo-yo, and the hula hoop here, along with such proprietary playthings as Scrabble and Monopoly, and toys as generic as the cardboard box. Here you'll see that the Barbie doll was inspired by (and toned down from) a risqué doll sold in German tobacco shops, while G.I. Joe ("fighting man from head to toe") was prototyped from a doll of Barbie's innocuous boyfriend Ken.
According to an Oliver Wendell Holmes quote posted in the museum, "A man does not cease to play because he grows old; he grows old because he ceases to play." While my favorite part was the Dancing Wings Butterfly Garden, all in all it was hard to choose. At the Wizard's Workshop in Reading Adventureland I cast my shadow on the Magic Movements wall, making eldritch gestures to swirl and weave surreal color patterns. "Are you making magic?" Joyce asked me. Oh, yeah. Was I ever.
 Kids Can Also- "Shop" (or work) in the Super Kids Market
- Toss and track volleyball-sized balls in a huge overhead kinetic ball machine (this was Joyce's SECOND favorite part)
- Ride on an indoor train
- Make sound effects in a radio studio
- Spin around on a 1918 carousel (the museum's largest artifact)
- Eat at the Skyliner, an old-time diner brought into the museum, or at the museum food court
- Admire live tropical fish in the Rainbow Reef space
Strong National Museum of Play is
- The world's only museum dedicated to the importance of play
- The second-largest "children's" museum in America
- Open year-round
- Hosting special activities and special exhibitions all through the calendar
- Loads of fun; on a previous visit, both our kids wanted to come, but we told the one he had to get to college, and the other he had to get to work!
Strong National Museum of Play
(585) 263-2700
www.museumofplay.org
Extra charge to visit the butterfly garden
- reservations suggested.
If you like the Museum of Play, you might also be interested in
Rochester Museum and Science Center
Ithaca Sciencenter
Toy Town Museum
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| Look What I Made - Glass Art!
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by Kirk W. House
I put on a heavy protective apron. I put on a pair of Kevlar sleeves. I put on a pair of heavy protective gloves. If I didn't wear glasses, I would have needed a pair of protective lenses.
I was getting ready to have fun.
I was in the Walk-in Workshop at the Corning Museum of Glass to try their hands-on glass experiences. The protection was probably overkill; Glady West, my artist-instructor, worked with bare hands while I used gloves. Even so, we were working with glass as hot as 2100 degrees, so it's clear why a little extra protection is not at all amiss.
Glady showed me a garden of glass flowers, where I decided to make a straight-stemmed flower (rather than curly stemmed), with blue and purple coloring. She dipped a stainless steel spindle into a crucible, gathering hot glass that she then dipped into color trays, after which I got to work.
Seated on a bench with metal side frames at chest height, I helped work the spindle, which overlapped two metal arms on my frame by a long distance -- good protection. While we turned the spindle I used a broad blade to flatten the end of the glass. Once out of the furnace or crucible its temperature quickly falls to "only" a thousand degrees. Slowly spinning the spindle keeps the glass evenly formed -- otherwise it droops with gravity.
Even though I was fully protected, the side of my face and neck closest the glass could certainly feel the heat radiating off that thousand-degree dollop. Using large metal tongs, I grabbed the glass as we rotated it, stretching out "petals" for the flower. Even though the glass was molten, and responding to gravity, there was a good deal of resistance, so I really had to tug -- it felt almost like pulling taffy.
 When things started congealing too much, Glady gave the glass a spin in the "glory hole" -- the 2100-degree furnace directly in front of me, giving me a fine view of my glass in the weird glow. We went through several rotations, with me repeatedly stretching out the glass, forming and re-forming petals, finally drawing it straight out away from the spindle. We were ready! My flower went straight to the cooling oven, where its temperature is dropped slowly and evenly, to prevent brittling.
Shucking the gloves and sleeves, but keeping the apron, we moved to the bead-making station. Although the heat by the furnaces had not been at all oppressive, I felt a chill as I moved away from them. Here I needed dark lenses over my glasses, for we were working with a flame jet, much like an angled Bunsen burner. I selected glass rods of three different colors, using yellow as the base for my bead.
I heated a small metal spindle, rotating it underhand but keeping it near the "cool" part of the flame. Bobbing my yellow rod in and out of the jet (working overhand), I gathered a glowing drop of wax and quickly transferred it to my spindle, meantime rotating the spindle to form a good round, even drop. Several applications gave me my basic bead.
Switching to my orange rod, I melted glass to embellish the bead. Glady and the other pros do this quickly and deftly -- knowing my own limitations with fine-motor coordination, I satisfied myself with laying on a band of molten orange, followed by a band of mixed-color glass. I decided to roll the bead out on a metal plate, forming a cylinder, and off we went to the cooling oven again.
The fused-glass activity was all "cool" work, requiring no special gear. I decided to create a picture frame, though I could have made a pin, a sun catcher, or a refrigerator magnet. Selecting a frame with dark color, I proceeded to embellish. Using a hand-held glass cutter (which took me back to my youth in the hardware store), I scored colored glass and snapped it with pliers, laying the pieces on the frame in a design I liked. A drop of glue held each piece in place as Glady transferred it to the fusing oven, where the glue would burn off as the glass surfaces adhered.
Sand blasting needs no oven time at all. I selected a drinking glass from stock and laid out designs with stickers and tape. For one side I used train stickers for my son the rail fan (though he's bigger than I am, and a little old for stickers, to be honest with you), and on the other the moon and stars, because I like moon and stars.
The sand blasting chamber is a sealed box. After placing the glass inside I manipulated glass and sand hose by using internal gloves, like you see in movies about quarantine chambers. The compressor sounds like a large vacuum cleaner as I lay bands of sand blast along the glass, engaging the flow with a foot pedal. After a complete rotation I go over it again, touching up any light spots. A quick wash, pull off the stickers, another wash, and there's my glass -- clear where the stickers were, and frosted where they weren't.
The drinking glass comes straight home with me, but the other items need to cool overnight -- the Studio ships at cost for those who request it. My flower comes out a fine dramatic dark shade, and it's surprisingly hefty, too. The picture frame has (in my opinion) a strong yet understated design. The bead is, well, a bead, though the Workshop provides a lanyard for it as well.
The colored bands I laid on are, as I expected, rather wavy, but the bead's fun to look at. I find that I can recall the specific stages of creation as I now find them "frozen" in my bead. Although I'm not very good at it, I really enjoyed sitting there in my apron and dark glasses, continuously spinning the spindle in the flame (horizontally, underhand) with my left hand while simultaneously and continuously melting and applying glass (45-degree-angle, overhand) with my right. I was meeting the challenge adequately, though not expertly, and I created something that reflects my work and my experience right back to me.
A little crowd had gathered behind me as Glady and I worked the hot-glass spindle. When I walked down Market Street later on that day, two ladies said, "Say -- you were making a glass flower this morning!" Little did I know when I set out that day that I would become part of an exhibit.
There's no age limit for fusing or sand blasting. Ten-year-olds can try the glass beads, and 14-year-olds the glass flower. Adults will get a deeper appreciation for the creation of glass art, especially if they work one of the hot glass techniques. Your creations can also make unusual gifts. In November and December, you can try glass blowing to make your own Christmas ornament. I will definitely be there.
Corning Museum of Glass, including the Walk-in Workshop, lies within sight of Exit 46 on I-86 (the Southern Tier Expressway, formerly Route 17). The Walk-In Workshop, also offers weekend and one-week courses, many of them open to neophytes. Groups of 10 or more can book a Fun With Glass event, combining an introduction to The Studio with the hands-on activities. Check on prices, times, and reservations (especially during summer and holiday times!) with Walk-in Workshop
Corning Museum of Glass
One Museum Way
Corning, NY 14830
(800) 732-6845
www.cmog.org
info@cmog.org
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