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World's Fair then and now, Passover
Apr. 11th, 2009 09:34 amSooooooo, the World's Fair!
Almost a week ago now, I went to the former World's Fair Grounds in Queens. Now it's. . . Flushing Meadows Corona Park? Huh? Flushing and Corona are involved in the name, I know that much. But yeah, there's a park/botanical gardens, apparently a zoo (a co-worker was like, "I heard there's a zoo there. There's a zoo in Queens?"), an art museum, and the HALL OF SCIENCE! The only remnants of the World's Fair are the Unisphere - a big steel model of the globe with topography! We walked under it and checked out Australia but it's on an angle (probably so you could see the US) so we really couldn't see Asia - except for the Himalayas popping up, which was awesome! And then the other remnant of the fair is those observation decks that were alien spaceships in Men in Black. But I don't think you can go up.
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ayamachi had mentioned that she was interested in going - possibly thinking that it would have more of an abandoned fairground feel than it does? And I was all "woo, park, adventure, science!" so we drafted twin!Katie and her boyfriend David, who live in Queens, and made a day of it. :D Well, afternoon.
And it was such a nice day! We got deli sandwiches and had a picnic, then wandered through the botanical gardens and the park - a bit weedy, but it's early in the season. But so warm out! I didn't even wear a jacket, it was great. And we dug up onion grass! This was a major occupation of recess during my elementary school years. Any time we wanted to play a game that involved eating or cooking, we had to dig up some onion grass. Not as easy as it sounds, because you need to get all the way down to the bulb.
Our final destination was obvious - the Hall of Science! I had fond memories of it as a kid.
Man, I love learning. XD The Hall of Science is all about interactive stuff, it's so great. There are all these little activity stations set up, where you can, like, mess with a prism to bend light and then there's a little thing telling you what to do and what it means. There was also a Hall of Infinity aka NIGHTMARES. It was a think where you were supposed to be able to look at two mirrors reflecting back on each other for infinity. So they had a mirror on the wall, and then they hung another mirror a couple inches away facing the wall. And you could look through eyeholes to see the reflections. Eyeholes. Interrupting the mirrors reflecting each other. So when you looked through. All you saw was your staring dark eyes. Floating in no where. OH MY GOD. . . . I couldn't stop doing it. My eyes were like the abyss!
The Hall of Mirrors was another hit -at first it seemed lame, but then we spent a lot of time making our fingers get super long and crazy and wiggling them, and then David made his (large due to receding hairline) forehead HUUUUGE and it was, I must say, hilarious.
But our favorite thing was the Hall of 80s Music Videos - a little area where you could move around in front of a screen and it would leave all these rainbow-colored imprints of your movement. We spent soooooo much time there! We'd dance around until a little kid came over and then we'd go and give him a turn and when it was empty we'd come back and dance some more. We'd also been singing 80s songs the whole day - I'd been watching VH1's Greatest 1 Hit Wonders of the 80s all week. "Too shy shy, Hush Hush, Eye to eye!"
I also really enjoyed the wall of mathematicians even though it wasn't interactive at all, just little bios. Gauss was a sad man. I mean, actually sad, not pathetic (David tells us he was the last person to know everything about math - before specialization took hold). Anyway, as you can tell, I'm just a big nerdbomb.
Oh, and I spent a lot of time trying to get sound vibrations to create a pattern in sand by running a cello bow along the side of a little metal platform. It took forever! But I did it! XD And felt an enormous sense of accomplishment. XD
When I met my dad for lunch on Wednesday. . . Tuesday? Tuesday, Wednesday was Passover and dad wasn't in. Anyway, I told him what we'd been up to and he was telling me about his memories of the World's Fair! He said it was in the summers of '64 and '65, so he was 14 and 15.
The saddest story was about a time when he decided to call home to tell his mom that he was going to be coming home a bit late - that he was staying for the fireworks, which started at nine (he lived in Brooklyn and it's not easy to get there from Queens). So he calls home and it's like "Oh, thanks so much for calling!" And my dad realizes, "That's not my mom!" His mom had a Yiddish accent and stuff, so he could really tell. So he says, "Oh, I'm sorry, I don't think you're my mother, I dialed the wrong number." And the woman said, "Yeah. . . I figured. My son wouldn't call to let me know where he was." Awwwwww!! So sad! And then she was like "Say hi to your mother for me."
He also was telling me about the "pavilion", I think for Mobile gas? But they had, like, a car that you could sort of fake drive - it would test how hard you braked, and how you took corners, whatever, and then it would tell you what your gas mileage would be. Well, my dad couldn't drive, so this was the best thing to him, he was so excited. Except you actually couldn't do it if you didn't have a license. So my dad and his friend got some sort of fake IDs. So they could drive the fake car! I was like "ooh, dad, what else did you use the fake ID for?" and he was like "What? Nothing" XD Priorities!
He also has fond memories of the Ford pavilion, because you would sit in an actual Ford car, like a Thunderbird, and get pulled through the exhibit. And they were all convertibles and his family didn't even have a car, so it was a real thrill.
My dad mentioned the general motors both, that's the "Futurama" one with all the modern appliances and stuff. He didn't have any particular memories of it except that it was cool, but that's certainly my idea of what was at the World's Fair. Susan tells me this is because it's at Disney now.
The best thing, though, was the IBM booth. Apparently it was a giant egg, and my dad never actually got inside because he was more interested in being on line. They would give people on line printouts of the NY Times headline on any date they chose. But the first person in line had it projected on a screen of some sort. So he goes and he's first and he gives them July 1, 1860. And apparently because of some production problem, there was no New York Times that day! And it CRASHED THE WHOLE SYSTEM. XD Just freaked the thing out. So dad tells me "I went back another time and made sure I was at the front of the line, but by then they'd fixed it so it just said something like 'date unavailable'." And I was like "Ooh, cool. . . wait a minute! You gave them the same bum date?" XD To which my dad was just like "Of course!"
Anyway, I love stories from my parents' childhoods and don't get to hear enough of them, so it was really great.
Passover was also great! Lots of food and good times. My family isn't religious at all - even when my dad's parents (the Jewish side of the family) were alive, we only celebrated Passover, Hanukkah, and Rosh Hashanah (new year). But we did used to do a seder, of some sort - seder plate, four questions, etc. Now we don't even do that. But we do refrain from eating leavened things at the meal itself. Just. . . not for the whole 8 days.
But yes, it was delicious and lovely and fun and full of family warmth and happiness. It was a very small group, though. We were at my aunt's house, my dad's sister - quite possibly the nicest person I know. Her husband always used to scare me a little, he was really gruff and serious all the time. He's a former FBI investigator. Anyway, he actually really mellowed when his granddaughters were born four years ago. :) It's really nice. And also I think that now that I'm an adult he's more comfortable talking to me. Cos he mostly talks about investigating things.
Anyway, it was just my aunt and uncle, my parents, me, and Katie and her boyfriend. My cousin, her husband, and her four year old twins were going to be there as well but the kiddies got a stomach virus and couldn't make it. (Which I didn't know about, so when I got there my aunt was filling me in on the latest news and I was still kind of ". . . they're not coming? :("
That's a really small crowd for a seder, but that's ok - first off, it wasn't even a seder. XD But it was also just really relaxed and nice and fun. And delicious! And I got recipes! For matzah brei and a really easy chicken dish. Not kugel or matzah ball soup or anything - way too ambitious for me.
Everything really was great, though. I had some of every dish served. People who are used to seders might freak out at that - remember it was a small one! This was gefilte fish, matzah ball soup (SO GOOD. My aunt makes the best matzah ball soup, it's like joy in a bowl), chicken, three types of kugel, and vegetables. And maybe something else? Maybe not though.
My aunt also sent me home with a small mountain of leftovers! And duck sauce. I'm really happy, though. My fridge is all full of deliciousness and I don't have to cook next week.
And this weekend it's Easter! I wrote "easy" just now. I'm tired. XD Anyway, I love Easter, although part of the reason is that during my childhood my family did this large-scale complex awesome Easter egg hunt. But now we're all grown up and scattered. Still, I get to see some family that I haven't seen in a while and I get to show Susan the old homestead. :D
And now it's time for breakfast. Why did I write this first? Dumb.
Oh, first - ::points at icon:: I was looking through Mojo magazine's 1969 special issue, and "The Band," which was the Band's second album, was one of their top albums. They described it as "uncharacteristic [of the year and time period] but arguably the most flawless." I was like HELL YEAH. It's so incredibly good. As an album, it's just. Spectacular. And they had all this other good stuff to say about the Band and I was happy. :D
Almost a week ago now, I went to the former World's Fair Grounds in Queens. Now it's. . . Flushing Meadows Corona Park? Huh? Flushing and Corona are involved in the name, I know that much. But yeah, there's a park/botanical gardens, apparently a zoo (a co-worker was like, "I heard there's a zoo there. There's a zoo in Queens?"), an art museum, and the HALL OF SCIENCE! The only remnants of the World's Fair are the Unisphere - a big steel model of the globe with topography! We walked under it and checked out Australia but it's on an angle (probably so you could see the US) so we really couldn't see Asia - except for the Himalayas popping up, which was awesome! And then the other remnant of the fair is those observation decks that were alien spaceships in Men in Black. But I don't think you can go up.
Anyway,
ayamachi had mentioned that she was interested in going - possibly thinking that it would have more of an abandoned fairground feel than it does? And I was all "woo, park, adventure, science!" so we drafted twin!Katie and her boyfriend David, who live in Queens, and made a day of it. :D Well, afternoon.And it was such a nice day! We got deli sandwiches and had a picnic, then wandered through the botanical gardens and the park - a bit weedy, but it's early in the season. But so warm out! I didn't even wear a jacket, it was great. And we dug up onion grass! This was a major occupation of recess during my elementary school years. Any time we wanted to play a game that involved eating or cooking, we had to dig up some onion grass. Not as easy as it sounds, because you need to get all the way down to the bulb.
Our final destination was obvious - the Hall of Science! I had fond memories of it as a kid.
Man, I love learning. XD The Hall of Science is all about interactive stuff, it's so great. There are all these little activity stations set up, where you can, like, mess with a prism to bend light and then there's a little thing telling you what to do and what it means. There was also a Hall of Infinity aka NIGHTMARES. It was a think where you were supposed to be able to look at two mirrors reflecting back on each other for infinity. So they had a mirror on the wall, and then they hung another mirror a couple inches away facing the wall. And you could look through eyeholes to see the reflections. Eyeholes. Interrupting the mirrors reflecting each other. So when you looked through. All you saw was your staring dark eyes. Floating in no where. OH MY GOD. . . . I couldn't stop doing it. My eyes were like the abyss!
The Hall of Mirrors was another hit -at first it seemed lame, but then we spent a lot of time making our fingers get super long and crazy and wiggling them, and then David made his (large due to receding hairline) forehead HUUUUGE and it was, I must say, hilarious.
But our favorite thing was the Hall of 80s Music Videos - a little area where you could move around in front of a screen and it would leave all these rainbow-colored imprints of your movement. We spent soooooo much time there! We'd dance around until a little kid came over and then we'd go and give him a turn and when it was empty we'd come back and dance some more. We'd also been singing 80s songs the whole day - I'd been watching VH1's Greatest 1 Hit Wonders of the 80s all week. "Too shy shy, Hush Hush, Eye to eye!"
I also really enjoyed the wall of mathematicians even though it wasn't interactive at all, just little bios. Gauss was a sad man. I mean, actually sad, not pathetic (David tells us he was the last person to know everything about math - before specialization took hold). Anyway, as you can tell, I'm just a big nerdbomb.
Oh, and I spent a lot of time trying to get sound vibrations to create a pattern in sand by running a cello bow along the side of a little metal platform. It took forever! But I did it! XD And felt an enormous sense of accomplishment. XD
When I met my dad for lunch on Wednesday. . . Tuesday? Tuesday, Wednesday was Passover and dad wasn't in. Anyway, I told him what we'd been up to and he was telling me about his memories of the World's Fair! He said it was in the summers of '64 and '65, so he was 14 and 15.
The saddest story was about a time when he decided to call home to tell his mom that he was going to be coming home a bit late - that he was staying for the fireworks, which started at nine (he lived in Brooklyn and it's not easy to get there from Queens). So he calls home and it's like "Oh, thanks so much for calling!" And my dad realizes, "That's not my mom!" His mom had a Yiddish accent and stuff, so he could really tell. So he says, "Oh, I'm sorry, I don't think you're my mother, I dialed the wrong number." And the woman said, "Yeah. . . I figured. My son wouldn't call to let me know where he was." Awwwwww!! So sad! And then she was like "Say hi to your mother for me."
He also was telling me about the "pavilion", I think for Mobile gas? But they had, like, a car that you could sort of fake drive - it would test how hard you braked, and how you took corners, whatever, and then it would tell you what your gas mileage would be. Well, my dad couldn't drive, so this was the best thing to him, he was so excited. Except you actually couldn't do it if you didn't have a license. So my dad and his friend got some sort of fake IDs. So they could drive the fake car! I was like "ooh, dad, what else did you use the fake ID for?" and he was like "What? Nothing" XD Priorities!
He also has fond memories of the Ford pavilion, because you would sit in an actual Ford car, like a Thunderbird, and get pulled through the exhibit. And they were all convertibles and his family didn't even have a car, so it was a real thrill.
My dad mentioned the general motors both, that's the "Futurama" one with all the modern appliances and stuff. He didn't have any particular memories of it except that it was cool, but that's certainly my idea of what was at the World's Fair. Susan tells me this is because it's at Disney now.
The best thing, though, was the IBM booth. Apparently it was a giant egg, and my dad never actually got inside because he was more interested in being on line. They would give people on line printouts of the NY Times headline on any date they chose. But the first person in line had it projected on a screen of some sort. So he goes and he's first and he gives them July 1, 1860. And apparently because of some production problem, there was no New York Times that day! And it CRASHED THE WHOLE SYSTEM. XD Just freaked the thing out. So dad tells me "I went back another time and made sure I was at the front of the line, but by then they'd fixed it so it just said something like 'date unavailable'." And I was like "Ooh, cool. . . wait a minute! You gave them the same bum date?" XD To which my dad was just like "Of course!"
Anyway, I love stories from my parents' childhoods and don't get to hear enough of them, so it was really great.
Passover was also great! Lots of food and good times. My family isn't religious at all - even when my dad's parents (the Jewish side of the family) were alive, we only celebrated Passover, Hanukkah, and Rosh Hashanah (new year). But we did used to do a seder, of some sort - seder plate, four questions, etc. Now we don't even do that. But we do refrain from eating leavened things at the meal itself. Just. . . not for the whole 8 days.
But yes, it was delicious and lovely and fun and full of family warmth and happiness. It was a very small group, though. We were at my aunt's house, my dad's sister - quite possibly the nicest person I know. Her husband always used to scare me a little, he was really gruff and serious all the time. He's a former FBI investigator. Anyway, he actually really mellowed when his granddaughters were born four years ago. :) It's really nice. And also I think that now that I'm an adult he's more comfortable talking to me. Cos he mostly talks about investigating things.
Anyway, it was just my aunt and uncle, my parents, me, and Katie and her boyfriend. My cousin, her husband, and her four year old twins were going to be there as well but the kiddies got a stomach virus and couldn't make it. (Which I didn't know about, so when I got there my aunt was filling me in on the latest news and I was still kind of ". . . they're not coming? :("
That's a really small crowd for a seder, but that's ok - first off, it wasn't even a seder. XD But it was also just really relaxed and nice and fun. And delicious! And I got recipes! For matzah brei and a really easy chicken dish. Not kugel or matzah ball soup or anything - way too ambitious for me.
Everything really was great, though. I had some of every dish served. People who are used to seders might freak out at that - remember it was a small one! This was gefilte fish, matzah ball soup (SO GOOD. My aunt makes the best matzah ball soup, it's like joy in a bowl), chicken, three types of kugel, and vegetables. And maybe something else? Maybe not though.
My aunt also sent me home with a small mountain of leftovers! And duck sauce. I'm really happy, though. My fridge is all full of deliciousness and I don't have to cook next week.
And this weekend it's Easter! I wrote "easy" just now. I'm tired. XD Anyway, I love Easter, although part of the reason is that during my childhood my family did this large-scale complex awesome Easter egg hunt. But now we're all grown up and scattered. Still, I get to see some family that I haven't seen in a while and I get to show Susan the old homestead. :D
And now it's time for breakfast. Why did I write this first? Dumb.
Oh, first - ::points at icon:: I was looking through Mojo magazine's 1969 special issue, and "The Band," which was the Band's second album, was one of their top albums. They described it as "uncharacteristic [of the year and time period] but arguably the most flawless." I was like HELL YEAH. It's so incredibly good. As an album, it's just. Spectacular. And they had all this other good stuff to say about the Band and I was happy. :D
