Purchased In Athens, Assembled in Lawrence

While in one of the museum gift shops in Greece I purchased this...for lack of a better word....paper doll set of the Greek God Poseidon. These can be found in pretty much all of the key museum shops and they have sets for all the main deities.  I never got around to putting mine together and had sort of forgotten about it until I was unpacking our stuff from moving back down to Lawrence.

 

So let's unpack this!  Here is the God of the Sea in only two dimensions. 

 
The square head of the Poseidon. There were no instructions included but it was nearly idiot proof. 

Thank goodness I waited to put this together because I can only imagine the headaches it would have given me in getting it back to America.  I would probably have just found a good home for it in Latvia!  

Abandoned Fairgrounds

My last post was about the Minnesota State Fair and fittingly my first post in over a month and a half is again about the fairgrounds.  A few weeks ago I headed to the state fairgrounds in Minneapolis to buy a few books...more on that in a moment...I had never been to the grounds when the fair was not in full swing and so this was an interesting and slightly creepy experience.  Here is the haunted house with no one in sight. 

The Space Tower.

The Cheese Curd stand that usually has customers lined up to the street is sad and boarded up.  It just wasn't right. 

The point of my visit was to go to Half Price Books clearance sale which was at the fairgrounds Grand Stand. There are six stores located around the Twin Cities area and so I imagine that they produce a lot of clearance items over the course of the year. 

Their set up was pretty impressive and there was no book, movie, or CD over $3.  The items weren't organized in any particular order and so the book you might be looking for could be a foot away from you and you would never know it.  And as you can see it was very busy that day and it was almost too much to take in but that being said I certainly didn't leave empty handed.  

Political Buttons From The Minnesota State Fair

Since I grew up in the northwest part of Wisconsin I've attended the Minnesota State Fair in Minneapolis instead of the Wisconsin State Fair which takes place on the east side of the state outside of Milwaukee. My favorite booths to always make a stop at are the political booths in order pick up the pins they have for sale. So even though I would never be able to vote in Minnesota elections I have many, many pins from Minnesota candidates.  Here is my haul this year.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that the DFL already selling "Hillary 2016" pins so I had to pick one up.

They had some Obama pins for sale that they already had but this one featuring Obama and the other Democratic presidents was something I hadn't seen before.  It's interesting to me because they include Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, and John Quincy Adams in the history of the Democratic Party when they were actually members of the Democratic-Republican Party. And although there is "Democrat" in their party's name they were more commonly referred to as "Republicans" at the time. Later the Democrat side would split from the Republican side and became what is still today the contemporary Democratic Party while the Republican side would eventually become the Whigs and fade from existence.

My last two pins are from Senator Al Franken's reelection campaign.  He is up for election in November 2014 and although he barely beat Norm Coleman in 2008 he has had very little Republican opposition in seeking his reelection.

I really enjoy this one and it plays off of Franken's joking Saturday Night Live past. I'm pretty sure this is the first political pin I own with a corn dog on  it.

Graffiti #18: A Chicago Piece

We are down in Chicago this week and staying in the Pilsen neighborhood.  In the early 1900's this was the center of the Czech community in Chicago and today it is home to a vibrant Latino community. You can see that in the street art you can find nearly around every corner and this particular piece is one of the most beautiful I've found since starting this blog and documenting my graffiti/street art finds.  

The Guardians of the Kharkiv Art Museum

Although I'm now home in America, I'm going to keep posting as if we recently had these adventures around Europe. I'll post the dates we actually visited these locations at the start of each posts in an attempt to keep things straight. 

The Guardians of the Kharkiv Art Musuem

Photographed: April 14th, 2013

I've not done any hard research on the matter but if I was to guess I would say that history and art museums in Ukraine must be the number one employer of women aged 40-65 in Ukraine. They are around every turn waiting for you to start talking loudly, share a loud laugh together, maybe grab a painting off the wall and make a break for it.

Inspired by this article from The Guardian about the guardians in museums in Russia I took photos of the guardians who populate the Kharkiv Art Museum.  Some of the guardians took a more active role in "their guarding" and silently follow you around as you examined the works.

Some read books...

Or magazines...

Or maybe looking out the window every once in a while.

Another important part of the guardians jobs is to check our admission tickets three or four times over the course of our visit.  This can be done sometimes two or three feet away from where we purchased the tickets and all within the guardians view.  

Laura was getting the double team treatment in one of the larger rooms.  This was the same room in which someone was tuning a piano that I posted about previously.

This will be Part 1 of my posts about visiting the Kharkiv Art Museum.  Next time I'll show you some of the highlights of the museum's contents.

A Little Yellow Church In Kiev

 Although I'm now home in America, I'm going to keep posting as if we recently had these adventures around Europe. I'll post the dates we actually visited these locations at the start of each posts in an attempt to keep things straight. 

A Little Yellow Church In Kiev

Photographed: April 11th, 2013

This little yellow chuch is the Church of the Birth of Christ was was originally built in 1814 and then rebuilt in 2005.  I had no idea at the time of taking this photo but this is the church at which the Ukrainian poet and unofficial champion/mascot of this blog, Taras Shevchenko, was laid to rest while his body was transported back to his home in 1861.  In 1930 the church was destroyed by the Communists and rebuilt 75 years later.  There is a more famous yellow church in Kiev, St. Volodymyr's, but I like this one for its smaller size and more subtle mustard yellow color.  

And here are two views of St. Andrew's which is also in Kiev and is, I'm pretty safe to say, my favorite church to take photos of. This may not seem like a controversial statement but Kiev has quite a few beautiful churches to choose from.

 Its location on one of the city's hills allows it to appear imposing while up close it is also a pretty tiny church. 

My Dad's Lucky Slot Machine

Our short term plan is to return to Kansas for the school year and so a few weeks ago my Dad and I took a load of stuff down to our storage space in Lawrence. While we were driving back we took a break at a way station in Iowa and as I was buying some vending machine snacks I noticed that the change machine accepted large denomination bills and gave out $1 coins.  

My Dad is a numismatist, a.k.a a coin collector, and so this was a treasure trove as it is hard to find stores that give out the coins in their change.  He keeps every state quarter he comes upon and so this was a chance to get many of the presidential dollar coins all at once.  So it then became a slot machine that you really couldn't loose at.  $5 went in and $5 came out, repeat.  As you can see from the second photo, I think it made his day.