Books Read March 2024

 Six books for this month, though I was off to a slow start. 

I did take a book with me to Cincinnati, but I never finished it. It was an Agatha Christie, so why would I not finish it!! Well, it was Parker Pyne Investigates, and it just...I did not like Parker Pyne. It is a collection of short stories--each chapter a different "case" of his. He was a retired civil servant, and each case was someone replying to his ad that said, "Are you happy? If not contact Parker Pine." The first case was annoying to me, and the second case...I just couldn't. Dame Agatha, I really liked your Miss Marples and your Hercule Poirots, and even Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, but you can keep Parker Pyne, thank you very much.

So that was the book I did not read, and here are the six that I did read:

1. All Strangers are kin: Adventures in Arabic and the Arab World (2016) by Zora O'Neill. I really enjoyed this book, and Zora's year of language learning efforts in Egypt, the Gulf, Lebanon, and Morocco. (This was not a recommended book in the bookstore in Cairo book; but I found it while looking for one of the books that I read last month.) Zora had majored in Arabic in college, but found she had forgotten a lot, hence her adventure in learning. I loved this paragraph, written after she realized that she was never going to be a perfect speaker of Arabic: "Ultimately, what mattered most to the people I met was not what I learned in class that day, but what I practiced least often with my teachers: I listened. And I was heartened to know that even if I was never able to tell pitch perfect jokes, read poems without a dictionary, or write an essay with flawless spelling and appropriate vocabulary, I would always be able to communicate, just by lending a sympathetic ear. Empathy, imagination, listening and nodding, saying thank you from the heart--these were skills I could use every day."  I think the same thing is true in English. 

2. You don't know us negroes (2022) by Zora Neale Hurston. First of all, can you believe that I was simultaneously reading two books by a person named Zora and with O'Neill and Neale as part of their names? What are the odds?!! (Zora O's name was from her parents' time spent living in Morocco--they named her after a woman they knew there. IDK where Zora H got her name.) Now, while this book was published in 2022, ZNH lived 1891-1960. This was the collection of all her essays, previously published in magazines or newspapers, and also her previously unpublished writings. She was an important writer in the Harlem Renaissance. And her title was exactly right. I did not know those negroes. She enlightened me. A sentence I liked from her essay "Race Cannot Become Great until it Recognizes its Talent": "The world's most powerful force is intellect. The only reality is thought." That would be a good prompt for another essay, don't you think?!! And from "Why the Negro Won't Buy Communism": (remember, she was writing during the McCarthy era) "They simply will not see us (negroes) as Americans, nourished on the same ideals as other Americans, and so headed in the same direction." and then "I will not contend that we Negroes are more religious than other Americans, but ceratinly we are more ceremonial. Negroes own more church property per capita than any other group in the United States. There has to be a reason for that. We must like it. So how expect us to turn godless in a lump? Like a lot of other Americans, many of us do not attend church regularly, but we have no thought nor intention of doing away with God. We like Our Maker, and feel better to think He is somewhere around on the premises."

3. Diné dóó Gáamalii: Navajo Latter-day Saint experiences in the twentieth century (2023) by Farina King. I don't remember how I found this book, but when I got it, I had to read it quickly. It was a BYU owned book, but only a three week loan (my usual loan is six months! which is ridiculously long) so I had to let it jump the queue--even my interlibrary loan books had longer loan periods! Farina King is a professor of indigenous studies at the University of Oklahoma. She is also a half Navajo (her father) half white (her mother) Mormon whose parents met while BYU students. She discussed the Indian Placement Program (IPP), missionary work on the reservations, the influence of Spencer W. Kimball who was very invested in native education, plus more. Diné dóó Gáamalii means Navajo people who also identify as Mormon/LDS--they are both. This was very interesting to me. I attended BYU during Kimball's presidency of the church, and I have thought in the past 20 years of being at BYU again, "Where are all the natives?" because they are not as much of a presence. When I was a BYU student, I had native friends. Sharon Peigan, who married Rick Tailfeathers, and I did the hemming of her wedding dress and transported her dress to Canada (me and Kevin Layton, the Taber one) because the dress was too fragile to fly cargo and too big to take in the cabin of the plane; Marlena Martinez from the reservation in New Mexico; a friend whose name escapes me (but she was dating Bucky Tozier, one of BYU's hockey players and I cooked for an apartment of hockey players including Bucky) and who was a member of Lamanite Generation; my roommate Bonnie was dating a native named Gordon, and his roommates were all also native. This book helped me to see that BYU is not actively recruiting these students anymore. Huh. Also the IPP--I grew up with many IPP students. Debbie Baptiste was one of my best friends. Her foster family were the Wildes. Her brother Anthony was on the IPP too; his foster family were the Evansons. The Jensens in our ward had Faron Jones for years (my cousin Margaret dated Faron); when his brother Harlan was old enough, Jensens took him, too. Even though they had nine children, they added two more, and had both until they finished high school On Connie's obituary (she died last year) they are listed as sons, equal with her other children. Similarly with Jim Tatoosh, whose host family, the Johnsons, count him as one of the brothers. No distinction made. Our friends from Barnwell, the Edwards, had two little IPP girls, Sophie and Julie, every year for more than a decade. Here in Utah, my cousin Mary had Armida, and counts her as a daughter. Our family gave it a try--we were asked to take in Jan when her placement with another family did not work out. We were not very good at it. Jan did not return to the IPP after two attempts with families. I am not sure if Arlene was still there or not, but B and C were not at home anymore when Jan was there. I do not think that I was kind enough to her. I think we all needed counselling--Jan, because she must have had baggage from her first family not working out; and we had no clue what we were doing. It would have been nice to have a clue!! However, in Alberta, I feel like native children had mostly positive experiences with the  IPP. (Edited to add: three people I know were interviewed/referenced in this book: Matt Heiss, Andrew's uncle, and Ben and Anthony Gardner, twins who are half Navajo/half white. Ben was our student employee once upon a time, and is now a Texas-based physician.)

4. The door of no return (2022) by Kwame Alexander is a book written in poetry about Kofi, who is kidnapped from Ghana in 1860 and ends up on a slave ship bound for America. When I got about halfway into it, I wanted to stop reading because the foreshadowing of impending doom was apparent, and I don't like doom and gloom!! This was our book group choice for the month, so I soldiered on, and it was a beautiful though haunting story filled with pain and suffering and death. What impressed me was that children in 1860 Ghana who were going to school were learning English; they were learning Shakespeare; they were not Godless savages, and yet, when they arrived in the New World to be sold as slaves, that is how they were perceived. The good thing about this book being placed in 1860 is that, even if Kofi had made it to America on the slave ship (which he did not--instead he got to have his ship sink and had to swim for his life (and his cousin's))--1865 was only five years away. There will be a sequel--it is about Kofi's granddaughter. Don't we get to know what happened to his parents? They will have been so upset at his disappearance! (And his brother's disappearance--they won't know he was killed, though Kofi witnessed that horror.)

5. The man in the white sharkskin suit: my family's exodus from old Cairo to the New World (2007) by Lucette Lagnado. This was the last of my Cairo Bookstore recommended titles. I had to order it through interlibrary loan, and when I received it, I was waiting to finish the two Zoras before beginning it, but then the Navajo book intervened with its short loan period, and then I had to finish the book club book before we met, so thank goodness that it had a long loan period. I loved this book!!! Funnily enough, while I was waiting to read it, Bridget posted about it, as one of her favorite books read of 2023. It was indeed a lovely book. Lucette's father (the man in the white sharkskin suit) is depicted with all his flaws and all his goodness displayed--he is not the nicest man in many ways, but Lucette loved him anyways, and this honesty was very compelling. Her father was a Syrian Jew from Aleppo whose family had moved to Cairo. The Jews in Cairo lived very happily with their Muslim and Christian neighbors. In fact, Lucette believes that Eypgt was one of the safest places to be a Jew during the second world war. The creation of Israel in 1948 changed all that. Trust was replaced with mistrust. Peace between the peoples of the book (Jew, Christian, Muslim) was gone. By the time their family left Cairo in 1963, they could only take $212 for their family of six. No valuables--no diamonds, gold, jewellery--could leave the country. You could take clothes, books, food, but no valuables and only severely limited cash. The Lagnado family went from rich to rags just like that. They first were refugees in Paris, and then finally, after a long and difficult application process, allowed to enter the United States. Super interesting book!!

6. The mystery guest (2023) by Nita Prose. This is Molly the maid from the book The Maid which I read last year. Another murder in the hotel--I will borrow these words from an Amazon reviewer: "This book is a sequel to The Maid by the same author. It features many of the same characters and some new ones. It helps if you have read the first book but there is enough of a recap to be okay to read this if you haven't read the first. The main character is Molly, a quirky maid in a fancy NYC hotel. There are enough twists and turns plus many surprises to make this book thoroughly enjoyable on its own." And I agree with all that!! It was a fun read. I liked how it jumped back in time to when Molly was a young girl, going to work at the Grimthorpe Mansion with her Gran, polishing all the silver. It was a quick, fun read, but guys...I can't remember who the murderer was!!! Only the people it wasn't!!! I remember the arrest, and the murderer's resistance--Oh!! I remember now!!! Phew. 

And that is my recap of six books I read. Four nonfiction, two fiction. They were all really interesting books. (Not, of course, including Parker Pyne.)

Zitkala-Ša

I have had the opportunity, over the past few months, to collaborate on an exhibit, which is presently on display in L. Tom Perry Special Collections in our library. It just opened today! The exhibit is called "Zitkala-Ša: Commemorating Her Art, Life, and Legacy." Zitkala-Ša, also known as Gertrude Bonnin, was a Native American writer, activist and musician. Well, actually, she started out as a musician, playing the violin and piano as a student at the New England Conservatory, and teaching music at Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania. As she grew older and more attuned to the biases she and other natives had to deal with, she became an activist and writer. Those two pursuits were closely related. (You may remember, a few months back, several books about Zitkala-Ša appearing on my "Books Read" lists. This was why.)

When her husband, Raymond, worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and was assigned to the Unitah-Ouray Reservation in Utah, Zitkala-Ša was able to collaborate with BYU music professor William F. Hanson in writing The Sun Dance Opera. (My colleague Mary C. created the guide that you will get to at that link.) 

Mary also designed the poster for the exhibit. The QR code leads to the guide that I linked to already.

Zitkala-Ša wrote the libretto, and played native melodies on her violin which Hanson transcribed and developed into the opera’s music. The premiere took place in February 1913, at Orpheus Hall in Vernal, Utah, and the cast included native Utes to perform the dances. The opera was later performed several times at BYU. In 1938, there was a revival at the Broadway Theatre in New York City.

The exhibit was made to coincide with a class on campus that studies the writings of Zitkala-Ša (taught by Mike T., one of my collaborators on the exhibit), and also to display the Zitkala-Ša quarter that is a part of American Women’s Quarters released by the US Mint. 

The display case I was responsible for was about The Sun Dance Opera. 

Notice the eagle bone whistles that were actually used in opera performances, and are included in the Raymond and Gertrude Bonnin collection in our Special Collections. (Here is a closer shot of them.)

Here are the other display cases. Sad thing: I can't read the captions. I can't get the distance right to focus wearing either of my glasses or my bare eyes. Oh well! The first one is about Z-S's writings, books and articles. (This is first here, but second in the display!)

The one just above here is actually the first exhibit case, which is about Z-S's life and legacy.

When Mary was in Washington D.C. last week, she found and visited the graves of the Bonnins. Here they are:

She wondered why the dates were engraven for the wife but not the husband. I responded that my guess is that there was nobody to add Raymond’s dates when he passed in 1942—their son Ohiya died in 1939, and incidentally is buried in Roosevelt, Utah. When Gertrude died, both her husband and her son were there to see that the engraving of dates took place. When Raymond died, there was nobody to do that.

S. Lyman Tyler Professionalism Award

 I was nominated for, and was awarded, the S. Lyman Tyler Professionalism Award for the library at the fall conference last year. It did come with a (taxable) financial award and also some kind of a trophy thing which is sitting in a velvety box in my office. I suppose I should take a picture of it, and put it here. (Which, as you can see, I did. I am not really a knick-knack person, so I don't even know what to do with this dust collector.)

I was actually in Canada when the award was awarded, so the financial award was just put into my paycheck and I am therefore unsure even how much it was. I just remember that when my direct deposit went in, it was higher than I expected and I was all "Huh." And then I got called into the library director's office and he gave me the trophy thing and the award letter (which probably says the amount but which I have not really read). 

However, this was an award that came with strings attached: you have to give a lecture. (When my colleague David P. was explaining about the award at the lecture yesterday, he said the recipient is "invited" to give a lecture, but the actual truth is "obligated" to give a lecture. Like, that money was already in my account before I knew I had it, so it wasn't like I could, at that point, say "no thanks!")

My grand-daughter Rachel did not know about the money part of the award, so her reaction, as related by Nancy, went like this:

When I told Rachel about today she said, “Wait? So she won an award and…the reward is that she has to give a presentation?!! That sounds like a punishment!”

(She said it was like the time she won an essay contest at school and the prize was…reading the essay in front of the whole school. Like, if she had known THAT…)

I was both okay with having to give a lecture and not okay. While I am used to giving presentations at conferences, the only time I have spoken at a plenary (which is a main session that all conference participants attend) was at the 2022 MLA which was entirely virtual, so while there were hundreds of people in the audience, I could not see them! Usually, at conferences, even at Viola Congresses, there are only like 20 people or something in the audience, and that is not super intimidating. But the auditorium in the library holds 200 people, and so that possibility was intimidating.

I started working on my lecture months ago, and then the slides, and then tweaking, tweaking, tweaking. Getting Nancy's help with the slides, which I very much appreciated. I will save a PDF of the presentation on GitHub and link to it here, but the PDF lacks all of the special effects that Nancy used, and that is sad because one slide had so many effects on it, and that slide in the PDF is not super effective because you miss so much, and two of the videos are just white boxes.

Anyway!! I worried and worried and fretted and fretted and it was seriously just fine!!! I have really got to stop with the worrying and just be more chill about things! 

Because I have so many family members who live out of the area/state/country, they allowed me to have a Zoom option for the lecture, and I think it pretty much worked except for some of the music did not work well. I need to find out what worked and what didn't. 

The musical samples were:

Icarus, a viola concerto by John Leavitt (since John wrote this while a BYU student, I think that the audio file might could be put on ScholarsArchive? I need to follow up on this...John sent me the mp3 file.)

After Noon Theme, a "short" (1:43) jazz composition by Bob McMullin, written for CBC radio as a filler for program gaps. I have this on a CD that Bob's daughter Pat sent me; like a CD that she had made from the original LP. And I ripped it onto my computer music files.

These Eyes by the Guess Who (in the "with orchestra" version) Here is a video clip that has the orchestra backing audible, but which is not the same as the sound clip I used, which I ripped from a CD.

In Cannington, a video clip from Bob's musical Cannington Manners (besides Bob's daughter Pat, I am the only person who has that entire musical. I do not think that even Archives Canada has it. I really need to talk to Ben, our film archivist, about what to do about that, because I think Pat would be very happy if it were preserved somehow.)

Giga from Corelli's Concerti Grossi op.6 no.11 (6th movement) as played by the Corelli Tri-Centenary String Orchestra, conducted by Dean Eckertsen (whose real name is Dean Eggertsen) in 1952.(This was a video clip because in our library, we only have these recordings on LP, and that would have been work to convert. Which Ben would have done for me--he did do the clip of Cannington for me--but I liked the video because it had a picture of Corelli on it.)

Jesus Is Born video clip--this was a library performance, filmed by Josie in 2019--of mine and Michael Biancardi's remake of an O. A. Miller tune originally titled I will take care of Thee. (At the link, the video clip is the last thing at the bottom, after the musical scores.)

Gonna Have a Good Time -- video clip of The Clingers from the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in 1969. I did have an audio file that I could have used, but even though it is fuzzy, I thought it would be fun to have the video. I have the sound file for this piece from the Clingers LP (which they crowdsourced funding for and made themselves) in my music files on my computer.

Fraulein, bitte sind sie Musicalisch (from ScholarsArchive) by Camilla Frydan.

Nancy sent a picture of the Zoom participants: 

This made me happy! Jenny is our library admin. assistant who is running the Zoom computer, and otherwise you can see three of my children and my husband, both of my sisters, two of my nieces, and four of my friends! Thank you, guys!! (Sadly, I just got an email this morning from Jan Perry --JKP-- that she is planning to watch this TODAY. A day late. I procrastinated inviting people and apparently she opened yesterday's email today.)

Also my brother was in the audience! And it was all actually just fine. All of that worrying for no good reason!

This is how they did the Zoom. Interesting. I imagined they were doing it differently. (This is Nancy's computer. And there is my friend James' new book sitting on her desk! He is having a book launch on Saturday to which I am invited. James is my friend Janice's nephew, but I knew James before I knew Janice.)

So! All's well that ends. But in this case, I think the whole phrase: All's well that ends well--is applicable.

See you in my dreams...

What a dream last night this morning! I woke up just before five, was exhausted so went back to sleep for two more hours, and woke up again at seven just as exhausted, or maybe more so, because I had a two-hour doozy of a dream!

The concept of the dream started before I woke up at five, because when I re-commenced dreaming, I already "knew" some things: like, that if you were going to cross the Oldman River between Taber and Vauxhall, there is no bridge, and you just have to drive across the river at a shallow point. This is, of course, not true! There is definitely a bridge there! But not in my dream,

So, in dreamland, we were living on my parents' farm north of Taber. For some reason, not explained in the dream, but simply accepted as fact by dream me, I needed to go to Lethbridge to pick up Piper, who was working at some theme park-esque thing in Lethbridge (that also does not exist) and take her to Vauxhall, where she was performing in a musical in the evening.

But I didn't know where my car was! Bruce said I could borrow his jeep, which had no doors and was full of lots of junk, because he was going to be busy farming (!!! He does not really farm...) so I could just drive his jeep since he was driving tractors that day. 

But I do not know how to drive a stick shift, so I drove all the way to Lethbridge very slowly without changing gears. (I wonder how long that would take!! Hours!!) Dream Me was not worried about this. Not until I had gone through the very stressful situation of parking in this weird theme park-esque/parking structure, and then locating Piper. That part of the dream was...very stressy!

Then we got back to the jeep, where Piper cheerfully jumped in with and on top of and surrounded by farm junk. Then I needed to drive her all around Lethbridge picking up her costume, getting her hair done, all of the preparation things! That was when I started to worry about how long it would take for me to drive in the lowest gear all the way to Vauxhall from Lethbridge! Using Highway 36, which was my plan, it is only 55 miles, but going slow? Hours! 

So I started thinking that I should see if there is an alternate road from Lethbridge, without going through Taber, where there was actually a bridge. (I have now looked it up--there is only one road.) In my dream, I also did not have my phone, and no way to look anything up, anyway. I was so worried, because we had already used so much of the day between me driving to Lethbridge, and getting all the things Piper needed, and I was so afraid to drive through the river in the dark!!

We had made it to the eastern edge of Lethbridge, when I decided that it would be better to turn around and go back to that whole parking/theme park nightmare and find my car. Because by this point in the dream, I remembered that my car was parked THERE! (How convenient!)

Only that building or whatever was truly a twisty-turny Escher-esque nightmare to navigate! So I finally just parked the jeep, and Piper and I set out on foot in the structure to try to find my car. Piper was, throughout all this, very cheerful and not in the least worried about getting to Vauxhall on time. I can't even explain all the oddities of this place we wandered through. It was a strange place!!

Finally, I decided that I needed to ask a worker for help, someone who knew the place who could drive us through all the parking areas to look for my car. I asked a few, and one agreed to drive us in his flatbed truck, but then all of the workers I had asked had to come with us. So I got in the front with the driver, and Piper climbed onto the flatbed with all of the worker dudes, and then the driver told them to look in a compartment of some sort back there to find the cookies! And here I was worrying about the time, and finding my car so that I could drive through the river more easily in the maybe-dark to get Piper there for her call time, and they were all engrossed in passing out cookies! 

All of that took two hours to unfold, and I woke up so anxious and frustrated!!!

(W)MLA in Cincinnati

 It is very difficult for my brain to think of Cincinnati without singing internally "WKRP in Cincina-a-ti!" But I went to Cincinnati for MLA, and it only has three letters, hence the (W)!

Before leaving for Cincinnati last Wednesday afternoon, I had a good morning. I felt an impression to contact a friend (whose son had committed suicide in January) with a positive expression, and actually did it, and it happened to be a day that she really needed some support, so that felt good. And then it was our second Black History Month concert, and it went really well with a people count of 122. 

By the time I could get away from campus, I was really worried about the time, and whenever I get really worried, things start to go downhill quickly. First, I forgot to take so many things I thought I needed: my black cardigan (so that I had two, and could wear either white or black depending on my clothes); my curlers, so that my hair could at least have more body and look like I care about it even a bit; my phone charger cord so that I could charge my phone. And then, I had prepaid for parking at the airport, but when I got there I couldn't open the gate with my QR code, so I had to get a second ticket, or the gate would not open. And at the airport, worried about solving the gate/parking problem, I realized I couldn't get on the WiFi and the I did not have my phone cord. And I still had to worry about flying and all of the logistics in Cincinnati once I arrived.

However, being in Cincinnati was good. It was cold--they were the coldest of the places I track in fact, even colder than Alberta--but the hotel was nice. We were supposed to have four of us (me, Janice, Anita, Christine) in a suite, but Anita did not end up being able to come. The suite was so nice, and so roomy and comfortable. And Janice and Christine are such nice roommates to have.

The conference itself --MLA or the Music Library Association--was really good. First day, I dressed in comfortable clothes and not too dressy of clothes because I thought that the panel I was on was on Friday, but actually it was on Thursday! (I could not wear what I had planned to wear for presenting anyway because no black cardian!) Our presention, on collecting Video Game Music for libraries, went well. And then I could relax, and just enjoy learning from my colleagues! 

Janice's very excellent presentation was on Saturday, and then my cousin Marie came to meet me in Cincinnati. The last time I was in Cincinnati was in 2016! I got to spend time with Marie and her family then, and so I was excited that MLA was in Cincy again, so I could visit Marie. It was a major motivating factor to attend for me--since virtual presenting is now a thing, and one of my session's panelists was presenting virtually, so that was an option for me. But--Marie! Of course I needed to go. I did see Marie last in 2019, but that was for Margaret's dying and funeral, and still, that was nearly five years ago. But Marie had moved from living in the Cincy area to living in the Columbus area. I was so happy that she agreed to come and see me in Cincinnati!

So on Saturday, Marie arrived, and would spend the night in our hotel room with us. She and Janice and I went out for dinner (walking) at a place called "Taste of Belgium"--but nobody had Belgian waffles! Janice and I did have poutine, so that is French-ish at least. Then we went back to the MLA after-party and listened to the Big Band and ate treats. Their treats were very, very mini-sized, which was just right for trying a bit of this, a bite of that. Delicious two-bite fruit tarts, I thought.

Then Sunday was our day to play, since we did not need to be at the airport until around 3:30-4:00. We ate breakfast in the hotel, and then decided, since we had late check-out at one, to leave and do something because we could have just checked out then, but the line was lo-o-o-o-o-ong! So we went to the Train Station, which is where there are also a bunch of museums. We still needed to get back to the hotel to check out, so we first walked around and looked at the station, and then decided to buy tickets to the Omnimax and watch "Volcanoes"--which was very interesting, and I was glad that Patrick was not taking his ropes and carabiners out to explore active volcanoes!

Here are Marie and I in front of the organ in the train station. Which is a caged organ. I was sad for it. Nobody and play it or even touch it. Very sad for it! I apologize to Miriam and other organists who might be interested in seeing keyboards and pedals, but all you can see around us are a whole bunch of stops.

After "Volcanoes" ended, we went back to the hotel, got ourselves checked out, and then we were going to go to a Creation museum that Marie knew about in Kentucky, not far from the airport (because the airport that services Cincy is actually in Covington, Kentucky) but it was closed on Sundays, so we went to the art museum instead. Nobody was super-thrilled about this plan, because we have all had experiences with art galleries where we were like "Anybody could have painted this canvas brown and called it 'Brown upon Brown' so what is special about this?"

Happily, the Cincinnati Art Museum is not like that! It is cool! It has a setting on a hill, and so before we went inside, we took quite a long walk on what had turned out to be a gorgeous Spring-like day. I didn't even wear my sweater in the afternoon, it was so nice out! And then we went inside, where we were surprised by finding more artifacts than art, and we really enjoyed it. There might be actual art, too, but we didn't even really finish the entire first floor, and there is also an entire second floor, and a small third floor. 

So, here is a mini-tour of some of the things we saw:

These are bits and pieces of an entrance for Khirbet et-Tannur (Arabic: خربة التنور) which is an ancient Nabataean temple situated on top of Jebel Tannur, in today's Jordan. (Thanks, Wikipedia.) I should have taken a picture of the drawing that showed how all the pieces fit together, with all the parts labeled, but I did not.

This is a fragment from a winged genie, found in tombs and pyramids in Egypt. I had just read about these in Magic and Mystery in Ancient Egypt which I just finished reading last month (also last week, Heehee) so I was like, "Oh! There is a winged genie fragment!" I cannot remember the magic associated with them, however; I would have to look in the book. Or maybe read the sign.

And then I went to the room for Syria/Iran, and saw this beautiful Mihrab, which is a prayer niche, like there would be in the wall of a mosque, at the point nearest to mecca, toward which the congregation faces to pray. And it was just so beautiful, so I had to go and get Marie and Janice, and drag them away from the things they were interested in, to have a photo with the thing that I was interested in. 

 

We are in front of, not in the niche. In was not allowed, and also might not be respectful. Janice took the picture, and I think we all look pretty good! It is such a lovely background. This is, by the way, from Iran, probably Isfahan Pahlavi Dynasty.

We spent some time looking at the map of India, which was around the corner, where Janice explained where her father's native village is (at which he is still the head elder of the Sikh people who live there, although he is an LDS guy who lives in America) which is near Amritsar!! The one place in India I would like to go to!! (But I cannot get to it without going other places in India where I don't really care to go. That is a conundrum!)

This was in India:

It is a Jain devotional shrine. 

And then I went inside a Damascus Room (1712). 

I am obstructing the view! Here is the room without me, courtesy of the museum website. And also I will put it actually here.

The website says "not currently on display" but I beg to differ! I was just there yesterday. A Damascus Room is a residential reception room, typical of the Ottoman empire in Damascus, Syria.

I had looked into the Damascus room and been enchanted, so I went into it, but I didn't even look at the entrance until I went out, and then I was all like "Why didn't I notice this?!" It was so lovely. So I had to go and drag Marie and Janice for a photo, of course!!

So here are two shots of us showing off the lovely entrance:

See how we carefully put our stuff out of the way so as not to be in the picture?!! Joke's on us--our stuff is still there. It made me laugh!!

We also visited China, and I took a picture of this Chinese porcelain simply because I apparently really love things that are blue. This is a representative of the many things I saw in various countries we visited in the museum that were lovely shades of blue!

Here is another example, less blue, still Chinese, but telling an interesting story about boats on a river. 

The one closest, the boats on the river one, is from the period of The Kangxi Emperor (4 May 1654 – 20 December 1722) and my phone did NOT like that word Kangxi. I kept telling it that word, and it kept telling me I meant Kandi. Silly phone. I meant Kangxi. Circa 1700.

We were starting to get into a more modern part of the museum. This is an American made, trying to be Japanese style bed, but I still think that most Japanese of this era were sleeping on their mats on the floor? 

I only took a picture of the bed (which was looking inviting, because my feet were, by this time, very tired!) but the room had a dresser, desk, etc., in this style. This dates from about 1880. Maybe the museum website talks about it? I will have to look.

By this time, we had LOST Marie. She also felt she had lost us, and she didn't have her phone with her, since it was still set up in her vehicle ready to act as the GPS. But we found her, we found a bathroom, and we found the exit. We had no more time! We had to get to the airport.

However, on the way out, I spied a person who I thought was maybe a part of a live display--I really did! She reminded me of the mimes and chess pieces I have seen in Italy or Paris who are real people acting as art. I wanted so badly to take a picture of the front of her, because her (what I thought was a) costume was very very. Like, strawberry shortcake or something. Anyway. It was striking. But I did not have the courage to ask, so I snuck a picture, and she was not a real person acting as art. She was just a real person with a lot of courage and confidence! And who knew how to put the outfit she wanted together!

And that was the end of our self-guided art gallery tour. It was a really great experience--too bad we could not see the rest of it! 

So we went to our vehicle (Marie's vehicle!) and she drove us to the airport, and we hugged and said thank you! I was so happy that Marie came and made my trip to Cincinnati great just by being there! It was so wonderful to catch up with her. I told Janice and Marie that they have switched places--in my growing up years, I got to see Marie nearly every day. And now I see Janice nearly every day!! But I miss those days of growing up with Arlene and Marie and Margaret, and our fun farm life. So nice to think back about that because I got to have some Marie time!

Janice and I had seats across the aisle from each other on the plane. We found my car in the lot, we didn't have to pay extra--my pre-pay worked all on its own, once the cashier helped us, and we got home by ten pm last night. Glad to be home, but had a lovely time in Cincinnati. (I should have worried less, before going, right?! That would have been better!)