cornerofmadness

If you are ever in Pittsburgh, do check out all our museums. Today I went to Heinz History Museum The nice thing about it is the admission fee gets you in free into 3 other museums the next day. This is a museum of nearly 370000 square feet, seven stories (though the top two aren't display areas) So five floors of stuff.

I can't even tell you everything I saw. I went for two reasons (been here before) the two new exhibitions: Mr. Rogers Neighborhood and The Women who helped to make Pittsburgh. Mr. Rogers was less than I expected but the tree and the castle were there and some of the puppets and the clothes.

The women's history was amazing. It was a huge exhibit, intersectional and honest in the way I've been seeing lately addressing the bad with the good and asking reflective questions (like one of the leaders in women in journalism who was also an advocate for violently decimating the native americans) and addressing the rampant racism in women's suffrage that women of color had to have their own groups. It covered a lot of territory including breaking it down into careers (journalism, nursing, WWII factory work, science, arts, etc)

They also had one Slavery to Freedom including a map with known underground railroad sites marked and a bit about how anti-slavery Pittsburgh was in general (Slaveholders were warned not to go there because they would lose their slaves) and there was violence after the Fugitive Slave act (which made it illegal to help a slave to freedom) A nice display for Martin Delany a fascinating free man of color who did briefly get into Harvard (you can imagine how that worked out in 1850)

Heinz and their pickles had a whole wing of course (not mentioning they no longer produce squat in Pittsburgh) Ironically there's a Heinz commercial on right now with a Heinz heir proclaiming she can't be seen eating non-Heinz ketchup. Somehow Pittsburgh sees you as not a worthy heir after yinz closed all the factories.

There's a thing on the french and Indian war and another on the tragic accident in the civil war that killed about 80 women and young girls (ammunition factory where they think a horse shoe struck a spark and caught the black powder on the ground on fire and blew the place to hell).

I picked up a book on Luna Park, a short lived amusement park in Pittsburgh that I'm sure I can use as story inspiration after I got stranded in the gift shop soon before closing (they were having both a wedding reception and a celebration of life memorial inside the museum afterward) because it was STORMING. Like blinding hard rain. Luckily there was a break I could get outside but right then my knee started to hurt and still is. sigh. (at least the TENS unit took almost all the pain out of my shoulder in just three treatments)

And if you didn't see my bingo card (previous post)