St. Patrick's Day Weekend

The weekend began on St Patrick’s Day Saturday in Holyoke, MA. Traffic was heavy and parking was scarce as there was a road race getting started. We were in town to ride the carousel. Now housed at the Heritage State Park in downtown Holyoke after begin removed from Mountain Park on nearby Mt Tom which closed in 1987. After the necessary fundraising to purchase the ride and construct a new home, the carousel - PTC #80 - opened in 1993. This is a Philadelphia Toboggan Company carousel, originally sold to Mountain Park in 1929, just in time for the Depression. The carrousel has exclusively horses for riding, which I found to be a little unusual, as there are often a great variety of animals available. While there was an original Artizan band organ there, the music playing was recorded. The ride moved pretty fast.

 

Afterwards, we drove to South Hadley and Mount Holyoke College. Founded n 1837 as a school for women, the school has received top rankings from various sources. They have had their share of renowned graduates from Emily Dickinson to Ella Grasso (governor of CT). Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winning playwright Wendy Wasserstein (class of 1971) was being honored with an exhibition of memoribilia at the Mount Holyoke Art Museum. Founded in 1876, the first piece donated for exhibition was Albert Bierstadt’s Hetch Hetchy Canyon, painted in 1875:

And while the Museum has over 16,000 objects, with the exception of special exhibitions, showed mainly landscapes and portraits that were of little interest. Here are a few that we liked:

Grande femme assise by Aristide Maillol, 1920

Skaters, Central Park by William Glackens, ca 1912

Saco Ford-Conway Meadows by George Inness, 1876

Fawns Playing by Anna Hyatt Huntington, 1934

Study for Steel (America Today Murals) by Thomas Hart Benton, 1930

Danseuse au Tambourin by Pierre Augustte Renoir

There was a art faculty show that was not very memorable. Photos were not allowed. And a large exhibition of artifacts from Yale:

 Roman relief, procession of five divinities, Apollo, Venus, Minerva, Juno, Jupiter, 25 bce to 14 ce

After a little walk around campus that made us think of a gothic movie set, we stopped in to visit the Talcott Greenhouse (constructed in 1899), which had many colorful displays:

We had little time, so as we drove north on Rt 116, we diverted to stop at Nash Dinosaur Track Quarry and Rock Shop (founded in 1939) in South Hadley. While we didn’t take a tour of the quarry and the tracks there, we saw lots of them in the shop and Marie got a few small things such as Archimedes (bryozoan from Carboniferous period)), a Fairy Ring, and a piece of Calcite crystal.

And took a short hike at the Holyoke Mountain Range’s Notch Park. There was just a bit too much gunfire for our liking. So we drove up to Hadley, where we were meeting a friend for dinner and took a longer walk on the Norwottuck Rail Trail, which we rode previously. It was such a beautiful afternoon. We walked across the Connecticut River and watched the Smith rowing teams finish their practice from the old train bridge.

maple sap is running

Dinner was at the Gohyang Korean Restaurant on Russell Street with friend Barbara. We had a lovely meal. I had grilled pork, Barbara had the beef and Marie, the eels. Very nice side dishes of kimchi, fish cake, radish salad, pickled cucumber, sprouts, and potato salad with fruit. For desert there were Melona – melon flavored creamsicles.

On Sunday morning we returned to Holyoke for the St. Patrick’s Day Parade. Begun in 1952, this parade has grown to be the 2nd largest in the country, with pipe bands, marching bands, police units, girl scouts, politicians and much more. Having arrived almost three hours early, we were able to park just off I-91 and walk to the parade route and find a place between two roped off areas. People have been roping off space since the week before, I understand. Then they erected metal fencing in front of us. This was the first time for this and it cause lots of problems for people wanting to get through to the vendors and portopotties behind us. Throughout the parade there was a constant stream of people walking between us and the parade, making the entire experience very poor. Of course, there was also the usual assembly of obnoxious drunks spraying green paint on people and the like. We ended up leaving early, but here’s a sampling of what we saw: