Devastation

MADNESS: The day started normally enough. By about 5:45 a.m., I was up turning gingerbread men into Elvis. Or Elviii. Or Elvises. Painstaking but pleasant work.

The day took a turn for the worse when my dad read aloud a news headline about a shooting at a school in Connecticut. And then came the news that it was an elementary school. The headline changed rapidly, the death toll climbing with each update.

Question. What kind of sick *&%^ walks into a classroom full of 5- and 6-year olds and starts shooting and killing kids? (After shooting and killing his own mother, the teacher.)

Insanity. The worst kind of 'humanity.' 

What's eerie is long before dawn, as I'm sitting at the counter decorating cookies and we're the only two up, with no TV on, CJ started talking about the Columbine school shooting and, much more recently, the mass shooting at the movie theater in Colorado. And just a couple hours later, another horrific incident joined the list of tragic days in U.S. history. 

We watched the news coverage for a lot of this afternoon. The kids - CJ especially - had LOTS of questions. So, we talked and talked and talked some more. There are certainly no 'good' answers for anything like this, but knowledge and information helps, I hope. 

I did tell CJ that this case immediately brings to mind Kip Kinkel, another school shooter, who first killed his parents before gunning down students (in this case, his high school classmates in Springfield, Ore.) back in 1982. 

What a horrible thing it is that there have been so many school shootings that we can compare and contrast them. Ugh. 




And now, on to the normal stuff. ... 

REWIND: On Wednesday evening, we attended a fun 12-12-12 birthday party held at the Harbor Heritage Museum. What a neat place!

The kids each got to row, row, row a boat, and Annabelle loved an accordion that she could play.

Right now, the museum is featuring a special exhibit, NW x SE ... A Collaborative Small Tapestry Project of Northwest and Southeast Weavers. It features more than 40 amazing tapestries. (If you like, you can take a virtual walk through the exhibit with a curator in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5kAum_CvDM&feature=youtu.be  The museum also had a couple of hands on weaving interactives, which the kids checked out.

We had to cross the Tacoma Narrows Bridge to get to the museum, and the museum is a repository for history regarding the bridge, most notably its collapse on Nov. 7, 1940, just four months after it opened! 

We've seen it before online, but we paused to watch the famous video of the disaster on the big movie screen at the museum. It's wild watching the bridge undulate up to nearly 30 feet in the 35-46 mile per hour winds. Here's a colorized version of it going down. ... 

You can learn more about "Galloping Gertie" via the museum's online exhibition: 
http://www.harborhistorymuseum.org/exhibits/online-exhibitions/tale-two-gerties/

Out back of the main museum is the tiny 1893 Midway school. It gives visitors a glimpse of what a one room schoolhouse on the Peninsula looked like long ago.

We also stepped outside to the Maritime Gallery to check out the 65-foot fishing vessel Shenandoah and the Thunderbird Hull #1 sailboat on display.

The kids also dug a map magnifying glass they could move around. 

THE END: Today's mailbox held a bittersweet delivery. It was a beloved Nintendo Power magazine, the arrival of which always made the kids' day/week. However, today's delivery was The Last Issue Ever. Guess with the magical Internet, there's just no real demand for an old fashioned print mag with articles about upcoming games and hacker codes and cheats.

And so we say "so long" to Nintendo Power. It will be missed.

NASA STYLE:  And now for something silly. Anyone who reads the MPA blog knows CJ has a 'thing' for the "Gangnam Style" song/dance craze and we've all got a "thing" for NASA, so no surprise we smiled when we saw this. ...