Old Sturbridge Village Anniversary Visit

According to one of my photo albums, I visited Old Sturbridge Village on September 3, 1989, so my niece suggested that we ought to pay a twenty-year anniversary visit to this outdoor history museum, a re-creation of a rural New England town of the 1830s.

It was an excellent idea:  Sturbridge is only a 20-minute drive from my house, and the tropical storm which had brought rain and gloom to the region had passed out to sea overnight.  It was sunny and mild, and after a breakfast of waffles and soy sausages, we packed sandwiches and snacks, and then set out to spend almost the entire day visiting these nineteenth-century buildings, talking to the costumed interpreters, watching demonstrations, and trying to imagine what life was like back then.

According to the website, “Old Sturbridge Village’s purpose is to provide modern Americans with a deepened understanding of their own times through a personal encounter with New England’s past.”  The Village first opened to the public on June 8, 1946, and in the years since then, millions of visitors have passed through its gates.  As an educational institution, the Village does historical research which “includes archaeology, scientific analysis of 19th-century objects and buildings, and painstaking study of letters, diaries, account books, and other documents. ”

We started at the Village Green.  Around the Common are the Center Meetinghouse (which today we would call simply the church), the Asa Knight Store, the Parsonage, the Tin Shop, the Grant Store, the Thompson Bank, and individual homes such as the Salem Towne House, the Fitch House, and the Fenno House (all of which we visited).

Farther out from the village center are such buildings as the Freeman Farm and the mills, including the Sawmill, the Grist Mill, and the Carding Mill.  (There are quite a few more buildings, but I’m only mentioning the ones we went into.)

At noon, we met the ox team and their drover; shortly thereafter, we witnessed a musket demonstration near the Bullard Tavern.  Later in the afternoon, we watched two teams playing tug-of-war on the Common, then at 3 pm, we learned about terpsichorean (dancing) etiquette.   Half an hour later, we went back across the covered bridge for demonstrations of the sawmill and the carding machine.

Toward the end of the day, we visited the Print Shop, which I found fascinating, and then just before the exit, we wandered through the Herb Garden, which was almost overwhelming with its profusion of culinary, medicinal, and household plantings.

Here are some random photos I took during the course of the day:

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Left: Two interpreters are dressed in women’s costumes typical of this period. Center:  Wool is dyed in kettles over open fires.  Right:  Black powder is used in this musket.
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Left: This team of young oxen was taught to plow earlier this spring.
Center: The Towne House furniture and decor are indicative of the family’s wealth.
Right: The Towne House dining room is elegantly appointed.
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Left: A stagecoach pulled by two horses transports visitors around the grounds.
Center: The sawmill here is cutting boards from logs of white pine.
Right: The carding mill operates by water power; carded wool was for home use.

Rainy Day at the Ecotarium

Although continuous rain was forecast for the entire day, my niece decided that we could still enjoy ourselves if we got out of the house for a bit.  She decided that the EcoTarium, Worcester’s unique indoor-outdoor science museum on Harrington Way, was the place to be.  I had visited the museum many years ago and vaguely recalled how to get there, so late in the morning, armed with some scribbled directions from Mapquest, we set off.

We travelled the back roads through Spencer and Paxton, then turned onto Route 9 near Elm Park, drove east toward Downtown, missed the turn onto Plantation, circled around via Lake Avenue, and finally arrived.  From the upper parking lot, we headed past the somewhat bedraggled owls and bald eagles toward the Main Entrance.

The EcoTarium houses a variety of animals, including this beautiful Scarlet Macaw (Ara macao).  Native to Central and South America, this species eats mostly fruits, nuts, flowers, and nectar.  In the photo, the bird is not eating but is playing with a toy.Ecotar01 The Museum hopes to inspire in visitors “a passion for science and nature”; it began in 1825 as the Worcester Lyceum of Natural History, was incorporated in 1884 as the Worcester Natural History Society, and transitioned from the New England Science Center to the EcoTarium in 1998. The name change emphasized the organization’s transformation into an accessible learning and discovery center for families.

I think they do a pretty good job of science education, although I strongly believe that the animal exhibits should always include binomial nomenclature.  For my part, I enjoyed the Minerals exhibit on the middle level and also some of the physics demonstrations.  I had heard from friends that the Museum puts on some great shows in the Alden Planetarium, so my niece and I bought tickets to “Cosmic Collisions”:

Narrated by Robert Redford, this spectacular immersive theater experience launches guests on a thrilling trip through space and time to explore cosmic collisions. Groundbreaking scientific simulations and visualizations based on cutting-edge research depict the dramatic and explosive encounters that shaped our solar system.

By then, we were both hungry, so we headed back to the car for a picnic lunch.  There were many more cars in the parking lot than we had expected; New Englanders are a hardy lot, I guess, or else parents feared their children going stir-crazy indoors.

After we had re-energized, we walked down the hill toward the polar bear (Ursus maritimus) exhibit.   The only surviving daughter of Ursa Minor and Ursa Major,  Kenda, a 26-year-old 600-pound female, is a star attraction.  I took a couple of photos of her as she wandered about in her enclosure:

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Kenda might look somewhat ragged, in that she is being treated for skin allergies; she is not particularly old for a bear in captivity, but in the wild, she probably would not have survived this long.  Polar bears are now protected under the Endangered Species Act, due to decreasing ice cover in the Arctic where they live.

Now that we were outdoors and shielded by umbrellas, we decided to visit the otter habitat, but we did not see Ariel and Slydell.  Had it been a sunny day, we might have waited to see if they would emerge from their den to play.  Instead, we called it a day.