American Sign Museum and Grand Finale Day Trip

Thursday, June 28, 25 or us took a leisurely trip down to the Camp Washington area of Cincinnati. We visited the newly opened American Sign Museum. Of course many of you remember that we visited the museum a couple of years ago. However, they just opened in a new location of their with very nice facilities. They have many more exhibits and also feature an operating Neon Sign Shop in the back. Tod Swormstedt the founder of this museum was kind enough to give us a very good tour.

Some of the oldest signs are over 100 years old with newer ones being from the 50s & 60s. I enjoy the neon signs and learned that not all of these really use neon gas. The gas is what give the color and other gases can be used for different colors. Colored glass tubes are also used. Of course not all of the signs are neon. Many are bulbs, back lighted or even just hand painted.

I think my favorite area of the museum was the store front areas. These were made to look like actual store fronts with signs that you would see on the stores or inside. One store was an actual disassembled storefront that was brought into the museum and reconstructed.

After Tod finished explaining the signs to us they took us into the working Neon Shop where two of the employees were making and repairing neon signs. They actually did part of a project with us and talked us through the process. This was extremely informative and interesting.

I received nothing but rave comments about this part of the trip. If you are interested in visiting this museum on your own or with a group, check out their website American Sign Museum. NOTE: Be sure to go to the new location. This site still lists the old address!

Following the Sign Museum tour, we advance back up I-75 to Glendale and the Grand Finale for our lunch. Lisa and I chose an abbreviated menu with several lunch selections and also dessert. Wow, everything was delicious. This place is noted for their romantic atmosphere and also their desserts (finale)! So, if you are looking for a great location for a special occasion, you will definitely want to consider the Grand Finale.

I think many of our Young at Heart came on this trip primarily to enjoy a good lunch at Grand Finale but in the end, everyone really enjoyed the museum tour, too, and were happy to have done both. I hope you enjoyed this little tour via the blog with us!

REMEMBER, YOU CAN EASILY SEE THE PHOTOS IN FULL SIZE BY DOUBLE CLICKING!

Young at Heart Luncheon Program–June 5, 2012

I think we had a very good luncheon program for everyone this month. It started with a couple of problems. We discovered that our planned speaker was going to be out of town that day so I had to do some juggling with the schedule and Stan Goode readily agreed to trade his original date and this worked very well for us. Also, this program is a week earlier than our normal second Tuesday of each month because Vacation Bible School is going to run the second week. That meant that some of our people had other things scheduled and we anticipated a lower than normal participation. Initially, our caller information confirmed this would be the case. Normally, we have a significant number of people not show after telling the callers that they planned to be here. This time our number of “no shows” was low and we had a good number of people show up who had not responded. So, the end result is that we had more people than anticipated. They were rewarded with a very good program and meal.

Grace Averitt played the grand piano as our musical prelude while people had a chance to visit prior to our program.

You can hear Grace’s Piano Prelude HERE.

Following this piano music, I opened the program with a few jokes and acknowledged Birthdays and Anniversaries. Then, we had a very nice musical solo by Christina Comer.

You can hear her solo, HERE.

Of course, our primary program included being entertained by “Stan the Magic Man”. Stan is a retired Sheriff’s Deputy and has been entertaining in programs like ours and with children for many years. He has a large number of tricks and illusions that he can do and I’ve never seen him do the same ones in the three years that he has been performing for us.

 

Stan talked about the church above being empty but we found people from all over the world just as we learned when we were children, “Jesus Loves the Children - Red and Yellow, Black, and White; they are Precious in HIS Sight!”

Stan fooled with our minds on the rabbit trick and let something slip, so that we “thought” we knew the secret. Of course we were wrong and this didn’t turn out the way we thought.

Stan’s mother, Doris Goode, is one of our regular members. It is always good to see her but I know it is special for her to see her own son perform.

Following Stan’s performance, I did a short talk about Fathers and our Heavenly Father. You can hear what I had to say, HERE.

Next month, we are going to do something very different. You will not want to miss our July 10th program. I won’t tell what it is but will say that we’ve never had this kind of program before. It will definitely be something to tell your children and grandkids about. If you miss the July program, you won’t have any “Bragging Rights”.    Bring your cameras, and enjoy our “Mystery Program” on July 10!

We will also plan some special music.

Next, I hope to cover our Day Trip to the American Sign Museum in Cincinnati and to the Grand Finale Restaurant.

YAH Luncheon–May 8, 2012

We enjoyed a terrific program today by Resounding Joy from the Dayton Christian High School. For those that are not aware, Dayton Christian Schools is one of the largest Christian school systems in the USA with campuses in Miamisburg (south of the Dayton Mall) and Xenia (on the Legacy Ministries Campus). The system provides education for K-12. All three of our daughters graduated from Dayton Christian.

These young men and women recently performed in Washington DC. Since we are taking our Young at Heart there this fall, we’re hoping they impacted the community so they will be prepared for us! More importantly, maybe they had a positive impact on our leadership in Washington! After all, these are our future leaders!

The music was fantastic and I really enjoyed every bit of it. We also had very good comments from our audience. One of our homes is also interested in having them perform for them. Unfortunately, I believe these students will be finishing school very soon, so this will need to wait. Anyway, we are sure to have them return again. We bring in one or two DCS groups every year.

The group also included their own instrumentalists (guitars, keyboard and drums) and a young lady doing signing.

Of course, it is all about the singing! The choir, led by Tracy Miller, did an awesome job.

You can listen to Resounding Joy HERE!

Following the program, we moved into our big dining room (the gym) for a very nice Cinco de Mayo luncheon! As always, our kitchen staff and dining room staff, did a great job!

Next month on June 5th (note normally our luncheons are the second Tuesday but this one is the first) we will have another of our Young at Heart favorites. Stan the Magic Man will return to our platform. I keep threatening to have him saw someone in two. The teens thought this would be cool! Any volunteers?

Stan the Magic Man – June 5th

Day Trip – Cedarville Play – Star Spangled Girl

Today, April 12, 2012, we drove over to Cedarville University to enjoy the Neil Simon play, “Star Spangled Girl”. This play is a simple but fun comedy. I was amazed that they could do a play with only three performers and only one setting. Fortunately, there were many people behind the scenes to  make this all work. It was a great play. I had already seen it a couple of weeks ago, perhaps the opening day and now we are seeing it at the end of the run. I must say, the performance was  much better today. I think it is fair to say that all of our people enjoyed it.

Basically, the play featured to young men (recently out of college) and a girl (Olympic Swimmer). The guys write and publish a rightwing paper and are having trouble making ends meet. The girl was making do, working at the YMCA as a swim instructor. One of the guys falls hopelessly in love with her and does really dumb things that result in her loosing her job. So, the other guy (business manager for the paper) gives her a job and ultimately also falls hopelessly in love. I’ve grossly oversimplified the plot, so you will need to see it for yourself. I do recommend this play.

By now you know the routine, “Click on an image to see it in full size”

Following the play, we drove over to Young’s Dairy north of Yellow Springs and ate at the “Golden Jersey Inn”. We had a great meal topped off with some of the delicious Young’s Ice Cream!

Young at Heart Luncheon–April 10, 2012

Today, we had an outstanding program and lunch.

We started with our Early Bird prelude of music from our Easter Cantata from last Sunday. Of course, this was followed by our time of jokes and story telling before getting into our agenda for the day.

Allison Stolar Misere sang a very nice solo. I’m sure we will be using her again. Her grandfather, John Stolar was a member of our group before his health began declining. We put a photo of their son, Jacob, over Allison’s head just because we enjoy children and I knew everyone would enjoy seeing him.

Unfortunately, we did not record this program, so you will not be able to hear Allison, this time. We will invite her back and be sure to record her, for next time. Maybe it worked out so we have a good excuse to bring her back, SOON!

Next we heard from Larry and Nancy Allen. They are missionaries to Bangladesh, where they’ve been for about 35 years with a short move of fields to the Philippines. Larry and Nancy have been long time members of our church and were actually married her in 1972. Larry attended college here and Nancy taught.

This was different that what you would expect from a missionary presentation. Larry did show some very interesting photos and talked about their work in Bangladesh; but his focus was on children, and more importantly, grand-parenting! Maybe they should focus on a ministry to grandparents, when they retire from active foreign missions!

Of course, a good Allen presentation wouldn’t be complete without Nancy. Her background is teaching and she also taught in Bangladesh.

Thank you Larry and Nancy Allen for a very interesting and enlightening presentation. I heard many very good comments about it.

REMEMBER: You can click on a picture to see it larger.

“A Day in Pompeii” – Day Trip, March 22, 2012

March 22, 2012, the Young at Heart group met a church for an early lunch before driving down to the Cincinnati Museum Center to see the special display of “A Day in Pompeii”. We had a good group of 34 people. This exceeded the capacity of our bus but didn’t justify the use of another mini-bus, so I drove our SUV to bring four of us. It was a nice time together. Bob Turner drove the bus. Thank you Bob.

I thought it would be interesting to note a bit of history regarding Pompeii. There is evidence of civilizations living at this site since the 8th to 6th century BC. Prior the destruction of Pompeii when Mt. Vesuvius erupted in the year 79, Pompeii had been seriously damaged by an earthquake in the year 62AD. Some of the damage from that earthquake still had not been repaired when the eruption of Vesuvius occurred. Pompeii was often a vacation spot for other Romans and was a place where many prosperous people had summer homes, etc. At the time of the eruption, there were probably about 20,000 inhabitants. I was pleasantly surprised to learn via the exhibits that the homes were somewhat modern, even by today’s standards. Many homes even had running water.

We know a lot about Pompeii because of the way it was preserved after being locked in time under many feet of ash. There was even artwork that portrayed what life was like in Pompeii at that time.

Think of this – at the time of the destruction of Pompeii, one or two of the Christ’s Apostles were still alive! Perhaps, one or more of them may have even visited there.

Pompeii is in Italy near what is now Naples.  Remember as you see images below, you can click on them to get a larger view.

The following pictures show what the city and homes would look like at the time of the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius.

The following panel shows the city during the Earthquake in 62.

Then, it 79 the eruption began!

I doctored this image to provide a little modesty

After the volcano, the ash covered everything, including the bodies of humans and animals. Excavation of the site uncovered many human and animal remains. Of course, many other articles were also recovered. Most wooden articles were destroyed by the fire and heat but metal furnishing and decorations were intact.

On the left we see what may be a husband attempting to protect his wife, center is a dog (even with a collar), and on the right are people attempting to escape at the bay.

Let’s take an additional look around the displays with some of our people!

This is a wall relief depicting Vulcan the God of Fire and Metalwork.

And, another god who I didn’t take note of.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The picture in the middle shows the leg protection worn by Roman soldiers, and on the right we see Arthur examining the Wine Decanters.

Left – Scale, Center- Serving Dish, Right – Millstone (grinder)

Looking up the street toward Mt. Vesuvius, today!

We hope you enjoyed our little travelogue to Pompeii and all the way back to 79AD, in history.