Minnesota History Day

Last weekend we packed everyone up and headed to Minneapolis for the state Minnesota History Day competition.  YaYa’s website qualified for the state level a few months ago. Dr. Peds was the driver extraordinaire who got us there and back safely, and then took the rest of the kidlets off to do fun things on Saturday while YaYa and I were at the University of Minnesota all day.

Really, it was a day filled with waiting, since YaYa only had one short interview.  Her project did not advance to the final round, but that was OK.  We wandered through the displays in the exhibit category.  There were some amazing topics!  There were displays on everything from Billy Graham and Jonathan Edwards to the people who started the Mayo Clinic arial rescue squad.  There were displays on military generals, the legacy of Sesame Street, people who developed vaccines, and invented the darkroom.  There were projects on the legacy of National Geographic, Maria Montessori, Suzuki, Winston Churchill, the Holocaust, and Tesla.  History day incorporates so much learning.  It practically makes me giddy.

I had never been on the campus of the University of Minnesota before, so that was an interesting experience.  The architecture was very impressive, and there were many neat views of the Minneapolis skyline across the Mississippi River.  At the end of the day I decided that it would have never been the right choice of place for me to attend college (I hate big cities and would have been swallowed up at such an enormous university) but it was place chalk full of interesting things.  I dragged YaYa to the university bookstore and was inspired by . . . all sorts of books.  After about forty minutes of me basking in an enormous shelf of poetry books, she decided she was done with the bookstore.  I could have stayed a few more hours.

I tried to convince her that we should check out the university library.  After the bookstore, it was a no-go, sadly.

Between the two buildings that we were most involved in for History Day was the Weismann Museum of Art, and since admission was free and we had a lot of spare time to use up, we perused the place.  It’s always fun to explore an art gallery with the greatest art appreciator in the family.  Most of the art was of a modern flare.   YaYa and I  each found a few pieces that we really liked.  Admittedly, there was a lot of art that, well, didn’t make a lot of sense to me.  There was a whole exhibit on “feasts” that involved people eating at a restaurant with friends and then gluing the plates, utensils, napkins and other eating accessories right to the table, with the leftover food attached.  Intriguing, but a bit strange?  (My lucky moldy orange from high school  would have fit right in!)   Stay tuned for a separate post about my very favorite exhibit in this art museum.

It was a beautiful, warm day, so we spent a great deal of time hanging around outside, where the grass was green and trees growing leaves.  Daffodils were blooming, and cherry trees were beginning to blossom.  I knew in advance that there would be a lot of waiting around at History Day, so I brought a book along and managed to finish the entire thing.  We did a lot of people watching.  We had bagel sandwiches and smoothies for lunch, and were very grateful that Dr. Peds was entertaining everyone else because it enabled us to have a peaceful day, and the other kids would have been incredibly bored.

Later we found out that an actual W.A.S.P pilot was at history day!  We didn’t know it at the time though.  YaYa’s whole history day project was about Margaret Phelon Taylor, a W.A.S.P.  I’m pretty sure we actually saw the lady, but we didn’t know that’s who she was.  YaYa’s history teacher got to meet her though, and she told her all about how YaYa had designed her website about the W.A.S.P.

It was a good day, although, I will be honest:  the car ride to and from the cities was a little hairy.  This time it was the grown ups who were cantankerous, not the kidlets.  Have I mentioned that I hate long car rides?