Constant Reader discussion
CR 2012 Convention - Pittsburgh
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Great Time
Thank you so much, Mary Anne and Vic, for a superb job of hosting. I'm going to post some pictures, and I hope all of the attendees will help in describing things. The first one is of Allen, very distinguished in a beard:
John and I had a wonderful time! We enjoyed meeting Mary Anne and Vic who went out of their way to make our visit to Pittsburgh so memorable and fun. It was great to meet Peggy and Janet in person and to renew friendships with everyone else. What a great time! The Phipps Conservatory was simply outstanding! I really enjoyed that, but then I enjoyed everything. Thank you Mary Anne and Vic! It was fabulous!
Friday morning we went to Phipps Conservatory. What a wonderful place. Here are some photos:The Chihuly Chandelier
The Obama Table:
The Toy Trains:
I'll leave it to others to explain.
Another Chihuly:
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And more Chilhuly:
Beautiful, are these pieces blown glass?
Carol, I don't know what techniques Chihuly uses. My guess is that they are.The "Obama table" was the first table used in the G-20 when it was here in Pittsburgh a few years ago.
Vic and I had a great time, as well! As Katy said, it was great to gather once again with CRs from around the country, and to meet some CRs for the first time in person.
It sounds like it was a fantastic conference! And the Phipps Conservatory looks amazing. How was the author meeting?
The author was very interesting. She started out in the theater and still teaches at the college level. I bought two of her books, but I haven't read them yet. Her name is Kathleen George.
Thanks for the link, Ruth. I am fascinated by the artistic quality of blown glass. I could watch the artists for hours.
Seconding everything - the whole weekend was tremendous fun!! I could have spent all day doing any one of the activities Mary Anne set up for us, and it was great seeing my CR friends, new and old - though I'm still not quite convinced that Jane and I had never met before!!
You know Peggy I had that same feeling the first time I met Jane also. She is comfortable to be with. Maybe we all met in a previous life or it is our Karma.
I did a detour to WI on the way home and spent last night at my cabin, so I just got back this evening. Just adding my vote of thanks to MAP and Vic for a wonderful time in Pittsburgh! You were both fantastic hosts. Courtesy of Vic, Allen and I had had our own "town car" and driver for most of the weekend :) The Phipps brought back many memories of my days in horticulture and the brew pub in the converted church was unlike anything I've ever seen. I took a few pictures of it on my cell phone, but I don't know if they'll translate well to my computer. If they do, I'll be sure and share them!
Carol wrote: "Thanks for the link, Ruth. I am fascinated by the artistic quality of blown glass. I could watch the artists for hours."It is fascinating. They had a glass-blowing section in the Art Dept of the college where I used to teach. Every time I passed by, if there was anything going on, I'd stop to watch.
We tend to forget the beauty of glass , because so much of it is molded or stamped. I do have a couple of stamped pieces I love, and several pieces of the old carnival glass in blue. I did have a gorgeous blown glass fish, but I gave it to my baby sister, because she loved it , also a lovely red blown glass basket, which my daughter broke. I would love to find a basket like that one.
Oops, sorry for the derailment, I forgot what thread I was in. Back to regular broadcasting.
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I'm not as good a photographer as Sherry & had trouble posting these larger, but if you click on a picture it takes you to the site I uploaded them to where you can view a bigger version.Here are a few more. Pittsburgh at night and some from Falling Water.
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Thanks, Janet. I enjoyed seeing these. How beautiful and green the woods are. Having grown up with our western forests I always find woods like these fascinating.And I loved the group photo. How nice to see old friends, and new.
I clicked on the link and went to the slideshow. What a nice looking group of people. Looks like Pittsburg had lots of beautiful scenery.
Could you saw who the CRs are in the first photo you posted, Janet. I was worried when I couldn't identify everyone.
I didn't want to bore anyone with too many photos on this discussion thread but I went ahead and uploaded the rest of my shots of Phipps Conservatory and Falling Water to the album I previously uploaded to. If you are curious, click the link next to one of the photos in the above post and the rest appear after the pictures previously posted here.I hesitate to identify who is in the shot since I believe there is a possibility someone who was there might prefer not to have that done. I posted this shot since I noticed Sherry had included a group shot in her pictures. I will identify myself though; I'm the one kneeling in front in the dark blue sweater.
I recognized you, Janet. And I can identify more CRs now that I look closer at it. I'm sorry if my request made you or others uncomfortable. Thanks so much for your photos!
I'll identify them, Yulia. Vic Papale, Barb Moors, Allen Crocker, Lynn Isvik, John Higgins, Katy Higgins, Peggy Ramsey, Janet Leszl, Sherry Keller (me), Jane Niemeier, and our hostess Mary Anne Papale.
Here's a link to pictures of the former church that is now a restaurant and microbrewery. It's a little dark because I took it with my cell phone, but I think you can get the idea.
CR Pittsburgh
I love all these pictures! Constant Readers are multi-talented!
Lynn wrote: "Here's a link to pictures of the former church that is now a restaurant and microbrewery. It's a little dark because I took it with my cell phone, but I think you can get the idea...."
I'm so glad you took these. I meant to take more here but got so wrapped up in the great food and conversation that I forgot to.
How anyone could post a picture of some guy who looks like he might be an associate editor for a French cinema magazine and claim that it's me, I really cannot understand.Seriously, I can barely recognize myself in that photo at all. Particularly since the whiskers went the way of all fuzz three hours after my return home, and won't be coming back any time soon. However, given the positive reaction, the beard might be making a repeat appearance when we're deep in the heart of Texas next year.
Oh yes, the get-together.....
First, mad props, as the youngsters might say, to Mary Anne for flawlessly organizing CR Pittsburgh. For one, this will go down in memory as The Weekend Without an Admission Charge -- MAP got us passes to the museums and not just a visit to the Phipps Conservatory but a full behind-the-scenes tour conducted by one of the site's directors (can't remember his name or title). I will echo Peggy's comment that we could have spent far more time than we did at any of the places we visited; I like the feeling of just having tasted a tiny sample of what the city had to offer.
When we met author Kathleen George at the Mystery Lovers Bookshop in Oakmont we learned that up to that point she had thought we were nothing other than a typical local book group and was quite surprised to find out about CR's unique nature. Our all-time best reaction came from the store's proprietor: "I am so honored that you chose US!!" (Did MAP, with her well-known flair for the dramatic, deliberately hold back that vital bit of information? Frankly, I wouldn't put it past her....)
Getting a bit late here; I'll be back in a bit with some more of the details that the rest of these slackers evidently can't be bothered to supply.
As one of the slackers, I'd like to say thanks, Allen, for filling in some of the gaps in our accounts with such flair. After your comments about how the beard felt, I'm surprised it took you three whole hours to shed it after you got home :)
I am enjoying all the trip reports. It looks like you had a wonderful time. MAP sure did a fabulous job organizing.
What a stunning place to have a meal or drink. Wow.
The picture on the Church Brew Works website gives a much better idea of just how stunning it was: http://www.churchbrew.com/. My cell phone pics don't really do it justice.
So, did you ever have moments when you wished you could reach back in time and yank a younger version of yourself forward, that he or she could experience something that Kid-You would have loved? I had a couple such moments in Pittsburgh.The first occurred when I looked out the window of my room at the Hampton Inn (a very CR-appropriate hotel, by the way: smallish and perfectly situated). "Look, 12-year-old me!" I would have shouted. "You can see the ballpark right out the window! That's where the Pittsburgh Pirates play!"
The second was on Friday morning. "Check it out, 9-year-old me!" I can hear myself exclaiming. "Fossils! A mammoth skeleton! Two tyrannosaurus skeletons that look like they're having an argument! All the things you've been longing to see but have never been able to!"
We were at the Carnegie (pronounced CarNEGie, thank you very much) Museums of Art and Natural History -- the only time I've ever seen two such disparate venues under a single roof. Lynn and I were the only ones in a science-y mood, it seems; the rest of the group went off to visit the artistic offerings. (Since no one said anything about what they saw in the Art Museum, I suppose it must not have been all that impressive, I said, trying to goad someone into proving me wrong.) In addition to more fossils than you could shake an intercostal clavicle at, we were also treated to a fine collection of amazing gem and mineral specimens. At one point there was a row of tall glass display cases with mirrored walls facing each other from each end, so as to give the illusion of a hallway stretching into infinity -- a truly marvelous visual effect.
Back with more soon....
Also, could one of you group of clam impersonators tell us a bit about the visit to Fallingwater? The pictures only whet one's appetite for details!
I'm one of those slackers Allen was referencing. I've been so busy at work since I got back that this is my first time on Constant Reader this week. Mary Anne and Vic did an absolutely fabulous job of hosting this get-together. As I have said to her by email, there is nothing quite like visiting a city with people who truly know it like they do. I've been to Pittsburgh a number of times before but everything was new to me.We went to the Carnegie Museums of Art and Natural History on the first morning and I could easily have stayed all day in just the art museum. They own two Renoirs that I've never seen before and one of Monet's water lillies as well as a very famous painting by Mary Cassatt. I just discovered these gems when we only had about 20 minutes left!
After a nice lunch, we went to the Phipps Conservatory which was the site of so many of the great photos here. In addition to being beautiful, it has been redesigned and structured to be a Living Building, meaning that it is totally self-sustaining. They "generate all of their own energy and capture and treat all of their own water on site." This is a quote from their website which can be found here: http://phipps.conservatory.org/projec...
Thanks to our guide, I felt like we were able to see tons more than the average visitor.
I'll try to post some more this weekend. But, for now, I'll just say that I'll have these memories for a very long time. And, Constant Readers are an amazing bunch. I'm always surprised by how much we have in common -- in addition to books.
Peggy and I left after a lovely brunch at Mary Anne's house on Sunday so we missed the trip to Falling Water. However, in a bit of serendipity, the Sunday Free Press had an article on it by their travel writer:http://www.freep.com/article/20121014...
I was reading it Sunday night and wondering how there could be such a coincidence.
I love the idea of a sciencey thing. The gem and minerals specifcally.
Falling Water was a very nice treat! I'm glad I was able to stay until Monday morning so I could go there. It was such a beautiful day that apparently a bunch of other people had the same idea... when we got there the inside tours were all sold out. We were able to walk the grounds all we wanted, though, and peek through the windows from the decks and patios. Funny thing - it looks just like all the pictures you see on posters :) There were also some interesting displays about the history of the design and building process. Apparently, the only reason the place is still standing is that the builders added extra steel reinforcements to the cantilevers at the insistence of some structural engineering consultants. That pissed Wright off big time because they didn't follow his design plan and threatened to quit, but it turned out to be necessary. The structure has still shifted over time, but remains stable.
I just have to thank Mary Anne again for taking the time to drive us there. It wasn't a short trip, but the scenery was gorgeous along the way. The mountainy terrain was beautiful and the fall leaf color had to be near its peak!
Our new member Joan, has just coincidentally posted a review of a book about Frank Lloyd Wright over in the What I'm Reading folder.I had no idea Falling Water was near Pittsburgh.
Falling Water! I have always wanted to go there. Well, I'll just have to visit Pittsburgh one day. It sounds like y'all had a great time. The Phipps looks cool, too.Next year in Texas? Where?
It will be in Austin, Susan. I hope I can drag Tonya out of hiding for the event.I haven't been able to post as much as I would like to this thread, because I have had a lot of babysitting to do since I've been back. The big push is going on to get Robyn's and Ken's house ready to move into. Whenever I get a spare moment, I post a few more pictures to my SmugMug account. If I weren't so anal about processing them and getting them just-so, there's be a lot more to look at. Here's a link to the whole gallery, but I add a few every day.
http://shkell.smugmug.com/Friends/Con...
I've done a terrible job of labeling, so if you have a question, just ask me here. We went to the Warhol exhibit, but you were only allowed to take pictures on the first floor.
The street scenes are of a lively market district called the Strip District (not what you think!)
I love the close up shots of the train display at Phipps Conservatory.
Despite not being able to go into the building, the trails at Falling Water were a treat to wander through. I imagine how utterly peaceful it would be there prior to tourists like me arriving for the day. Even now just thinking about the place lowered my blood pressure numbers- for a few moments at least.
Here is a group shot while we were at Mystery Lover's Bookshop. 
Back row: Janet, Peggy, Barb, John, Jane, Lynn, Katy, owner of bookshop (Laurie?)
Front: Allen, Mary Anne, Kathleen George, Sherry (me)
Great picture, Sherry. So are the other ones you posted at the website you mentioned.
I am enjoying these photos and comments so much. It's like doing the trip again!
I will post more later in the week.