Museum Monday: Tripping Over a New Museum at Steelyard Commons, Cleveland

I wasn’t sure what to feel about Steelyard Commons. It’s a rather run-of-the mill (pun, ha) shopping center created on lands once occupied by a Cleveland steel mill in 2007. Other steel mills are located nearby. It’s identifying characteristic is … Continue reading

Transit Tuesday – The New York Transit Museum

Transit and Museums? Two of my loves rolled up into one. Visitors to New York want to see the Empire State Building, Times Square, and the Statue of Liberty. I try to coax them off the beaten path. The New … Continue reading

What I Ate: New Haven

I was just in New Haven to attend the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections Conference (what a great bunch of museum professionals!). Besides being overwhelmed with its very creative parking garages (recurring class project of the architecture … Continue reading

Transportation Tuesday – The Atlantic Avenue Tunnel

Until December 2010, at the intersection by the Trader Joes on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, you might find a few traffic cones surrounding a popped manhole cover. Dozens of people queued on the nearby sidewalk. Between green lights, a few … Continue reading

The Not So Big Movement

Nearly fifteen years after its publication, Sarah Susanka’s The Not So Big House has turned into a movement. Visit the website here. I first encountered this volume when it was brand new, sitting in the gift shop of The National … Continue reading

Wanderlust Wednesday – What I Did with Spare Time in Ohio

Last Tuesday, I was somewhere in eastern Ohio. I had access to a car, and nothing to do for eight hours. You got it – it was Lincoln Highway time. When I last traveled this portion of the Lincoln in … Continue reading

Mid-Atlantic Material Culture: McKee Crab Baking Dishes

An orange not seen in nature. These 1950s McKee Glass Company “Glasbake” crab baking dishes were intended for deviled crab. Interestingly, in my go-to historic Maryland cookbook Fifty Years in a Maryland Kitchen, deviled crab is nothing more than crabmeat … Continue reading