Poem for Monday and Titanic Exhibit

From 'The Errand-Bearers'
By Walt Whitman

Over sea, hither from Niphon,
Courteous, the Princes of Asia, swart-cheeck'd
        princes,
First-comers, guests, two-sworded princes,
Lesson-giving princes, leaning back in their open
        barouches, bare-headed, impassive,
This day they ride through Manhattan.

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On the second-to-last day of spring break, we had a rather lazy morning. I folded one of the three loads of laundry waiting for me (the other two are still waiting, heh) and did some writing while waiting for my kids to drag themselves out of bed -- Daniel had wanted to get a haircut while he was home but he took so long getting dressed that we didn't manage to get to the Hair Cuttery in the morning, which ended up being fine because we found out late in the day that they'd closed for Easter.

After lunch, we picked up my mother (my father wasn't feeling well) and went to the National Geographic Museum downtown, which has a 100th anniversary exhibit on the Titanic including some props from the film as well as footage and simulations of the sinking, plus an exhibit on the evolution of the concept of the Samurai warrior in Japan and elsewhere. The Titanic exhibit was very interesting but I learned much more from the Samurai exhibit -- there were fantastic photos and illustrations of Ulysses Grant and Theodore Roosevelt receiving swords and armor and dozens of examples of how cherry blossoms are venerated in Japanese warrior culture.


A full-scale replica of a life boat used in the film Titanic...


...and a miniature of a life boat.


This replica of the ship took seven years to build, nearly four years longer than the ship itself.


The exhibit has some of the windows and decor from the first class rooms in the movie.


There is also interactive video of the ship's construction, though nothing on the scale of that new museum in Belfast.


News about the ship is reproduced, from the hype before its sinking to initial incorrect reports that all aboard had been rescued.


This is one of James Cameron's models of the sunken ship surrounded by photos of the rusticle-covered wreck.


Of course Paul and I had to play Kate and Leo, since they set up the photo op.

We had Passover leftovers for dinner with my parents, which were delicious, before taking Daniel back to College Park. We missed most of Harry's Law but got home in time for Great Expectations, which I enjoyed a lot (they did the later ending, yay), and now we are watching the National Geographic Channel's Titanic: The Final Word, from which much of the video in the exhibit was taken, with much longer animations of the sinking though it doesn't have all the information about the building of the ship that the exhibit does.