My Friday!

Yesterday was sure a fun day! I met 11 other ladies at 8:15 AM and went to Mt Pleasant to tour the P.E.O. memorial rooms at Iowa Wesleyan. They have lots of artifacts and period furniture from the 1860's when 7 women from Iowa Wesleyan started P.E.O. It was a very informative tour. After touring the P.E.O. rooms, we went to the Harlan-Lincoln home which is basically on the IW campus. It was the home of Senator Harlan whose daughter married Abraham Lincoln's son Robert Todd Lincoln. Again they had a lot of artifacts from both families - the Harlans and the Lincolns, including a piece of the coat that President Lincoln was wearing when he was assassinated and one of Mary Todd Lincoln's mourning veils. After these two interesting tours, we went to a fellow P.E.O. sister's home where she and a couple other P.E.O. sisters served us a wonderful meal. Following lunch we were treated to a tour of her home which is absolutely beautiful. When we finally left there we were running a little behind! We went to the Old Threshers grounds for our next two tours. The first was of their doll room. They were given over 400 dolls by a gentleman whose wife had collected dolls. She wanted her babies to stay together in one place! When they got the dolls, they were in something like 54 boxes with each doll wrapped in bubble wrap and plastic bread wrappers. Now most of the dolls have been cleaned up and catalogued. It is a beautiful collection - from china head dolls to Barbies! They have one French doll there worth over $8,000! After the dolls, we went to our last tour, which again was on the Old Threshers Grounds - The Theater Museum. Here they have a wonderful display of curtains from the opera houses around the country, as well as musical instruments, scripts, costumes, handbills, tickets - everything from the old tent shows and traveling acting troups. They have a lot of information about the old Toby and Susie actors and skits. It was a fascinating day! After I got home, I talked Dave into going downtown to the river to take a few water shots for my class. Here is just one of them. I'm still awaiting my instructor's comments. I went down this morning to get some morning shots, but actually they look just about the same. Anyway, I think I was able to capture the power of the water pretty well. If I had a DSLR camera with lots of settings (more money!!) I would have been able to get the water to look like strands of silk. My camera has some settings on it for changing the shutter speed, but I don't think it's ever going to get the water to look like silk! I'll keep trying though!