Wednesday, August 25, 2010

King Tut & Garage Sales

The King Tut items were on display at “Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs,” in the Discovery Times Square Exposition.  Having always been enthralled with the mystique of the Egyptian tombs — I HAD to go.  After seeing a partial and wonderful display at the provincial museum in Victoria, I went prepared to spend time soaking it all in.  It was fabulous.  (New York is its last stop before the artifacts return to Egypt in January.)  I felt blessed to be able to see more!  The average time to go through the display is estimated at 90 minutes.  I took three hours.  Of course there I was making notes and sketches for future projects, taking down details and just generally studying everything.  And then, going through the souvenir shop, I bought the book!

A girl who was travelling at the same speed as me started speaking with me (altho the general mood is one of silent awe) and she told me she'd been to Egypt and seen the actual pyramids, and many other details, adding exponentially to what we were looking at.  She made me giggle amid the silence when she said "they thought the scarab, a dung beetle, was the beginning of life.  I don't really want to believe that I descended from a dung beetle, but they do look artistic don't they?"  Several pieces of jewelery on display were absolutely stunning when you consider how primitive their tools supposedly were!



I particularly enjoyed this exhibit.  A "funny story".  Several years ago, my sister-in-law and I held a garage sale.  We cleaned out my sewing room, our kitchens, our book shelves, our garages and our crawl spaces.  We advertised.  We set everything up in the garage and advertised in the local paper.  The morning of the sale arrived and we were out there bright and early.  The garage door went up and there were at least five cars parked in the street already!  Things moved so fast after that we hardly had a chance to catch our breath. 

We had agreed that we would put all our profits together and take our partners with us to Victoria to see the Egyptian display at the BC Museum.  Between her awesome collection of pocketbooks, and her knowledge of who wrote them and which series they were part of, and my quilting and needlework supplies, we did very well.  So, a couple of weeks later, off we went to Victoria.  We wandered around downtown, had a great dinner, stayed in a motel where we visited together, and the next day had breakfast at the Empress Hotel, all on the funds we had earned at the garage sale! 


After breakfast we went to the Museum, where we waited in line for quite some time, winding back and forth and down the hall before we got into the actual display.  Needless to say, our husbands were less than enthusiastic by this point, mine in particular.  He had HIS dog in the car and didn't like him being alone this long, let alone the time it would take to see the display.  When we got in, it was dark, quiet, and we had the headphones to listen to the details about the displays.  Needless to say, I lost him within five minutes.  I suspected he had sped through the displays and went back to his dog.  At first I felt I should worry about him and look for him, but I decided no, I was going to enjoy this as it was likely a once-in-a-lifetime experience.  (I had no clue I would be lucky enough to see more in New York City!)  So I did the same thing threre.....read every plaque, listened to each description, sometimes more than once, made some sketches, and generally took my time to absorb it all. 

When I came out, hubby was indeed outside walking the dog.  I accused him of roaring through to get back to his dog and...... he denied it.  I asked a couple of questions about what he saw and what were his favorite things.  He gave answers that showed he'd seen something but not much detail.  It was a long quiet ride home!  So he and his dog still enjoy themselves together while I travel with girlfriends or alone, and thus I truly enjoyed this opportunity in New York to see such splendorous objects with NO pressure to hurry!