New Years Day

New Years Day dawned gray, windy and chilly. Evidently Old Man Winter has come to Cincinnati! We got out of the house by mid-morning and had a quick breakfast, stopped at the Post Office and headed down to Union Terminal (a.k.a. Cincinnati Museum Center). Union Terminal is home to several organizations: The Cincinnati History Museum, the Childrens Museum, the Museum of Natural History and Science, and the OmniMax Theater. There are also frequent special exhibits to visit, and if you're ever going somewhere via Amtrak, this is the place to catch your train. Union Terminal was built in 1931 and has enormous mosaic murals depicting life in the Ohio River Valley, from frontier times to the early 1900's. Countless visitors have passed through the terminal with its huge rotunda, travelling by rail in the days before air travel was the norm.

We've been wanting to see the Titanic Artifacts exhibit, and we'd also heard about the new movie showing at the OmniMax, "Hurricane on the Bayou." We bought our tickets for both and went downstairs to find the Titanic exhibit. The lady at the entrance gave us lengthy dire instructions about not touching the glass cases ("shrieking alarms"), no cameras (smiled politely while we stashed them away in our backpack); and for heaven's sake, no gum, drinks, food or cell phones. The exhibit was good - very factual, everything labelled and explained, really bringing the passengers and the experience to life. As we moved from room to room studying the exhibit, one thought impressed me over and over: so many of the passengers never intended to be on that ocean liner; there was a big coal strike at the time that caused many of the other Trans-Atlantic liners to cancel their crossings. Many of those who died had not been on that trip by choice, but by default. I was also struck by the big differences between First and Second Class vs. Third Class. So many of the Third Class passengers never had a chance to survive....

The movie was not quite what we expected. The footage of the bayous and people were wonderful, and the music was great but we hadn't anticipated the environmental message that was the real theme of the movie. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for saving coastal wetlands in Louisiana. But somehow, "man" can never do the right thing with our natural resources ... Anyhow, it's always a treat to go to an IMAX movie even though I get sooo dizzy as soon as I walk in. I had to fight the urge to close my eyes much of the time.

We're looking forward to many more short trips this year - Chris' co-worker gave him a book called "Ohio Oddities" as a Christmas gift so we'll use that to find some out-of-the-way fun places on the weekends.