Thursday morning, January 13th, started out pleasantly enough – I was super excited about the prospect of a peppermint hot chocolate from Starbucks (with whipped cream thank you very much sir, do you really need to ask?). In comparison, I may have been slightly less excited about the window sight-seeing tour we were about to embark on but then again I have never made secret my delight in all things edible and unhealthy. As our departure time was a bit fluid, and as the Director hadn’t arrived yet, I sat down at my desk to get in a little bit of work before we left. Reflecting smugly on my productivity and work ethic, I answered the ringing phone in my most friendly and engaging voice, albeit in a voice register somewhere between that of a pre-adolescent choir boy and Minnie Mouse.
Me: “Good Morning, Historic Cherry Hill. How may I help you?”
Caller: “You’re not going to believe this.”
Me: “Director?”
The Director formerly known as Caller: “My car has been towed. There was snow emergency parking last night and when I came out this morning my car was gone!”
Me: [Silence while an internal battle raged to suppress any unsympathetic sniggers or giggles]
The Director: [Panicked breathing]
Me: “Do you know where your car is?”
The Director: “No! I have to call the city…maybe we could rent a car for the drive.”
Me [slightly offended that the Director would rather rent a car and drive then let me drive us all in my minivan]: “We can take my car.”
The Director: [Long Pause] “I’ll call the city. Can you guys come and pick me up at my place.”
Me: “Okay.”
About twenty minutes later the Curator and I pulled up to the side of the road to pick up a very annoyed Director. The Director climbed into the van (whose “high-tech” handle proved too difficult for her to master on her first try) and directed me to our next destination. THE POLICE STATION!
As I parked the car in THE POLICE STATION! parking lot, the Curator and I eagerly exited the car and practically skipped to accompany our fearless leader inside the citadel of justice. The Director didn’t seem to appreciate our show of support, particularly because the support was offered with barely suppressed glee. We walked into THE POLICE STATION! with our Director leading the way like we were a couple of overexcited puppies she was trying to control. While she attempted to communicate (communicate = shout back and forth) through a tiny hole in a glass window with an officer in blue on the other side, the Curator and I sized up the space, eagerly watching as more miserable Albanians shuffled in, a rag tag group of snow emergency parking victims and…others. Unfortunately we were only there for a very short time, but it was long enough for The Director to sign some paperwork, obtain the location of the tow-company that took her beloved car, and weasel her way out of some overdue parking tickets Officer O’Malley discovered she owed during the whole process. I don’t think she was enjoying the experience as much as we were. I high-fived a man resembling Grizzly Adams on the way out the door, and shouted "Power to the People!" before we emerged into the sunlight to sniff the sweet smell of freedom, a heady mix of car exhaust and stale urine.
We hopped back into the van and made our way to free the Director’s car. We had to go inside the tow-company’s office where the Director once again “communicated” with someone through a tiny hole in a glass window and then paid the cost of the tow before being gifted with the location of her car - something along the lines of “It’s in the lot at the back of the building.” Into the car we piled again and I drove the director to the lot at the back of the building which we found to be filled with cars in varying degrees of burial under the snow. For a moment it looked like the Director’s bad luck was going to hold and we would have to play a game of Marco Polo with her car using the panic button on her keychain, but much to the disappointment of both the Curator and I, the Director located her car quickly.
So the road trip was on – but first we had to go back to the museum to drop off my car and climb into the newly recovered car of the Director. But once we climbed in – the road trip was on! To the first rest stop on the Thruway heading south where coffee and hot chocolate was purchased. But after that – the road trip was on!
We traveled to Katonah, NY to visit Stepping Stones, a historic house museum. The house was the home of Bill Wilson, co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, and his wife Lois, co-founder of Al-Anon Family Groups. The Executive Director of Stepping Stones greeted us, winter hat on head and guided us along a snow covered path, approximately the width of a single human foot, from the office building to the historic house. As I attempted to place one foot in front of the other on the path across what in my mind seemed more akin to a frozen tundra in northern Russia than a yard in Westchester County, I reflected for the 17th time in my life that my sense of balance was more suited to a one-legged clown than a two-legged Communications Coordinator.
Stepping Stones has recently installed exterior storm windows similar to the ones we are planning to install at Historic Cherry Hill. Our trek through the snow afforded us a lovely view of the house and its exterior windows. I dutifully snapped pictures while the museum professionals talked about UV filtration, window installation and things of that nature.
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| The exterior storm windows seen here at Stepping Stones are similar to what Historic Cherry Hill will install. |
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| Close up of an exterior storm window at Stepping Stones |
What did grab my attention after looking around the first floor of the house, (once again while the real professionals conversed), were the measurement instruments the Executive Director of Stepping Stones brought along to take some measurements with. She had both a visible light measure and a UV light measure. The Curator was instantly drawn to the measurement devices like a Communications Coordinator is drawn to cheese fries – picking up the visible light meter, she began figuring out how the device worked. It took some time to understand what the readings meant in terms of measurement of light (lux) but eventually she clued us in on the following:
Level A: 0-1999
x1 lux
Level B: 2000-19999
x10 lux
Level C: 20,000-50,000
x100 lux
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| The visible light meter - I will confess I was a little disappointed to find that the light meter was not similar in any way, shape or form to the lightsabers from the Star Wars movies. |
These readings may not mean anything at all to anyone who isn’t holding the instruction booklet to the light meter in their hands, and even then, if you’re like me, it still won’t mean anything to you. However I was lucky enough to have the Curator with me and she being, (I think), a direct descendant of Mr. Wizard, was able to talk me through the process. We took visible light measurements in one particularly sunny room and were amazed at the difference in light measurement when a window was covered with sheer curtains versus when a window was devoid of window treatments. The amount of visible light that traveled through a bare window was reduced by almost 57% with just the addition of the sheer vurtains.
Because visible light poses such a danger to collections, museums in general strive to keep lux levels low but in such a way that a visitor can still enjoy the full color of the objects they are looking at. In the best circumstances, a person needs a minimum of 50 lux to still be able to see - it is a level that museums aim for. Now, the lux requirement will go up depending on the conditions of the room and the needs of people viewing the room. For example, one would multiply 50 lux by 3 to accommodate the vision of an elderly person; one would multiply 50 lux by 3 if looking at a low contrast object in the room; one would multiply by 3 if there are dark paintings on view; one would multiply by 3 if there was fine detail on an object on view. So if an older person came into a room to look at a dark painting and also examine the fine detail of the painting’s picture frame – you would multiply 50 lux by 3, by 3, by 3 to get a necessary lux measurement of 1350 lux which a musuem would need for that older visitor to comfortably view the painting and all its detail.
Moving on to the next gadget: the UV light meter. The Curator took some measurements which I dutifully recorded. We took the UV light measurements in several different spots in the house. Since we weren’t as confident in our understanding of what the UV light measurements meant, i.e. what UV range was acceptable in a museum environment, we took the measurements home to analyze another day. We want to understand how effective the UV filter in the exterior storms is as we are relying on that to filter out UV light in our museum.
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| This picture of the Curator holding the UV light meter is going in her hand-modeling portfolio - we're hoping it will be her lucky break. |
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| This is an example of an ancient Greek scroll...wait a minute, no...my mistake, that's got something to do with the UV light sensor. |
We left Stepping Stones to head to our next destination, Olana State Historic Site, in Hudson, NY. Our plan was to check out the “screeney blinds” Olana used on their windows, to see what our opinion was of them. Instead of taking the Thruway north we made our way to the Taconic State Parkway, deeming that the faster route. Little did we know what horror awaited us halfway to our destination. Driving along, the Director and the Curator in the front seat, myself in the back, things seemed to be going well. We were a little bit ahead of schedule and congratulating ourselves on that feat. Only another hour or so and we would be to Olana. Then the unthinkable happened. A blur in the sky, a thump on the front bumper of the car. The Director kept driving while I sat in the back seat, gasping in horror, my eyes wide with the realization that I had just witnessed a hit and run. Leaning forward, trembling hands clasped as if in supplication to the almighty Director to “say it ain’t so”, I stammered out the question – “Did you just hit a bird?” to which the Director replied, “Yeah….I did.” And there the three of us sat, all guilty of taking the life of a harmless little bird. The weight of our guilt weighed heavily on us for a couple of seconds, but then the Director said, “I think I just stunned it.” And, call me crazy, but I believed her – sure we were going over 60 mph and the thing took a kamikaze dive into the hood of the Director’s car but gosh darn it, yes, I agree, the Director probably just stunned it.
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| R.I.P. 2010-2011 |
Arriving at Olana, after taking a solemn blood oath to never breathe a word of our heinous deed to anyone on pain of immediate termination of employment (the Director’s idea), we were greeted by Olana’s curator who brought us into the house to view the “screeney blinds,” although she just called them solar shades. The thing about Olana, in case you aren’t aware, is that this house was built for the views out its windows, and those views are stunning. I was skeptical, thinking that the “screeney blinds” would intrude too much into my personal enjoyment of those views. I was pleasantly surprised to realize that it wasn’t as bad as I imagined. Of course nothing can compare to an unimpeded view of the Hudson River from Olana’s hilltop perch but the view through the “screeney blinds” was acceptable. We left Olana rethinking our previous stance on the “screeney blinds” question and took a quick drive across the Rip Van Winkle bridge to take a look at Thomas Cole House which had the same “screeney blinds” but in white to see the different options available to us.
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| Olana State Historic Site - it sits on a magical hill that has flowers and blue skies even in the middle of January (at least that's what I am pretending, having lifted this picture off its website) |
After all of the “site”-seeing ( a little historic house humor for you) we were ravenous as we hadn’t stopped for lunch and it was about 5pm, so we crossed the Rip Van Winkle bridge one more time and took the road to Mexico. To be a little more precise – to Mexican Radio a great Mexican restaurant in Hudson, NY which incidentally serves phenomenal pitchers of raspberry/blackberry margaritas – not that I know that from first hand experience – a little birdie (recovering from severe head trauma as the result of a car accident) told me.
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| People whose conscience weighs heavily on them for some crime they have committed will often turn to drink. I know when an evil deed has stained my soul I prefer to drink something fruity and colorful. |
Thus ended our road trip, although the Director and the Curator went on another trip the next day to The Hyde Collection in Glens Falls, NY to take a look at what that site did with their window restoration. They used tinted Plexiglas on the interior which they covered with sheer curtains that made the tint practically invisible. The Light Guru created a complicated and extensive artificial lighting system in their rooms that was so genius it is difficult for a visitor to tell where the light in the room comes from.
As of now, taking in all of the observations made on the trips to different sites as well as the opinions of different experts in the field, the Curator is leaning heavily toward blocking the visible light in our museum with shades. There is a meeting scheduled for this Wednesday with our architectural team and a “Shade Lady” after which a final decision will be made as to how we want to tackle the issue of visible light.
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