Old Stuff

 

The R.J. Reynolds company is based in Winston-Salem North Carolina. It was founded by Richard Joshua Reynolds who, in 1913, had this crazy idea that he should sell packaged cigarettes. Up to this point in time, most people would roll their own cigarettes. Nobody thought there would be a market for pre-packaged cigarettes. R.J. created Camel cigarettes (they used Turkish tobacco) and within a year the company had sold 425 million packs of Camels. Yup – he became one rich dude.

With all this money, Reynolds' wife (Katherine) decided that she wanted to build a country estate, complete with a village to support the estate. She decided to call it Reynolda. The house is now not only a house museum, but an art museum displaying art that the Reynolds had collected. It is quite an impressive collection – there was Mary Cassatt, Frederic Church, Thomas Cole, and Gilbert Stuart among others.

Reynolda

The swimming pool, bowling alley and shooting range were all added on by R.J.'s children after he died.  Those cages at the end of the pool used to house macaws. 

Old Salem is a historic district of Winston-Salem which was settled by Moravians in 1766. It is one of those living-history places where they not only have a museum, but they have history re-enactors who stay in character as they explain what you what you are seeing. I did not know anything about Moravians and learned that they are one of the oldest Protestant denominations. They are older than Lutherans by about one hundred years.

You have to walk across this bridge to get to Old Salem

I thought the gunsmith shop would be boring.  I mean, guns.  But, among other things, learning how to load a gun the way they did back in the 1700's was fun.  I was surprised how long it took to get the gun ready to fire.  If it were me, back then,  I would hide behind a tree until the gun was fired and then I would jump out with my sword and do the gun guy in before he had a chance to reload.  

At the bottom of this post (because I couldn't figure out how to insert it HERE) is a short video of the organ in the Old Salem church.  It would just about blow your socks off, it was so loud.

On the way to Raleigh, there had to be a visit to the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame.  So many wonderful musicians have come from North Carolina - this was a must see for me.  All I have to say, is what a disappointment.  The displays would have the person's name, maybe a few keepsakes or album covers and that was it.  I wanted bios, I needed to know more about both the people I knew about and also those I didn't.  

This was the Tori Amos display.  Oh, look - she had three right shoes and a couple of dresses.  

This was cool - the wall with artist's names

During a short stop in Raleigh, we went to the North Carolina Museum of Art Sculpture park. Deep in the woods, they had a Camera Obscura. It is officially called Cloud Chamber For The Trees And Skies. In this particular case, this was a small round building with a mirror on the top of the roof that projects an image of the outside landscape into the building. Side note: camera obscuras were important in the development of photography back in the day. You walk into this little hut thru a single door and close the door. It is pitch black in there, only a little light coming in thru the hole in the ceiling. As your eyes become accustomed you start to see trees and clouds. They are all upside down, but it is still pretty amazing.

Is this not wonderful or what?

Everytime I've been in the Raleigh area I have wanted to see the Duke Lemur Center – the largest sanctuary for strepsirrhine (lemurs, bush babies, lorises) primates in the world but each time the Center has been closed. Evidently, they are currently hibernating so I was again out of luck.