A Visit to Corning, New York

It rained so hard last night that Noah would have been sure this was The Big One.  We slept through most of it, but when we awoke this morning, we had no power.  Hmm.... apparently no AC from the campground, but, more mysteriously, no DC from our batteries.  This could be bad.

We got dressed, made our coffees by boiling water on the propane stove in the kitchen (gotta have that Joe - trouble was, the only ground coffee we had was Wawa pumpkin spice coffee, which we normally dilute with regular coffee as an occasional treat; it was mighty strong on its own) and started diagnosing the problem.

David checked and determined that the campground power was out, so at least that was the evident cause of the lack of AC power.  There was so much water lying around on the campsite (inches!) that we wondered if our electrical connection had shorted and maybe blown something critical to the whole system.  We still didn't know what had caused the DC outage.  It occurred to Kathy that perhaps our trailer's "kill switch" had been somehow pulled, which would kill all electricity from the batteries.  David went out and checked the exterior kill switch.  Sure enough, it was thrown.  Simple as that.  David pulled it on, and - voila - lights and other DC stuff.  Still, the mystery remained how our kill switch had been thrown, because it's inside a locked enclosure. We scratched our heads over this, but at least were relieved that nothing had happened to our electrical system.

We decided to go ahead with plans to visit Corning Museum of Glass (our rainy day itinerary), and figured the campground electricity would be brought back up later in the day while we were gone.  As it happened, we got the AC back before we left, which gave us some peace of mind about how quickly we might have run down our batteries.  However, mysteriously, our water pressure was still gone, and we surmised that the campground water depended on a pump with AC power - but we couldn't understand why the pump wouldn't resume and water pressure be regained with the AC power.

Anyway, off we drove to Corning.  We stopped at the campground office, only to learn that, while our section of the campground had its electricity restored, the upper section, where the water pump is located, was still dark.  Mystery solved.

It's only a 15 mile drive to Corning from our campground, and the road is pleasant with rolling hills, farms and green-leaf-springing trees.  This morning, however, the scenery also included many streams overflowing their banks in mocha brown, and not a few flooded lawns and fields. We saw that sections of the region were still power-free to the west of our campground.

Corning, however, had power, and as we pulled into the parking lot, we could see that the museum was open.  We parked Great White and made our way to the museum entrance:

The Museum is well worth a visit.  In addition to some really well designed exhibits on various subjects relating to glass (see more below), the Museum has a daily schedule of live demonstrations.  The most dramatic is the Hot Glass Show, where technicians demonstrated how to make a beautiful fluted, wide-mouth bowl, from start to finish:

There were TV monitors to help you see the glass-blowing up close.  There was even a camera placed INSIDE the kiln so that you could see the glass object FROM THE INSIDE as it was placed inside to be heated.  You could watch the artisan's skill in rotating the glass to keep it from losing its shape and melting into a puddle.

A substantial number of tourists attending the demonstration were Chinese, and the presentation was narrated in both English and Chinese.  You can see the Chinese narrator dressed in red in the photo above.  The English narrator is in the center, and the artisan who was responsible for most of the glass-blowing work is on the right.

A big surprise was that, at the end of the demonstration, the presenters raffled off a fluted bowl just like the one they made.  A lucky woman walked away with a treasure!

After the Hot Glass Show, we skipped over to the Flameworking demonstration, where an artisan with a blowtorch demonstrated how to make a glass beaver statue just with her two hands and a couple of simple tools.  Again, there was a monitor that allowed us to look at what she was doing as closely as if we were standing right over her:

A third live demonstration illustrated the physics and chemical principles underlying glass fiber optic cable, which was invented at Corning.  We learned the history of glass fiber optics as well as the properties of the fiber optic cable that make it work.

One option we didn't have today was to blow our own glass ornament.  There were workshops to make glass objects by flameworking, fusing glass or sandblasting, but they cost extra and we really only wanted to try the glass blowing, or "hot glasswork" - so we passed on that opportunity.

It was time to tour some of the exhibits.  We learned more details about glass fiber optic cables, and then continued on to a fascinating exhibit that explained the history and technology of glass lenses and mirrors for telescopes, including the glass mirror Corning built for Mt. Palomar's telescope.  The exhibit included a demonstration of how the focal length of a glass mirror works, but letting us walk up to and great our own reflection, which first appears upside-down, and then flips right-side-up when we reach the correct focal length.  Here are Kathy and Kathy's Reflection helping David's Reflection demonstrate it all:

The exhibits of Contemporary Glass Art are NOT TO BE MISSED.  The richness and variety of technical and artistic styles are breathtaking.  Here was one piece that took Kathy's fancy:  iron objects holding "melting" glass forms:

We both liked this piece, which was an entire chess set of glass pieces, featuring contending armies of Catholic and Jewish religious functionaries:

The colors that can be achieved with glass are simply unbelievable, although we learned that scientists have not yet figures out how to make black glass; "black" glass is actually produced, not by a unique coloring agent, but by an agent that produces one of the other colors.  For example, manganese oxide, which normally is used to produce shades of purple, will, when used in high enough concentrations, make a very dark color that, on superficial examination, looks black.

Here is one of the more striking examples of color used in modern glass art:

Two other exhibits not to be missed include a huge exhibit on the history of glass making, which includes innumerable archaeological pieces of glass artistry from the earliest years of glass-making (perhaps 2,000 B.C.) to today.  Another is a collection of Steuben glass.

Worn out by our study of glass, we walked across a pedestrian bridge, called "The Centerway," from the Corning Complex, over the Chemung River, to historic downtown Corning, sometimes called the "Gaffer District."  (A "gaffer" is a master glass-blower.)  In the center background of the photo below, you can see a white smokestack preserved from the early Corning Glass Works factory complex:

The pedestrian bridge has some interesting artwork on it, including a maze laid out in white over black asphalt.  Kathy tried her luck finding her way through the maze:

On the far side of the bridge, as we entered the Gaffer District, we came to the "Little Joe Tower," which Corning Glass Works employed to manufacture thermometer tubes.  It is said to be named after a well-known glass-worker who devoted his life to making thermometer tubing in the tower. The tubes would be made by heating solid glass tubes and drawing them out mechanically between the top of the tower and the ground.

A gate to the original Corning Glass Works adorns a small park near the company's newest, most modern glass building.  The archway, made of brick, is ornately decorated in glass art:

A casual walk along Market Street in the Gaffer District can produce surprises, such as this Dali-esque melting glass clock:

Robert Rockwell, a successful local businessman, established an extensive collection of Steuben Glass, as well as what is said to be the largest collection of Western Art east of the Mississippi. The collection is housed in the former Corning City Hall, which is itself an impressive work of architecture:

The building's trademark feature is "Artemus" the bison, who was named by a young person's winning entry in a contest, explained because "art is among us":

A highlight of our tour of Market Street was a stop at Market Street Coffee & Tea, a coffee shop and roastery, where we picked up bags of five different whole-bean coffees!  The shop occupies an historic building known as "The Boston Store," remarkable because it has the only second-story bay windows in the region:

The shop boasts over 20 different types of coffee that they roast themselves - an aromatic pleasure house!  We can't wait to sample some.