Muscatine the button capital of the world?[]
Well I have just arrived home from Muscatine Iowa with a full stomach and mix of good and bad memories. I ran into more than I expected not with the convention but the condition of the town I never knew that they were the button capital of the world with their large amounts of clams but now with jobs going over seas the town is pretty much abandon. I would only see a few cars and people around all of the houses were falling apart and I could see the buildings that used to house factories. On my way to the library I saw empty stores "closed, sorry closed, out of businesses, or available for rent" seems like the town is losing what they had and trying to keep the rest. The people there were good enough all the people were from different schools school of fine arts, school of combat, school of music and stuff like that. I just could not feel bad since I have all this stuff at my house and these people in Muscatine are feeling the backlash of the resection. When I woke up all the streets were abandon me and my Dad were just walking and walking couldn't hear anyone except the guy vacuuming the inside of town hall. I felt like I was in the middle of a Stephen King book sometimes. I could just see it walking down the hall ways at our hotel, "Come and play with us Chris! Come and play with us!" and I could see on the mirror llaw der then I would be following my dad,"Redwall! Redwall!" but that was a good book The shinning. You are probably bored of listening to me rant on now how about looking at the fair its self.
Public library[]
Me and my Dad decided to go to the library first and look at what they. The events were upstairs and I grabed my pencil and my packet of Redwall riddles and questions. Most were easy but I still need to figure out some more. They had a weaving area with Renaissance era tools and they would allow you to try it out but I was not really interested in weaving and went to the historical books. I had no clue what the herbs were but some ingredients was quite weird for example a type of water that was used to relive stress or a headache had ground up parts of a mans skull and it ahd to be someone who died a terrible and painful death and my question what do you do when supplies run low? Some of the books I was afraid to touch some dated back to the 1400's and still had the original binding but the person there said I could look through it. I finished my tour of the library in the music center where they had a puppet show but we missed it. They had someone there playing music in the back round and he talked about instruments completely irrelevant to Redwall books but was still fun to listen to. At the end he told us a pretty cool thing about this band he is in. In 1963 when Led Zeppelin was on their first U.S. tour they stopped by Muscatine (remember this was when the town was booming) they had a show there and the guy at the library opened up for Led Zeppelin! Preety cool with the history behind the town no?
Art center[]
Me and my Dad went here to check out the stuff they had going on there and when we walked inside we went into the art room and they had a lady there who's job is to re-write old text and she was making fancy signatures for people so I got one for me and my parents. When we made our way upstairs the place went from a museum to a house since it was built out of the first house in all of Muscatein. We went to the music room and ran into The Antiquas (no not the Northern Atlantic island) but a band from Iowa state who preform mid- evil music and one of them was a professor at Iowa university. They were very talented and I grabbed one of their pan flits on the way out.
The Discovery Center[]
Me and my Dad had trouble fiding this one since the Redwall style map of the town was very poorly scaled we thought that it was next to the library like it showed on the map but it ended up being 2 miles out of town! So when we got there I saw the archery range and I ran right at it (I love to fire anything) and tried out my poor archery skills at a target only 10 meters away and was having trouble hitting it. So once I felt like I cut of my figure tips off I wanted to see the heroes and villains of Redwall. We were looking for the animals and when I saw the otters and badger I noticed something Gee Lord Brocktree looks a little stiff. C'mon Mattias you look a little stuffy how about you go to the infirmary Log a Log loosen up! (if you did not get it yet most of the animals they had there were stuffed otters, badgers, mice, shrews, birds, squirrels) but they did have live hedhogs and they looked like little rolling pincushions! I saw a hare and it was looking at me like I was about to kill it can't blame it though not like I was though. They also had a ferret (yeah) but it was in the weasel cage and it was rolling on its back and went to sleep like any ferret. I also saw the rats and they were just well... running around so... I was hoping to see a live shrew but what I know about them they would have certinly killed and eatten each other by the end of the day and kill everything else if they could since they have poisonous siliva that they use in killing each other, mice, and squirrels included.
The family center[]
This was a preety good set up they had a local preference group that did mid- evil combat and they did a spoof of Romeo and Juliet and guess what I got to do a mock fight with a claymore against one of the perfumers and got a photo of me looking like an idiot with my sowrd hitting him in the head (we were only posing it). They took the 500 year old classic and compleatly mess it up from a tragedy and romance to a funny comedy and they had a guy play Juliet and he had a big beard and they had Romeo not love her/him and he was trying to find a way to get away form Juliet but the chores (the narrator of plays in the 1500's) trying to keep the play together. Not to spoil it but at the end instead of Romeo and Juliet killing them selves Romeo was running around the set trying to hide from Juliet and while they were running and the chores was yelling at them to stop while they ran past her she said, "You are supposed to be dead and you are supposed to kill your self!" so while they were running by she "killed" them and they said, "can we at least end the play properly!" it was funny and cool to watch the fight scenes. On the second day it was pretty much the guy who made the play saying "come watch it!" and I noticed he like the tv show changed the story for example he said Ambrose was a porky pine ?! he was a hedgehog! there is a difference! He also spoiled the ending to the play (what?) and made the abbot die later not on the abbey lawn after the fight I mean how could an old mouse survive being stabbed in the chest by a poison barb and be trambled under a battle and survive for a few more days? I think I am blowing things out of proportion though and should just calm down not like I could direct anything that could be called a play so I should not be judging others on their work if I can not do any better guess it is just me complaining as usual (I would make a good shrew).
I f you have any questions about the events or the history of the town just comment and I will try to answer them.