Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion

Posted on October 9, 2013 by barbara

With the celebration of Halloween this month I thought it would be a great time to do a post about Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion located in Anaheim, CA. There is a Haunted Mansion attraction located in the other Disney Parks: Walt Disney World, Tokyo Disneyland, in Disneyland Paris it is known as Phantom Manor and the newest in located at Hong Kong Disneyland is known as Mystic Manor.

Back in the early 1950s, the original concept of Walt Disney’s Disneyland illustrated by legendary Imagineer Harper Goff was designed with an old manor house and adjoining graveyard on a hill overlooking the main street. Eventually the attraction was omitted from the plans and not included when Disneyland opened in 1955.

Years later when Disney was planning an expansion of the park to include New Orleans Square located between Frotierland and Adventureland, Disney Imagineer Ken Anderson was assigned the task of creating a story using the original concept of a “haunted manor” and developing it as a walk-through attraction. For inspiration Anderson traveled to New Orleans to study the architecture and designed an old plantation antebellum style manor in a state of disrepair. Disney had the plans revised because he thought a neglected looking building should not be located in his clean park. He famously said, “We will take care of the outside and the ghost can take care of the inside”.

Andersen came back with a new redesigned mansion and a basic story concept about a sea captain who kills his wife in a rage and then hangs himself when he sadly realizes the tragedy that he has caused. Additional Imagineers, Rolly Crump and Yale Gracey, were brought in to further develop the project. In the Disney tradition of fully researching a project, the Imagineers studied ghost hauntings and old horror movies for inspiration and they experimented with different types of special effects to further expand the basic storyline. Walt appreciated the ideas and the special effects that they were creating but he did not like the sinister stories that they were developing and the project was once again put on hold for several more years.

Disney announced the new attraction in 1961 even though Walt was still unhappy with the ride’s current concept. Construction on the building began in 1962 and the exterior of the “haunted manor” was completed by 1963. But the building stayed empty for several years as the Disney Imagineers worked on several other attractions for the New York World’s Fair of 1964-65 and then the project was further delayed when Walt suddenly died in 1966.

As the project continued a few years later for the newly renamed Haunted Mansion attraction, the concept changed significantly from a walk-through to a vehicle ride attraction using the Omnimover system that was developed for the Monsanto “Adventure Thru Inner Space” ride that Disney created for the New York World’s Fair. This new ride system would solve the problem of the original low capacity walk-through attraction. Now these new Omnimover vehices, renamed the Doombuggies, would be able to accommodate a much higher ride capacity using approximately 131 cars with an hourly guest capacity of over 2,400. These new ride vehicles would also help in the attraction’s storytelling because the Doombuggy could be rotated in any direction at any point in the ride and this would allow the Imagineers to control what the guests not only heard but saw throughout the ride.

Around this time Anderson left the project and several other Disney Imagineers, Marc Davis, Claude Coats and X Atencio, were brought in to develop the attraction’s interior. Coats was originally a Disney background artist and he wanted the attraction to be a scary adventure with a moody interior designed with endless hallways and a corridor of unusual doors. Davis was a Disney animator that wanted spooky characters and funny gags throughout the ride. X Atencio combined these two different concepts of scary and funny into an entertaining ride and he also wrote the lyrics for the ride’s theme song, “Grim Grinning Ghosts”.

The Haunted Mansion opened in August 1969 and the attraction was an immediate success and has proven to be one of Disneyland’s most popular rides. As mentioned previously in the post, The Nightmare Before Christmas movie, in October 2001 the attraction premiered the seasonal overlay featuring characters from Tim Burton’s 1993 movie and from mid-September to early January the attraction becomes “The Haunted Mansion Holiday”.

Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion Trivia

As noted earlier, the Haunted Mansion original building stayed empty for several years before the Disney Imagineers moved forward with creating the ride attraction. For this reason, the Haunted Mansion that is seen from New Orleans Square is just the elaborate entrance to the ride; the show building that contains the actual ride is located outside the park’s berm or boundary. The Disneyland Railroad tracks that circle the park are directly behind the Haunted Mansion and in order to reach the main show building on the other side of the tracks there is an elevator cleverly disguised as the stretching room that takes guest down and the hallway with the changing portraits is really a tunnel where guests are actually walking under the railroad tracks and the Doombuggy boarding area is located on the other side of the tracks in the main show building.
As guests travel on their Doombuggy through the Haunted Mansion attraction they will notice a raven in every scene. Inspired by the Edgar Allan Poe’s poem, “The Raven” originally published in 1845, the Disney Imagineers planned on using these ravens as the narrator on earlier versions of the ride. The idea never made the final plan but the ravens have still remained in their original positions in each scenes.
As guests travel through the ballroom scene in the Disneyland Haunted Mansion, just before leaving this section in one of the last plexiglass panels look for a bullet hole caused by a gunshot from someone years ago, it is cleverly disguised with a spider web.
Before leaving the ballroom scene look for the large organ at the end of the room being played by a ghost organist, the organ was actually a prop from the 1954 Disney movie “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”.
Originally in the attic scene there was briefly a “Hat Box Ghost”. Located near the end of the room, on the left there was a bride and on the right was a groom holding a hat box. The groom’s head would slowly disappear and then reappear inside the hatbox and then the illusion would continue cycling back and forth. The special effect never worked quite right and was soon removed from the attic scene and the bride was repositioned from the left to her present position on the right side.
One the signing busts at the end of the graveyard scene is not Walt Disney. The bust that is confused as being the face of Walt is actually modeled after Thurl Ravenscroft who provides the deep bass voice heard in the theme song of the Haunted mansion, “Grim Grinning Ghosts”. Ravenscroft sang in a popular quartet known as the Mellomen that provided backup vocals for many popular recording artists such as Rosemary Clooney, Bing Crosby, Doris Day and even Elvis Presley. The group went on to sing in several Disney movies, such as Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan and Lady and the Tramp. Ravenscroft is best known as the voice of Tony the Tiger from the cereal commercials.

Be sure to check out the five part Disneyland series for information about the history and park information about the eight different “lands”. Part One – The history of Disneyland, Part Two – Main Street and Fantasyland, Part Three – Adventureland and Frontierland, Part Four – New Orleans Square and Critter Country, Part Five – Tomorrowland and Mickey’s Toontown.

“The Nightmare Before Christmas” movie

Posted on October 7, 2013 by barbara

One of our favorite family traditions at Halloween every year is watching “The Nightmare Before Christmas”. I must be honest and say that when I first saw the movie I did not like it but over the years I have come to enjoy this quirky movie by Tim Burton. When we lived in California, we also went every year to see the Haunted Mansion in Disneyland when it received the annual “Nightmare Before Christmas” overlay with the characters of Jack Skellington, Zero, Sally and Oogie featured throughout the attraction. (Please see the post, Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion, for more information on this iconic attraction)

Tim Burton was born in Burbank, CA in 1958 and as a teenager he started making short films using the stop motion animation technique. After graduating from Burbank High School, Burton studied at the California Institute of the Arts located in Valencia, CA. Founded and created by Walt Disney in the early 1960s the university, known as CalArts, was created specifically for the visual and performing arts which Disney used as a resource for their future employees. Interestingly, some of Burton’s classmates were John Lasseter and Henry Selick.

Eventually Burton went to work as a Disney animator and in 1982 he had some mild success with an animated six minute stop action short film called “Vincent”. At this same time, Burton wrote a three page poem, “The Nightmare Before Christmas”. Disney had considered developing the idea into a short film or possibly a television special. In 1984 Burton’s next film was a live action short called “Frankwnweenie” but shortly after the film was completed Disney thought Burton’s work was too dark and scary for children which was Disney’s target audience and he left the company. Burton went on to direct such Warner Bros. films as “Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure” (1985), “Beetlejuice” (1988), “Batman” (1989), and the 20th Century Fox film “Edward Scissorhands” (1990).

During those years, Burton kept returning to the story of “The Nightmare Before Christmas” but Disney still owned the film rights. Finally in 1990 Burton entered into an agreement to produce a full length feature film but due to the darker theme of the film, Walt Disney Pictures had decided to release the movie under their more mature movie division, Touchstone Pictures. Burton’s old classmate from CalArts, Henry Selick, was the film’s director and Danny Elfman, who Burton had worked with since 1984 on his previous films, collaborated on the storyline and co-wrote the songs for the movie.

By 1991 Selick had organized a team of animators and began the complicated and long production of the stop action film with a crew of 120 workers using 20 sound stages in San Francisco, CA. To film the movie they had created 227 puppets for the various characters in the movie. Just for the character of Jack Skellington there were over four hundred heads to allow for every possible facial expression, emotion and head position. The movement of Sally’s mouth was animated later through a different process utilizing ten different types of faces each with a series of various expressions and synchronized mouth movements. By this time Burton was involved in a previous commitment to film “Batman Returns” (1992) and preproduction for his next film “Ed Wood” (1994). According to Selick, because of Burton involvement with the other movies he rarely visited the set of “The Nightmare Before Christmas” during the two years it took to complete the principal filming of the movie.

The movie was released in 1993 and includes a cast of characters with the voices of Chris Sarandon as Jack Skellington (Danny Elfman provides the singing voice of Jack), Catherine O’Hara as Sally, William Hickey as Doctor Kinklestein, Ed Ivory as Santa Claus and Ken Page as Oogie Boogie. Although the movie received positive reviews for originality it only had limited success due to the darker and quirky style of storytelling. With the DVD release of the film in 1997 and the wonderful CD soundtrack of songs co-written by Burton and Elfman, the movie has become a popular with the general public and has proven to be a new Halloween classic.

With this increase in the movie’s popularity Disney Imagineers decided to take a chance and starting in 2001 the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland receives a seasonal overlay that blends the settings and characters of the original attraction and “The Nightmare Before Christmas”. The Haunted Mansion in New Orleans Square closes for two weeks in September to be converted into “The Haunted Mansion Holiday” attraction. “The Haunted Mansion Holiday” runs from mid September to early January then the attraction closes to have the overlay removed.

“The Nightmare Before Christmas” synopsis

As the movie starts we are introduced to Halloween Town which is filled with ghosts, vampires, werewolves, witches and other monsters. Jack Skellington, also known as the Pumpkin King, is the center of the Halloween celebration but he is growing tired of the same routine every year. While wandering in the forest he accidentally finds a portal to Christmas Town and Jack is fascinated with this new holiday. He loves the feeling of Christmas and the idea of Santa Claus with all the gift giving traditions. Jack decides to bring the ideas of Christmas back to Halloween Town.

Back in Halloween Town there is a rag doll women named Sally that was created by a mad scientist. Sally has begun to fall in love with Jack, but she thinks his idea of Christmas will be disastrous. Jack enlists the help of a trio of children named Lock, Shock and Barrel to kidnap the real Santa and bring him back to Halloween Town. Instead the trio brings Santa to Oogie Boogie who is a bogeyman with a fondness for gambling and Oogie decides to play a game with Santa’s life and he is in terrible danger.

When Christmas Eve arrives and Jack finds out Santa is missing he decides to return to Christmas Town and Sally tries to stop Jack. But Jack, now dressed as Sandy Claws, leaves on a sleigh made from a coffin pulled by a skeletal reindeer which is actually his ghost dog named Zero. Sandy Claws starts to deliver presents which are not lovely gifts but scary things like shrunken heads and Christmas tree eating snakes that terrify the children. Christmas Town is on alert and the military hunts Sandy Claws down while he is flying in his make-shift sleigh. After the crash, news gets back to Halloween Town that Jack (Sandy Claws) is presumed dead.

Somehow Jack survives the crash and lands the cemetery. He is sad that his Christmas plan has failed but his spirit is renewed when he begins to make new and exciting plans for next Halloween. Finding out that the missing Santa is being held by Oogie Boogie and that when Sally tries to rescue Santa but she also gets captured, Jack tries to save them both. Unfortunately, Oogie attacks Jack with metal playing card that keep popping up but Oogie is finally defeated and everybody is saved.

Afterwards, Santa reprimands Jack for almost ruining Christmas. As Santa leaves Halloween Town he makes the snow fall to show that there are no hard feelings towards Jack. The town’s people are at first confused by the snow (they have never seen it before) but then they begin to play in the snow and are very happy. Then, Jack notices that Sally is heading towards the graveyard and he follows her and finally reveals that he loves her too. The last scene ends with the couple kissing on the top of a large hill in the cemetery with a full moon behind them.

The Queen’s Jewelry Collection (Part One)

Posted on September 26, 2013 by barbara

Over the past months there have been two posts that discussed the Crown Jewels of England, Part One and Part Two. Part One detailed the Royal Regalia which is used in the Coronation of the British Monarch and Part Two had information on some of the other items within the Crown Jewels collection, such as Queen Victoria’s small diamond crown and the Queen Mother’s crown with the famous 105 carat Koh-I-Nor diamond. (yes, the diamond is that large!) This post will detail some of the items in the Queen’s personal collection; such as the George IV State Diadem, several beautiful tiaras and other pieces of lovely jewelry that have been passed down within the royal family.

By definition the British Monarch’s Jewels are a collection of tiaras, necklaces, earrings and brooches that are part of their personal collection. Queen Elizabeth II is the current British Monarch and for her coronation in 1953 she wore St. Edward’s Crown and for the annual State Opening of Parliament she wears the Imperial State Crown. (for more information about these two crowns please see Crown Jewels – Part One) According to tradition, the Crown Jewels never leave England, so when the Queen travels to another country she will wear one of several tiaras from her personal collection. In addition to a variety of beautiful tiaras, the Queen also has a lovely selection of necklaces, earrings and brooches that she will wear while attending the daily events on her royal calendar.

Listed below are some of the items from the Queen’s personal collection:

The George IV State Diadem

The George IV State Diadem was made in 1820 for the coronation of King George IV. The diadem includes 1333 diamonds, including a four-carat yellow diamond and 169 pearls, the circular frame alternates between crosses and a floral design which incorporate roses, thistles and shamrocks which are the symbols of England, Scotland and Ireland.

The diadem was later worn by Queen Adelaide, the consort of King William IV. Queen Victoria inherited it in 1837 and she wore it at her coronation during the recessional from Westminster Abbey. Upon her death in 1901 the diadem was passed to a secession of Queen consorts; Queen Alexandra, Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth. The diadem was worn by Queen Elizabeth II for her coronation on the procession from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Abbey and it is now part of the Queen’s Personal Jewel Collection. The diadem is one of the most easily recognizable items of the collection since it is worn by Queen Elizabeth in the image on the postage stamps, coins and currency of England; it is also worn in the annual procession from Buckingham Palace to the State Opening of Parliament.

Queen Mary’s Girls of Great Britain and Ireland Tiara

In 1893, this tiara was given to Princess Victoria Mary of Teck on the occasion of her marriage to the Duke of York, the future King George. Funds were privately raised and it was given by the “girls of Great Britain and Ireland” as a gift to the future Queen Mary. (hence the name of the tiara!)

The tiara is circular in form with diamonds pave set in silver and gold. Originally the tiara had 14 large oriental pearls at each top; in 1914 Queen Mary adapted the tiara to use 13 large diamonds instead of the pearls for a slight change. The tiara can also be worn as a necklace. Queen Elizabeth wears this tiara often and can be is seen wearing it in the images on the paper currency and coins of Great Britain.

Queen Mary’s Fringe Tiara

Known by several different names, such as the Hanoverian Fringe Tiara and King Georg III Fringe Tiara, the history of this tiara can be rather confusing. The piece started as a diamond fringe necklace owned by Queen Adelaide, the consort of King William IV, made with diamonds formerly owned by King George III and Queen Charlotte. The necklace was inherited by Queen Victoria and passed down within the royal family. Queen Mary had the fringe necklace remade into a tiara.

Later, Queen Mary decided to combine this fringe tiara with diamonds from a necklace that Queen Victoria gave her as a wedding present. The royal jeweler, Garrard, was brought in make a new tiara that used elements of these two pieces. The new tiara now included 47 bars of diamonds with smaller diamond spikes, the new piece can be converted into a necklace. In 1936, Queen Mary gave the tiara to her daughter-in-law Princess Elizabeth, the Duchess of York (the future Queen Consort of King George VI and later the Queen Mother).

The Queen Mother lent it to her daughter, the future Queen Elizabeth II, to wear on her wedding day in 1947. The tiara broke but was quickly repaired and in photographs taken that day the tiara can be seen looking a little off-centered. The Queen Mother also lent the tiara to her granddaughter, Princess Anne, to wear on her wedding day in 1973. The Queen Mother wore the tiara frequently over the years and when she died in 2002 the tiara was inherited by Queen Elizabeth II.

Cambridge Lovers Knot Tiara

In 1914 Queen Mary commissioned Garrard to recreate the tiara of Princess Augusta of Hesse-Cassel, her maternal grandmother, who was the Duchess of Cambridge. According to her will, when Queen Mary died she left the tiara to her granddaughter, Queen Elizabeth II. The tiara was later given to Diana, Princess of Wales, as a wedding present and she who wore often. After her divorce from Prince Charles in 1996 the tiara was returned to the Queen.

The tiara is French Neo-Classical in a design which features 19 openwork frames of diamonds in the form of arches with 19 graduated large pearl drops. At the top of each arch are lover’s knot bows with a large diamond at the center.

The Grand Duchess Vladimir Tiara

The Grand Duchess Vladimir, Maria Pavlovna, was the wife of the Grand Duke Vladimir Alexanrovich and the aunt of the Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. The tiara was created specifically for her in 1874 by the Russia royal jewelers and was a semi-circular band made of platinum with a design consisting of fifteen interlaced circles set with diamonds and a band of diamonds across the top with pearls drops and small diamonds mounted inside each of the circles.

With the start of the Russian Revolution in 1917, many Russian royalty members including the Grand Duchess fled the country but most of her fabulous jewels were hidden in a secret vault in the Palace. Sadly, Tsar Nicholas and his family were murdered by the Bolsheviks in 1918. The Grand Duchess lived exiled from Russia first in Venice, Italy and later she moved to the south of France. Her jewels, including the tiara were eventually smuggled of out Russia by a trusted British diplomat and returned to the Grand Duchess. When she died in 1920 her jewels and the tiara were given to her daughter, the Grand Duchess Elena Vladimirona, who married Prince Nicholas of Greece. As the family’s vast fortune was reduced, she sold several pieces of jewelry, including the tiara, to Queen Mary in 1921.

By this time the tiara was in very poor condition and in need of repairs. The tiara was refurbished by Garrard, the royal jewelers, and Queen Mary decided to make the original teardrop pearls interchangeable with her famous Cambridge emeralds. When Queen Mary died in 1953, the Vladimir Tiara was given to her granddaughter, Queen Elizabeth II.

Queen Elizabeth wears this versatile tiara frequently and it is also one of her favorites, sometimes she will wear it with the original pearl drops, sometimes with the Cambridge emeralds and she has even worn the tiara with no pendants at all.

Cartier Halo Tiara

This tiara was made by Cartier in 1939 and purchased by the Duke of York, the future King George VI, for his wife the Duchess of York. The tiara is designed in the form of a band with 16 graduated scrolls set with 888 diamonds.

As Queen Elizabeth, the consort of King George, she wore the tiara several times over the years before presenting it to her daughter, Princess Elizabeth, for her 18th birthday. When King George died in 1952 Princess Elizabeth became Queen Elizabeth II and for her 1953 coronation, the tiara was loaned to her sister, Princess Margaret to wear. The tiara was loaned most recently to Catherine Middleton for her wedding to Prince William in 2011.

The Prince Albert Sapphire Brooch

The day before their wedding in 1840, Prince Albert gave Queen Victoria a beautiful sapphire and diamond brooch. The center stone is a large oblong blue sapphire surrounded by twelve round diamonds and set in gold, the size of the sapphire has never been confirmed but it is estimated to be between 20-30 carats.

After Prince Albert’s death in 1861, the brooch became a very sentimental to Queen Victoria and she wore is very often for during her long life. When Queen Victoria died in 1901, this important historical brooch was given to the British Crown. Several Queen Consorts have worn the brooch over the years including the present Queen Elizabeth II.

“Granny’s Chips” – the Cullinan III & IV Diamonds

The Cullinan Diamond was found in South Africa and presented to King Edward Vii on the occasion of his birthday in XXXX. Several stones were cut from this massive diamond, two of those were the pear shaped 94.4 carat Cullinan IIII and the square shaped 63.6 carat Cullinan IV. Queen Mary had both these stones made into a brooch and they became known collectively as “Granny’s Chips”. When she died in 1953, the most of her jewelry collection, including the brooch, was passed onto Queen Elizabeth II.

The combined weight of the two stones when worn as a brooch can be very heavy. During her reign the Queen has worn the brooch only for very special occasions, the most recent time was for her Diamond Jubilee celebration in 2013. The beautiful brooch has great significant historical value and it is considered one of the most priceless items in the Queen’s Personal Jewel Collection.

For more information about the Queen’s Personal Jewelry Collection, please click on the link to Part Two. Also, if you are interested in more information about the Royal Family and their jewels, please click on the links to the following posts: The Crown Jewels (Part One and Part Two) and the Cambridge Emeralds.

H. G. Wells’ Birthday

Posted on September 21, 2013 by jeff0006

You may be noticing a theme here. Barbara is letting me write another post about another science fiction author. I think she will be surprised at some of the colorful aspects of H.G. Wells’ life I uncovered in my research on him!

Herbert George Wells (Born: September 21, 1866 – Died: August 13, 1946) was an English author known for his prophetic science fiction novels and in later life his comic portrayals of lower class society. His parents were servants who had turned shopkeepers when they purchased a small store with an inheritance. The shop was not particularly successful and his father supplemented their income as a professional cricket player. When the shop failed and his father broke his thigh ending his career as a cricketer, his mother went back to work as a lady’s maid. As part of the employment agreement the father and children were not allowed to live with her. Herbert was placed as an apprentice to a draper. Long days and poor working conditions made this one of the worst periods of his life, but provided experiences he later wrote about in The Wheels of Chance and Kipps.

Herbert’s education was erratic and broad. He attended Thomas Morley’s Commercial Academy and then taught at the National School as a pupil-teacher (an advanced student who taught the younger children). When his sponsor was dismissed he had a short, unsuccessful apprenticeship as a chemist and eventually wound up as a pupil-teacher at the Midhurst Grammar school where his Latin proficiency and science had been remembered from a short stay a few years earlier. In 1884 he won a scholarship from the Normal School of Science (now part of the Imperial College London) where he studied biology and physics. He studied teaching at the College of Preceptors (teachers) and eventually earned a Bachelor of Science degree in zoology from the University of London External Programme.

In 1891 Herbert married his cousin Isabel Mary Wells. The marriage only lasted three years and they separated when he fell in love with one of his students Amy Catherine Robbins (Jane) who he married in 1895. He had two children with Jane, but with the full consent of Jane he preached and practiced a version of free love and fathered several other children with other women. H. G. Wells in Love: Postscript to An Experiment in Autobiography chronicles this portion of his life. At his request it was published 50 years after his death to protect the women in his life.

Amazon.com Widgets

Politically Herbert was a socialist and who envisioned a classless world where everyone was judged by their merits, not their lineage. Many of his writings, especially later in life, were devoted to political themes. He was a strong proponent of the League of Nations (later the United Nations). His impact on politics was marginal but he did co-found Diabetes UK which is now the leading diabetes charity in the UK.

H. G. Wells was a prolific writer publishing both fiction and non-fiction. Few people know he wrote a biology textbook and eventually abandoned science fiction later in life for comic novels with discussions of social or political themes. What he is primarily know for are his science fiction works which have landed him firmly in contention as the “Father of Science Fiction”. He wrote many of these is a burst of energy between 1895 and 1904. These works include one of my all-time favorites “The Time Machine” along with “The Invisible Man”, “The Island of Doctor Moreau”, the “First Men on the Moon” and “The War of The Worlds”.

One of his short stories, “The Country of the Blind” is a tale of a man who is stranded in a valley where everyone is blind. Being able to see, he remembers the old adage “in the land of the blind the one eyed man will be king” and figures he has it made. Eventually he falls in love with one of the locals, but his petition to marry her is denied because of his obsession with “sight” that the residents of the valley cannot understand or grasp. They recommend having his eyes removed so he can become “normal”, but on the day of the operation he flees thinking it will be easy to avoid blind searchers, but it is not as easy as he thought. He sees that the valley is about to be destroyed by a rock slide, but they do not believe him. In the final version of the story rewritten in 1939 he escapes with the rock slide with his love. This is a short read and is really worth the time!

H. G. Wells’ works have been made into many blockbuster movies and other productions, but the most memorable of them was the October 30, 1938 radio production of “War of the Worlds” by Orson Welles. This was written as a newscast interrupting the regularly scheduled broadcast. It caused widespread panic among listeners and mass hysteria. You can see Herbert’s biology training showing through in that the world is saved not by military might, but by germs the Martians bodies cannot cope with.

I hope you have enjoyed this post. It barely scratches the surface of H. G. Wells’ life. Please comment if you would like to know more about this great science fiction author!

Jeff Jones

“The Rock Guy”

Posted on September 16, 2013 by barbara

Hello again, it’s Jeff. Today is National Collect Rocks Day (yes, there is such a thing!), and I will be writing about my rock collection. I have been fascinated by rocks since I was a kid and I think I have a very nice collection of different rocks and minerals. When we travel across the United States of our annual road trips I am always on the look-out for a rock shop … I can spend hours just looking in those stores (can you hear Barbara and Cassandra groaning just thinking about rock shops?).

When Barbara asked me to write a post about my rocks my first thought was making a presentation similar to what I have done a couple of times for Cassandra’s classes over the years. When she was in 4^th grade and again in 7^th grade I took a portion of my collection to the school and showed it to the Science classes. That’s where I got the name “The Rock Guy”. I have had kids come up to me years later and ask what a particular rock was. Quite an honor! While it was a lot of fun and I hope the kids learned a lot, an educational presentation doesn’t really fit with the style of Barbara’s blog. I thought I would talk about some of my favorites, why they are my favorites (even though it should be obvious), how I got them and any other tips I might have for you.

The first tip I have is one I learned from Barbara. It is if you have cool stuff, you really need to display it. What good are beautiful and interesting things if they are stored away in boxes in the attic? Barbara has touched on this in her post Decor – Displaying Travel Souvenirs. What you can’t see in the pictures of that post are the shelves to the left and right which have glass doors and contain my mineral treasures (although you can see some of my petrified wood on those shelves). Be forewarned though, displaying your treasures takes a lot of space. If you are not committed to the cause it is better not to get started!

One of my favorite groups of minerals are the different forms of pyrite, more commonly known as “Fools Gold”. It can be found in a number of natural forms and shapes, such as in cubes, spheres and my personal favorite the pyrite sun.

All of these were purchased at museum shops which brings me to my second tip. While it would be wonderful to have the giant, colorful, beautiful specimens like they have in museums there is a reason they are in those museums – they are rare and EXPENSIVE. To have something like that you need a lot of money and space to display them properly. I like to focus on smaller samples that are more affordable. Here are a few of my samples, not that big, but I enjoy looking at them.

Another of my favorite rocks types is granite and if you haven’t figured it out already, I have several HUGE specimens in my house. Where do you ask? My kitchen! When we remodeled our kitchen we went to this warehouse and got to look through hundreds of slabs of granite. We chose a Persian granite for the top of our island. I never get tired of looking at the different minerals and crystals there. We also have some granite we got from Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse. Not polished and the crystal structures are much smaller than our counter top, but cool none the less.

I am always looking for rocks and minerals. I found a beautiful piece of rose quartz on the side of the road in the Black Hills and some great slate in Kentucky, but I get most of my specimens in stores. Sometimes I get lucky, like when we were in Arizona one year and we had stopped for gas. I went in to see if they had a bathroom and found that the owner was selling petrified wood collected off of private property. I got these great pieces at a fraction of the cost than if I had bought them at the gift shop in the National Park.

I got this gypsum rose from a store in New Mexico that sold all kinds of stuff. It only cost me $12! What a find! I found one for sale on eBay about half the size for $90. I purchased this salt crystal at 75% off from a store in the mall that was going out of business. It is actually a lamp, but I pulled the bulb and this is how I display it.

My favorite deal was purchased in a small shop in the Black Hills in the off season. The store owner had just received a shipment of amethyst cathedrals and I purchased one for $128. An amethyst cathedral is a geode (hollow rock) lined with purple crystals. One of my more expensive purchases, but similar cathedrals sell for $400 – $600 each. The main rules are keep your eyes open and, most importantly, know what you are buying so you pay a fair price. If you have a smartphone you can always look up what you are looking at to make sure it is a good deal.

In closing, I want to thank Barbara for a number of things. First that she let me share some of my passion for rocks with you on her blog. Second, that she lets me buy them, pick them up and more importantly that she displays them so we can enjoy them.

Let me know if you have any questions or want to see any additional pictures. I would love to receive your comments. If you really want to help me out you can lobby Barbara to let me get something like is described here! If not that, maybe just a trip to BLM lands in Utah.

Sincerely,

Jeff Jones

The Enchanted Manor

a lifestyle blog by Barbara Jones

Category Archives: Miscellaneous

Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion

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“The Nightmare Before Christmas” movie

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The Queen’s Jewelry Collection (Part One)

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H. G. Wells’ Birthday

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“The Rock Guy”

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