By 3 p.m. on Saturday’s celebration of Theodate Pope Riddle’s 138th birthday, 135 people had visited the Hill-Stead Museum, and later champagne and cake were served.
    Riddle was the architect who designed the Colonial Revival house for her parents, which was completed in 1901.  Since she was not yet a licensed architect, the prestigious architectural firm McKim, Mead & White prepared the final drawings of the estate.
   Museum Director Sharon Stotz played Theodate in an elegant lace-accented period costume during the celebration.  Stotz and docents interpreted the rooms, which contain original furnishings, and they described historical vignettes of Pope Riddle’s life and accomplishments.
    Pope Riddle studied architecture and became licensed to practice in New York and Connecticut during a time when few women were architects and when women were not allowed in mainstream academic society, a society that was reserved for men.  She studied architecture at Harvard where she was allowed to sit at the back of the room with a screen around her so the male students wouldn’t be corrupted by her feminine presence.
    Docents explained that she lost some clients when they found out she was a woman.  Yet, she experienced success, and she designed a public elementary school in Naugatuck, the Westover School for Girls in Middlebury, and Avon Old Farms Boys School.
    Pope Riddle was a hands-on architect.  She personally supervised the building of her architectural projects, and she ran the Westover School and designed the curriculum, which included craftsmanship.  The design of private homes and the restoration of the Teddy Roosevelt home in Manhattan were among her projects.
    Born in 1867, she lived in the house from 1901 until her death in 1946.  She was married to John Wallace Riddle in 1916.
   Visitors to the estate who are interested in architectural design, original paintings by Monet, Manet, Degas, Cassatt, and Whistler, period furnishings, leather-bound literature, and a closet full of beautiful period gowns will not be disappointed.
    Victorian Empire style mahogany furnishings abound in wall-papered and fielded panel rooms, along with a 17th century Georgian-style pie crust pedestal table, a Shaker rocking chair, Chippendale, Sheraton, a Steinway baby grand piano, and an early 18th century French commode inlaid with ormolu trim and a red marble top.
    Hill-Stead Museum house tours, museum shop, grounds, gardens and trails are located at 35 Mountain Road in Farmington.

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    Jack Sustic, Museum Curator at the National Arboretum, is responsible for all the plants at the Bonsai and Penjing Museums.  Sustic explained that it’s important not to talk in absolutes with bonsai and penjing because there are exceptions.
    The difference between the Japanese and Chinese art is that the Japanese art is called bonsai, while the Chinese call it penjing.  Figurines are generally found in penjing but not in bonsai.  Penjing generally allow exposed roots but not bonsai.
    Bonsai aesthetics wouldn’t usually have a white pot and believe the plant is the most important thing.  A post or anything else becomes a frame for the plant.  Penjing aesthetics view everything that makes up the composition as important, the pot and all.
    “The bonsai art of growing plants in pots began in China, went to Korea, then went to Japan,” he said.
    Sustic first became interested in bonsai while in the US military in Korea.  He later studied under John Naka, and he has studied in both the US and Japan.
    He said there are several misconceptions about the art of bonsai:  “People believe that the small pot keeps the plants small, which is partly true, but pruning is necessary.  The branches are pruned regularly and the roots are pruned every 3-5 years so that new roots will grow and the plant will stay healthy.  The plants are not dwarf plants.  They are normal plants one finds growing anywhere.  Anything that gets a woody trunk can be a bonsai.”  Fruit, flowers, and pinecone size on bonsai won’t reduce in size, so the bonsai gardener usually pulls those off the tree.
    A bust of John Y. Naka is in the North American Bonsai Pavilion entrance.  Naka grew the Goshin (protector of the spirit), shown in the Pavilion.  It is the most famous bonsai in the world.  There are 11 trees in Goshin, representing Naka’s 11 grandchildren.  “Anyone who knows bonsai knows John.  Unfortunately we lost him last year.  He died at the age of 89.  He used to come out every May and he had his plane ticket to come this year.  He went into the hospital a week before he was supposed to come.  It’s hard to believe.  He was such a bright light in the bonsai world,” said Sustic.
    The International Pavilion, near the Penjing and Bonsai Museums, has information, education, cultural displays, and houses the most extensive library dedicated to the art of bonsai in the US.
        A Chinese Scholar’s studio can be seen in the Penjing Museum, along with rotating exhibits.
When Sustic gets a frantic call from someone who has an ailing bonsai, it’s usually an outdoor plant that has been kept inside.  He tells the caller:  “Take the bonsai off the coffee table and put it outside.”  The caller says, “How did you know it’s on the coffee table?”
    The National Arboretum is located in SE Washington, at 3501 New York Ave (Route 50) and Bladensburg Road. 

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Flying High In Aviation History
Events Offered For Children During Presidents’ Week

By Tricia Stuart

    Caroline d’Otreppe, the director of educational programs at the New England Air Museum, loves planes and the people who have made flight history.  “Women involved in all aspects of flight fly in from all parts of the U.S. to help share their stories,” she said.
    Beginning Feb. 24, Tammy D. Richardson will play the part of Bessie Coleman, the first African American female licensed pilot in America, for Black History Month, at 12:30 p.m. and 2 p.m.
    Women skydivers, corporate and military pilots, balloonists, and aerospace engineers have come to the museum to share their stories and to help spread the word that women have played a large part in aviation history, a part they continue to play.
   A Lockheed Model 10E Electra, identical to the plane Amelia Earhart flew, is exhibited in the Civil Aviation Hangar.  Earhart was the first female to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean (1932) and the first to fly from Honolulu, Hawaii, to Oakland, Calif. (1935) in the first trans-Pacific solo flight by a woman.
   “Connecticut has had such a rich history of aviation,” d’Otreppe says, “and we have 256 aircraft engines in storage, largely due to Pratt Whitney being here.”
   As a result of the Pratt & Whitney Wasp C engine, larger planes could be built, and it opened the door to commercial aviation.
   d’Otreppe and volunteers work with school groups to fit educational tours and hands-on activities into their curriculum of science, technology, history, art, invention, and any inspired themes public- and private-school teachers choose.
    The New England Air Museum will offer a week of family activities Feb. 20 to Feb. 25, in exhibits housed in three heated hangars through tours, book sales, modeling workshops, flight simulations, videos, arts and crafts, and interpretations of the past and present.
   Visitors are guided through aviation history by viewing a timeline in the evolution of flight, and exhibits of landmark engines.  The airplane, helicopter, and other exhibits are sure to produce a nostalgic feeling and a visit to the museum is like entering a time machine to the past.
        Visitors can see a Silas Brooks 1870-balloon basket, the oldest air memento in the country.
   The Wright Brothers’ four-cylinder water-cooled vertical engine was rebuilt in the museum and run on the 100-year anniversary, Dec. 1, 2003.  It is the oldest running Wright engine in the world, and the first engine light enough for an airplane.  The engine runs 1325-1500 revolutions per minute, has 28-42 horsepower and weighs a trim 160-180 pounds.
    d’Otreppe pointed out a 1917 Fokker DRI Triplane replica of the German World War I pilot, The Red Baron.  “Originals were too fragile.  Originals don’t exist.  Early planes were made of wood, and had fabric covering a wire frame.”
    The Triplane replica was built in Russia with original Sikorsky plans.  The plane and plans were purchased by a Sikorsky descendant and shipped to the Sikorsky plant in Stratford Connecticut, where the building of the replica was finished.
    The 1920s and 1930s were an exciting time for flight.  The Hindenburg, a German dirigible completed in 1936, was destroyed by fire, and killed many while landing in Lakehurst, N.J. in 1937.  Despite the depression of 1929, new Wasp engines were developed in the early 1930s, and airplane racing had its heyday with the racetrack in the air, racing motorcycles, cars, and each other to set records in speed, distance and height.
    Visitors can see the B-25 Bomber flown by Jimmy Doolittle in World War II, in response to the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor.
    “You have to remember, most World War II planes were built by women because most of the men were overseas fighting,” said d’Otreppe.
    One of the most famous planes is the Sikorsky flying boat, used in World War II by the Navy to carry dignitaries such as Presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and the actor Humphrey Bogart.  The actress Maureen O’Hara last owned it.
    A flying boat was developed because “we didn’t have many runways back then so the plane needed to take off on and land in water,” d’Otreppe explained.
    O’Hara and her pilot husband Charlie Blair last used the plane in a private business in the Virgin Islands.  By the time O’Hara donated it to the museum, the plane had seen better days and the museum has a before-restoration picture of the plane.
    “The restoration was a joint project between Sikorsky and the museum.  A lot of the people who originally built it restored it.”
    The luxury flying boat had 16 passengers and a crew of 11, a kitchen for food preparation, and beds on board.  It didn’t have pressurized cabins so it flew below 10,000 feet, and mostly below the clouds.  A flight from LaGuardia Airport, with a stopover for fuel in Gander Newfoundland, to Shannon, Ireland, took 22 hours.
    Planes, helicopters, and missiles aren’t the only things that will be seen at the museum.  For old car and bicycle buffs, there is a 20 horse power 1918 Ford Model T Runabout, a 1935 Ford Roadster, a 1940 Midget Race Car, a 1936 Cord 810 Phaeton, and a 1939 Iver Johnson Bicycle.
        “There is a lot of cross-technology between cars, motorcycles, bicycles, and planes,” said d’Otreppe.
    “Sikorsky was probably the greatest aeronautical engineer of the 20th century.  Sikorsky had a mission to build planes that could save lives in inaccessible areas, like underwater rescue,” and so he built the flying boat.
    If just visiting exhibits at the museum isn’t quite enough fun, the space can be rented for events.  The New England Air Museum has had sleepovers for Cub Scouts and Girl Scouts, and neighboring organizations have reserved space for speeches, dinners, receptions, and even weddings and funerals.
    “A lot of grandparents come with their grandchildren.  We provide fun activities that are inside —out of the weather for kids of all ages.  We have 15 tour guides with different areas of expertise, and we match the expertise with the group needs.  Our tour guides flew some of these planes and helicopters.  Others were workers who built the planes or worked on the space program.  The people are living historians who share their stories with the next generation.  It’s exciting to be part of that,” said d’Otreppe.
    Tours are given for groups of 20 and the tours are geared to the group’s objectives for learning.  The planes are on wheels, so the exhibits change, and kiosks and hands-on activities change.

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Culinary Institute Trains Chefs, Weekend Warriors
By Tricia Stuart

Violinist Concert Sunday
Joan Kwuon To Perform At GMU
By Tricia Stuart

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