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This morning my wife and I decided to go off to the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA.

I hate Salem. In the best of times the traffic is bad and the streets narrow. And, in October it is just a nightmare.
My family first moved there in 1639 and and lived there for 12 years. Then, he was offered a position as a minister in a town 40 miles south. For the following 361 years my family has been doing its best to stay out, and I do my best to continue the habit.
But, the PEM is a really great museum and we do like to go there.
So, when we aren’t in the fall, I will go.

Of course, once we got there we were greeted with a male statue of liberty doing football moves at people on the street corner.

Go figure.

This is the widest road in Salem.

We parked on the roof of the parking garage because it was a very nice day and a great view.

But, it was windy.

Last month when we went to the Smithsonian, we found a big ceremony going on and a big crowd.
Last week when we went to the Worcester Art Museum, we found the Flora in Winter exhibit and a big crowd.

But, the PEM in January?
We would be safe, right?
It is the down time for museums. We could have a nice leisurely visit knowing we would be some of the few in the museum that day. Right?
Wrong.

Two weeks after Chinese New Year, they were holding their Chinese New Year Holiday Special!

Chinese dragons, dancers, acrobats, etc.

Very cool. But, also unexpected.

But, we pressed on to the Native American special exhibit they were having.

Sadly, as always, the special exhibits don’t allow photography.

But, I really, really liked it.
The first piece alone was worth the trip for me. It was a view of Europeans as if the first contact Native Americans had written a National Geographic assessment of them as a people.
It was everything the Smithsonian exhibit wasn’t. It was smart, funny and very cutting to the people who did so much damage.
One of my favorite parts was in the silent film part where a Native American is exploring the lives of these new people and finds some underwear models and says “we have destroyed their culture as they are discarding their colorful native fashions and imitating us.”

The whale skeleton made up of lawn chair parts was also very interesting.
Many of the pieces were very good and a lot of them made you stop and think about things. Which is exactly what I like. (I did buy the book of the exhibit, but you probably guessed that, right?)

When we came out, the rest of the museum was still crowded and shows were still going on.

And, I mean really crowded. Like hard to get around crowded.

So, we went off to the other special exhibit I wanted to see where they were displaying some of the books from their library. Like this, one of the first travel books ever printed:

I also liked this one.

The irony of the president congratulating him on a bible saving his life from a bullet and sending him a new one, only to be shot himself later, seems almost like a Twilight Zone thing.

They had other books as well.

When we came out of that, it was still crowded.

We did stop at the gift shop where I got our godson a present for his upcoming birthday.
I hope he’ll like a dinosaur backpack.
The guy at the store asked if it was for me and I’d be wearing it home.
“No,” I said. “It’s for my godson who is turning 8.”
Pause.
“I’m sure this is what an 8 year old would want for their birthday,” he said.

We ate lunch at a very good chicken place near the museum and then walked around Salem some.
There was actually a sign about the “quiet neighbors” in Salem.