N.C. college lockdown prompted by man carrying golf umbrella (twincities)
RALEIGH, N.C. - A major university in eastern North Carolina was locked down
for three hours Wednesday when a man carrying a golf umbrella was mistaken for
a gunman.
twincities
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Sasquatch Sighting in North Carolina
Flavorsome Delight : The North American Museum Of Natural History's 'Chocolate' Show Is Full Of Empty Calories
The "Chocolate" exhibition at the american Museum of Natural History ( on view until Sept. Four ) isno surprisea trifle. It softens in your mouth, not in your cerebral cortex. Charmingly undemanding ( if expensive at $17 a pop ), it's the throwaway summer blockbuster of museum exhibits, an institutional moneymaker directed at the sweet-toothed infant in us all.
And here I must admit that i am that baby. After following the floor stickers ( "This way to Chocolate!" ) to a Wonka-esque gold-scripted arch, I ended up winding thru a maze of history litejust enough info to get the point, nothing too taxingdutifully taking notes but with one thought pulsing inside my little lizard brain : At the end of this exhibit, there is a chocolate cafe. A chocolate cafe. A dark chocolate cafe. Round the time Spain was spreading the sweet stuff from the Mayans to Europe, I gave in and cheated.
I scuttled thru the exhibit, past the antique candy wrappers, and got a big bar of organic dark chocolate. Then I snuck back to the beginning. Now, speaking precisely, this is illegaland damn it, I support following the guidelines. Nobody wants tourists smearing Mars bars on the museum's spotless glass cases. But as a critic, I felt that it was vital that I work with all my senses.
Loaded up on the sweet stuff, I discovered that the exhibit does indeed cover the fundamentals. You have your wrinkly cocoa pods, your Mayan pottery, your commercial history of the cocoa trade ( with a pleasant accent on social justice ). You have got your shocking pellet of 1,500-year-old chocolate. Even better you have your photo of a gigantic Easter bunny, circa 1890. 5 feet tall, the rabbit has the chalky dignity of an Egyptian sarcophagus, and it stands, golemlike, beside it is its creator, Robert L. Strohecker. The label explains Strohecker is "the 'father ' of the chocolate Easter bunny"pretty much the best epithet one could hope for in this life.
Some of the exhibit's historical sections were a little on the imprecise side. "Almost one hundred years passed before other European states caught the chocolate craze," read one display's label. "Were the Spanish making an attempt to keep chocolate to themselves? And how did reports of chocolate spread? We're not sure." But there's just about enough backdrop to keep an intellectual candy-lover occupied. Among stuff I learned without focusing too intently : The ancient Mayans offered the god Quetzalcoatl ritual chocolate that was "a deep blood-red color." By 1930, there were forty thousand different types of chocolate bars. Chocolate contains the love-chemical phenylethylamine. ( Though the poster rather primly insisted that there is "no conclusive evidence it excites the libido." ) And do not feed your dog chocolateit can be deadly, and it is a waste of good chocolate.
At a few junctures, the facts-to-dramatics proportion dipped too low for even phenylethylamine-addled me. In one alcove, visitors find a movie screen showing the swirly legend "Chocolate meets sugar in Spain." This silent-movie caption is instantly followed by a video illustration : a gigantic brown tongue of melted chocolate pours down from the head of the screen, followed by a spinning drift of sugar. Then the solemn words appear again : "Chocolate meets sugar in Spain." That is the full extent of the display.
More successful is the panoply of defunct candy wrappers, each beaming guarantees of pleasure. "Keep the party perkin '! Woman, take a bow! Serve 'em nuggets, serve 'em chips! Glorious and wow!" reads one. Taken together, the wrappers form a record of cultural trends, from Brach's Swingtime ( named after the dance craze ) to the Mr. Massive Shaq Snaq ( named after the hoops player ). There's also a telephone-shaped chocolate mould, a hand-carved coffin in the form of a cocoa pod, and a snack dispenser that once dispensed Hershey bars for a penny each. There is not that much sociological depth hereI found myself pondering oddball subjects the curators might have covered, like the way chocolate images has been utilized to refer to black skin or the entire Cathy cartoon idea that women have some special biological need for chocolate, but a few of these tchotchkes are fun to take a look at.
Still, listening to my fellow exhibit-goers was often more entertaining than gazing at yet one more cocoa pod. After all , this is a subject on which everybody is an expert. "I would like to live in a chocolate house!" blurted out one thirtysomething fellow. A couple to my left started earnestly debating the difference between hot cocoa and hot chocolate. And a bescarved French matron, gazing up at a massive screen showing a minidocumentary about the modern producing process, started reminiscing in great detail about the famous I like Lucy chocolate-making scene.
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