Corning and the Fingerlakes

 Day 1: Corning Glass Museum:

As an amateur stained glass artist and an avid fan of Blown Away, I jumped at the chance to go to the Corning Museum. We started by hitting up all the demos. The glass blowing demo was first, where two artists transformed a ball of glass into a completed pitcher in only 20 minutes. The blower balanced heat, air pressure, and gravity to shape the glass while her assistant kept up a fascinating commentary explaining every step and stepping in whenever a second set of hands was required. Watching their unspoken coordination and their comfort at working close to the limits of the material was inspiring -  their familiarity with the constantly-changing pliability of cooling glass was clearly earned with years of practice. Each heat gives the artist about 20 seconds to sculpt, so they moved with an alacrity and efficiency that was as much dance as fabrication - but a dance driven by practicalities and more beautiful for it. I absolutely thought they had dropped the piece when transferring it between punts, but the smooth downward arc was an intentional parabola designed to minimize stress. What looks like an awkward pull or accidental sag quickly transforms into a arcing handle or a subtle spout.   An additional note of nerd-admiration: They had cameras in the ovens, protected by thermally-resistant borosilicate glass, a nice flex developed in Corning's research labs.

Almost immediately, we jumped to the hotwork / sculpting demo. Since we'd arrived early, the crowds were small and we were able to sit front and center. Entirely unplanned, this put us in the perfect position to watch the sculpting through the filter panel.  Like welding, hot-work is too bright to view directly; unlike welding, it is only painful and not blinding. The sculptors have glasses that attenuate the brightness, particularly in the wavelengths given off by sodium (the Na in soda flares particularly bright), and the filter panel was made of a large panel of the same glass (flex).

The sculpting demo was just as informative, as the host talked us through the techniques behind the sculpting, such as the difference between hot and cold joints, where to use them, and how she can tell (refraction layers) - and as she discussed we could see the very changes she was describing. She made an adorable penguin, the demo finished, and we headed into the museum proper.

The upper floor was dedicated to the science of glass, and I loved it. To be fair, this is the intersection point of several of my hobbies. Exceptional exhibits on fiber-optics (ranging from fibers a few inches across to those the size of a human hair), prisms, enormous space telescopes, and really nerdy stuff like why chromatic aberration happens and how to cancel it out by stacking multiple lenses with certain shapes and chemical compositions.

Lunch was down at the cafeteria, where I had a surprisingly good Pho, and then we headed to the exhibition hall. I enjoy glass artwork, I love playing with light, and the exhibition hall was delightful. They definitely weren't all wins, but there were several really clever experiments. 

The best, however, was this:

The population of the major cities on each continent, over time. Beautiful to look at, packed with data, and we spent probably 15 minutes identifying various wars and how hard they hit given cities and countries. It was nerd-bait, and my father and I were transfixed long after my mother had wandered off.

Soon, however, it was time for the "Glass Breaking" demo. As someone who has driven battlebots into bottles and attempted to cut a tempered glass table-top, this was familiar territory. I did learn you can use polarized light to highlight the stress concentrations, so now I really want to build a polarizing box for the hackerspace. The finale of the demo was a Bologna Bottle - differentially tempered glass similar to a Prince Rupert's Drop, where the exterior is hammer-proof but the interior will shatter with a tap. Cool to see IRL, but solidly 3rd place on the demo roster.

Then we swung through the gift-shop, which is as much a showroom as the rest of the museum (That cute inch-tall penguin from the demo? $40!), and made our way to the gallery proper.

Sullivan. I took a pic so I could draw inspiration from the shape-work.

I love old shit, so I read the first several exhibits with interest. The oldest relics of glass, the level of technology those relics required, mind-boggling antiquities. But as we moved on, we quickly realized just HOW MUCH glass there was. It would take days to give this section it's proper due - and it was all interesting work and well done, but almost exactly like the Vatican, it devolved to speed-skimming the Magna Opera of masters.  Tiffany was great, but a better salesman than artist. Special shoutouts to Frank Lloyd Wright, Lloyd Sullivan who did his style better, Vera Liskova, and basically everyone who did weird stuff with cut glass, that room was gorgeous.

Also, Ghost Walk under Infinite Darkness by Andrew K. Erdos (and shoutout to the museum staff who knew exactly what I was asking about and replied to my email within an hour!)

Day 2/3: Finger Lakes: 

To be honest, we didn't travel all this way for the Corning Museum, although it was totally worth it. My brother invited us up to an air-BNB on the Finger Lakes, and I automatically say yes when people invite me places I haven't been yet.  Corning was just on the way.

The entire Finger Lakes region is gorgeous, rolling rural hills that slope into one winery or another and suddenly plummet into lakes several hundred feet deep. While the winery part is a joke (kinda... there are almost 200 wineries, vinters, and cellars along the coasts), the geology is wild. Glaciers carved out valleys only 1-2 miles wide but over 600 feet deep, and then flooded them. We stayed in Dresden, a small town halfway up Lake Seneca, right on the waterfront.  The entire town is a few blocks across and charmingly quaint.

I'd love to tell you how brightly the stars shone, and how beautiful the Aurora is, but it was cloudy THE ENTIRE TIME. Luckily they were all altocumulus, so the horizontal views remained gorgeous.  We had a delightful time, visiting restaurants and wineries (the food was amazing, the wineries meh - but the soil favors sweet wines and I'm rather dry), and most importantly, hanging out with my niece who is kind-of talking, almost walking, and a delight. 

The next day, my brother, father, and I decided the day's main event was going to be kayaking in the lake. We had all independently reviewed the satellite imagery (because we're nerds, apparently) and decided the two options were the Naval Sonar Research Station a mile out into the lake, or the random stream 700 yards up the lake. Due to the wind, the distance, and a desire to retain our perfect record of never being shot at, we chose the stream!  They both took kayaks, and I grabbed a paddle-board with a kayak paddle (faster, but wetter) and we all headed down the coast. 

After the half-mile paddle (I measured afterwards), we got to the Keura Lake Outlet! This stream connects to the next finger-lake over, but there were a few dams along the way. We didn't expect to be able to make it... but we also weren't going to quit unless we were forced to. Full speed ahead!  We'll call in a pickup if we make it the whole way.  The alluvial delta emptying into the lake had a few options through it, so I stood up on my paddleboard to plot a good course. And promptly fell in. Wildly, the water was pleasant. The Finger Lakes are legendary for their chill, averaging 39F year-round, with only slight surface-warming in the summer. Must be a shallow river.

We headed up-stream, fighting under or around driftwood, and avoiding the channels shallow enough to beach us. Battling the flow and heading upstream, we counted literal dozens of osprey over us, uncountable number of catfish beneath us, and enjoyed nature in it's glory. After a quarter mile, everything clicked.  The stream split in half. Half continued straight, increasingly shallow, and left veered off past a grate/fence towards a powerplant in the distance, rushing fast and bath-water warm. Later we did some research and discovered this powerplant doubles as a bitcoin-mine, diverting power to wherever profits lie at the moment, but always pumping out heat. No wonder nature loves the outfall.

Orange: Out.     Pink: Back.      Red: Several bad ideas all at once, saved for next time.

We headed another quarter-mile up a markedly colder stream, carefully exploring and zigzagging to wherever was deepest. Even sitting on the nose of the paddleboard to lift the fin from the water, I began to ground out.  None of us were looking forward to miles of portage, so we decided to head back. The float back to the lake was quick and delightful, and then we had to get home.

Which was now significantly up-wind.  It was a long sustained burn, all of us ducking low, digging deep, and thinking little.  About half-way across I sprinted into my brother's draft in an attempt to almost-literally ride his coattails....  but the chop meant staying in the draft was a fight with every stroke, and I soon gave up and resigned myself to the slog. On the upside, after the exertion the frigid water almost felt tempting.  We still had to force ourselves, and had to dive in rather than ease in, but of course we did it. Sooo much colder.

Corning was on our way to the Lakes, Watkins Glen was on our way back from the Lakes.   As the glaciers retreated and the surface ice melted, this valley remained as the best path down, leading to eons of erosion and a slot canyon over 400 feet deep.  In the 1860s - recent by geological standards - paths were carved into the banks for tourists, and these paths (or at least their modern replacements) are fantastic. Carefully balancing the beauty of nature with the human desire to go touch it, they wend back and forth across the glen, vaulting over bridges and cutting beneath waterfalls.  At times we had to skip from rock-to-rock, and once jumped up on the railing (even my 60y/o mom!) to tightrope past a flooded section of trail, but all of that only made it more fun.

It's beautiful from an artistic perspective, you can go geologist and start evaluating rock layers, or you can indulge your inner hydrologist and examine bowels and cascades. The stream and the valley keep the temperature comfortable, at least in the summer months. We hiked most the way up the canyon, taking the requisite pictures through waterfalls, and I got a bit distracted trying to shoot ultra-high-speed video. After we got to the top of the canyon, the path split. Half of us took the high-and-dry route back over the top, my father and I decided more canyon more better and did the whole thing in reverse, which offered a new perspective and felt more like a different trail with familiar themes than a repeat. If you ever visit the Finger Lakes, this is my only must-do recommendation. 

Day 4: Baby

To be honest, even the lakes were an afterthought. My other brother invited us up to meet my new niece, Ada Marie.  She is four weeks old, and she is perfect.