The shops and restaurants at Miami International Airport (MIA) are making another holiday into a festival-in-an-airport.
The @ShopMIAIntl Halloween Celebration runs through Monday and then picks up again on Wednesday – Halloween – with a witch greeter, Halloween candy, games, crafts, an inflatable Haunted House and plenty of discounts in many of the shops.
Philadelphia International Airport presents a marvelous and diverse program of both permanent and changing art exhibitions throughout the terminals.
In keeping with the season, one installation to seek out right now is The Repairer – eight large-scale glass spider webs created by artist Sharyn O’Mara in memory of the artist Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010).
Photo credit: Richard McMullin, Philadelphia International Airport
Here’s some background on the installation from the airport website:
Described as a “Grande Dame of American and European art,” Bourgeois is best known for her series of monumental metal spiders – the largest stands more than 30 feet tall. Although primarily a sculptor, Bourgeois also liked to draw. It was another medium to express her fascination with spiders and, in particular, their webs. Bourgeois had said that drawing was similar to a spider’s web: “it’s like the thread…it is a knitting, a spiral.“
Like Bourgeois’ gigantic spiders, O’Mara has fabricated similarly sized glass webs influenced by the late artist’s web drawings. O’Mara’s installation was inspired by Bourgeois, whose parents restored tapestries. Bourgeois once said, “The spider is a repairer. I came from a family of repairers. If you bash into the web of a spider, she doesn’t get mad. She weaves and repairs it.”
Look for Sharyn O’Mara’s The Repairer post-security in Terminal A-West through February 2011.
And, in the spirit of Halloween, here are two great cartoons my buddy Bob Rini found and posted on his highly entertaining blog, The Nine Pound Hammer.
This one is a Betty Boop cartoon that was banned in the 1930’s.
And this one is a very early Mickey Mouse cartoon.
Whatever city you’re in, there’s probably a museum offering free admission as part of Bank of America’s Museums on Us program.
During the first full weekend of each month, Bank of America ATM, credit and check cardholders get free access to 70 museums and cultural institutions in 28 cities across the country
One good choice this weekend: The Harvard Museum of Natural History, which has a Halloween-worthy tip sheet families can use to guide them through the galleries in search of scary creatures (snakes, bats, spiders, and more ) and a new Language of Color exhibition which explores how animal colors are produced, the ways in which color is perceived, and the diverse messages that animal colors can convey.
Halloween is here and hopefully you have a bowl of candy at the ready for the Trick-or-Treaters. Before they start banging on the door, grab some of those mini Snickers bars and read some of the scary travel stories folks sent me for this week’s Well Mannered Traveler column on MSNBC.com.
Gregg Rottler, curator of Flights from Hell Web site, helped me choose the stories to publish, but there were loads we didn’t have room for. And a couple I didn’t quite believe…
There’s way too much intriguing, puzzling and just plain bizarre stuff happening at airports this week. So as we head into the weekend, here are some items I’ve filed under “find out more….”
According to this article in the Los Angeles Times, the FAA may make the agency that manages Los Angeles International Airportand several other area airports give back millions of dollars – maybe $40 million – that it may have improperly given to the city’s convention and visitor’s bureau to help promote tourism in the area. Other airports have also undergone this scrutiny.
Airports ARE a city’s front door, so it makes sense that an airport would want to be included in the overall promotion for a city. The federal government gets that and, according to the article, allows airport funds to be used for “advertising, marketing and promotions designed to increase air travel at an airport…” But only “as long as the efforts specifically relate to an airport’s amenities, airlines and advantages for travelers.”
I’m going to find out more.
Meanwhile… where does an alligator wait for its flight?
In Naples, Florida – anywhere it wants to…
Earlier this week, the Naples Municipal Airportwas shut down for a while because an alligator wandered onto the runway, interfering with landings.
According to news reports, two Collier County Sheriff’s Office deputies, with no trapping experience, assisted in capturing the gator. One used the skid of a helicopter to pin the gator down by its tail. The other tied the gator to the helicopter with a rope until a professional trapper arrived.
And in Tucson, Arizona on Wednesday morning, security officers at Tucson International Airport discovered a human skull in a checked piece of luggage. The woman transporting the skull told the TSA that her boyfriend had given her the skull and that she was taking it to Philadelphia for Halloween.
On second thought, I’m not sure I need to find out more…
