The Famous New Yorker Wax Museum

The fourth graders at Aidan's elementary school present a famous New Yorker "wax museum" each year as part of their history studies. Each student is assigned a person, researches that person, writes a short bio and then portrays that person in a presentation to their fellow students, friends and families. Aidan's class portrayed people from government and local history, another class portrayed people who changed history and the final class portrayed assorted famous (and presumably infamous) people.

Aidan was assigned the role of DeWitt Clinton - you know him, right? When Aidan started to tell me about him, I realized that I did know one fact about him, that he was one of the main forces behind the creation of the Erie Canal and the first version of the canal was often called "Clinton's Ditch". He was also governor of New York, a U.S. Senator and the mayor of New York City.

We had to provide Aidan with a costume or props for his presentation. Since I am not an expert in historical clothing nor am I a seamstress, we decided to work off the Clinton's Ditch portion of the bio and outfit Aidan with a shovel. We also pinned a "I LOVE NY" button on his shirt, since Clinton had served our state well in his lifetime.

Last Thursday afternoon the wax museum opened. Aidan and his classmates were arranged around the classroom with red circles in front of them, which were pretend buttons that the viewers could press to bring the character to life. Aidan did a marvelous job of remembering his lines and delivering them in a clear voice:

I also viewed our neighbor, Bailey, as Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, and heard the bios of Mayor Bloomberg and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Then I popped next door to see some of Aidan's Cub Scout friends. Most of the students did an excellent job of remembering their lines and I learned a bit more about some of the interesting people in our state's history. It was a better experience, I am sure, than going to the wax museum in Lake George.

Continuous improvement

It is the first day of June (eek!) and time to take a quick look back at the goals I set for May and set the goals for June. In May, I continued with the health-related goals of walking three times a week, not snacking and cutting down on food portions. I did really well with the walking, usually going more than three times a week, and I did quite well on not snacking. Portion control? Not so well. The truth is that I like to eat and I cook really good meals, so cutting back on the amount is difficult for me.

I also had a knitting goal in May, to finish an end of year gift for Aidan's classroom teacher. It is not yet done, but is about 80% complete so I am pleased; it will not be a problem to get it done by June 20, the last day of school.

All in all, I say that May was a success. There may be people who would disagree with me, saying that I did not meet all of my goals. To me, the purpose of setting goals or making resolutions is to bring about change; by setting these goals, I am able to keep the changes I want to make first and foremost in my thoughts, and steadily work towards those goals. So while I may not necessarily achieve each goal completely, I am making continuous improvement - and that, for me, is an achievement.

I will be a bit repetitive for June: walk three times a week, limit my snacking and, once again, try to decrease meal portions. With the end of the school year looming (eek!), that is about all I can focus on this month. In July, maybe I will add a new and exciting goal to my list.