A Taste of Omaha

Coming into Omaha from the eastern side of the Missouri River it is possible to get a good view of the skyline of Omaha.  It is dominated by the tall Woodman insurance building, as well as Century Link and Mutual of Omaha.  The Omaha World-Herald can also be seen as one enters the city, followed by the buildings of Creighton University, where my brother-in-law Chuck is a professor.  I was able to capture a bit of this skyline when we visited Heartland of America Park Friday, searching for a bit of supper at the Taste of Omaha food festival.

Heartland Park has a lake and fountain with a rather high spray of water, which becomes higher on a windy day, the likes of which we had on Friday.  While strolling around the park, and munching on our supper, we noticed a gaggle of geese deciding that they too wanted to join in on the fun of the festival.

The rest of this post will be my own taste of Omaha, which I will share with you.  An earlier building of Omaha can still be found in one of its older neighborhoods.  On Saturday we visited the Florence Mill.  It originally was the 1846 Winter Quarter gristmill of the Mormons, built under the supervision of Brigham Young.  We were given a tour of the mill by its current owner, Linda Meigs.  She uses the mill as an art gallery, and at the same time still proudly displays some of the very older features of the mill.  Currently, as part of her art gallery, she has a very unusual quilt collection entitled "The Serpent in the Story".  The small quilts feature a mythical serpent entwined in the ancient stories of mankind.   Also on Saturday we visited Omaha's Joslyn Art Museum, where we viewed another very unusual display of art, the Madame Curie exhibit.  The artist, Jennifer Steinkamp, has produced a 60 foot digital production of Madam Curie's garden.  The famous scientist was a avid gardener and the artist created a swirling projection of 18 flowering plants which Curie had in her garden.  While watching the digital video as it glided across the wall, I could pick out such plants as daisies, apple blossoms, rambling rose, periwinkle, Virginia creeper, to name but a few of them.  It was quite a mesmerizing display of art!  Outside of the art museum is a wonderful sculpture garden.  Unfortunately, because of inclement weather, we could not linger there very long.  One particular sculpture caught my eye, perhaps because it looked like so cartoonish and cheerful.  The artist is Tom Otterness.