On Saturday, right after I was welcomed at the Vent Haven Museum open house, I was asked if I’d been there before. “Yes”, I answered. “Several years ago.” I later checked to see when that earlier visit was and discovered that apparently — in my mind, today — several equals ten.
My only previous visit to the “World’s Only Museum Dedicated to Ventriloquism” occurred way back in 2011. It was during that short period when Oddment pages had not yet been totally replaced by blog posts. There is an Oddment page here. I joined a guided tour on that 2011 visit which made the information I received and shared on that Oddment page noticeably more precise and organized than what I’m posting here. That’s not at all a knock of the open house, and I encourage everyone to partake if they can. They generally do two a year and the second one for 2021 is just a month away on Sunday, June 13.
Today I’ll just share a couple of photos from each of the three open buildings. My first stop was in the building directly behind the house. It was built in the 1960s by museum founder W.S. Berger, and is the first building constructed specifically for the museum. There are hundreds of ventriloquist dummies in the building but I’ve chosen pictures of the string of past presidents and another small grouping. It is the smallest member of that grouping that caught my eye. It’s a replica of “Bull” from the TV show Night Court.
This is the collection’s first home after it was booted from the residence by Mrs. Berger in 1947. It is the garage left empty when Mr. Berger retired and sold his car. The middle picture is of eight dummies donated in the last twelve months. The museum typically gets 10-15 donated each year. There are also a few hundred dummies in this building but none more realistic looking than Penn and Teller.
Construction of the third building was started by Berger but he died before it was completed. It and the garage will be taken down later this year to be replaced by a new building that will offer several enhancements (including restrooms!). Be aware that these are not the only wall-of-bodies or shelf-of-heads photo ops in the museum which now has about a thousand residents.
I actually took this picture soon after I arrived but saved it for a closer. It’s Mike Hemmelgarn who made absolutely everyone feel relaxed and welcome.
The Jewish calendar is lunisolar, meaning it is based on both the sun and the moon. The more common Gregorian calendar is purely solar with no direct lunar involvement. All months of the Jewish calendar start with a new moon. A new moon occurs approximately every 29.5 days, so that the Jewish calendar can keep the months pretty much in sync with the phases of the moon by alternating 29 and 30-day months. Of course, 12 X 29.5 is a little short of the 365.24 days that it takes the Earth to circle the sun, so every now and then a thirteenth month is added to the year. The timing of these “leap months” is based on a nineteen-year cycle and there are other tweaks as well.
Passover begins on the fifteenth day of the month of Nisan, which is the first month after the vernal equinox. Because every month starts with a new moon, the fifteenth of every month is a full moon. Ergo, Passover always begins on a full moon. Being a week long, it always contains a Sunday. Rather than moving Easter away from Passover in 325, the First Council of Nicaea kept the scheduling just the same as it had always been and simply stopped saying the word Passover out loud. Oh wah, tagoo, Siam.
Like the Madonna of the Trail monuments in 
I knew nothing of this book or its author until just before it was reviewed in the Jefferson Highway Association newsletter, The Declaration. The only reason I learned of it that early was because the reviewer, Wayne Shannon, is a friend whom I happened to chat with by phone while he was putting his review together. He was quite positive in talking about the book but, like me, unfamiliar with the name Stephen H. Provost.
