Info — Press Releases

Contents:

1. Miracle of America Welcomes Hell’s Angels
2. Getting into National Geographic
3. Freedom Day Celebration
4. Montana HOG Rally Riders, Welcome
5. Winter Poster
6. New Exhibit (Bobbin Lace)
7. Museum Displays Diversity
8. Ventriloquist at LHD

Miracle of America Welcomes Hell’s Angels
By Ned Wilde, 22 July 2008.

Just a scenic one hour ride north of Missoula Montana is the biker- and veteran- friendly Miracle of America Museum. For less than it'll cost you to get a gallon of gas you can see Montana's largest antique motorcycle collection and tribute to the veteran displays.

1941 Indian four-cylinder motorcycle is the most recent vintage restoration project of over 50 displayed iron steeds.

Harley-Davidson rat trike is an ongoing project.

Sonny Barger for President!

Another picture of the Harley rat trike.

Check out our nifty red and white shift knob.

Vietnam Veterans appreciate our support and sentiments.
Just a small portion of our tribute to America's Veterans.

Dear Friend,
I know this takes a few minutes, but we would REALLY APPRECIATE it if you could nominate:

• The Miracle of America Museum,
• 36094 Memory Lane,
• Polson, MT 59860
• Web site www.MiracleOfAmericaMuseum.org
• Email address info@MiracleOfAmericaMuseum.org
• Phone 406-883-6804
• Hours of operation 8-8 Daily Summer, reduced hours the rest of the year
• Open year around
• Handicapped accessible
• Private 501-C-3 corporation
• Rates: adults $4, AAA & seniors over 65 $3.50, children under 12- $1.

After nominating the museum if you still have time and desire you could also nominate:

• Live History Days
• the third weekend in July
• all other info is the same.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR HELP!
Below is the info we received — note the deadline of May 11!

Gil & Joanne Mangels

Greetings,

The National Geographic Society is developing a new type of community-based map for the Crown of the Continent region of southwestern Alberta, southeastern British Columbia, and northwestern Montana, the Rocky Mountain Front Area, Blackfoot Valley and Missoula Valley. In cooperation with a broad spectrum of local and regional partners, we're asking the public to nominate any place, event, experience, or activity that captures this region's beauty, diversity and unique feel. We're also looking for examples of what people in the region are doing to sustain these special values through creative stewardship initiatives.

Nominations might include great wildlife viewing or birding spots, local foods, an historic district, unique local businesses or places to stay, recreational trails, archeological sites, community festivals and traditions, a community forestry project … anything that helps tell the story of this place.

Go to www.crownofthecontinent.net to nominate that special place by May 11. Recognizing that some special places might not belong on a map of this sort, our web site provides guidelines that can help you determine whether to nominate it.

The MapGuide will be a valuable and handy fold-out info source for local residents who want to better know their own international backyard as well as far-flung visitors from around the world. The project specifically targets the growing number of travelers known as 'geotourists.' Geotourists seek experiences that maintain a destination's unspoiled sense of place and that complement rather than compete with the needs of local residents.

For more information, if you can't find it on our web site, please contact me.

Steve Thompson
Crown of the Continent Project Coordinator
Associate Regional Director
Northern Rockies Region
National Parks Conservation Association
PO Box 4485, Whitefish, MT 59937
Ph: (406) 862-6793
Fax: (406) 862-6753
sthompson@npca.org

'geotourism (n): Tourism that sustains or enhances the geographical character of a place — its environment, culture, aesthetics, heritage, and the well-being of its residents.'

“Because they served (and serve) we are free” is just one of the many slogans paying tribute to America’s armed forces at the Miracle of America Museum, Polson, Montana. This museum houses Montana’s largest tribute to our veterans. Much more than plaques, bronze statues or granite monuments, the displays create an atmosphere where visitors say they can feel the price of freedom. One middle-aged woman from California tearfully said, “Thank you for your museum exhibits! I can now understand my father better and why he wouldn’t talk about the war.”

The museum will participate in the “Freedom Day Celebration” and the 2007 Memorial Day Parade by entering a convoy of at least five military vehicles. The oldest will be the 1943 “Freedom Truck,” a 6X6 1-¹/₂ ton Dodge WC-62 weapons and personnel carrier.
Vietnam thru Desert Storm era vehicles include: the “mule,” a ¹/₂ ton platform truck with 106 mm recoilless rifle;
an M151 jeep with the markings of the “Rat Patrol” and center mounted M60 machine gun;
a 6X6 Gama-Goat;
and an M106 full track 107 mm mortar carrier. All weapons are deactivated. Veterans are welcome to ride in the vehicles.

The event schedule for the Western Montana Freedom Day - Armed Forces Memorial bridge dedication and 2007 Memorial Day parade in Polson MT, is posted at Polson Chamber, 750 KERR, Char-Koosta News, and the Daily Interlake. Get the 40 page official “Freedom Guide” in the May 16th Leader Advertiser.

Montana HOG Rally Riders, Welcome
by Joanne Mangels, 10 June 2006.

HOG riders drool over the vintage Harley-Davidsons on display at the Miracle of America Museum. Unfortunmately many "bikers" don't know about our growing collection of over 40 antique motorcycles and over 3000 pieces of cycling memorabilia. The photo above was taken a year or so ago — bikers are always welcome here.

 

The spinsters and knitters in the sun,
And the free maids that weave their threads with bones …
—Shakespeare, Twelfth Night.

Sometime in the 1600s an order of nuns set up a school in the historic town of Bayeux, France, just inland from Normandy's Channel coast, establishing a tradition of dentelle aux fuseaux, or bobbin lace. Using bone or wooden rods wound with fine threads of silk, linen, drawn silver or gold, lace was created by weaving and twisting a dozen to more than 600 bobbins around an intricate cluster of pins, often fashioned of fish bones. The nuns' laces clothed altars, trimmed vestments and other ecclesiastical accessories. Flanders, Italy and Spain also developed cottage industries in the art of bobbin lace about this time. In England, Queen Catherine of Aragon taught lace making while residing in Ampthill in 1531, and Flemish immigrants fleeing from persecution brought the art with them in the 1560s. Bobbin lace was passed down in a show- and- tell tradition of skill, patience and arduous toil by peasant women working late into the night after the daily chores were done, using magnifying loupes and a single candle magnified by water flasks.

Demand for handmade lace grew in the 17^th century, and women and children were schooled in its making. Until the Industrial Revolution, life's comedies and tragedies became interwoven with the history of lace. The finest, most painstaking laces assumed almost priceless value up through the 19^th century, becoming one of Europe's dearest articles of commerce. Lace was an insignia of rank and station, so highly prized that noblemen sold acres of land to buy lace made by poor women of the towns and countryside, who themselves wore 'beggar's lace' made from coarser threads. The greatest period for lace making was during the Napoleonic wars when no lace was imported and exports to America resumed after the War of Independence. Women and men were paid 25 shillings per week for working lace for ruffs, cuffs, parasols, fans and other foppish fashions of the wealthy and royal. Church leaders railed against such extravagance, demanding laws to limit how much or who could wear lace, while winking at elaborate christening gowns, wedding dresses and lace for court and state occasions. Vermeer's painting of "The Lacemaker" [Dentelliere], circa 1660 - 1670, hangs in the Louvre in Paris, and Maes' "Lacemaker" may be seen at the MOMA in New York City.

The intelligence, logic and mathematics behind the lace patterns and tools are on exhibit at the Miracle of America Museum on Highway 93, just south of Polson.

Pillow lace, bobbin lace and bone lace are all terms used for the textiles created on three kinds of bolsters on display. The 'cookie pillow' is a large, mounded and padded circle of velvet on which doilies, handkerchiefs and fans are worked. The continuous lace edgings are made on one of two kinds of rotating cylinders with porcupine- like bristles of tiny pins. Each pin supports a fine thread weighted by a pair of slender bobbins. The 3 to 5 inch long bobbins are a collector's delight, made from bone, wood, pewter, glass, brass or ivory. Antique bobbins may be carved, intricately lathe- turned, or inlaid with metals or exotic woods. Some are inscribed with names, dates and messages to commemorate events such as hangings, or to share romantic thoughts. One famous bobbin is inscribed, "My mind is fex [fixed], I cannot rang[e], I love my choice too well to chang[e]." On another: "Elisha Smith Goodman, Born April 9, 1824, died May 29, 1843, aged 19 years." English bobbins have a loop at the end for "spangling," a loop of beads, old coins or buttons to weight the bobbin and keep it from rolling around on a round surface. One imagines the clicking, tinkling sound of the bobbins being worked into yards of lace in the twilight in the Old World.

The lace patterns themselves are 'prickings,' or parchment perforated like a tiny stencil with the outline and inner shapes of the lace. A pin is strategically inserted in each hole of the pattern so that threads are woven and twisted in picots, spiders, braids, ground and filling designs for the most gossamer and delicate of laces.

Yet for all its intricacy and mystery, all bobbin lace consists of two basic stitches, the twist and the cross. Combinations of these two simple movements form the basis of all bobbin lace, and can be done with old- fashioned clothespins, string and a small pillowcase made into a stiff bolster that will support multiple pins. Pillows were traditionally stuffed with sawdust or straw. The small stands to support the pillows are called horses, maids or ladies. Some cylinder pillows were simply rotated in one's lap, with a pincushion hanging near, frequently shaped like a heart.

Hardly a lost art, bobbin lace is demonstrated every summer at the Living History event at the Miracle of America Museum. The museum is open all winter 8 - 5 Monday through Saturday and 1:30 - 5 Sunday. Rates are $1 for children and $4 for those over 12 (AAA & seniors over 65 - 50¢ discount to $3.50).

The Great Falls Weavers and Spinners and Lacers Guild meets to make bobbin lace, and supplies and books are available from Sweden through Unicorn Books, 1338 Ross Street, Petaluma CA 94954, (707) 762-3362.

Whether it's diversity of size - from the Paul Bunyan, a 65 ft. logging tow listed in the National Register to a bird-point arrowhead, diversity of cultures, diversity of opinions from the moonshine stills to prohibition memorabilia, or just plain diversity of exhibits from harps to Harleys, the Miracle of America Museum has something for you. Over 100,000 objects displayed and their very diversity make this museum unique. It has been nicknamed, "The Smithsonian of the West" because of it's many and varied exhibits.

"Where is this fantastic place located?" you ask. Well, the Miracle of America Museum is about two miles south of Polson, right on US-93. It's ³/₄ mile south of the US-93 and Montana-35 highway junction. It opens at 8 a.m. daily, year around. Busy summer days it usually closes at dusk and during the rest of the year, closes about 5 p.m. Admission is free if you're under 3, for ages 3 - 12 it's $1, and over twelve $4 (AAA & seniors over 65 - 50¢ off adult rate, maximum one discount per person per visit). Group tours are available.

Cars from a 1910 original Maytag auto, through a myriad of others vehicles to the mint '69 Caddy convertible, captures the hearts of many transportation buffs. Two dozen motorcycles from a restored 1912 Harley to a 1965 "Trike" and three large showcases of cycle memorabilia, interests others. Bicycles range from an 1875 wooden "bone shaker," an 1890's ladies tricycle and a tandem bicycle with its rubber tires glued to the wooden wheels, to a fancy 1950's model sporting nearly every gadget available. There are fire trucks, dump trucks, pickups, buggies, wagons, race cars, helicopters, an 1880's vintage hearse, and an amusement park train. The museum recently added a new 2500 sq. ft. automobile display building. The artifacts added to the transportation display in the last year include a full size steam RR switching engine and an A7D Corsair jet attack bomber.

Have we captured your interest yet? Well perhaps you'd enjoy an original oil painting by Merle Olsen, a pastel drawing of a pow-wow dancer by Pina Jo Miller, small bird sculptures by Ace Powell, or a spectacular wood carving by the late deaf-mute John Clarke, called "Cutapuis - The Man Who Talks Not" by the Blackfeet. His carvings have appeared in galleries world-wide. This museum exhibits a Clarke sculpture carved from a single piece of wood, depicting a dramatic incident involving a mother bear, her foot caught in a trap, two cubs by her side and an advancing, rifle-toting hunter. Artistically executed, but definitely not "Fine Art" in the usual sense is a delicate picture made of rattlesnake bones and rattles and another of crocheted human hair which was made in 1889. In quilts, beadwork, even the varied styling of dozens of cast iron tractor seats, our ancestors created beauty in functional objects.

In the yard behind the main museum building lie over two dozen more buildings. There visitors can view the Montana State Fiddlers Hall of Fame, walk through an old-time general store stocked with antique merchandise, attend an original 1912 one-room school, see a saddle and harness repair shop, and tour a two story barn filled with agricultural implements and one of Montana's largest barbed wire displays. Another building is full of old wooden boats, like Marcus Daly III's sporty Garwood runabout the Third Bird, marine engines, and fishing displays. Logging memorabilia fills yet another building and the barber shop, sewing shop and appliance shop are overflowing with appropriate vintage artifacts. The 1500 sq. ft. fully stocked blacksmith shop and machine shop is looking for a full, part time, or "drop in" smith to exhibit the art, using museum equipment. There's also a trappers cabin and a Land Office full of old maps and early views of the area.

Veterans will appreciate the extensive military display which includes over 20 vehicles, a large collection of home-front posters and memorabilia from several wars. Gil Mangels, President of the Museum Board of Directors says, "The tribute to veterans isn't to glorify war, but to recognize the veterans of all wars and to help each of us remember the sacrifices they made to preserve our freedoms." The Law Enforcement display and a small Fire Hall pay tribute to these public servants.

This 501-C-3 non-profit museum welcomes your tax deductible donations of any kind which will help improve the displays or help preserve the museum for future generations. If you want to arrange a special tour, or if we haven't answered all your questions, just give us a call at 406-883-6804.