Travel News: New TSA Rules Will Affect Carry-Ons, World-Record ‘Human Seashell’ in Florida, and See Grandma Moses in Vermont
From the long security lines at foreign airports to the bucolic mountains of Vermont to the beaches of Florida, we guarantee you’ll have a strong reaction to this week’s quirky, sometimes irritating, sometimes soothing travel news.
NEW TSA RULES WILL AFFECT CARRY-ONS
Starting June 30, foreign airports will be examining your carry-ons more carefully. Why? Powder. A new TSA regulation will ask that travelers headed to the U.S. from another country remove powdered substances from their bags to be carefully checked, as agents currently do with liquids, and be prepared to either discard the powder or check their bag. The reason, of course, is the fear of improvised explosive devices, which can sometimes involve powdery substances. To avoid extra scrutiny, anyone traveling with more than 12 ounces of powder, which could include makeup, baby-related products, food, and other substances, should put the powder in a checked bag.
WORLD-RECORD HUMAN SEASHELL IN FLORIDA
Everybody loves a good world record, and the beaches of Fort Myers and Sanibel got in on the action this past week by breaking the Guinness world record for the largest human image of a seashell. Just how large? More than 1,000 participants gathered on Fort Myers Beach on June 21, which, not coincidentally, was the first day of summer and National Seashell Day, to form what a Guinness adjudicator verified was the world’s largest-ever human seashell.
SEE GRANDMA MOSES IN VERMONT
The world’s largest collection of paintings by the 20th-century American folk artist Anna Mary Roberton, better known as “Grandma Moses,” is at the Bennington Museum (benningtonmuseum.org), in Bennington, VT. The artist, who started painting in her seventies, depicted colorful scenes of bustling small-town rural life in Vermont and nearby upstate New York, often from an elevated “bird’s-eye” view that plays sly games of perspective with the viewer. Gently rolling mountains can be seen in the background in many of her paintings, and visitors to the beautiful Bennington are recognize them instantly as the Green Mountains just outside of town. The museum’s newly installed Grandma Moses Gallery features a larger selection of the artist’s work than ever before, including such classic pictures as Thunderstorm, Deep Snow, and A Christmas Gift, all on loan from private collections. If you haven’t visited Bennington lately, summer 2018 might be the time.