OPNY & OPPA Hold Multi-Affiliate Meeting Celebrating Space Exploration Day At The Franklin Institute In Philadelphia

The Objectivist Party of New York and Objectivist Party of Pennsylvania held a multi-affiliate meeting celebrating Space Exploration Day (July 20th) by visiting Star Trek: The Exhibition in the Mandell Center at The Franklin Institute located at 222 North 20th Street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. OPNY and OPPA affiliate members met at 12 noon. Admission cost $23.75 and included access to both Star Trek: The Exhibition and the other permanent and temporary exhibits on view at The Franklin Institute.

Star Trek: The Exhibition featured the world's most comprehensive collection of authentic Star Trek objects and transported visitors into parallel universes of the future and past. This 12,500 foot exhibition, an amalgamation of all five television and ten film series spanning over 40 years, was the ultimate opportunity to connect with iconic Star Trek moments and characters, while celebrating the creative spirit of science fiction and science that gave rise to many of today's modern marvels. A good part of the exhibition was devoted to the men and women who have actually achieved their own milestones in space exploration.

Since affiliate members already paid for admission to The Franklin Institute, they decided to visit some of the other exhibits which included the following:

Benjamin Franklin National Memorial
Amazing Machine
Franklin Air Show
Race: Are We So Different?
Giant Heart
Train Factory
Space Command

Before leaving for the day, OPNY and OPPA affiliate members could not resist walking down to the Philadelphia Museum of Art's Rodin Museum & Garden located at Benjamin Franklin Parkway & 22nd Street. The Rodin Museum, a gift of Jules Mastbaum (1872-1926) to his native city of Philadelphia, contains more than 120 sculptures representing every aspect of Auguste Rodin's career and all of his major projects. It was breathtaking!

While seeing off some OPNY members who were returning to New York City by train, OPNY & OPPA affiliate members visited 30th Street Station in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, which is also known as Pennsylvania Station. While in there, we visited the “Spirit of Transportation” sculpture. The accompanying plaque for this sculpture, which is inside the 30th Street Station, reads:

This panel, the conception and work of Karl Bitter, was executed in 1895 and placed in the waiting room of Broad Street Station, Philadelphia, from which place it was removed to this site in January, 1955. The Spirit of Transportation is represented in triumphal procession of progress led by a little child carrying a model of an airship, a prophetic vision of a mode of transportation to come.

Pennsylvania Station (also known as 30th Street Station) and the Spirit of Transportation sculpture were both quite impressive!