Ode to Golf

An ode to Golf. A Worldwide Golf Museum is exactly what this nation and world needs. Located near the prestigious Augusta National Course in Augusta, Georgia, this golf museum will attract golf lovers and not all the same. Close enough to Atlanta, guests will be able to drive from this Southern metropoilis to see the great golf wonder. Par three holes, biographies, and an overall timeline of golf through the ages using videos, diagrams, models, and interactive exhibits will attract visitors old and young. This new museum will co-exist with the Augusta National Course. With a facade like that of a golf clubhouse, exhibit rooms of golf from different eras, and actual par 3 holes, golfers from the Augusta course will be excited to come learn the vivid history of the game. While most people know that golf started from sticks, the first balls were indeed stones, and the first real golf links is the Old Course at St. Andrews, this golf museum will show the other side that not everyone knows. The evolution of the golf ball from stone to dimpled high-flier, biographies of those influential golfers such as King James IV to Tiger Woods will all be displayed.

A visit to the Museum of Tolerance

One example of an exhibit that I felt was effective in getting a message across to the visitor was the Holocaust exhibit at the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles. Here, the focus of the exhibit was to put the visitor in the environment enabling them to feel compassion for those who went through extermination camps. By putting me in a mock extermination camp environment, I was able to nearly fully understand the extent and horror of those camps during WWII. The Museum of Tolerance set up the entrance to this exhibit like a prisoner would enter an extermination camp. Men and women (visitors) were initially split up and brought into 'shower' rooms. These life size rooms without windows, made of concrete were where the first videos of actual prisoners going to the shower rooms could be seen. Next, we walked into a dark, dimly lit hall with models, exhibits, videos, pictures, and diagrams lining it. The walls were made to look like barbed wire fences of the extermination camps. It was an erie experience. Another thing the exhibit did was make us take a baseball like card of an actual prisoner. As we walked through the exhibit, we were able to put our card into the diagrams where information would be revealed on our prisoners' biography. In some cases the prisoners died half way through the exhibits. The exhibit nearly gave me chills. I have images of the pictures and exhibit models vividly engrained into my mind. The history of the holocaust and details I learned that day will not be easily forgotten.