Museum of Natural History

cattitude and I just had a very pleasant time showing zorinth around the American Museum of Natural History.

He's in town with papersky, who is here for the Nebulas. We met them, and davidlevine, for a quick slice of pizza, then Papersky and David went back to the hotel, and Cattitude, Zorinth, and I took the train uptown.

We started on the fourth floor, because the original plan had been "take Zorinth to AMNH and show him the dinosaurs." The three of us had fun showing each other stuff--Cattitude and I know the museum, but Zorinth was pointing out details of the fossils to us as well as the other way around. At one point, Cattitude asked to borrow the small flashlight that I keep in my daypack, for a closer look at a fossil; it didn't make a huge difference. After two or three halls, Cattitude decided he wasn't entirely well, and headed home; Z and I kept looking at cool things, including the rest of the dinosaurs.

Having nothing specific in mind after dinosaurs, we went downstairs, which led to the Hall of African Mammals. I led him in there to show off the elephants from above, after which we went around the dioramas on the third floor, then those on the second floor (the level the elephants are actually on), with the fine old dioramas. A discussion while in there about whether giraffes were taller than blue whales had included me saying "We could go look," so we stopped in briefly to see the huge model hanging from the wall of the Hall of Fishes (though we skipped the rest of that hall).

We finished up with the Hall of Rocks and Minerals: Faberge miniatures, specimen gold (the fine leafing and branching some nuggets do), then along to the case of fluorescent minerals, which we watched through three cycles of turning the lights on (so we could see the usual look of them) and off (for the fluorescence). And then casually into the adjacent room, where Zorinth of course walked straight ahead and right up to the Star of India. We had fun looking at star sapphires; Zorinth said he especially liked the red one just below the Star of India. And on around the rest of that room, full of gemstones and a rebuilt gem pocket from a topaz mine. And out again, to look at huge pieces of amethyst and azurite, and a stalagmite, and lots of other things both attractive and educational.

It had been years since I actually went all the way around that hall, instead of just showing off the star sapphires to visitors and then stopping by my favorite huge hunk of amethyst. I should do so more often.

As a bonus, the path in and out of the Hall of Gems and Minerals is through the Hall of Human Origins, which has a model of Turkana Boy that I think is new, and a cast of a Homo floresiensis that I know I hadn't seen before.

That was about as much museum as I had in me, so I took Zorinth back downtown, then came home via the grocery store. (I needed vegetables to make fish stock, having bought fish "frames" (bones and some of the usually-less-desirable flesh) for the purpose at the Greenmarket this morning.)

Museum of Natural History

cattitude and I just had a very pleasant time showing zorinth around the American Museum of Natural History.

He's in town with papersky, who is here for the Nebulas. We met them, and davidlevine, for a quick slice of pizza, then Papersky and David went back to the hotel, and Cattitude, Zorinth, and I took the train uptown.

We started on the fourth floor, because the original plan had been "take Zorinth to AMNH and show him the dinosaurs." The three of us had fun showing each other stuff--Cattitude and I know the museum, but Zorinth was pointing out details of the fossils to us as well as the other way around. At one point, Cattitude asked to borrow the small flashlight that I keep in my daypack, for a closer look at a fossil; it didn't make a huge difference. After two or three halls, Cattitude decided he wasn't entirely well, and headed home; Z and I kept looking at cool things, including the rest of the dinosaurs.

Having nothing specific in mind after dinosaurs, we went downstairs, which led to the Hall of African Mammals. I led him in there to show off the elephants from above, after which we went around the dioramas on the third floor, then those on the second floor (the level the elephants are actually on), with the fine old dioramas. A discussion while in there about whether giraffes were taller than blue whales had included me saying "We could go look," so we stopped in briefly to see the huge model hanging from the wall of the Hall of Fishes (though we skipped the rest of that hall).

We finished up with the Hall of Rocks and Minerals: Faberge miniatures, specimen gold (the fine leafing and branching some nuggets do), then along to the case of fluorescent minerals, which we watched through three cycles of turning the lights on (so we could see the usual look of them) and off (for the fluorescence). And then casually into the adjacent room, where Zorinth of course walked straight ahead and right up to the Star of India. We had fun looking at star sapphires; Zorinth said he especially liked the red one just below the Star of India. And on around the rest of that room, full of gemstones and a rebuilt gem pocket from a topaz mine. And out again, to look at huge pieces of amethyst and azurite, and a stalagmite, and lots of other things both attractive and educational.

It had been years since I actually went all the way around that hall, instead of just showing off the star sapphires to visitors and then stopping by my favorite huge hunk of amethyst. I should do so more often.

As a bonus, the path in and out of the Hall of Gems and Minerals is through the Hall of Human Origins, which has a model of Turkana Boy that I think is new, and a cast of a Homo floresiensis that I know I hadn't seen before.

That was about as much museum as I had in me, so I took Zorinth back downtown, then came home via the grocery store. (I needed vegetables to make fish stock, having bought fish "frames" (bones and some of the usually-less-desirable flesh) for the purpose at the Greenmarket this morning.)

Some recent reading

I was going to write a lengthy post on Armageddon Rag, but it's been sitting half-formed for a couple of weeks, so I'm combining it with some shorter book notes:

Armageddon Rag, by George R. R. Martin, is rock and roll, and fantasy, and feels a lot darker than War for the Oaks. (That's not a comparison other people seem to be making, and it's not in the books themselves, but "rock and roll" and "fantasy" put together reminded me of the Emma Bull.) The fantasy stuff--visions and possible magic--is secondary to writing about rock and roll, and the power music can have, and what music meant to a generation of people slightly older than I am, as part of the whole collection of things that are shorthanded as "the Sixties."

Martin almost makes me believe in the Nazgul, an incredibly popular rock and roll band that never was; he does make me believe in Sandy Blair, and how powerful the dream of a reunion tour can be, and Larry Richmond, who played in a cover band because he so much loved the old band's music, and wanted to be Pat Hobbins, the musician he grew up worshipping, and the way people believe in magic, good and bad, and the power of music. Thanks to rysmiel for the recommendation. The book is full of snippets of music, mostly Sixties and early Seventies, epigraphs on the chapters and sometimes quoted in the text; the long list of acknowledgements at the front was handy for identifying things I didn't recognize or couldn't quite place. (Martin also uses a lot of Yeats, slightly rearranged as rock lyrics, but that's out of copyright.)

Martin doesn't quote "Do you believe in rock and roll/Can the music save your mortal soul?" but he doesn't need to. Another song not quoted also seems apropos, from a different piece of the musical tradition that I grew up with: "Which side are you on, boys? Which side are you on?" Sandy Blair runs into both those questions, and his answers make sense--not necessarily as "this is the way the world is" but as "this is what he would do."

Who Goes Here,, by Bob Shaw, is rather a romp: someone joins the Space Legion to forget, and then tries to find out what it is he wanted to forget. Everyone in the Space Legion has joined to forget, in many cases because they appear to believe that if they forget something, they can't get in trouble for it. The Space Legion has access to memory-erasing technology, which usually removes only the specifics that the person feels guilty about, and in his case has left him with no memory at all. There turns out to be an explanation for why he's called Warren Peace, but there are lots of silly names like that: the next character met is a Capt. Widget. In the course of trying to find out, Peace runs into a variety of mad inventions and inventors; Shaw is playing with cliches, like the mad scientist's beautiful daughter, but he doesn't ask us to take it more seriously than he does.

The Rebirth of Pan, by Jo Walton, is the unpublished novel she put online as part of International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day, with commentary beforehand. And yes, the parts from the POV of the widowed boat are excellent. I found the plot easier to follow as I went along, as the strands came together. I like the ending, both in the sense that it's well-written and fits what came before, and that I like the mood and expansiveness of the last couple of chapters.

Tripoint, by C. J. Cherryh. I borrowed this from adrian_turtle, at her suggestion, because we were discussing Cherryh and she thought I'd like this one. (I read Cyteen ages ago, liked it, and wasn't moved to continue, and the first of the atevi books, which I didn't care for.) The world-building is good (and I gather is part of a many-book thing). I found myself putting it down every few pages near the middle, and then realized this was because there were lots of characters I disliked and almost none I liked (though the protagonist is sympathetic, albeit not someone I'd have wanted to be around). Also, partway through, I was saying things like "God, those are dysfunctional family dynamics." Adrian pointed out that it fits the world-building, and that this is exactly what could happen in that sort of society if one high-status person was that kind of crazy. And then I went on, and it turned out there was more than one likeable character. I liked this; it's coming-of-age in a context that's sort of cousin to space opera.

Some recent reading

I was going to write a lengthy post on Armageddon Rag, but it's been sitting half-formed for a couple of weeks, so I'm combining it with some shorter book notes:

Armageddon Rag, by George R. R. Martin, is rock and roll, and fantasy, and feels a lot darker than War for the Oaks. (That's not a comparison other people seem to be making, and it's not in the books themselves, but "rock and roll" and "fantasy" put together reminded me of the Emma Bull.) The fantasy stuff--visions and possible magic--is secondary to writing about rock and roll, and the power music can have, and what music meant to a generation of people slightly older than I am, as part of the whole collection of things that are shorthanded as "the Sixties."

Martin almost makes me believe in the Nazgul, an incredibly popular rock and roll band that never was; he does make me believe in Sandy Blair, and how powerful the dream of a reunion tour can be, and Larry Richmond, who played in a cover band because he so much loved the old band's music, and wanted to be Pat Hobbins, the musician he grew up worshipping, and the way people believe in magic, good and bad, and the power of music. Thanks to rysmiel for the recommendation. The book is full of snippets of music, mostly Sixties and early Seventies, epigraphs on the chapters and sometimes quoted in the text; the long list of acknowledgements at the front was handy for identifying things I didn't recognize or couldn't quite place. (Martin also uses a lot of Yeats, slightly rearranged as rock lyrics, but that's out of copyright.)

Martin doesn't quote "Do you believe in rock and roll/Can the music save your mortal soul?" but he doesn't need to. Another song not quoted also seems apropos, from a different piece of the musical tradition that I grew up with: "Which side are you on, boys? Which side are you on?" Sandy Blair runs into both those questions, and his answers make sense--not necessarily as "this is the way the world is" but as "this is what he would do."

Who Goes Here,, by Bob Shaw, is rather a romp: someone joins the Space Legion to forget, and then tries to find out what it is he wanted to forget. Everyone in the Space Legion has joined to forget, in many cases because they appear to believe that if they forget something, they can't get in trouble for it. The Space Legion has access to memory-erasing technology, which usually removes only the specifics that the person feels guilty about, and in his case has left him with no memory at all. There turns out to be an explanation for why he's called Warren Peace, but there are lots of silly names like that: the next character met is a Capt. Widget. In the course of trying to find out, Peace runs into a variety of mad inventions and inventors; Shaw is playing with cliches, like the mad scientist's beautiful daughter, but he doesn't ask us to take it more seriously than he does.

The Rebirth of Pan, by Jo Walton, is the unpublished novel she put online as part of International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day, with commentary beforehand. And yes, the parts from the POV of the widowed boat are excellent. I found the plot easier to follow as I went along, as the strands came together. I like the ending, both in the sense that it's well-written and fits what came before, and that I like the mood and expansiveness of the last couple of chapters.

Tripoint, by C. J. Cherryh. I borrowed this from adrian_turtle, at her suggestion, because we were discussing Cherryh and she thought I'd like this one. (I read Cyteen ages ago, liked it, and wasn't moved to continue, and the first of the atevi books, which I didn't care for.) The world-building is good (and I gather is part of a many-book thing). I found myself putting it down every few pages near the middle, and then realized this was because there were lots of characters I disliked and almost none I liked (though the protagonist is sympathetic, albeit not someone I'd have wanted to be around). Also, partway through, I was saying things like "God, those are dysfunctional family dynamics." Adrian pointed out that it fits the world-building, and that this is exactly what could happen in that sort of society if one high-status person was that kind of crazy. And then I went on, and it turned out there was more than one likeable character. I liked this; it's coming-of-age in a context that's sort of cousin to space opera.