(no subject)

[cblj_backup]

I set out this morning intending to go to the Shedd Aquarium, but the line was really long and I'd thought it was a free day when it wasn't. So I decided for half the cost of Aquarium admission and no wait I could get into the Field Museum half a block away.

Every time I go to the Field Museum, two things happen:

1. I am reminded why I don't go to the Field Museum more often, because it's this weird mixture of early-20th-century dioramas and BRIGHT! SHINY! SIMPLISTIC! exhibits for kids. Also, all the kids. I'm torn between worrying people will think I'm a perv for being a grownup alone at the Field and just really wanting to kick the nearest toddler.

2. I encounter at least one truly amazing thing that will be all I remember the next time I think to myself, "Why don't I go to the Field Museum more often?"

This time I also unexpectedly ended up in a parade, but that doesn't usually happen.

There's an exhibit going on right now through September called Traditions Retold: Mexican Nativity Scenes. It's tiny, just a single room, but it was better than the Horse and Design For Living exhibits combined (this wasn't hard, as The Horse was a hot mess and Design For Living was totally incoherent). Really interesting, beautiful display pieces and very educational.

Also there's a bug exhibit on, so there was a guy in the main hall with a HUGE display of preserved insects and spiders and a bunch of live ones too. Right as I stepped up to investigate a tarantula in a glass case he popped the top off it and announced "This is Hannah. Who wants to hold her?"

So I got to hold a tarantula, which was AWESOME. They're so soft! And much lighter than they look. I kind of want one now.

And I poked around in the Animals of Asia diorama room, and went upstairs to look at the gems and jade, and saw a few other things, and then decided it was time to go home.

Except that to get from the Museum Campus to the El, you have to walk through this LABYRINTH of footpaths in the campus park, made more complicated today by the fact that half the paths were blocked off because there was some kind of parade queueing up. I still have no idea what the point of the parade was, but my indomitably bad sense of direction led me straight up the one flight of stairs not blocked off by the police and into the heart of the parade.

If you've never had "GET OUT OF THE PARADE!" yelled at you while trying to cross the street, you haven't truly lived.

But aside from antagonising the cops and feeling as if I drastically overpaid for access to the Horse exhibit, it was a pretty good day.

Comments

[happi-feet.livejournal.com]

We got to see her at the Anniston Natural History Museum in Anniston, AL - back in '07, I think. The boy has wanted to get to Chicago to see her again, ever since.

[venivincere]

Oh, lucky. Someday I'll get to see her, I'm sure of it, though it will likely be a long time coming. :-)

[happi-feet.livejournal.com]

We're trying to plan a trip to Chicago next summer. We'll probably take the megabus from Memphis. I want to see the Tsavo Maneaters. The kids went to Fernbank in Atlanta this summer and saw some dinosaurs there, and we hit Tellus in Cartersville, GA last summer where we spent so long in the dino exhibit that there was no time for the planetarium (much to The Boy's chagrin). My kids are so weird, I swear. Their favorite places to go are science museums. Bunch of nerds.

[venivincere]

Oh, after my own heart. When my son was little, he was the same way. He's grown out of it, though, more's the pity, or we'd go to the Science Center here in Detroit more often. :-)

[happi-feet.livejournal.com]

I despair that my middle child's greatest ambitions are "to be homecoming queen" and "to be a teenager". I just keep hoping she'll find something more... lofty to which to aspire. She's too smart for such shallow goals.

[copperbadge.livejournal.com]

You'll find a lot to entertain you and the kids at the Field, but don't get an overinflated idea of the Tsavo lions -- there was an exhibit when they first opened, but now it's like...one case, at the back of the Animals of Asia exhibit.

[happi-feet.livejournal.com]

I get that it's just a couple of lions, but I really love natural history museums. I want to eventually get around to all of them - all the better if I get to do it with the kids. Sometimes the best thing about a natural history museum is getting to watch a kid discover it.

[copperbadge.livejournal.com]

When you do, make sure to make the trek up the staircase behind her so you can see her real skull -- the real thing was too heavy, so the skull is a fake and the real one's in a glass case behind her :D

[venivincere]

Ooh! Thanks for that! :-)