A Trip to the Museum. Plus: Biscuits! And: Don't Feed the Sexist Trolls

Yesterday I got a little thwarted.  Ted had dug up online that there was to be a free science seminar at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, as part of the R.W. Moriarty Science Seminar Series.  Past topics included things like, "Origin and Evolution of Dinosaurs: An exemplary evolutionary radiation", and, "It's a slug's life: The ecology of terrestrial slugs", which I am very sorry I missed.  Fortunately, though my student ID doesn't get me into the museum for free over the summer, every year Ted and I buy a couple's membership to the Carnegie.  Though it's a little redundant for me for part of the year, it's very cheap, considering -- $98 -- and it gets us year-round admission to the Art, Natural History, and Warhol Museums, and to the Science Center.  Plus it's kind of like a little charitable donation, you know?  

One thing I love about the Carnegie is that the building itself is beautiful.

Unfortunately, when I got there, the lecture had been canceled.  But there are worse things than having two hours to kill in the museum.  I headed to the Natural History Museum, which is a stunning place.  The one lamentable thing is the children.  It must have been like, field trip day for half of the schools in the Pittsburgh area yesterday.  I would absolutely pay extra to be able to attend the museum on a No Kids Day.  They run around, they're loud, and you can tell that the vast majority of them are only barely interested in learning anything.  I really don't like kids.

There used to be a pretend Egyptian tomb, that you had to crawl through a tiny fake rock tunnel to get to, and then you emerged into this display, like you were an archaeologist that had just discovered it.  They have the fake tomb/tunnel part sealed off now, and they moved the display out into the open.  Which sucks.

But luckily, the kids and I enjoy different parts of the museum.  For instance, one of my absolute favorite parts of the NHM is the corridor on the third floor between the Egyptian and the Arctic/Native American Rooms.  One hallway is lined with shells and, somewhat inexplicably, time pieces; the other is lined with taxidermied birds.  Everything's in these very old fashioned wooden cases, and you can tell it was all installed and put together decades ago. It's quiet and there are little hobbit-sized doors that run along the corridor, leading who knows where, and I always enjoy the shells.  Like the late, lamented Stephen Jay Gould (who's own research centered on "shells" -- or rather, land snails), I don't really like the parts of the museum that are flashy, with screens blinking at you and interactive this and that; I like the collections, the mute presentation of specimens and artifacts from which one is free to draw their own conclusions and experiences.  I'm not saying the museum shouldn't affirmatively teach, or separate fact from the uninformed speculation of its visitors.  But I think a museum should be contemplative as much as it is interactive -- I want a quieter experience.

Someday, if I am ever rich, I will go shell collecting on far flung, tropical beaches.

Which is why I usually have to avoid the dinosaurs.  Don't get me wrong, I LOVE dinosaurs.  When I was a kid I read every single book about dinosaurs I could get my hands on. I read Bob Bakker's Dinosaur Heresies when I was only eight.  And the new dinosaur exhibit at the museum is beautiful.  I still remember the old hall, which was only half as big, and the dark, old fashioned wood cases holding specimens along the walls, and the dinosaur skeletons that were the real bones(!) mounted in the most scientifically false positions imaginable.  It was grand and all, but mostly wrong.  The new mounts are accurate and beautiful and compelling.

This overlook was child-free.

But of course, the whole space is swarming with kids who all want to punch the touchscreens and run around and scream.  So rather than confront that, I took in the Halls of North American and African Animals, and Botany.  I couldn't find insects, or the great old dioramas about the evolution of sea life.  I suppose part of my museum visits just satisfy my nostalgia.  As a kid, despite the fact that we lived an easy 45-minute drive away from the city, I got brought into the city exactly once a year, to go to the museum.  Because folks where I'm from didn't go to the city.  'Cause ... yeah.  I hate where I'm from.

MINERALS FOREVER.

I also always peruse the gems.  They fit my museum criteria really well: big mute collections to quietly contemplate, with just enough learning thrown in to feel edified (this is how particular crystalline structures form, this is how phosphorescence works, etc.).  Plus the kids don't seem to like it much.  I did encounter a group of Japanese businessmen in the gem hall, each wearing a nearly identical dark suit and carrying a nearly identical leather briefcase, looking around quietly at the cases of minerals.  I'm sure there's a story there, but I don't know what it is.

Why not me?

Anyway, maybe in a few weeks when schools are well and truly out, there will be fewer kids.  Or maybe next time I just need to go to the Art Museum.


Back at home, after lunch I read some Dostoevsky, and then I tackled Biscuits.  You have to understand that as much as I love to cook, I cannot bake for shit.  It's too precise and nitpicky -- I have mastered the baking of a single object, the chocolate chip cookie, and everything else is a disaster.  But I love biscuits, and they're cheap, and you can't ever find them anywhere for sale (except the ones that are choked with transfats and shit), so I set about a few months ago to make Friend Mark T.'s biscuits.  The first time I tried to make these seemingly extremely simple biscuits, it was such a sticky disaster that they were actually inedible.  The second attempt ... eh.  Edible, but not exactly good.  Yesterday's attempt went much better, though I've no idea why things worked this time and not the last two times.  I think they needed another minute or two in the oven, but they were definitely tasty, and so we had chicken 'n' biscuits for dinner, and I was very proud of myself.

I have cooked SO MANY MEALS this month.

Oh, and yesterday's other Thing That Happened was that I made the mistake of feeding a Facebook troll who was all like, "It's not patronizing and infantilizing and sexist for a man to come up in a public place to woman he doesn't know and demand that she smile for him!  He has good intentions."  First: yes, it is.  It is patronizing, infantilizing, and sexist for him to do so: that's why women never do this to men.  Such behavior stems from the belief that women are public property, and it is their obligation to please others, either with their bodies, countenance, or attitude.  That belief manifests itself in douchebaggery like, "Smile, honey, it's not so bad!" (except it is -- this came up because Friend Katie was getting this crap from dudes and her father just passed away), and then goes all the way up on a continuum that ends in rape and violence.  Are the dudes that tell you to smile rapists?  Probably not.  But as soon as you believe a woman you don't know has some sort of obligation to you, to make you more comfortable or to conform to your wishes, as soon as you believe she exists for you, you're on that spectrum.  So get back off of it.  As to intentions: who gives a shit about your intentions?  It's not the offending party who gets to decide what's offensive; that's the right of the offended party.  A woman walks down the street, and a strange man tells his friend, so she can hear, that he'd like to fuck that bitch; this is very common, and very intimidating for a woman.  Am I supposed to think that the fact that the man just meant to "give the woman a compliment" is what's really important?  Bullshit.  It doesn't matter at all. What matters is the sexual harassment of a woman in a public space, and how it makes her feel.  Period.  The end.  Full stop.  You douchebag.


So, anyhoodle.  I know, I know, don't feed the trolls.


Anyway, today I have to go to Giant Eagle, which I hate, but then this evening Ted and I get to go see Friends Sarah and Roger give dance performances at their work, which should be nice.  


Oh, and, full disclosure, I have so far completely failed to undertake any of the self-improvement projects I wanted to start this week.  Why, God, why aren't I one of those kind of people who doesn't despise exercise?