A Story in Pictures.
After You Vote: Unplug
1 week ago
Friday, November 27, 2009
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Curating
The museums in DC are so inspiring. It makes me want to curate my own exhibit when I get home. I asked the kids if they wanted to make a small museum in our house and they said, Noooo! But I suspect if I just start on my own, they'll hop on board.
I can't decide if this will be a virtual museum or a real one. Maybe a little bit of both.
I have noticed a trend in some museums toward flash with minimal content. Not so here. The exhibits were sometimes flashy, but so deep as well.
They all start with a pithy title like:
If you can't make it to DC, try the book Written in Bone: Buried Lives of Jamestown and Colonial Maryland (Exceptional Social Studies Titles for Intermediate Grades)
It was especially interesting to us since we had just visited Jamestown.
When you read about The Starving Time at Jamestown and see the graves it tells the story the usual way.
But when you see, in Written in Bone, the piles of horse, dog, cat and rat bones the colonists butchered and ate, it tells the story in a more intimate way.
My favorite part of the exhibit was where they identified colonists' occupations just by examining the bones.
Tailor's notches: chipping of the teeth and characteristic grooves made from holding needles in the teeth identify the owner of this jaw as a tailor.
The Library of Congress is making a huge push to digitize its collection and make it available to the public. On their website you can sign up for myloc.gov and make your own collection of books and documents housed at the LoC.
The National Park Service is going multimedia, too. They have virtual tours. I liked the flipbook documenting the construction of the Lincoln Memorial.
If you get inspired to curate your own exhibit, please share it with us and put a link in the comments section.
Death Trap is a fantastic video. See if you can find it at your library or get it used. Just fast forward past the gratuitous bit in the beginning where a man gets his leg caught in a steel bear trap.
All the rest of it is a fascinating account of how various plants and even seeds! trap insects and digest them.
I got our venus flytraps from: The Black Jungle Terrarium Supply
17 comments:
You tell a great story with pictures!
Love the 'knife' one :-)
Karen
Pumpkin pie is my favorite... for breakfast or dessert! You have inspired me to use my pumpkins sitting on my front porch. :)
Karen, thanks! Re: knife one...me, too. When Halloween came and the pumpkins were nowhere near ripe we were a little sad, but we looked forward to Thanksgiving and are so glad we had pie from our home grown pumpkins.
Ashley, so nice to hear from you! We miss all of you! I hope you made your pies. We had our second one for breakfast this morning. Mmmm.
How wonderful, amazing, inspiring!!
My favorite is the sliced-open, hollow one sinking into the counter top like a punctured balloon. Great story!
What a great story to tell! Everyone should experience from seed to table at least once!!
Barbara, it is amazing isn't it? It is a pumpkin pie we really felt grateful for having seen how long it takes to make the pumpkin! I wish I had taken some photos of the vines as they crept across the bee yard and took over the paths.
Carolyn, I can't believe you are blog commenting what with Nanowrimo and packing. I feel honored! :) I hope to continue the pumpkin's story next year. We're drying the seeds we scooped out and planning to plant them next year.
Gina, so true. We planted arugula from seed and have been loving it--the kids grab some on the way to the car and then the whole car smells arugulicious. But it only takes a few weeks from seed to mouth. The pumpkins were 126 days from planting to pie.
I enjoyed your "movie" of photos, especially the one with Evelyn chomping the goodness you grew, processed and baked.
The soil in your composter looked fantastic. Was it your own?
Kristin, it was not our own soil. It was the veggie mix from American Stone and Soil in Richmond. I've tried growing vegetables several times and just planted them in our rock hard clay and they always died. Planting them in this soil has been like magic.
So I guess it was yummy with a greenish pumpkin too, huh?
Judith, we googled "how to tell if a pumpkin is ripe" and put our pumpkins through the tests: hollow noise when knocked on? Check. Tough skin that dents but doesn't break when you poke it with your fingernail? Check. Stem hard? Check. Apparently they needn't be orange to be ripe. And our pie was yummy but maybe not as yummy as yours. :)
awesome! is there a cut-off point for when pumpkin pie stops being seasonal? because, really... I could eat it all year long.
Barbara, we froze half the pulp thinking it would be great for Christmas, but now you have me thinking...why not make it for St. Patty's Day and see if it isn't just as good.
I always love your writing, but I was willing to live without your words this once because it was such a good story. Fabulous.
What a great blog! I love that your kids learned what it was like to grow a pumpkin and then eat it. I didn't grow a pumpkin until I was an adult, but I still find it fascinating. The stuff in the cans is fine -- but growing it yourself both takes away some of the mystery and adds another new and exciting dimension
Tricia, I was thinking of you as I didn't write words. I was thinking I'd go for no words rather than words as (as you wrote) "dangly earrings or platform shoes for images." If you are wondering about that see patriciazaballos.com/2009/06/24/a-post-without-an-image/
My excuse for wordlessness and a lack of blog posts is that I have been writing the other thing. The novel.
Jade, welcome and thanks for leaving a comment! You are so right--the mystery of how you turn a pumpkin into that orange mush in a can is solved. But we have a whole new dimension of patience, gratitude and anticipation..now we are waiting to see if the seeds we planted will sprout..and bring the process full circle.
I don't know how I missed this. Nice! Pumpkins (all winter squash, actually, are such gifts). Soil does make the difference, doesn't it? Makes me want to make that butternut squash soup I have in reserve.
And can I read the novel now?
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