Museum Day
Sep. 3rd, 2023 10:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cornerofmadnessSo today was 90% about the museums at Union Terminal It's an art deco train terminal and now houses multiple museums (and if you're a Cincinnati local, a membership is a big saver. All museums for them 7$ for me 30$) I don't have children as you know. That said I LOVE seeing them learning and engaging in science and history. These museums (with one exception) had so many hands on exhibits, lots of buttons to push, a lot of computer interactives and several rooms just for kids. Kudos to CMC for that.
I hit the Cincinnati History museum which had a miniature layout of the city you walk along and learn things. What shocked me was they had multiple displays where you could SMELL the artifact/factoid in questions, like yeast for the brewery and bakery areas, leather for the leather (thankfully nothing for porkopolis as Cinci was a massive hog/sausage place) even wood and catfish for the docks. It had a full size city street at the docks where you could walk on the ship and into several of the buildings. Impressive.
My favorite facts: the life and photos of a formerly enslaved man turned photographer (now I forget his name but I have a pic of it on my dead battery camera), and then this business I never heard of. Fashion Frocks who had women going door to door selling clothing like it was Tupperware or vacuum cleaners. Puts that in my historical stories fact bank
And while I love Rookwood Pottery and covet it, I had no idea it was founded by a woman in the 1800s. I'm impressed.
I had Graeter's ice cream cone for lunch. That's lunch right? RIGHT? It was good (and better than the pizza or kid food which was the only other option)
From there I went into the natural history museum because dinosaurs. Nothing much new here except for one hollow boned femur that grew a geode inside it as it fossilized. Hot damn! They also had a full sized glacier display with Pleistocene critters and a two story 'cave' which why did I go in since I've been in many a cave? Because CAVE. (they even had it turn yourself sideways narrow in places to simulate the real thing) There was a big display of Neil Armstrong too including a 360 movie loop of the moon landing.
New things to me besides the geode bone? They had thin sliced an iron meteor and back lit it. That was pretty. And now I know something about Big Bone Lick KY (besides I snicker like a 12 year old every time I drive past it going somewhere in KY) It was a massive mastodon fossil site and now I want to look it up and see if there are any sites still active in the area.
From there I went to the one museum not designed for kids: the holocaust museum. Cincinnati (and Columbus) have very high German populations, Jewish and otherwise. I was hesitant going in because pain but how could I not. The one thing the museum didn't do was share a lot of pictures of the camps (in fact none) What it wanted to do in a short movie and throughout the small museum was talk to Cincinnati locals who survived the camps (or were sent away as children never to see their family again) In the video, those people showed their foraged papers to get out of Europe and other items while talking about it.
Going into the movie theater (as you wait to be let in) is a large mural with various statements from the locals. That continued into the museum. Things that made you think, a) the full uniform one of those from the camps had kept and took out when life was hard and reminded himself he was lucky to be alive (perhaps not how I would do things)
B) the quote that said this didn't start with bullets. it started with words and I think about politicians liks MGT and DeSantis with their backing the Proud Boys or whose priest is running around talking about killing all gay people, how some of these people in power still blame women, Jews, anyone of color, as they silence their voices, challenge their history, their books, it looks like this could so very easily happen again
C) the ending of the movie with them asking the questions a lot of us ask, what would I have done back then, would I have stood up and helped, would I have caved out of fear? and those survivors saying don't ask those questions. Ask what can I do NOW? Which is also where the exhibits ended, walking you through civil rights issues right now, showing where you could help.
Once I left there, I'd been in the museums 4 hours. It was time to go. I had to go to Jungle Jim's again. Apparently so did everyone. It was SO crowded. I got some more neat stuff but some stuff was insanely overpriced. 12$ for Tim Tams? keep them. I did find fun stuff though and they had Brunost cheese again (they didn't in June). I'm poorer now. ha.
Got home without issue. Rocket is very glad to see me.
Unfortunately I opened my email to see my Elevators to Hell story was rejected. I am sad about this one. I thought it was a fun anthology and I liked my story. I thought it was fun, different and fit the anthology. Pouts. Maybe it wasn't scary enough (I will say most of my 'horror' is more urban fantasy). I need to find more UF markets. Oh well, I'll send it elsewhere.
I hit the Cincinnati History museum which had a miniature layout of the city you walk along and learn things. What shocked me was they had multiple displays where you could SMELL the artifact/factoid in questions, like yeast for the brewery and bakery areas, leather for the leather (thankfully nothing for porkopolis as Cinci was a massive hog/sausage place) even wood and catfish for the docks. It had a full size city street at the docks where you could walk on the ship and into several of the buildings. Impressive.
My favorite facts: the life and photos of a formerly enslaved man turned photographer (now I forget his name but I have a pic of it on my dead battery camera), and then this business I never heard of. Fashion Frocks who had women going door to door selling clothing like it was Tupperware or vacuum cleaners. Puts that in my historical stories fact bank
And while I love Rookwood Pottery and covet it, I had no idea it was founded by a woman in the 1800s. I'm impressed.
I had Graeter's ice cream cone for lunch. That's lunch right? RIGHT? It was good (and better than the pizza or kid food which was the only other option)
From there I went into the natural history museum because dinosaurs. Nothing much new here except for one hollow boned femur that grew a geode inside it as it fossilized. Hot damn! They also had a full sized glacier display with Pleistocene critters and a two story 'cave' which why did I go in since I've been in many a cave? Because CAVE. (they even had it turn yourself sideways narrow in places to simulate the real thing) There was a big display of Neil Armstrong too including a 360 movie loop of the moon landing.
New things to me besides the geode bone? They had thin sliced an iron meteor and back lit it. That was pretty. And now I know something about Big Bone Lick KY (besides I snicker like a 12 year old every time I drive past it going somewhere in KY) It was a massive mastodon fossil site and now I want to look it up and see if there are any sites still active in the area.
From there I went to the one museum not designed for kids: the holocaust museum. Cincinnati (and Columbus) have very high German populations, Jewish and otherwise. I was hesitant going in because pain but how could I not. The one thing the museum didn't do was share a lot of pictures of the camps (in fact none) What it wanted to do in a short movie and throughout the small museum was talk to Cincinnati locals who survived the camps (or were sent away as children never to see their family again) In the video, those people showed their foraged papers to get out of Europe and other items while talking about it.
Going into the movie theater (as you wait to be let in) is a large mural with various statements from the locals. That continued into the museum. Things that made you think, a) the full uniform one of those from the camps had kept and took out when life was hard and reminded himself he was lucky to be alive (perhaps not how I would do things)
B) the quote that said this didn't start with bullets. it started with words and I think about politicians liks MGT and DeSantis with their backing the Proud Boys or whose priest is running around talking about killing all gay people, how some of these people in power still blame women, Jews, anyone of color, as they silence their voices, challenge their history, their books, it looks like this could so very easily happen again
C) the ending of the movie with them asking the questions a lot of us ask, what would I have done back then, would I have stood up and helped, would I have caved out of fear? and those survivors saying don't ask those questions. Ask what can I do NOW? Which is also where the exhibits ended, walking you through civil rights issues right now, showing where you could help.
Once I left there, I'd been in the museums 4 hours. It was time to go. I had to go to Jungle Jim's again. Apparently so did everyone. It was SO crowded. I got some more neat stuff but some stuff was insanely overpriced. 12$ for Tim Tams? keep them. I did find fun stuff though and they had Brunost cheese again (they didn't in June). I'm poorer now. ha.
Got home without issue. Rocket is very glad to see me.
Unfortunately I opened my email to see my Elevators to Hell story was rejected. I am sad about this one. I thought it was a fun anthology and I liked my story. I thought it was fun, different and fit the anthology. Pouts. Maybe it wasn't scary enough (I will say most of my 'horror' is more urban fantasy). I need to find more UF markets. Oh well, I'll send it elsewhere.
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