No future fears

I knew that I would inevitably spend time at the Air And Space Museum what with it being where I spend about 90 percent of my museum time while in Washington, DC. So I resolved to try breaking myself of that relentless pattern and go first to the Castle instead. It turns out the Castle closes at 5:30, and I got there around 6:00. I knew that Air and Space was open to 7:30, though, so I would be pushed over there. I did give a try at getting to the Arts and Industry building, but it turns out that's closed for renovations, and I have no idea where one goes for Art or Industry in the interim.

It was during this stretch that I got some pictures of the Joseph Henry statue, and overheard the people admitting they had no idea who this was, prompting me to leap into action and start explaining. And after the day of interviewing for a job I was increasingly sure wasn't right for me, the idea of going around explaining who Joseph Henry was to people felt irresistible. I also realized that this meant I'd be able to write very easily an extra Livejournal entry about this feeling when I got back to the hotel and when the Internet would surely be fixed.

At the Air and Space Museum I naturally went to touch the Moon Rock and noticed one of those things I routinely forget, that the piece they had was from Apollo 17. That naturally made me think of bunny_hugger and so I called her to leave a slightly rambling message about it on her answering machine, although it turned out I'd called her cell phone instead, so she wouldn't notice the message for a couple days.

I knew with 90 minutes to wander around I wouldn't see much of Air and Space, so I figured to just float around and see some old friends --- Gemini IV, Skylab 4/3 and why is that in the Apollo To The Moon hall again, Skylab Backup --- although I was pulled into the Wright Brothers exhibit, which I didn't remember from past visits. The Apollo To The Moon hall is still showing a semi-animated cartoon of the old Man in the Moon talking about the discovery of the Moon's origins, which from the animation style seems to date to the 70s; it also suggests that the Moon's origins are a thoroughgoing mystery, although I'd thought that the ``Big Splat'' model had pretty much taken the moon-origin industry by storm the past thirty years.

I was not able to provide enlightenment along the lines of my Joseph Henry performance at the Skylab Backup, which was haunted by people who could give only vague and haphazard guesses about such things as ``what was this?'' Also there was a lot of talk about how the Skylab astronauts had to sleep standing up, which seems to miss an important point about space stations. I admit I had missed an important point in previous visits, namely, that the ceiling of the tunnel through the Backup Workshop is also plexiglass and you can see into the big dome and even such items as a paper Christmas Tree. I thought that was really cool and did my best to encourage people to look up by looking up myself and pointing it out, but got few takers there.

As ever, I stayed too long, and started getting yelled at by the security guards that the museum was closed when I very clearly was no longer moving away from the exits even if I did stop to get a fresh picture of the Apollo 11 heat shield. I tried to ask about how to get to the Udvar-Hazy Center, but they said that if I left now and came back tomorrow the information desk would be able to help; since I hadn't seen anyone at the information desk the several times I passed it, I had my doubts that anyone would be there. Anyway. They wanted me out, and got me there.

Trivia: Irving Fields's 1959 album Bagels and Bongos arranged Jewish melodies to Latin American rhythms. Source: The Bagel: The Surprising History Of A Modest Bread, Maria Balinska.

Currently Reading: Promised Land, Brian M Stableford.