Monday, January 18, 2010

They walk the walk

I took 4 kids to the American Museum of Natural History today.  Yea, it is one of the perks of being a New Yorker.  I get to go there all the time.  Tourists come here just to visit.  They might take photos of the T-Rex, Lucy, a giant meteorite, a squid fighting with a giant whale or even retrace the filming locations of some populare movies.

I am always intrigued by a collections  Teddy Roosevelt's Hats



and by an armrest dedicated to one of my favored authors.




















But one of my favorite things about the museum is a thing you will not see.  You will not see bottled water in their cafe.  They don't sell it.  They give away tap water. They don't just talk about saving the Earth, they lose revenue to do it.
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7 comments:

  1. DeniseJanuary 19, 2010 at 9:45:00 AM EST

    Wow, you are a real man about town this weekend! 2 kids to the Bronx Zoo on Sunday and then 4 to the history museum? Wow! isn't 4 a lot for just you?

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  2. ChickenUnderwearJanuary 19, 2010 at 10:00:00 AM EST

    yea, I don't even know what I did on Saturday.

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  3. AnonymousJanuary 19, 2010 at 12:40:00 PM EST

    I love finding blogs from fellow New Yorkers, and I'm a huge fan of the AMNH! Glad you had a good time!

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  4. Mike RussellJanuary 19, 2010 at 1:07:00 PM EST

    Do they feature a lot of Roosevelt's hats? That would be cool to see.

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  5. AnonymousJanuary 19, 2010 at 4:37:00 PM EST

    I want to enlighten you about the "skeletons" in Human Origins in AMNH. None of them are actual bones but great copies, and in fact the originals are really bones and not fossilized. They are just not old enough to have been "turned to stone".

    First of all, the originals are owned by the country in which they were found. This seems to be an international agreement. Once the anthropologists/archaeologists who have found them have completed their studies they are returned to the country of origin. Sometimes they are loaned out however for exhibits but always returned.

    And secondly, it is politically incorrect to exhibit skeletons now regardless of whether they are from ritual burials or found items.

    Actually, AMNH does have some "mummies" on exhibit. In particular in the Hall of South American peoples there is "Copper Man", a miner who perished in a copper mine and his body contains copper salts. You can read an interesting account of the museum's acquiring this in the book "Dinosaurs in the Attic". But that was over 100 years ago.

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  6. ChickenUnderwearJanuary 19, 2010 at 4:55:00 PM EST

    Thanks Anonymous, I am disappointed. I assumed that I was looking at "the real thing". I hope the dinosaurs are real?

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  7. HildaJanuary 21, 2010 at 3:17:00 AM EST

    What a coincidence. My friend and I were just talking about the earthquake monitor they have in that museum.

    We share one favorite author. And I like your statement about the tap water and losing revenue to save the earth. The museum should be commended by the city.

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You do not have to be nice!