A grand time at the Field Museum
Today some friends and I spent a few hours at the Field Museum of Natural History here in Chicago.
Chicago is a city with a lot of cultural attractions. In addition to the Field Museum, there’s also the Museum of Science and Industry, the Adler Planetarium, the Shedd Aquarium, the Art Institute, and dozens and dozens of other great institutions. I’ve lived here for years, and I think that I’ve gone twice.
It’s not that I don’t enjoy this sort of thing. I do. It’s not that I can’t afford it on a poor author’s salary. They have free days. I just never seem to get around to it, which is a damn shame.
That Voodoo that You Do
I was able to make the trip this time, because a friend of mine was going to see the Vodou exhibit, and since he’s a member he gets extra admissions. Sometimes a little extra push is all you need to get moving.
The exhibit was intense, and if you’re in the city, I strongly recommend checking it out yourself. I took some photos, which I’ll share with you here, but there were a lot of things I wasn’t comfortable taking pictures of.
Click to view slideshow.
A long walk through history
After spending an hour or two at the Voudo exhibit, we went to the Ancient Americas hall, partially as inspiration for my current book, which draws heavily from Zuni culture and history.
Click to view slideshow.
We weren’t yet halfway through the exhibit hall when we started to get tired, and sort of rushed through the rest of it. I feel bad about that, but the Field Museum’s collections are so expansive that you could spend an entire day slowly absorbing each one.
So that’s what I want to do.
The Best Laid Plan
What I’d like to do is get a museum membership and visit the Field once or twice a month, spending the day really getting a feel for one exhibit hall at a time, without rushing, without trying to do or see it all. I’d take pictures and live-tweet the experience, make a blog series out of it. Maybe do a live TWIK episode or two.
Museum memberships aren’t expensive, but they’re not cheap, either – it’s not out of the question, but it’s not trivial. It’d take 40 extra book sales in a given month. Half that if they were buying the Omnibus, which most new readers do.
So if you want to do me a solid, spread the word about my books. Tell your friends. Recommend them. Direct people to the free Bartleby and James – people go on from that to buy the others. Write an Amazon review.
It’d help me out.
Questions? You are invited to either leave a comment below, or ask directly through the comment form.
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