My 10-year-old had been lobbying all summer for a trip to the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago. Of course you know how summers go… Well, with only a week before he went back to school, we finally put the pause-button on the daily grind and took the 3 hour drive to the city. Did I say 3 hours? Well, that’s what it would be if not for the long traffic jams that seem to be part of daily life in Chicago. I used to be pretty good at getting in and out of Chicago while rarely worrying about traffic. In the last couple years however, it seems that morning and evening rush hours have merged into an almost debilitating all day event.
A little between performance huddle...
Now when it comes museums and such, we always blow off the “shows” and movies. Who wants to waste time on popcorn entertainment when there’s learning afoot!? On the other hand, when you have a kid’s attention span spurring you along, you don’t have enough time to read everything either. The combined effect is that you move through a place like Shedd fairly quickly. We did. Still, along the way I did manage to get a few good pictures of jellyfish.
With a few hours left of our last “fun” day before the dreaded return of school, we decided we may as well pay another visit to Sue the T-Rex over at the Field Museum. We’ve been to the Field Museum enough times that we almost have each display card memorized. Heck even Lucy is starting to give me that “You Again?” look when we pass by. The last thing you want is to be labeled the “guest who would not leave” by your Australopithecus ancestors.
And speaking of ancestors… I’ve had a thought, a feeling, maybe more of a question that has been getting stronger each time I go to the Field Museum and walk through the exhibit of Egyptian mummies. I’ve always been fascinated with Egypt’s amazing history, like so many others of course, and I’ve spent lots of time in that exhibit. But lately I’ve not been feeling “good” when I’ve walked through. I think it first started nagging at me last year. Guilt. I’m not sure why it suddenly hit me. I guess that the more museums try to personalize our connection with the past, the more we start asking the personal questions like, “What if that were our family member on display?” I can’t guess at all the different angles people could look at it. Do our mortal remains matter? Are they simply discarded shells? Did anyone ask for and get permission to bring the mummies out of their homeland in the first place? Has anyone asked for them back? Back in the day, it was pretty common to just take whatever you found, especially when it was found outside of the “western world” as we all know. Mummies certainly didn’t always get treated with much respect, especially before the 1900s. Even with the reverence they receive in modern museums, I can’t imagine the people those mummies once were would have wanted to be removed from their graves, or their native soil. But does that matter if they’re dead anyway? Am I over-thinking? I’m not sure I have a fixed opinion myself… Just a random thought that seems to get stronger every time I pause to think that mummies where once people just like us. They certainly could have never imagined what would be done with their remains. . .
Sorry, I just led you down another one of the random, twisted walks that often play havoc with my brain….
And with that in mind…
A little between performance huddle...
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