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greygirlbeastWhatever this entry might have been, it's going to be this entry, instead. And you can thank Monsieur Insomnie for that, for keeping me up all night and into the day with his deviant shenanigans. I said deviant, not devious.
Um...
Trip recounting Part Two. Yeah, well that's not really going to happen. Or it's not going to happen the way it would have, had I slept. Insomnia's sort of like time travel. Shit still happens, but it happens differently than it would have, because the worldline's been altered.
Day Two. We went to the American Museum of Natural History. I have many fond memories of the AMNH. The last time I'd been there was May 2001, and I was there as a paleontologist researching mosasaurs. I sat in the dusty attic, filled with cabinets of fossils and labels written in Cope's own spidery hand, and worked on a project that I was never able to finish. The museum's changed a bit in the last ten years. Mostly not for the better. And these are the two things that cycled through my mind repeatedly while we were there on Wednesday.
In the Hall of Biodiversity, I sat down and made some notes about how natural history museums are - partly by necessity, partly by way of wrongheaded educators - going the way of the dinosaurs they display. Funding continues to dry up, and museums have to find ways to stay afloat. So, they become more and more like theme parks. It's called "infotainment," which requires "interactive" gimmicks, instead of hands-off exhibits with, you know, words and stuff. Add to this a maze of gift shops. I gag on that sickly portmanteau, "infotainment." Anyway, in my little black notebook, I wrote:
More and more, the old museum has been lost to the ravages of "infotainment." And to that add hundreds upon hundreds of screeching children*. The sense of sanctuary has been lost, that secular Cathedral to Science and Nature that was once the hallmark of good museums. The quiet dignity. I watch the people, and they file past, hardly even pausing to actually look at anything. Video monitors everywhere, sensory overload. Very sad seeing this.
Okay, I feel bad enough without harping on the Death of Museums right now. I'll come back to it some other time.
---
"Fake Plastic Trees" has sold to Ellen Datlow and Terry Windling for their post-apocalyptic YA anthology, After. I suppose, at this point, everything that postdates tomorrow is post-apocalyptic.
Also, while I have decided to write Blood Oranges before Blue Canary, it's not what I actually want to do. Many factors come into play. Blood Oranges is a peculiar lark of a book. Blue Canary is my future (I hope). By the way, with my agent's blessings, I'll be writing the latter as Kathleen Rory Tierney. Or Kathleen R. Tierney. But the R will stand for Rory, whether people know it or not. Someday, I may write another novel like The Drowning Girl or The Red Tree. We shall see. Time will tell. Regardless, all this is a change of direction of my choosing.
Yesterday...um...yesterday, I signed 600+ signature sheets for Two Worlds and In Between (which required two hours and forty-five minutes). I emailed stories to two editors for two anthologies. I answered email. The REAL mail came, and there was a chunk of granite (brick red with grey phenocrysts) from Ryan Obermeyer, which he picked up on the shore of the Red Sea, at Hurghada, during his recent trip to Egypt. Actually, the stone came from out of the water of the Red Sea.
My foot hurts like hell. If hell hurts, and they tell us it will.
Last night, good rp in Rift. The guild grows, and its story begins to unfold.
And I'm going to hit myself in the face now.
Deliriously,
Aunt Beast
P.S. -- My birthday soon. Please give me stuff.
* Once, when I was young, children actually knew how to behave in museums. Now, the teachers chaperoning field trips have probably been bullied by helicopter parents to the point that they're afraid of telling kids to keep it down, for fear of lawsuits charging them with stifling self-expression or some bullshit. So, we get these fucking brats with a sense of entitlement.
In the Theodore Roosevelt Rotunda, a rearing Barosaurus (unlikely) and an Allosaurus.
African elephants that once were alive. But when they're extinct, we'll still have these dead things to show the kids.
The Bongo. I have a horn fetish. No, really.
A model of a mosquito, enlarged many, many times. Spooky loved this in particular.
The scale model of a Blue Whale.
A Cretaceous-age seafloor.
A Permian-age seafloor.
More Permian seafloor.
Ordovician-age trilobites crawling over a head of coral.
The giant Ordovician trilobite Isotelus gigas.
The coelacanth, symbol of many, many things.
A dusty Architeuthis battles a dusty Sperm Whale in the pretend darkness of a pretend abyss.
All photographs Copyright © 2011 by Caitlín R. Kiernan and Kathryn A. Pollnac
Um...
Trip recounting Part Two. Yeah, well that's not really going to happen. Or it's not going to happen the way it would have, had I slept. Insomnia's sort of like time travel. Shit still happens, but it happens differently than it would have, because the worldline's been altered.
Day Two. We went to the American Museum of Natural History. I have many fond memories of the AMNH. The last time I'd been there was May 2001, and I was there as a paleontologist researching mosasaurs. I sat in the dusty attic, filled with cabinets of fossils and labels written in Cope's own spidery hand, and worked on a project that I was never able to finish. The museum's changed a bit in the last ten years. Mostly not for the better. And these are the two things that cycled through my mind repeatedly while we were there on Wednesday.
In the Hall of Biodiversity, I sat down and made some notes about how natural history museums are - partly by necessity, partly by way of wrongheaded educators - going the way of the dinosaurs they display. Funding continues to dry up, and museums have to find ways to stay afloat. So, they become more and more like theme parks. It's called "infotainment," which requires "interactive" gimmicks, instead of hands-off exhibits with, you know, words and stuff. Add to this a maze of gift shops. I gag on that sickly portmanteau, "infotainment." Anyway, in my little black notebook, I wrote:
More and more, the old museum has been lost to the ravages of "infotainment." And to that add hundreds upon hundreds of screeching children*. The sense of sanctuary has been lost, that secular Cathedral to Science and Nature that was once the hallmark of good museums. The quiet dignity. I watch the people, and they file past, hardly even pausing to actually look at anything. Video monitors everywhere, sensory overload. Very sad seeing this.
Okay, I feel bad enough without harping on the Death of Museums right now. I'll come back to it some other time.
---
"Fake Plastic Trees" has sold to Ellen Datlow and Terry Windling for their post-apocalyptic YA anthology, After. I suppose, at this point, everything that postdates tomorrow is post-apocalyptic.
Also, while I have decided to write Blood Oranges before Blue Canary, it's not what I actually want to do. Many factors come into play. Blood Oranges is a peculiar lark of a book. Blue Canary is my future (I hope). By the way, with my agent's blessings, I'll be writing the latter as Kathleen Rory Tierney. Or Kathleen R. Tierney. But the R will stand for Rory, whether people know it or not. Someday, I may write another novel like The Drowning Girl or The Red Tree. We shall see. Time will tell. Regardless, all this is a change of direction of my choosing.
Yesterday...um...yesterday, I signed 600+ signature sheets for Two Worlds and In Between (which required two hours and forty-five minutes). I emailed stories to two editors for two anthologies. I answered email. The REAL mail came, and there was a chunk of granite (brick red with grey phenocrysts) from Ryan Obermeyer, which he picked up on the shore of the Red Sea, at Hurghada, during his recent trip to Egypt. Actually, the stone came from out of the water of the Red Sea.
My foot hurts like hell. If hell hurts, and they tell us it will.
Last night, good rp in Rift. The guild grows, and its story begins to unfold.
And I'm going to hit myself in the face now.
Deliriously,
Aunt Beast
P.S. -- My birthday soon. Please give me stuff.
* Once, when I was young, children actually knew how to behave in museums. Now, the teachers chaperoning field trips have probably been bullied by helicopter parents to the point that they're afraid of telling kids to keep it down, for fear of lawsuits charging them with stifling self-expression or some bullshit. So, we get these fucking brats with a sense of entitlement.
In the Theodore Roosevelt Rotunda, a rearing Barosaurus (unlikely) and an Allosaurus.
African elephants that once were alive. But when they're extinct, we'll still have these dead things to show the kids.
The Bongo. I have a horn fetish. No, really.
A model of a mosquito, enlarged many, many times. Spooky loved this in particular.
The scale model of a Blue Whale.
A Cretaceous-age seafloor.
A Permian-age seafloor.
More Permian seafloor.
Ordovician-age trilobites crawling over a head of coral.
The giant Ordovician trilobite Isotelus gigas.
The coelacanth, symbol of many, many things.
A dusty Architeuthis battles a dusty Sperm Whale in the pretend darkness of a pretend abyss.
All photographs Copyright © 2011 by Caitlín R. Kiernan and Kathryn A. Pollnac
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no subject
Date: 2011-05-20 07:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-20 07:01 pm (UTC)Thank you.
no subject
Date: 2011-05-20 07:02 pm (UTC)I'm looking forward to Blood Oranges (and Blue Canary)--I love the idea of supernatural noir, but have been disappointed in nearly all the results of the UF/PR glut of the past few years.
no subject
Date: 2011-05-20 07:04 pm (UTC)I love the idea of supernatural noir, but have been disappointed in nearly all the results of the UF/PR glut of the past few years.
I hope this is different. But since I don't read that shit, I can't be sure.
no subject
Date: 2011-05-20 07:21 pm (UTC)Once, when I was young, children actually knew how to behave in museums. Now ... we get these fucking brats with a sense of entitlement.
If we're lucky, they - along with the fundamentalist Xtians - will be carried away in tomorrow's Rapture.
Post-apocalypse party at my place Sunday. You're invited.
no subject
Date: 2011-05-20 07:22 pm (UTC)If we're lucky, they - along with the fundamentalist Xtians - will be carried away in tomorrow's Rapture.
True.
Post-apocalypse party at my place Sunday. You're invited.
I will; be there in spirit.
no subject
Date: 2011-05-20 07:42 pm (UTC)I would murder my kids if they were anything but reverent in a museum.
no subject
Date: 2011-05-20 07:46 pm (UTC)What a beautiful place that museum must be.
So much as one it was.
I would murder my kids if they were anything but reverent in a museum.
Didn't want to go to jail.
no subject
Date: 2011-05-20 08:43 pm (UTC)This made me laugh. I don't blame you! I wouldn't actually murder my kids but I would certainly either get them to behave properly or leave the museum with them if they wouldn't behave. And of course I am talking about my own kids who's access to ice cream and bedtime stories I control. Other people's children are out of my hands.
no subject
Date: 2011-05-20 09:00 pm (UTC)Other people's children are out of my hands.
Alas.
Also, that icon scares me.
no subject
Date: 2011-05-20 08:02 pm (UTC)Probably unsurprisingly, the Hall of Ocean Life is one of my favorite places in New York. Even now that it has video up everywhere, I love its ancient seafloors and the whale always gathering, diving down.
no subject
Date: 2011-05-20 08:16 pm (UTC)Even now that it has video up everywhere
I'm going to write about that.
no subject
Date: 2011-05-20 08:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-20 09:01 pm (UTC)Thanks for sharing!
You're welcome.
no subject
Date: 2011-05-21 01:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-21 01:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-21 02:46 am (UTC)BTW, I presume you've already seen it, but just in case: did you catch the "elephants evolving tusklessness" thing?
no subject
Date: 2011-05-21 08:39 pm (UTC)I do my best to raise respectful children, since I cringe at the scene you describe.
Went to library with my daughter this morning to do the weekly exchange for books. She told a high-school kid who was being disrespectfully loud (showing off for a gaggle of teenage girls, from my perspective) to "shush." He turned beat red and left.
no subject
Date: 2011-05-21 10:01 pm (UTC)I love the mosquito, as well. it's quite wonderful.
no subject
Date: 2011-05-21 10:57 pm (UTC)Also, about pen names: do you have to register any pen names you use? I realized I don't know if there's any sort of protocol for using them, beyond saying to your agent "I want to use this name; that okay?" Maybe there's no set way to publish under a pseudonym and I'm just overthinking this, but I'm curious.