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Salton Sea and the Imperial Valley.
Colorado River
Rio Grande near Truth or Consequences,
NM?
I thought this was the Rio Grande,
but now that I look at a map, I think it was the Pecos.
Times Square, 1 am:
Midtown:
Downtown:
Brooklyn Bridge:
Lincoln Center:
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Well, it was more than a minute...I was there for three days. But it
sure felt like a minute! A fun-filled one at that.
From Take
Our Word For It
From Joe Papalia: ...My question pertains to
the origin of the phrase New York minute. I'm guessing that it refers
to a quick and hurried minute by making allusions to the hustle and
bustle of New York City. Any ideas?
I'm glad you enjoy the site! Unfortunately,
I'm about to let you down. I've been unable to find any information
on this term, though it certainly is likely that your guess as to
the term's origin is correct.
More on the phrase "New York Minute"
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If you can't see the bigger pix try this:
In IE 6.0, choose Tools from the Menu Bar. Choose Internet
Options. Select the Security tab. Choose Custom
Level. Scroll down to Scripting/Active Scripting and select Enable. That
should do it.
Other browsers: If you can't figure it out from the above instruction,
drop me a note and I'll see if I can help.
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American Museum of Natural History
United
Nations
Chrysler Building
Brooklyn
American Museum of Natural
History
My main purpose was to visit my old friend
Ethel. In fact, I realized that visiting Ethel at her office in
the American Museum of Natural History is probably the most persistent
activity in my life; my mom would take me up to visit her old high
school friend when I was a small kid. We would come to the museum
and upstairs to her lab (Ethel was a Curator at the museum, specializing
in comparative animal psychology). We would see her lab animals.
I remember rabbits (and later, searching tidepools in San Pedro
for sea slugs). And I'm still visiting here there!
But aside from this strong personal contact,
I just love this museum, and I always have. I probably spent six
or eight hours this trip just wandering its halls, and could easily
have spent more time there.
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1. Dinosaurs and
such
Big difference in the way dinosaurs are
treated in the AMNH and the LA
County Museum of Natural History. In LA, dinosaurs are extinct reptiles. In New York, dinosaurs are
animals that "dominated the earth for 150 million years," and
are now mostly extinct except for one large group that continue
to be seen around the world: birds.
Which is righ? I don't know. I think it's
an item of contention among scientists. I like the AMNH view, but
Ethel says the museum relies too heavily on "cladistics," the
drawing of family trees that claim to show the relationship of
animals based heavily on anatomical features.
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2. Frogs, Elephants
and such
Its interesting to reflect on the evolution
of style in museum display by comparing, for example, the classic
Hall of African Mammals with the contemporary Hall of Biodiversity.
The former features stuffed and mounted
life-like "specimens" set in their habitats, recreated
in three dimensions with beautiful painted backdrops. You can almost
feel you are there, with the jackles at the kill, the eagle high
in its aerie or the chimp in his jungle underbrush.
Now consider the Hall of Biodiversity.
I knew a woman who thought there were two distinct ways of thinking,
which she called "geometric" and "biomorphic." The
Halls of Mammals are geometric; Bidodiversity is biomorphic, more
free and wild and, in its own way, life-like. You don't quite know
what you are looking at, or how it all fits together. At least
not at first glance. In the center is a chunk of rain forest. A
monkey up a tree. Other things. A curious case has stuffed animals,
but not in their own habitats; posed naturally and arftully, but
with no backdrops or foliage. A half dozen or so unrelated animals,
including a beautiful tiger. On one wall there are displays about
different
animal groups with specimens, text and video. Off to one side there's
a separate section with quotes about nature from famous people
(see below).
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3. Biodiversity
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4. Theodore Roosevelt
The American Museum of Natural History
was founded just after the Civil War. Ethel told me that civic
leaders were concerned that immigrants coming into
the city would lose touch with their rural roots and the lands
they came from, and the museum was intended to help them hold on
to those roots. But the grand edifice that I always associate with
the museum was built in the 1920s as a memorial to New York's native
son, former governor and president Theodore Roosevelt.
Consider the bronze statue that sits in
front of the museum, facing central park. TR is mounted, heroically,
on a horse; standing on either side are a Negro and and Indian.
It's the great white father going forth to bring the great edifice
of western
civilization to the backward world. Ethel told me that
some years ago, there was a move to melt the statue down and put
the metal to a practical use (bullet casings, I think she said),
but that it was saved from the smelter and continues to inspire
us with its pomposity.
Politically, I know it's wrong, but I just
can't help it. I love that big brass, the inscriptions carved in
stone, the pillars, the magnificent halls, the mounted dinosaur
skeletons, the stuffed and mounted elephant herds, the tall murals
(I can't tell if they are supposed to depict history or mythology)
and the Halls of Human Knowledge. I just love this museum! |
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American Museum of Natural History | United
Nations | Chrysler Building | Brooklyn
"Ordinary language fixes the difference
between handmade images like Goya's and photographs by the convention
that artists 'make' drawings and paintings while photographer 'take'
photographs. But the photographic image...cannot be simply a transparency
of something that happened. It is always the image that someone chose;
to photograph is to frame, and to frame is to exclude."
— Susan Sontag
Regarding the Pain of Others
American Museum of Natural History | United
Nations | Chrysler Building | Brooklyn
American Museum of Natural History | United
Nations | Chrysler Building | Brooklyn
A meal I must mention...
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Shrimp and alligator sausage cheesecake
I asked the waiter to describe it; he said
he couldn't, all he could say was that it was delicious.
And it was! |
American Museum of Natural History | United
Nations |
Chrysler Building | Brooklyn
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Midtown:
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