The Best Laid Plans

The plan was to pick The Eldest up at her hotel around 11:30 am, Sunday. Since we were so close to the Museum of Science, we would head over to view The Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit 

Since it was a holiday weekend, we made good time on The Pike and got into the city in under an hour. Usually, it can take an hour and a quarter to two hours depending on time of day and traffic. The Eldest was waiting for us outside the hotel. We headed across town to the museum, and our good timing and plans came to a screeching halt.

The museum parking garage was full. Two lanes of traffic were backed up trying to make the left hand turn to the alternate parking lot at the Galleria Mall. I was hoping Anime convention goers, OneRun runners and spectators (Sat) would head over to the MFA for their Free Memorial Day Community Weekend, but looked like they had the same plans we did. "The best laid plans of mice and men, gang aft aglee."

Himself has Fridays off during the Summer so we'll try again. Did you get to do what you wanted to do this weekend?

TARDIS - Art and Science

To Hear an Ocean in A Whisper
Artist: Nathalie Miebech
Scientist: Jonathan Finke

The fourth and final day of my Artist Retreat. Check out at the hotel was at noon, but the Young One wouldn't be done at the Con until 7pm. So the plan was Himself would pick me up along with my bag, and assorted bags and laptops of The Young One and one of her teammates. I thought I'd take Andy Fish's advice and visit the ICA, Institute for Contemporary Art. I had never heard of the ICA, and not sure how I feel about modern or contemporary art. Part of this retreat was to do things outside of my comfort zone (like eat at a restaurant all by my lone). The ICA was in the same area as PAX. As an added benefit, World of Wheels was at a convention center across the street from the ICA, and the Batmobile from the 1960s television series, Batman, was on display along with a couple of other Batmobiles from recent movies. I thought Himself would like to see the Batmobile and that would take the sting out of being dragged around art museums. Himself is a most excellent good sport.

At the last minute, as it turned out, The Eldest decided to tag along on the trip in to Boston. She's not much for visiting art museums and would definitely be bored by the Batmobile. What would keep two scientists happy for the day? A trip to the Museum of Science. Besides all the fun of the science museum, Himself found an exhibit called Ocean Stories: A Synergy of Art and Science. This was a collaboration between artists from Cape Cod and scientists from MIT and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. The scientists explained their work to the artists, and the artists visually interpreted the work in unusual and creative ways from large paintings, sculptures, and using light to create a painting. Art and science, hand in glove.

The last time we visited the science museum, we weren't able to see the lightning show, but we did get to see it this time around. I love this show. No matter how many times I see it, the show never gets old.

After the lightning show was over, the demonstrator turned on the singing Tesla coils. This is electrical energy used to make sound and produce music. I was hoping the musical selection was the theme from Doctor Who, but the coil was programmed to play The William Tell Overture.







If you've never heard a Tesla coil used as a musical instrument, watch this Youtube video of the group Arc Attack as they use the coil to play the theme song from Doctor Who

The Friday Five

Last Friday, The Kennegeeks  made the annual pilgrimage to the Museum of Science, Boston. We decided to go before The Young One returned to college, Himself had to go back to his classroom, and The Eldest had to return to her job at the lab. We picked a good day as Christmas vacation was over, and the kids were back in school. It was too early in the season for field trips, so the museum wasn't crowded. We didn't have much of a wait to purchase tickets so we felt as if we had the place to ourselves.

1. The Eldest wanted to see the new planetarium show about Moons. The planetarium shows are always exciting, but the new camera made the show spectacular. You almost felt as if you were on the surface of the Earth's moon, or hopping from one moon of Saturn to another.

2. The Young One wanted to see the 3D film Flying Monsters. We donned our 3D glasses and traveled back in time to soar with the pterosaurs. The Young One analyzed the quality of the animation.

3. Because there were no lines, we were able to take a nice break in the Butterfly Garden. Himself was the one who noticed a Blue Morpho butterfly hanging out on the window. If you moved a couple of steps to the right, the butterfly looked as if it was climbing the Prudential Tower. I wrote about the butterfly terrorizing the Back Bay the other day.

4. We saw the Shipwreck! Pirates and Treasures exhibit. Learned how treasure and artifacts are collected from a wreck. Saw lots of gold and silver coins, and pottery and bottles without so much as a crack or chip. There were tales of famous pirates, a robotic arm to try your hand at gathering treasure, and a wind tube so you could feel hurricane force winds.

5. We stopped by to see Sue, the lovely, life-size T-Rex model. It was a chilly day so museum staff had wrapped Sue in a long red and white scarf. Outside her permanent exhibit, we happily fed quarters and pennies into the machine to emboss the penny with dinosaur images. The disclaimer on the machine said it was not illegal to deface legal tender, and was a lot safer than placing pennies on the subway tracks which The Brother and I did as kids. Thanks to Fraue for teaching The Young One about the penny machines when she took us to visit the Minnesota Zoo almost 7 years ago. We decided the next trip, we need to bring more pennies and a boatload of quarters to hit all the machines outside of the big exhibits.

The only disappointing part of the trip was we didn't have time to see my favorite exhibit, the lightning show with the singing Tesla coil. Oh well, next trip.

Museum of Science

We finally got to the Boston Museum of Science. It was the last day of the Pompeii exhibit, but we didn't get to see it. The exhibit was sold out, and there were no spaces left in the museum parking garage. Deep sigh. Forlorn look. We ended up taking a long detour before getting our bearings and parking around the block at the Cambridge Galleria.

We saw a fun demonstration of illusions and mind games before heading to the planetarium to see Cosmic Collisions. I expected the show to be narrated by Leonard Nimoy (the actor who played Spock in the original Star Trek just in case you're too young or grew up in a cave and have no idea what I'm talking about.) Nimoy grew up a few blocks from the museum and does the voice over to demonstrate the sound system at the museum Omni Theater. Instead,  the planetarium show was narrated by actor Robert Redford (Google him if you don't recognize the name) which took the sting out of missing Pompeii (at least for me) The planetarium has a new camera which projects some incredible images of planets and objects and galaxies far, far, away.

The last exhibit we saw was Electricity. I've seen the show a hundred times, but was surprised with the addition of the musical Tesla coil. Too fun.

What did you do this weekend?