I was a bit bummed this morning that after three days here none of my visits had firmed up and I was running out of promising sites to explore. It was rainy early on (loud thunder during the night) so I searched for museums and it looked like the top two were both at UI: the Natural History Museum on the main campus east of the river and the Art Museum on the opposite bank.
The Museum of Natural History turned out to be a good time even though it's medium-sized at best and is largely the old-fashioned kind with collections of bones, stuffed animals, and dioramas in serried rows of glass cases.
Iowa Hall on the first floor was the real winner, leading the visitor through several story lines -
- Iowa geology and paleontology, including a very nice video on students and their professor excavating the bones of an elephant-sized ground sloth from about 10,000 years ago;
- Iowa climate change since the last Ice Age, the clues scientists use to track it and the impact of modern agriculture and conservation on preserving key ecosystems; and
- The culture of Iowa's native tribes from before the arrival of Europeans, through the periods of white settlement and confinement of natives on reservations in Kansas and later Oklahoma, and modern-day remnants of their people and culture.
I got so wrapped up in these exhibits that I had to rush through the other main area, on the third floor, for fear of a parking ticket (Iowa City loves parking meters like God loves beetles; they're everywhere). This wasn't much of a loss since the third floor houses halls of mammals and birds lined up by taxonomic group without much effort to tell their stories or single out those from Iowa. Still, the bird hall did give me a closer view of one of yesterday's friends the turkey vultures looking a bit dusty and faded. Not blog-worthy IMO but look if you want. ;-)I also photographed one sign near the turkey vulture explaining that vultures have the neat trick of "excreting" on their legs to cool off. They share this substitute for sweating with storks, who turn out to be their close relatives. I had to go to the Indiana Public Media website to find out which sort of excreting the sign meant (urinating) and to learn that the birds' bald heads may serve more for cooling than for carrion-eaters' hygiene.
A tiny ecological exhibit on the third floor did have a bit more pizazz with its lively hands-on and Q&A approaches apparently aimed at schoolchildren. I skipped the final exhibit area, in the basement.
While I was at the museum Lisa confirmed our dinner date and the day brightened considerably as a result. My trek through snarled traffic to the west bank of the Iowa River turned up no art museum: it's now a theater building and only part of the art collection is on view, in the student union back on the east bank.
No way - I was through sightseeing and spent the afternoon in my hotel room listening to Stravinsky and Sibelius on my iPod. (Sometimes I listen alphabetically: Shostakovich lasted me through several days and states between California and Nebraska, and I've cued up Stockhausen for tomorrow.)
By the way, do you find it almost impossible to watch TV in a new city? The channels and times for your favorite shows are all different, and it isn't enough just to compensate for the time zone. To use a local newspaper or online TV listing you first have to figure out which cable service the hotel uses, then scroll down a long list and across all the possible time slots. The PBS News Hour (7 on WETA at home) is at 5:30 here in Central Time, and Law & Order SVU (9 at home) is at 7, so I couldn't watch either of them. My total TV watching for these 2 1/2 months probably totals less than an hour. Not a bad thing, I guess.
Tonight Lisa and Ben and two of their kids, Sophie and Sam, joined me for a wonderful dinner at The Thai Spice. Duck in a red curry - yum! My third photo is of them, and of course I don't put people's faces and full names in this blog.
Final footnote for Sigrid G: come to Iowa City. The song of cicadas is everywhere here.
Big plans for tomorrow in Illinois - do stay tuned!
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