Totem Poles, Classical Music, Dinosaurs and Santa

In The Librarian, a series of films starring Noah Wyle (the first was directed by Peter Winther), we learn that being a librarian can be a dangerous quest for knowledge involving enchanted spears, swords and other dangerous paraphernalia. Apparently, knowing the Dewey Decimal system, being nerdy and wearing horn-rimmed glasses is no longer an adequate qualification.

(Below, the John Rylands Library Reading Room)

The 'humble librarian' as action-adventure hero is a much-done theme, as shown in a truly wonderful set of Australian horror books by Garth Nix. As National Treasure and the Night at the Museum films also teach us, museums are much the same. Not only do the collectors have to brave pits full of snakes and giant boulders in such productions as the Indiana Jones films, but they have to manage the evil cleaning crews headed by such unsavory characters as Dick van Dyke. There's even a comic book, Rex Libris, about a librarian who has to go into the past and the future and outer space to retrieve stolen library books.

These books and films show us that the quiet, dusty, book lined buildings filled with boring people wearing thick glasses attached to their necks with gold-toned chains that we think of as "libraries" are, in fact very exciting places. Not the parts that we get to see, of course, those look like the the Rowlands Library

In these books and films, beneath the book-lined interiors of these majestic buildings, saints were martyred, spies made vows to protect antiquities and bad guys of various sorts built their lairs. Enter one of these halls, and you never know quite what to expect. There's even trees and suns and stuff down there, hiding angry monsters that would like to eat your brain.

MightyIsis, despite her wallflowerlike personality and liking for quiet evenings punctuated only by the sound of crunching Oreo cookies, loves libraries and museums. Of course, she has never been in danger of having her brain eaten, even during a behind-the-scenes tour of the herpetology department. (The taxidermied turtles are scary for a host of other reasons, though)

Take, for example, the John Rylands University Library, where you can see the oldest existing piece of bible...MightyIsis did (See below).

If you believe these movies, then the nice lady who buttered the scones in the tea shop is actually a deposed Egyptian goddess who is working off her 1000 years of community service for feeding parts of her dead nephew to another family member during a particularly nasty fight about whose turn it was to put earrings on the sacred crocodiles or something. And Vikings are lurking behind the poetry display looking to carry off any likely looking maidens to help them catch a unicorn so they can get it to poke Teddy Roosevelt in the bottom. Meanwhile, the oldest piece of bible verse carries a secret code that contains the combination to a locker that holds a bunch of lightning bolts.... Or something like that.

Of course, these old bits of parchment, like the Dead Sea Scrolls, are often kept in museums as well. Which gets a tad bit confusing, actually. I mean, how are you supposed to know where to go to look for what? Below: Dead Sea Scroll, last seen by MightyIsis in a museum in California.

This problem is only compounded when you start thinking about the different types of museums. Say you want to see some African art. Do you go to a museum of natural history...like the Royal Ontario Museum, or an art museum like the Metropolitan Museum of Art?

MightyIsis likes both. And in some ways, natural history museums are a lot better. For one thing, they are friendlier for kids, which means that they have things like bat caves and tunnels where you are the same scale as a worm, and petrified wood. Also, they have dinosaurs, which are very special, even if MightyIsis has seen better examples elsewhere.

And who else has such a nice Quetzlycoatlus?

So imagine the joy of MightyIsis on wandering back into the lower level of the Royal Ontario Museum after viewing a truly spectacular exhibit of 20th century African art. Although she had just learned that she had been trapped for another hour by the Santa Claus parade, she spied a totem pole in sight of a dinosaur, just as an orchestra began to practice for a concert.

Sublime.

Manuscript images in the public domain. Image of the John Rylands Reading room: file is licensed under the Creative CommonsAttribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license. Photograph by Mike Peel(www.mikepeel.net)

The bat cave--all it's cracked up to be?

As everyone knows, Batman, otherwise known as the Caped Crusader, has his very own cave, the Bat Cave, which is located beneath the stately Wayne Manor, home of his playboy alter ego Bruce Wayne, just outside of the perpetually troubled Gotham City. In the classic--or at least the "cool"--film Batman Begins, we learn that as a boy Bruce Wayne was traumatized by bats and used his superhero persona as a way of overcoming that and the even greater childhood tragedy of losing both his parents to violent crime.

(Below, Bruce Wayne and sidekick. NB: They are definitely not gay and there is nothing even remotely weird about them sleeping in the same bed. Or their clashing pajamas.)

The Bat Cave is full of technological gizmos and gadgets that range from the sublimely ridiculous “Bat Shark Repellant” that Robin whipped off his utility belt during an undersea adventure when “Superfriend” Aquaman was not available to use his sonar powers, to the rather nifty full-body armour that the Dark Knight sports during his myriad feats of derring-do and whatnot. There are many large computers and other items with blinking lights and bat costumes, and probably even a few actual bats. Or would be if Batman wasn't scared of them.

The Bat Cave also has cars—the Batmobile, of course, but all of the many iterations of it, some fancy sports cars that Bruce Wayne is tired of, and things like little Bat Tanks that need someplace to be while they’re not outside vanquishing foes or zooming up to Batman in his hour of need like a cross between Trigger, the faithful mount of Roy Rogers, and Kit, the self-aware car of Knight Rider. Plus any planes and gliders that Batman and Robin are using or working on also have a place in the BatCave. It is worthy of note here that Batman is cooler than David Hasselhoff and also that the Batmobiles are cooler than Kit.

Of course, the Bat Cave is a made up story and no one really believes it exists.

Except MightyIsis… and then, only a little.

Sometimes.

After a few beers, mostly.

And while watching the Superfriends,

or any Batman movies,

or reading about Batman…

or Spiderman, actually,

or any other character popular at the Comic Book Store,

and well…

Ok, MightyIsis is a bit silly about Batman.

Luckily, Batman is not the topic of today’s blog or things would begin to get a bit soppy at just about this point.

This past weekend, MightyIsis visited an actual “Bat Cave” at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM). It was a bit of a disappointment. The museum itself was marvelous, but the bat cave was not as good relative to its billing as the rest of the exhibits.

Of course, an obsession—well, let’s say a healthy interest—in Batman does not lend itself to realistic expectations of other Bat Caves. It rather places them at a disadvantage. But the bat cave literature—not to mention the helpful signs—indicated that this “new” bat cave was “bigger, better, and scarier than ever !” With bats…and animatronics.

So, as a lover both of bats and of animatronics, MightyIsis made haste away from a truly gorgeous exhibition of twentieth century African art to the bat cave, eagerly tamping down all thoughts of Batman Begins or “It’s a Small World” as she went. After all, why set up the ROM bat cave for failure? That would be unfair.

The bat cave had a lot of plastic bats on what appeared to be elastic strings…and some other more detailed plastic bats, and a lot of red lights. The cave walls were nice, and the bat cave sounds were realistic-sounding for a person who had never actually been in a bat cave.

But it was less good, certainly than the “Masters of the Night” exhibit that showed tons of real, live, actual bats and flying foxes. Which are pretty big. Or the World of Darkness at the Wildlife conservation society, or even the bat that got stuck in the hallway at MightyIsis’ last job.

Surely this is not the fault of anyone at the ROM. The children right in front of MightyIsis seemed to enjoy the bat cave very much, actually. Until they reached the end and wanted to know where the real bats were. Below: a bat--not the type at the ROM.

MightyIsis just went and looked at the totem poles. Admittedly, there are tons of bigger, nicer ones in the Field Museum in Chicago (they are left over from the World's Fair), but the ROM had some simply delightful classical music.

Images: Batman and Robin: This low-quality image which represents a single panel from a larger comic book work and is for illustrative purposes is in no way an infringement of the copyright holders' rights to the property, nor does it limit the copyright holders' ability to sell reprints of the entire work. All DC Comics characters and the distinctive likeness(es) thereof are Trademarks & Copyright © 1954 DC Comics, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Batcave: limited use of this copyrighted image in as an illustration directly pertaining to it is a fair use. It depicts a fictional subject (such as a character) that is copyrighted. It would be impossible to create a replacement image which would not be subject to the original author's copyright. The image is only used to illustrate the fictional subject. The purposes are not for profit and in no way reduce the value of the original or limit its use. characters and the distinctive likeness(es) thereof are Trademarks & Copyright © 2006 DC Comics, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Organichasms

In reading the last, hurried, guilty food-oriented posts, I came to a decision: food diarist is not in my line. Or at least "regular food diarist" is not really my thing.

I like to read a lot and experience a lot and then synthesize all of that experience with a healthy dose of something whimsical. Like a plastic dinosaur or two. I like plastic dinosaurs...especially the fancy ones.

(Photos of my kitchen counter...thanks iPhone!! [left] iguanadon with eucalyptus in commemorative Weinachts glass from Cologne and 100th anniversary Milka tin)

So, although I've not been blogging regularly about my food exploits, I have not fallen off the better eating wagon entirely...bruised and battered I may be by the temptations of the Hostess cupcakes (so yummy), and even more so by the prose of Peter Singer (can that man evoke a more horrifying image of cruelty to swordfish?), I have persevered to present: this blog post. All right, even I am a bit underwhelmed by this, but what can we do?

[below] stegosaurus, purchased in Siena, Italy (at a store brimming with Smurfs) and posed with eucalyptus leaves. The little human being trampled underfoot is just for scale and was not harmed in the making of this photo.

[right] parasaurolophus with owl "whimsy," pigeon pea can, and huile de salade dispenser. The huile de salade dispenser is complete with recipes... albeit en francais, which requires a bit of doing to figure out.

Ok, not very much to show for 6 weeks of dietary efforts, but what can I do?

Over the past few weeks, I found it very hard to eat foods that Peter Singer described as being raised cruelly. So, eggs and chicken have been largely off the table, as well as anything I know has eggs in it, unless I can verify that they are organic.

I was wondering about this weirdly visceral reaction. After all...I've been hearing about egg production for years. Melanie Joy in Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows offers the explanation that as we conjure up images of nonfood animals, we experience disgust at the thought of eating them. I seem to be having the same experience with eggs. And, as I learned while eating lunch at Whole Foods yesterday, Michael Pollan in his recent, slim how-to-eat volume indicates something similar: if you can't picture the animal and know it was treated humanely, you're better off not eating it.

I am wondering if I am scarred for life. I used to be able to eat prepackaged baked treats, and when I had a packaged cupcake on New Year's Day, all I could think about were stacked cages of beakless chickens.

And going organic is a total pain: it's hard and expensive. Organic food spoils almost instantly and it rarely comes in single-serving sizes. And it's deceptive: organic cheddar bunnies say they're organic, but it's only the wheat. Who knows how the cheddar was produced? And organic frozen waffles (my sister left some eggos at my house and I got hooked)? Where did the eggs come from? And, by the way, "flax" is not a tasty waffle flavor, especially for those of us who like Twinkies but can no longer eat them.

In my out-to-eat with work life, I'm eating more beef now because it's raised less cruelly than other animals. And I'm struck by how difficult it is to find light meals and options that aren't packed with bacon of mysterious origins. Ok--I know it's from pigs (or turkeys...or maybe tofus), but which pigs? did they have names?

Frankly, I was a bit happier when I was chivvying my family about whether or not the apples were "free range" or the potatoes were cage free. Then I started to wonder--are the mouse-shaped cucumbers at Disneyland cruel to plants? Or are the plants better off because they are being tended by hydroponic specialists in perfectly controlled conditions?

So, I guess it's back to the Pocono diet: lots of dried fruit and green beans and tomatoes, almonds, and some pasta on the weekends. Tons of chips and salsa with cheese on the side and bags and bags of those little carrots.

Of course, There will be some changes. I discovered the wonderful world of arugula--what a tasty green. I'm also now spending $4 per half gallon of milk to get organic (it tastes a lot better, which means I'm drinking it) and supporting the local cheesemakers of Vermont, who if they are not already blest, in my humble opinion should be.