We watched Night at the Museum last night. I recommend it to everyone. (and welcome to another memory riff...) My dad taught me to be a museum freak. We didn't go on vacations often and when we did, museums were always on the way. The Smithsonian, museums of industry, museums of science, fine arts. One museum we went to at least once a year is now long gone, the Morse Museum in Warren, NH. The Morse Museum was actually a mansion. The Morse family were (I think) diplomats or industrialists back when being an industrialist meant something. They travelled, filled their home with animals, artifacts, oddities, ... They brought the world to a small town in NH. My dad asked questions of people who worked in all museums. Whatever they couldn't answer, he'd turn to me and ask, "What do you think, son?" These questions were invitations to imagination.
Behind the Morse Museum was a pond filled with fish. There was a converted gumball machine that, for a nickel, would give you a handful of fishfood. Imagination would take us to this fish pond and nickel after nickel would go in that machine as we imagined how animals lived all over the world ("Why do you think it has spots?" "What good are hooves like that?" "It's skin is awful smooth. How come?") and people, too, ("How do they move in all those clothes?" "Such little tiny feet on a grown woman. Why would they do that?").
It was glorious, and Night at the Museum brought back all the imaginations.
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