While the shining summer sea dances in the glass of your mirror

[sovay]

Anyone who lives in Boston or within visiting distance, this is a public service announcement that the Blaschka glass invertebrates which Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology has been restoring since 2006 are now on permanent display. There are 430 in the collection; I was told this afternoon that there are currently 62 on view and the selection will rotate frequently. They are extraordinarily beautiful. Jellyfish. Anemones. Cephalopods. Nudibranchs. Anything soft-bodied and delicately colored that preservation in formaldehyde would have turned into a fistful of glop, Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka recreated in glass for educational study. The glass flowers are more famous (and unique to Harvard, having been commissioned on the strength of the Blaschkas' sea creatures, which were supplied to museums and universities around the world), but I expect to find myself returning to these sea-conjurations more often. The Portuguese man o' war is precisely the vibrant violet-blue of the living animal, its tentacles ribboned like candy. I'd never seen any of the anemones before; their tentacles are as boneless and translucent as the real thing. I texted derspatchel, "I covet the Sacoglossan Sea Slug (Stiliger ornatus)."

(I really do. I just don't have thousands of dollars to spare.)

It's been a stressful several weeks. I wanted to visit a museum. It was worth it.

Comments

[sovay]

"Aww! Can I keep it? Please?"

Don't I wish!

Nembrotha kubaryana—the variable neon sea slug—sounds like something invented by Tolkien. The nomenclature on the Regal Sea Goddess (Felimare picta) is not blowing smoke. Nembrotha cristata has pretty much won my heart.

I miss the sea so much. Last year was a changeful, productive, incredibly happy (if incredibly full of logistics—two moves and a marriage) year, but it was a very dry year. Maybe I should just visit the aquarium.