Do you see the water and watch it flow and float an empty shell?

[sovay]

I just found out that my all-time favorite of the Smithsonian's exhibits, "Life in the Ancient Seas," ceased to exist in 2013. The fossil halls are being completely remodeled. It looks like a considerable, thoughtful undertaking. It is probably even scientifically necessary. At the moment I'm too stunned to appreciate it. I loved the fossil skeletons swimming before the full-scale murals of which they were the stony echoes, the shadowiness of its corridors and the sea-lighting, the petrified corals and the shells. The diorama of the Paleozoic reef. I wanted to swim in those waters, all the different millions of years of them. Ammonites, mosasaurs, armored fishes, euryptids, dugongs and diving birds and kelp swaying in the bubble-blue light. In 2005, I rejoiced that it still existed. I wish I had known in time to say goodbye.

[edit] Ely Kish, the painter of the murals, died last year. She gave me a wonderful dream of the sea's deep time. I would have preferred not to learn both of these facts within the same half-hour.

Comments

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

Oh dear. I am so sorry. It is heartbreaking to lose beloved spaces, to lose the visionary who had made them live. Her memory for a blessing. May you dream of swimming in those waters, sleek, rejoicing.

Nine

[sovay]

May you dream of swimming in those waters, sleek, rejoicing.

Thank you. I did not really sleep enough to dream, but I wrote her a poem.

[spatch]

Thanks to the Internet, the Faith Hubley animation Enter Life will live on. Do you reckon the murals have been archived somewhere as well?

[sovay]

Thanks to the Internet, the Faith Hubley animation Enter Life will live on.

I am thankful for that, and so glad to have been able to watch it again with you. I hope the new fossil hall will have a place for it. No other museum video has ever earwormed me so thoroughly and with such a successful imprint of chemistry.

Do you reckon the murals have been archived somewhere as well?

I truly hope so. I was able to find some pictures, but nothing systematic. I trust the Smithsonian not to junk the originals, but I want to be able to see them.

[yamamanama.livejournal.com]

I'm glad there are others who are as amazed by paleozoic life as I am.

[sovay]

I'm glad there are others who are as amazed by paleozoic life as I am.

I have no training, but I love the deep time and the diversity of life. I read a lot of books when I was younger. I am beginning to feel vaguely as though I am starved for science these days.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

How can we not mourn for things that we love disappearing? Even though we ourselves are 100 percent transient and changing....

I feel for you.

Yesterday I learned that Jean Ritchie had died. Her singing was with me through childhood right up to now... I know we are all mortal, but.

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

Oh no. Jean Ritchie? A good age, and a noble legacy. But...

Nine

[sovay]

How can we not mourn for things that we love disappearing? Even though we ourselves are 100 percent transient and changing....

And nothing puts it in perspective like reading about major extinction events.

(No, but it's true: you grieve anyway.)

Yesterday I learned that Jean Ritchie had died.

I didn't know. Thank you for telling me. Her memory for a blessing.

[larryhammer]

Ah, man. My favorite Smithsonian exhibit as well. I remember when it went in, because I hadn't been convinced that anything could be better than the life-sized blue whale that had been in that space and was AMAZED at how much better ancient life was than ocean life. During those mid-teen years when I was too young for a summer job, I spent a lot of summer days haunting the Mall-side Smithsonians, and that was one of the places I always went.

---L.

[sovay]

Ah, man. My favorite Smithsonian exhibit as well.

Oh, I'm sorry. I envy your opportunity to haunt the Smithsonian. I can still count the number of times I've been there on a hand and a half.

[larryhammer]

It was one of the distinct pluses of growing up in the District.

---L.

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

Ach. I am sorry.

[sovay]

Ach. I am sorry.

Thank you. I want to visit a lot of museums now before I miss anything else.

[strange-selkie.livejournal.com]

They took away the "people bones," too, in a fit of equal opportunism. Noel is so pissed, we haven't been back. (She spent many a fond minute sprawled lying atop the fauxmains [or possibly his real relics; the case didn't say] of Bartholomew Gosnold, 'looking right into the eyeholes of his BRAINCASE, Mama' until the Japanese tourists started taking pictures of her, too) and she loved the Egyptians' things, set out in fake situ on glittering sand. Gone also, with many of the best specimens from that area of the world, is the Iraqi Neolithic toddler who taught her that her very own mouth was fucking terrifying just by its osseous existence, and it looked JUST like that. I wish some things could just stay the same.

*hugs and thoughts of the deep sea's bones*