Les Bonnes Choses

My mom and dad came to visit this American Thanksgiving weekend. Mom has been down since Monday morning, and my dad arrived Thursday evening. They left about an hour ago, and I am now pausing to reflect on the holiday visit.

We visited the Chicago Botanical Gardens on Friday, which marked the opening of the Wonderland Express model train exhibit. Both of my uncles Dave would have been really impressed by the G-scale model train setup:

Those buildings? They're models of Chicago area landmarks made of plant bits: twigs, seeds, shells, leaves, bark, etc.

Yesterday we went to the Field Museum of natural history. Jude is into Dinosaurs, so it seemed like a guaranteed home run. There is a large T.Rex skeleton on the main level, and that was a hit, but by the time we got to the dinosaur exhibit, Mssr. Jude had quite enough of the place. We lingered briefly after that to see the Egyptian exhibit. Entering the exhibit through a mockup of a pyramid catacomb, the curator's attention to detail lead to disappointment: they had apparently went to great lengths to recreate an actual pyramid visit. As we know, with the exception of Tutankhamen's famous crypt, nearly every pyramid was raided by thieves (usually the same people hired to construct the tomb). Thus, at every turn we would reach a dead end with a sign saying something like, "This is where golden urns filled with dried fruits would have been stored for the dead's voyage to the afterlife. Unfortunately grave robbers have long since emptied the room...". I'm not even sure that anyone from the museum ever visited Egypt. I've never been to Egypt, but apparently already have most of what I would need to put on my own Egyptian tomb exhibit.