We Wish You a Scary Christmas

Well, the manger scene turned out splendidly; I'll be linking to it on Flickr shortly. The addition of Jar-Jar as little drummer boy was fairly alarming. But frankly, if there's anything more annoying than Jar-Jar, it's that damn carol. Stupid drummer boy, with his incessant rum-pum-pumming. How I hate it. And now I'm working in a job where there is a high statistical likelihood that at any time I might walk out of my department and find it playing on the overhead speakers throughout the museum. GAH.

To be perfectly fair, they do also play reasonably good holiday music on the overhead occasionally; I've heard the Eurythmics version of "Winter Wonderland" and Trans-Siberian Orchestra's "Wizards in Winter" in years past, when I was working on contract. But there's a lot of hullabaloo about what music museums can or can't play over their public speakers these days, and if we don't have the proper agreements with ASCAP we might find ourselves listening to the Emmett Otter Jug Band all holiday season. Personally I'd love to hear them fire up DaVinci's Notebook's Dreidel Song, but I think the odds are against it.

Some Cheese with my Whine?

See, now I've whined about the sadness of our recent exhibit here.... I've discharged considerable frustration about it on a locked LJ post (and thanks to H for reminding me that I do, in fact, have a Livejournal and that I could be using it for something)... So what happens when the thing is open and it's time to move on? The following:

Work is silent. People are already leaving for Thanksgiving. I go downstairs for a cup of coffee. Refused access to the holiday "Yule Slide" I am forced to walk down the ramps. Upon returning to the Exhibits department, I am greeted with the following:

COWORKER #1: Ninja! (this is my nickname at the office. no, you cannot ask why.)
COWORKER #2: Ninja! We need you!
ME: Uh oh.
COWORKER #2: Specifically, we need your Star Wars action figures.
ME: Ok. No, wait, WHY?
COWORKER #1: We're making a nativity scene for the collections department.
COWORKER #2: We've got it all planned out. Anakin and Amadala will be Mary and Joseph, and we're going to use LEGO minifigures of Luke and Leia in the manger.
ME: ........
COWORKER #1: Will you help?
ME: Well, duh! Ok, wait, so who are our shepherds? Is the Emperor one of the wise men, or is he more a King Herod type...?

Yeah. I continue to play a vital part in the life of our museum, by supplying the rare but valuable element of Nerdolinium (periodic symbol: NRD) whenever needed.

A Gasp of Relief

Today the big exhibit opened. Instead of blogging about the trials and tribulations of the last week before opening, I wanted to give some serious thought to the emotional content of the exhibit.

It's intense. As I mentioned in the last post, I have to wonder about the intensity level for our visitor base. We're warning folks with kids under the age of 9 or 10 that we don't recommend it for them; this is all well and good to tell people, and yet on opening day I saw a hundred kids under the age of 10 zipping around the space. Did parents ignore the greeters? Did they not hear them? Does it matter? It might, at that. At several points, I saw small kids tugging on their mom's hand and saying, "I don't like this. Can we go?" And I've no idea if that was a reaction to content--the unfun subjects--or if it's a reaction to the fact that there are no activities geared for younger visitors in the gallery.

For me, this week, it's been a re-opening of the emotional responses I've had over the past 6 months to doing content research for the exhibit. On Monday, Ryan White's mom came to the gallery for the first time since the structures went up. I was applying some graphics of her son to a panel, and I stepped aside so she could read it. We exchanged pleasantries, I told her how happy we were to have her there and how I hoped she liked what we'd done. She's a lovely woman. And then she went into the "Ryan's Room" area of the exhibit, which is pretty much all of his stuff from his room at the time he died, all arranged as an immersive environment. And all I could think about was how I can't even begin to imagine what that would feel like--to walk into a museum exhibit, 16 years after the death of your son, and see his whole life on display like that. It was wrenching.

This exhibit has been a long series of emotional blows to the gut. Which is what it should be, don't get me wrong--I'm proud that we did this exhibit, it's important. But working on it has been months of that kind of wrenching. I watched films about the holocaust, and the children who experienced it--not just once, but over and over and over as I made selections for editing, transcribed them for captioning, and reviewed them before installation. I watched news films of kids who were my age back in 1986, talking about how they were going to kick Ryan's ass if he came back to their school, and interviews with Ryan's friends and family and Ryan himself talking about how that felt... over and over and over. To see the exhibit finally open gives me a sense of pride in the accomplishment of the small part I played in it, and a sense of relief; but most of all a sort of hollow sensation of knowing that working on this exhibit has changed me, too.

Lo, I am returned

I'm not sure what's kept me from blogging the past couple weeks; work has been alternating between busy and waiting for the other shoe to drop as we blitz forward toward the opening of our new exhibit. I've talked to a lot of you in person about this exhibit over the last few months... It's a history exhibit, fairly serious in its subject matter, and I think the community in general is going to have a bit of a shock reaction that we're talking about the Holocaust and Civil Rights and AIDS in an exhibit for kids. Most of the people I know who have kids have been really positive about the idea once I've explained the theory behind it; but I wonder how it's going to play in Peoria, so to speak. We'll see, I guess! I think it's a really amazing and ambitious exhibit in lots of ways. But the tension as we work to get it done by opening day is rather palpable.

You might wonder what working at a kid museum is like when the holidays roll around. Let me tell you, Halloween was awesome! Not only did I spend a Saturday volunteering at my work-away-from-work, the zoo, handing out candy to over a thousand little kids in a thousand cuter than hell costumes... but I got to dress up Wednesday and wear my costume all day. Every time I went out of my office and on the floor, kids would yell "Hey, Luke Skywalker!" at me; my next-door cube neighbor was an awesome Barbie, and the staff at the welcome desk were dressed as the Lollipop Guild. One of the interpretation managers was wearing a bright green track suit, unzipped slightly to reveal a yellow t-shirt underneath, and a pointy yellow foam cone with a tassle atop her head. "I'm Corn!" she cheerfully informed me--pronouncing it "COR-UN." It was fantabulous. Even with the spectre of Holocaust and AIDS looming, we manage to have a hell of a fun time.

I'll Miss You, Stmnnn Grnsmnsnsamm

I don't often have voice mails at work; I'm at my desk plenty, and even when I'm not, I don't get a lot of calls. Most of the people I need to talk to are in shouting distance, and if we don't want to shout we use email. But way back in July, I got the best voice mail ever.

PLEASANT FEMALE VOICE: This is a call for
COMPUTER GENERATED VOICE: Stmnn Grnsmmsnerhsnsmnn.
PFV: If you are not
CGV: Stmnn Grnsmmsnerhsnsmnn
PFV: then please hang up. If you are
CGV: Stmnn Grnsmmsnerhsnsmnn
PFV: please stay on the line. This is an attempt to collect a debt from
CGV: Stmnn Grnsmmsnerhsnsmnn.....

Obviously, some dude had given a fake phone # and name on some kind of credit app. The first name sounded kind of vaguely like it might have been "Stephen," but the last name was total gibberish as interpreted by the voice software stuff. So I laughed, and hung up, figuring that was the end of it.

Except, two weeks later, it happened again. Same message, same incessant repetition of the garbled name--and it said it in kind of a singsong, so it was more like StmNNN ... GrnsMMSnerhSNSmnn... and it reduced me to giggling fits as I listened to the entire message to see if there was some way to call them back and tell them they had the wrong number. There was a number; I called it, and got put on hold for 5 minutes before I gave up.

After the third or fourth time, I began to wonder why they never called while I was at my desk. I mean, it happened again and again--I even saved it in my voice mail so I could forward it to co-workers on slow days. Could it be that Stmnn Grnsmmsnerhsnsmnn was stalking me? Who IS Stmnn Grnsmmsnerhsnsmnn?? And why is he such a bad credit risk? What did he default on, and why is he haunting me?? The calls increased in frequency; I'd leave my desk for 10 minutes, come back, and there he'd be again. It was worrisome.

Then, last week, I got a call while at my desk. I said, "Hello, this is me" and there was a pause, like there is when a computer is dialing for someone, and then a voice came on the line. "Can I speak to Steven Peterson?" "Umm, nope--no one by that name here, sorry." "Thank you." And they hung up. A moment later I realized--was that the credit cops? Could this be the end of Stmnn Grnsmmsnerhsnsmnn?? It's OK, Stmnnn. You will always live on in my heart. And in my saved voice messages.

Avast, Ye Lubbers

Surely ye didn't think I'd be lettin' this day pass wi'out some piratey goodness! True, this holiday gleams upon me calendar like a silver real winkin' at ye from the sandy bottom of Dead Man's Cove...
I did swill some grog with me crew at a Pirate Party this evening, and couched many if nae all of me work emails in pirate talk in remembrance of the occasion.

It's Phlegm-tastic!

I have a cold, which is extra-fun since the weather outside is amazingly gorgeous and all I can do is stare at it and sniffle. When I was a kid, I was sick a lot--at least, I remember being sick a lot, I had a tendency towards bronchial infections and became intimately familiar with chalky-pink-crap medicine, aka Amoxicillan, over the course of my childhood. My mom used to keep a supply of small but entertaining toys hidden in the linen closet for me, so she could pull them out when I was bed-ridden and cheer me up. Now I'm 37, and mom's linen closet is a 15 minute drive from here, and I think it's just got linen in it at this point. (Though she does occasionally present me with some trinket that was bought in the early 80's and squirreled away, only to be rediscovered when my newly retired dad makes her clear out the nether reaches of the storage cupboards at their house...) Anyway, so last night I was feeling low, but not too low to actually leave the house, so I went out to the toy department at Meijer. Meijer on a Sunday night is not as deserted as I would have imagined, and it took me a while to check out with my loot. But I considered this a work-related activity; we're starting work on the upcoming LEGO exhibit, and I needed research materials.

I was disappointed in the small selection of Star Wars LEGO at Meijer, so was forced to buy a few--ok, several--action figures to meet my need for a Lucasfilm fix. They had slightly more in the medieval castles LEGO line, so I selected a LEGO arbalest and a catapault, both with heroic knight defenders and evil undead skeletons to operate the machinery. I'm a LEGO fan from way back; if they had had the huge castle playset at Meijer I would have been sorely tempted to buy it. But the two war machines I bought work quite well, and I'm having fantasies about purchasing the Jawa sandcrawler in future. It's all for work, mind you. Work.