Wow, I guess everyone has been busy today. I slept in, then went to work. Home now.
Yesterday I learned something really wonderful. Over 45 years ago I went on a school field trip, and I think we had stopped at three different places. I was bored with all the stops until we came to the last one, which was some kind of museum. All I remember is that they had the most exquisite collection of glass flowers!! All my life I have wanted to see that exhibit again, but I had no idea where I was living at the time, what museum we'd stopped at, or even whether it was a temporary or permanent exhibit. I wished so much that I could show it to my children during our home schooling years, and we even stopped at possible museums, but never found it.
Then yesterday my granddaughters' other grandfather posted a photo he took of our eldest Grand looking at something in a museum. It was a case of glass flowers, and the cases looked exactly as I recalled them. Just to be sure, I asked if the museum has rooms full of the glass flowers all in cases just like that one. He replied that it does...!!! So we will soon be visiting the Harvard Museum of Natural History! I can't explain how much this means to me...!!
Botanist Donald Schnell gives testimony to the astonishing accuracy of the models. He writes of a plant, Pinguicula, the details of whose pollination were unknown. By painstaking analysis of its structures, he worked out the probable mechanism of pollination. On visiting the glass flowers exhibit for the first time in 1997, he was enjoying the "enchanting and very accurate" models, when he was astonished to see a panel showing Pinguicula and a pollinating bee: "one sculpture showed a bee entering the flower and a second showed the bee exiting, lifting the stigma apron as it did so," precisely as Schnell had hypothesized. "As far as I know Professor Goodale never published this information, nor did it seem to have been published by anyone back then, but the process was faithfully executed."[3]
Howard!!!!
ReplyDeleteWow, I guess everyone has been busy today. I slept in, then went to work. Home now.
ReplyDeleteYesterday I learned something really wonderful. Over 45 years ago I went on a school field trip, and I think we had stopped at three different places. I was bored with all the stops until we came to the last one, which was some kind of museum. All I remember is that they had the most exquisite collection of glass flowers!! All my life I have wanted to see that exhibit again, but I had no idea where I was living at the time, what museum we'd stopped at, or even whether it was a temporary or permanent exhibit. I wished so much that I could show it to my children during our home schooling years, and we even stopped at possible museums, but never found it.
Then yesterday my granddaughters' other grandfather posted a photo he took of our eldest Grand looking at something in a museum. It was a case of glass flowers, and the cases looked exactly as I recalled them. Just to be sure, I asked if the museum has rooms full of the glass flowers all in cases just like that one. He replied that it does...!!! So we will soon be visiting the Harvard Museum of Natural History! I can't explain how much this means to me...!!
Ah, listener! What a lovely find!!! How often does that happen? Lucky girl!
DeleteThe strangest thing about finding The Museum is that it's located within walking distance of the monastery where I have gone on retreat many times...!
ReplyDeleteWell, I suppose you don't expect glass flowers in a natural history museum. More like preserved natural flowers.
DeleteAnd yes, I've been pretty busy. Got an article to write.
Botanist Donald Schnell gives testimony to the astonishing accuracy of the models. He writes of a plant, Pinguicula, the details of whose pollination were unknown. By painstaking analysis of its structures, he worked out the probable mechanism of pollination. On visiting the glass flowers exhibit for the first time in 1997, he was enjoying the "enchanting and very accurate" models, when he was astonished to see a panel showing Pinguicula and a pollinating bee: "one sculpture showed a bee entering the flower and a second showed the bee exiting, lifting the stigma apron as it did so," precisely as Schnell had hypothesized. "As far as I know Professor Goodale never published this information, nor did it seem to have been published by anyone back then, but the process was faithfully executed."[3]
Deletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_Flowers