I took Piper to the Carnegie Science Center yesterday. We had a great time and got a good tour of the coral reef aquarium by a friendly docent named Wesley. I didn't know that all the separate aquariums were attached to the same water system.
Piper wanted to try most everything. She loved the Miniature Railroad and Village and we took two circuits and she probably would have liked taking a couple more just to see everything, including the 100 animations — swingers on swings, farmers chasing pigs, batters at home plate, carousels turning . . .
The outstanding thing about the Miniature Railroad and Village is the layered complexity of it. The display had its origins not in corporate benevolence or well-researched pedagogy but in one man's vision. Charles Bowdish started the display in his Brookville home in 1920. It was in 1954 that the Buhl Planetarium invited Bowdish to bring his trains and miniatures to Pittsburgh. It seems as if the energy comes from within the exhibit, as opposed to the other science center exhibits, which almost have a pandering quality to them. The only thing missing from the Miniature Railroad and Village is some kind of hands on component, although approximately 68 volunteers work on the display. There must be some way to pass on the miniature railroadists' enthusiasm, craft, and ingenuity.
Sometimes I think I'm a socialist and sometimes I think I'm a capitalist, but if I have any kind of economic theory it must be that of the transcendentalist. What I mean is that if all of us hitched our wagons to our own pole stars, built our better mousetraps, or mangled whatever metaphors we could in order to do what we wanted, that somehow it would all work out. And if it didn't we would at least have the works of people like Charles Bowdish and Achilles Rizzoli amidst all the rubble. As John Gardner said, "We are all building castles in the sand. Some of us are just building more elaborate castles."
Posted by mastr at June 11, 2005 09:18 AM