Monday, July 19, 2010

Museum of Science and Industry seeks blogger for 30 day stay; Curmudgeon interested

The Chicago Tribune reports that our Museum of Science and Industry is seeking a blogger to move into the museum for 30 days "to experience all the fun and education that fits in this historic 14-acre building."

Now, the museum folks don't just want a blogger, although that will be part of the assignment -- they'll want someone who can Facebook and Twitter and Tweet and Chirp or whatever it is that those darn fool kids do these days.

No doubt the winner of the contest (that's a link to the museum contest site) will be a 20-something underemployed graduate student. Probably with piercings and tattoos and everything.

But I wish the museum would consider an alternative -- an aging, but-not-yet-entirely-decrepit lawyer, for example. Someone who recalls that the Museum is housed in the Palace of Fine Arts built for the Columbian Exposition of 1893 -- that it is the only major building that remains from "The White City" constructed for that world's fair. (And no, despite what my children may tell you, I did not attend the Columbian Exposition!)

Anyway, the Museum should consider someone who's seen not only the U-505 -- the only World War II German U-boat to be captured intact by the Allies during the war -- and a star attraction of the Museum of Science and Industry, in case you didn't know -- but also an American counterpart, the USS Cobia, housed further up Lake Michigan at Manitowoc, Wisconsin. (The vintage American sub -- though tiny by contemporary standards -- is nevertheless far bigger than the U-boat.)

I suppose my inability to tweet and twirp may be held against me, but I'm sure I could pick up enough of the skill to hold my own.

I'm halfway tempted to fill out the application in my own name -- there is a $10,000 stipend involved so I don't think Long Suffering Spouse would object too much, even if I were required to absent myself from the family home for the 30 day stay.

Don't you think it would be a pretty darn cool thing to have an entire museum to one's self, after hours, without crowds?

4 comments:

Dave said...

In answer to your last question, as long as Robin Williams doesn't show up on horse back, OK.

If you did it, and you could, you could work via computer.

I'll expect reports on the coal mine and the hearing test thingy if they're sitll there. Then too, escape one night and tell us about the Aquarium and the art museum which aren't too far down the road - a post on electric eels and Van Gogh seen in the wee hours. Isn't the painting that Don McLean wrote about there? Or better yet, the one with the clock and the desert, a skull or two if I remember correctly, and other stuff.

I take it back, I want to be the correspondent.

Andy K said...

If you really wanted to preserve your Chicago cred, you would have had to have visited the USS Silversides when it was docked at the Naval Armory at the foot of Randolph Street.

AND have witnessed when they brought the locomotives in - laying a couple hundred yards of rail at a time down the bridal paths along South Shore Drive.

Empress Bee (of the high sea) said...

well i am old and i can tweet and chirp with the best of them. but then i can't do this because i have cards to play. every day. oh my.

smiles, bee
tyvc

Steve Skinner said...

Thirty days in a museum would be pretty darn cool!