Posts Tagged → smithsonian
The light that shines twice as bright lasts half as long
If you live long enough, you get to appreciate every minute alive more and more, because more and more, the people you know, love, work with, rely upon themselves fall prey to the end of all flesh. Some die unexpectedly and terribly, like my friend Dr. Holly Engelman, hit by a car while crossing Front Street in Harrisburg just days ago.
Others die of some unexpected disease or ailment. Several years ago, the state’s Furbearer Biologist, Tom Hardisky, had a massive heart attack while gardening. Tom was a friendly source of 24/7 inspiration and help to Pennsylvania trappers. And then one sunny morning, he was gone. In his early fifties.
My friend and fellow Dauphin County Planning Commission board member, Keith Oellig, died of a heart attack while stacking hay bales on his farm. In his mid fifties.
Live long enough, and the list just keeps growing. And today we add another to it: Janet Hodge.
Janet Hodge has been the long time webmaster for all of the web pages I own. She and I hit it off after just a couple minutes interviewing one another for the job, and the rest is history. Janet died a few days ago of a cancer she had been battling for a year. My web management needs are not so intense, and so her sickness resulted in just a couple delays here and there, with subjects that were not that important, anyhow. Her friendship was the best part of our relationship.
Janet Hodge is still shown on the Smithsonian Institute’s website as one of America’s living legacy people; a person who embodies some aspect of traditional American culture in a big way. To work with humble Janet was a big honor and enjoyment for me, and I will miss her technical support and her friendly camaraderie.
Here is her obituary, and some related links. Here.
Rest in peace, Janet Hodge. Yes, you died young at 66, but you also achieved more than most Americans could accomplish in two or three full lifetimes. And the light that burns twice as bright, lasts half as long.
Folks, don’t sit around wasting time; get out there in the world and leave your positive mark, leave a good legacy. Like Janet.
I took this photo in Rome. This is 1600’s street art, a reminder that death awaits us all
Why are museums closed on Mondays?
Can someone reasonably explain why museums are still closed on Mondays? It is a longstanding tradition that defies common sense. You won’t find many people advocating for tradition more than I, but what tradition I argue for makes sense. Museums closed on Monday makes no sense. It seems to be an outdated, strange sense of special privilege that almost all museums are closed on Monday.
In a nation full of highly mobile travelers and vacationers taking long weekends, and where so many small towns and rural counties have worked hard and significantly invested to attract tourists, we still come up against the strange tradition of museums being closed on Mondays. No one I have spoken to can give a good reason for this educational shut-down. They are even shut on Monday during the summer season, when tons of tourists are traveling through town.
Going to visit your old uncle via an oddly zig-zagging road trip you will never do again in your life? Don’t count on seeing the local museums or historical society that Monday; they will be inexplicably closed. “It’s Museum Monday, dontcha know…..”
Taking a long weekend summer vacation on a whim to some remote place you will never visit again? Don’t make Monday your local museum day, because regardless of where you are, the museums are likely to all be closed. “It’s Museum Monday, dontcha know…..”
Every other business sector works hard to meet its customers’ needs, except the museums, when they are closed on Monday. The list of Open On Monday Despite The Terrible Hardship businesses includes funeral homes, libraries, car mechanic shops, pet care shops, and ice cream stands. Among most other businesses.
Every other business sector has to survive, and can’t afford to artificially turn away customers, except for museums with their “poor me” donation boxes that are inexplicably closed on Monday.
Every other business sector rotates staff in order to give workers a day off, a weekend off, except most museums, apparently. Only museums have staff that must get Monday off. Only Monday. Not Sunday. Or Wednesday. But Monday….
Yes, I recognize that a hundred years ago when museums were becoming a thing, they developed a common culture of being available over weekends (except those museums that are closed on Sunday…and also Monday, of course), which necessitated having a day off for facility cleaning, repair, exhibit updates, and rest for the staff. I suppose. But now? Every other business is open on Monday, and yes, museums can do it, too! They should do it.
Find some new staff or volunteers for the Monday shifts. Pay the museum staff more on Monday. Whatever it takes to meet customer demand, museums should do; this ain’t rocket science. The Smithsonian is open seven days a week, and if that gigantic place can be open on Monday, then so can small museums in Podunk USA across the USA.
I would like to thank the Ward O’Hara agricultural museum in Auburn, New York, and the Museum of the Fur Trade in Chadron, Nebraska, for being open on Mondays. We just happened to be passing through their respective rural necks of the woods on two given Mondays, a year apart, and lo! – a museum with an Open for Business sign! We happily paid their fees, left generous donations in the donation box, and had a really enjoyable time learning what they had to teach us. And no one involved turned into a pumpkin because it was Monday.
Dear museums, please join the 21st century, and make yourselves available for the highly mobile 21st century traveler. Arrange your open hours to meet the demand of your would-be customers; especially during the summer vacation season. And to those foundations who write big operating grants to museums, you should stipulate that the museums must be open when people are expecting to use it. That would definitely include all the week days, like every other business.