I want to be a librarian like this when I grow up

The Unknown Librarian Who Saved Queer History: You probably don’t know the name Paul Fasana. But the librarian was instrumental in preserving hundreds of thousands of artifacts of queer history

A working-class gay man and first-gen college student, Fasana came out in the late 1950s, while getting a master’s of library science at UC-Berkeley (where he later established a scholarship for queer students). After rising through the ranks at the New York Public Library, he moved to Florida in the mid-’90s and began the herculean task of organizing SNMAL’s holdings. Since 1972, SNMAL has been a crucial safeguard of queer history—particularly queer Southern history—but like all independent queer archives, its fragile existence has long depended on volunteers like Fasana, passionate pencil pushers who perform the inglorious yet absolutely necessary day-to-day work.

By the time Fasana came on board, SNMAL’s holdings had grown precipitously, particularly as it rescued vast collections from men dying in the first wave of the AIDS crisis. Out of a jumble spread across three different warehouses, Fasana knit the collections together into one usable archive—an archive that has been powering queer scholarship and community in southern Florida and across the country ever since. Today, in honor of Fasana and his partner, Robert Graham, SNMAL’s collection is known as the Fasana/Graham Archive.

SNMAL is the Stonewall National Museum, Archives, and Library in Florida, not connected to the Stonewall Riots of 1969, but it's 50 years old (founded in 1972). For more on them, see their about page.

Interesting opinion piece on the value of natural history collections

Libraries of Life

Hidden behind the popular displays at many of your favorite natural history museums — in their basements, back rooms and, increasingly, off-site facilities — sit humanity’s most important libraries of life, holding not books but preserved animal and plant specimens, carefully collected over centuries by thousands of scientist explorers.

These specimen collections serve as the bedrock of our system of taxonomy — the rules by which we classify life — and are integral to our understanding of the threats, origins and interrelationships of biodiversity. And yet, thanks to budget cutbacks, misplaced ethical critiques, public misconceptions and government regulations that restrict scientists while failing to restrict environmental exploitation, the continued maintenance and growth of these libraries is in danger.

Though most visitors never know they are there, natural history collections are as critical to modern biologists as libraries are to journalists and historians. Indeed, like good literature, each museum specimen allows reinterpretation by every person who examines it.

Hmm...that's a little different

Adopt a Skull to Save Cranium Collection

Looking for the perfect holiday gift for a slightly morbid loved one? Adopt a skull for them.

The Mütter Museum in Philadelphia's Save Our Skulls fundraiser is inviting fans of medical history and the macabre to step up and donate to help restore a collection of skulls dating back more than 150 years. For $200, a person can adopt the skull of their choice. Besides bragging rights, the donation gets the adopter's name on a plaque next to the repaired and remounted skull.

The skulls (there are 139) belonged to Josef Hyrtl, a 19th-century Austrian anatomist. Hyrtl collected the skulls to disprove the science of phrenology, which held that a person's personality and character were reflected in the size and shape of their skull. Phrenology was nothing but pseudoscience, but it was held in high esteem in the 1800s.

Why would you take stairs?

And by that I mean off a building and abscond with them? I know. Because you can.

Poe House vandalized while closed during transition

The historic Edgar Allan Poe House and Museum in Baltimore, which lost its longtime curator and was shuttered in September amid an operational reorganization, has in the last month been defaced by graffiti and robbed of its wooden front steps, according to those involved in the museum's revitalization.

After talking with YKWIA

for quite some time on the phone, I have decided to heed his advice concerning the tourist venue of choice (I do sometimes heed his advice, despite what he may tell you). Having a logical mind, he very rightly pointed out that I would enjoy the Field Museum more than an art museum because I have a science background, love natural history, and will actually understand what I'm seeing much more than I would looking a pretty pictures whose significance I don't really know much about (art history was something I learned as a conjunct to history and classics, but it would be better to go if I could take him along, since he has both studied art history and is an artist as well; sadly, I cannot do so.) Not to mention, the thought of a T. Rex skeleton (and I believe Sue is the one that Harry Dresden rode in one of Jim Butcher's books) warms my science geek heart. So the Field Museum it is. :) Now if I can just get that extra day off.

Preserve. Remember. Never Let It Happen Again.

'Ravages of time' leave Auschwitz decaying: Global campaign seeks to raise $165 million to create 'perpetual fund' to allow repairs

The red brick barracks that housed starving inmates are sinking into ruin. Time has warped victims' leather shoes into strange shapes. Hair sheared to make cloth is slowly turning to dust.

Auschwitz is crumbling — the world's most powerful and important testament to Nazi Germany's crimes falling victim to age and mass tourism. Now guardians of the memorial site are waging an urgent effort to save what they can before it is too late.

There is no other place on this earth where the chilling crimes of the Nazis and their 'Final Solution' to the 'Jewish Problem' can be seen so plainly. Auschwitz is forever burned into the memories of those who endured it. For many Jews, it is a place where family members died and were buried or cremated, and while not holy, should be respected as a place of the dead. But even more so, for the rest of us, it is a reminder that we can never let this happen again, that the massive wholesale and orderly efficiency with which so many people were murdered is still a form of butchery. It is a bastion against those who would deny its existence, and that of the Holocaust itself. It is an opportunity to teach new generations of the horror that can come when ordinary people do extraordinarily evil (and to be fair, in some cases heroic things). It should not be allowed to crumble to dust, but rather be preserved for the present, and for the future, with the hope that this will never happen again.

Says museum director Piotr Cywinski:

"There are no more remains of Treblinka, Kulmhof, Sobibor and Belzec," Cywinski said, referring to extermination camps that the Nazis destroyed in an effort to hide their crimes. "Let us not allow the biggest of these death camps — and the only one that is still recognizable — to fall into decay due to the ravages of time and our indifference."

Egad....

Kentucky Creationist Museum to Feature Dragons, Unicorns

Here is the full quote from Kentucky blog Barefoot and Progressive, which was partially quoted in the story:

Thanks to Steve Beshear, Kentucky is no longer just known as the state whose governor endorsed and gave $40 million in tax breaks to people who want to tell children that science and history explain that a 600 year old man herded dinosaurs onto a big boat 4,000 years ago.

No, Kentucky will now be known as the state whose governor endorsed and gave $40 million in tax breaks to people who want to tell children that science and history explain that a 600 year old man herded dinosaurs, fire-breathing dragons and unicorns onto a big boat 4,000 years ago.

Via @almightygod.

Oh, Gods

Giant Noah's Ark likely landing in Kentucky: Governor, Creation Museum officials expected to announce creationist theme park

I've lived in Grant County, Kentucky. While it's nice that 900 new jobs will be created by this endeavour, a schlocky Creationist theme park would not be my ideal. But hey, as one commenter wrote, theme parks are often centred around fantasy ideas.

This is a project by the same people who brought us the Creation Museum, a popular destination in Petersburg, Kentucky (near the Cincinnati airport, which, incidentally, is in northern Kentucky, not in Ohio).

Okay, it's 2 am, I've read everything in Google Reader. Time for bed. Good night.

Visit the Secret Annex online

Go to: http://www.annefrank.org/secretannex to explore as they celebrate 50 years of caring for Anne Frank's legacy.

Nifty

Big day for museums, parks on Sept. 26: Free admission to many on Annual Museum Day, National Public Lands Day

Museums participating in Kentucky:

Frazier International History Museum, Louisville; Headley-Whitney Museum, Lexington; Historic Locust Grove, Louisville; International Museum of the Horse, Lexington; Kentucky Gateway Museum Center, Maysville; Kentucky Historical Society, Frankfort; Lexington History Museum, Lexington; Liberty Hall Historic Site, Frankfort; Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory, Louisville; Mary Todd Lincoln House, Lexington; McCreary County Museum, Stearns; McDowell House Museum and Apothecary, Danville; Perryville Battlefield State Historic Site Museum, Perryville; River Discovery Center, Paducah; and Wickliffe Mounds State Historic Site, Wickliffe

Find out what's near you.

That's three in the city I live in and two in my home county, including one (the McDowell House) where I used to be a docent. :)

Wonderful

Anne Frank museum to display her actual diaries

The Anne Frank House museum says it will put the teenage Holocaust victim's diaries and other writings on permanent display to commemorate what would have been her 80th birthday on June 12, 1929.

Frank died in a concentration camp at 15.

Today would have been her 80th birthday. So sad that such a vibrant life was cut short by hate.

Home at last

I took off from the hospital today to run some errands and go to an exhibit on Flinders Petrie's excavations of Aegypt that's wrapping up at UK by Sunday. I thought it would be $10 to get in, but it turns out that it's free to alumni, but you don't have to be in the Alumni Association or anything. Petrie, unlike other excavators of the time who were interested in carting off treasure as quickly as possible, saw archaeology as a science and approached it very systematically. These are items from the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology in London, some never displayed before, and with my interest in Aegyptology, I wanted to take advantage of it. Although I've read quite a bit about Aegypt's history, life, and language, I first heard of Petrie from Elizabeth Peters' Amelia Peabody mysteries. Peters is a pseudonym for Barbara Mertz, who holds a phD in Aegyptology.

The exhibit was very nice and spanned most of Aegypt's pre-Islamic history, including items considered classically Aegyptian but it also had Ptolemaic, Roman, and Coptic artefacts. It was well-attended. There was a group of elderly men and women and two women with their pre-teen children, among others. The exhibit runs through the 14th (Sunday), after which it returns to England. Hours are 12-5 except on Friday, when it is open till 8, and although it is $10 for the general public, it is free on Friday from 5-8, and also free to students, staff, and alumni of the university.

After that I went to my friends' house and painted shelves and did some work around the house for them. I stopped at the gas station on the way home to pick up a PowerBar for dinner, then walked home through a steady rain. Now I'm glad to be home. I did manage to go to the pharmacy in the early part of the day and got a lace-up support for my ankle, although it's a devil to get on. :)

Tomorrow I have a consortium meeting over at UK's Young Library where we'll have a continuing education class. I think it's on evidence-based medicine. I'll have to leave a little earlier than usual to make it there on time by bus. Then it's over to the store for truck night from 6-10.

Saturday I work from 10-6 [not by myself!] and then there's more painting to do (the last of this project, though). Sunday is the game. Monday I have my appointment with the podiatrist in the morning, and then I work at the hospital, staying a little later since I'll come in late. Tuesday and Wednesday are long days, working at the hospital and then working at the store from 3-10. On Thursday I'm getting the car fixed. It's also our employee appreciation cookout, so I'm torn as to whether to take the day off and hang out at the repair shop or go back in to work and then pick the car up afterwards. I'm taking the car in by 8 am, so it hopefully will be finished fairly early. Whew! It's going to be a busy week!

Some news of interest (to me, anyway)

Octopus sets off flood at aquarium (ah, the wily octopus!)

1.5 million-year-old human footprints found

Fungus threatens famed Lascaux cave drawings

Philip José Farmer, Science Fiction Writer, Dies at 91

Poll: 1 in 4 delaying medical care due to cost

13,000-year-old tools dug up in Colorado yard

Best Reason To Get A Kindle 2

Bizarre fish poisoning sparks alarm

Injured good Samaritan ticketed for jaywalking

Iraq to reopen museum looted in US invasion chaos

First Solar Eclipse Recorded From Moon (story has a link to a video which showes a glowing ring around the earth much like the ones seen when the moon passes between us and the sun)

Cache of Ice Age fossils found in Los Angeles