Her trek through the arcane jungles of
Invertebratology to the shores
of
Dunwoody Pond began when she was given a small card with an odd name on
it:
Siphonia tulipa. Go to wonderland, she was told, and find Siphonia
tulipa. But when she climbed the shining marble
staircase and pushed open
the
ancient creaking doors, she found so many elegant items that she forgot
Siphonia tulipa for a time, and
became lost among the rock leaves, stared
back
at the stone eyes looking up at her from their beds of green felt,
took
a trip back four hundred million years, riding there in the frozen
writhing
arms of a black star, felt sadness for the crushed flowers that
were
not real flowers at all, but sea lilies, from a far off time.
Around her feet the children played, and ran
calling to one another to
come
look at all the strange creatures made of rocks and epoxy and
information
and the hard work of people who dug into the Earth for evidence
of
past worlds. I must find Siphonia tulipa, Tami thought,
eventually, and
when
I do, it will be the most beautiful of all these wonders. She was
wrong. It was not the most beautiful, nor the most
complex of fossils in
the
museum, but it was hers, for upon the card she'd been given was not
only
a lyrical name, but also an assignment:
write a story, about Siphonia
tulipa, that will make
one of these children want to grow up to be just
like
me. She leaned over, then, staring
closely through the glass, and
asked
her questions of the rock: What is your
secret? How do I make a
person
choose an animal, then because of that choice, choose a life, just
by
telling a story? What kind of a story
might this one be?
If you are a teacher, reading this short excerpt, I hope you are inspired to find a variety of ways to use your local museums as classroom resources. I did it for decades; nobody got hurt; my colleagues generally thought I was out of control for doing it. They were wrong.
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