The lovely bones

One place I missed on my first trip to New York was the Natural History Museum. Not this time, I said.

I thought of my nieces a bit while walking through here - the three with whom I watched Night at the Museum last fall, and then the two who are crazy about dinosaurs, and more notably, whales. And all of whom I know would have absolutely loved this museum.

 

 

I hadn't realized it was Veteran's Day that day until I started running into an unusual amount of children, running around giggling at naked homosapiens while their parents were trying to keep track of them. And in fact, I kind of felt like a child as I walked around the different exhibits, just realizing how much about the earth I don't know and will never know, feeling a bit overwhelmed by the complexity and brilliance of it all, and then also simple questions like, "How did they stuff that tiger?"

We exited the museum and re-entered the hustle and bustle of the New Yorkers' habitat. This part of it will always my favorite: