As long as we were going to Lawrence, well, that's half way to Topeka, right?
And the Kansas State Historical Society showed a cheap museum there. Not quite as cheap as 'suggested donation' but close: $8 for the three of us.
It was bigger than I expected.
The special exhibit was on Abe Lincoln, focused on his week campaigning here back when the plains really were black with buffalo. Well, it was thinning out by then. The big argument in society was whether you could own people rather than whether it was ethical to shoot an animal just for its hide.
Ah, ethics. Is it ethical to allow someone to take risks beyond there ability to bear the consequences? Say, for instance, let an insurance company create convoluted and dubious financial instruments and then float so many of them that when the house of cards collapses it can ruin the entire world economy? AIG is an insurance company, why were they allowed to take on more risk than they could even theoretically manage?
Sorry, political digression. A weakness with me. You can skip the next two paragraphs if you don't want to suffer my soap box.
Last thought on the subject: if you can ruin the U.S. and for that matter the world economy and no laws have been broken, the laws themselves are broken. If we're really at that point, it's violent revolution time. I don't advocate that — violent revolutions almost always put bigger assholes in charge — but really, there's no reason for a system to continue if AIG's adventures into derivatives and the bundling of sub-prime mortgages as 'risk free' investments involves no criminal activity.
No law on the books to punish the execs? Bullshit. You fire a gun, you are responsible for someone struck and killed by that bullet even if you didn't mean to hit them. Killing one person, that's bad, but wrecking the economy of 300 million, an economy intertwined with the fates of another six billion?
Anyway, back to Topeka. The main exhibit starts with Paleo Indians and whatnot, with tipis and grass versions of same, and goes through the 1980s.
A steam train, locomotive and several cars, the real thing. A Wright-Bros.-esque airplane, lots of other stuff. I'm in the 80's room and exclaiming, 'A Radio Shack TR-80! My family didn't have that kind of scratch.' And my microwave oven, today, has a more sophisticated brain. Your wrist watch can compute more than this sucker.
And tell you what, I could really use me a horn chair.
On the way to and from, going up SW 6th in Topeka, we passed Gage Park, which is also the entrance to the Topeka Zoo. And I had a déjà vu moment except it was actually a memory.
I saw this whale and I thought, that looks just like the whale I ducked into when I was a kid one time. Then I spotted the Octopus and realized that whale didn't look like the whale I ducked into. It was the whale.
I remember it was no effort to get in and stand fully upright inside it. So in my memory it's roughly the size of a panel truck. In the present, it's...well, there's a kid in this picture to give you some sense of scale. But I'd have to lay down and roll to get in this sucker.
I asked my Mom about it, and she says it was probably the field trip at the end of the year for my preschool when I was five. But it could have been the year before, she's not sure.
I also passed a liquor store called, no kidding, Pain Killers. I didn't take a picture of it, but I did take a picture of this sign. I hope Trippy Rashy Pasta is a band that booked into the Boobie Trap. Great name for a bar, interesting name for a band. My fear is it's a sign advertising the dinner special, in which case, I don't want to know the details.
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