Happy Half Way through the New Year.

Why am I so neglectful of my blog? Other people seem able to fill up acres and acres of blog space with thoughts. I hardly ever seem to think of my blog at all. I think I shall have to remedy this. Starting.............now!

Garden tours are not as boring as they could be, thanks to my trusty camera.

Bug's eye view of a pair of daisies. We had an amazing crop of daisies this year.

Trying to get my act together and put up more things for sale on Etsy.
If you don't know about Etsy, you should! It's brilliant.
www.etsy.com

My particular page can be found at www.etsy.com/kerrymcquaid

Adventure Thru Inner Space (or, How Disneyland Warped My Mind)

I grew up in Santa Monica.

Once a year or so we would head over to Disneyland.

This, while fun, was not entirely good for my young brain.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventure_Thru_Inner_Space



This ride REALLY tripped me out. I still think about it and use it to describe my bizarre sleep paralysis occurances.

The fact that this ride was somehow linked to Monsanto is beyond creepy.



I am not the only one...http://themightymicroscope.com/home.htm

Wikipedia has a desperatly sad list of deceased Disneyland rides.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_past_Disneyland_attractions

Some of these sound like they really never needed to exist in the first place like, "1955-1960, Aluminum Hall of Fame" and, "1956-1960, Crane Company Bathroom of Tomorrow". I am not making that up.



I love the internet.



-k.

Oh, the joys of the internet abound.

So, continuing my hunt. Looking for J. Kreienbuhl around and about I found this... http://siarchives.si.edu/findingaids/FA94-127.htm
The Smithsonian is our national museum. One thinks of organisation as being a big part of maintaining an institution like that. This list of what is in what box made me weep with delight.

I can't believe I am going to have to wait till 2009 to delve into whatever "Uncle Beasley (2 folders) " might be. Not to mention the rather depressing sounding " One with the Earth Temp Indian Exhibit 1983 " and, most appealing to me, of course, "Elephant Label ".

This list made me so happy. I wish that someone would take the time to include digital photos or scans of each of these objects.
I would be even happier.

The hunt goes on.

I continue to search, continue to hope.
I continue to find really weird alternative elephants.
At some point, for some reason the part of the French Natural History Museum that housed the taxidermied (wow is that a word?) specimens was closed off. It was left this way, abandoned, for decades! Eventually, a Swiss painter, Jurg Kreienbuhl discovered it and did a series of paintings of what he found there. I love this idea. I have no idea how Mr. Kreienbuhl happened to be the one to discover the lost collection. All of the articles I find about the discovery are in French. I can read just enough to make sense of the main points.

I am slightly worried that my elusive elephant may have been an ad for Mr. K's work being shown somewhere about Paris. I don't know. I know that he was showing his paintings of the Natural History Museum in 1985. It's more of a lead than I have ever had before.

I will keep looking.