New Educational Exhibit! getting inside Godzilla

Well Well Well!

It looks as though the Director has finally decided to get her hands dirty!

Here was I thinking that she would be searching the arid inlands of Mesopotamia, given that that's what she TOLD us, in the memo she left in my wastepaper bin, whilst all the time she has actually been big-game hunting in Japan.

And then she has the temerity to send her trophies back to me in a state of partial... partialness. Not that I'm pointing fingers, but it looks to me like someone got a little peckish.

Perhaps had a little midnight snack?

Gamera schnitzel, that I understand... but Mothera steaks!?

Anyway, as always, I struggle on, making the best of what I'm given. The museum must come first. Etc. etc.

However, in this instance, I think that you will agree with me when I say I made this particular sow's ear into silk pyjamas.

Taking the mutilated corpses, I have presented them as an educational exhibit. This exhibit will afford young visitors a thrilling learning experience.

A proper understanding of the anatomy of monsters has been too often overlooked in the past. But this ignorance is putting our young people into deadly peril.

This new exhibit An Anatomical Guide to Monsters, is appropriately supported by an especially commissioned publication of the same name (An Anatomical Guide to Monsters, 1967. Text: Shoji Otomo. Illustrator: Shogo Endo.) Each individual exhibit displays a full range of useful and educational signage and wall-labels. This isstate of the art new museology I'm making here!

My exhibit is bound to be a tremendous success, attracting that lucrative school audience to the Museum. Director de Plume will HAVE to give me a payrise now!

I expecting such huge interest, that I've commissioned a special structure for the exhibit. The Hunting Lodge will both commemorate the Director's prowess and provide a safe buffer for the more fragile exhibits in the rest of the museum.



Please view the rest of the exhibition An Anatomical Guide to Monsters at The Hunting Lodge



The historically inclined amongst the audience may also find this specimen A Hairy Monster, prepared by anatomist Tom Gauld, of more than passing interest.

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Inky SPRUNG! Aunt Aggie's Bone Garden

It is completely obvious that Inky will say and do anything to get attention.

Even claim credit for ideas that are SO not his own. Yes, you -- like me -- may have secretly found his putative 'Xmas Bonetree' intriguing, even endearing. And you, like me, probably gave him full marks for originality and effort. But now I know the full truth, I have a good mind to drop the whole thing down the deepest hole in the darkest Oubliette that MoD boasts.

Not only was he ripping the idea off -- he ripped it from a DEAD woman... who had been a slave to boot!

Somehow he must have found out about Aunt Aggie's Bone Yard, a former roadside attraction in Lakeland, Florida (That's in the United States of Amerika for those who are geographically challenged... Inky you know who I'm talking about...).

Aunt Aggie's bone yard: Lake City, Florida ca. 1915. Aunt Aggie Jones on the right with a visitor. Photograph from Imagesof Florida's Black History

As you can see, it was quite sight and between 1900 and 1918 it was very popular with courting couples and young families (apparently the kids loved autographing the bones... tagging has a very long history). Then, they bulldozed it and put up a school on the site. Typical. Now all that is left is a small display about it at the Columbia County Historical Society.

Aunt Aggie (Aggie Jones) was born into slavery but when she and her husband gained their freedom she set to creating not only her remarkable garden, but also a natural history museum inside, which contained snakes preserved in jars and alligator skeletons, as well as a human skeleton hung in the hallway. Although she planted conventional plants and laid white sand walkways, its raison d'etre was "amazing gateways, arches and trellises from bones, wired together to form fanciful structures." Aggie Jones never charged entry, but she sold produce and food, made customised bouquets and reputedly worked a little magic, telling fortunes using the time-honoured cup, key and bible combination. On special occasions, she donned an Indian outfit and danced.

Slightly more info at Roadside.America.Com

Anyway, given that Inky has paved the way with his appropriation... I'm considering recreating at least a section of the Bone Yard in the grounds of the Museum. But that will be an homage... not a rip-off.

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