Some Experiences I Loved

I'm going off-list for this post, to talk about some of the things I've tried and loved since starting this blog project. I have happened to blog about a number of things I had severely mixed or critical opinions of lately, so I wanted to highlight fourteen things I wholeheartedly recommend. Happy Valentine's Day.


Blog experiences I've loved (in no particular order)

1. Doing Morning Pages for a month: Good Morning, Internet!

2. Geeking out about a rope walk at Mystic Seaport:  I Guess This is a Post About Beauty in Unexpected Places
3. Reading the very important but also very compelling book about immigration, The Weight of Shadows
4. Taking a hat making class and reading up on the relevant history: Some say, to survive it, you need to be mad as a hatter
5. Reading Fading Scars, a book that really expanded my understanding of disabilities
6. Transcribing and exploring documents in the National Archives Citizen Archivist project: For Procrastinators and Explorers
7. Learning about another culture through art at the Museum of Russian Icons: Windows into Another World

Other things I've loved in the past year that I recommend, on-topic but not on the blog:

8. I did more travel than usual this year. I visited the Cable Car Museum in San Francisco, and it smelled like machine oil but it was fascinating! 

Image is of a large set of machines (think room-sized) with cables running between large wheels. In the background is a balcony with museum exhibits.
A view into the real workings of the cable cars, at the Cable Car Museum.
Image by Daderot on Wikimedia Commons
9. I read Dr. Eddie Glaude Jr.'s book Democracy in Black, which I reviewed on LibraryThing.
10.  I created a museum exhibit that took place in a hotel event space, on the balcony around an atrium. As frustrating as it was to put together (I made a map of which electrical outlets worked so we could light the panels enough to read them) it was a really great experience for expanding my thinking about the use of space, and I enjoyed the challenge. I guess "pop-up exhibit in a weird space" is only an experience I can recommend to other museum people, but I wanted to mention it.
11. I visited the Natural History Museum of Utah in Salt Lake City. I wasn't familiar with the geology of the area and loved that exhibit, I've never seen so many horned dinosaur heads (my inner 6-year-old was very happy) and they have semi-open collections storage!
12. I watched the documentary The Long Shadow, about the legacy of the First World War. It's also on Netflix.
13.  I read Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing, about an incredible Antarctic expedition, which was spellbinding.
14. I finally visited the Chocolate Shop and Print Shop at Old North Church in Boston, a part of the Freedom Trail (I have no excuse for not having visited sooner, they've been there three or four years) and they were touristy yet fun and informative.

PS. I recently started reading The Warmth of Other Suns, by Isabel Wilkerson. I really like it so far, but sometimes it takes me a few weeks to read a 500-page book and sometimes it makes me a lot longer, so it may be a while until my next regular post.

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