Return to the Adler

We had full summer weekend here, including taking children to a municipal pool, re-arranging the garage (re-organizing is too strong a word, but there are now three bags of castoff items waiting for the garbageman), blowing bubbles in the back yard with Ann, setting up the big tent in the same yard to dry it out, catching A Thousand Clowns on TV by chance -- a swell movie, a lot more nuanced than I remember -- and, on Sunday, visiting the Adler Planetarium there on the shore of Lake Michigan.

Haven't been there in a long time, maybe 10 years. Lilly has been there more recently, taken by her mother, but I wanted to walk the museum with her this time and take her to one of the sky shows. Unfortunately, the Adler's "Egyptian Nights: Secrets of the Sky Gods," didn't rise above mediocre. Sure, the Egyptians watched the sky really, really closely, and built a Stonehenge-like structure that predated Stonehenge. They identified certain constellations with certain of their gods, and they told an elaborate story about how the Sun god spent his nights. But the show could have included much more, such as some historic and geograhic context. It also could have at least mentioned the fact that the constellations would have looked different then, because of the slow drift of the stars, and why Thuban (Alpha Draconis) was the pole star in those days, instead of merely stating that it was.

But Lilly probably got more out of it than I did. Later, we walked around the museum, and happened across something I'd never heard of or seen before, since it's only been at the Adler less than 10 years. It made up for the mediocre star show: the Atwood Sphere. More about which tomorrow.