Going down a rabbit hole and emerging with cicadas

I was in New York for work last week, and Heidi came down for the weekend. We attended the National Ballet of Canada’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” on Friday, and Youssou N’Dour on Saturday. Both were OK.

We visited the Morgan Library & Museum on Saturday in the rain, giving me an opportunity to add to my collection of photos of miniaturized museum lobbies (different strokes for different folks). This was a great find that I highly recommend. It was particularly interesting due to an exhibit from the Bodleian Library at Oxford; inlcuding a first folio Shakespeare, a copy of Newton’s Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, extracts from the original manuscript for Frankenstein among other stuff. Very nicely done.

On Sunday we took the free ferry to Staten Island and visited the Staten Island Museum, a hole in the wall place that is the exact opposite of the luxuriant Morgan Museum. However, Staten Island Museum does have the world’s second largest collection of cicada specimens, so that’s something. They also have a small wall display devoted to “Strange Things”, like a baseball-sized hairball removed from a cow’s stomach, and a preserved four-legged chicken, if you’re into that sort of thing.