Issue 90 – My Favorite Museum – Journey Planet<\/a> I\u2019ve actually written about museums a lot. I wanted to work in one, but things became complicated and I never did. One of the books I\u2019m writing (the non-fiction) includes analyses of museums.<\/p>\nOne of the most reassuring things imaginable for me is to visit a museum and analyse and tear apart the exhibits and think about their cultural impact. This is nothing new. I first did this when I was about seven. There was a display of old irons and children\u2019s clothes in a country museum and I looked at them and looked at them and there was nothing in writing that explained them and no-one to ask, so I told my parents (with such seriousness) that this was wrong and they could do better. I remember listing the information needed to describe those irons and clothes. I knew what I needed to know and I was upset that it wasn\u2019t there.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t know I was going to be an historian then. I started collecting limestone from various places and thought I was going to be a palaeontologist and a writer. Then I was going to be an opera singer and a writer. Then a museum curator and a writer. Then I reached high school.<\/p>\n
At high school I told I was too young to know my future. I said, \u201cBut it has to include history and writing.\u201d<\/p>\n
I was told, \u201cNo, you\u2019re doing science.\u201d<\/p>\n
I was very argumentative. I did maths, but dropped the science and did every single history and English subject I was allowed, plus music and French. This worked.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m the person who has history and writing as core parts of her life, still\u2026 and I still love looking at the work in museums and I am even more opinionated about these things than when I was seven.<\/p>\n
Even this month, when life is flooding me, I can stop and think about museums. There is one particular exhibit I\u2019m hoping to see later this week: a seventeenth century German bearded jug. If I get to see it, I might report on it in a fortnight. Maybe. It depends on the flooding receding just enough to make reports possible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The weeks after a PhD is done are always peculiar. There\u2019s a backlog of life and it rushes in and floods the everyday. This is me, right now. Ironically, New South Wales is also flooded right now. My backlog of life includes so much to write and so much to read and (this weekend alone) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166,6,636,56,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-covid-life","category-fiction","category-life","category-life-experiences","category-nonfiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4038"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4038\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4039,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4038\/revisions\/4039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}