Three Things to Think About

Welcome. And buckle up.

I have three absolutely fascinating stories to share this week, so let’s dive in. And be sure to join us in the comments with your thoughts!

Dioramas, a Thing of the Past?

I’ll admit it, I have a strange affinity for dioramas. The Thorne miniature room exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago is perhaps my favorite thing to see, and I have an equal love for the tiny replicas of ancient Egyptians engaged in the mummification process at the Field Museum. Dioramas needn’t be tiny for me to love them, though — all sizes are welcome.

But now, museums are rethinking the way they present science, especially through dioramas.

The “diorama dilemma,” as it is called, is challenging the way museums show wild animals, and the human impulses behind them. The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, for example, had a lion diorama that had a paltry number of females — which it has taken steps to rectify. .

Some human biases like sexism and homophobia show through in exhibits like at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles’s lion diorama which only included a sparse number of female lions when it originally debuted, but now includes more.

Are dioramas becoming dusty museum relics? This article in Science News explores the fascinating debate about dioramas in modern life.

The Other Donner Party

For decades, a luxury train shuttled passengers between Chicago and San Francisco. But in order to get there, they needed to travel near Donner Pass, high in the Sierra Nevadas. (Yes, that Donner Pass.)

More than 100 years after the ill-fated Donner expedition was trapped, the City of San Francisco train ran smack-dab into a blizzard that created 25-foot snow drifts. In 1952, 226 people were trapped aboard the train for three days, until an enterprising group of people — including a dog team — came to their rescue. Why hasn’t this been made into a feature film yet? Read the story here.

Did JFK Know?

A newly-released home video, directed by Jackie Kennedy, has revived the theory that, like Abraham Lincoln before him, JFK may have had premonitions of his own death.

The James Bond-inspired movie, filmed two months before Kennedy’s assassination, shows Kennedy, who plays himself, being assassinated at their Hammersmith Farm vacation home.

Jackie told some of JFK’s security detail, “We’re making a movie about the president’s murder.”

Read the story here.

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