Sunday morning thoughts – again

An afternoon at the museum

I’m sitting on my sofa typing with a stuffed bear under my arm. Don’t ask. He seems to like it and it somehow helps me focus. Temperatures have dropped significantly. We started today at 14°C/57°F and the highs will be 18°C/64°C. Last week we still had highs of 34°C/94°F and I don’t live in one of the hotter areas of Switzerland. It’s been raining a lot and will continue to for the foreseeable future. It’s much needed after the heatwave we experienced. Nothing new there.

What has changed though is that our thunderstorms (and the weather patterns in general) have become unpredictable. And that’s what makes them dangerous. I’ll give you an example. Last night I had the option of walking home from my sister’s. Takes about 25 minutes along a steam lined with bushes and trees. I could hear some rumbling and there were more rain clouds moving through. I checked the weather radar, and it didn’t show any thunderstorms. Then again, the same happened on Friday. The one storm that caused the most damage was not really on the radar or only very shortly before it happened. So, what I ended up doing was take two buses home. Takes maybe five minutes longer as there is no direct route (you have to go through Aarau). Don’t get me wrong I still love thunderstorms, but I really don’t want a tree to fall on me or even just a big branch. I don’t think I’d enjoy that very much.

Yet, we still have people pretending it’s all not happening. Oh, the entitlement of some. If I can afford to fly myself and a couple of friends to – I can’t remember where – on a private Boeing 747 (aka Jumbo Jet), I will totally do that, and nobody can stop me. And here I am thinking twice about buying a new pair of pants for my new job and teaching my little niece about which cleaning products are not harming insects or the environment.

Not just randomly of course. We went to the National History Museum in Aarau yesterday. It’s called Naturama (I love that name) and it’s right next to my high school. They have special exhibits and the current one is on insects. In one section you had a pretend supermarket, and you could scan bar codes to see how environmentally friendly certain products were. For food the aim was to find local foods or fruits/vegetables that were in season. We did well on that. Then there were cleaning products and other non-food items. Here we could see what was harmful to the environment and would kill insects. It was really well done. Of course, my 5-year old niece wanted to scan everything, but we did talk about the symbols on cleaning products (a little butterfly) that meant they were safe.

I don’t know who had more fun at that museum – her or me. Okay, it was totally me. Hands down. It wasn’t even close. Yes, I did follow all the animal footprints I saw. Who wouldn’t? We also looked at a fun relief map of the last ice age and how flat (this is flat in the Swiss sense of the word – that’s a note to my Dutch friends) certain areas are because of the glaciers that moved in and how certain valleys were formed. Fascinating stuff. Of course, there were dinosaurs too. Since we’d previously been to a dinosaur museum we didn’t start from scratch. So, yesterday’s questions were “when they find a bone how do they know what dinosaur it came from? What’s this one called? That’s a funny name, who came up with that?”. I explained it to her and also told her that if she ever discovered an animal that nobody had seen before, it would be named after her. I think she now wants to become a biologist. I’m totally taking credit for that.

I love how the museum keeps things real and how they have things for kids to explore and touch. We had a deal – don’t touch unless it has the touch symbol. Worked really well. We did touch EVERYTHING we were allowed to. Again, who wouldn’t? My niece asked me a bunch of times if some of the stuffed animals were real. Tough question that. I went with “real but dead” – that seemed to work. We also had a close look at an otter and a beaver. Especially their tails. Now we know.

Like any good exhibition on insects, they provided a lot of information on the importance of insect habitats (main focus on trees) and how to create habitats for insects in your backyard or on your balcony. Not just for the benefit of insects of course, but insects being around has an impact on so many other species. There were little hidden secrets to explore. Little windows to open and see who lives in there. Like under the tree bark or in the ground among the roots. There was also this wall of insect species with pictures. There are sooo many different ones. And you know how many species of us there are? We’re just one. One! Lucky we’re not the destructive kind … oh, wait!

Can we all go back to exploring our surroundings, back to being impressed/fascinated by nature? Can we all just realize that without insects, we will be next to die out? And we’ll only have ourselves to blame.

Credit: RawForBeauty.com (source)

I think it’s unconfirmed that Einstein really said this, but I’m quoting him here for two reasons. The quote works well with what I just said and … *drumroll* … he went to school right next to the museum. Oh, come on! You all knew I was going to mention that again.

I had such a wonderful time yesterday. My brain is exhausted from trying to explain things so a 5-year-old would understand. Well, worth the effort and I got the biggest hug after. Learning is fun. Having a fun aunt helps too – of course. We’re totally going there again for the next special exhibit. It’s on bats.

Notes:

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/be/58/b6/be58b62401a9baeb273af1499d017709--bee-keeping-save-the-bees.jpg