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Updated: 08/09/02



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"A Beautiful Mind"
by Sylvia Nasar

make guacamole

trollop fest 2002


Friday, 8 August, 2002

The Trollops are coming! The Trollops are coming! Stephani is driving down from Ithaca, NY, and will pick up Laurie from the Philly airport around 4:00, so they should arrive at Chez Kay by 5:00 today. *Huzzah!*

Unfortunately the remaining Trollops - Sarah, Sonya and Bonnie - are not able to come this year. Oh well. Steph says it is our task and challenge to be just as loud and funny with three as we normally are with four.

["Five-oh-two: Funny begins."]

Steph's one request is that we get soft pretzels from the Amish sellers at the Reading Terminal Market. She also wants to cook for us one night, so we might get our shopping out of the way then too.

Laurie wants to go to the Mutter Museum. For those not familiar with it, here's a write-up:

"What is that?"

Words not often overheard during a typical trip to a museum, to be sure. Then again, Philadelphia’s Mütter Museum, popularly known as "the museum of medical oddities," doesn’t exactly pride itself on being typical in any sense of the word.

Part of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, the Mütter Museum offers visitors an awe-inspiring view of the most extreme cases of pathological human abnormalities. Witness, for example, the skeletons of a hunchback, a giant and a dwarf. Check out a plaster model of the body of famous conjoined twins Chang and Eng, and view the actual contorted remains of a man whose joints had hardened into bone. And you can’t miss the grotesquely engorged colon of the man who hadn’t experienced a bowel movement in more than three months, or the preserved body of a woman whose decomposing corpse turned to soap.

The museum itself was, after all, initially conceived as a resource for medical students by Dr. Thomas Mütter, a wealthy 19th century physician. After studying medicine abroad, Mütter became frustrated with the stagnant state of medical education in America, specifically concerning restrictions on the study of corpses and the conduction of autopsies due to the religious and social constraints of the period. As such, Mütter employed his wealth to amass his own collection of both actual human specimens and models depicting congenital diseases in various stages of development.

As curator Gretchen Worden states, "There’s no substitute for seeing the real thing. It really broadens your mind — the humanity, the reality, the mortality."

So indulge your inner curiosity. After all, you’re only human.

[OK . . . maybe we'll do that AFTER lunch.]

As for me, I found two wineries in Chadds Ford, PA - about an hour outside of town - that I think would be fun to visit. In comparison to the wines we've tasted in Napa and Sonoma, well . . . it will be fun anyway.

I'm not sure how much writing I'll do over the next few days, so to tide you over, I offer the following:

1 - Pictures from my Double Date at the Zoo:

Ian and Connor at the Zoo

[That's Ian on the left and Connor on the right.]

Ian

Connor


[Aren't they just the cutest little guys??]

2 - MORE new pictures of THE HOUSE - the remainder of the Gallery construction is complete. It does need railings, which should go up within the next two weeks. I hope. If I don't fire everyone again.

3 - New pictures of the Suki-Monster. It's moments like these that make up for the shredded carpeting.

Suki in a calm moment

Suki

Suki in the planter

[Cuteness aside - she's still getting her nails done next week.]

~ ~ ~

Quote du jour:

"How long can you be cute?"

-- Goldie Hawn (1945 - ____) US actress, comedienne, producer

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