Why this blog?

Around 25 years ago, I convinced my grandmother to write a memoir. Naturally, it was in pen on (gasp) paper. That, of course, would never do. I was blinded by new technology. I was an idiot. I convinced (read "paid") my daughter, Miriam, to type Bubbie's manuscript up on my Commodore 64. Then, to make matters worse, I edited the typescript. Then I printed it out and had it copied and bound.

Now, the actual original manuscript, what Bubbie actually wrote with her own hand, is lost forever. It's probably somewhere in the house, but that pretty much counts as lost forever.

Now, I'm at that age. My kids have not asked me to do this, but I'm doing it anyway. I'm still amused enough by technology that I don't want to do a handwritten manuscript. I also don't think I can achieve the kind of dramatic impact that Bubbie managed with a formal autobiography. So, instead, I'm doing a blog with random memories from the past and the present scattered in a disorganized way.

This blog is linked to my two other blogs.

http://henryandcarolynsecondhoneymoon.blogspot.com/ is the blog I started when I came down with cancer and pretty much stopped when Carolyn died.

http://henryfarkaswidowerblog.blogspot.com/ is the blog I started after Carolyn died; when I decided to continue blogging.

For what it's worth, there's a search engine attached to this blog right below this intro. That won't be worth much initially, but if this blog gets long and stays disorganized, then my kids and their kids will be able to use the search engine to find stuff if they're interested.

Search This Blog

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

You've heard of "Night at the Museum." How about a month of nights?

In a recent post on my other blog, Henry Farkas Widower Blog, I mentioned that I'd decided to enter a contest where the winner gets to live in the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry for a month, play with all the exhibits at night when there aren't any lines, and blog about the experience. This isn't the kind of contest where all you have to do is write your name and address on the inside of a cereal box top and send it in. You have to work at this. There's a long application form, a five hundred word essay, a five by seven photo, and a one minute video that you have to send in. They have a committee that decides, and the members of the museum (of which I'm one) get to vote among the top three finalists. I'm pretty sure the selection committee gets the final say, but they're going to care about what the members actually say.

Clearly this isn't the right venue for my appealing to you to send email to the museum pointing out to them that the many followers of my blogs all want the winner to be me. As far as I know, there are only six subscribers to one or another of my blogs. I'm doing this for posterity, or for fun. I haven't decided which. Anyway, once my materials arrive at the museum, by 4 pm EDT tomorrow, the museum will own the copyright on everything I sent them. So my only chance to get some extra mileage out of the essay is to publish it here right now. Here it is.
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I'm Your Person, and the Month in the Museum is my Dream Job

Henry Farkas, MD, MPH

I'm your person. I've been a science fiction and a science geek ever since my father first took me to the Museum of Natural History and the Hayden Planetarium by subway when I was six. That was sixty years ago.

I've gotten a reprieve from stage IV lung cancer (never smoked, wife never smoked, got it anyway). That's unusual. The only reason I'm still alive is the Trilogy, the radiation robot that zapped my cancer. There's now no evidence of cancer in any of my scans.

Cancer survival makes a person re-assess his goals. I've been wondering what I could do that would make a difference. I'm retired from my profession as a kindly old country doctor (emergency medicine full time and hospice part time). Now, I want to do something different.

On August 2nd, my brother and I were passing through Chicago, and we visited the Museum of Science and Industry. At the information desk, we saw the sign about the contest. Live a month in the museum. This is the kind of thing I'm looking for. OK, it's only a month, but I'll know I did it. At the end of life, people regret the things they never did.

I'm prepared. I've been fascinated by science and technology all my life. During my lifetime, technology, at least in some fields, has surpassed the imagination of the science fiction authors that I read avidly when I was a child. Cell phones, for example, are better than most versions of mental telepathy that I read about in science fiction stories back then. The telepaths didn't have to count minutes, but they couldn't access the web.

During the 30 days, I'll be able to talk with patrons about the museum's exhibits. I'm already tuned in on biology, chemistry, some physics, and a bit of engineering. I could assess each visitor's level of interest and knowledge, and then point out interesting things about the exhibits that they may not have noticed, or appreciated, on their own. That's how I'll enhance the museum experience for our patrons. Most museum exhibits have interesting details that are easy to miss.

Because I'm a licensed pilot, I'll put in lots of hours flying your outstanding flight simulator after museum hours. That's going to be the best perquisite of all. Thanks for that exhibit.

There's a line in the description of the prizes you're offering about how you'll provide the winner with lots of electronic gizmos to use during the month. Actually, I pretty much have one of anything you might want me to have except an iPad. I mention that just in case an iPad wasn't already on your list of gizmos the winner should have.
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OK, that's my essay, slightly edited. There was also a one minute video. I can't embed it here, but I can give you a link to the first draft.

Click here to see the first draft of the video. It will be available only until August 16th, 2010.

Actually, it's way better now than it was when I got my brother to take the video of me talking the words. I sent that, plus lots of other feeble attempts at video production (about which I know nothing) to my son-in-law, Chris, who does editing for a living and even got an Emmy nomination for editing. He perked it up with embedded stills, took out some of what I'd said, and made it actually interesting.

Thanks, Chris.
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