Phil Hotten wrote:

As a social isolate, I might just as well be living on the moon. But,
it seems to me that Whatcom County should be endeavoring to expand
its natural history exhibiits, instead of getting rid of that
irreplaceable mounted bird collection. This county is becoming paved
over, and the younger generations should be aware of what they are
losing and what they have lost, natural history-wise. The great
natural history museums of western europe are constantly visited by
school children, including displays showing how the USA, Mexico, et
al. have squandered their natural world.
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Phil, you're absolutely right. I consider it a tragedy that so many
museums are abandoning exhibits and collections such as these to make
way for exhibits to go along with our modern fast-paced world (in
other words, those that kids can relate to, more like video games).
When I worked at the Burke Museum in the early 70s, they had a fine
exhibit of mounted local birds, and the administrative staff (which
were all cultural rather than natural historians) took down the
exhibit to make way for remodeling and then conveniently never put it
back up. It was apparently one of the more popular exhibits at the
time, but one wonders if museum personnel pay as much attention to
that as they do to the latest trends in exhibitry. Don't get me
wrong, I'm entirely pro-museum, but I've seen these changes and
regret the trend toward fancier and fancier exhibits with fewer
actual specimens.

We're losing not only nature but the ability to relate to it, the
latter just because almost all of us live away from it. Those mounted
birds are real, more real in a way than a TV program about bird
behavior, and yet it's getting harder and harder for any of us to
have access to such educational resources.

Dennis Paulson
1724 NE 98 St.
Seattle, WA 98115
206-528-1382

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