One Year On

In the year since I posted last, I have not only outfitted an more than modest sized traveling museum and finished a second MA, but was able to squeeze in a few shows for students as well. The greatest highlight to share is that in a couple weeks I will be presenting Paleo Porch at the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology Conference in Berlin, Germany. My abstract was accepted in the "Education and Outreach" session which is all poster format, but I will be going to discuss not only the outreach with traveling artifacts (in this case casts) but also how successful using the humanities to teach science outreach can be.

Below is a sampling of the talks I did in the Spring and Summer with the Paleo Porch Mini Mobile Museum. The Paleo Porch Facebook page is still running strong, and is updated frequently with paleo news, good fun, and bad puns. There is still a lot going on as I make my way towards comprehensive exams. Currently I am living in the Art History department absorbing everything I can on the Art of the American West, and the Myth and Memory of that same west. Understanding what artists were representing about the west, helps us to understand the expectations of that west (and what came out of it) that those living wast of the Mississippi were using to make sense of their world and relationship with it. With that in mind it also influences how museums were designed and filled and what artifacts were used to establish authenticity and authority including giant fossil bones, whether they were from dinosaurs or giant mammals. You can read about one such method of communication here. 

Until there is more to report from Berlin, and I have time to put together posts on Natural History Museums (which is my next plan for here) enjoy these candid shots of kids learning about paleontology and the history of science through the Paleo Porch Mini Mobile Museum. Total reach for the year is about 1100 and that is only with a handful of exhibitions. More to come! 

First "Paleo in the Park" 

Middle School 

Middle School

Middle School

Middle School

University Talk

University Talk

University talk layout and Q&A 

Pre-Collegiate Class at University

Pre-Collegiate Class at University

Pre-Collegiate Class at University

I will get some photos of the conference and my poster up when I return. The conference runs Nov. 5-8, 2014.

DinoSkulls

The Indiegogo campaign has come to an end. The perks and goodies have been mailed, and the money transfer has been "initiated." The Paypal donations have already cleared and that is what I purchased the perks, the cases, and paid for the shipping with. There was enough to put in a quick order for a few pieces before they disappeared. The Carnotaurus was discontinued with only 3 left in stock, so I wanted to act quickly. They also offer damaged skulls for a fraction (about 1/3) of the regular price. So, I ordered one of each that they offered. At most it would just be a little gluing. I will highlight the first shipment for the Paleo Porch Mini Mobile Museum:

The package as it was delivered. Well packed, I might add. 

Three boxes=3 skulls

Opening the Carnotaurus first

These are really high quality replicas. 

Scaled down for super-easy transport

They even come with very nice little stands with their names and scale size on it: 

Here is where the fun begins: How badly would these be damaged? They didn't say:

The deinonychus was missing a few (4) teeth, as you can see, and was now a two piece. 

I learned about Duco cement at University taking my Archaeology course. This stuff is fantastic for nearly any type of medium you need to reattach and it works brilliantly on resin. 

 

The jaws, being good little levers were heavier on the end so I had to employ a bit of spacering and rubberbanding. 

The Brachiosaurus was another story. The jaw was separated from the skull, just as the deinonychus was, only it was missing many, many more teeth. Both from the lower jaw:

and the upper: 

This actually let me realize just how good these casts are. Brachiosaur teeth are notably described as "peg-like" or "pencil-like" and these are. All of them. But, they each have the flattened wedge shape on the inside. That made it only a little easier. 

Also, the don't simply get smaller from the front back. They vary in size all along the tooth row. 

There was a lot of checking and double checking. 

Some progress:

Upper was a bit easier, or that is to say went quicker. 

I am still not 100% certain they are all in the correct "sockets" but they look pretty good

Required the same advanced techniques for holding things together . It was here I realized there is a great opportunity to market DragonSkull shoes. They would still look better than crocs

Once all the teeth were in and the jaws were rigged into place

 it was just a matter of the Duco setting up. Total time to get 

 to this point about 2 and a half hours. 

With the jaws being so heavy on the ends and needing pressure in all the right places, I was worried that the Duco might not make it. Shouldn't have worried though, once the bands and spacers were in the right places it was just a matter of time. Now that the Duco has completely cured, the glued joints are stronger than the regular resin pieces. 

 They may have come out of the boxes completely different, a few hours of work and dry time, there isn't that much difference in the finished products. And now you have the first three skulls in the Paleo Porch collections. These three and a few teeth and claws will be at the Pioneer library meeting this Thursday and Friday to potentially negotiate workshops at all 10 libraries in their system during summer vacation. I think it is a fitting sample of what the Paleo Porch Mini Mobile Museum will have to offer 

More to come as I work with retailers to get more bang for buck. I will update as new orders arrive and new workshops get planned, check back here for more updates! 

Museum Perks and Advertising Have Arrived

Keeping with the tradition of telling everyone what it going on today I received my shipment of perks to send out to the donors for the project and my business cards and magnets.

First, the perks for those that helped me pass my indiegogo goal: Stickers, magnets, and T-shirts (oh, my).

The Stickers

The business card-sized magnets

The simple yet elegant T-shirt

A few other things that I will share are the things that local folks should be on the look out for in the near future: 

Business Cards Front and Back 

Large Magnets to go on the car. --The Mobile part of the mobile museum

Here they are, blurry, but on the refrigerator for scale. 

Thanks, yet again, to all those who have shared the project, donated to the project, and/or offered encouraging words to the project's director. Soon these posts will be about the pieces in the museum, the places I give talks, and the people I meet!

Here is a last closeup of the shirt: 

Gearing Up

The first of my large cases came in last night. Trying to figure out how to make a museum mobile isn't terribly difficult, but finding things that you can use to actually do it isn't terrible easy. After searching the internet and countless hours of review grazing and product specs reading I decided to give this one a shot. It was a bit more than I wanted to spend, so I resigned to have it in my ebay watch list all summer, and wait. Finally went on sale this past week, for a $100 and FREE shipping which when compared to Amazon's and others $25 shipping was part of the deal.

Another neat thing about indiegogo (besides getting the option to keep funds if you don't make your goal) is that donations rendered via paypal immediately go into my paypal account and I can USE them. Which is how I got this case. So your donations have already been put to good use. I also ordered all the business needs and all the small perks and a few of the shirts. They are slated for a delivery around the 9th but who knows.

This case is actually much better than I had anticipated, which is a pleasant surprise. It is essentially two units that are stackable and latchable. The top acting as a lid for the bottom. There is also a bonus lid in case you want to carry only the bottom, or you need to take them apart for better spatial maneuvering. The pictures below are already up on the Paleo Porch facebook page, but it's worth sharing on here for a broader, less facebook oriented, curious public.

 An extend-o handle and luggage wheels make this a nice little traveling piece. Even when the wheels inevitably eat it on a curb, the whole thing weighs under 20 pounds empty, and the resin replicas won't add too much to the overall dificulty of packing the items into the library or lecture Hall. Everything latches down pretty streamlined so nothing should get caught on anything, but this is life.


 I really like the tacklebox like action of the top case. All together this unit is about 38 inched high, a foot and a half long and about a foot deep. Plenty of room to house teeth, claws, and dinosaur eggs. Especially since the dividers can be moved around. The bottom unit houses a shelf, and then is empty space providing amble room for the scaled down skulls and larger pieces like the Archaeopteryx and pteranodon pieces I have on my list.

So, there you have it, the fist official purchase with crowdsourced funds. I was so impressed with the quality that I have ordered another one to take advantage of a discount offered by the ebay store and the still free shipping. So I will have two to start out with, at the cost of 1.5 and saving $50 on shipping. All of which gets funneled back into the replica purchasing fund. This excited about an empty box with latches (it is rather shiny and official looking) image when I start getting the fossils in and getting to post about them. 

                                   

I will be posting about the businessy and perk things as soon as they come in so be watching here and/or on facebook for the next exciting update of things that are going on in the world of creating a mobile mini museum! 

*For Full Disclosure: this is actually a traveling makeup case. It even came with a free mirror! So, if you are looking for one of those for your business or your travling theatre/one act play, it's not a bad purchase, lol. Originally $170, I got 2 for $206. *

Collision of Worlds

If you have read (or will read) the first entry of this blog, you know (or will know) the story behind The Paleo Porch. A great many of you may have already made the connection with the Have Bones Will Travel slogan, too. But in case you haven't, or maybe want to understand how circuitous my thoughts run, here is a brief rundown.

It's Catchy. I mean, it is really catchy, that's why it's been used over and over again in popular culture. From the simple beginnings of a gunman for hire to a Fractured Fairy Tale in The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. The latter was a new take on the Puss in Boots fairytale. Two of the items included, "Have Boots Will Travel,"  and "Have Spoon Will Travel." Have Bones Will Travel is also a section of Yale's Medical School, that shows up on google searches as beginning in 1996. "Have Fossils Will Travel doesn't work on account of fossils having too many syllables."

It's part of our culture. Our shared television culture, that is. Most of the children that attend my workshops have no idea who Richard Boone or Paladin was--their parents might, and their grandparents usually all do. A few even know of the history behind Paladin's pseudonym. Paladins being the Twelve Peers and warriors of Charlemagne. Which for me is even better because it ties into one of my favorite songs: Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner by Warren Zevon. Roland and Van Owen coming from some of the earliest French literature in the Song of Roland. In the song, Roland, a mercenary, is double crossed by Van Owen another gun for hire. The trope appears again in the movie version of The Lost World (Jurassic Park II) Where Roland, the great white hunter is thwarted by Nick Van Owen, a documentary filmmaker and environmentalist, so in a Rube Goldbergian sort of way, it connects back to dinosaurs and fossils.

Roland

Van Owen

Replacing the iconic chess knight of silver with a dino-knight, just looks cool. The paralophosaurus is pretty iconic and still offers a more interesting profile than the T-Rex.

Back to the show: Have Gun Will Travel was never a favorite, but I liked it well enough. I also liked Wild Wild West, Gunsmoke, and Bonanza. On Sunday afternoons if the weather was right, I could pick up channel 55 out of Houston. The Tube, as it was called showed a marathon of old westerns: Rawhide, The Rifleman, and those mentioned above. The thing that drew me back to Paladin when I was creating this...thing...was his duality.

At his hotel in San Francisco Paladin is a wealthy playboy who enjoys the best of everything. Once he takes a case he shifts into "field mode" a completely different uniform and modus operandi. It's very similar to real paleontology. Back at the University or Museum Lab--usually in town far away from the field, is a completely different world than the field work. Just ask anyone that does it.

Finally, I remember how smart Paladin was. He quote classic literature, poetry, etc whenever the need arose, to prove a point, or frame a situation. It showed that in a television show that was idolizing the single epitome of masculinity protecting , serving, helping, etc. etc. that it was still okay to be smart. So, when all these things slammed together in my head one night I created this persona for the best way to brand my talks and my little traveling museum. So, as Paul Harvey said, Now you know the rest of the story.