Titanic

Due to an unheard of early pre trip packing on my part, the VOR, GuitarMatt, and I were able to attend the exhibit and Omnitheater film on the Titanic at the Science Museum last evening. The normal scrambling, searching, and cursing had pretty much been dealt with the night before and the VOR managed to get a reservation for a 7:15 'boarding.

The ill fated ship fascinates people, even before Leonardo and Kate slipped down into the hold for some automotive appreciation. I remember reading Walter Lord's A Night to Remember when I was about 10 years old which got me hooked on the ship and the event. The Omnitheater film was not quite as riveting as the movie Titanic (I only saw certain snippets of the movie) and the comfortable seats, placed at an identical angle to my Lazy Boy, caused me to doze off a time or two. The exhibit however, was excellent. It always gives me a thrill when I'm looking at history in the flesh, so to speak, and the artifacts that were brought up and preserved were a great representation of life aboard the ship. The thing that they did that had the most impact on connecting a visitor to the event was to issue a boarding pass in the name of one of the passengers on the vessel. It was only at the end, after the entire exhibit was toured, that you found out whether your passenger survived. The VOR's did. GM and mine did not.


The exhibit was well worth attending and is most certainly thought provoking. Issues of class, chivalry, fate, technology and plain luck were all roiling around in my head as I walked through, reading every single word on the displays. It also reminded me, to paraphrase the masthead on this little page, that Nature is indeed the Boss. Nothing is unsinkable and as we pack up to head north for our 4 day Apostle Islands kayak trip, I will keep that little gem in the back of my mind. I shall return to the keyboard on Wednesday.