11 February 2014 Museums should encourage the use of tactile senses!

I always wanted to touch everything, run my fingers across the art, feel the texture have a tactile sensation to compliment what my eyes were viewing. Then the docent would yell at me and my mother gave me "those" eyes. As a child museums where a challenge, I could not understand why the adults would not let me play as my heart so yearned.

Today though was a museum gift: for at the Museum of the North on the UaF campus I was able to in every sense of the word, "experience" Alaska. Native art, cultural history, natural history, even "The place where you go to listen." This room dedicated to the rhythms of daylight and darkness, phases of the moon, and seismic vibrations allowed me use more then one sense. Have you ever been in a room focused solely on the heartbeat of a planet? The acoustic accompaniment to this ever changing sound vibrating room was amazing, an auditory glimpse into the earth. This was my kind of museum!

And then the icing on the cake, a special presentation on the arctic ground squirrel, and more specifically their hibernation. In a word...wow! Seven months of hibernation, more than a meter beneath the frozen tundra with neural pathways deteriorating. Yet they awaken, and continue with the cycle of survival and reproduction good as new.

So if you ever find yourself in Fairbanks, I would highly recommend a trip to the Museum of the North, and who knows, you might be able to have the rare thrill of holding a hibernating arctic ground squirrel.