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Overall the Museum of Natural History has changed little since I was there on class trips and family expeditions as a kid. This is not, alas, intended as a complement. I remember it as a hot, airless, dusty space with artifacts that don't seem well cared-for in rooms that don't link together in any logical way. That sums up a fair amount of yesterday morning's expedition. Many years and quite a bit of money pumped through the place and they still don't have accessible bathrooms - everything's all manual, no braille or any kind of alternative signage. I also didn't see anything wide enough for a chair, let alone a walker or an elderly woman with a cane. Not impressed. We did fit in the planetarium, though none of us loved the show. But lunch was good, as were some of the outer space photos.
After that, we thought we'd try and take in "Three Faiths: Judaism, Christianity and Islam" at the New York Public Library at Bryant Park (the one with the lions for those living elsewhere) before Mom went home and we went on to a reading. This proved to be one of the epic expeditions of doom in which one misses a train, gets diverted, then slogs through a zillion miles of corridor and stairs to try to get to one's destination. Sufficith to say, we were all pretty wiped out when we got there. But get there we did and the show was outstanding. They've gathered together some beautiful and historically relevant examples of Torahs, various writings from the Kabbalah, a Gutenberg Bible and some gorgeous illuminated manuscripts as well as a some beautiful Qur'ans and associated writings. They even had a girdle book, which is Jana's current project, so everyone enjoyed this part of the trip.
We dropped Mom off at the station and hied our way down to the Lower East Side to go to the Valentine's Day erotica reading by Rachel Kramer Bussel, D.L. King and Christen Clifford at Bluestockings Bookstore. One pleasant meal at a little French restaurant around the corner and we were off. I hadn't met D.L. King before so I made an educated guess and went up to introduce myself. This turned out marvelously well and we sat around chatting until the reading got underway. It was a fine show and we liked a number of the stories. Afterward, it was back to the same pleasant French restaurant with D.L. King for gossip and chatting - definitely the best couple of hours of the trip thus far. It sounds like I may be going to the Erotic Author's Association Conference but we'll see how things look when we get back home.
Today, hoping to keep it low key, spend a bit more time with Mom and to connect with our pal, Ama, for dinner.