Museums of the future. Spent

June 13, 2002

Museums of the future. Spent a lot of the afternoon in Lower Fort Garry. Its an important Hudson’s Bay fort that was active from 1835 until (I think) 1887. Since its a national historic site near Selkirk Manitoba. They’ve hired young actors to dress in period costume and pretend they are the different historical figures that peopled the premises back in the day. This is common at a lot of Canadian heritage sites. Everything is restored to ship shape and all the artifacts and appointments of the age are in place. Its a big field trip spot for Winnipeg school kids. Because we’re “home schooling” right now I’ve noticed a few things 1) We beat the school kid rush because we’re on a different clock. 2) School field trips are mainly about jacking around with your friends and attempting to get away with as much as you can due to the difficulty of proper supervision 3) factor #2 makes the actual subject matter of the trips seem more boring than it is 4) the older the kids the more #s 2 and 3 come into play. I loved the place more for the information than the place itself. I was sucking in the fur trade history, romantic terminology and lifestyle details. The kids were screaming to stay by the time I’d become bored shitless. Us parents were staring at them like they were aliens. Then I understood. This was actually fascinating. My childhood experiences were based on school field trips. Here we were as a unit who had pulled into the attraction because we were passing by and it looked like something we’d like to see. The adventure element plays into the whole vibe. Legislated fun can be the worst. Yesterday we just happened upon Louis Riel’s grave in St. Boniface in the same way. The whole idea that we were “all of a sudden” touching the spot where his body was buried made the usual parental history lesson seem way more exciting. I speak in what has been described as a dynamic monotone so this is doubly amazing. Why wouldn’t it be cool for a kid to watch a blacksmith bang away at red hot metal? Honing a knife blade. Why wouldn’t it be cool to hide out in the booze cellar of an old fort or touch the pelt of a bison or a silver fox? These are but sidebars in relation to the fact that the place is full of guns and the evidence of where they were fired. Wicked. Birch bark canoes and teepees too.
If you let it all “happen to them” then the experience washes around, in and through them. They knew we could leave to drive up to Lake Winnipeg to swim at Grand Beach whenever we wanted and they chose to stay longer. As my youngest says...freaky.
I thought of our house in a hundred and thirty years. Could it be used an example of life in the turn of the millennium if restored to its former glory? A preteen girl could stand behind the rope at the door of the “preteen girl’s bedroom” in her “period costume” and spout her script:
“I wear the word Nike on my shirt to signify my allegiance to a clan of children and an ideology of fun and sporting life!. My friends and I must wear this uniform to the grand malls and fast food restaurants of our suburb in order to avoid being cast out of the clan!. This box on my desk is called a c.o.m.p.u.t.e.r. You may have already learned in school that the computer came before the pen and synthetic paper. I use the computer to talk to my friends in secret youth codes along a special information highway known as the microsoft. The microsoft is a dangerous place where information runs wild and we sneak peaks at the pornography that our society will later accept as proper “news broadcasts”! Can you imagine?! Preteens such as myself were not allowed to kill anyone, sample God’s gift of heroin or even have sex! Our music was programmed for us by the secret government of MTV and Clear Channel and it was illegal to be exposed to the demons of variation, irony, or real emotion. The secret government subsidized what we now know as “imitation music“. After the heads of the unspoken government and the leader of the microsoft were all put in the 2021 space jails things got much better. Youth was no longer considered to be the only reality and the story of “aging” was allowed to be told again. “They say our brains grew three sizes that day” [sic] said the great Dr. Seuss who’s teachings brought the whole world around. Museums of the future. I wish I could have just one tripman from the Hudson’s Bay walk out of the past to split his side’s open laughing at the idiots in the fort.