Close to Nowhere - Linda Jones


Thursday, June 15, 2006
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Close to Nowhere
By Linda Jones

Summer scheduling

Isn’t summer vacation time? Even our Scottish writer Mark Entwhistle and his wife are on vacation (in Spain no less).

With our granddaughter’s schedule, we may not have time for anything but chauffeuring her around for the next few months.

She has cooking school this week; camp next week; dancing classes at some point after that and now, her mom has stolen my idea and decided to take the girls to Chicago to see “Black Sue.”

“Sue” is on display in a museum in Chicago, along with Tutankhamun — the boy-king of Egypt.

Sue was unveiled at the Field Museum in May of 2000. She is the largest, most complete and best preserved T. rex fossil yet discovered.

To quote the website advertising the exhibit: “The skeleton on display is the real thing. Not a plastic model or a plaster cast. Not a patchwork or composite of bones from different specimens.

“Sue stands 13 feet high at the hips and 42 feet long from head to tail. One of the only pieces of Sue that is not mounted is her five-foot-long skull, which is too heavy to be placed on the steel armature that holds together her more than 200 fossilized bones.

“In its place, the Museum has installed a cast replica. Sue’s real skull is on display in an exhibit on the second-floor balcony overlooking Stanley Field Hall.

“Here, visitors can get an up-close view of Sue’s massive head, as well as some insight into the mounting process and the story of how Sue ended up at The Field Museum. In addition, visitors can view animated CT scans of the skull and touch a variety of casts of Sue’s bones, including a rib, forelimb and tooth.”

I have never seen a “real” dinosaur before, but I can just imagine how fantastic Sue must be. I have, after all, seen the movie “Jurassic Park.”

Not that Sue can be topped but how can you stand seeing King Tut in the same museum on the same trip?

We saw the King Tut exhibit when it was in Memphis, Tenn. at the Pyramid. How many years ago has that been?

I sure can’t remember — I do know my kids were in junior high and high school at the time.

Friends at church say Chicago is about six or so hours from home — Map Quest on the Internet says nine plus hours.

I think I can stand nine plus hours in the car with my daughter and two granddaughters for the opportunity to see Sue and King Tut.

Now, all we have to do is find a time on our granddaughter’s schedule to “pencil” it in!

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