Tales of the Invisible Ben

Labor Day Weekend Update

Hello, I'm the Invisible Ben...and you're not. And now, our top stories.

It has now been two months since I left for Germany and over a month since I returned home. Mysteriously, more than half of the blog posts outlining my adventures are still reported missing in action. Those few that have trickled in (Click on the July 2007 archive link at right for more.) have informed us that the others have been trapped in a holding pattern over Boston International Airport...along with two million other American Airlines passengers.

This just in: The previous joke was not sponsored by American Airlines as a means to discredit that company's reputation. It was sponsored by Delta.

This just in: Apparently, neither of the "news stories" above were jokes at all, but rather the result of a Weekend Update parody that was doomed to failure from the outset given the consistently brilliant writing of the modern Saturday Night Live writing staff. After all, how can one mere blog compete with the geniuses who brought us the Spartan cheerleaders and Amy Poehler's Aunt Linda?

We now return to something far less imaginative: a list of bullet points.

• As mentioned above, I have been working on blog posts outlining all of the memorable time I spent in Germany. If you haven't checked out my pictures from Heidelberg's student prison, puzzled over the anti-Semitic board game in Nuremberg's Nazi museum, or tried to calculate the absurdly high voltage of the Deutsches Museum's gigantic Jacob's Ladder, then you have been missing out. And this is just the beginning. I promise...even if it takes me another two months, I will be posting a detailed record of my month long European adventure.
  

• Part of the reason for the delayed posts was the two week hiatus I took from blogging in connection with my dental surgery. I am now pleased to report, however, that almost four weeks later, I am now able to eat even the most solid of foods without worrying about searing pain in my lower jaw. (Yes...even corn on the cob!) Granted, I need to take some time after meals to spray water into the the large, but relatively painless, holes in the back of my jaw using a syringe my doctor provided to prevent food from getting caught back there. Although it's really not that big a deal, the fact that I have gotten into the habit of doing this two to three times a day has lately struck me as reminiscent of an episode of The Critic. ("One week ago, I was looking at a death sentence. Now all I have to do is inject 8 little ounces of this into my eyeball every 4 hours!")

• Another part of the reason for delayed blog updates has been that I have been busy at work revising my research paper from last semester using the research I conducted at the Deutsches Museum. Hopefully, now that I have actual "evidence" that I can "cite" in my paper, my "argument" will be much more convincing. On the other hand, polishing my old research paper means that I have spent less time thinking about my research paper for this semester, a fact which may come back to haunt me as I begin confronting the looming menace of my general exams (ugh).

Finally, I have decided to add two new members to the Invisible Blogroll for your consideration, one whose addition is long overdue and the other I only recently discovered.

• Secondhand Thoughts, a blog devoted to educational issues, is written by Eric Turner, an Army veteran currently in training to obtain a degree in history and secondary education. I first became aware of Eric's blog after he was kind enough to comment on one of my posts and have since become an avid reader of his well-written and insightful discussions on the current status of American teacher training. Plus, you have to admire anyone who goes through the effort of organizing his bookmarks according to the Dewey Decimal System! I try to check this site every Wednesday when Mr. Turner posts his Wednesday Website Pick of the Week of new educational blogs. After all, even though I am now out of the classroom, that doesn't mean I don't sympathize with those who are still slogging through the trenches of public education or appreciate what they have to say. Check it out, you'll be glad you did.
• Charlie Trautmann is the executive director of the Sciencenter in Ithaca, New York, one of the institutions affiliated with that city's Discovery Trail. (Yes, that's Sciencenter...one word!) He is currently in the midst of an exciting odyssey across Europe, visiting a wide range of museums in order to compare their approaches towards public education with regard to environmental issues. Since he started his European Museum Crawl in Munich last July, it is wholly possible that we might have passed each other in the hallways of the Deutsches Museum a few times. As an experienced museum professional, Mr. Trautmann has a keen eye for the logistics of exhibit planning and pointing out the strengths and weaknesses of various display strategies. Since I have recently become interested in the history of science museums, I will definitely be reading this blog carefully through October, at which point I sincerely hope that its author will consider continuing to post on museum issues in the United States and the world.

Well folks, that's all for now.
I'm the Invisible Ben. At the risk of once more flogging an already dead horse and an equally dead joke, good night and have a pleasant tomorrow...or something like that.