Indiana and Lord of the Rings
My brother finally got his Christmas present from me today. I decided to think “outside the box” this year and took him to the Lord of the Rings exhibit at the Indiana State Museum. It was quite impressive. The place was packed – probably because tomorrow’s the last day it will be shown anywhere in the U.S. By the time we left the exhibit, the tickets were sold out for the day and they were already selling tickets for tomorrow.
Neither one of us are Lord of the Rings fanatics. We both enjoyed the movies, but it doesn’t consume us like it does some people (like Star Wars does to some people I know). That being said, it was amazing to see all of the props and costumes. The amount of detail that went into the production is astonishing – even on the stuff that wouldn’t ever show up on film! I guess that’s what it takes to create a high quality film. It was also pretty cool to see how they created all of the special effects and such. I was a little concerned that we’d get bored after about ten minutes. I remember when a moon rock came to the Evansville museum. They made a big deal about it and might have even charged extra to see it. I was thinking it would be a huge piece of rock – like, the size of my head or something. It was hardly that. It was only something like an inch wide, or something like that. Can you say, “Little Orphan Annie’s secret decoder?” That didn’t happen, though. It took us almost three hours to walk through and it definitely lived up to the hype.
It was a memorable experience for me. Hopefully it was for him, too.
We also walked through the rest of the museum, since the ticket price included general admission. The building is amazing! I liked the atmosphere and the architecture. I wasn’t that impressed with the permanent collections, though. There was only a passing mention to Indiana’s role in homeland support of World War II. There was some mention of the Milan miracle, Hoosiers, and the Colts, but not much else related to the role of sports in our state. Not much about William Henry Harrison, other than his betrayal of The Prophet and Tecumseh. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but I really left wishing there was more meat to the exhibits. You can only look at so many arrowheads and interactive exhibits about the earth’s core.
I did learn one thing, though. Indiana has been a state made up of racist, sexist, lying, incompetent boobs since its inception. At least, that’s the impression I got from several of the exhibits. That was a little disappointing. I don’t want to sound like I didn’t enjoy the day, though. I had a great time with my brother. I also had a great time at the Lord of the Rings exhibit!
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No mention of the Battle of Corydon, either. I really don’t remember much about involvement in the Civil War at all. Not even the Underground Railroad!