Kids' Stuff

Dear Ed,

We went to the Children's Museum in Nap Town today and observed a water clock that was fascinating. It is truly a functional chronometer. We watched the hour change from two to three, and it happened all at once, and it was a joy to see. I wish I had a photo to illustrate it, since it is a complicated thing to describe. It looks sort of like a laboratory distillation device, with ascending glass balls on the left to indicate hours and smaller containers on the right to indicate minutes. At first glance I thought it was model that illustrated the mechanism of a petroleum cracking tower but then I observed the pendulum. Said pendulum is connected to a simple ladle pump, which is essential in the timely delivery of water. It is filled with blue-dyed water, and all parts which include tubes. It is in the lobby, which has skylights, and today was a beautiful sunny August day. The Children's Museum in Indianapolis. Great! The pendulum reminded me of the Foucault pendulum at the museum downtown, which uses the earth's movement to keep knocking over these little pegs all day long. Every kid, virtual and actual, should get to see that pendulum too. Those two items are the kind of phenomena that made Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. proud of his native Indianapolis. I like Nap Town (I insist on calling it "Nap Town" instead of "Indy," because it is still a great place to take a nap, in Indiana, the center of things--the dead center. Some kids from out of state came in a decade or so ago and tried to jazz Indiana up, and they were misguided, because Indiana's unjazziness is part and parcel of its charm. A red 1950 Studebaker convertible rolling over a covered bridge at twenty miles an hour--bring it back! And August is probably next to October in being the most charming month in Indiana--melons and corn and tomatoes and picnics and reunions and some of the best weather Indiana is capable of having. And, I concede, some of the worst.) I love you, Hoosier State! I wish sometimes Madison wasn't so damned Kentucky. I'm a Yankee, dammit, not a Reb. (And on that one, murder will out -- Grant was a better general than Lee. Just as Omar Bradley was a better field commander than Rommel. Go figure.)

JT