When I awoke this morning, a deep icy slush covered the ground and was still falling heavily from the leaden sky. Faced with a full day of AJ pent up indoors, I elected to change gears and take him with me to the university today. We made our way slowly down the highway, past scores of disconcerting accidents and arrived at the administrator�s door in time to fill out payroll forms before she left for lunch. While I attempted to calculate withholding, AJ attempted to dismantle the administrator�s desk, which apparently charmed her enough that she took a small, flag-covered bear off her shelf and gave it to him to keep. He�s currently curled up in his bed sleeping with it.

After I had been guaranteed of a paycheck, we headed to the department to try out my new code for the copier and make copies of handouts for the first day of class. We also picked up my office and classroom keys. My transformation to teacher is almost complete � next week I�ll get a mailbox.

AJ and I dined at one of my usual campus haunts, an establishment chosen primarily for its proximity to my department and its wide variety of caffeinated beverages. AJ ate a blueberry yogurt and most of a bagel. You wouldn�t think such pedestrian food would warrant constant remark, but AJ was enthralled with the gothic room, the smooth wooden chairs, the interesting shapes of the windows, the gargoyles on the mantel and some of his general enthusiasm spilled over to his lunch.

After we�d filled our bellies, we headed to the Museum of Science and Industry to take in the bodyworlds exhibit, which AJ has been clamoring to see ever since he first saw the ads for it. We had to wait nearly a half an hour just to get into the museum, but once there, it was fairly calm. The exhibit was fascinating. As you know, if you clicked the above link, the exhibit is made up of human bodies with their outer layers peeled back in a variety of ways to reveal their insides. There were exhibits that showed all the human blood vessels. There was a case that particularly fascinated AJ where the intestine were uncurled so you could get a sense of their actual length. Mostly, though, we looked at the figures scattered throughout, that were engaged in assorted activities � biking, swimming, archery, basketball � their skins carefully peeled back revealing muscles, tendons, organs.

We had been warned that the exhibit was not recommended for small children and we received many sideways glances as we walked around � I suspect some questioned my judgment for bringing a three-year-old to an exhibit of modified corpses. But, as I pointed out to my husband when we were trying to decide whether this was a good idea, small children are not likely to be the ones to have problems with this. AJ has numerous books with illustrations that show the same kind of thing. He doesn�t have the sense of taboo about death and the body that older kids and adults do. He was not at all frightened. He just kept wandering around like a small professor, looking very serious and occasionally observing, �this is very interesting.�

I, on the other hand, while not squeamish, felt a little uncomfortable with the artfulness of the displays. While I�m totally cool with the examinations of the insides of those who�ve donated their bodies to science, I�m a little less comfortable with the idea of turning them into sculpture. In this exhibit, the line they are walking is very fine. Had this exhibit appeared at the Art Institute � and in many respects it could have � there certainly would have been a public uproar.

Why, then, is this kind of exhibit okay for science but not for art (at least for me)? Is it the sheer vulnerability the figures display, standing not only naked but skinless before us? Is it the reminder that we are all just bodies in the end? Is it the fact that art seems less necessary than learning something concrete like anatomy (a fallicy, I think)?

I�m too tired to put this into the words I want to this evening. I�d be very interested to hear from anyone else who�s seen this exhibit.

After we left bodyworlds, we sprinted around as much of the rest of the museum as we could. We turned every crank and button. We investigated all of the machines in one of the stairwells. We climbed on the train and the plane. We watched the massive model railroad for a long, long time. AJ just sucked it all in until his eyes began to droop. It was time to go. He was asleep almost instantly, snoring away in the back seat as I zig-zagged through pre-rush-hour traffic while listening to a Mahler symphony trickling out of the car�s speakers on low.

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