telerib | Points of Pilgrimage

Yahoo! News reports that Paul Allen, Microsoft co-founder and sponsor of SpaceShip One, is also the sponsor of the Sci-Fi Museum in Seattle,Washington.

Now, the other day I learned that the Giant Shoe Museum is also in Seattle. Maybe one day, I can see them both!

I was rather upset that the weather in Boston this January prevented me from taking public transit to see the Museum of Bad Art. It is still on my to-do list.

Closer to home, the American Dime Museum contains a wealth of weirdness from the original dime museums and sideshows of the turn of the last century. It's in Baltimore, but the last few times I've tried to visit, they've been closed or on vacation. I'm not sure if I have the stomach for the National Museum of Health and Medicine at Walter Reed in Bethesda, but there is something compelling about a place where you can see a stomach-shaped hairball.

I have my pilgrim badges from the Nut Museum in Lyme, CT (yes, where Lyme disease is from!) and the Frisco Native American Museum on the Outer Banks in NC. The Nut Museum is every bit as odd as it looks - I went with my family as a child, dutifully handed over the one-nut admission price, and toured the old Victorian house stuffed full of nut memorabilia. We even heard the Nut Lady sing her Nut Anthem.

The Frisco Native American Museum's website makes it look much more normal than it appeared to us some seven years ago. We fondly recall the Navajo "eye dazzler" pattern rug, displayed with the placard: "WARNING! DO NOT LOOK DIRECTLY AT RUG!" and the golden eagle whose head had been painted white in the "Animals of North America" display.