Hairy Museum of Natural History

Silence has once again settled over the halls of the HMNH. It came as these interruptions usually do, unexpectedly and unannounced, but this time it has remained slightly longer than usual, which I’ll blame on 2009’s heady mix of activity, uncertainty, and misanthropy. These are difficult times for museums, after all, and in this much at least the Hairy Museum is no exception to the larger trend.

The thing about these extended silences is that they become harder to break the longer they linger. This half-year hiatus has given me ample opportunity to reflect upon various aspects of the site—what opportunities to pursue, what areas to focus on or shift away from, what to do with dated information, &c. &c. &c. I’m happy to say that after much deliberation every last paralyzing concern has met with multiple, contradictory sets of even more petrifying solutions.

In the end, to move forward, I’ll commit to no plans. For now, I’ll simply stop stopping, doing what I can when I can, without grand schemes or organizational aids, trusting that any necessary rhyme or reason will reveal itself in due course.

And so: time once again to dust off old bones, put fingers to keys and see where things go from here. To work!

—Matt Celeskey.

File under: Rogaine.

Comments on record: (2)

As we slowly settle into the new year here at the Hairy Museum, it seems only fitting, what with all the resoluteness in the air at this time of year, that I nail to the front door a list of things that I’d like to post/share/accomplish around here in the coming 365 days…

• Hominids. A project I’m currently involved in has me learning more about our closest fossil kin than I’d had the pleasure to delve into before. My work on it is to be wrapped up by the end of summer, so there should be more news, notes, sketches, & art on that front later in the year.
• Coelophysis. The work I began this year with Larry Rinehart—reconstructing growth series, sexual dimorphs, and the population structure—continues in 2009. As things progress, I hope to be able to share more specimen drawings, skeletal reconstructions, and life restorations of this Ghost Ranch dinosaur.
• Continue with the redesign. A new design for the HMNH front-page blog was launched in March 2008, and…pretty much it stayed on the front-page blog. There are a few kinks in the CSS to work out, but what I’d really like to do is implement it on the secondary and tertiary pages of the site, as well. Speaking of the redesign…
• Properly introduce the new “Happy Therapsid”. I never did get around to posting about the smilin’ skeleton in the revamped logo. Then again, I never did say much about the old one, either. Perhaps both could be remedied in a handful of posts about the wild and potentially wooly creatures that branched off from the stem of the mammal family tree.
• HMNH Library. When I first started transcribing old texts into HTML, there were far fewer resources online for the student of historical paleontology. Nowadays, I’m happy to say, you can hardly click a mouse without coming across some cache of freely-downloadable PDFs, and I’d like to use the Library to begin cataloguing links to other online collections.
• Paleo-Pop Shop. What was originally envisioned as the HMNH gift shop has been without product for far too long. One way or another, there will be something stocking the virtual shelves of this store by in time for the holiday season of 2009!

Not to mention the usual hodgepodge of paper summaries, new discoveries, miscellaneous sketches, and links to paleoart and writing across the web. As always, I welcome your comments and suggestions for anything you would like to see (or anything you wouldn’t). Thank you, valued museum visitor, for making the Hairy Museum of Natural History a destination in your online wanderings, and best wishes in the coming new year!

—Matt Celeskey.

File under: Rogaine.

Comments on record: (1)

I couldn’t improve upon the existing caption to this intriguing image, which accompanies this intriguing article.

Albardi, L. 2004. Comparative aspects of the inner root sheath in adult and developing hairs of mammals in relation to the evolution of hairs. Journal of Anatomy 205: 3, pp. 179-200.

—Matt Celeskey.

File under: Mammals, Rogaine, Synapsids.

Comments on record: (0)

…that took a bit longer than expected. And there’s no shortage of things left to be done.

But, it seems well past time to work on putting some content up here, so I’ll fix as I go. If there are any long-suffering readers still out there, please let me know if anything isn’t working with the new design. Ideally, we’re all seeing something that looks a little like this (well, maybe somewhat larger):

More soon!

—Matt Celeskey.

File under: Rogaine.

Comments on record: (13)

Well, folks, it looks like the month of December is going to be hairier than usual around HMNH HQ. At the top of the list are some thrilling but time-consuming deadlines from the day job rushing towards me, including a set of illustrations for a new exhibit opening this spring, but needed by January in order to flesh out a little publication that has to be printed and ready to distribute by opening day. Sorry to be so tight-lipped about this project, but there should be more to say very soon!

The upside is that I’m making more time during the normal workdays to paint. The downside is that I’m squeezing it in alongside several other duties that are coalescing around the same exhibit. Actually, that isn’t really a downside, since everything I’m working on is pretty exciting—the real downside is that it will be bleeding into more personal time as the holidays approach. Postings here may tend to be a bit sporadic over the next few weeks as a result.

In anticipation of this, I’ve bitten the bullet and ordered a long-overdue replacement to my aging computer. I’m hoping it will help me accomplish the tasks ahead at blazing speed, but I’m sure its main function will be to serve as a shiny bit of positive reinforcement when I need to hunker down and plug away at some image files or layouts.

Speaking of layouts, I’ve been threatening to redesign this site for a couple of months now, so I really should add that to the list of things that need my attention this month. When I last mentioned it, a couple of comments encouraged me to retire the Titanophoneus skull that has grinned out from the HMNH logo for the past three years, in favor of something a little more appropriately hairy. I haven’t quite settled on what will replace it just yet, but there are a couple of fruitful possibilities…

…so, just off the cuff, is there a kind reader out there able to send me a PDF of the following article?

Hopson & Kitching 2001. A probainognathian cynodont from South Africa and the phylogeny of non-mammalian cynodonts. Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, 156, p.5-35.

—Matt Celeskey.

File under: Rogaine, The Day Job.

Comments on record: (2)