Over thirty years ago, a small group of El Paso Citizens thought that the City needed a venue to teach our children science. All science, a “hands on” museum where they can learn about nature, space, gravity, anatomy, etc. They put their money where their mouth was and through their tireless efforts, Insights Museum was born. Over the next 30 years plus, over a million Children from our school districts alone, learned the beauty of science. Countless physicists, chemists, physicians, engineers and even an astronaut, had their first exposure to the beauty of science at our museum. “Poof”, says the Wilson Quintet of Byrd, Cook, Lilly, Ortega and Niland and it’s gone. So we needed a downtown ballpark so the children can sit in the stands and eat junk food while watching minor league baseball players, hit, catch and scratch. Such a deal!
Always thinking of the children since they are our future, they tossed the Insights Museum out in the street, replacing it with first base.
Did they give us an interim location for our children? How about the El Paso train Station? No lets rent/give it to the Texas Tech Architectural School for $1.00 a year for 75 years. Some of our kids may become architects. I’ve got a better idea, let’s stick a Children’s museum into the Quality of life Bond issue which if they approve, will result in the City hall and the Insights Museum imploding. They think they are getting a museum but it will take 5 years if ever. Give the kids popcorn and cracker jacks.
Despite the City’s efforts, Insights lives on. There is an active board of directors who like their predecessors, see the value of a science museum for the children of El Paso. They see, out of the Rubble of the old Insights Museum a new and better era coming. I’m sure that the new Mayor and Council will see their value and give them the support they need. Oh yes we want to support the baseball team but isn’t this important?
Just think of it, dedicating space in the new baseball stadium addition in honor of the Insights Museum on which the stadium is situated. How about a display about the physics of a curve ball? a sinker? a fastball? ala George Wills. the art of hitting the ball, opposite field hitting etc. I’m sure we can come up with that type of display. Things don’t just happen by accident, there is a science to baseball Misters Doubleday, Foster and Hunt.
The PDNG and City Hall mordidacrats failed to take into account the public popularity of insights. They just assumed the Insight’s board would see the city’s wisdom of subsituting baseball for STEM education and roll over and play dead. When they did not and fought the eviction, and Occupy occupied Insight’s parking lot, it got dirty. Suddenly the story was that the dumbest city in the USA was destroying its only science museum to replace it with a baseball field!
PDNG, city hall and Mountain Star orchestrated a full court press campaign with the help of the EP Times presstitutes and put out the story that the QoL childrens’ Museum would be the “new” science museum, except the only “business plan” for the QoL childrens’ museum was one PowerPoint silde! So you could say anything and it was true in the mind of Wilson, PDNG and Council and anyone else who wanted to get rid of Insights for AAA. The Insights kool-aid that flowed from city hall, PDNG and the Times would put any kid into sugar hyperdrive! Even Courtney Niland got into the act and said on the record in a city budget hearing that she wanted a children’s museum where she could drop off her kids in the morning and pick them up in the afternoon! So, that kind of defined what the city knew about science musuems except they wanted to get rid of Insights because it was becoming an obstacle to WoodyWorld.
Well, then the Times started pushing the story that, in the meantime (everyone knows it will be 5 years before we see an operating children’s musuem) Lynx will be the new science museum. The Insights board was appalled that the Times did not know the difference between a Smithsonian-certified museum (Insights) and Chuck E Cheese, which is the Lynx level of scientific credibilty, except Lori Paternoster had some clout at the paper to get the idea published several times.
Insights is broke, doesn’t have a building anymore, may never have one, and is a testiment to El Paso being the nation’s largest “Dumbfuckistad.”
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You forgot to mention the “science” of spitting-out tobacco “juice” without letting any of it dribble down your chin. But look on the bright side: the “progressives” did get the buses moving on time and more space for the zoo animals, (so they appear to be slightly less imprisoned), and soon a dixie cup-sized semi pro stadium, and it only took 8 years and huge, ungodly large amounts of money to do it!
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