Back from the Big Apple

I had a great (and exhausting) week in New York. Walked all over the city with my students and saw some wonderful shows (Glass Menagerie, Spamalot, Play Without Words at Brooklyn Academy of Music, Shockheaded Peter, and Upright Citizens’ Brigade) and, of course, ate a lot of fantastic food.

I’ve mentioned several times the offensive DEA museum exhibit on display in Times Square in New York: Target America: Drug Traffickers, Terrorists and You (See my earlier posts here and here).
I passed by it several times this week, but held off going in — I would have just gotten too upset, and there would probably only be some minor functionary there to debate. Several of my students went and were utterly amazed at how ridiculous the exhibits were in attempting to connect drug use to terrorism.
Oddly, the DEA Museum had one of the tougher security checks in the city. Visitors had their bags searched and were checked in detail with a metal detector wand. This was much more than the security at crowded theatres, or at museums with priceless artifacts. As fas as I saw, the only places with such tight security were the NY Stock Exchange and Liberty/Ellis Island. But why?
I heard that the DEA got embarrassed by having part of one of their exhibits stolen from under their noses (but they weren’t searching people leaving, only entering). Did they think that much of themselves that they really believed that they were a major terrorist target? Or were they afraid of their own citizens?
Fortunately, the exhibit closed yesterday.
Next stop is Detroit, where it is scheduled to be at the Detroit Science Center from April 2 through October 2. You might want to contact them and ask how a DEA propaganda exhibit fulfills their non-profit mission to educate people about science.