I must admit I have watched very little. In part because I am very busy at the moment. In part because I am not strongly sports oriented (I was picked for the ball teams just before the ugly girls in grade school). And in part because I just can’t bear to watch some of the people lose. Oh, I’m not talking about the no-chance-in-hell-of-finishing-in-the-medals people. I’m talking about the for sure winners. The athletes that the announcers describe as the gold medalist favorite. The athletes that broke a record at the World Championships (insert your sport of choice). But for every Michael Phelps there is a Lolo Jones.

Here she’s gone and trained her whole bloody life for this moment. Foster homes. Working to get a scholarship. Actually getting the scholarship. Beautiful start on her run, pulling out ahead of the pack, on her way to gold…….and she clips the 9th hurdle. How many hundreds of times has she been successful? But on this most crucial moment a snafu finishes her and puts her out of the medals. It’s heartbreaking. It’s like reliving the Erica Kane woes all over again. I just can’t do it. I quit watching All My Children 20 years ago because I just couldn’t see her go through any more heartbreak. For me it all started with the hysterical pregnancy. Does anyone remember that? It’s just too much.

With the Olympics it’s especially bad when you can figure it is probably their last real chance. Sure some athletes are lasting longer but when you are in your late 20’s in 2008 it means you are in your early 30’s in 2012 and there is some younger whippersnapper chewing up the ground all around you. Yes, there is Dara Torres. But how many her age in total? So, no. While I enjoy watching many Olympic events (Some hardly seem like sports at all!) I won’t devote my life to them. Besides, I participate in the Horticulture Olympics every year. I know the thrill of victory AND the agony of defeat. This year it’s lots of defeat.

Each year it’s like having to go through all those preliminary rounds to get to the finals. And you hope for your best performance knowing anything can happen. Some gardening moments you finish in the medals, others you fall off the pummel horse. Talk about trying to stay on the balance beam. Some years you have a great mount. Your whole routine is just golden. How could it be any better? Time for the dismount. Oooooo. You slipped just as you pushed off. To put it in horticulture terms, who knew it could take that long for castor beans to take off? Normally they grow a foot a day. My whole design was to be anchored by the damn things. Oh, they’re starting to look pretty good now even though they are barely above the cannas.

But that’s like saying “I won $17 playing Bingo at the church picnic so I’m okay loosing the Olympic medal”. No one really gives a crap about the Bingo game. I mean with my love of, fascination with, and perhaps obsession for tropicals and annuals I think of myself as one of the ones about whom the announcer would say: “He’s definitely a gold medal contender in this year’s Horticulture Olympics. Remember the incredible performance he turned in a few years ago with the unbeatable red rice and papyrus combo? Let’s not forget the year of pink, orange, and yellow.” I trained. Really I did. I studied past performances. The damn purple heart vine should have filled in and not look like this.

Colocasia likes it on the wet side. So why are mine barely a foot tall?

I should have been within reach of the medal. But here I am. Nearer to frost with each passing day. Trying to catch up with the other Horticulturists instead of having them breathless trying to gain on me. Geoff’s pots at Garden Terrace are full and lovely.

Patty’s urns at the Formal Garden are all summery in blue and yellow and scented of rosemary.

Jim’s Annual Border is what a tropical/annual planting is supposed to be.

Katie’s pots are perfect.

And Chad’s Garden for Everyone has clever lush pairings like this one of parsley and fountain grass.

So where does that leave me? Lying under the pummel horse covered in chalk and blood? Hanging from the rings like a dead carcass? On my knees crying my eyes out in the tunnel waiting to be kicked out of the stadium? Hell no. I may be old but I’m not dead. I will be training. I’ll be studying those plant catalogues. I’ll be going through those images I took on the Perennial Plant Symposium tours. I’ll be taking mental notes when I visit other gardens. I’ll be writing down ideas as they come to me. Look out you IMA Horticulturists. That sound you here is me about to run past you faster than kudzu can cover a junk car in Mississippi. Game on, bitches.

As numbers twirl around my head like 10-year old Chinese gymnasts (they are definitely NOT 16 that’s for sure), I thought I’d share with you some of my favorites. You can find a lot of these stats on the IMA’s dashboard, but some of the numbers are not accessible to the public…until now. In the Museum’s ongoing dedication to full transparency, here’s IMA by the numbers:

Full-time Employees: 197

Average Daily Blog Readers: 220

To Live Forever Exhibition Attendance through Aug. 11: 18,254

IMA Members: 10,454

Pieces of Glass in the Efroymson Entrance Pavilion: 225

Days until To Live Forever Closes: 24

Tickets Sold to Summer Nights Film Rocky Horror Picture Show: 714

Percentage of Web visitors from Indiana: 52%

IMA Curators: 12

Visitors to IMA, July 2008: 47,548

Cubic Yards of Concrete poured for 2005 renovation: 25,000

Square feet of IMA building: 492,000

Nugget Factory productions on YouTube: 100

Women named Pam on Staff: 5

Designers named Matt on Staff: 3 (2 graphic & 1 web)

Days until Power and Glory: Court Arts from the Ming Dynasty opens: 73

Number of Views to IMA’s first-ever YouTube video: 3,593

Number of days I’ve worked at the IMA: 1,354

]]> http://www.imamuseum.org/blog/2008/08/14/ima-by-the-numbers/feed/ 1 http://www.imamuseum.org/blog/2008/08/04/letterboxing-crazy-passtime-or-new-olympic-event/ http://www.imamuseum.org/blog/2008/08/04/letterboxing-crazy-passtime-or-new-olympic-event/#comments Mon, 04 Aug 2008 09:00:00 +0000 Rob Stein http://www.imamuseum.org/blog/?p=605 The heat of summer is definitely upon us and as I sit here in my office, I can’t help but wish I was outside roasting away! So, for those of you looking for a good excuse to get some fresh air and a little adventure, I thought I’d share with you my one of my new favorite pastimes… LETTERBOXING!

(stay tuned for a great way to experience the IMA grounds before the end of this post!)

A friend told me about how they went letterboxing on a recent vacation and was surprised that I’d never heard of it before. Letterboxing is similar to its more recent cousin, GeoCaching, and involves hiding small boxes with journals and stamps inside them. The idea being to bring your own stamp and journal with you to collect a log of all the treasures you have found! Letterboxers leave clues to the locations of boxes they have planted online for others to find. Experienced letterboxers can collect hundreds of stamps from around the country and individual boxes can stay alive for many years! As I began to learn a bit more about it… I was hooked!

A Brief History of Letterboxing

Apparently, letterboxing has been around for a long time. Wikipedia’s article on letterboxing says that it originated in England around 150 years ago! Letterboxing seems to have gained popularity in North America in the late 1990’s. In exploring this a bit more online, I was stunned to find out how many boxes exist right around the corner! One popular letterboxing website lists over 46,000 registered letterboxes in the United States and over 1000 in the state of Indiana. There are even 2 letterboxes close by for our blog readers in Zimbabwe… What… am I living in a cave? How could I have missed this one? The thought of all these stealthy hidden little boxes brings out the pirate in me… Arggh!

(A Google Map of Letterbox locations around Indianapolis)

Letterboxing Resources

I’ve found a few great sites to fuel your burning letterboxing habit! Lately, I’ve been looking these sites up on my phone as we sail around with the top down on the Jeep looking for stamps to fill our journal. A good primer on what you need to start letterboxing can be found on this “Getting Started” page.

When you’re ready to find some boxes to search for these are some great links to start with:

• Search Letterboxes on AtlasQuest.com
• Search for Letterboxes on Letterboxing.org

Letterboxing @ IMA

So, why talk about a crazy hobby like letterboxing on the IMA’s blog? Well besides the obvious craft involved in creating some of the stamps I’ve seen… I was stunned to find out that there are two, count ‘em, two letterboxes already hidden on the grounds of the IMA. I’d be breaking the secret code of letterboxers if I gave away their exact locations… but here are the links to the clues so you can find them yourself. We’ve found both of them in the last two weeks, so I know their both still safe and sound. I wonder if our grounds keeping staff knows about these?

• IMA – planted by “Trail Mail Junkie”
• Robert Indiana – planted by “Dream a Dream”

I’m thinking that we’ll have to take it upon ourselves as proud IMA-staffers to plant a few more of these puppies out in the Art and Nature Park before it opens! Any ideas of some good hiding spots?