JANE LOUISE CURRY

Meet Dippy. The Diplodocus. Short for Diplodocus carnegii. I met him when I was about seven. Or eight. And fell in love-- or, to be more precise, "fell in awe." He died in Sheep Creek, Wyoming, but came to live in the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh. We lived an hour or so down the Ohio River, so I didn't get to visit him very often.

At least, not very often in Pittsburgh. But there are more of him. Andrew Carnegie financed the dig where he was found, and while the Carnegie Museum was still being built, King Edward VII was so impressed with the discovery, he asked Mr. Carnegie for a cast of the bones for London. Dippy Clone #1 met the public at a big formal reception at the Natural History Museum there in 1905. In 1907 Dippy Himself appeared in his new Carnegie Museum home, and it wasn't long before every king or head of state wanted a copy-- so there are now Dippys in the national museums in France, Germany, Italy, Austria, Russia, Spain, Mexico and Argentina. Read More 

"And the Bane grew green" was the ending of Beneath the Hill. That was true, but I'm afraid it was also wishful thinking. Because the topsoil was gone, the grass that grew there was for a long while pretty scraggly. It's greener now, but there are no trees. In an untended pasture, the surrounding woods will creep in year by year to reclaim it, but, sadly, their seedlings do not take root in the Bane's stony soil...

The Arthurs are gone. Mr. and Mrs. Arthur retired to Florida to be near Margaret (Miggle), who is a professor of Marine Archaeology at FSU. Trish and her husband, Frank Allan, live over White Oak Ridge, in Colwyn. Morton, the youngest Arthur, lives with his wife and family in Oakland, California. The new owners of the farm are a Jack and Frances Shadwell; they're due to move in next week. The rumor is that Frances is a soils reclamation scientist. Interesting! Read More 

It was the Arthur family's farm, familiar, but different...

And it happened so quickly! I had got as far in my story ideas as having five children on a farm much like our own, threatened by strip mining, who encounter mythical beings out of the past...

...Those "Fair Folk" lost at sea! Who else! Read More