The Philosophy of Victor Porter
This week, returning home, I ended up driving by the Indianapolis Children’s Museum a couple of times throughout my visit. I previously worked at the ICM as a paleontology apprentice; the head paleontologist when I worked there, Victor Porter, was a curious person. He’d never had an official college education and had amassed his enormous collection of paleontology knowledge entirely on his own. He’d started out working as a jeweler for many years, and found a passion for fossils after finding a specimen at a construction site he was working at. Victor never believed that you needed a large amount of knowledge or experience to start something- this lack of expertise is exactly how he found his lifelong love for paleontology!
I was in eighth grade when I met Victor; he welcomed anyone and everyone who wanted to work in his lab. He treated me and the other apprentices with an understanding that “yes, these are young adults. They are fully capable of anything they put their efforts towards, they only need to feel as if they are trusted. As if they won’t be assumed to be incompetent simply because of their age.” Victor came from a poor family, and he knew that opportunities do not present themselves to everyone in the same manner. The first day I worked in Victor’s lab, he handed me an unwrapped hadrosaurus femur fragment, some x-acto knives, a bottle of glue, fine sandpaper, and the instructions “don’t hurt the bone, but get the dirt off of it.” Stress, but healthy stress, pushed me to excel with this task I was entrusted with; as far as fossils go, this one was far from rare or valuable. Yet, I knew that what I was holding could never be replaced and was older than anything else I could see around me. It took me a couple of weeks, but I managed to free the bone from the dirt chrysalis that encompassed it. Victor simply took the clean fossil and handed me another. That was how he ran things; Victor trusted me to take care of these irreplaceable specimens.
He died in late 2016. The last few months of knowing him, his skin turned yellow as his liver began to die. The apprentices weren’t allowed back in the lab for many months after Victor’s death. When we finally returned, Victor’s replacement, a man named William, was introduced to us. William was a similarly interesting man, but he had far less power in the IMC than Victor had wielded. Rather than letting anyone and everyone come in and try, William was forced to only allow the apprentices who’d been working for a while to continue. I was lucky to be allowed to continue working. I wasn’t allowed to work every weekend as I’d previously worked; instead, I had to sign up for limited spots via a buggy online portal. I was only able to work in the lab once a month, if even. When I would go, William was stuck watching over what we were working; he’d much rather have spent his time on the large fossils that littered the office, half-cleaned, but these orders “came from the top.”
I ended up leaving this program after the IMC a.) spent millions of dollars in donations on a bizarre sports-themed park [sponsored by the Indiana Pacers and the Indianapolis Colts!] and b.) announced a remodeling of the paleontology lab, turning it from an actual laboratory into an attraction. There were so many things I hated about this; I’d already been placed in the window while I worked. I loved answering the guests’ questions about the fossils around the museum and the lab, but I couldn’t STAND how many adults came up to me and asked me what I, a 15 year old, was doing cleaning fossils. It felt belittling. Also, there’s only so many times one can be asked “were dinosaurs even real?” or “is that a dinosaur bone? {motioning to the massive brachiosaurid femur sitting behind the window}” before your faith in humanity is in dire need of restoration. Rather than have us “young’n’s” working with the fossils that were entrusted to us, my duties would be shifted from “paleontologist” to “tour guide.” I did love interacting with the guests, but not as my primary and only duty. I’d still have to sign up through the buggy website if I wanted to continue, too.
Victor Porter represents the ideals that I feel have been lost by many a person: anyone can learn. Some philosopher in AD idk said “one who has mastered something has only made every mistake there is to make, and learned from their mistakes.” I scratched the FUCK out of an edmontosaurus sternum fragment; this is something I will never be able to undo, but I learned from it. Victor had told me “it’s okay. Just don’t let it happen again.” He then cracked a joke about how he’d sold a valuable skeletal reconstruction to a private collector, and how that was a far worse paleontological sin than scratching a fossil. I was trusted with cleaning this fossil, and I had failed. I wasn’t beyond redemption in Victor’s eyes, though; he’d made these same mistakes and learned from them.
Victor understood where I was coming from; I was curious and interested in paleontology. “Why waste this curiosity?” he no doubt thought as he handed me fossil after fossil. “This kid wants to be here cleaning fossils. I was the same way when I started.” Victor trusted the other apprentices and me. He knew that we’d eventually screw something up, but that didn’t phase him. Once management at the ICM took over the lab, every little mistake needed to be avoided at all costs. Unfortunately, responsibility fell on William to pick up the slack that the apprentices has been carrying for Victor. William spent his hours slaving away to clean the fossils that he’d much rather have given to the young’n’s to clean. “This man wanted to be here cleaning fossils. Let’s waste his potential because we can’t trust a group of teenagers to properly handle and care for these ancient artifacts.”
Trust is essential and must be earned. This does mean that everyone involved MUST be willing to fight to maintain that trust.
