"The scope of what some museums now call 'rapid response collecting' has expanded significantly in recent years."

"Curators often mingle with crowds, scoop up fliers and ask people to part with signs, or perhaps a piece of clothing. Such collecting has taken place at demonstrations around the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore in 2015, and during the 2014 protests in Ferguson, Mo., after the death of Michael Brown."

From "Museums Collect Protest Signs to Preserve History in Real Time/Curators surveyed the area outside the White House on Wednesday for artifacts that will help record the emotional turmoil" (NYT).

They swoop in.

This morning, driving to the sunrise, at the turtle crossing, we saw birds picking over the smashed body of a plate-sized turtle.



I thought: How mean of the birds. But the birds didn't smash the turtle. Yes, but they delighted in the corpse.