Research for Another Novel: "The Fire Curse"

Historical fiction requires years of research for most of us who write it, and the closer we get to the time of writing, the more "picky" we get about details we need -- the length of a skirt, the exact movie being shown, a song being shared.

I'm still in the "wide open" stage of preparing for a book I've tentatively titled The Fire Curse. Recently the Fairbanks Museum & Planetarium in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, closed for two weeks to allow a team to install a "fire suppression system" -- the sensors, electronics, pipes, and pumps that can fight a structure fire before it takes lives. The museum's staff kindly welcomed me to look behind the scenes, and a couple of installation crew members paused for a few minutes to answer some questions that I had. I won't give you details now --- but I wanted to share these photos, because they show something you'll never see again: the moveable scaffold that the installing team created, to slide along the balcony railings upstairs, giving the crew access to the vaulted ceiling of the museum, where sensors and spray nozzles needed to be carefully place. Can you spot the antlers, polar bear, and other museum artifacts here and there?