Her backbone scores for skeletons

A bone aficionado wants skeletons to be back in classrooms.
MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL
MILWAUKEE -- For 10 years, Pegi Taylor has been waging a bone-wearying battle. To her surprise and relief, she may have just won the first round.
Taylor, 51, a Milwaukee-based free-lance writer, performance artist and art model, campaigns on behalf of human skeletons. She thinks there aren't enough around, and she's trying to get them back into classrooms across the nation.
She's also been searching for a way to keep her own skeleton intact and on display after she dies. She has found this mission surprisingly difficult but may have finally prevailed.
Taylor's quest began in the 1990s when she heard a drawing instructor complain about the lack of quality human skeletons for sale. Curious, she started to look into the issue.
She's a fanatic
But it was more than curiosity. Taylor loves skeletons: A collection in her bedroom includes fish, bird, deer, raccoon and horse bones. And she believes that the structure of her own physical being is beautiful, a feeling she has long harbored, if at first only subconsciously.
As a teenager, she was attacked with a razor blade. She escaped, but the experience made her re-examine her body and self.
"Being assaulted made me -- at the time unconsciously -- come to grips with my mortality," Taylor said, adding the ordeal made her realize that her flesh and bones were not the most vulnerable part of her being.
But these thoughts went unrecognized until 1979, when she was pregnant with her daughter, Caitlin.
"This is when my study in anthropology connected on this very personal plane," she said. She went to a gallery show, where she saw pen-and-ink sketches of pregnant women. She realized she wanted to be sketched, too.
"On paper I'd become part of the evolutionary family tree," she said, adding that it would enable her to "trace myself back through time to the first amoeba."
Modeling work
She started modeling for the Milwaukee Institute of Art & amp; Design. And as the years rolled on, she decided this was a role she'd like to continue -- beyond the grave.
The human skeleton plays an invaluable role in university classrooms. Skeletons serve to educate students -- from artists to anatomists -- about the form and function of the human body. Pathologists use them to understand disease. Forensic anthropologists look at them to better understand the variation that comes from sex, race, lifestyle and disease.
Too expensive
Unfortunately, human skeletons are difficult to come by these days. Very few places sell them, and the few bone outlets that do exist charge a premium. Skulls Unlimited, an osteological warehouse, sells complete, reassembled human skeletons for $3,800, including stand.
"It's not as though I'm advocating for the use of skeletons," said Taylor. "I am responding to a national crisis," in which schools don't want to buy skeletons because of their expense and uncertain origin.
Indeed, she has lobbied Congress to start a national bone center. According to Taylor, she and Sen. Russ Feingold have corresponded on the matter.
In the meantime, Taylor decided she needed to do something closer to home and has bequeathed her skeleton to the Milwaukee Institute of Art & amp; Design.
The school is home to Edgar, a skeleton the institute purchased in 1977. But he is getting old. And according to Taylor, human bones last only so long, maybe 40 or 50 years before becoming brittle. Edgar's tenure will soon be up, and Taylor would like to take his place.