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The musings of me

Entries in this blog

Day 50, 51, 52

Day 50 -May 2nd   Finally finished Box 4. Just one more box to go.   There's a woman who keeps visiting the Historical Society with her kids. They like seeing the guns. It's great seeing the importance of the historical society as a free place for families to go and entertain their children.   I think hands-on activities would be great to add, like maybe teaching children how to make haversacks or marching.   Day 51- May 4th   Interestingly, I'm starting on Box 1 as my final box. Lucki

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Day 43

Day 43, April 17th   While working on Box 9, I came across three religious service books. It made me think about how important religion must have been to the soldiers who fought. It may not have been their personal beliefs, but they definitely had to consider religion as part of their daily lives. I wonder what it might have been like to have been an atheist in World War I- would one have even admitted to such a thing back then?

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Ghost Hunting

I went on a ghost hunt at IUP this weekend, over at Keith and Leonard Hall. It was cool- last Halloween I went and nothing happened, but this time around, we had some experiences! Using a flashlight that would turn on and off by itself as well as a K2 meter, we had several ghosts communicate to us. One was named Danny- he had identified himself as a founding father of IUP, and had been around during the 1870's and 1880's, and died of an illness in March. I had literal chills going down my back w

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Day 40, Day 41, Day 42

Day 40, April 11th   I finished work on Box 2. Finally.   Day 41, April 13th   I started work on Box 9. It doesn't look as if it'll take as long as Box 2 did. Hopefully.   I gave one of the other grad students a tour of the military exhibit at the society. He's into military history, so I pretty much let him lead the tour. I imagine that something like that will come up when gving tours, running into people who know more about the exhibit(or at least believe they do) than you do. I kept

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Day 37, Day 38, Day 39

Day 37, April 3rd   Continued working on Box 2.   Day 38, April 4th   Continued working on Box 2.   Day 39, April 10th   Almost finished with Box 2.   There was a woman in here with her kid today, basically planning on having him volunteer over the summer. He didn't look all that excited, but my hope is that they'll find the right hook with the kid, and get him to enjoy the place.   I feel like that's a major part of what I'm supposed to do in this field- figure out how to make peo

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Day 33, Day 34, Day 35, Day 36

Day 33- March 27th   Continued working on Box 2.   Day 34-March 28th   Someone showed me a diploma from the Indiana State Normal School, from 1910. (That was IUP's name when it was a teacher's college.) It was interesting to read it, because the diploma listed all of the subjects that the person was able to teach. It was a quite a list as well- everything ranging from politics to geometry. Nowadays, a person needs a master's in education just to teach elementary school, it seems.   I had

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Day 29, Day 30, Day 31, Day 32

Day 29- March 9th   I was interviewed for the museum newsletter. It was kind of nice, getting to talk about myself and what I've been working on for this semester.   Day 30- March 20th   I continued working on Box 2, and got my picture taken for the newsletter.   Day 31- March 21st   I corrected some stuff about the article that was written about me, and continued working on Box 2.   Day 32- March 24th   The Cub Scouts visited the museum today, and I watched as Herb gave another to

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ASB 2012

I just got back from a week in Tennessee, helping to build new paths for the Cumberland Trail. We stayed at a lodge in a small hole-in-the-wall called Soddy Daisy, with kids from schools all around the East Coast and Mid-West.   I can't put into words just how wonderful that experience was. I came into the trip expecting that we'd be putting down gravel and trimming weeds for some biking/cross-country trails. I had never hiked a day in my life, unless you count walking around flat Delaware

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Day 27, Day 28

Day 27, March 6th   Today I continued working on Box 2. I found an envelope of newspaper clippings- the envelope was a big manila envelope with "Philadelphia Convention July 1958" on front, so we kept the envelope.   I also found a 50th Anniversary Gettysburg Commission memo, which was great because there's a photo of the 50th Anniversary Gettysburg camp out displayed in the museum. I told my adviser about it, and she copied the letter and eventually intends on displaying the copy.   That

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Day 23, Day 24, Day 25, Day 26

Day 23, February 28th   I found the 1966 bibliography that had been written for the collection when it was housed at the old museum. It's a pretty great thing to have, in order to understand how this collection had been processed and cataloged before.   Day 24, February 29th   I continued working on Box 3. There was also a visit from someone who was a consulting, which I'm interested in doing as a career. It was neat to hear the advice from her.   Day 25, March 2nd   I finished work on

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Day 22

Day 22, February 25th   I continued working on Box 5.   Today, there was a presentation given by someone who wrote a book called Native Womb, about his journey into learning about his biological family once he got adopted. He talked about his usage of Ancestry.com, which makes me think the usage of genealogy to help people learn about where they come from. That's what the Historical Society helps with a lot- we've had so many people come in wanting to learn about their family history. That's

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Day 20, Day 21

Day 20, February 22nd   I finally finished Box 5. It came out to about 130-something items.   Day 21, February 24th   I started work on Box 3 of the collection. It holds a lot of correspondence that Richard Watson got while being in charge of Camp Hancock in Augusta, Georgia. Some were regarding people who were prisoners for being AWOL, or simply getting drunk and disorderly. One was about a boy who lied about being 18 years old to get into the army, and was therefore getting discharged. I

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Day 18, Day 19

Day 18, February 17th   I continued working on Box 5.   In terms of the different ways that archives can be used, we had one patron who was learning about the house that he was working on. The man was a college landlord, who was dividing up this house into four apartments, and he was interested in learning about the house.   The house was once a college female dormitory, and it was a TKE frat house all the up to last semester. It was cool to hear about the history of this house. Kind of ma

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Day 16, Day 17

Day 16, February 14th   I continued working on Box 5. I found a couple of pamplets that discussed gas warfare, as well as trench warefare. Those were the two big hallmarks of the Great War, because they were such new ways to fight in a way that still believed in the Romantic Napoleonic way of fighting. I wonder what it must have been like for the soldiers who read these pamplets to get a sense of what they were going to face.   I looked up the online orbituary of Colonel Richard W. Wa

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Day 15

Day 15, Feburary 10th   I continued working on Box 5. One interesting find was a pamplet on what soldiers should do if they find a Boche gun, aka a German machine gun. I suppose that must have been quite a boon for Allied soldiers, as the pamplet seemed to suggest that finding a German machine gun was something desirable. I wonder if that means that they were state-of-the-art at the time.   Someone from a local newspaper came in today to take pictures of the clothing and items from a 1960's

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Day 13, Day 14

Day 13, February 7th   Today I finally finished sorting out Box 10. Finally. 111 items in that box and done.   Day 14, February 8th   I started on Box 5. There are a lot of manuals.

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Day 10, Day 11, Day 12

Day 10- February 2nd   I found a letter from the War Department of the United States, dating from 1917 or 1918, which gave a list of desirable books for which to start a camp library. That would explain so much about why George Watson had so many different books, and often in duplicate.   I also found a manual on physical training. It was interesting to see what the physical training standards were for the army in the 1910's- it seemed to be mostly focused on calistenics, swimming, and gymna

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Internship Day 7, 8, 9

Day 7 January 27th   I finished sorting through Box 8. Now I'm working on Box 10.   Day 8 January 31st   Going through Box 10, I found a manual for young officers. It was from 1907. I know that George Watson was born in 1881, which means he would have been about 26 years old when he got that manual, and presumably became an officer in the army. It was interesting to think about that- I'm 26 years old, and I just can't even imagine what it would be like to have that kind of responsibility a

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methodwriter85

Grad School Grades

I somehow, through some miracle, got a B in the class I thought I was going to fail. My GPA went down a little bit, from a 3.83 to a 3.77, but I'm pretty happy with it.

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Internship Day 6

Day 6- January 25th   I continued working on Box 8.   Someone came in to donate items that her father had left to her when she had died. I got to see how the museum accepts a gift, and the form that needs to get filmed out. Her collection included family genealogoies of the Buterbaugh family in Pennyslvania, as well as yearbooks from Homer City, P.A. It was neat to compare the 1970 yearbook photo of the senior class, to the class of 1980. In 1970, the teenagers were dressed so much more form

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Internship Day 4 and Day 5

Day 4- January 21st   I finished processing Box 6, which was nice.   Day 5 - January 24th   I was about to go through box 7, but it was crammed full of personal military service records from World War I. I decided that it was a box that needed to have someone process it for the entire semester, rather than just being given a cursory glance through. The military records were held together by rusting metal clips, and will hopefully be preserved much better. It was fascinating to look at a fe

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Internship Day 3

Day 3- January 20th   Today I continued working on the Watson Collection. I worked on Box 6. I found a book commeorating the 50th Annivesary of the Battle of Gettysburg. It wasn't in great shape, but it was still pretty nice. I also found this book that was a 1879 report of schools for the orphans of soldiers. It had a doodle of two faces on it in the front, which was pretty cool. I liked those personal touches.   There was a couple who were looking up information about a woman from

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methodwriter85

Internship Day 1 and Day 2

Alright, so I have to do a journal for this college internship I'm doing. I figure I might as well post stuff here, and then print out the entries later on.   Day 1- January 18th   I started my internship at the Indiana County Historical society today. It's a small museum, much smaller than when I did my internships at Hagley and the DMNH. It's a pretty friendly, laid-back place. The staff has been pretty helpful. I'm working on the Watson Collection, which has to do with World War I. I'm

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University of Police Fascist State

http://www.udreview.com/udpd-steps-up-tailgate-regulation-1.2641368   I love reading about how my alma matter has turned into a fascist police state where no students are allowed to have fun. J-walkers and tailgaters get punished, yet that same weekend three students were robbed by gun point and the UD police didn't give a damn because they don't make money off of them like they do fining students over ridiculous reasons.   University of Delaware was once a great school, with lots of u

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Civic Pride

Okay, maybe I'm a dork, but I'm feeling particularly full of civic pride right now. I ran across the bid video for my college town, which won the 2011 Great American Main Street Reward.   Here's the video:     I like to call present-day Newark a Disney Town, USA. LOL. It's gotta a lot more generic over the years, but the tradeoff is that it's doing pretty well. (Thinks about Tet and that lovely little college town he has.)   Any people got some nice tourism videos to share of

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