Jump to content

methodwriter85

Editor
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    7,325

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Blog Entries posted by methodwriter85

  1. methodwriter85
    On Day 8 (which was Friday, July 5th) and Day 9 (July 9th), I worked on the inventory for my 4th box. This particular box was mainly the files of paperwork from the parades, going from the 1980's to the 2000's. I had a conversation with the museum leader about the box- he agreed with me that it wasn't really necessary for me to inventory each and every single piece of paper, so I did the inventory by the folder.
     
    Some of the paperwork was pretty tedious(I found memos about catering the event from 2005 to about 2007), but there were some pretty cool things about the guests and the participants of the parade. I also found some newspaper clippings- some going all the way back to 1984. I'm guessing that the person who donated the collection joined the Memorial Day Committee around the mid-80's, since none of the paperwork goes further back than the mid-1980's. The photos do, but not the paperwork or the newspaper clippings I've found.
     
    It was for the most part one of the easier boxes to go through, because a lot of the files had already been labeled with dates. You guys have no clue how useful that is for future archivists.
  2. methodwriter85
    Today marks the 150th anniversary of the final day of fighting at the Battle of Gettysburg, which was the turning point of The Civil War.
     
    Thought I'd mark that day by sharing a YouTube documentary about it:
     
    The Battle of Gettysburg (2011 Documentary)
     
    Part of me really wishes I could be in Gettysburg, but eh...priorities change. It's funny though- I did a Gettysburg encampment in 2004, and I was so excited to think that I'd only be 27 for the 150th annivesary encampment. Now it's here, but Civil War re-enactments don't really interest me as much. Maybe when I'm middle-aged and 37, I'll be out for the 160th in 2023...possibly.
     
    I would like to try and visit this summer or in the fall, when it's not so crowded.
     
    But anyway, let's hear it for the brave men who sacrificed their lives to try and keep this union together in the Civil War!
  3. methodwriter85
    I finished inventory on my third box, and now I've got two more boxes to go through. After that, I'll go through actually accessioning the collection.
     
    I found a packet of photos that ranged from 1957 to 1982, as well as a photo album from 2005. This was a very wide-ranging box in terms of the years.
     
    One really cool thing I found was a very old newspaper from Saturday, August 1st, 1987. It was pretty crazy- the paper was actually in really good shape considering that it was twenty-six years old. One of the front-page stories was about Ronald Reagan getting surgery from skin cancer- I don' really remember Ronald Reagan as president, but I know '87 had the whole Iran-Contra affair going on. On the back of the paper were a bunch of advertisements for VCR's, ranging from 300 dollars to 500 dollars. Crazy to think how expensive that was back then- nowadays you can get a DVD player for 59 bucks, which would be 30 bucks in 1987 money. The advertisements also listed a "Big Screen TV"- at 26 inches. LOL.
     
    Another really interesting item I found was a 1989 police statement investigating a fire incident at the State Theater. (The State Theater was located on what is now the 1996-built Galleria Mini-Mall, anchored by Grotto's Pizza.) It had been built in 1929 and put on the National Historic building list in 1983, but had closed down by the late 1980's. Here's a photo of the theater I found from 1981:
     

     
    Here's what's there now:

     
    Gotta love progress, right? Anyway, according to the police statement I read, four men in their early 20's snuck into the closed theater while being very intoxicated. The guy giving the statement said that they wanted to visit the theater, because it held sentimental value for him since he worked there before it closed. At some point, the theater caught on fire, and the statement was basically the guy saying that they did not intentionally set the theater on fire. The statement basically indicated that there was no way to salvage what was left of the theater, which makes sense, since seven years later there'd be a mini-mall on the site.
     
    It was really interesting learning about the history of a site I've gone to many, many times in my life. I cannot tell you how many times I've parked at the parking lot behind this mini-mall, or gone to Grotto's Pizza/Kildare's when I went to UD.
  4. methodwriter85
    I started work on another box- this one isn't going to be as easy, because it's not filled with photo albums with dates on the front like the first one I worked on was. It's mostly scattered photographs in packets from photo development shops.
     
    The bulk of the photos I've run across in this box are from the late 1990's into about 2004, although I did find photos from 1988-1990.
     
    That was interesting for me, because I started hanging out around downtown Newark/The University of Delaware area in the late 1990's/early 2000's, so I was seeing a lot of familiar old sights there. One photo I really loved was of Rainbow Records- it's an indie record shop that had been really popular, to the point that they had moved into a nearby building as part of a big expansion. In latter years, the store had moved back to it's original space, and then eventually moved to an even smaller space in what had once been the store's back offices. It's been barely hanging on, but it's still there- just in a much smaller space. So the photo of what the store looked like it in the glory days of CD's before MP3's became common was pretty cool to see.
     
    I had to do a lot of "dating" clues when it came to the photographs. One that helped was Gore Hall, which was built on campus in 1998. So if I saw a photo of ROTC kids marching on camps and they passed by Gore, I knew the photo had to have been from post-1998. Another interesting clue I had was a picture of these children who were at the parade- one little girl had a shirt on that said, "04", which suggested 2004 to me. I remember when it was particularly trendy at that point in the decade to have shirts that said the year on it. Then there was Cafe Gelatto's, the fancy schmancy Italian restuarant that had been around since 2000, where I would get Gelatto since I was in high school. My favorite clue though, was when I'd see photos with Mayor Vance Funk (who became mayor of Newark in 2003), and Ruth Ann Minner, who had been Delaware governor from 2001 to 2009. So having those two in the parade would definitely point to a 2004-ish time period for those particular set of photos.
  5. methodwriter85
    My oldest niece graduated from high school today- Charter School of Wilmington's Class of 2013! It was pretty cool to watch- the ceremony was at the DuPont Theater in downtown Wilmington. The class salutorian was actually pretty funny, the speakers weren't boring, and they had a cool touch with a powerpoint show that showed a large, blown-up picture of every senior as they graduated. It was a pretty stark contrast to my own graduation in 2005- a dark rainy night, really boring speeches, and disorganization to the point where people were showing up and sneaking onstage while the ceremony was in progress.
     
    I gotta say, I got pretty teary-eyed. My oldest niece was the family baby for almost 12 years until the second niece came along in '06 - I can still prety clearly remember her crawling around on the floor of our house when she was 9 months old. It's weird to think she'll be going off on her own to Pittsburgh University, where she'll be studying molecular biology. It doesn't seem possible that 18 years went by like *that*. It was wonderful to watch her grow up from a baby into a young woman who marches to the beat of her own drum, with some great accomplishments under her belt.
     
    Later that night, I wound up going out to Newark, DE to watch Alumni Weekend in progress. Alumni Weekend, called Del-A-Bration (get it? get it?) is a weekend where the University of Delaware puts on various celebrations for their alumni. The centerpoint of this is Mug Night, where they put two tents on the North Green and South Green, and the alumni get trashed to the tune of cover bands. The other hallmark is that alumni are allowed to have "overnights" in the dorms. I didn't take part in all of that, because I didn't feel like putting down money for that. Maybe next year, since it's my 5th year out. Well, not my 5th year, because I graduated in 2010, but 2009 was my real class year. And...I guess maybe I don't really feel accomplished enough yet to really"deserve" to these alumni events.
     
    I did hit up popular UD bar Klondike Kate's, though. I don't usually go there because the crowd is always 90 percent college- I tend to hit up Deer Park Tavern or Homegrown, which are more mixed and have live music. But one of my friends was there (he graduated in '11), so I wound up going. It was cool to see old faces that I remembered seeing when I went to UD. To top it off, our D.J. played "Party in the U.S.A.", which instantly brought me back to the fall of my senior year, when the song was huge.
     
    After the bars let out, it was pretty funny to walk around Main Street and see all the 25 to 30-year olds acting like they were still at UD- people carrying around their drunk friends on their shoulder like they were 19 again. I did wind up running into a few people I knew from college, which was cool.
     
    My friend and I walked down to the fountain on South Green, where a bunch of people were splashing around. It's a UD tradition for seniors to splash around in this foundtain on graduation night. I sat around and laughed my ass off at this spectacle until the cops came. (Okay, I'll admit I stayed around to watch because some of the guys were pretty cute with nice bodies that looked good in wet boxers.) I could've gone in, but I don't know- I jumped into the fountain when I was actually graduating from UD- I didn't really feel the urge to do this, plus given that I'm no longer a student there, public safety would have no incentive not to throw the book at me so the risk didn't seem worth it. As I watched those 25-year olds re-enacting their rite-of-passage(one of them said they were the class of 2010), I did think a lot about what Adam has said about The Endless Summer- when it's gone, you can't really get it back. Although if it makes them happy to pretend they're 22 again for a weekend...well, more power to them.
     
    My friend Mike and I then walked around aimlessly around campus and just talked. It was nice. It made me remember what it was like on a late night at UD, when I couldn't sleep and I'd just walk around the campus aimlessly. It was cool to point out places that hold particular memories- although even though I'm only 3 years out, A LOT has changed. Again, the Endless Summer not being so Endless...it really isn't 2009 anymore, and I got reminded of that while walking around the campus.
     
    I don't consider University of Delaware the best years of my life- I really think my IUP graduate school years brought out the best in me. But it really was a time in which I went through a lot of change and growth, learned some incredibly tough lessons about myself and about other people, and made some incredible memories.
  6. methodwriter85
    I thought about posting this in the internet forum, but due to the political nature of the rap, I thought I'd just post it here.
     

     
    Definitely a very well-done parody. I loved the use of the D.A.R.E. shirt- a program shrouded in good intentions, but didn't really do much to actually stop the children of the 1980's and the 1990's from using drugs.
  7. methodwriter85
    So today I started doing volunteer work at a small museum near where I went to undergrad, called Newark Historical Society. I decided to do this in order to keep my skills relevant while I look for a paying job.
     
    They started me on a project where I'm going to go through 5 boxes that city hall sent them, which consist of photo albums from the 20th century Memorial Day parades. I'm not doing any real processing yet, just a little inventory. Today I looked at Box 3 of the Collection- it had albums from 1969, 1973, 1974, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1982, circa 1986, 1989, and circa 1990.
     
    A lot of the albums had the years embossed on the front, but three of them did not. I had to do a little detective work for the ones that I deduced as being from about 1986 and 1990- one of the volunteers that is a fireman, and said he recognized the vintage of the firetrucks from the mid-80's in one album, and the early 90's in another. What really nailed the year down, though, were two pictures that showed the winners of the Newark "Pushmobile" contest- basically, the soap box derby for this town. (It was gone by the mid-90's, because I moved to the town in 1995 and there wasn't anything like that.) In one album, it showed a photo of a boy who was announced the 1986 winner, and the other showed a little girl who was announced the 1990 winner.
     
    I really enjoyed trying to deduce the year- it was easy to get an "era" down in terms of the clothing, hair, and cars, but an exact year can be harder to come by. It was really funny looking at the 1990 photo album, because that's a year I can remember, and it really brought back memories of how things looked when I was 4, 5 years old. Another fun moment was when I was going through what I think was the '86 album, and I saw what looked like a brown 1981 Buick...that was our family car through about 1993, if I'm remembering correctly.
  8. methodwriter85
    Here's a letter, written by an Iraq War veteran named Tomas Young under hospice care, to Dubya and Dick. His body has been ravaged by paralysis and resulting complications that he's decided to go off his feeding tube and "fade away" instead of the conventional suicide.
     
    The Last Letter
     
    Pretty powerful stuff. It saddens me to think of how many lives were destroyed because of Haliburton war complex, and how so few of us gave a crap about what was going on over in Iraq because we were more interested in important things like Britney Spears Meltdown '07-'08 or buying McHouses in McSuburbs we couldn't afford to take advantage of that red-hot real estate market of the early/mid-
    '00s.
     
    I didn't personally know anybody who died in the Iraq War, but the school upstairs from mine was rocked by it in '05 when an English teacher's son died...I think he would have been just about Adam's age now if he had lived. I did have an acquaintance I'll call Mike who was there. He was Mr. Funny Class Clown in high school, and he was our best runner. He had some jerky qualities to him, but Mike was overall a nice guy. Mike joined up with the army after he graduated from high school to pay for college. He didn't get hugely maimed in the war...he just lost a pinky or something or something like. But I'll never forget one night I ran into Mike at a bar...I think it was probably '08 or '09. Mike was so fucked up drunk that he could barely stand...I remember saying to him, "Dude, please don't die in Iraq." (In my defense, I was 22 or 23 and very drunk, so tact wasn't easy to come by.) Mike looked at me, and said, "I honestly don't care if I die."
     
    I will never forget that. Ever. Seeing this guy who had been so damned full of life and jokes at 17 turn into this alcoholic who could look me straight in the eye and say he doesn't care about dying shocked the hell out of me, and it made my own problems like whether or not I could pass math class seem so small in comparison.
     
    I've followed his postings on FB and it seems like he's gotten his life together- he's sober and has a girlfriend, from what I've gleaned...but god, what he must have gone through to have gotten to the point he was at a couple of years ago.
     
    Mike got a second chance and did well with it...it's just such a damn shame that this 33-year old guy is basically already done with his life. Tomas Young truly is a sacrificial lamb to the Hailburton war complex that gripped the world during the Dubya Years.
  9. methodwriter85
    Deadly Courthouse Shooting
     
    From I what understand, the shooting victims were a woman involved in a bitter custody dispute, as well as one of her friends. The shooter was the father of her ex-husband. The ex-husband had years ago kidnapped their children and took them on a 18-month run throughout South America. I remembered that story, and I remember that the ex-husband did his best to paint the woman as a crazed bitch and himself as the worried father. Talk about a terrible way of concluding this saga.
     
    I think what shakes me up about this...it's not like it was a typical Wilmington drug-related shooting. This was in a high security area, and I've been to that courthouse several times. He shot them in the lobby before the gun detectors, and it shakes me up to think that someone could just flat out get killed in a place as heavily guarded as a courthouse.
     
    Those poor girls. Not only do they have to live with the fact that their father and grandmother kidnapped them for over a year, they now have to live with the fact that their own grandfather killed their mother. Damn.
  10. methodwriter85
    Every year, there's an alumni luncheon at my old high school. It was fun as it always is- I get free Bobbie subs from Capriotti's and such.
     
    One thing that was absolutely hysterical was this holiday show performance called the "12 Joys of Cab", which makes fun of the teachers at the school. This year, one guy was singled out as the hot young teacher that girls won't stop drooling over- I mean, they absolutely ripped into him.
     
    The funny thing was that this guy was none other than "Dave K", a guy who was two years ahead of me and graduated in 2003. He was what amounted to the high school alpha male jock at my school, only he was the leader of the popular punk artist straight-edge crowd. Dave K was in high school, as he apparently is again, the "hot guy" that everyone was drooling over, and as a consequence he was really egotistical and full of himself. First week of freshman year, he and his crowd decided to target me, and I was mocked pretty mercilessly by them as being fat, ugly, and annoying. Dave got the ball rolling, and his cronies JT and Dan ran with it. It was really bad freshman year, and their teasing didn't end until they finally graduated when I was a sophomore. People joined in because he was what amounted to the alpha male jock, and upperclassmen didn't even know what my actual name was because they called me by the "clever" mean nickname that he came up with for me. It wasn't until I was a junior and they were gone that high school really started becoming fun for me, and I finally felt free of that baggage. My last two years of high school, despite some angst, were so much better and those were the years when I finally started developing some self-worth about myself. And I realized that the more self-worth I had, the less it mattered what the conceited assholes thought about me. By my last semester in high school, *I* was the one comforting a freshman boy who was getting picked on by an upperclassmen with an overblown ego, and it was full circle moment.
     
    It was funny to see this guy back at Cab as this high school teacher- a hot teacher apparently that jailbait is jumping on- but just a regular adult regardless instead of the "star" who could do no wrong that he was back then. Your bullies in middle and high school can seem larger than life because of the power they held over you, and then when you're no longer in the middle of that- you see how really ordinary and insignficiant they are.
     
    In the ten years since those days, I've made some great relationships, graduated from college and grad school, and have partaken in some pretty great memories. I'm a far cry from the 9th grader who used to cry in the bathroom at lunch because of the bullying.
     
    So you see, kids, things really do get better. Seeing one of my old high school bullies really reminded me of that.
  11. methodwriter85
    I spent three days as a volunteer at Firefly Music Festival in Dover, Delaware. I left Thursday night to set up camp, and came back Monday afternoon. Thursday night was probably the most fun in terms of camping- I was placed next to people who were pretty cool and friendly, and all of us hung out when we got back on Friday and Sunday.
     
    I got to see the Black Keys, the Killers(who set off fireworks for their finale), Graffiti 6, the Silversun Pickups, The Wallflowers, Ok!Go, and Imagine Dragons. It was so much fun.
  12. methodwriter85
    I'm going to the Firefly Festival where I'll get to see the
    play! I'm so excited! 
    I signed up as a volunteer, so in exchange for three 6-hour shifts, I get to go the event for free. Unfortunately I'll have to work when the Killers are playing, but I'll get to see Jack White on Friday night and the Black Keys Sunday night.
     
    It's going to be so much fun. I've never been to a big concert before. I can't wait!
  13. methodwriter85
    Alright. So, it's (unofficially) summer, and I got the idea in my head to highlight a song from a particular summer every Monday and encourage people to share songs/memories from that year. I'm starting with the summer of 1995...this is my choice:
     
    Kiss From A Rose by Seal
     
    Kiss From A Rose. God, what a classic 90's pop track.
     
    Summer '95 was the summer I moved to Delaware from Texas. I was 9 years old. My sisters were 12 and 13, and those lucky bitches got to spend the summer on the Jersey Shore with a family friend. They were supposedly getting watched by him, but it was basically, "Hi Bob, we're hanging out at the pier. Bye!" They got to do whatever they wanted- my older sister apparently learned to appreciate a cup of Joe that summer as late-night diners are big in Jersey. I was stuck hanging out with my mother's boyfriend's crazy children and playing with pogs, but on the other hand...being 9 years old and getting to walk around neighborhoods with no supervision...I feel like kids don't really get to do that now.
     
    I think that summer was the first inkling of independence I had...the first summer where I wasn't constantly being watched or babysat. That was pretty cool.
  14. methodwriter85
    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. Luckily, there doesn't look to be that much here.
     
    I found a program for America's sesquicentennial in 1926. That was pretty interesting, because I really wish I could have been around for the bicentennial in 1976. I'm definitely looking forward to the tricentennial in 2076.
     
    Day 52- May 5th
     
    I continued working on Box 1, and taped some covers back on to the manuals using archival tape.
  15. methodwriter85

    Day 43

    By methodwriter85,

    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?
  16. methodwriter85
    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 it to an easy discussion and tried to lead him around the exhibit, but John pretty much knew what everything was. It was definitely easier on me to lead someone around who knew what they were looking at.
     
    Day 42, April 14th
     
    I continued working on Box 9. I also watched another tour being given to Cub Scouts. They asked me to think about some hands-on activities that they could try in order to make the kids more into the museum. I was thinking making stone tools could be interestings, or perhaps teaching them how to march while carrying around sticks meant to represent muskets. That could be pretty cool. I know it worked for me back when I was a kid going to history camp for the Delaware Heritage Commission- there was a strong emphasis on hands-on activities.
     
    I'm definitely going to be challenged finding ways to get people interested in history, and coming up with hands-on activies is defnitely key.
  17. methodwriter85
    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 people excited by what we're doing here.
  18. methodwriter85
    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 an interesting talk with a woman who went to IUP back during the 1960's. It was eye-opening to think what college was like during the 1960's, when there were no co-ed dorms, people had to dress up for dinner, and students had curfews. Mind-boggling.
     
    Day 35- March 30th
     
    I continued working through Box 2. I was going through enlistment papers for the Pennsylvania National Guard in the 1920's- people must have been pretty short back then. The average height that I kept coming across was about 5'5"-5'8", which was pretty interesting.
     
    I had a conversation with a woman who is working through her family genealogy. She is having difficulty, because apparently records that she's looking for were destroyed in a fire sometime around 1855. It definitely drove home the point of how important records can be.
     
    Day 36-March 31st
     
    Today I helped a woman who wanted to learn more about what IUP was like during the 1930's, when her mother attended the school. It was nice utilizing the knowledge I had gained from working on the Sutton Hall tour in the first semester of grad school.
     
    As we looked for photos of buildings that would have been around in the 1930's, it was kind of depressing to think about how much IUP tore down, and is planning to tear down. I know there's planned obsolesce and all that, but there's something about being able to go to an older building and feeling a sense of place and historical continuity. IUP doesn't really have a lot of older buildings left, which is in stark contrast to University of Delaware, which(despite some mis-steps) really treasures a lot of the older buildings on campus, especially the Georgian revival ones. Talking to a woman who wanted to find the buildings that were around that her mother probably went, and realizing she won't find much, definitely makes me glad that Blue Hens can check out dorms that people lived in during the 1920's, and recitation halls from the 1890's.
     
    The dorm that I live in, UT, is scheduled to come down in a few years. It really is amazing to think that except for Whit, pretty much all dorms built in the 20th century at IUP are slated to come down at some point. They really don't build to last these days.
  19. methodwriter85
    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 tour. The best part was when he explained the mining exhibit. I grew up in Delaware, and our work labor history is mainly based on farms and du Pont gunpowder mills(before giving way to chemical factories). It's been interesting learning about the mining history of Western PA...one thing that I really have loved about living in a different region from the one I grew up in.
  20. methodwriter85

    ASB 2012

    By methodwriter85,

    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 state parks. (Which I don't, after what I experienced.) I'm deathly afraid of heights, and when I realized that trail building actually entailed hiking some pretty steep areas, all I could was try not to look over the side and concentrate on landing on each stepping stone. The fact that I was able to do it, and do it more than once, was something that amazes the hell out of me when I think about it. Sure, I took the absolute longest to hike up and get down, but the fact that I actually did climbed up this huge hill when the 12-year old me refused to ride an escalator at the National Air Space Museum for my 5th grade field trip was pretty cool.
     
    The scenery was amazing- for a boy used to the flat coastal plains, the views were just beautiful. We went on a trip to Chattanooga twice- the city was pretty cool...I'd figured Chattanooga was just this small little city, but it's actually got some amazing views and cool shops/restaurants. It was great experiencing a city that I had never really thought about before, and learning that it had some pretty cool things going on for it.
     
    With all these kids around from different schools, the experience felt like the summer camp experience I never had. It was so cool talking to people from places like Boston, or Georgia, or Wisconsin. I made one Wisconsin guy promise to see the Ocean some day if I promised to see a Great Lake. It was fun ribbing the BU kids about the joke from The Social Network, as well as explaining what a "hoagie" is to someone from Boston.
     
    Overall, this was so much better than my Florida trip, because while on that trip I helped someone out that needed help, in this case, I gave back while really challenging myself on things I never thought I could do. And, I guess this probably sounds cheesy...but...when I was climbing up that hill and hit the rocky spots, all I could do was focus on the next step, and then the step after that. I've been so depressed and anxious about what my future is going to be after graduation, because I don't really have any real, concrete plan...but like on that trail, my path has to be followed starting by one step. I can't let the fear of falling down keep me from taking that next step.
  21. methodwriter85
    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 was a personal connection, because in 2004 I went to Gettysburg as a Union re-enactor. I've been excited for the 150th anniversary in 2013 since then. It's amazing to think there's only one year.
     
    Day 28th, March 7th
     
    I found a pretty cool 1914 tourist map of Washington, D.C. It was in a great shape. We decided to house the map in a different folder, and weighted two boxes on top of the new housing so that the document would flatten out.
  22. methodwriter85
    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 Box 3, and began work on Box 2.
     
    Day 26, March 3rd
     
    Box 2 had a folder of items that were donated by Richard Watson's son in 1990. It had a picture of father and son standing outside of their home in 1941, as well as a picture of Richard Watson at his American legion ceremony in 1960. He was being commemorated for forty years of membership with the Indiana County American Legion.
     
    The folder included a letter from Richard Watson's son that included the context of the items. It was really nice to have that- it made understanding the photos much easier! Definitely rare for that to happen when it comes to collections.
     
    Today I also watched a tour being given. It was interesting to see how the tours can differ in terms of who the audience is. The person giving the tour did not mention the Vietnam War pictures, probably because this wasn't a veteran crowd, and because there was a little kid there. You need to read your audience in order to figure out how you're going to relate the items to the people there.
  23. methodwriter85

    Day 22

    By methodwriter85,

    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 the cool thing about working here- we're preserving the continuity of family knowledge, or at least making it easier to develop a sense of a family narrative.
  24. methodwriter85

    Day 20, Day 21

    By methodwriter85,

    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 also found a letter about a man who tried to prove that his son was disabled and therefore needed to be discharged, but the army medical board replied that they could not find anything physically wrong with the song. It was interesting- you wonder if the son really was lying, or if he wasn't, and the army was ignoring actual injuries so that they could provide more cannon fodder for the Western front.
  25. methodwriter85

    Day 18, Day 19

    By methodwriter85,

    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 makes me think about where I'm from, where the oldest houses were built in the 1950's. And in the college town I did my undergrad in, where they keep tearing down houses to put up new apartment buildings with retail on the first floor. That's one thing I really like about this area- there are so many older houses around, with more character than one could find in the cookie-cutter suburbia of Bear, Delaware.
     
    Day 19, February 18th
     
    I watched another tour of the museum. It's definitely good practice to see how guides can get the visitors to relate to the material.
     
    We had a discussion about some Operation Desert Storm trading cards that had been donated by this very eager young kid who had discovered them in a hobby shop. The problem was that there's always a full set of cards, and the museum doesn't really need them. But how exactly can you turn a donation down? That seems to be a continual problem- with the limitations of space and budget, can or should an archives save everything they're given?
×
×
  • Create New...