Things to Say

I was gently reminded I had a blog the other night and I automatically said my standard reply, "I don't have anything to report." It's true in the past I always kept a blog only while I was off on some exciting adventure. Bath, England. Washington DC. My daily life just doesn't inspire me to words like the Royal Crescent or the Jefferson Memorial.

However, I will try again and join every other Tom, Dick and Harry that keeps a blog these days. I am back living with my parents - first fun fact for the post. My delightfully expensive education that has put me into more debt than I can comprehend, has failed to procure me a job yet. No worries there. When I keep finding entry level jobs listed as requiring PhD's, I figure it's the job market and not me. Some days are better than others for convincing myself of that line.

I am still working for the Sindecuse Museum of Dentistry back in Michigan. I am finishing up a research project I've been working on for them on the early women graduates of the University of Michigan dental school. Tracking them has been a lot of fun - a treasure hunt of sorts. Some of them lead quiet lives. Others went off and did extraordinary things. My favorite though must be Flora Mae Spore who alternately went by Marion Spore and then, her married name, Marion Spore Bush. She had a successful dental practice in Bay City, Michigan for over 20 years before her mother's death caused her to start hearing voices that told her to paint. So, she went off to New York City and did "spirit" paintings. Fascinating, isn't it? She even has her own Wikipedia Page here . I especially love that she literally married her husband an hour after his second divorce was finalized. How the broad sheets of New York must have screamed!

I've been re-reading my books since I got home from Michigan. Slowly working my way back through my shelves, deciding if I want to keep them after I re-read them or if it's time to send them on their ways. I started with Gregory Maguire. I will forever love him for giving me Elphaba and Iris but his later books are not as much to my taste. Both Lost and Mirror, Mirror are just well...weird is a good word for them. Lost tries to combine elements from Dickens' Christmas Carol next to the stories of Jack the Ripper and elements of Possession. It never successfully does that and then , towards the end, really goes off the deep end. It has an unlikable heroine who is completely untrustworthy and, let's see how best to put this....whiny. I cannot abide by a whiny character. Mirror, Mirror is in a bad position from the beginning with me - it's based on Snow White, the least likable princess I know. Its premise is more interesting than Lost but still fails to capture my attention. I fight my way through it and then post it on Amazon. Someone else more inclined to like Snow and her dwarfs is welcome to it. I hope to work my way through my bookshelves, purging once I know I'll be happy to never open the book again.

I did re-read, and adored all over again, Jane Eyre. Charlotte never did write another one as good (personally, after Jane Eyre, I think she just stole and re-tooled her sisters' best ideas). Jane is witty, courageous and independent. Though Rochester is right there with Darcy on my list of "Literary Heroes I adore on the page but are 'too costly for daily wear,'" Jane and he make a great couple to root for throughout the novel. Definitely on my keeper shelf.

Tomorrow is an excursion to Skaneateles and then to visit my cousins in Marcellus. My little cousins are apparently asking for new playmates - I think they have that end of summer, don't want to go back to school but really are bored out of their minds syndrome I remember well. We're also going to help them plan for their Disney trip in November. Mine is in three days! Boo-yah!

mr. president

It has not been often lately that I have been able to be proud of my country. I remember the embarrassment of my first trip to Europe senior year of high school. I was visiting France with my AP French class following the whole "freedom fries" fiasco when the US was ostracizing a country and its leaders for doing the unthinkable...listening to the will of its people. The hypocrisy of that whole episode made me gag. My semester abroad was a little better though I often wished I could say I was from anywhere but the US at times. Why, oh why, wasn't I Canadian? It had been my plan at the time - finish school and head north. I'm happy to say I was forced to stick around for school because I think today, for the first time in a long time, I was proud to be an American.

So, my best wishes and good will go out to our 44th president. And also a good luck because the poor guy is going to need it. I am certainly ready to rise to the call of responsibility he put forth in his speech this afternoon and I think a lot of my generation is as well. Too long I felt like I didn't have anything to believe in and after spending a summer in DC, surrounded by its history and then watching this historic campaign and swearing in of President Obama, I think I do have some restored faith in my country and its people. It always seemed like we were paddling as fast as we could and getting nowhere, hindered by party lines and uncompromising "values" that cripple the government's ability to do anything of use. Here's hoping we're ready for a change, for compromise and a new future with a little more faith and a little more trust that we're all in this together and we can make a change for the better.

My first Thanksgiving

So, technically, this was not the first Thanksgiving away from home for me. That honor belongs to the dinner in Bath in 2005 which was great except, I mean, what do the English know about Thanksgiving? The stuffing came out in little balls. They tried and I was grateful. But my first Thanksgiving that I was in control of was going to go perfectly.

Oh come now. I'm not that naive. It wouldn't be Thanksgiving if there were not scares and hiccups and moments when you think the whole thing might blow up in your face. It started out early, before the parade even came on, one of my roommates started the turkey. We couldn't find the packet of giblets but we carried on, thinking perhaps they'd forgotten them. Seanna put all sorts of stuff in the bird, rubbed it down with miracle whip and successfully had it into the oven before 9 AM. Ahead of schedule. I liked this. However, the parade never started. Apparently, Detroit's Thanksgiving Parade is more important than the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in Michigan. I was confused and found some sort of coverage on CBS. My parents later helped me figure out the problem and I flipped out. One tradition shot to dust. Luckily, my paper arrived on time and I plotted out my attack for the next morning. Yes, I am one of those nutters who leaves the house at the crack of dawn on Black Friday.

Anyhoo, we're swimming along just fine and then Julie appears. Our turkey is probably done. Three hours before planned. Me, the person who checks, double checks and triple checks anything to do with cooking hadn't looked up cooking times again after we decided to cook the turkey unstuffed...House thrown into frenzy, people running around, stuffing being thrown into oven, potatoes boiling. In the grand scheme of things, of course it worked out. In fact, the turkey ended up only being done an hour earlier than planned (our oven takes forever to do anything).

So, Thanksgiving was delightful in the end. We ate ourselves into food comas, recovered to have pumpkin pie and whipped cream and generally enjoyed a day with friends and less guilt for not working on papers.

And in the end, we found our packet of giblets. The take home message of the day? A turkey has two holes. Check both before cooking.

Marmalade

I wish I had a better memory on days like this. I wish I could remember why I obsessively started asking for a cat or why I decided on a Maine Coon. Dad had started dragging me to cat shows I know was a part of it and I knew asking for another dog was getting me no where so I went with the biggest cat breed I could find. Marm didn’t let me down. Smaller than her champion brothers got, she was still at 20 pounds most of her adult life. I marvel at how little she once was. Sadly, I don’t have any of her kitten photos digitized – they’re all at home in Marm’s album on my shelf. There are the early pictures, before she grew into her ears and when she would still chase her cat toys around the house. Then there are the middle years, Marm at her best, finding all sorts of interesting places to sleep. It was one of the things she was best at, along with eating, getting into things she shouldn’t and whining constantly to my mother. She also had a knack for choosing the most inconvenient times to want attention. She was my study buddy in high school. Call me crazy but I swear she knew French for a while there. She listened as I read aloud Le Petit Prince or tried out sentences for my latest sujet. She was my companion while I stayed up working on projects that should have been done long before the night before it was due. She laid with me when I was sick and always seemed to know when I was down. She watched movies with me, sharing popcorn with me and never failed to be there when I needed her. As long as it was convenient for her of course. She was queen of all she surveyed. We all danced to her tune.

There were certain things you could always count on with Marm around. One, it wouldn’t be quiet. She had a voice and she knew how to use it. Mom always said she was whining – I think she just had one of those voices and was a bit of a chatterbox. Two, if there was paper on the floor, on the couch, on the table, she would be on it. Three, if you recently got up from the couch or the easy chair, she would be in it when you got back. The incredible thing was, you just sat somewhere else then. To move her was unthinkable. Four, she had the look of distain ready at all times. No one could look haughtier than my cat could. I swear she had it down to an art. Five, if I was planning to give her a bath, she would mysteriously disappear. I am so sad I never took a picture of her looking like a drowned rat in the tub but I could never seem to do such an injustice to her. Six, if I had a book in my hands, she was in my lap. I think she heard a lot of stories because of that (I like to think Austen was her favorite but I think am projecting). I like to read aloud anyway and she seemed to like to listen. Seven, for a house cat, she loved our back porch. It was her outdoors and her goal was to become as dirty as she could in as little time possible. Eight, she couldn’t hold a grudge to save her soul. She was never very welcoming when I’d come back from being away at school. She’d ignore me when I first came in, wouldn’t look at me when I’d scoop her up but she’d saunter in as I unpacked, getting into trouble as usual and then, the second I sat down, she’d be on top of me. Nine, Miss Priss she was, no matter what. Looking like a drowned rat after her baths, she’d still sit up and glare at me as I dried her. Even a soaking wet Marm had her dignity. Ten, she wasn’t perfect but she was Marm and she was one of my best friends who was always there when I needed her to be, no matter what. She has been one of the things I have missed most when I am away from home and it never occurred to think one day she wouldn’t be there.

Marm left us on Wednesday of this past week very suddenly. She had cancer and we didn't know until it was too late. My little Marmalade Blaze of Big Tree Cattery is gone and my last memory of her is sitting at the top of Grammy’s staircase, front paws crossed, looking all the world like a queen surveying her kingdom. And so she was, because for eleven years, she ruled our house and I know the next time I go home, there will be a something missing because we’ve lost our queen.

Daddy has done such a beautiful job of taking her picture over the years but I wanted to share one of my favorites. She had a knack for mischief especially on Christmas morning. I hope, wherever she is, she hasn’t lost it. Goodbye Baby Girl, I'll miss you.

The Questions to Answer in the End

(last reflective paper for class)

As I wrap up my summer internship, everyone at work has been asking me what I liked best, what I did not like, do you still want to be an archivist after this? In turn, in order to answer, I have been doing a lot of thinking about what exactly it is that I like about the work. I will admit, sitting in a windowless room, staring at a computer screen day in and day out would have driven me insane two months ago. So one perk to the job is the variety. Because we had a schedule of some sorts at SIA, I knew what building and what I would be working on every day. My supervisors did not always have that luxury. The variety of their work excited me – some days they worked on digital materials, another day they would be processing, the next they would be out at an appraisal or doing outreach with another office in the Smithsonian. I like a job that gives me variety and a sense of adventure. Being an intern there to work on a single project, I did not always get that variety myself but I see the possibility of it in the profession.
I also answer to the “what did you like” question, the feeling of discovery. True, a lot of the collections I worked on outside of my scanning room were not the most riveting of materials – a lot of administration paperwork and so on but a few of the collections were truly interesting and I was never sure what I was going to find next. One collection, from the National Air and Space Museum had video footage of planes being flown into Dulles airport for the NASM Hazy Center Annex at the airport. How often to get to see a space shuttle piggy backing on a 747? Or another collection from the National Museum for Natural History was entirely correspondence between a geologist and professors, collectors, and experts in the field with some fun dirt samples and weird leaves thrown in for good measure. I like wondering also who will use this collection next and what will they discover in it?
I am hard pressed to answer the question “what did you not like.” One thing I did not care of was the isolation from the archives department. Because of the location of the scanning room, I rarely saw my other interns or, often, my supervisor simply because of my location. That is no fault of the profession, more poor office planning. While I like having a space to work in alone and be able to organize everything “my” way, I would like to see other people from time to time…I also did not like getting frustrated with the work which would happen every so often. I would find whole groups of photos with no names or find ruined pictures that no one bothered to remove the first time the collection was looked over. However, my supervisor assures me that that is simply a part of the work. There will be boxes of unknowns and silly people who do not understand what happens to rubber bands thirty years down the road (they harden and stain and crumble…not good). It is a frustrating job I have been forewarned by everyone in the office but also a rewarding job. I have only been able to observe the reference desk a few times but the look on people’s faces when we have that obscure document from the National Museum of American History or we have that photo of the old National Air and Space Museum is worth it.
As for the last question, “do I still want to be an archivist”, the answer is a resounding yes. It took me so long to find a career that was challenging and rewarding enough to keep my interest and fit into what I am personally interested in outside of work. Now I just need to work on the inevitable next question: “what kind of archive do you think you would like to work in?” I am still deciding this one. I really enjoyed my time at the Smithsonian and I would definitely apply if they decide they want to hire in the spring but I want to keep my options open and I have been lucky enough to have co-workers this summer who have experiences in just about every type of archive you can find so they have given me a lot to think about. It’s a question I am still working on but I feel this summer has given me a taste of an institution and an environment that I would be very happy to work in long term any time in the future.

The Phillips Collection

OK, while the best art museum in this town will remain the National Gallery of Art, the Phillips Collection gets the prize for the best atmosphere of an art museum. While I especially felt under dressed here (though I usually do in this town), The Phillips Collection is comprised of two buildings, one a modern building and the other, an old house off of Dupont Circle. So, for part of your walk through the museum, you're in a typical "museum" setting with perfect lighting and few windows. For the other part, you wander into the old Victorian house and feel like someone has let you wander their house, enjoying their art collection. It created a very intimate feeling to the museum which I enjoyed. Don't get me wrong, I love my Louvre but the small setting of feeling like I stepped into some one's parlor to comment on their O'Keefe was a unique and special experience.

And then there is the painting that I went to see. I turned a corner and there it was, so much bigger than I expected. Renoir's Luncheon of the Boating Party. It literally took my breath away and I had to sit on the bench in front of it and stare (around the two men who insisted on discussing the painting for what felt like eons directly in front of it). Renoir has always been my second favorite (not being a tortured enough artist for me to love as much as my Van Gogh). To see this painting, arguably not his best, but his best-known, work was a joy. It ranks up there with turning the corner to see Starry Night at MOMA or finding down in the basement Crows with Wheatfield in Amsterdam. I will admit, I thought it was smaller because of the film Amelie. The canvas in the movie is smaller that the painting actually is but I admit I also stared at the girl with the glass and smiled. The colors also blew me away. The flowers on the girl's hat with the dog were so vivid and textured, I would have sworn they were just painted yesterday. Also, this painting has such movement. You expect to see the next moments at any second, as if you were watching a film instead of looking at a painting. I have said it before, but I'll say it again, I wish I could see the world the way the Impressionists saw it. We all should be so lucky.

learning goal check

(reflective report for school)

I thought this week since I only have about three weeks left I should reflect a little on how I am doing with my project and my learning goals for the summer. For one, I am realizing now that I was unrealistic in thinking I could complete the project this summer. It was never the intention of my supervisor that I should finish however; I thought to myself I could get the main boxes scanned over the course of the summer. I started on the letter H. I am just now rounding the corner of the letter L. It sounds like I have not gotten far at all. But looking at the numbers, I have scanned over 1770 photos into the database. Sadly, I am never going to see the final steps of the project personally at SIA. The refining of the metadata, the linking of the actual photo file to the database entry and the launch of the database into SIRIS, the Smithsonian Institute database on-line where it would be searchable by the user will take place long after I am back at school or even out in the work force. I am just starting to realize the massive amount of time and resources it takes to make a project like this get off the ground and to finally see it completed.

My supervisor took time to explain to me this week about the SIRIS protocol and what the collection will need to go through still after the scanning is done. She was very interested in using flickr as a resource to help identify people we know little or nothing about in the Science Service photos. The Smithsonian Institute and the Library of Congress have both already utilized flickr to not only give better access to their users but to tap into their users’ information. It is amazing to me the network of resources outside of an institution that are available if we only have the tools to use them. I will be interested to see if flickr or a site like it will be used with my collection in the future. This fit well into one of my learning goals for the summer which was to understand how a digitization project comes together from start to finish, what an institution needs to know or learn to make a project of this magnitude a worth-while endeavor that will ultimately help the user of an archives to better access and understand a collection. What I find interesting in this case, with the Science Service photos, is we have a lot of blanks. Photos with only initials and a last name or, worst-case scenario, simply a last name. No university, no area of science to go off on. I have googled many and come up with full names for few. It is another project in itself and one that digitization of the photos could help complete if SIA decides to go the ‘flickr route.’

Along with the start to finish of a digitization project, I have learned a lot about processing collections: when to toss, when to keep, when a finding aid is “good enough” to work for the moment. Something the classroom and the real world have both agreed on whole heartedly is there is never enough time, people, or money to do everything you want to do with a collection and its finding aid. Sometimes, one simply has to say that it is as good as it is going to get for the moment and move on. A perfectionist would die a slow and painful death in the archives. You are perpetually leaving everything half done with the idea that some day you will come back and finish that finding aid to perfection, list other collections that link to it in the archives and elsewhere, come back and digitize everything. In reality, the collections I put back on the shelf today at Fullerton will probably never be returned to – they will live with a simple listing of folders and a brief summary of where the papers come from and what they may pertain to during the dates listed. A user could use them easily, true, but we could do better…if we had time.

So, my learning goals are there. I feel I have gleaned a lot from my digitization project as well as the time I have spent processing collections. I learned patience certainly but from discussing the big picture, I see that it is hard work and lives you often with the feeling that if you only had a little more time, it could be done that much better. It is a problem found in many lines of work. However, I often find myself wondering, as I work on a collection, which will use it next and what can I add to a finding aid to help them in their scavenger hunt. So I add a few lines to a summary, a few lines after a folder name to say something interesting I have found in my perusal of the collection over a few hours of processing. It is not much but the user is something SI has made me very aware of and I feel that one of my lessons, even if it was not in my learning goals or even something my supervisor has pointed out to me, is that the user is always there in the back of my mind and I am working to make the user’s quest in the archives go that much smoother. If it takes me five extra minutes at my computer, in the end, I think it is worth it.