Retirees Finding Second Careers at Historical Sites

At many of the museums and historical sites I have visited, there seems to always be someone who has found a second career or volunteer opportunity after retirement with the institution.  I found an article published in The New York Times written in May over this very topic.  From historical interpreters at living history museums to docents at historic houses, many older adults have found a home and second career after retirement in the museum field.  The article points out that some are paid, but most volunteer in their post-retirement free time.  

The article begins with the story of 62-year-old Kent Brinkley, a re-enacter, or interpreter, at Colonial Williamsburg.  He is among 500 others who present life as it was in the 1770s.  About 15 percent of these volunteers are 60-years-old and older.  Of this 15 percent, most are either retired or arrived at this point after working other professions, like Brinkley who was a landscape architect.  His story makes me think of a small natural history museum called the Desert Museum I visited in Tuscon, Arizona this summer. My grandfather frequently visits the museum and knew most of the volunteers working while I was visiting.  Of those volunteers, most were retired and seemed to enjoy spending their free time educating others about their facility.  My grandfather is considering donating his retired time to the museum, as he truly enjoys the institution and what it has to offer the community.

Another story the article highlights is the volunteer community of Sturbridge, which portrays a farm community of the early 19th century.  People 60 and older make up around 40 of the 442 staff members and volunteers.There jobs range from general tasks to being involved in re-enactments at the museum.  

George Ward's story is one of the few told in this article, a 74-year-old retiree from Polaroid, who has been with the living history museum in Plymouth for 19 years!  He is a part of the estimated 60 percent of the plantation's 200 staff members and volunteers over age 55.  Ward helps maintain the ship and interacts with visitors.  I can see my grandfather enjoying work like this, where you are not necessarily live action role playing, but can still enhance visitor experiences.  

It is clear to me that both paid and volunteer opportunities can be very important to retired folk.  Similar to anyone who wants to be involved with a historical institution, they want to use their free time well and give back to their community through their love of history. This article pointed out to me how important these opportunities can be to the 55 and over crowd.

You can find the full article at this link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/15/business/retirementspecial/retirees-are-finding-second-careers-at-historical-sites.html?_r=0

The Dayton International Peace Museum

Dayton has an International Peace Museum!!?  I had no idea!  I visited the museum Friday.  The Dayton International Peace Museum is located at 208 W Monument St in Dayton, about 2 blocks west of Main St.  It's in an old, historic, three story mansion called the Pollack House.  The mission of the museum is to inspire a local, national and international culture of peace.  The museum was founded in 2004 and helps people of all races, ages and nationalities learn nonviolent ways to achieve peace.

The third story was closed for renovations, as was part of the first floor. But the remaining area on the first floor and the entire second floor were open and quite interesting.  The first floor is where their current exhibit is being displayed.  The exhibit is called Quilting the Golden Rule.  It's seventeen quilts with a religion and that religion's main concepts on the quilt.  It's fascinating, actually to see seventeen different religions, yet they all have the same main point, the golden rule - do unto others as you'd have them do to you.  The second floor consists of a library with books and audio visual materials that are able to be checked out as well as a small section of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize winners' books.  There are areas to sit and research if needed.  The children's room is also located on the second floor.

Around the museum are pictures of peace makers, Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Teresa and Jane Addams to name a few.  There are also posters, for lack of a better word hung around the museum with conflicts and peaceful resolutions to those conflicts.  It's all very interesting and moving.

The  Pollack House is absolutely gorgeous inside.  It was built in 1855 on West Third St in Dayton and was actually on the city demolition list twice.  In 1979 the house was moved from West Third to it's current location on Monument.  I would think if the current residents ever vacate the property someone will snatch it up in a heartbeat, it's an amazing house.

The museum is small but powerful and well worth a visit!  You can view their information at www.DaytonPeaceMuseum.org.

The Brewery at Carillon Park

Last Friday evening I met friends at The Brewery at Carillon Park for dinner and drinks.  I was pleasantly surprised by the interior of the building, the food choices and the beer (current and pending) selection.  The outside of the building is very rustic, as we saw when we were at Carillon Park for our class a few weeks ago.  The inside reminds me of an old barn or mill of some sort.  There are pipes or ducts to move grain or liquids from one place to another, a big, brick fire place and the exposed beams are amazing.  The bar area was a bit small, but there is plenty of room to sit and eat and even enough space to dance it looked like.  Someone was rolling out dough, perhaps for rolls or home pie crusts.  The servers were wearing turn of the century costumes, the women in long, prairie skirts and the men in pants and shirts with big sleeves.

The food was amazing! I expected an ok burger, but it was probably one of the best I've had in a long time.  Friends I was with had the reuben, which was HUGE. The soft pretzel appetizer was also great. The beer selection was small but still very good and when they start serving their own brewed beer is when people will really start talking.  The only negative part of the experience was our server, just didn't seem engaged or as if he wanted to be there.

I snapped this photo before we left, you can see the detail that went into designing the restaurant

.  Oh, and there is also a very large banquet room available for parties.  Perhaps we should have class there before the end of the semester....Dawne???

From the Secret Diaries of American Artists to Digital Diary Keeping

On September 26, The Smithsonian opened a new exhibit in the Archives' Fleishman Gallery showcasing how artists documented their lives before life in the digital age.  Three artists have their complete diary collections on display in the exhibit as well as 35 other opened diaries from various artists.  The contents vary from elaborate illustrations to incredible personal stories that were contained under lock and key.  Katharine Lane Weems, a famous American animal sculptor, had all 54 of her diaries locked, which a curator had to pick open with a paperclip!  Here are two pictures posted by the Smithsonian from the exhibit:

Janice Lowry wrote an entry about September 11 in her diary on display at the Smithsonian

"F. Luis Mora kept pocket diaries barely larger than a matchbook."

Despite the shift towards documentation through social media, diary keeping is still popular today. The most recent work in the exhibit is a video installation by Joe Hollier, a graphic designer and illustrator, created this year.  Hollier thought that traditional journal keeping was boring and felt forced.  He felt it was easier to express himself in a more digital setting.  With a graphic design background, I can see why digital diary keeping may be more practical for him.  Regardless of the format, the content in diaries has not changed much over time.  From personal information to daily activities, people still disclose this information through new forms of diary keeping.   

The idea of privacy is shifting, too.  I've always considered my diary to be a personal, sacred book that only I should have access to.  Tumblr and Facebook are just two ways people are putting their personal feelings and opinions out for the world to see.  Deputy Director Liza Kirwin states that in a way, diaries are being kept now more than ever with these new forms available.  Before reading this article, I never thought of social media outlets being considered a form of diary keeping.  When I compare what I write in my diary to those who post on social media, I do see a similarity in topics and issues discussed.    

World War One in Color

I just found out about a book of color photographs of World War One published recently by Taschen, which you can find here. I had no idea that such photos even existed but they were apparently taken with a French-patented process called autochrome that required a lengthy exposure time. That means that there aren't many color images of actual combat but many of the photos are of soldiers preparing for battle and of the destruction to towns and cities from the fighting.

When all most people see of this time is black and white there is an inevitable disconnect there, since we don't see the world that way. In most photos of this time (and earlier) it's easy to conceptualize the people in them as being ghosts, not quite real. But, with these color images, it drives home that they were real, living people like us today. The war has largely disappeared from living memory so it's important to keep the memory of that conflict alive. This book and the photos contained within it will help drive home the real, human reality of war for generations to come.

Murdering History: How Wallace Defeats Himself

In reading Mike Wallace's last essay "Ronald Reagan and the Politics of History," I could not help but be reminded of what I learned in Ch. 1: I heartily disagree with Wallace's fundamental view of what history is. It was only after reading his railing against Reagan that I finally found the words to express my discontent. In his words, Wallace's believes, "There is, after all, no such thing as a single historical 'truth.' All history is a human production--a deliberate selection, ordering and evaluation of past events, experiences, and processes" (252). This belief, grounded in the postmodernist view that history is relativist human construct, is itself historicidal. Perhaps I'm misreading or perhaps Wallace just hasn't explained his full definition of history, but examining the full implications of his definition is self-defeating and flawed in ways I will attempt to explain below.

First, the view that "the past" only exists as far as humans acknowledge and interpret it is incredibly anthropocentric and excludes the idea that time occurs regardless of our knowledge of it (24). A tree doesn't wait for a human witness to fall in the woods, and animal species don't suddenly pop into existence the moment we discover them. Rather, they've existed unobserved, nevertheless influencing the world around them for the entire duration of their existence. If Reagan is guilty of trying to ignore pieces of history, he is no less guilty than Wallace, who insists that unrecorded history doesn't matter.

Second, in saying that there is no single truth, Wallace is undermining the importance of facts. Of course, by "single truth," he's talking not about names and dates so much as broad interpretive narratives. However, what he appears to be saying is that history is more about ideology and politics than truth. Even he states that these facts can be used to support a wide variety of interpretations. But in claiming that the interpretation is what matters about history, he's weakening his (according to him) evidence-based liberal, social history and giving Reagan power to reinterpret with lies. That is, if history is what people believe happened (human construct) and not what actually happened, then facts are not history; interpretation is. Therefore, if Reagan could convince people that Vietnam was a great, defensive, patriotic movement then his history (which Wallace derides as false) would become truth. The core danger of postmodernist theory is that it creates the very "history of the victors" it sought to overturn.

Last, while this may not be a legitimate point so much as nitpicking, it seems to me that Wallace contradicts his own stated beliefs. While he says that other interpretations can exist, he presents the interpretation of his "generation of professional historians" as the only truly correct interpretation. While he admits that intelligent right wing scholars can still interpret history, he adds the backhanded slap that they're having "tougher sledding" because, unlike Reagan, they have to find supporting facts. He never once actually considers that "his generation" might not have gotten everything correct. It seems like he is only adopting the postmodernist view as far as it can benefit his interpretation without exploring the full implications of how they hinder his efforts in promoting the one "correct" interpretation he actually (clearly) believes in.

Again, perhaps I have misinterpreted his views, and I am not a strong enough philosopher to have fully explored the connections and implications present. If you see something I have missed or gotten wrong, please let me know. Until then, I will continue believing that Wallace himself is the one who is truly killing history.

Dayton Celebrates Glass at the Dayton Art Institute

  

Two weekends ago a few of our class mates and I decided to check out the glass exhibit at the Dayton Art Institute titled Dayton Celebrates Glass: Chihuly, Lttleton, Labino and Beyond. Personally I wanted to go because last year I curated a glass exhibit at the Art Gallery at Berea College (Berea College Art Galleries Blog) . So I wanted to compare how I did my exhibit with how the Dayton Art Institute did theirs in terms of content, exhibition style, and the number of items on display. The glass I exhibited was much older and was not locally made, completely opposite from this exhibit. While walking though the galleries at the Art Institute I was paying attention to the way the glass was exhibited, such as how the lighting was placed. Lighting can be tricky in general, but with glass it is even trickier to deal with because you do not want the light reflecting off of the glass and blinding the viewers. Many of the pieces were encased but some were not, probably due to their large size. There were quite a few larger pieces and I was impressed that the Art Institute was able to exhibit them. I definitely would not have wanted to be part of the moving crew when it came to the larger pieces being exhibited! I moved a lot of glass when I did my exhibit; for example I lifted glass objects off of very tall shelves and had to carry them across brick floors, talk about nervous!

When we came to the end of the exhibit there was  a survey we could fill out about what we thought of the exhibit, which I thought was a good idea. The exhibit was not what I expected, I was hoping to see older works of glass, but overall I enjoyed the exhibit and I am glad we got the chance to go.

The Met App V.1.0 & V.1.1

The Metropolitan Museum of Art recently launched the Met App V.1.0.  This new app offers audio tours, encyclopedic background on current exhibits, and keeps users up to date on the museum's exhibits and programs.  It was featured as one of the best new apps in the AppStore. In a Forbes article titled "The Met's New App is Modest, But Could Foreshadow Big Things,"  Seth Porges writes about what the app has to offer.  He mentioned how the app has it's kinks, but the Met as started this app off right by providing users with excellent information about what the museum has to offer.  They are going beyond a pretty interface and keep Met fans informed in a smart, simple way. The New York Times had great things to say as well, stating the app has a "lovely, clean design that begs to be explored." 

The Met App will be upgraded in November, 2014 to V.1.1. Statements on the Met's blog claim they are proud of the first version, but are excited to build and improve the app. One improvement will be a question and answer function that allows app users to ask questions to the museum and receive a response within 30 seconds.  The museum also wants the app to have similar technological infrastructure as their website, metmuseum.org.

The museum has been tracking public response to the app. The biggest complaint of the first app version is that there is no map of the museum provided.  The museum plans on improving the map on metmuseum.org, but from what I read on their blog, has no plans to include a map on their app.  One issue I have with the app is that it is only currently available for iPhones.  I hope that the app will soon be available for Android so I can check it out!