stormdog | Entries tagged with archives

Danae and I were at an exhibit that made me think of working with the archivist at Parkside. The Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University has an exhibit on Charlotte Moorman and her avant-garde art and music. Part of the exhibit was a selection of items from a large archive of her papers and posessions. Bits and pieces of her life, both in the arts and out, put on display and contextualized.

The things that touched me deepest were some of the documents that speak of her relationship with her husband. "Please do not ticket; wife has bone cancer and am helping her down stairs" read a note that her husband wrote to leave on his dashboard to placate traffic police. In another case was a piece of official press release stationary on which Charlotte had written "I love you. I love you. I love you, " over and over to fill the entire body of the note other than the name of its recipient. They made me think of the kinds of stories that only archives, and those who work with them, can tell. And then, one wall of the room was full of shelves of boxes of her archived materials, seemingly in the process of processing. I was on campus to get a document notarized, and Danae and I happened to stop in to the museum afterward. It was really worthwhile; I would enjoy seeing more exhibits like that. I also want to look into Charlotte Moorman a bit more. She was a an avant-garde string musician in New York at the same time as Laurie Anderson was busy there; I feel like they must have worked together at some point and that would be fantastic to see.

Current Mood: excited

I have a fantastic letter, sent to me by the Clark University archives, that I want to share with you. It's from one of the inventors I'm researching, Charles Williams, to Wallace Atwood, a professor of geography who later became president of Clark University. Williams is complaining about Gilbert Grosvenor, president of the National Geographic Society, essentially jerking Williams around as he tried to get funding to produce his index globe invention. Some quotes:

"I’m simply sick and tired of the childish and unfair way he has acted. He’s said he would take it time and time again, but wanted some changes made. I’ve changed and changed for him and we’re back where we started with my original design." (With "my original design" strongly underlined.)

"...spent a lot of time and money on him but am through monkeying with him any longer. He’s a child."

"Every body here has expressed themselves as delighted, except Grosvenor can’t come down to sign up, acts more like he’s a brainless girl trying to buy a spring hat."

The hotel stationary that Williams wrote on is pretty nifty in itself. The header reads:

Hotel Hudson
European
(Formerly the New Fredonia)
Wm. W. Danenhower, Manager

Hot and Cold Running Water and Long Distance Telephone in every room
Garage connected. Phone Main 7973.
1329 and 1331 H St. N. W., Washington DC

Current Mood: amused

With the Amazon gift card that the staff at the archives gave me as a going away present, I just paid for part of a set of nicer panniers to replace the ones on my bike. My current set has survived two full years of commuting and is almost more duct tape than vinyl. It's being replaced by these Axiom Panniers.

I'm going to be using these every day in Syracuse! And they'll remind me of people I loved working with and care about. Yay!

Current Mood: happy

During my last day of work at the archives yesterday, the two staff members I work with, along with one of the new student workers, had a mini going away party for me. There was a very pretty tray of cake and cinnamon rolls, and people got together on an Amazon gift card for me to help me acquire more of my Summer reading materials. They gave me a really sweet card too. Working at the archives has really been the best job of my life, for so many reasons: the people, the wonderful materials I got to work with, the interesting research I did; I'm going to miss it a lot. I felt more emotional than I expected to as I was walking out the door for the last time. But I'll be back at least once over the summer for a Poky Little Puppy photoshoot, so I'll definitely see people again. And now that I'm no longer a student, I'm going to keep up with a number of Parkside people on Facebook. It's nice living in the future, with so many more ways to keep in touch.

Anna also arranged for me to meet Vince. He'd become kind of a legend in my mind; the guy who has a cave down in the sub-basement where he fixes everything from our microwave at the archives to the reel-to-reel deck I donated to the library, to laboratory equipment for the science departments. It was a real treat to meet him in person and get a tour of his lab. He has an amazing array of electronics down there, most of which I didn't recognize at all. I did pick out a Commodore Vic-20 plus tape drive, a laserdisc player, and a jacob's ladder out of the background though. Vince also talked about some of the equipment he's working on, like a cell counter, an electron beam generator, and bunches of other stuff. One of the most memorable things to me were a couple of Altair 8800s tucked in a corner. Two of them! And as Vince was happy to point out, not even the Smithsonian has a working one of those. The ones at Parkside are surplus from the biology department; they actually used them about four decades ago.

Vince grew up, like me, wanting to take everything apart and learn how it works. My parents never let me disassemble a TV though. Vince got that experience, complete with having the flyback transformer discharge into his body and send him flying across the room. Maybe it's better that I missed out on that? Anyway, I kind of wanted to be him when I grew up, when I was little, and it was awesome to get to talk with him. I think I'm going to see if he wants a few things of mine that I'm going to get rid of. A benchtop 13.8 volt power supply, a pretty old analog multimeter, things like that. I'm also going to see if I could commission him to repair my IMB Model Ms that have issues. Maybe I could trade him a keyboard in return for some repair work on my other ones?

I think someone needs to do some oral history interviewing with him; he must have wonderful stories.

Current Mood: happy

My last grad school application is on its way, which is a huge relief. Yay! I also got my first half-acceptance, which is pretty neat. All my prospective programs are in geology, with the exception of UW-Milwaukee's dual degree MLIS/MS Urban Studies program. Yesterday, I was notified of my acceptance to the MLIS half of the program. This is also the only program I applied to that does not have high potential for funding, but I also feel that it may have higher likelihood of earning money than the others. I guess I'll wait and see if the Urban Studies program likes me too.

I have a huge amount of financial catch-up work to do tonight. I haven't been tracking expenses since before Christmas. With all the application fees and my car repair, I know the number it all comes out to will be rather lower than I'd like. Fortunately, next semester's student loan disbursement is ahead, and I'm also working more hours at the archives.

Speaking of the archives, some children from the Racine Montessori School were in over the last few days doing research into local history. I worked with a kid who very much reminds me of me; a fifth-grader who is really into air raid sirens in Racine. Where they are, what models are there, how long they've been there, what they sound and look like.... Together, we found records of the Racine Common Council detailing bids made for their purchase and installation, as well as site locations, info about money contributed by the VFW, and other stuff. I think he was really happy to have found it.

I think we spent half the time doing research, while the other half of the time he was showing me websites and fora where people who are also really into these have posted pictures and maps and historical documents and movies all about air raid sirens. This is one of the things that is truly wonderful about modern communication. People who are have a passion like this can find each other and collaborate. (I know, that's a two-edged sword....) Anyway, I had such a fun time, and I hope zie comes to visit again. (I'm told that, before the second day, zie asked, hopefully, whether "that guy from last time" would be there, so the feeling is mutual. *grins*) It kind of makes me want a kid of my own, to go researching down strange tangents with, or with whom to go on road trips photographing bunches of whatever oddities catch zir interest.

I played a game of Dominion with Serinthia Kelberry, her partner, and my mother tonight. I was feeling time-stressy and didn't want to go out for our usual Thursday get-together, but invited them over instead so I could feel more in control of my time and space. I'm glad they came; it's always nice to see them.

What else? Now that applications are done, I really need to start working on my presentations for AAG and Madison in April. But first things first. Finances.

Current Mood: accomplished

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
			1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28	29	30	31

MeghanIsMe

Entries tagged with archives

Charlotte Moorman and Archives

Angry Businessmen of the 1920s.

New Panniers

Last Day at the Archives, Meeting the School Techy

Applications are Done! Geeky Kids are Cute. Back to the Grind

Profile

January 2025

Syndicate

Most Popular Tags

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags