Hobbes, Tigger, et al.

Christmas Foods!

2010-12-22T15:29:00.000-08:00

I was requested to share some recipes for traditional German Christmas foods that I bring out by the truck load in December.

Under the cut are recipes for Pfeffernüsse and Stollen. German Christmas goodies are time consuming, if nothing else. They can take a lot of practice to get right, and in the case of Stollen, most Germans buy them from the various official stollen bakeries in their part of the country. I eat so much stollen and so many pfeffernüsse during the holidays I mostly buy them in order to keep my sanity.

For Baumkuchen, go here: http://historyskarp.blogspot.com/2010/04/baumkuchen.html

Pfeffernüsse. Recipe from the Philadelphia German Society's cookbook.

3 eggs
1.5 cups packed light brown sugar
2 cups flour, sifted
.5 tsp baking powder
.5 tsp baking soda
.5 tsp salt
1 tsp cloves
2 tsp cinnamon
.5 tsp black papper
1 cup blanked almonds, finely chopped
15 raisins, ground
2 T citron, ground
powdered sugar for rolling.

Beat eggs until thick and lemon colored. Add brown sugar and continue beating until mixture is thick. In a separate bowl, sift flour and baking powder, soda, salt cloves cinnamon and pepper. Add almonds, raisins and citron and stir only to coat. Pour the egg-sugar mixture into the flour mixture and stir to make dough. With floured hands, pinch off a teaspoonful of dough at a tim and roll into a ball. If dough is too sticky, chill for an hour. Put onto well greased baking sheet, leavbing 2 inch space between cookies to allow for spreading. bake in preheated 350 degree oven for 10-12 minutes or until cookies hold shape. Cookies should be moist inside because they dry with time. While still warm, roll in powdered surgar. When cool, store in airtight container.

Stollen

2 cup raisins
1/2 cup candied red cherries, halved
1/4 cup currants
1/4 cup candied citron, diced
1/4 cup rum
4 1/2 cup flour
2 yeast, active dry packages
1 cup milk
1/4 cup butter or margarine
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
2 eggs
1 tbsp. orange peel, finely shredded
2 tsp. lemon peel, finely shredded
1/2 cup almonds, blanched chopped

In a medium bowl combine raisins, cherries, currants, citron or citrus peel, and rum. Set aside. In a large mixer bowl combine 1-1/2 cups of the flour and yeast. Heat milk, butter, sugar and salt over low heat, stirring constantly until warm (120F to 130F).

Add to dry ingredients along with eggs and fruit peels. Beat at low speed of electric mixer for 1/2 minute, scraping sides of bowl. Beat 3 minutes at high speed. Stir in fruit-rum mixture, almonds and enough of the remaining flour to make a soft dough.

Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and knead in enough of the remaining flour to make a moderately soft dough that is smooth and elastic (5 to 6 minutes). Shape into a ball. Place in a greased bowl, turning once. Cover. Let rise until double (1 hour). Punch dough down. Divide in half. Cover and let rest 10 minutes.

On a lightly floured surface roll each half to a 10x8-inch oval. Fold lengthwise in half so the top half overlaps to within 1/2 inch
of the bottom half. Press folded edge firmly. Place about 4-inches apart on greased baking sheet. Cover and let rise until
double (45 minutes). Bake at 200 degrees Celsius for 15 to 20 minutes or until golden brown. Cool. Serve sprinkled with powdered sugar or spread with Confectioners' Glaze and decorate with candied cherries. Makes 2 loaves.

CONFECTIONERS' GLAZE

Mix 1 cup sifted powdered sugar and 1 tablespoon milk. Add more milk, 1/2 teaspoon at a time, until spreading consistency.

New Object

2010-11-29T22:14:00.000-08:00

For the final, I had to pick a 'new' object. To save some of my precious sanity, I am substituting a stuffed cat for a stuffed tiger. I attempted to find another stuffed tiger or stuffed wild cat, but unfortunately the only one I know of resides in Ohio.

So here we go. My new object, a Beanie Baby Ty Classic plush cat from 2003.

This a stuffed animal I own and was closest to all the research I had already done on the Beanie Buddy tiger I used for other posts. Officially named 'Chica', my sixteen year old self renamed it 'meow-kitty' potentially due to sleep deprivation or a desire to avoid homework by reverting back to my six year old self. This stuffed animal was one of two Beanie cats received as a gift. I had them in my room at college. Its matted fur now resulting in a pirate eye is the result of a vase full of water falling on my bed/desk/room freshman year and thus leading to a trip through the dryer.

I would be a bad candidate for the First Person Arts for I tell less-than-invigorating stories about my objects.

I also apologize for the poor photography present in this post. Between the disembodied hand and strange macbook induced lighting it looks much more threatening that I desired.

Exhibit Review

2010-11-17T07:57:00.001-08:00

First Person Museum, Vicki Solot, director; Temple University History Graduate Students, historians; The Painted Bride Art Center Philadelphia, exhibit space; 5 November -18 December 2010.

The First Person Museum is part of a larger concept called “First Person Arts” developed by Vicky Solot with the help of a small Pew Innovation Grant. The mission of First Person Arts is to transform “the drama of real life into memoir and documentary art to foster appreciation for
our unique and shared experience.”[1] From this goal, Solot produced the idea for a museum. The museum highlights sixteen stories and objects, chosen from a larger group of sixty stories shared by community group members in Philadelphia within the First Person Arts mission. The exhibit is formulated around five goals, which desire the visitor to understand the value people place on objects, the cultural and societal context that influence their meaning of the objects and respond emotionally to them and their own objects.

The objects belong to Philadelphians of all classes, races, genders and ages, and the audience is similarly diverse, from young children to senior citizens, coming the middle class neighborhood surrounding the museum as well as the rest of Philadelphia. The exhibit has been well attended, demonstrated by the seventy visitors in one hour on a Friday evening. Each of the sixteen objects is displayed in a semi-domestic space—a ring on a table, a stuffed animal on a rocking chair. With the objects is a caption entitled “A Bit of History” which tells the history of the object or object category e.g., “About Stuffed Animals” for a Stuffed Tiger. For each object, the visitor can experience the story that goes with it. Some stories are told through text panels, others listened through headphones, and some seen through short films. Photographs of the owner surround the object, caption or story. Visitors can add their own story by filling out small cards and posting them on tack boards. For the participants who shared their stories but whose objects were not showcased, one-sentence stories accompanied by a photograph are in a separate room.

The exhibit successfully fulfills its goals—visitors engage the objects, enjoy the stories and can be heard discussing their own objects in relation to what they see in the exhibit. Part of the success is the variety available in the exhibit. The captions are large and colorful; the photographs of the owners often express different emotions than found in the story. Instead of reading all the stories, one can hear the voice of the owner, or see how they interact with the object on film. The furniture nods to the idea domestic space without creating an in-situ experience. Museums can often feel sterile, void of significant color and full of tiny text panels—the First Person Museum however creates an approachable and colorful environment where conversation is desired and not to be left outside. In some cases the space could be more fully used, incorporating the main objects all in one room rather than separated to ensure equal viewing and fill in dead space. If the museum were performed on a larger scale, issues would arise with the spoken stories (only one headset), however with the flow and numbers in this case, it did not appear to be a problem.

This exhibit stresses that multiple approaches retain visitor attention. While the space is cohesive through its furniture and general set up, the exhibit maintains variety in order to veer away from a fully text display. Mixing text, audio, video and photos keeps the objects from becoming repetitive, and prevents reader fatigue. More importantly the mix of emotions found in this varied approach, whether in the stories, photographs or captions, similarly attracts the attention of the visitor and keeps them engaged.

The presentation of the museum was in some ways experimental, and it was at first difficult to imagine how a museum about personal objects could be a history museum. However these very personal stories produce a discourse on issues of memory and value and a broader culture and society commentary. While the object stories discuss very personal matters, their histories explored broader themes and prompted discussion of current topics such as marriage, citizenship, deviance and immigration. These histories encourage visitors to think about seemingly over-politicized or dry topics through different avenues and introducing a more comfortable way through which to engage history, and the culture and society around them—their own stuff. One of the objects, Amy’s Birth Certificate, a German birth certificate for an American citizen born abroad, tackles issues of citizenship—how one proves their citizenship, and how is citizenship defined. It also can lead to discussion of post-WWII race relations in the United States, since race is absent on this certificate but would have been present on an American certificate. Of course this presentation, with the story informing the history and vice versa, there is a danger that the visitor may leave with a particularly one-sided understanding of a topic.

While not necessarily an in-depth discussion of any particular theme, period or topic, First Person Museum allows the visitor to engage many aspects of history without becoming overwhelmed by the topic. The exhibit largely avoids this problem. Since being overwhelmed by information is a common complaint from museum visitors, this exhibit piques interest in a variety of time periods and topics and attempts to tie them together through the shared space and experience of Philadelphia. In the end a visitor leaves the museum with a cursory understanding or potentially deeper interest in a variety of topics, as well as a more nuanced involvement with the city they live in or near. The sometime- shallow historical investigation prompted by this exhibit may concern some historians. It is a legitimate concern, however it appears that visitors exit this exhibit legitimately interested and involved with what they just viewed, rather than exhausted from text and overwhelmed by detail. Between this heightened level of interest and the approachability of the exhibit, the First Person Museum is an overall positive experience and effective exhibit that educates and engages the visitor.

[1] First Person Arts, www.firstpersonarts.org.

And the moment we've all been waiting for...

2010-10-11T12:46:00.000-07:00

Here are my captions!

About Ownership:

The Steiff Toy Company first mass-produced stuffed animals in the 1880s. Originally hand-stitched with plush mohair fur, they were expensive luxury items due to the cost of production. Today cheap synthetic materials and low overseas production costs make stuffed animals an inexpensive and thus common possession for children and adults.

About Personification:

Despite being inanimate objects people ascribe human characterizes onto stuffed animals. They are given names, personalities and emotions. Tigger (Winnie the Pooh) and Hobbes (Calvin and Hobbes) are two popular examples of such personification. Through these human characteristics stuffed animals become sources of emotional expression and comfort for their owners.

About Nostalgia:

People of varying ages identify strongly with the stories in The Velveteen Rabbit and Toy Story because stuffed animals play important roles throughout our lives. They are sources of comfort and entertainment as children, remind us of home when in college and prompt familiar and pleasant memories as adults.

About Stuffed Tigers:

From Tigger in Winnie the Pooh to Calvin’s philosophical pal Hobbes in Bill Watterson’s famous comic strip, stuffed tigers are familiar figures in American culture. Building on this familiarity and popularity, the World Wildlife Fund sells plush tigers to promote education and activism regarding the dangers of poaching endangered wildlife.

About Function:

In addition to being toys, stuffed animals function as promotional and collector’s items and expressions of trauma and support. The Ty Beanie Baby Company produces animals in honor of Princess Diana, for the World Cup, to promote cancer research and Teenie Beanies, a collectible set found in McDonald’s Happy Meals

Happy decision making!

Sources:

Andrew Christie (January 1987). "An Interview With Bill Watterson : The creator of Calvin and Hobbes on cartooning, syndicates, Garfield, Charles Schulz, and editors". Honk magazine.

Deborah Jaffe, The History of Toys: From Spinning Tops to Robots, Thrupp, UK: Sutton Publishing Limited, 2006.

Official Steiff Website

Complete List of Beanie Babies. http://www.aboutbeanies.com/beaniebabies.html

A.A Milne, The Winnie the Pooh

Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes

Hampshire Museum Services, http://www3.hants.gov.uk/museum/childhood-collections/toys/dolls-soft-toys.htm

The Victoria and Albert Museum of Childhood, http://www.vam.ac.uk/moc/

World Wildlife Fund, http://www.worldwildlife.org/ogc/species_SKU.cfm?cqs=CTTG

Museum Design: aka how to have too much fun with floor plans

2010-09-28T14:47:00.000-07:00

This week's assignment grew far bigger than it probably should have. But it did lead to some fun conversations with visitors at work who wondered why I was furiously drawing and sketching floor plans.
I apologize for the weird formatting this week. Not sure what happened, but the spacing is seriously out of whack and if there are random symbols, I promise I did not mean for them to be there.

For my museums plans, I used the objects and general concept of First Person Arts as we know it, including the number of objects. The big differences: unlimited quantities of money and an altered theme statement. I threw in some influences of my park interp training, and pulled some aspects of Interpretive Service Plans to organize the first step.

Step #1: Mission Statement, Take-Home Messages, and Storyline

Theme Statement: Objects serve practical functions in our lives. They also represent memories and feelings upon which we organize our homes, relationships and cultural understanding. Due to the meanings we find in and ascribe upon objects, each represents a story.

Goals: What you hope to accomplish with the presentation

Present an understanding that we organize our lives with objects
To describe what purposes objects fill in our lives.
To inform people of the origins of every day objects
To gain a deeper understanding of our culture as one of materials and objects

Objectives: Measurable accomplishments

At the end of the program the visitor will be able to:

Name Three stories they heard
Identity two modes of organization of objects
Explain the function and production of one of the objects and the importance there of.
Tell us about an object they organize their lives around

Step #2: "Galleries of Thought"/Step #3: Inventory & Facts

So, with those goals and themes in mind, I separated the objects into spaces, or modes of organization: Objects of Home, Objects of Comfort, Objects of Memory and Objects of Adventure (in that order for a specific reason). I am aware that these categories are extremely flexible but go with me here. The objects in these categories are:

Home: Birth Certificate, Pan, Wall Hanging and Painting.

Comfort: Tiger, Rhino, Shawl, Dolls

Memory: sock, wedding ring, boxers, wedding ring

Adventure: Passport, map, fishing license, pen.

Steps #4: Motivate & Engage Visitors

Main concerns for set up: Traffic Flow and access to objects and story at same time without too much reading. I did not want the objects to sit in a made up trying-hard-to-look-like home atmosphere, rather aspects that hinted at context without pretending they were there.

Getting the Stories: Visitors get headphones at the front desk to listen to stories, with numbers at each object to prompt story.
Understanding the spaces: Longer text panel introduces the whole exhibit, giving people an object such as a hair brush or other ordinary thing to look at and asking them to think of what they do with it, where it sits in their house and then delving into a short discussion of the theme. Each room would have a short introductory panel.

Step #5 Create the Look & Feel
Engaging the objects: Each room has four objects and one more interactive experience, either something to touch (a sample of fabric from one of the objects), a short film about production of the object, or how people use it in other cultures. Each object would have a short description a la what we are doing (got to make us relevant in this experience). Each object would be on display in some sort of case that allows the visitor to see the object from all around. On the walls there would be pictures of the object in the context of its story potentially with its owner, then a picture of it in another context (manufacture, store, another culture) and proper signage. Visitors can more fully understand the origins, purpose AND emotional meaning of the object from the mixed approaches of visual, text, photos, and tactile interaction. Visitors retain much more when they they observe and touch, than when they read and are spoken to.
Engaging the Space: There would be plenty of places to sit (including a rocking chair in the 'home' section and a bean bag chair in the 'comfort' section). Other small things include obviously placed bathrooms and offices for the staff so they don't mutiny. If I was better with the program, I would have changed the colors of the rooms (Home: yellow, Comfort: beige, Memory: blue, Adventure: green) because people associate colors with feelings, places and objects. And making every room white is just boring. Lights would be of a lower, softer voltage, set on walls rather than the ceiling to avoid the feeling of being in a hospital.There would be a more interactive section at the end where people could share their own stories, react to other objects, try making objects. Revenue could be made off of a catalog, photos, or discs of the stories. Limited, straight forward merchandise.

And after wrestling with Floorplanner for a few hours, this is what I came up with for the set up of the museum. I have put a variety of objects in place of display cases (lamps, book cases) and info panels (screens) and it seems my walls have some trouble.

Not the best screen shot, but you get the point. The squiggly things are intro panels. Imagine the square, round and multi colored things are varying types of display cases which can either hold just the object, or the object and pictures. The triangular objects would be more interactive displays with videos, touchable objects, other questions.
Before class tomorrow I will include a mock up drawing of a display. However, technology is not cooperating at the moment and I wish to put this out before midnight.

Cultural and Social Context

2010-09-21T12:14:00.000-07:00

First off, a note of celebration. I have a picture of my object! whoo. However, I do not yet have clearance to post the photos and I was not bored enough at work this weekend to draw a picture. Granted, now that I have a picture I must re-do my first and sort of re-do my second blog post. Alas. But what is grad school without challenges? So in this week's installment of let's talk about a stuffed tiger, we discuss cultural and societal context. This particular tiger, admittedly, has little social or cultural context. In fact, if most people saw him they wouldn't think very much, or would construct a story about who it belonged to (probably a small child) and what its purpose was (comfort). They'd be sort of right. In order to actually get something out of this post, I will once again be broadening the subject to stuffed animals in general, and point of some specific tigers in the process.

Cultural Social Context of Stuffed Tigers/Animals:

Original design Tigger at left.

America, surprisingly enough, has a handful of stuffed tigers that function as pervasive cultural references. Two feature prominently in my blog title: Tigger and Hobbes. Tigger is the rambunctious pal of Winnie the Pooh (who much to my five year old self's annoyance is a constantly plague to Eeyore). Tigger in plush form takes two styles, that of the original A.A. Milne design and the more cultural pervasive image produced by Disney. Tigger is well known in America and England among both children and adults, even if they have not read the Winnie the Pooh stories or seen the television show.

Hobbes is in some ways, arguably less well known. Since Bill Watterson's comic strip ended in 1995, Calvin and his anthropomorphized tiger pal Hobbes are increasing less recognized by people under the age of 12.* Hobbes, who appears as a stuffed animal to all other characters, comes to life when accompanied by his owner Calvin. He serves often as Calvin's voice of reason and is up to frighten Calvin with a good pounce. Hobbes often waxes lyrical about humanity, life and other philosophical subjects. Both tigers who are stuffed animals to one set of viewers but talking, responsive characters to others allow the creators to play with understanding of childhood versus adulthood, the role of toys in a persons life and influences of ones imagination. In an interview with Honk Magazine in 1987 Watterson noted "'When Hobbes is a stuffed toy in one panel and alive in the next, I'm juxtaposing the 'grown-up' version of reality with Calvin's version, and inviting the reader to decide which is truer'", noting the flexibility of signifiers of age.

Stuffed animals in general also function as a shared experience in society. As exhibited by the popularity of and emotional response illicited across the population by the story The Velveteen Rabit and the Toy Story movies, stuffed animals play an important and recognizable role in our society, whether we are willing to admit it or not (returning to the conflict of childhood vs. adulthood). They symbolize traumatic events (the Oklahoma City bombings, the death of Princess Diana, for example), comfort and a myriad of other emotions, demonstrated by the ability to buy a stuffed animal for any event, their display smartly placed right next to the greeting cards in most drug stores. In other cultures, specifically in China and India, stuffed tigers can be representations of gods, faith and power and are presented as ceremonial and celebratory gifts.

For the rest of this post, I am going to indulge myself and post some Calvin and Hobbes strips.

*Cultural understanding gauged on an oh-so-scientific study done on the poor visitors at work who are increasingly my public history guinea pigs.

Object History: Stuffed Animals

2010-09-14T11:26:00.000-07:00

Once again, this post comes with a preface: I (still) have not seen my object in any way. So, we will be continuing this experiment with the tiger described in the last post, India, the 2001 Ty Beanie Buddy.

It has been surprisingly difficult compiling the history of the 'stuffed animal'. Semantic issues caused a lot of searches to end in detailed descriptions of taxiderm-ied wildlife. Most commonly, my attempts at determining the history of 'stuffed animals' (as opposed to stuffed toys, which could mean dolls, puppets, plant life, etc) have led to histories of the teddy bear. Changing my search terms to include 'plush animals' helped greatly. This blog will essentially have two parts. First the history of this particular tiger, then a longer history of stuffed animals after the jump.

History of "India" the Tiger:
India began its life in China as one of hundreds of hand/machine sewn, synthetic fabric construction Beanie Buddies marketed towards children in 2001. India is a part of the Ty Beanie Baby empire which began producing small, bean and fiber-filled stuffed animals in the late 1980s. India's sub category was never quite so popular as the original Beanie Baby, and almost entirely purchased by or for children and adolescents as a comforting toy, not as a collector's item. India was then shipped to the United States and sold in a variety of stores including drug stores, toy stores and gift shops. The stuffed animal could have sat in a variety of warehouses and shelves between the time of production and time of purchase. India the tiger is a not a rare stuffed animal, but is very important to Leyla.
This particular tiger stuffed animal was purchased in the United States in 2001 and given to Leyla in the same year by her Aunt and Uncle to serve as source of comfort in a complicated transitional time in her life. She was 16 at the time. While I am not positive, Leyla seems to be the tiger's first and only owner. The tiger has been re-moniker-ed as Mr. Pugsley, gendered male and been attributed meaning by Leyla, who now sees him as a type of companion. He has traveled across the globe over the last nine years, going to LA, Philly and Ireland. He occasionally takes some jaunts through the washing machine, and sometimes finds himself as a pillow for he 'lives' in Leyla's bed. He has had the life of a favorite stuffed animal and Leyla describes him as somewhat mis-shapen and smushed due to his occasional use as a pillow. Mr. Pugsley could probably tell a pretty specific and substantial story of Leyla's life for he seems to have followed her everywhere throughout the last nine years of her life.

Ultimately, stuffed/plush animals are children's toys meant to comfort and with which to play. Where they were produced, what they are made out of or the number produced weighs little on the security (and anxiety when lost) they can provide to a child. Many of these toys given or purchased in childhood, much like Mr. Pugsley, follow us into adulthood, sit in our rooms at college, and continue to serve as sources of comfort, security and a reminder of specific moments in our lives.

Follow the link for History of Plush Animals:

The most concrete references at the moment (Inter-library loan has some of the seemingly better sources floating in library limbo currently) note that what we consider to be stuffed animals were, starting in the mid 19th century, marketed as plush animals. The term plush is derived from the material used for creating the pelts of these toys, or their outer shells. Plush is particular type of animal fiber known for its velvet-like feel. It is typically made from the fleece of Angoran goats and is more commonly known as Mohair. Plush, according to the Steiff Toy Company, can be either knitted or woven. Knitted plush is much cheaper to produce, while woven plush requires more manual labor and is thus more expensive. According to the Victoria and Albert Museum website for their children's museum, early plush animals were filled with fine wood shavings known as wool wood and sewn, however the filling overtime was replaced with a fine silk-like plant fiber called kapok.

As a marketable entity, plush animals appear on the world scene in the late 19th century. Steiff, the famous German toy company, claims to be the world's oldest manufacturer of plush toys. Founded in 1880 by Margaret Steiff, a seamstress, the company to today produces high quality plush toys for both children and collectors. These toys are handmade with natural fibers, which accounts for their high cost.. English manufacturers began producing plush animals for public consumption as well, and flourished during WWI due to the ban on German goods. Hampshire Museum Services in England notes that domestic animals such as cats and dogs were the most popular of the plush animals, but exotic animals such as monkeys and elephants were also commonly purchased. These animals were mostly produced for children as comforting toys. However, Steiff in particular produces lines of their animals specifically as collector's items, made of more fragile materials not meant for the often hard life experienced by a child's favorite plush animal.

During the inter-war years and during WWII, plush animal production diminished due to rationing and lack of materials. Looking at the Sears Roebuck Christmas Catalogs from those years also shows that dolls of various forms were increasingly popular over plush animals. Plush animals became stuffed animals after WWII, as plush was very expensive to produce in comparison to polyester, rayon, nylon and plastic accouterments. American factory production increased over these decades as well, and today most stuffed animals are made of cheap synthetic materials. Most plush toys made by American companies are put together overseas in China, Indonesia and Taiwan, through inexpensive hand sewn and machine sewn production. The production process has however also been brought to the consumer. The Build-a-Bear company has would-be stuffed animal owners stuff, sew and 'manufacture' their own animal from prefabricated shells.

Beanie Baby Info found at http://www.aboutbeanies.com/timeline.html.

Leyla's stuffed tiger.

2010-09-07T12:41:00.000-07:00

I must preface this assignment. I have not seen this object in any way shape or form-not in person, not a picture. I have a very short description of the circumstances surrounding the 'life' of this plush tiger from which I can extract when it was purchased and potentially the city in which it was bought. In order to complete this first assignment, I have located a plush tiger which was purchasable in 2001 throughout the United States. This tiger has been a friend to a woman for the last nine years, a gift from relatives when Leyla moved in with them at the age of 16. Best described as her 'favorite' stuffed animal, this tiger has traveled the country and serves the purpose of a well loved companion.

After searches through Google, Amazon and E-bay, the most commonly available tiger in 2001 seems to be the Ty Beanie Buddies Tiger named India. This is the plush animal I will be describing for the purposes of this assignment, and which most fits the 'small and round' description I have of the tiger. Of course, this is simply an assumption. Having been the recipient of many a stuffed animal over my life time, I know that the most 'commonly available' item is not what is given as a sentimental gift.

"India" is a plush tiger toy produced by Ty Inc, the maker of Beanie Babies, in 2001. First produced in April 2001, the design was subsequently "retired" (Ty's euphemism for ending production) at the end of the year. It was made in China and cost approximately $11.00 to purchase in 2001. Today the average price on Amazon.com is $15.00, according to this listing. This plush tiger measures 15 inches long, excluding the tail, and about 5 inches wide. It weighs approximately 11 ounces and is made of man-made materials including a very soft, fuzzy tylon/nylon pelt, polyester stuffing and P.E. pellets acting at the 'beanie' part of the toy, as stated on the toy's fabric tag. For lack of a better term, this animal is 'smushy', having some ability to hold a sitting position, but is still floppy.* The toy has standard tiger coloration and pattern, with an orange pelt with black vertical stripes and white underbelly, muzzle and inner ears. Its eyes and nose are hard plastic. It appears to be a mix of machine and hand stitching.

Like all Ty produced animals, India has a red heart shaped cardboard hang tag from the right ear, which states the animals given name, production details/style number (09406), age recommendation and a small descriptive poem. India's poem states, according to Stashmatic.com, a collecting website, "India the Beanie Baby/is one of only three tiger styles/ever created".

*Fabric and 'feel' descriptions based on the blog writer's similarly sized Beanie Buddy cat stuffed animal purchased around 2003.

Switching things around, once again

2010-09-03T11:42:00.000-07:00

A new semester seems to mean a new subject for this dear blog.

Philadelphia has been quite hot this summer and limited how much I have baked and cooked. The most exciting thing I concocted was some tomato sauce with my some tomatoes from my garden and some peppers from my neighbor's. Soon it will also be pflaumkuchen season, but that will have to wait.

For the next few months this blog and I will spend some quality time getting to know a plush tiger.

I am quite taken with this project for my Studies in American Material Culture for my graduate work at Temple University. We are doing project with First Person Arts (link to the left) through the Painted Bride Art Center in Philadelphia. People from the area are providing an object-something loved, something with a story, something perhaps old, new or unfinished, and providing the stories that go with them. Our job is to provide the history of that object, cultural, political or otherwise. After spending the summer picking the brains of the archeologists behind Washington's Headquarters, I have found the art of finding out what that 'thing' is to be quite intriguing. Less academically minded, the idea of spending an entire semester talking about a stuffed tiger warms my plush animal loving heart.

So whether the semester brings me a Tigger, a Hobbes or any other variety of less well known tigers, I am sure I'll enjoy it in one way or another.

Baumkuchen!

2010-04-26T20:48:00.000-07:00

I have negelected this blog, I apologize. I just haven't really gotten any time to cook anything fun lately! School has been disgustingly overwhelming lately and just has not left time for slaving over a stove or oven. Except for last night when I decided instead of working on my urban historiography, I would make baumkuchen. I was originally going to make it for my German nationalism class, but they don't deserve it as much as my urban class did.

I was hoping that making Baumkuchen would put me in the mood to read a lot of books about culture politics in the GDR (I don't think it worked). However, it did challenge my culinary skills. Baukuchen (literally "tree cake" for the layers it makes when cut) is a German holiday cake that is traditionally cooked over an open fire on a turning spit. I do have the ability for an open fire but not a spit, so I went the cheating way and did it under the broiler. Because it is not built over a stick, it does not make such nice tree-esque rings, but it still shows all the layers.

As I found out this is an EXTREMELY time consuming process. I worked on it for 3 hours! But it seemed to be worth it since it was all consumed in class today (possibly aided by the glorious beer provided by another classmate). I think I was less enthusiastic about it than I am about most of my cooking, simply because after three hours the smell was getting to me. It was still tasty anyway.

So this is how it begins:

12 eggs!

Follow the link for more!

Because this recipe required so much attention to detail, I did not get many pictures, but I tried.

Separating that many eggs was interesting! I only messed up on the very last one but still managed to get the yolk out of the whites, which are set aside for later. There is no baking powder or leavening agent in this cake so the highly beaten egg yolks and egg whites provide the slight rise and spongeiness found in the layers.

Meringues! Pretty much

Mixing them in...

Making the layers

Making the layers was by far the most time consuming, and painful, part. It requires taking 1/3cup of batter and making a very thin layer, putting it under the broiler while turning it for even browning, then taking it out and repeating the process. It probably took about 1.5 hours to do about 18 layers. It also involves having most of your arms in the oven for that whole time. It was toasty.

Chocolatey goodness.

Once it was cooled though, it required jam and chocolate. I used my first double boiler! It worked much better than my last try to melt chocolate in the microwave where I just ended up with burnt chocolate chips. This was a vast improvement.

Pour everything on, apricot first, then chocolate. I used too much chocolate and it took a long time to harden, so I suggest using only half a bag.

And Done!

Recipe:
I upped everything by a quarter because I wanted to make sure to be able to feed 16 people. Keeping it the original measurements would have easily finished a 12" pan which cuts about 20 1"x2" pieces.
10 egg yolks

3/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 tsp. finely shredded lemon peel
1 TSP. VANILLA extract

1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup cornstarch
1/4 tsp. salt

10 egg whites
1/4 cup granulated sugar

One jar apricot jam

1/2 bag semi sweet chocolate chips

In small mixer bowl beat egg yolks at high speed on electric mixer till thick and lemon colored, about 10 minutes; set aside. In large mixer bowl beat butter till light and fluffy; gradually beat in the3/4 cup sugar. Add lemon peel and vanilla. Beat in egg yolk mixture. In large mixing bowl stir together flour, cornstarch, and salt; stir in butter-egg mixture. Wash beaters and the large mixing bowl thoroughly. In large mixing bowl beat egg whites to soft peaks (tips curl over); gradually add the 1/4 cup sugar, beating to stiff peaks (tips stand straight). Fold into egg yolk batter.
Grease an 8-inch springform pan. Spread 1/3 cup of the batter evenly in the bottom of the pan. Place under broiler 5 inches from heat and broil about 1 minute or till top is light brown (it may be necessary to give pan a half turn for even browning). Do not overbrown. Remove from broiler. Spread another 1/3 cup batter on top of the first layer. Broil as before, turning as necessary, for even browness. Repeat spreading batter and broiling to make 15 to 17 layers in all. Cool in pan 10 minutes. Loosen cake and remove sides of pan; cool completely.

Melt apricot jam over low heat. While that melts, start melting chocolate in either microwave or double boiler. I prefer double boiler because it allows for more control. Melt your chocolate, adding milk or oil if you feel it needs to be thinner.

Once jam is melted, spread a layer over the top and sides of cake. Allow to cook a little. Cover with chocolate and 'frost' with chocolate. Allow chocolate to harden.

Bacon!

2010-03-05T16:01:00.000-08:00

So, in keeping with the title of this blog, I made something with bacon today! It wasn't bacon wrapped, but there was indeed bacon involved. I don't get to eat bacon all that often. Especially not real bacon with nitrites and pork and all that good tasty stuff. Despite being a good German household that eats all sorts of pork product (there was even blood pudding in the fridge a couple weeks ago...I did not partake), bacon is not in our house all that often. If ever.

Since it is "Spring Break" I am not in as great of a wide eyed panic to get my reading and writing done I have been taking the time to knit, cook real dinners and actually think about my dissertation topic (Channeling Craig Ferguson: I know!). However, I will save the waxing lyrical about representation of communism in Berlin's neighborhood architectural changes since 1990 for another day. And what a fun day that will be.

Speaking of things German and my domestic endeavors, I made spaghetti carbonara for dinner. Yes, you are currently going 'but that's not german, that's italian!' I'm aware, I'm aware. However, the first time I ever had Spaghetti Carbonara it was made by a German, in a freezing little flat somewhere in Edinburgh. It was absolutely delightful, and when I returned to Berlin I found those little Knor packets that let you make complex dishes without actually having culinary talents. So for many a meal while in Berlin, I made spaghetti Carbonara.

I have since then been lazy and just keep making the packets when I want it, mainly due to a significant fear of tempering eggs. Tempering eggs allows you to cook the eggs and include them in a sauce without the egg scrambling (think hollandaise). I figured I would just fail at this miserably and end up either either with salmonella or with scrambled eggs. Today, however, I conquered egg tempering.

(Recipe taken from The Food Network. I only had three eggs, so I added some cream to make them go further. I also used 1.5 cups cheese, well, because I love cheese)

Pictures after the cut...

I love Bacon.

This was very stubborn pasta. Took forever to cook.

Pasta in the pan with the cooked bacon and the garlic, some of the bacon grease and black pepper. Right before eggs.

And Success!

Om nom nom.

I made asparagus to go with it, mainly because it was on sale (99 cents per bundle!). It turned out well, but I think I should have used a bit more cheese, or perhaps not the cheap kind. It just needed a little bit more kick of parm. I am still please by my ability to not make it into scrambled eggs with bacon and pasta.

That is all for now I suppose. Time for Jeopardy and reading American Babylon by Robert Self.

Snow=baking

2010-02-10T20:38:00.000-08:00

So, for those of you not on the east coast, particularly those not in the DC/Philly area, it snowed. Twice. With many inches each time. Now, I should be taking these no class, not going anywhere, no errands to run days to complete the six books I have to read before wednesday (and I'm not even behind!), but instead I have made a tiny snow man, shoveled twice read a book and of course, baked.

Saturday (the first snow storm) my baking endeavors were quite dull, simply a box of brownies with vanilla buttercream. I'm not sure why I will bake from scratch almost everything...but brownies. They aren't hard or complicated. I just can't seem to get them to taste like Betty Crocker.
When it snows my neighbors get bored and thus throw parties, so they got enjoyed by my neighborhood.

Believe it or not I put marshmallows in those. Probably about a cup of mini marshmallows went into the batter. When they were done and I cut them up, the marshmallows were gone. I'm assuming chemistry got the better of me, but still, where did all the marshmallows go?

Today I was slightly more adventurous. When they forcasted another close to two feet of snow, I went searching for a recipe worthy of a snowy day stuck inside and Caramel Banana Bundt Cake came up.
I like bananas, I like caramel. Bryn Mawr made (or bought, I was never really sure) a really tasty caramel banana cake that came around once in the six week menu rotation. Even if I wasn't planning on going to dinner or if I had work that night and wasn't going to get dining hall food, I made sure to go and get that cake. So, I figured this would be a close homemade substitute.

So, after consulting The Crepes of Wrath, I went to town on making said cake.

The cake part went well. I'm good at cakes. Not too pretty oven shot:

Then came the caramel part. The last time I made caramel I was probably about 13 years old and at the shore house of a friend. I decided I was going to make caramel apple tarts. After three failed attempts at caramel making, the friend's husband Dave had to make it for me. I have not since tried to make caramel. But I'm older, wiser and better with a stove, so it was time to try again.

This time was slightly more successful. The caramel was fine, quite tasty, but I reduced it to be fairly thick. The recipe calls for poking holes in the bottom of the cake and pouring the caramel so that it seeps into the cake (kind of like a tres leches cake). Not being amazingly good at the cause and effect part of life, the caramel kind of sat on the top, and not so much seeping into the cake.

Whoops:

In the end, it came out looking kind of odd (the glaze was kind of runny and well...left much to the imagination) but it tasted wonderful. The bottom with the caramel tasted very nutty and rich while the top with the thin yogurt banana glaze was very light and fruity

Recipe at The Crepes of Wrath. She did a lot of things I didn't. I used vanilla yogurt, no butterscotch chips and I used the remaining vanilla yogurt, half a banana and some powdered sugar to make a little glaze.

I suppose now I should get some more reading done. Celia Applegate and her A Nation of Provincials is up next.

Mr. Snowman says hi. He got buried under the extra eight inches of snow we got between his creation and the second go at shoveling. He is unburied and back to greeting you at the front steps.

Switching things around

2010-01-24T10:55:00.000-08:00

So, since our public history class has ended, I've decided to change things up a smidgen to better fit my current blogging needs.

I'm a procrasti-baker. When I don't want to do my school work or more often when I have finished a whole bunch of reading or a long paper, I bake. Recently this has expanded and I've been cooking more. In college the lack of an accessible oven really did me in as far as culinary exploration as tied to not doing school work, however, since grad school=kitchen, I have been cooking a lot more lately and documenting it. Facebook just isn't cutting it for my food posting needs, so this blog has become a place to talk about my research or historical musings...and the baking/cooking I do when I want to avoiding said research.

Oddly enough, I rarely actually eat what I make. Maybe one cookie, a piece of cake, a sample of dinner, but I am not the main consumer of these edibles. Possibly a self induced desire not to weigh 400 pounds, and possibly a desire to not see another pork chop.

So, to begin this fun times, we're going back to Thanksgiving. Pumpkin Cookies with Cream Cheese Frosting. I was on a big pumpkin kick for a while, which included an amazing spicy pumpkin soup.

Not necessarily the best looking cookies, but tasty nonetheless. These turned out surprisingly well since I was cooking in a friends kitchen in which she didn't have measuring spoons, baking powder (this was remedied), or any form of mixer/whisk. It turned out fine however.

The recipe is here. I did not add raisins or walnuts, and made a simple cream cheese frosting instead of the icing they state. With a mixer and proper ingredients, these are a pretty speedy dish.

I suppose that is all for now, just introducing the new direction for the blog.

And we're back!

2010-01-15T19:04:00.001-08:00

So, after a bit of a hiatus from deep thought (my brain somewhat fizzled after finals, but it's all good now), I figured this blog is a useful thing to continue with.

My winter breaks tend to mean a few things: I ever so briefly join the cult of domesticity (baking, cooking, knitting, cleaning, organizing-generally being a richtig gut Hausfrau), I do all the cultural things I have missed out on (museum visits), and I hear from my lovely vermieterin in Berlin.

I spent August through December of 2007 living and studying in Berlin. While there I stayed with this absolutely fascinating woman, Helga, who was my vermieterin. While coldly defined at 'landlord', I use it as a particularly warm term. She tolerated my initially pitifully slow and poorly pronounced German and is more responsible for my current fluency than anything else. In exchange I beat her one temperature of burning oven into submission to make thanksgiving dinner (thanks KaDeWe for imported American food, including cranberry sauce in a can!), and introduced her to my version of homemade mac and cheese. She spoke little to no English, but wanted to learn some. I mainly enjoyed trying to get her to say 'squirrel'. It was not a rousing success.

Helga has lived in east/East Berlin all her life. She has worked for the government in its various forms over the years and now works as an adviser for Die Linke and the Berlin Parliament. Our apartment was in a unique neighborhood in Berlin, Prenzlauerberg. Originally the section of the city for the laboring population, in the 1980s it was a focal point of action against the GDR's policies. Now it's a strange mix of hippies, yuppies that used to be hippies, their young children...and Helga. This is where we lived:

44 Oderberger Straße. WWII bullet holes and all. I lived on the 5th floor. Excellent exercise, but annoying with a weeks worth of groceries. The cafe sold waffles and ice cream and the whole building smelled of it all day long (believe it or not, I never did get a waffle, something to do when I get back!). It was one of two on the street that had not been renovated. I often had to get through city bike/walking tours to get inside. These tours would narrate the horrors of living in the GDR and the typical lives of their citizens, as though my poor little apartment building embodied all that was evil/downtrodden/totalitarian/oppressive in the East German regime. I normally rolled my eyes and trudged up the stairs to an apartment that would make Erich Honecker wrinkle his nose.

In this year's Christmas greetings, Helga informed me that the apartment building was being modernized. I am deeply saddened by this news. Buildings tell a lot of history, and the buildings a city chooses to keep or destroy mirrors the history that they choose to keep or destroy. Berlin is constantly revising its history based on the buildings it choses to keep, alter, renovate or destroy. In the case of 44 Oderberger, there are a lot of stories getting lost with a modernization.

Histories found in a building scarred by Berlin's traumatic 20th century. This 1989 photo shows a building that witnessed the grassroots beginnings to the civilian upheaval which brought down the wall. Even if the bike tours made it exemplify the more difficult parts of life in the GDR, it still told a history, specifically that of the GDR, a history with which Berlin has a particularly tenuous relationship.
I fear in many ways Berlin is trying to compartmentalize its traumatic past. There is the Topography of Terror, a fenced outdoor museum about the horrors of Nazi aggression. You have Hoheschönhausen, another fenced museum about the terrors of the Stasi. You have Bernauer Strasse, a once again fenced off reminder of the Wall. These boxed reminders tell of a traumatic collective experience while the rest of the city's history and memory becomes a gentrified revision of 1871. These fenced areas of remembrance push lots of stories and lots of history into one space, a place where people can go 'yes, this happened, it was traumatic, we should remember and learn' while history, events that happened to these people on these streets in these buildlings, dissappears from everywhere else. It's clean, it's distant, it's divorced. Should history be something we can walk away from? Bits and pieces chosen, boxed and revisited when we feel like it?

Berlin understands using space and place to tell history. I am just afraid of which spaces are being used and which history is being told, or more worryingly, being silenced.

Website Review: The Lower Merion Historical Society

2009-11-22T18:59:00.000-08:00

The Lower Merion Historical Society. https://www.lowermerionhistory.org, The Lower Merion Historical Society. November 2009.

The Lower Merion Historical Society aims to promote community involvement in the preservation of local cultural resources. Their website states this is accomplished “by stewardship of local history, education of the community, preservation of historic resources and outreach to promote awareness of the cultural heritage of the Township of Lower Merion.” The Society's website is divided into two sections, one focusing on the society itself, the other on the collections and archives of the Society. As can be noted from the mission of the Society and the content of the site, the main audience is not the scholar or academic, rather the historically interested citizens of Lower Merion.
The site has a significant quantity of useful and relevant resources, particularly for those interested in family and area history. This includes artifact collections, collections of individuals, burial records, atlases, maps, historic photographs and significant Quaker collections. The photographs are digitized, but the rest of the collections are not, so searches of these collections provide identifying information such as call numbers and abstracts, but one must still go to the collections. For being directed at the amateur historian, the navigation of the site and research tools leave much to be desired. Despite sections entitled “How to Research” and “Search Tips”, the search interface is difficult to navigate even for a seasoned researcher, and the explanations are too long and too text driven. More concise and visually friendly directions (something other than blocks of black text on white backgrounds) would aid the user. The site could improve navigation to ensure a user's ability to return to the main page without having to retype the URL. The navigation is also not coherent. The site currently tells no distinct narrative nor promotes any particular interpretation of the area's past. A coherent narrative could introduce a user to the wide array of resources available and encourage involvement and preservation through increase historical engagement.
Despite these issues, the site provides access to intriguing and useful information. This is particularly true of the digitized photographs of mansions and architecture. A signficiant part of the society's site is dedicated to these themes (mansions are a significant part of Lower Merion's history) and its website is useful to research these structures and architects. It allows for quick access to photos and relevant information without having to pay the Society's librarian or make an appointment to pull the folio. This is particularly useful for the user with some interest in one particular place, but not necessarily a hobbyist invested in historical research of old homes.
While the site attempts to engage current issues through their online newsletter, the site lacks current historical civic engagement. There is no mention of big news items such as the recent destruction of an architecturally significant mansion in the area. The fight for this building and its destruction garnered significant press due to the society's involvement and the actions of Lower Merion preservationists, but is not included anywhere on the site. The Society could utilize these current events to bolster their mission of increased awareness of the township's resources. The Society has significant resources and their photography and map collections are impressive. These current events and photographs could be utilized in the design to create a cohesive narrative and entice casual users to do further research and engage history.

Readings, November 23

2009-11-21T18:59:00.000-08:00

I think this would have been a superb week to read Walter Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, particularly in relation to Rosenzweig and Cohen's thoughts on Exhibits and Film as made available through digital media (mainly the internet). Yes, access is truly a wonderful thing, but is viewing a online version of a museum exhibition about say, Gilbert Stuart’s 1796 portrait of George Washington (Portrait included) the same experience and does it garner the same 'take away' as going to actually stand in front of the portrait and the supporting artifacts and exhibit? Benjamin would naturally argue no. Rosenzweig and Cohen also agree that the internet is not a replacement for the real thing, but weigh the negatives of that against the positives of increased access. But can a person truly engage the exhibit in the way intended by viewing it online? Can you breech comfort and provoke through the controlled view of a computer screen? Will museum directors and museum design staff become moot players eventually as exhibits cease to be physical and just go online? Will people eventually give up on a museum and just go to their computer to experience an exhibit?

For the most part I appreciated Cohen and Rosenzweig's thoughts and analysis. However, for some sections (particularly those on creating, maintaining and backing up a site) I started to have flash backs to taking the GRE when they explained to you how to use a mouse and the up and down arrows. This, I suppose, does function as an example of how issues of digitization and digital media become out of date by the time you publish them.

Skipping back a paragraph, returning to the future of museums, I found the piece "Museums and Society 2034" fascinating and aggravating all at the same time. The point that struck me the most, possibly because I did all of the digital media reading first, was their discussion of media in the museum. They apparently do not believe museums will fall off the face of the earth, which is good, but they do believe they will become more media/digitally driven. This will be good for a society that is increasingly 'tech-y'. However, they miss the ever popular 'generation gap'. Despite feeling myself to be fairly technically savvy, it is entirely possible that when I am 60, I will be completely inept at using whatever the latest mechanical doohickey (technical, I know) the kids are writing their school work on. How will this translate to museums? If they are increasingly media and digitally driven, what generation's technical knowledge will they be catering to? Will parts of museums become inaccessible to a particular generation or group due to the technical constraints of the exhibit? (Throughout this entire article I waited for the phrase 'flying car' to get thrown around. Alas, it did not happen.)

And to make this completely lacking in any form of segue, a wee discussion of the two smaller articles, that about Haunted Mice and that about Internet as Civic Engagement. I liked both of these pieces, and think that they provide case studies about how the internet can be a really useful tool, for those both supernaturally inclined and community driven.

Readings for November 16

2009-11-13T10:50:00.001-08:00

This weeks readings were Angela Landsberg's Prosthetic Memory and Jay Winter's "The Generation of Memory: Reflections on the "Memory Boom" in Contemporary Historical Studies".

While at a GHI lecture ("Der DDR: Was Bleibt?") about a month ago, I realized how much easier it is to talk about History and Memory in German than it is English. German has such good words for memory and remembering. Much better than English. The 'memory boom' Jay Winter speaks to did not leave Germans in a frantic search for a term defining the memories of a group for which English tosses around collective memory and public memory at great debate. Groups, cultures and nations have Gedächtnis. People have Erinnerung. Memorials are Denkmäle. The words for groups remembering and the activities there in, such as memorials, are taken from the word 'to think' and not the word 'to remember'. I feel the challenge of learning how to differentiate these terms and their meanings was worth the depth the language can bring to discussing memory and history. As Winter stated, memories have come to be associated with trauma, the nation, its politics and identity. Germany has a traumatic past and particularly traumatic 20th century, encompassing 7 different political regimes, all of which people still (potentially, depending on life span) have living memory. Now that Germany is reunified, discussions of memory have intensified, particularly wondering how reunified Germany will remember its fragmented past (and present; ask any German, political unity does not mean unity in identities), made even more complicated by their role in the European Union.

I spent the entirety of last year reading Pierre Nora, Halbwachs and Aleida Assmann and Rolf Goeble (some among many) in an attempt to come to terms with how Berliners (and their memories) relate to their communist past. I wish I had read Landsberg's text last year while I spent hours wracking my brain trying to define the memories Berlin's have for a particulars buildings, despite having no living memory of them. I ultimately had no great moment of genius and that section got hacked out of my thesis. While her particular presentation reminds me why I stopped taking English Literature courses freshman year of college, Landsberg's concept of Prosthetic Memory really intrigues me. Cultures and people have memories of events and places of which they have no legitimate experience. Do they thus not count? How these said memories are created and how they shape a person's relation to their own past and history in general is illuminating. In the case of Berlin, people have spent millions upon millions of dollars to tear down one building simply to resurrect another, neither of which they have any living memories. But they have prosthetic memories, created from pictures, news stories, romantic ideals of Prussian exceptionalism and sometimes unreasonable accusations of East German cruelty. In Berlin, one history disappeared, and another has become the sanitized party line because of Prosthetic Memories.

So, in lieu of spending your space and time explaining this whole thing, here's the story of what went down in Berlin. It's hard to get a neutral voice, and the government site isn't ideal (they did vote to destroy the one building, and pay to rebuild the new one) but they are less sensational about it. It's also the only one in English.

Schloßplatzdebatte

Readings for November 9

2009-11-08T19:44:00.000-08:00

Nancy Raquel Mirabal, “Geographies of Displacement: Latinas/os, Oral History, and the Politics of
Gentrification in San Francisco’s Mission District,” and Eric O’Keefe, “Auctioning the Old West to Help a City in the East.” As well as the addition, "The End of History: What is Plan B?"

This week's 'theme' so far as we have one, is Community Engagement. How does history engage the communities in which it is experienced. As can be seen from this week's readings, experience and engagement does not necessarily have to be of the history of that particular area.

I'm not entirely sure what to do with the "Auctioning the Old West to Help a City in the East" article. Besides from the shady quality by which the artifacts were acquired (nothing like not telling your taxpayers where their money is going), I suppose I did not find odd the desire to tell that part of Harrisburg's history. I think it is a provocative shift of scope to frame Harrisburg as the beginning of the journey to the 'frontier'. Even if in the 19th century it was no longer the edge of the wilderness, it is an intriguing make people see that at one point most of the country as 'new' and that past Ohio was considered an adventure (which for many it still may be...but not in a bison, native American sort of way).

However, I did enjoy Mirabal's article. I am a big fan of using individual memories to tell the histories of an area, for without them, histories become silenced. In this case, these individual memories tell the story of an area quickly moving away from the culture that defined it for many years. Are these memories, however, community engagement? Are the oral histories which Mirabal and her cohort collected going to enact social change? Possibly. They certainly seem to hope so, if going by nothing else than the title of the project "La Mision: Voices of Resistance." It would be interesting to see if since the dot com boom has busted, whether the older residences and cultures have returned. Do the previous residents of the Mission area have shared authority, and better yet, are they utlizing it?

On a slightly different note, Cary Carson's article about the death of history museums. He begs public historians to look at the people walking through the door and focus on the quality of museum that those visitors are seeing. He notes that public historians are, in one way or another, history teachers. I feel that many (most?) public historians would agree to that, but as we have discussed previously, are they to be stewards only to the visitors and not to the collections? His Plan B, which is pretty much pandering to the short attention span of Americans (thanks, Sesame Street), leads us on the slippery slope of sanitizing history so that when people visit, they can be immersed without feeling uncomfortable. Immersion history often leads to a linear progress view for most visitors, the 'oh look, they were stupid and we're so advanced' view of history, something which I personally try to discourage to the best of my ability. Not to say that history museums do not need to shift focus to keep the attention of their visitors, but is just 'giving them what they want' really an effective tool to being a historian or a history teacher?

And really, the idea of a history soap opera kind of makes me ill.

2009-11-03T21:55:00.000-08:00

Last Sunday on my undergrad's campus, all the freshwomen lined up in the Cloisters and got their Lanterns. This year's class is red. Just like mine, Just like my sisters. (Four year rotation, light blue, red, dark blue, green). Sophomores give the freshmen their lanterns, while the juniors and seniors direct the whole thing. This is the second of of the four main traditions that frame the year.

Bryn Mawr, for better or for worse, is deeply entrenched in its traditions. The lantern is probably one of the most positive traditions, representing your alligences to particular graduating or incoming classes and embodying your "Bryn Mawr Experience". Beginning in 1901, it has had bumps along the way, such as metal and money shortages during WWII meaning no new lanterns for the new students, but is still one of the most exciting evenings of the school year.

Some people say that if you do something more than once at Bryn Mawr, it becomes a tradition. While close to true, this has luckily not held for some of Bryn Mawr's bleaker traditions, some on which the institution was founded.

Springing from our discussion on monday, I got thinking about why it is important to discuss the motivations and situations under which an institution was founded. Seeing all the facebook congratulations to the incoming class of 2013 for their lanterns just got things moving.

Bryn Mawr was founded in 1885, in simple terms, so that women would be able to earn PhDs in the US and not have to go to Europe. The main impetus to that is this woman:

Ms. M Carey Thomas, the first dean, and second president.

And besides looking like she will consume your soul for dinner (which really, I wouldn't put it past her), she was fiercly intellegent, incredibly determined, greatly motivated...and an incredible classist and bigot.

Now, those first three adjectives sum up your typical "Bryn Mawr Woman", and Thomas's tradition lives on. However, because Bryn Mawr keeps the situation of its founding in mind, the last have not become part of a Mawter's daily life. Thomas would scoff at the idea that 80% of students hold a job to help pay for college, that most do not come from wealthy backgrounds, and many are not white. Bryn Mawr is acutely aware of the pretenses under which Thomas molded the institution in its early years, and keeps it in mind while molding the institution today. Bryn Mawr students often take pride in their on-campus jobs, and while diversity continues to be a heated subject, the school takes a proactive approach to separate itself from its founding views.

I am exceptionally happy for the traditions that Bryn Mawr chose to keep throughout these years; they made my college experience more than I could have ever asked for. Bryn Mawr would be tearfully dull and two demensional without its history, and I am very grateful that the college has kept its history, both the lanterns and the bigots, in mind over the last 125 years.

Readings, Nov 2

2009-11-01T20:22:00.000-08:00

(I'm a smidgen behind on the readings for this week, thanks to some unfortunate dental work. However, I wanted to have something here to at least add onto when I do finish the readings).

Freedman Tilden's Interpreting Our Heritage has come across my desk at work a number of times, is quoted fairly often in NPS training, and occasionally is critiqued as being outdated.

Interpretation is a peculiar sort of animal. What works one day may very well never work again. What really engaged the group on your walk at 11am may leave the group at 1pm falling asleep standing up, even if the group make up does not appear dramatically different, (although the level of mental engagement of the interpreter may have changed).

Something Tilden throws about in his text is this idea of comfort. Comfort for the audience, comfort with the information, comfort with the interactions of people to the resource, even the comfort of the interpreter. What does comfort mean exactly, though? Making the visitor feel warm and fuzzy? Making sure no one will pass out from heat stroke or acquire frostbite while you walk the rim of the Grand Canyon? Knowing your "stuff"?

Just this morning a colleague and I were discussing how you have to be 'in the mood' to make a walking tour up to the huts a good one. If you, the interpreter, are not mentally and physically comfortable with the walk and all that it entails (your theme, the information, the simple 1/4 mile up to the huts, your boots, your group not walking into the middle of the street, the list goes on and on), it creeps its way into your talk. If your visitor is hot, cold, exhausted or tired of being on vacation, the ability to absorb interpretation, and that lovely provocation Tilden mentions, decreases. Comfort in interpretation is hard to come by, but when it does, Tilden is right, interpretation can be very relaxing and very fulfilling, for both the visitor and the interpreter. However, can you still provoke a visitor to engage this history, both with other historic knowledge as well as the past, and still have them be comfortable? Isn't provocation by definition an uncomfortable thing? Handler and Gable seem to think so, or at least that a visitor cannot be both comfortable and engaged.

Tilden has a lovely definition for interpretation. It is all of one sentence long, but presents a incredibly daunting task to those who "do" interpretation. Striking that balance between information, provocation and revelation is an incredible challenge. Yes there are a myriad of aids to help you, exhibits, films (or as one lovely visitor this morning stated, slide presentations), demonstrations, interactions, etc. They all help. But provoking the visitor to want to take steps towards understanding the scope, motivations, or consequences of any given event or action is so difficult it becomes the exception, not the norm. This, I feel stems from something that Tilden chooses to ignore: the motivation of the visitor to come to a particular place. I respectfully disagree with him, but an individual visitor's reason for coming to a site guides their ability to interact with the interpretation more so than any docent, guide, film or exhibit.

More to come tomorrow.

Readings October 26th.

2009-10-25T15:11:00.000-07:00

This weeks readings included Cathy Stanton's The Lowell Experiment and an article on the American Preservation Ethos.

I feel like this week's readings, for the most part, can be summarized in one person:

John Muir.

For those of you who did not watch the Ken Burns series about the National Parks (of which about four hours are dedicated to him), John Muir is, at least in the NPS, considered the first Park Ranger. He was an avid preservationist and was integral in the creation of the first National Parks. He also founded the Sierra Club.

In Stanton's book, she outlines what she feels a public historian is. Leftists, activist, civically engaged, (normally) white, middle class. Muir was all of these. While he put his efforts towards the natural resources and not the culutural resources like Stanton writes about, Muir still fits the bill pretty closely. Muir did not grow up in an affluent household, but did well for himself in life as first an engineer, then a naturalist. He owned a fair amount of land and was well educated.
Muir was instrumental in the founding of Yosemite and other national parks, wanting to preserve them for their beauty, but also for how they could serve and be enjoyed by the general population. He was most certainly an activist, through his writing, influence on politicians, his actions for the parks.

I have heard Muir citized for his 'radical environmentalism', which in most cases was a deep concern for the preservation of land and resources. However, it does tie into our second reading about preservation. Many feel that Muir would have just preserved everything if he had the chance (and considering his great pull with the presidents at the time, it could have happened). It does beg the question however, if people had not pushed so hard for preservation, would we these parks and places? Is the extreme need to preserve a complete negative?

The main difference between Muir and Stanton's version of public historian is that Muir actively engaged his subject. He lived in all of the places that became parks and was constantly surrounded by and engaged with the surroundings he was trying to save or work for. Stanton notes that public historians are often too removed from what they are studying, such as the Lowell rangers not actually living in Lowell. However, it's a comparison better left unmade. Muir walked 1000 miles for the experience of it and camped out in Yosemite with Teddy Roosevelt. His wife sent him back to live in the wilderness because being away from the mountains/trees/etc was bad for his health. Muir made his work into somewhat of a religious experience and while, as Stanton said, people do bleed 'grey and green', I do not know if that quite equals Muir's experience.

Readings for October 18th

2009-10-18T20:40:00.001-07:00

For this week we took on Horton and Horton's Slavery and Public History: The Tough Stuff of American Memory and Launius's "American Memory, Culture Wars and the Challenge of Presenting Science and Technology in a National Museum".

One theme that both of these texts stresses is that there is not necessarily room, time or desire for new or forgotten interpretations of particular histories, whether that be technology, slavery or the causes of the civil war. The current presentations (historical societies, museums, schooling, what have you) just do not provide space for varying, and potentially undesired, interpretations. However, both also stress that, through continued discourse and education, public historians have the best hope for the incorporation of these new narratives. Public historians and places of public history are where these interpretations will be found and discussed.

Other than that I have a few questions just to think about and which we will possibly end up discussing in class anyway.

If memory is the springboard for history, can history realistically live up to the desire to be factual and accurate (words that came up more than once in these readings)?

As stressed in many of the essays, is education in these areas the answer to promoting more open discourse and further presentation of different or forgotten interpretations? Will education alone do this, or do we need public historians to push these discussions into the general discourse?

Part of any NPS interp training, and I'd assume any other public history training is know your audience. However, the Horton text also stresses know your interpreter. How often in visiting museums, or other places of public history, do people take into account the race, class, background, etc of the interpreter? Or is historical interpretation supposed to be a place where those things are supposed to not matter/be ignored?

I will write further on this, particularly in relation to possibly my favorite book from undergrad. However, the thoughts haven't fully solidified. Give it a few days.

Museum Review: The Mercer Museum

2009-10-06T08:45:00.000-07:00

Since this week seems to be a lot of pathetic mishaps on my part for this class (missed the link (is there one?) for the new reading, I think my computer is revolting against the dashboard and not showing updates, my printer ran out of ink,), I'll try to make up for at least the last part by including some more photos from my Mercer Museum trip on here.

So, the short version of the review:
The Mercer Museum is the concrete castle home of Henry Chapman Mercer's collection of pre-industrial (pre 1850) American hand tools and hand crafts. Mercer, a native of Buck County PA, started collecting tools of pre industrial America in 1897, and built the castle for his collection of about 30,000 pieces in 1916. He wanted to force people to look at items not too far removed from the presented and how they told the history of Bucks County and the nation. The set up of the museum forces people to look at common objects in new ways.
The museum today houses about 50,000 items, many with their original labels in their original places within the castle. These items are separated into over 60 different catagories, based on what they were used for. This includes things such as threshing, butter making, music, medicine, local iron making and crime and punishment (which includes a set of gallows). The goals remain in line with Mercer's, and attempt to describe history through these tools, demonstrate how these tools portay Bucks County history, as well as examine Mercer's ideas of how museums should be run in the early 20th Century.
Through detailed placards in the exhibit areas describing whatever task (Fruit Preservation), what it is, how it is done (explaining the apple corers, right), how fruit preservation fits into the history of the Northeast and Bucks County, and how Mercer felt about this, the museum manages to bridge the time gap between the current audience and the tools. This significant distance in time between the tools and the audience is not something mercer had to grapple with so much, but the museum has successfully addressed the problem.
The Mercer Museum is increadibly informative, and succeeds in knowing its audience and making the collections accessible and approachable. Because Mercer, and today's curators, choose to encorporate many intertwining narratives into the museum's exhibits, it provides interpretation and knowledge not necessarily found else where in one place in such a comprehensive manner.

Anyway, it's incredibly hard to appreciate the Mercer Museum without visuals.

Yes, there are items upside down from the ceiling, Mercer's way of forcing people to look at things different, as well as saving space. And yes, those are real paw prints in the cement (from Mercer's dog, Rollo, who plays an integral part in the museum interpretation today)

Readings for October 5th

2009-10-02T20:09:00.000-07:00

First, I'd like to say hooray for October! As a big fan of fall, I'm happy to see cool, crisp air taking place of the stifling humidity of PA summers. And I got to pull my Turkish scarves out of summer storage, which is always a big plus. Other exciting things: pumpkin flavored everything (still need to find a good pumpkin beer), halloween and getting to drink hot chocolate without looking like an idiot.

Anyway, onto the main point of this whole shindig, this week's readings!

The whole of this weeks readings (Making Museum's Matter, the AAM's 2008 annual report, and an essay regarding the incorporation of the Cold War into Civil rights museums) all dealt with three main things: Accountability, Ownership, and Value. Weil does a good job laying out the precarious balancing act in which these three things take part in regards to making a functional, worthwhile and purposeful museum in our current world. So I guess the best route for this is to address the three things separately, with a few concluding thoughts thrown in.

Accountability: Weil stresses accountability in a big way. He feels that part of the reason museums aren't thriving as well as they could be is that there is no evaluation system--they have no method of being accountable to each other or too any sort of grading or evaluation, leaving museums to include what they feel like and run in whatever way may appear best for them at the time. The AAM report touches on the movement towards some sort of central guideline for creating such accountability. Renee Romano addresses this problem of accountability if her text. She desires the global narrative of the Cold War to be incorporated into Civil Rights museums--feeling that this narrative is often ignored, forgotten, and an older narrative is presented at the loss of some major insights. She desires museums to be accountable for the information provided and to strive to provide the best available and most encompassing interpretation. A challenge which is made more difficult by the next bit to balance, which is...

Ownership: something that has significant impact on how museums function, run, are funded, get collections, and pretty much exist. Weil notes a particular shift in the functioning of Museums over the last 50 to 100 years. 19th century, the collections were why the museum existed. The museum or whatever donor or university owned the collections, they were available to be preserved in and of themselves for further scholarship and that was that. Ownership was fairly easy to identify and thus the museum and its content was accountable to that entity. Over the last century, who owns museums has become a bigger question. Is it the public? The board of trustees? The government? The grant giver? The corporation funding it? The original owners of the pieces in the collections? The list goes on. A museum is often 'owned' by many of the above, each of which has its own unique agenda, plan and attitude towards the running of the operation. Each of those entities may desire a different interpretation. Museums have to balance having engaged visitors while still pleasing the desires of their benefactors. The AAM's annual report shows this attempt to balance the effects of many tiered ownership, but also demonstrates through its long list of donors, how the balancing act may be tiped to one side or another (ie: those with the money to keep the operation going).

Value: And finally, the value of museums. This goes all the way from the the value of the experience one derives from a visit, to the value of the pieces inside the walls of the galleries and storage, to the walls of the building in which those collections are stored. Weil's quasi thought exercise about how different types of people would react to a "c-day" scenario exhibits the differing attitudes towards the value of museums and their holdings in a very clear way. The AAM's report stresses a desire to instill a feeling in museum visitors in the value of visiting a museum, to increase stewardship and participation. Of the three parts here, the value of a museum is most likely the hardest to concretely define, for it is not something that can be defined quantitatively.

Weil notes that museums sit in their weird world between a for profit business and a not for profit organization. They need to be accountable just like any for profit business, but they need to provide some sort of discernible value/benefit to its patrons, like a non-profit (his favorite in the united way). It is difficult to talk about one bit of this balancing act without engaging the others, since when one shifts, as do the others. However, to avoid blathering on too long, I'd just like to touch back to our Rosenzeig/Thelen reading, and a small bibliographic note from Weil, maybe explaining some of R/T's findings:

Pg 52, footnotes to "From Being about Something, to being for Someone"
35. I am grateful to Camilla Boodle, a London based museum consultant, for her suggestion that visitors may find a museum rewarding without necessarily accepting its authority. Conversation with the author, August 1998.

A French actor, speaking German, playing an indian...

2009-09-27T11:56:00.000-07:00

...all to feel attached to history.

While standing at the front desk at work the other day, I witnessed something I had yet to see in my tenure at the park: visitors (not volunteers, not reenactors, not there for an event) dressed in revolutionary clothing to come visit the park. This is apparently a fairly common thing at Gettysburg, as relayed to a friend who worked at the Eisenhower NHS for a summer. The visitors come all decked out in their appropriate clothing, although they are mostly a little 'farby' and I'm sure the 'real' re-enactors look down upon them.
Now, as the girl who gets back into her civvies as fast as possible when done at days up at Muhlenberg, this desire to walk around in slightly ill fitting, seemingly never fully clean clothes for giggles evades me. However, as enlightened by Kim/Jamal, this apparently provides people with some sense of belonging or attachment. While vafo is probably (I hope) more tame than your average ren faire get together, I would imagine the feeling of camaraderie still applies. Wearing a tri-corn hat makes them feel like they are connected to or are participating in the time period or event they are clothed for. I don't think this understanding will ever make me want to go out in public like that without pay, but I at least have a slightly better understanding.

(I diss on living history a lot, but I must admit, I would have much much better posture if someone made me wear stays every day. Back support without suffocation? Count me in)

One issue that arises from this, and living history/reenacting in general, is something not addressed by Kim/Jamal is whether this is making a mockery of history. Are these people searching for authenticity or are they belittling a very serious issue? For rev war/civil reenacting people are almost always portraying soldiers. Is the interest a matter of honoring those that died or suffered for a cause or is it a matter of demeaning something so serious as war and death? Do Rev/Civil war re-enactors feel like they are honoring because the event is so far in the past (and so deep in myth/legend), while WWII re-enactors (oh yes, they exist) are trying to remember the not so distant, bitterly disasterous and still very influential part of the world's history (for which the US, arguably, payed the smallest toll)? Do we only start to reenact things that are pretty and shiny and so deeply entrenched in our nations myths? Is that why Germans insist on re-enacting ridiculous mishmashes of Native Americans (a concept for which German does not have a word), because their main narrative only involves the stories of Winnetou and the books of Karl May?

I don't necessarily have an answer to that. I am inclined to lean towards demeaning. We only seem to reenact the traumatic parts of history that have shiny presents. Is that honoring a memory or belittling those forgotten? I don't have answers to these questions, but they are good things to think about.

(The few times I saw these guys at the Brandenburger Tor in Berlin, they had a didgeridoo. As in the Austrialian aboriginal instrument. It was fascinating.)

Readings: September 21 or undergrad stats class finally pays off

2009-09-19T18:54:00.000-07:00

I will probably expend my entire posting for this week's readings (as well as possibly a couple other posts in the future) about the Rosenzweig and Thelen reading. The essays/chapters were also informative and sometimes fun, but I found the larger text perhaps the most fascinating and the most thought provoking.

The authors' use the argument that Americans do not care or do not know about history as their jumping off point for their research, a point they disprove. Despite the convincing data presented in support, I think their interpretation of the original concept is slightly off. Rosenzweig quotes an address from the AHA in 1989, regarding the ignorance of americans towards history. I think that the president of the AHA was not stressing so much the idea that Americans are devoid of general historical knowledge or interest thereof, which is what R/T argue, but that they are ignorant of or uninterested in the prescribed historical narrative which any publicly educated American would have been introduced to (An ignorance R/T explain through the disdain/disinterest in history as taught in schools). They demonstrate that people are interested in history, but the respondents do not necessarily exhibit knowledge of that prescribed narrative. This then begs the question of is the currently prescribed narrative something that should continue to be propagated? Does the narrative that is repeated in the school system need to be changed to be more accessible, possibly stressing more interesting/accessible individual and collective histories as apposed to the chronological narrative now presented? What are the goals of continuing this narrative, and what would be the disadvantages to changing it? I would be interested to see if there would be different responses to capital H History (read: the stuff in school) if this survey was given again, given the purposeful changes in school history pedagogy and curriculum over the last 20 or so years.

Thelen and Rosenweig support Becker's claim that everyone is a historian, but construct a more concrete outline than Becker. The answers and data derived from the respondents demonstrate that the public does function within standard historiography frame works that dominate the history profession. For instance, the public worry about bias, sources, trustworthiness, impact and collective vs. individual histories. All things that any academic historian worries themselves with. However, Thelen/Roswenzweig also provide some argument for why professional historians are necessary, but stress that they need to function somewhat within the framework in which the public is working.

and I still did do my readings at work this week, but I brought my camera along, and caught a surprise outside while working/reading at Washington's Headquarters. British Fusiliers come to Vafo once a year. It's a treat for both the visitors and the staff, and makes the day a little more fun. But not for any feelings of existential authenticity.

Readings for September 14th

2009-09-13T11:22:00.000-07:00

So this week we tackled the intro to the Lowell Experiment, a speech to the AHA in 1931 and Ian Tyrrell's Historians in Public.

Stanton's text has the potential to be very intriguing. I am very interested if her frame of Lowell's mission and tours provides reasonable support for her arguments regarding the methods of doing public history and Lowell's performance therein. I am concerned that the frame may not be the best fit and may not allow for her argument to fully develop. Or that her theory is good, but Lowell NHS may not be the best place to implement it. One of my current co-workers worked at Lowell during Stanton's research there (Stanton even took a couple of her tours) and I am excited to compare Stanton's analysis to her experience at the park.

Becker and Tyrrel's pieces present a good starting place for our discussion of public history. Becker's argument that history as a discipline will 'disappear' unless academics realize how to integrate the academic into the public is an interesting one. Whether or not he intended it to be so dramatic an idea, or just trying to get historians thinking in a broader way (this was an address as the president of the AHA, after all), I'm not sure. In any case, Becker presented many observations that are central to both academic and public history,such as his discussion of the present interpretation of history being the facts that are currently considered truths, while that which has been discarded are those facts which have been deemed false or incorrect, and the constant fluidity of such defining ideas.

Tyrrell approaches history in public in a similar manner to Becker, in so much as history and its practice being fluid. Tyrrel frames his discussion of history in public and public history (a difference which probably requires a separate post to discuss) in the realm of the academic. He does this for a reason, noting that academics although hidden in the hallowed ivy covered halls, move in the same direction as public desires and pressures and that they are not intrinsically separate worlds with completely separate methods, practices and applications (pg 138). He also touches on the swing of American history from the super specialized to the all encompassing, and follows history's inclusion in the public realm through its trends of highly specialized to broad interpretations and research. He leaves us with the question of where these the public will take academic history (and vice versa) and where the pendulum of historical practice is going next.

If nothing else, this week's readings taught me that I should probably refrain from doing my public history reading while at work. It becomes far too overstimulating (I want to try to apply things I've read and see what works), and sometimes far too cooincidental. While reading Tyrrel's section on the incorporation of history cirriculum in schooling (particularly the arguments that between the world wars the american youth barely knew anything of their own nations history), an american student in university asked me "what is the american revolution?" (and not in the methaphorical sense, either). Such events are prime examples of why history education, both in its academic and public forms, is so very important to have and to investigate.

Introduction!

2009-09-05T20:33:00.000-07:00

This blog will function as a sounding board for thoughts, ideas, projects and other such things for the Managing History/Public History course at Temple University (also possible are tangentially related, still appropriate but not official remarks regarding my related employment, depending what tickles my fancy).
My interest in public history stems from my work as a season ranger at Valley Forge National Historical Park, part of the NPS. Even though I am fairly low on the totem pole, I still am actively involved in the production and interpretation of history for the general park visiting public. I work within the Interpretive division meaning providing the visitor with information about what they are seeing in a meaningful and accessible way. Interpreting the park and the history of the American Revolution in an accessible way presents itself as a constant challenge. While the NPS has interpretive guidelines and the individual parks have missions within which to work, each ranger is responsible for developing individual programs tailored to and accessible to a wide range of audiences, knowledge bases and of course, interest levels. This needs to integrate the contemporary AND past academic historiography and interpretations with the goals of the NPS in a way that informs but also slightly challenges the public. I have grappled with this for every program I have written, which often are met with great appreciation and interest, but sometimes faced with the dreaded blank states. Despite being so engaged with practice of public history, I have no concrete definition, guidance or real idea of how what I do on a daily basis got to be what it is. Hopefully through this course work I can find those answers, as well as inform my own work through the varying interpretations, reading, projects and discussions we will engage.

NOTE: The opinions, statements, notes, etc mentioned in this blog regarding the NPS are NOT official NPS/Vafo policy unless noted through citation of the official NPS policy, either through direction to written documents or citation of electronic texts or websites. Discussion of policy will be extremely limited, but it will be objective, academic discussion which relates to my course work or which will positively enhance my academic or professional careers. This blog is written as a member of the public, not in any official capacity as an employee of the NPS.