Take That, Cubicle Life!

A busy, stressful workweek, but this view of the afternoon sun lighting up a forsythia bush outside my office window definitely struck a chord.  I've come a long way from cubicle walls & florescent lighting.

Flaky

I don't know why I like this shot of an old, paint-peeling radiator from one of my museums, but I do.

Picnic Scene

Some of our historic toys & games, set up on a quilt for a membership drive today at one of my museums.  Today feels less like it than the last few days, but spring IS on the way!

Sunshine Day

Gotta love a day when the outdoors is much warmer than the indoors.  :)  The museum is still its old, cold temps, but with the side door open and sunlight streaming in, it's starting to warm up.  Don't know how long it will last (supposed to be normal March temps this weekend), but I'll take it while we've got it!

Also - unrelated to the weather, but I love the old wood floors in this room.

I Get to Do All the Fun Stuff

These sunny, warm days are really working to my advantage at the museum.  I brought a group of local elementary school students to our 17th century house today to tour the gardens and plant some seeds.  It's been on the schedule since February, but a normal March day would have been a lot chillier.  

Instead, the kids got to plant nasturtium & marigold seeds in peat pots (for eventual planting in their home gardens) and tour the housewife's garden in the bright sunshine.  It was a lovely afternoon.

Multiple Brides

That's a lot of brides!  Or rather, the same bride about thirty-two times.  I did a postcard mailing to New England wedding photographers today at work and here are my neat little piles of wedding postcards.  And yes, those are my shoes & scarf on the right.  I had to stand on the table to get a reasonably straight-on shot.  Not an atypical day in my strange museum work world! 

Community Engagement

I saw this quote on one of my "green" blogs today (and they got it via a planetarium), but I think it's just perfect for museums.

If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.
-Antoine St. Exupery

I think it's important for us in the historical community to keep this always in mind.  We all think what we do is important - the work of collecting, preserving, and interpreting history.  But unless the public cares about what we do, "the work" is dead in the water.  

We throw around action words like engaging, dynamic, interactive, etc. but sometimes I feel that we're really just preserving the history for another generation, not this one. How can we fix that? How can we actively instill our equivalent of a longing for "the endless immensity of the sea" in the communities we serve?

Mingling with Genius

Oh yeah, that's totally the site of Anne Bradstreet's house (from about 1640-50) that I casually drove by today.  Yeah, THAT Anne Bradstreet.

Unique to Museums

Bet you wouldn't see a pencil cup like this on the desk of a hedge fund manager.  An old coffee mug with an image of the historic house (probably a leftover from gift shop stock) filled with the expected stuff . . . and a darning egg and a corn husk doll.

Earning Your Keep

Another aspect of museum work - shoveling my way into the office today.  :)