dabbling in imagery

Last Friday, I took a self-guided, photographing-based tour of the Ridges, focusing specifically on the TB Ward. I want to get my own documentation while I still can, just in case.

Of the over 100 photos I took, I want to share a few of my favorites.

soul of the era

More and more each day, I’m feeling like I’m in the right place. After exposing myself to so much of this museum culture, I’m able to articulate how exactly I feel about history and artifacts and why they need to be preserved.

I spent a good hour and a half gushing over a 1942 edition of Good Housekeeping. My assignment was to notate pages that would work for an upcoming “Women in WWII” exhibit, but it was so hard to choose! I found a Kotex advertisement that somehow tied a teenager’s brother being in the war, to plans for a scrap metal fundraiser, to being a better citizen because she’s wearing Kotex. To me, that tells so much about life during that era. It wasn’t just the writing, or the experience of holding something old, but the ability to peek into the past for a brief moment to see how women of this era thought, how advertisers appealed to their customers, to see how much they valued text over imagery in their advertisements. It’s a “window into the soul” of the era, and that’s what appeals to me.

At the same time, though, that was almost too easy. They spoke English very similar to ours, and their history is alive with our elders. I want to experience more of a challenge! Maybe I’ll actually build up what I’m learning to be able to understand those ancient points better.

Speaking of points, Kate visited the museum again on Friday. We got to talking about her plans for the future, and I’m loving her outlook. She wants to go to grad school to study museum studies, but she mentioned that schools in the West tend to have more of an anthropological perspective. That sounds amazing! I’m not sure quite yet that I want to dedicate my life to museum work, but the people here inspire me to think about it.

I still want to somehow incorporate journalism into my future. Aside from all this, I’ve been thinking of expanding my portfolio to include skills in programming, video editing and photography, and go the multimedia route of journalism. I want to tie all this back to a potential thesis in some way, shape or form, but I’m not quite sure what, yet. Of course, to do that, I’m going to definitely need more experience.

Back to the Ridges issue from last week: I worked with Jessica to edit a letter that she then sent to supporters within the Historical Society. I want to do more! But I feel like I might be starting to annoy her with my enthusiasm. I don’t know: I’m enjoying this experience but I fear that I’m being blind to the needs and experiences of others at the museum. I chat with the other interns when we’re in the same room, but I haven’t really “buddied-up” with anyone yet. It’s a weird situation. I love going there every day, but I’m afraid my social insecurities are getting in the way of me fully enjoying myself. I suppose that’s yet another thing to work on.

and the walls came tumblin' down...

on friday, the post wrote an article on how the university is planning to tear down the tb ward at the ridges before halloween. when i read it, i was upset and appalled that they would do that, let alone so quickly. while i have not broken in to the building or spent hours on the weekends up there (like so many students have), i love the ridges and the beauty and history they lend to athens. 

i later went to the museum for my shift, and the author of the new book asylum on the hill, katherine ziff, was there to donate something from her attic. she and everyone in collections got into a rather heated conversation about the demolition, and they discussed all the ways they are trying to stop it from happening. i asked if there was any way i could help, so at the very least, i’m writing a press release for them next week.

i’ve always loved old buildings and have had a curiosity about them since i was little. my sister and mom share this and claim historical homes as "their own" back where i’m from. i remember my sister’s “house” was demolished last summer, and none of us have driven past the empty lot since then. 

i think buildings have so much to say and deserve to be kept whole for as long as possible. the $300,000 allotted to demolition the tb ward (and, according to jessica, eventually every other non-renovated building at the ridges) could be used so easily to help restore the buildings and then open them to the public. it infuriates me when people refuse to acknowledge the historical and cultural value of older buildings. 

some things are worth more than what money you might save or make from building a new, modern site. once that bulldozer hits the foundation, it’s over. gone. nothing left but to try to scavenge some information from the rubble. apparently, these buildings haven’t yet been officially recognized as important, but they are. 

i’m going to make noise with these people to try to stop the demolition.

on the bright side, it’s becoming clearer to me every day that this field is something that i love.

a bland but necessary introduction to interning

as a bit of a reference point, i’m retroactively recounting my first few weeks as an intern at the athens county historical society and museum. i first got involved with ahs this past winter, when i volunteered to help plan a civil war ball fund-raiser; i loved it so much that i decided to pursue an internship for this fall.

i spend most of my days working through the collections boxes with the other interns. ahs has been renumbering and reorganizing everything, and i have such a small part in this huge plan. 

i’m have to learn how to be more careful and aware of what my hands are doing. these items, if i drop them or rip them or even touch them without wearing gloves, could so easily be destroyed. even the donation ledgers are old and crumbly! it's a bit scary and intimidates me from approaching items sometimes. i’m not used to such caution ... but this must be second-nature if i want to work with artifacts.

the idea of de-accessioning items seems a little strange to me. if something is numbered, no matter what it is, it must go through a process of being removed from the collection. we have a pile full of bottles with hazardous, decades-old liquids in them, envelopes, boxes, and moldy things that shouldn’t be kept in close contact with other items. but, at the same time, some things that i think should be kept aren’t. i found an edition of the athens messenger from 1935, which i thought was amazing, and i spent a good half hour just flipping through the pages. but it didn’t contain the article that the label had said it did, the museum has a better-preserved copy, and it wasn’t accessioned, so we were planning to get rid of it. i managed to convince jessica (the curator) to give it to me though — awesome prize for a journalism/anthropology major, if i do say so myself. but this is just one of many examples that i have seen so far. maybe it’s the future archaeologist in me crying out that junk is not necessarily garbage, but i hate seeing things going into that pile.

on a similar note, i’ve noticed that my dust allergies are bringing a complication into the equation by prompting me to sneeze at inconvenient moments.

officially, one of my primary jobs is to work on a large collection of native american points. the student who worked on this before me met with me to explain how she learned to sort and identify thousands of points from across the continental u.s. she has traveled to meet with experts and worked with donald, a volunteer with a lot of previous experience, to identify unusual artifacts. i’m a bit intimidated by this project, and maybe that’s one of the reasons why i haven’t worked with it much, yet. i do hope i get over that ... in any case, this would be awesome exposure to archaeology before i apply to a field school for next summer.

i’ve helped to build an exhibit already, too! a photo exhibit of the social movements of the 1960’s was compiled and designed by one of the interns, and we put it up a week ago. i even learned how to shoot a staple gun.

all in all, i love this!

catch-22

there's so much pressure out there to make a name for yourself. historically, i haven't been much of a social media fanatic. yeah, i used to be one of those annoying high school facebookers who post everything about their lives for the world to see, and sure, i have a twitter to follow things and people i deem important, but it makes me wonder -- what does this really mean to us as individuals? in order to define ourselves to the world, we have to have an online presence. (as a j-school kid, this nonsense is preached on a daily basis.) to have an online presence, we have to keep up with what's popular and hip and trendy and all that jazz. to do that, we have to conform to the social norms of the moment and obsess over what new fad might be coming next, to keep up the pretext of being "on the edge of technology."

what if our identity is to be one to not follow the crowd? or, like i often am, to be perfectly comfortable and confident in being the last to join in?

so here i am, succumbing to pressures both external and internal, several years later than my peers. i can't escape that nagging preteen girl inside me, who's begging to be in vogue, nor that pesky little thing called the economy that tells me i won't be a successful journalist without conformity. it's a catch-22: your identity to the world is damned if you conform and damned if you don't.

and no one cares about the ongoing daily happenings of the average jane doe. how do all those other bloggers out there come up with interesting stuff to say? they pick a theme: political, sports, fashion, whatever. i'm going to talk about my experiences and growth as an individual as i go through an internship at my local historical society and museum.

but more on that later. for now: my name is elizabeth cychosz. i am a journalism and anthropology major at ohio university. and i am now a blogger.