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The Western Region of ALHFAM - Fall and Winter of 2012 Newsletter
Citation preview
information gathered to
further enhance our
educational and
interpretive programming.
As an educator, I felt
school programs and
educational materials
needed to be more fully
explored. Also, I wished
there were more sessions
on specific historical
content as well as the “how
to present” a program.
ALHFAM is a down to
earth organization that
provides group support,
(Continued on page 2)
By Martha Johnson Director of Interpretive Programming (retired) Genesee Country Village & Museum Mumford, NY
Volunteer Harbor History Museum Gig Harbor, WA
In September I attended
my third Western
Regional ALHFAM
Conference. ALHFAM is
not new to me as I have
been attending both the
Annual, Mid-Atlantic and
New England Regional
conferences since the
1990s. However, it was a
different experience as a
recent transplant to the
west coast.
As part of the conference
a Town Hall meeting was
held and one of the
questions asked was,
“what can ALHFAM do for
you?” This question
caused me to stop and
ponder. I was employed
in museum education and
interpretation for 18
years, but have been
retired for the last 12
years. I currently have no
museum
involvement except as a
volunteer. So why am I
still drawn to ALHFAM?
I came to museum work
through the backdoor, so
to speak, and I really
had little knowledge of
the museum field or how
other institutions
operated. With the
urging of the museum’s
first CEO, I attended an
ALHFAM meeting in
Staunton, VA. It was an
eye-opener and I was
hooked!
On reflection, ALHFAM
helped me grow in a
profession that I have
come to love. I’ve
learned many new skills,
gathered information,
and met like-minded
individuals so willing to
share. By holding the
conferences at various
institutions, I was able to
see places I may never
have visited. Behind the
scenes tours allowed me
to see first-hand how
other museums
operated. It helped me
realize the things we
were doing well and
what we needed to
improve. I used the
Reflection and Vision
ALHFAM Western Region F A L L / W I N T E R 2 0 1 2
S P E C I A L
P O I N T S O F
I N T E R E S T :
Reflection
and Vision
News and
Newsletters
2013
ALHFAM
Conference
Of Chicken
Coops and
Forest Fires
PIG’S
Western Regional
Representative:
Mick Woodcock
Newsletter Design:
Zaira Valdovinos
Newsletter Editor:
Eileen Hook
On reflection, ALHFAM
helped me grow in a
profession that I have
come to love. .
P A G E 2
ALHFAM is a down
to earth organization
that provides group
support, advice,
factual knowledge
and encouragement.
The conferences are
informal gatherings
filled with fun, good
food, entertainment
and useful and
educational
programs.
Reflection and Vision Continued... advice, factual
knowledge and
encouragement. The
conferences are informal
gatherings filled with fun,
good food, entertainment
and useful and
educational programs. As
a newcomer to the west
coast, the regional
conferences have
provided a way for me to
learn the history of the
area and a means to
meet new acquaintances.
ALHFAM is not just about
living history. It also
encompasses agriculture
and farming. I worked in
a large living history
museum with farms and
gardens; agricultural
topics sometimes got
buried when telling the
stories of the 19th
century. It is a topic that
ALHFAM is able to help
museums bring forward,
especially in today’s
world, that’s so far
removed from farming
practices and food
origins. I would have
never expected that at
this year’s conference I
would receive an
excellent lead on holly
farms, of all things, for a
talk I will be giving.
Attending conferences
can be difficult. Museum
staff members usually
wear many hats and
often are over-worked.
Money is always an
issue. Regional
conferences are more
localized and expenses
can be kept a little lower.
Usually professional
conferences are geared
toward administrators
and directors. However,
at ALHFAM all staff,
seasonal or permanent,
and volunteers can find
sessions that will help in
their duties. In the past, I
encouraged my seasonal
interpreters to attend
ALHFAM, particularly the
regional conferences.
Today they are
permanent staff
members using the
confidence and
knowledge they gained
and maintaining valuable
connections to others in
their field.
I used to have a poster in
my office with a quote
from Marcel Proust: “the
real voyage of discovery
consists not in seeking
new landscapes, but
having new eyes”. It is
one of the reasons I have
and will continue to
attend ALHFAM
meetings. I’ve learned
over the years that you
don’t have to reinvent the
wheel as much as
perceive its possible
uses as a totally different
implement. At this year’s
regional conference, I
had the chance to review
mending techniques I
learned as a child, which
led me to programming
ideas I could offer the
museum where I
volunteer--not about
mending, but about life at
sea.
Sometimes it is healthy
to step out of our busy
work life and hectic
schedules to refresh and
renew. We can look
back, reflect on what we
have done, see what
others are doing and
envision what we need to
do in the future. Perhaps
then we can acquire a
new vision, see the
journey with new eyes.
That may be what
ALHFAM can do for you.
Martha
Johnson
A L H F A M W E S T E R N R E G I O N
How has ALHFAM
contributed to your
life? Consider writing
a reflection for our
next Newsletter.
Details on next page:
P A G E 3
Message from our Regional Representative The issue you are reading is officially the “Winter” edition, mostly because I failed to get the notice for the fall edition out in a timely manner. As our sites attempt to do more with less and budgets are pared to below minimum, work loads go to overload. That said, I do apologize for this and will see if we can’t get back on track. To that end, we have the following schedule:
Spring 2013 – article deadline February 1st, publication in March. Topic – Curation. Summer 2013 – article deadline May 1st, publication in June. Topic – Foodways. Fall 2013 – article deadline August 1st, publication in September. Topic – Special Events. Winter 2013 – article deadline November 1st, publication in December. Topic – Achieving a Period Look
I will be sending out advance notice of these deadlines so start working now on your favorite topic.
-Mick Woodcock
A note from the Newsletter Designer It has been such a pleasure to design the newsletters for our region. I apologize for any delays in their timely arrival. One interesting piece of news is that there are folks who are subscribing to our ISSUU site (virtual site where I post the newsletters) that are not in our region or in ALHFAM.
So people from other parts of the country are excited to read our newsletter and find out more about living history. Here’s the link in
case you want to share it with friends and colleges http://issuu.com/zairadynia/docs Content: Please let us know if there is other content you are interested in seeing in the newsletter. For example:
The Mountain Plains region includes news items from sites within their region. The Mid-Atlantic region included names of New Members to the Region Others include Book Reviews in relevant topics. Reflections on events and programs. News from any of the interest groups.
What other ideas do you have? This newsletter is for you! What do you want to know about? Newsletters are content driven, so let’s get our Western Region ALHFamily driving! -Zaira Valdovinos
News and Newsletters
Call for Presentations, Sessions and Papers On June 14-18, 2013, Hale Farm & Village, an outdoor living history site and a premier collection and museum of the Western Reserve Histori-cal Society, will host the 2013 ALHFAM Annual Meeting and Confer-ence. Nestled in the picturesque Cuyahoga Valley National Park, Hale Farm & Village depicts mid-19th century rural life in Northeastern Ohio through dozens of historic structures, farm animals, heritage gardens and artisan demonstrations. The University of Akron will provide meet-ing, dining and lodging facilities for the conference and is located within 50 minutes of Cleveland Hopkins International Airport and 20 minutes of the Akron-Canton Regional Airport.
Guided by the theme; Bringing It All to the Table: Feed Your Body, Feed Your Mind, museum professionals everywhere are encouraged to gather with colleagues around a common table. Here conference at-tendees will acquaint themselves with old friends and new associates, while enjoying good company, good food, and rousing conversa-tion. And what better place to gather than the time-honored table that is familiar to everyone and is oftentimes described as a positive and productive setting for stimulating discourse, high spirits, instruction, respite and shared aims. Appropriately the table serves as a special place that is witness to life's most important things.
The 2013 conference will address issues and concerns currently facing living history and agricultural museums. Proposals for presentations, sessions, papers and workshops are now being accepted and should focus on individual, institutional and communal achievements that serve up innovative programming initiatives or organizational efforts that are creative, essential and relevant in today’s marketplace. How do museums cultivate and nurture civic engagement for greater involve-ment and investment in their organizations? What can we glean from new demographic shifts, technological applications and curriculum schemes? What are the current and best practices of living history in-terpretation and museum methodology that effect organizational rich-ness? What are the processes for dishing-up success? How do we deliver the goods to our audiences and reap the rewards of a good yield in the face of new challenges and opportunities?
Submission deadline is December 1, 2012
2013 Keynote Speaker will be
Patrick Conway, Jr. Pat is the co-owner of the Great Lakes Brewery. The 25 year old brewery’s mission is to be “the premier craft brewery in the Great Lakes region.” The brewery produces 100,000 barrels annually and distributes to 13 states and Washington, DC. Patrick has been involved with Hale Farm & Vil-lage for 5 years in a project called “the pint size garden.” The garden which covers 1/2 acres grows produce for the brewery’s restaurant in downtown Cleveland. The company is very inter-ested in sustainability and using locally grown foods. It was recently named one of the Top Workplaces in the area by the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Work-ing with his alma mater, the University of Chicago, he has recently recreated a brew recipe on a 4,000 year old Sumerian clay tablet. Special clay fer-mentation vessels (gakkuls) were cre-ated and yeast from barley bread were used when customs officials would not allow yeast samples form a Lebanese brewery to be exported. You can read all about this by going to the website: www.greatlakesbrewery.com
P A G E 4
Of Chicken Coops and Forest Fires
By Mick Woodcock
You know you aren’t at an ordinary museum conference when you hear two people commiserating about varmints getting into their hen houses. This could only be an ALHFAM meeting and indeed it was the Western Region’s meeting in Bend, OR September 27-29!
Hosted by The High Desert Museum, whose highway entry sign proclaims “WILDLIFE – LIVING HISTORY”, this site was the gathering point for members from across the West in general which includes both the Western and Mountain/Plains regions. ALHFAM Vice President Debra Reid came and conducted a town hall on what members thought the organization might provide extra in the way of services. She also conducted a session on how to find out what your site has to offer that no one else can.
The conference started Thursday evening with a reception at the Bend Brewing Company. Members drifted in as they arrived in town and partook of a variety of finger food and a no host bar that consisted of a sizeable list of locally brewed beers.
Friday was a day given over to sessions. The day started with the Town Hall, then moved to concurrent sessions “How to Find Out What Your Site Has to Offer that No One Else Can” and “Reform! Reform Needs to be the Watchword!” This was followed by lunch and the region’s business meeting which covered future sites of meetings and a presentation by Dan Thyer from Historic Nevada City on the 2013 tri-regional meeting.
The afternoon was divided into two concurrent session blocks. The early one had “Hand Sewing: Plain and Fancy. No Machinery Required!” and “Training First Person Interpreters for your Museum”. The clean up slot had “Training Well: How to Go from a Great Idea to a Great Visitor Experience” and “Crowning Glory: Victorian and Edwardian Hairstyles for Modern Interpreters”.
We took a break and then traveled to the Old Mill District, a rehabilitated lumber mill site turned into a thriving shopping area to have an early supper at the Flatbread Pizza Co. A good time was had by all with some folks staying late to walk on the banks of the Deschutes River or have ice cream in one of the local shops. We were lulled to sleep with the wafting odors from the local forest fire west of town.
Saturday found us viewing the exhibit halls “Spirit of the West” and “By Hand Through Memory”. After a short break we had a tour of one of the collections vault where white gloves were donned and numerous objects were examined that included clothing of different types, firearms from the museum’s collection and gambling artifacts from a previous exhibit called Sin in the Sagebrush.
Afternoon free time was spent touring the outdoor portions of the
A L H F A M W E S T E R N R E G I O N
P A G E 5
museum which are devoted to wildlife and the living history area which includes a sawmill and 1904 ranch. A special public program was going on with children digging (or planting) potatoes, pressing cider, grinding corn and generally having a good time.
After a break to head off to the hotel to change into period garb, we were back at the ranch for the evening meal and auction. Beef stew, fresh bread, salad and pie made for an excellent end to an all too short conference. The auction netted $321 which was then added to by Associated Foundations with an additional $500.
Folks are already excited about the meeting in Nevada City next year. If things work out, the region, with the support of Associated Foundations, will be sponsoring three workshops FREE to ALHFAM members. More on that will be forthcoming in a later newsletter.
PIG’s Are you in
terested?
ALHFAM Professional Interest Groups are an informal gathering of ALHFAM members interested in exploring and sharing information on specific topics and skills.
You can join a PIG by contact-ing the chair of the group(s) that interest you, attending meetings during annual and regional conferences, and communicating with other PIG members between meetings. PIGS are encouraged to plan, sponsor and offer workshops during annual and regional meetings
and submit Bulletin articles.
What are they?
FPIPN (pronounced Pipin) First-Person Interpreters Network Contact: Ron Carnegie [email protected]
CPR Collections, Preservation, and Registration Contact: Martha Katzhyman [email protected]
GRUNTS Government Raised Unincorporated, Non-Uniformed Troops Contact: Andrew Duppstadt [email protected]
HAT Historic Apparel and Textiles Committee Contact: Sarah Wilson LeCount [email protected]
Machinery Committee Contact: Franz Klingender [email protected]
NERDS New Electronic Resources and Data Systems Contact: Heidi Gladfelter [email protected]
PIE Programs, Interpretation, and Education Committee Contact: Maria-Sophie Desaulniers [email protected]
FARM Committee Contact: Ed Shultz [email protected]
POTS Historic Foodways Committee Contact: Kimberly Costa [email protected]
Replica Committee Contact: Mick Woodcock [email protected]
SAP Seeds and Plants Contact: Karen Becker [email protected] Mike Beckett [email protected]
PROFESSIONAL INTEREST GROUPS