Saturday, March 30, 2013

Historical Society in Society

I have a confession for you, my readers: I have never been to visit my local historical society. As far as I know, it is located less than a quarter mile from my house. I drive past it almost every time I leave my driveway. We’ve lived here since early 2009, we spend most of our free time driving all over New England to do history stuff, but neither Stephen nor I have stepped foot inside the local historical society.

Why oh why are we so neglectful? How could I claim to be into history and not at least stick my head in the door in the past three years? My current experience with history is exciting and adventurous; my past experiences with historical societies have all been pretty boring. Sometimes when I drive by there is an “open” flag out, but I’ve never seen anyone hanging out, any events happening there. I haven’t seen any flyers in town, or mailings about it, nothing on the municipal web page. I’m not sure if there is anything there beyond a little “schoolhouse.”

I really should find out. I think I’ll wait until the weather is better and I can walk down.

Posted by Alena at 10:21 AM
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1 comment:

  1. GobaeMarch 30, 2013 at 11:01 AM

    I know exactly what you mean. Our local area has a lot of history, historical societies, and even small museums; but I've never to most of them.

    For me the biggest reason boils down to interest. Although European settlement in my area dates back to 350 (or so) years ago, most of the local small communities were founded around the Civil War or industrial revolution, that's just too "new" to really pique my interest.

    A close second, are all the reasons you've already listed. All of the local history societies that I've been to are quite boring places. Static displays that haven't changed in the past 50+ years, poor advertising that they even exist, and/or no events.

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