Votes For Women

Suffragists at Strawbery Banke 2016

Last year in the month before SBM's first reenactor'stimeline event I was looking at the lineup of military camp after military camp, and at the concentrations of groups by time period and decided the event desperately needed some women's history, especially representing the early 20th century.

As a bit of a lark I put up a Facebook post asking if any of my friends would be up to portraying a few good suffragists to help drum up support for votes for women at the timeline. I got many good responses, some of whom were actually quite serious about coming out on July 2nd, especially if I could supply costuming. A quick conversation with the head of SBM's role players confirmed that she would be happy to help with costumes (we have a 1908 house and a 1919 one) and would like to help with the group itself.

The group that came together was a fabulous mix of feminists, reenactors, and friends. Not every one was a history nerd, not everyone was comfortable portraying history in front of the public, but we all felt it was really important to respect the women who stood up for our rights by reminding museum goers of the struggle less than 100 years ago. In the few weeks before the event I convinced my dad to go through his plywood collection for some sign sized pieces, found some blank banners online, and even roped in one of the SBM summer interns to make up some votes for women ribbons we could pin to our costumes. I frantically painted signs and lettered banners, just enough for a small group of women to be recognized as suffragists.

I saved the orchard next to SBM's 1919 house for our set up, and in the week before the second I dug through my closet and went to the local thrift shops to assemble my own outfit. I was going for 1908 for my outfit. I already had the petticoats & walking skirt, but my early 20th century shirt is a warm flannel one, and my hat is a winter wool one, so a new shirt and hat were in order. Along with organizing a new event, and putting together the suffrage group I unexpectedly spent a week in the hospital just before July. I had no time to make anything, but I had a black straw hat, and found taffeta ribbon at Michaels. I wrapped the entire spool of fluffy white net around the crown of the hat to make it look like a massive (but light and airy) Edwardian hat. Then at a local Portsmouth store I found a white cotton nightgown with the right sort of details and collar. I didn't even bother to shorten the nightgown, just tucked it into the skirts and wore it like a shirt. I knew I would not get to spend a lot of time with the other suffragists, I'd be too busy managing the event. But I really wanted to dress up; and a nice shirtwaist, walking skirt, and straw hat were fine for this working girl.

 

Early on the morning of the 2nd all us suffragists met in the SBM costume storage rooms. Most of the ladies had not met each other before, but they all quickly bonded while getting into new and interesting costumes, and talked modern politics as well as historical. By the time I lead them out to the orchard I knew they'd have have fun and well represent our foremothers. During the day they figured out to let people try on the "votes for women" sandwich board, visitors had a good time taking photos of their friends carrying the signs. The women talked to visitors from our modern perspective about why equal rights are still important today and about the historical fight to vote. From all the feedback I heard only good things about all the conversations they had.

By the end of the day they all agreed to come back next year, and even maybe get together some other times too. We haven't done that yet, but I've got plans. I think the group will be even bigger in 2017, but I'm hoping it will be just as positive and just as much fun. I think I'll have a cool new outfit too.

Percy drives Mama in a Model A. Probably a good idea to keep my eyes closed.

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Learning Through Movement

I am a big supporter of alternate methods of learning, especially when it comes to learning history. Lectures, static exhibits, and books have their place but I’m just tickled that my job allows me to think out of the box and plan for all the different ways people can learn history.

In my role as Manager of Special Events I’m in charge of the celebrations surrounding the 4th of July. When I came in to this position, July 4th was the only event that did not make money for the museum. It was a scattered sort of event, with dozens of random activities, the event needed a serious streamlining. Back in March I talked on this blog about some of the problems, and my first thought about making the event more cohesive. I did not get a full reenactor’s timeline off the ground this year, though having a few more reenactors join us, and a few more time periods represented was a really good start.

What I did manage to do was add two opportunities for folks to get up, move around, and connect to history by using their bodies: a swing dance for adults on Friday night, and an Old Fashioned Field Day for kids on Saturday the 4th. This post is about Friday’s dance, the next one will be about Saturday.

When stumping for the reenactor’s timeline I approached one of the active members of Portsmouth’s vintage community, and asked if he would get a picnic together for the 4th as part of the timeline. He wasn’t very interested in that, but suggested to me that Portsmouth did not have any swing dances, and that we might be ripe for a dance instead. After Adam told me there was nowhere to swing dance on the seacoast I did some research to ascertain if that was true. The only stuff I could find was a dance club at the University of New Hampshire (The Hepcats) and a defunct group on Facebook. I emailed the local dance studios, some of them sometimes offer swing lessons. Boston has a huge swing community, and we’re not that far away. I know they swing in Lowell, and in Manchester NH. Hmm.

Several months after Adam suggested SBM host a swing dance the new head of role-players here at the museum came up to me and asked if, as the events person, I could add a swing dance to one of my events. Well two different people asking for it, and enough interest in vintage outings in the area and no one else doing it, this swing dance was looking more likely.

It took a lot more than just that, The July 4th event went through several more incarnations: we almost hosted a strawberry festival, pancake breakfast, Barbeque, the curatorial team really wanted a pony (I’m not kidding.) but by the time we made it to June the dance was one of the only parts still standing. We scheduled it for Friday night, July 3rd, the same night as the Portsmouth Fireworks. I hired a big band, a tent with a dance floor, and a network of people to get the word out. We made posters, and I did a lot of posting on Facebook. I was so worried that no one would attend that I comped in a couple of dancers on the understanding that they would stay on the dance floor and drag out reluctant attendees too. I got a couple willing to do a dance lesson in the hour before the band played, and asked for their advice on hosting a dance (provide hand sanitizer and breath mints.)

We sold tickets online in advance, but sales were slow. I was a nervous wreck in the afternoon leading up to the dance with the usual July 4th stuff still scheduled to happen the next day, plus the dance was so brand new. The band arrived in plenty of time, the dance instructors, and plenty of SBM employees and volunteers showed up to help out. I supplied pizza to all the volunteers and employees who had agreed to work late (we all missed dinner because of the dance) and the first attendees started to arrive before we’d all finished our first slice. By the time the lesson was well under way the dance floor I’d ordered was nice and crowded.

Folks of all ages, abilities fill the dance floor at Strawbery Banke on July 3rd.

The crowd was swinging and the band was hopping at Strawbery Banke on July 3rd.

And people danced! The lesson was noisy with enthusiasm, and once the band started up people stayed on the dance floor. The dancers I’d invited did a great job of drawing people out who were reluctant, those that had taken part in the lesson tried out their moves. We attracted some more experienced folks as well including quite a few HepCats from UNH who were still around for the summer. A few attendees were even in their vintage best. I only made it out on the dance floor once, but I was so thrilled that everyone else seemed to be having a good time. When the dance ended just as dusk was falling, many folks made a point of coming up to me and telling me that I had to do it again next year.

My volunteers, the SB employees, and I cleaned up fast since it was late, and the tent would be used again first thing in the morning. The band cleared out quickly too and we almost managed to get everything done before the Portsmouth town fireworks started. We all went out on to the lawn to watch the display, which showed rather well over the trees. It was a lovely end to a successful evening, even if we all got stuck in fireworks traffic on the way home.

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A Good First Impression

I’ve brought this up before, but I’ve been thinking about it again. Upon meeting someone we only get a short time to make a first impression. As someone educating about a different time and place the first impression is doubly important. Here are the things that I consider important in a LH introduction:
1.    Something about the time period you are representing
2.    Something about the person you are portraying
3.    Something to engage your audience
I like to try to do all that in just a few short sentences.

When using first-person interpretation we have to be clever to get the most important information out there since we are talking from the long-ago, to an audience of modern individuals. It is a challenge, but a good one. Even when using third-person it is important to avoid giving just a name and a date. Most people don’t have the historical knowledge to put dates into any kind of context. Event smart people who should know dates often don’t. and names have a fairly low educational factor.

So what does a good introduction sound like? Stephen delivered one of my favorites here at the museum with his 1870s coachman character, it went something like:
“Welcome to the kitchen! I hope you don't mind if I don't stand, Mr. Goodwin gave us the evening off. We’re having a bit of a party to celebrate Christmas eve, and to celebrate that we’re one year further away from that dreadful war.”

I love this intro because although in this particular iteration the character is unnamed and the date is not given, there is so much an audience member can get from the intro:
1.    The speaker is an employee, and a fairly formal one (usually they stand when a guest arrives)
2.    He has identified the place: the kitchen of the home owned by Mr. Goodwin
3.    The day itself is something special: a party of Christmas eve, and at the end of a war.
4.    Because he does not specify the war, he has left an opening for his audience to ask. Though they could ask any number of questions based on his statement, the one hanging in the room is: “what war is that?” which can lead to quite a good discussion about the era, about the character, about the audience member’s own experience of war.

"George Rose" chats with a visitor in the kitchen at Goodwin House

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Visual Thinking Strategies

Back in November I attended the New England Museum Association's conference in Boston. I still have mixed feelings about the conference, mostly because November is so busy with my job, and spending two days away from the office seemed like a waste of valuable time. The conference was so crowded I did not get to attend as many sessions as I wanted to, and some of the ones I did attend were not too useful for me in my current position. What I did get out of it was a chance to connect with people who do what I do, and that is what makes the trip worth it. It also really makes me want to host the FPIPN conference in Portsmouth next spring.

One of the sessions I did attend was on Visual Thinking Strategies. Although I was unaware of the term as it was meant in the session, I have inadvertently been teaching using VTS since I was in college. Thinking back on it, someone must have taught it to me, just never used the term. I'm not sure if it was my parents while they dragged me to museum after museum or if it was in college classes on art history or museums but someone must have used visual thinking strategies on me. The session at the conference basically went through the kid's program at one of the mill museums in Northern Mass. They showed photographs of child mill workers from the early 20th Century and asked the kids what they think about the photo and why, then showed them modern photos of child labor around the world, and did the same. While the presenters were walking us museum folks through their kids program I was flashing back to an experience just out of college when I put together and ran a summer camp.

I was working at Historic Northampton, the director had given me a chance right out of college and I was so overwhelmed. But I did manage to put together a one week summer program for kids teaching about life in the year 1875. Every morning when the kids arrived we all hunkered down on the carpet in the tiny classroom behind the gallery, and I would bring out a stack of images: photos of New York and Boston in the 1870s one day, greeting cards the next, advertisements the next. We would look at the images and I would ask the kids what they thought about the kids in the photos, about the products advertised, about what things were considered beautiful, or cool or … My questions were much more leading than the actual VTS questions, which are just: “What is going on in this picture?” and “What makes you say that?” but we used the images to spark some really good discussions. The kids did not have to know a lot of history going in to the discussion, they just had to look at the image and they could take part.

Last week we were talking about a new summer camp program here at the museum that would focus on food. We brought up food in art and in advertising, and wondered how to incorporate that into the camp program, well that is easy! Giving a kid an image and asking them what is going on in the picture can be a fantastic way to establish a shared vocabulary, a jumping off point, a reference for all the other crafts, recipes, garden tours that take place over the week. I don’t get a lot of chances to work directly with visitors any more,  but sitting in on the camp planning session was a lot of fun, and reminded me how much I like visual thinking strategies. Read this entry on entry page

A Reenactor's Timeline

A few of the groups (I'm in there in the middle) at the LHA's 25th timeline event in 2011

I've attended a few LH events that are "timeline events" where groups representing a number of different historical eras/cultures set up encampments, hold demos, participate in fashion shows, and more. For those of us who portray an era that is a little less common, sometimes timeline events are the only events where were get to interact with other people who do living history. Military History Fest is not called a timeline, but it has all the elements, and we've been attending that one (this past February being the only exception) since it started. When we were just starting out with Das Geld Fahnlein we drove all the way to Maryland to participate in a timeline event with another Landsknecht unit, and a few years later tracked down a small timeline event in the middle of Vermont. We've event thought of hosting our own for a while, but getting something new off the ground can be quite difficult.

Winter in the office is when I plan all SBM's events for the next year: get feedback on last year, take a good look at the way we have done things in the past, and think about making changes for the upcoming seasons. Many of the events that I oversee are very established with key elements that work well, and only need minor changes every year: Halloween is about safe trick-or-treat, Christmas is about holiday stories, music and decorations, but July 4th has always seemed a bit unfocussed. We have a big naturalization ceremony in the morning to welcome new citizens to the United States, but as fun as it is to attend, most visitors (or potential visitors) don't think of a naturalization ceremony as a good reason to come to a museum on a day usually devoted to parades and barbeques. This past month I've taken a look at all the elements we've included in our July 4th celebrations: food vendors, craft sellers, kids games, reenactor encampments, garden crafts, special tours, readings of the Declaration, a kid's bike parade, cupcake walk, the list of random bits and pieces went on and on with very little to unify them other than the color scheme. So I took off the list any bits that fit in with other events we already host: we have two food-related events, and a big craft event in the fall. Those bits that had little to do with history like the non-historic kid’s games and cupcake walk I tossed out. Then I looked at the list of things I had left and picked out my favorite parts. The bike parade is a huge hit and I love parades of all shapes and sizes, garden crafts fit so well into the museum’s mission and everyone has fun taking a bit of the museum home, and then there are the reenactors.

Anyone who has read this blog for any length of time will know that I feel very strongly that Living History is a great way to engage with the past, and reenactors do just that, they themselves engage with the past, and help others to do so as well. In 2014 there were three different reenactment groups that participated in SBM’s July 4th festivities: one portraying 1740, one 1865, and one 1943. In year’s past there have been even more: a 1770s doctor, some 1914 folks. Then there are our normal costumed roleplayers who are inside the historic houses representing 1777, 1870, 1907, and 1919. Then there are the Junior Roleplayers who all come out on July 4th and bring to life the buildings and lanes that are usually so static. Once I looked at the event through the lens of my own interests, I discovered that I already had a reenactor’s timeline in the making, with many reasons to cement the theme.

Why a reenactor’s timeline? Strawbery Banke already shows change over time with houses interpreted from 1690 to 1950, so we are well set-up to host multiple time periods. Our houses represent some eras that are less commonly reenacted (not just the ones during major wars) so I’m hoping to attract reenactors who portray some of the less common personas. Strawbery Banke Museum is known to a lot of local reenactment groups, many of whom had told me they would like to be more involved here. Since I do some reenacting on my own I have connections in the reenactment community that I can utilize to get more people involved. Even more exciting to me, I plan on actively looking for groups or individuals that have non-military impressions. We show daily life here on the seacoast, I’ll welcome military reenactors but I want to showcase all sorts of history. There is a fairly active vintage community on the seacoast that I hope to engage; they love history and live locally, but many of them do not visit SBM. One of our staff members has a Model-A Ford which he will bring, and he has promised to bring out a few of his antique car buddies too. I’m excited to get some Native American groups involved, and hopefully some of the fantastic African American LH presenters that are in the area.

I’m gearing up by contacting as many local, or not so local, museums and historic sites that host reenactment events, so I can ask them questions, and hopefully make some professional contacts. I’m reaching out to folks in the LH community that I’ve never worked with before. I’m making a list of all the timeline events in New England, and finding those with interesting, not necessarily military, displays to enrich those that come out to visit SBM on the 4th of July.



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That random collection of digits

The average American does not know dates.

I was talking with a retired Literature professor about volunteering at the museum and learning how to hearth cook. I mentioned that we use recipes from the late 18^th Century, and his response was to ask if we were making pemmican and other Native American meals. By 1770 (what I meant by the later 18^th C.) there were very few Native Americans left in Downtown Portsmouth, there had been English settlers here for over 120 years.

The museum was hiring an outside group, dancers specifically, for some shows and the organizer was effusive about his wonderful costumes. First he said they were just like Currier and Ives, then he mentioned “A Christmas Carol” then went on to talk about “vintage dress”. I had to ask if he was talking 1840s when Currier and Ives started  and when a Christmas Carol was first printed, or 1900s which is when Currier and Ives ended and what is usually considered vintage. He had no idea. When I got to see his costumes they actually were pretty good renditions of the 1860s Currier & Ives prints, it was just the concept of dates and names for separate eras that he had no interest in.

I gave a tour of the museum to a kid just out of college where he had majored in history. I mentioned that Ichabod Goodwin was governor of the state just at the beginning of the Civil War, but that we show his house how it looked in 1870. The kid asked if it was a colonial house.

Maybe it is just the way that I use dates and events, names of time periods versus names of styles. I like to think I’m not a bad history educator. It does say to me that when introducing some to a historical concept, giving a date: as set of numbers strung together to indicate a time in history, or giving an era whether it is Colonial or Victorian can be totally ineffective as a method of grounding your audience.

Here is a challenge to you all: How can you give your audience an anchor from which to understand you without using dates or era name?

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Bringing the streets to life

As Special Events Manager I get to make magic during all sorts of events. I think a large part of that magical atmosphere is created by people, specifically first-person role-players so I try to add as many into my events as possible. Even before I was hired to run SBM’s holiday event, Candlelight Stroll employed more role-players than the regular season, and more than the other events. We have 8 houses that are set up as our “Historic Houses” (i.e. furnished to a specific time period, telling a specific story, and not an exhibit or craft demonstration house) and during Stroll they all contain role-players. One house has only one person in costume, some of the other houses contain up to 8 people bringing holiday stories to life. Some of those folks are employed as role-players during the regular season, many of them are teenagers that participate in our Junior Role-player program, some we hire in specifically for the three weekends in December.

This year I’m hiring folks to perform a few roles inside the historic houses, and I’m also hiring folks to perform on the streets of our neighborhood to extend the atmosphere (and to entertain those people who are stuck waiting in lines.) I did a little of this last year, I hired two of my friends from the Renaissance Faire to interact on the streets and they did a great job. They’ve perfected their craft of interactive improvisational theatre over years of working Faires, and the two I picked are also history buffs. I got great feedback about those two, and permission to hire a bunch more. But I only know so many folks who are close enough to the coast of NH who would want to perform on the streets in December. I’m looking at possibly hiring people I have not worked with before which is exciting, but daunting too.

Junior Roleplayers head on to the grounds during Candlelight Stroll 2013

The challenge will be ensuring a certain level of quality among the role players when we bring on extra people who do not have all year to perfect their craft. Visitors will not be able to tell by looking who is a year-round role-player, who is a RenFaire performer, and who is an actor hired just for this event. I am planning to do a day of training to get a basic starting point for all the different costumed people, We’ll see how much it is possible to do in just one day.
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Not That Rich

I recently read a blog post by one of my favorite bloggers Kitty Calash in which she mentioned a conversation discussing if the rich folks living Providence, RI in the late 18th Century could afford curtains. I won’t wade in to that conversation, but it brought up a discussion I had last year with a roleplayer that I was training about the vagaries of defining a historical person as "rich". I had to explain that although the Goodwins might have been a little rich they really were not super rich. Today we can talk about the super-rich, the 1%, those that drive a Lexus versus a Toyota, versus a Honda, versus a Lamborghini. When we have conversations about those living a long time ago, subtleties like exactly how rich someone is can be lost.

Here on the grounds of Strawbery Banke we have a house we call the Governor’s Mansion. It is actually a very modest house. The family that lived there had five kids, two of which lived in the house as adults. So in the year 1870 there were three generations in the house: Mr. and Mrs. Goodwin, two grown daughters, at least two grandchildren (maybe three), plus four servants. By my count there are 4 small bedrooms on the second floor; the servants and children would be stuck in the third floor attic space. On days when everyone was home it would have been a very crowded house! So that means they must not have been very rich.

And yet … They took vacations and expensive train trips every summer. Mr. Goodwin’s investments did well enough that he could fund a campaign for Governor, and had enough clout to get all his banking friends to fund the first New Hampshire troops sent off to fight the Civil War. The females got their wardrobes from the dress makers in Boston and New York. They had four servants. So they were rich.

But of those servants, only one was male, and he was the coachman. They did not have a butler. Their servants were all younger (the oldest being 25) and mostly immigrants, so they were not the expensive class of servants. Mr. Goodwin did not own hotels, plantations, or factories (other folks in town did,) but he did own shares in railroads and bridges. So not that rich.

I ended up explaining it to my trainee this way: if the Goodwins lived today, they could not afford their own private jet, but would fly first class. Yes they had money, but they were not part of the 1%. See there were gradations back then too.






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Fall Museum Plans

Even though it is still summer by most American calendars, fall and winter planning are well underway at Strawbery Banke. The two events that started off my career as Manager of Special Events are coming around again and I am super excited to add a little of my own creativity into them this year.

Ghosts on the Banke: last year I had only just started less than a month before our Halloween event, so mostly I was carrying out the vision of the last person in my position. "Ghosts" is a safe trick-or-treat that last for two hours per evening on Friday and Saturday the weekend before Halloween. It is a small budget event, and most of that budget is spent on candy so over the years it has gotten away from being a history event, though it is still about community. This year I'm going to try to bring a little history back, by enlisting the help of local theater groups: improv troupes, high school clubs, anyone I can find, to tell "ghost stories" or historical themed skits and scenes on the grounds during the event. I'm going to have to put in some miles tracking down groups to participate  but hopefully this will add a new level of community involvement, more history, and lot more life to the event.

Our holiday event: Candlelight Stroll is also on my mind. To this one I need to add more outdoor activity. This is not that easy to do in December in New England, but that is what I am hoping to do. I am trying to increase the number of caroling groups, or at least spread them out more evenly over the three weekends; I am hoping to work with local Boy Scout and Girl Scout troupes to get them involved, and I have been given the okay to hire more costumed role players!

The last one is the one closest to my heart, I've done so much historical interpretation, acting, role playing, whatever you want to call it, myself. I think it is a great way to bring history to life, and Renaissance Faires have taught me that it is also a great way to keep a crowd entertained. Since we have houses ranging in date from 1690 to 1950 I am looking forward to hiring people to portray all sorts of townsfolk from all sorts of eras. I've already written up the casting call even though I will not put it out until September. The next step as far as putting more costumed role players on site is to start in on the research, also tons of fun, and something I have missed doing! Read this entry on entry page

Not Universally Accessible

We just got some feedback on the Christmas program here at the museum, it is feedback that I have heard before, on an issue that I have struggled with for many years: universal access for those of all levels of mobility. As a historic site, one must travel the roads and paths to get to the historic buildings, all of which are entered by going up stairs. We have retro-fitted some buildings with ramps, but entrances are not the only problems: getting around inside the buildings can be tough, and just getting to the buildings from the visitor center can be a challenge.

The busiest day of this year’s Christmas program was also the most problematic in terms of visitors navigating our site. The weekend before we had received a foot and a half of snow, then on Tuesday we got another 8 inches. All that had been cleared off the paths, but Friday and Saturday were warm and the light mist had been melting the snow all day. Since it was fairly cold, the ground was mostly frozen, forcing the snow melt on to our nicely shoveled paths and either re-freezing in to ice slicks, or mixing with just enough thawed ground to cause massive mud puddles. The grounds were totally a mess. I wore my rubber boots and muddled through, but those visitors who had dressed up in fancy shoes, or had mobility issues were having trouble on the grounds.

What could we do about this particular situation? We were certainly salting and sanding the icy patches, pushing back the snow, but even with a dedicated grounds crew there was not a lot we could do about the mud puddles. The water was not being absorbed into the frozen ground, and in order to soak up all that water we would have needed to invest in a couple tons of sand or gravel, or possibly several industrial vacuum cleaners. Do they make vacuum cleaners that suck up mud puddles?

So short term we could not do anything about the rough walking conditions, but that does not mean we can not improve for the future. So what are some of the long term solutions? The easiest and most cost effective solution to weather conditions on roads is to pave them: wooden walkways, cobblestones, concrete, asphalt. All of these would significantly reduce the mobility issues of our modern visitors. However, we are a historic site and none of those methods of paving can be documented for the time when most of our houses were built, which is the late 1700s early 1800s. At that time the roads were dirt, so that is what we have: dirt. By having piles of snow and mud puddles in December we are giving visitors a taste of winter in times past, and all the limits that go with it.

So yes, a number of elderly visitors and those with mobility issues do have trouble navigating our grounds in bad weather, even if nothing is falling from the sky at the moment that they come through. From a modern perspective that is totally unfair. I think universal access is an incredibly worthy goal and I do try, in my own little way, to work towards universal access for people of all abilities. But I am also a historian and can tell you, folks with disabilities did not really get to enjoy the “good old days.” Aside from the stigma a differently-abled person had to endure, in the time before electricity there were no elevators, no electric wheel chairs; heck, all those muddy paths were dark and even more treacherous before the cheap modern light bulb. What happened when older folks were no longer able to walk all that well? They certainly did not expect to go out with the grandkids to a nine-acre site in the middle of the winter and expect to walk around for several hours. But just because they were excluded in the past does not give us permission to exclude people today. BUT we don’t want to give up on presenting history, that is what we do!

I know there are people out there in the museum world doing wonderful work on universal access, but I have found very little of it on historic settings. If a reader has any insight, please share. I’d love to put more brains to work on this.


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Candlelight Stroll 2013

Family Parlor in Goodwin Mansion

This past weekend was the second weekend of Strawbery Banke Museum’s Candlelight Stroll. This is the Big Event for me in my position of Manager of Special Events. The month leading up to this past weekend, and the last couple weeks in particular have been hellishly stressful, but the weekends went off beautifully. Yes, the first hour of the first Saturday was spent running around fixing all the things, and there was a bunch of stuff that I wanted to do that did not get done in time. But visitors seemed to have a good time, I got some compliments, and only the nit-pickers found anything to complain about.

So Candlelight Stroll is big.

Eight of the museum’s houses are set up how they would have looked in December, in eight different time periods. That means 8 different research bases, 8 different stories to tell, 8 different sets of costumes, music, food, everything. Oh, and eight different sets of decorations made from local botanicals in historically appropriate designs. Every house is full of light, and role players, and activity.

Then there are the demonstration and exhibit houses. During regular museum open hours there are demos of: Hearth cooking, weaving, pottery, coppering, and blacksmithing. This past weekend those were joined by: windsor chair making, tin smithing, and basket making. Then there was all the food: the museum has a new cafe, plus this year we served booze in the 1777 tavern, free hot cider and cookies, and museum members got their own food-filled reception.

Then there was all the live music. Local choruses singing carols, piano music in the Visitor Center, bands in the Cider Shed, Roving guitarists. And puppet shows, and wandering role-players, and a kid’s treasure hunt, and Saint Nick handing out candy, and horse-drawn carriage rides, and hands on crafts...

Yes, I am in charge of all of that.

I get a ton of help from the Horticulture Department, Curatorial, Education, Development, heck, every department. This is by no means a one-woman-show. But ultimately if it falls apart or succeeds I am the one responsible.

Making magic like this event, I absolutely love that. I love that visitors have a magical-non-commercial experience. I love creating safe, celebratory experiences that have a ton of really rich history thrown in.

But I really missed role playing. I was not in historical costume, I was not personally bringing the past to life. I got to hire a bunch of really talented people to do it, and that was definitely satisfying, but not the same.

Peek in the door to Rider-Wood

I’m looking forward to next weekend, when we get to do it all over again for the final time this year, and I’m looking forward to the next time I get to dress up, even if it won’t be for a while. Read this entry on entry page

Halloween and What I'm up to

This always seems to happen, I hit the end of October and just feel like sleeping for the next few months. Last year I did manage to blog a tiny bit in November, the year before I did not manage a single post in November. Yup, it is a trend.

This year I’ve spent the last month and a half jumping in the deep end of event management here at the museum. My first day was October 1st and my first event was October 25th. Luckily the person I am replacing was both very well organized and willing to come in and spend a number of days helping me get going. I have relied very heavily on her past planning and notes as I get going organizing and carrying-out special events here at the museum. Now, I am not in charge of all events; weddings and private events are handled by someone else, educational events and fundraisers are different too. I am in charge of Halloween, Christmas, Independence Day, and a wine and food festival in the fall. That means my schedule is very heavily weighted towards this time of year, just when I am getting started!

Halloween was interesting. As an event it strays pretty far from some of the museum’s mission: specifically the part about encounters with history and preservation, but it does have a lot to do with community which is also part of the mission. The Friday and Saturday before Halloween the museum opens for safe and spooky (but not scary) trick-or-treating for kids of all ages. There are a few activities, some Halloween themed entertainment, but mostly it is a chance to walk around the neighborhood that is Strawbery Banke Museum and fill a bag with all sorts of candy. With the help of the properties department I got to purchase over 35,000 individual-sized pieces of candy. Just the smell of all that candy was enough to give anyone a sugar high. Over the two evenings more than 3,000 visitors came through. By the end we had just a few pounds of candy left, and from what I heard folks seemed pretty satisfied with their experience.

So what did all that have to do with history? Very little, unfortunately. The event really is geared towards all the local families that want a safe place to trick-or-treat, and the evenings are so crowded that a lot of the historic houses are just too small and too fragile to be used in this manner. Could more history be injected into the event? Heck yes! I did not have a lot of time this year to come up with anything new, these past few weeks have really been about learning the ropes, but anything I am involved in inevitably gets history injected into it, and all these events take place at a museum! Next year I’ll have those trick-or-treaters learning some history, I guarantee.

Next up, the biggest event at the museum: Candlelight Stroll. Three weekends in December, every building on the museum grounds, 300 years of history, over ten thousand visitors expected. This one is a whopper, so if you don’t hear from me for a while please understand I’m bringing history to life in some of the most exciting, magical ways that I know how.

Then come visit me at the museum!


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A Different Kind of Costume

As of the end of September I am no longer a Costumed Roleplayer at Strawbery Banke Museum. I have given up what may have been the best job ever, but since this is the second time I have given it up, I get the feeling that it won’t be the last. I guess I know what I’ll be doing when I retire!

I gave up the job because the wages are so low that I was not able to contribute to my family in a monetary way. We’ve got a mortgage, two cars, pets, medical bills. Yes, I probably could have changed my lifestyle to reflect the abysmal pay, but I can’t ask my family to do that too. And the commute was killing me. An hour and twenty minutes each way is a hard slog.

Well the commute is not going to change, but I’ve been given a stellar opportunity. The person in charge of special events (or at least some of them) at the museum where I’ve spent the last two years is moving on, and after I gave my notice as a role-player and expressed my interest in the events position the museum hustled to make me an offer. I am now Strawbery Banke’s Manager of Special Events! I’ll be able to use the skills I honed stage managing renaissance faires, then tempered in fire up at the college. I’ve only been in the job a week and a half, but I’m enjoying it so far, I’m not feeling overwhelmed yet.

There are four main events that I will oversee, the 4th of July, a wine festival, Halloween Trick-or-Treat, and the December Candlelight Stroll. I’ve jumped in feet first planning the Halloween event, luckily it is a fairly low-key event whose sole purpose is to give the community kids a fun, spooky (but not scary) experience. Christmas is the biggest event and will follow shortly after. It is the one I am most worried about and the one I am most looking forward to. If anyone who reads my blog wants to come help out, I promise I run a really fun event!

But on the title of this post. I only took one weekend and one day off in between my last day of role-playing and my first day in the new position. Most folks had been informed (especially the ones who read email) that I was switching from seasonal to regular staff, but some still mentioned that it was a shock seeing my come in wearing “normal” business clothes. I did not look like I stepped out of some other era, nor was I wearing the interpreter uniform of a burgundy polo and khaki pants. But one of my role-player buddies who is very perceptive observed of my office attire: “it is just a different kind of costume.”

So I’ll be living less history during the work week, but I’ll be able to do more of my own reenacting on the weekends, and hopefully I’ll get to create magical events where scores of people will get to experience Living History.


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Presenting the Presentation

The day of my presentation I was so incredibly nervous! I had hard copies of my various notes, plus originals for the handout. I had electronic versions in my email and on my iPad, I even packed a shirt to change into so I would not have to wear my red uniform shirt during the talk. Of course when I got to work the person playing Mrs. Shapiro called out sick, so I had to scramble into my back-up clothes and spend the day being Mrs. Shapiro. Actually that was probably better, it meant I could stay in Mrs. Shapiro mode and only think about feeding the family, and Avrham at work, Mollie at school. Mrs. Shapiro did not give presentations to colleagues. But when the crowds died down in the afternoon I was again stuck in my own thoughts, getting more and more nervous. At the end of the day I practically ran out of Shapiro house to go get ready for my talk.

Since it was not scheduled too far in advance, and because my talk was advertised as mostly for role-players, I did not have too big a crowd. Still, enough people did show up, and everyone who did was very attentive. The folks in the education department had asked for an advance copy of the bibliography so they could order some of my recommendations for the little library, they ended up ordering a ton of books! It was awesome to see all my old friends (in book form) waiting for me to tell more folks about them.

I started by talking about how important it is that we never stop honing our skills as interpreters (costumed or uniformed.) That we need to keep learning and developing new skills no matter how long we have been at it. Then I segued into an activity to determine what some of those interpretation skills are. I got some resistance at the beginning of the activity, but most people seemed to get in to it, and everyone seemed to figure out what I was aiming for. It started with everyone writing down various types of skills from a couple of different types of occupations: historian, teacher, and actor. I asked them to write down skills that they might use as interpreters, to think of those things that the best of us do well, and attitudes we all strive for.

The next part I was up in front of the whiteboard, while the group shouted out various skills they had either written down or just though of. I filled up the entire board with my horrible handwriting, my audience only corrected my spelling twice. The point was not really to have everyone read and memorize the skills we put on the board, the point was to help my fellow interpreters recognize the diversity of skills one can draw on in our profession and help them recognize ways to keep learning. When someone seemed to have a little trouble articulating an idea they had I was often able to fill in with a vocabulary-type word to describe the things we all do, but never talk about. As I wrote down skills I pointed to the various publications where my audience could find out more information. Before we finished each section i made sure to go back to the list I had compiled ahead of time, there were only a few things in each section that no one had yet mentioned that I thought were important enough to add. For the most part, my fellow interpreters got the important skills all on their own.

Once the board was full, folks asked questions, of me and of each other. We had a heated discussion on "telling the truth" and what that meant as a role-player. I tried to not let one or two people dominate the discussion, but at the same time I certainly did not keep an iron grip on the lines of discussion.

The whole presentation plus discussion ran for just over an hour, and I got quite a few compliments when it was done. I did not get a lot of constructive criticism, my guess is that the workshop was so far outside everyone's experience of other workshops that they did not have a lot to compare it to. I did have one participant come up to me the day after and share one of her favorite Emily Dickinson poems, and that was incredibly special.

Now I want to give my presentation to more groups, see if I can inspire more people who do historical interpretation (in costume or otherwise, at a museum or on their own) to hone their skills and never stop learning.


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Preparing to lead a workshop

Recap of This Post: I was unhappy with SBM’s level of Role-Player training, and I was unhappy with our spring workshop. When given 5 paid hours of research time I decided to research first-person historic interpretation.

When given the opportunity to research what we do, my first thought was to go through my bibliography of Living History and pick out some bits from each book to share with my co-workers in the form of a paper. It gave me a good excuse to go back and actually read some of the books on my list that I had only skimmed, and pick out the more relevant parts. I started in on two of the skimmed books, then buckled down on three of the never-read ones. So far I have completed (and reviewed) only one, but I’m really close to being done with one of the other two. I’ve promised myself I’ll get at least two more of them finished and reviewed before the end of October.

This spring we role-players were scheduled for two workshops, one at the end of March (the crappy one) and another in mid-April. It was scheduled for a Monday morning, and I was spending the weekend in Fort Wayne, Indiana (I blogged about that event here.) I drove through most of the night trying to make it back to the east coast for that workshop, and at about 2 am somewhere in the depths of New York state on a very empty highway I decided what the workshop would look like if I ran it. In order to stay awake I wrote it all down, and that basic outline is what I eventually used for the workshop I ran this past week. I did not make it to the second role-playing workshop, we stopped at about 4 am and I overslept, ah well.

The basics of that I wrote down that night are this: the skills needed for historical role-playing (sometimes called costumed interpretation, sometimes called first-person interpretation) can be broken down into three categories: history, education, and theatre. Without skills in any one of the three categories you will have a much harder time role-playing, good RPs have skills that fall into all three. That night I started my list of skills, and listed them in the category I thought was most appropriate. Over the next few months I kept thinking about my list and adding to it.

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Leading Up To Leading a Workshop

Advance warning: this is part one of a three part series on a workshop I recently conducted at Strawbery Banke Museum

A few weeks ago I lead a workshop and discussion for my fellow interpreters and role-players at Strawbery Banke Museum. I designed the workshop in response to a training that the museum offered us role-players last spring. I did not blog about it because April was very busy, also because it was so bad, I really had nothing good to say about it other than that it got all us role-players together, and it convinced me that I could lead a better workshop.

One of the things that I had noticed about becoming a museum role-player this time around (as opposed to when I started back in 1999) is that the museum provided tools in only two varieties: historical research, and the other role-players. Every role that the museum fills comes with a big 3-ring binder full of history articles. The binders include information about the house where you will be role-playing, the family you will represent, a timeline of known facts about the person you will be portraying, articles about the general history of the era, and more specifically about Portsmouth and about New Hampshire’s role in that era. In addition to the binder there are file cabinets full of photocopies of primary sources, articles written by past employees, and yet more history articles. Plus there is a small library of history books that we’re encouraged to borrow. That is all history-research related, which is useful but only one part of becoming a role-player. When one of the folks in horticulture asked what is wrong with just giving only the history stuff I kind of blew up at him (sorry Eric) and said it would be like giving someone a book of plants and telling them to go garden. Not a book on how-to garden, just a book with facts on the plants in the garden, he would never expect someone to know how to transplant seedlings without step-by-step instructions, or at least watching someone else do it.

Now for new role-players they are given a small amount of time shadowing a well established role-player, where they get to watch someone who knows how to do it. But from what I have gathered, the amount of time a new RP gets depends less on their need and more on the museum’s scheduling difficulties. How much the experienced role-player gets to share, and if it is compatible with the way the new RP learns is left entirely up to chance. In the little library there were no books on role-playing. Heck, there were not even any books on museum interpretation!

But back to the spring workshop. I was very excited going in to the workshop because we were actually having training! I was hopeful that the workshop leader would establish some professional vocabulary, that she would talk about the books about roleplaying, and that we would get a chance to bond as a group outside of the mess of interpreters. Well we got to bond about what a crappy workshop it was. The worst part was that at the very end of the workshop the leader passed around some hand-outs that did include a vocabulary list and a tiny bit of a bibliography! She did not talk at all about her hand-outs which would have made a great workshop, she just passed them around with apologies and basically told us to ignore them!!

By the time the workshop was over I knew that I could better meet the needs of my fellow role-players, and at the same time I was offered an opportunity to do so. We were all told that the museum was offering us RPs 5 hours of paid research time. It was expected we would research some aspect of history from the era that we represent, then write it up in a paper, so the other folks who do the same time period could benefit. I knew that my co-workers would be better served if I was able to share my research on role-playing instead of any research on history that I may do. Thankfully my bosses at the museum agreed to let me try.

Thus ends part 1 of my journey to workshop, I’ll post about the actual workshop soon.

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Feeling Pretty

Last month I spent a lot of time thinking about getting into character, and why I had been having so much trouble with the new role in the Victorian Garden. I've been struggling to learn all the gardening, to finish my clothing, to find ways to get into character and relate to my visitors. Often it takes some time for me to feel comfortable in a new role, but this one has seemed almost torturous (though that could have been the corset.)

The day in the garden that I felt the most confident, the most "in character" had a lot of things going for it, I had time to prepare the day before, I was given garden tasks I knew I could do, and I went into the day feeling very pretty.

The evening before I managed to sew a few more hook and eye closures on my costume, so my pink petticoat was no longer held on with pins, and the back of my skirt at least had the hook, even if the eye was still a safety pin. I know that those two little things made absolutely no difference to the visitors, but to know that I had made even some tiny progress on my clothing made me feel better in the clothes. During the day itself I was assigned a garden task that I felt confident about (watering and fertilizing) and in the afternoon I was joined by the summer camp kids in their cute pinafores, which I always think is great fun.

I had been visiting with a college friend the few days before, and I remembered from so long ago his skills at French braids. I asked, and he accepted so when I arrived in the morning my hair looked fabulous. Those braids, even more than the clothing fixes, and the camp kids made me feel 100%. All day long I greeted every visitor with a flirtatious smile and a story about growing up in Portsmouth. I got the gardening chores done so fast, and I did not second guess myself too often. I know most people could not see my lovely coif under the bonnet, but I made sure to take off my bonnet as much as possible.

Am I being shallow? Is this a weakness on my part? I think it is entirely a reflection of the history I am portraying.

In Shapiro house I wear a big frumpy apron when I am inside, and a massive dark raincoat to go out. I wear an unflattering orange shirt that I made out of flannel, I mix brown, black and navy blue. Mrs. Shapiro was a thrifty woman. She cared about feeding her family well but did not worry about feeding herself. Her husband unplugged the alarm clocks during the day so they would not waste electricity. I do not have photographic evidence of Mrs. Shapiro's fashion sense until later in her life, but I feel fairly confident surmising that her own clothing did not matter much to Mrs. Shapiro.

Victorian ladies are something different altogether. We have stories of them changing outfits three times a day. Even their underthings required help for proper fitting. Susan Dewey specifically was known as a beauty and a charmer. In 1870 she has been married for 3 years and has come back to her home town for the summer. Though I only have a few facts about Susie, I surmise from the mores of the time if nothing else that she would look pretty well put together, which is something I struggle with.

So I often find it tough to have the confidence to play Susan Dewey. To play her well I think I need a servant to see that I'm properly attired before I'm ready to face the world, or the museum going public. Or maybe I just need to find ways to feel pretty.

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Every 8 Minutes

In the parlor of Shapiro house there is a large mirror above the fireplace (actually the former fireplace). The mirror is magic, it conceals a television that plays an eight minute video about the Shapiro family and their journey from Ukraine to Portsmouth, NH. The video is on repeat. The interpreter playing Mrs. Shapiro turns it on in the morning when we open the house, and turn it off in the evening when we lock up. On a quiet day in Shapiro house us Mrs. Shapiros listen to the video while we sit in the kitchen and it plays over and over in the parlor. Every eight minutes. In a day we listen to the video play over 53 times, depending on how early we turn it on, and how sick of it we are at the end of the day. I'm sure all three of us could recite the whole thing, narrator's pauses and inflections in place. Luckily, the script is very well written. It is not an easy task to condense the lives of an entire family into eight minutes, and to do so without causing bleeding ears among those of us who have listened to it all season for years is a blessing.

The narrator starts out describing the family back in Russia, talks about names, about Samuel Shapiro’s journey to Portsmouth, about Abraham and Sarah, about life in Portsmouth, about Mollie, then about the family as it is now. Since I have mostly just listened to it for the past two seasons sometimes I’m surprised when I catch the images on the TV that go along with the script that I know so well. It is an odd perspective.

For me one of the parts that stick out the most are the tragedies. There are three events that the narrator describes as tragic: the holocaust, the death of Samuel Shapiro's two oldest daughters, and Mollie Shapiro's death shortly after her marriage. The order I have described above is the order they appear in the film even though chronologically the holocaust happens last. Yes, when sitting there on a really slow day, often a cold and wet day, I think about things like that while I keep myself busy cooking, sewing and reading; waiting for visitors to talk to.




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Junior Role-Players

As the school year starts back up, we’ve said goodbye to the Junior Role-players at Strawbery Banke. I will definitely miss them. During the summer SBM runs all kinds of summer camps: half day camp for the littles, craft-centered camps for the 8 to 12, and role-player camps for the older kids. They get to try out all the history, all the clothes, and what it is like to be in character out on the grounds of the museum. I have tons of good stories to tell you about this year’s juniors, but first, a memory.

When I worked at SBM while I was in college I befriended a junior role player. He had been involved in the museum a lot longer that I had and knew more about the history and about roleplaying. At the end of my first season I was given the christmas program assignment of the most boring house on the grounds. The Puritan/Protestant winter house has no decorations because they did not celebrate Christmas. We could not have a real fire, the kitchen where I sat had a string of red christmas lights buried in the ash in the fireplace. I was assigned to tell stories to my two “step-children”, two poor juniors who had to sit with me in that dreary house. Cory, the boy assigned to play Jack Wheelwright, step-son to Martha Wheelwright (my character) was such a good sport. We made our own fun, told stories all evening long.

The next summer Cory volunteered a couple times a week, usually in the library, and if i was working he would stop by to visit.We talked about everything. We both loved history, hated high school, and had a theatrical disposition that got us in trouble one day. I forget whether it was early spring or late fall, either way the sun was setting before closing, so the flood-lights came on in front of the house where I was stationed. There had been very few visitors before Cory had shown up, so it did not take long while we were chatting for us to discover a musical we both loved. I don’t remember if it was Les Miserables, or Little Mermaid (probably Little Mermaid.) Soon we were both singing and showing off in the flood-lights. We were not all that different in age, he was almost through high school, I had completed two years of college. I remember getting in trouble for that one!

Sometimes we joked, Cory and I, that one day he would go in for a job interview at the Smithsonian and I would be the one conducting the interview. I hope, wherever Cory ended up he is doing well. Read this entry on entry page

Victorian Ensemble: The Dress

I'm going to tell you, dear readers, about my Victorian dress, even though I generally like to wait until the outfits are complete, I'm afraid this one will take a very long time, and might be retired before it is ever finished.

Have you ever seen some fabric in a store and known exactly what you'd make it into? Even if you do not currently "do" that period? How long would you hold on to said fabric just waiting for the right opportunity?

About 10 years ago I came across some tan linen fabric embroidered with  white and gold flowers that I just had to make into a mid-nineteenth century gown. At the time there was very little possibility of me branching from the Renaissance into 19th C. but I could not pass up the fabric. I liked it so much and worried about the amount a hoop skirted form would take up I actually bought more of it when I saw the same pattern again the next year. The fabric then sat in a bin for a very long time. Five years after going into the bin I pulled out my lovely linen when it looked like there was a possibility that we would put on a Wild West show. That opportunity fell through so the fabric went back into storage. I thought I'd get to make it up when a friend got married and had a tea party theme, I ran out of time.

Well obviously the fabric was destined to be an 1870s garden outfit for me to wear in my role at Strawber Banke. The funniest part is when I first started contemplating making my own 1870 dress, I had completely forgotten about the embroidered linen! I was thinking about my current fabric stash and the possiblity of purchasing something new, and got to wondering if there were any more bins of fabric that were still out in the shed... Voila, the perfect Victorian garden dress material. Purchased so long ago as to now feel like it was free.

When deciding on a dress shape and pattern I spent a bit of time in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s photo collections site and almost immediately found two lovely linen dresses that I thought would be suitable for the garden. The best part of both, is that they were not covered in ruffles that would weigh down a dress or pick up more garden debris. The dresses I liked had lovely looking scalloped hems, which is completely different from anything the Mrs. Goodwins wear. I even managed to find some extant dresses with scalloped hems that were embroidered with little flowers. Yay for documentation! Yay for having an eye for fabric even before I knew what I was doing!

I started in on the skirt first. I’ve done quite a bit of sewing now, and my last few historical skirts have turned out awesome. So I took a big risk and decided to make my skirt with only my own patterning. Ugh. I used much too much fabric, both width and length. I was attempting a little bit of poof with petticoats, so I made it a few inches longer than usual. I wanted to be able to work in it, and to have the width for some poof so I put plenty of width in there. It turned into a heavy, flappy mess.

I was heartbroken and in a total panic because it took me a lot longer than I thought it would. I was due to start in the garden and I only had some underpinnings and the horrible skirt. The person in charge of role playing at the museum saved me. She pulled out the maid’s outfit that I’d worn 14 years before, the first time I worked at Strawbery Banke. The thing fits me better now than it did then, and although it is worn, and not very regal, it was time period appropriate. And complete. After that first day I took my skirt home and chopped off almost 5 inches in length, and 35 inches in width. I wore it the next time I was in the garden and I’ve gotten tons of compliments on it ever since. The skirt still does not have a closure in the back, and the ribbon binding on the bottom edge is only sewn to the front of the scallops, it is not turned under. But no one seems to notice, and it is holding up fairly well.

I wore the nearly completed skirt and the old green bodice for a month and a half while I fussed over my own bodice. My friend Kristina helped me make the pattern and fit it, but as soon as we were done I lost the pattern piece for the back. then when I re-made the pattern I spent a few weeks getting the fit right by sewing and re-sewing the lining pieces. When I finally got the lining right, fixed my pattern and cut the fashion fabric (my lovely embroidered linen)  it was mid-June. I was determined to have something wearable other than the old green thing for the Fourth of July festivities at the museum since I would be in the garden that day.

A big part of stitching the bodice was putting on the trim. A bland tan linen needs a contrasting trim to make it special, so I matched the golden skirt trim with some golden piping, and put a chocolate brown ribbon underneath to make it pop. Before I stitched the lining to the bodice I put chocolate brown piping around the whole thing. This is a Victorian garden dress after all. By the time I got that done I barely had time to finish the front hook closure before the 4th. I did not manage to make sleeves or a belt or any of that. Luckily the museum had purchased with blouses for all of us gardeners to wear on the very hot days, so I pinned the button front of the shirt into the bodice so my arms are covered by the shirt sleeves. I ran out of time to sew hooks on to the skirt top, so I put safety pins on the inside an for the past month and a half have been attaching the hooks on the bodice to the little bit of the pins that show on the outside of the skirt.

4th of July, in the Goodwin Garden. I promise better photos some day!

I keep promising myself that I'll put on the sleeves, finish the skirt, and make the apron and bustle bit that goes over the whole thing, but at this point I happy wearing it the way it is. Maybe I'll have to come up with some mid-nineteenth century event this fall to get me motivated to finish it. Read this entry on entry page