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

Tools for Effective First-Person Role-Playing

When chatting with some of the other folks that were new role-players at Strawbery Banke one of them mentioned that when she started she had a hard time getting into character and talking to visitors as if she was her historical role. This is an incredibly common problem, especially since she was given only one set of tools in training: the historical record. Don’t get me wrong, the historical record is incredibly important. Without facts, historical documents and scholarly interpretation, we would not have a foundation, nothing to stand on. Knowing how to write does not make you a journalist, or novelist. You can have the best costume in the world, and know the most knowledge, but if you can not get it across to your audience then you are not an effective first-person role-player.

There are two other sets of tools that I think someone needs to be an effective first-person role-player: interactive improvisation, and educational presentation. I believe both of these can be taught, and that they should be taught. The new roleplayers at SBM were not taught about education, it is expected they know a bit about teaching before they get to the museum. And many “professionals” look down on theatre as fiction, it is certainly not serious study, like us role-players. But without being able to teach, and without interactive improvisation, I would be much poorer at what I do.

I’ll talk about education tools first, since I think these will be the easiest for most folks to agree with. Every teacher out there will tell you that there are skills needed to be an effective teacher, I think many of those translate to being an effective first-person role-player. Not every visitor needs to know the exact same fact, there are many different ways to learn, not everyone makes a good discussion leader. A teacher can tell you all this and a role player can use them to get across all those great stories they’ve learned through research. Modern folks can empathize with folks from the past, we can learn about ourselves by learning about where we come from. Sometimes just knowing that our jobs as roleplayers is not only to get across the past, but to teach it, to relate it in ways that are meaningful to our audiences can boost our effectiveness.

The third tool that I use in every visitor contact is interactive theatre (yes, I went to a posh sort of college and spell it “re”.) There is an element of acting in Living History portrayals. It is not the same as acting in a play, or movie, but interactive theatre is very different from those too. When the audience is right there interacting in the story, you need to be willing to throw the pages of the script out the window, but not loose sight of the underlying story you are telling. It takes flexibility and empathy; you need to be a good listener, know how to stay positive, and not be afraid to look like a complete donkey. Theatre techniques, practice, and yes, games can be a lot of help.  I promise your audience/visitors/MoP/students will never know.

I started doing this crazy dressing up and acting like a person from the past (i.e. first person roleplaying) nineteen years ago with a little theatre background, a little history research, and basically no educational training. Since then I’ve not only absorbed a lot of history and some educational theory, but I was trained in interactive improvisational theatre. I am a much better role-player for my training, and I think all of us role-players could continue to improve with more of all three.


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Conquered 38 Times

How does one explain the history of a place that goes back 6,000 years?

over the rooftops of Jerusalem's Old City

One of the things I noticed during our day in Jerusalem’s Old City is that there are as many different ways to tell the story, the history of Jerusalem as there are people, or perhaps even more than that. You’ve probably heard the joke about the group of 5 Jews (or scholars, or whatever) where you will find 6 opinions. The same can be said for teaching or storytelling methods, and in one day in Jerusalem’s Old City we experienced quite a variety of ways to tell the story of Jerusalem.

We hired a guide to the Old City and met her early in the morning. She got out some maps and a whiteboard and explained the story of the city in terms of geography. Then several hours later while sipping tea outside a teashop she explained the story with her arm span as a timeline, her elbows and shoulders were the major shifts and the life of Jesus was her left ear. After she left us we toured an old stone fortress and watched the introductory video (which happened to be the story of Jerusalem) then toured the exhibit halls (the story as told by objects.) and later than night came back for a laser and light show (yet another version of the story of Jerusalem.) Before our arrival I had read up on the story in guidebooks and magazines, and when we got home we got to tell our friends and families our own version of the story.

Jerusalem is a complex place, full of diverse people. Maybe more complex than the history of the US or most other places we might visit, but I think the lessons apply. Be on the lookout for other versions of the story, other ways to tell a tale or teach a lesson. Even if you think you know the story, you never know what new details might stick.

Model of Jerusalem during the time of the Second Temple at the Israel Museum

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I think She's got it

Alysa was in a really susceptible frame of mind. We’d had an adventurous first day in Israel and were on our second day, venturing even further afield. We had an amazing time riding horses on the Mediterranean coast in the morning, then headed further north to find some cool ruins.

On the way we got lost, splashed around in the Mediterranean,  and finally found the place where I wanted to go, a Roman city, built as a port 2,000 years ago, and now well preserved ruins. The entrance to the National Park at Caesarea is through a modern park structure, down a path, and then through the remains of a Crusader (European Middle-ages) structure full of high arches and towering stone. You emerge out of the dark, vaulted stone on to a bright column-lined Roman street, and as we emerged I said something to the effect of:

Two thousand years ago this street was a busy Roman street. Full of folks like Roman bureaucrats, cooks, fancy ladies, slaves, Roman Citizens out for a stroll and servants hurrying to market, messengers, tax collectors, they walked through a bustling city where we are now walking.

For the rest of the afternoon we explored up and down, on top and below all sorts of ruins. We had lunch and made friends with some very nice cats. We complained about the other tourists and at one point had a bit of a race to reach the Roman theater. We marveled at the bath house, and discussed what it would be like to live in a beautiful villa like the one we could see outlined in the ruins.

We also played out a conversation those Roman citizens might have had. We read a plaque explaining that the marble for the columns had been shipped in from all over: Greece and Turkey, even Egypt. So we played it out:
“That is nice marble, where’d you get it?”
“Oh this old stuff? I had it shipped from Greece, what about you?”
“Well my marble came from Egypt.”

I believe that there were jealousies and one-upmanship even in Roman times. I think emotions translate sometimes much better than facts or even objects.

A few days later Alysa was talking to someone else (Stephen probably) and said she had such a good time at Caesarea because that was history about actual people. She could see why history could be interesting if it was about how real people lived and not just about dates, battles, and countries. I have to say that moment totally warmed my heart.

I know that not everyone is going to love the things that I do. Alysa has her own life and one of our many goals when inviting her to live with us was helping her discover her own passions and goals. But since she is stuck with us for at least a while, I am really glad that she has started to understand why Stephen and I are so into history, and maybe is on her way to enjoying it while she is with us, if not beyond.

Alena photographing the ruins at Caesarea

Alysa posing under Crusader srches

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Am I a Living Historian?

Once, when I was 28 and unemployed I was confronted by my landlord in an awkward driveway encounter. It was the middle of the afternoon, when most adults are at work and on seeing me arrive at home to enter my apartment my landlord asked me what I did for a living. I told him I was a historian doing freelance work, mostly working for theater companies as a dramaturge. In reality I had just finished a stint as Production Manager of a Renaissance faire and was applying for any job I could find. I was doing a lot of history writing, but it was mostly for small stipends, and most real historians would look for the nearest vat of hot tar if they’d heard me say it. But my landlord’s reaction was mostly surprise, and definitely a higher level of respect. I look younger than I am, and I suppose one does rather expect historians to have grey beards and sit in armchairs while smoking pipes. So putting myself in the category of a learned academic meant that I was not going to be questioned about if I could pay my rent, or why I was returning home in the middle of the day.

I have been thinking about this recently because of all the stories about the unemployed who spent 20 years in the same industry but since they have been laid off have lost part of their identity. Can you call yourself a stockbroker if you don’t actually get paid to broker stocks? At the time what little money I had coming in was made by working in the field of history. But not everyone who works in the field of surgery is a surgeon.
In Stacy Roth’s book “Past into Present” at the beginning of her chapter on the Visitor she purposefully evokes the professional when talking about visitor relations.

“From a business angle, interpreters [which Roth defines as one who: translates material culture and human or natural phenomena to the public] provide a service and visitors are the customer. While such a statement sounds crassly commercial and clinical, it is a notion that cannot be ignored by anyone who earns a livelihood from historical interpretation. It separates the professional from the dabbler. Admittedly, many interpreters forget or ignore this responsibility. But the concerned professional interpreter, salaried or independent, and the serious hobbyist or volunteer care about the visitor experience.” - Stacy Roth, Past into Present

So while at first it might seem like Roth defines the professional as those earning their livelihood from LH she then does leave room for those not employed at museums (the independent) and those who don’t make money at it (the serious hobbyist and volunteer.) I’m encouraged that there might be room for me in Roth’s definition of the professional.

If I again find myself in the situation where I need a professional moniker but don’t have a full time job would I consider telling folks I’m a historian? Probably, though I do like the sound of Living Historian almost as much.

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When is a history book too old?

I was recently browsing in the library of the small college where I work, and I wandered into the section on German history. I was a little surprised that the section was so large, since the college does not strictly have a history major. Most of the shelves were taken up with books about World War II, which is to be expected, but there were a couple of books on the Holy Roman Empire, which is the reason why I had wandered into the section.

When looking at history books I always check the publication date. History information does get out of date. Every year historians are digging up new facts, and formulating new contexts in which to see the old figures. I like to imagine that we’re getting more picky about sources too, but I don’t want to swear to that one. The first book I pulled off the shelf had a publication date of 1983. Thirty years is pretty out of date, but I was willing to take a look at the book if the other couple were even older. The next one I opened was printed in 1967. The one after that was printed in 1928. 1928! I am shocked that that book is still on the shelf!

Now, that does not mean the book is worthless, I like to trace my sources back as far as they will go, often to books published in the early 20th century, but I’m obsessive. The book might have use in a historiography study, but I highly doubt anyone attending this college could even define historiography. The college where this book is shelved does not have a full history major. It is an undergraduate institution that offers 2 classes in Western Civilization, and one course on Contemporary Europe.  I’m skeptical about the worth of the 1967 book, and  I’m sure that the 1928 book has very little to offer the current students.

But I’m not a librarian, or a professor. I’m a lowly staff member with a love of history. I’m not going to make a fuss, the librarians are over worked and underappreciated. But I did want to say something here, and remind folks to check those publication dates before you trust anything you may read.

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Dabbling in Academia

What am I getting myself in for? Last night I drove from the college where I work, to another college almost an hour east, in order to volunteer away the next two months. I’m horrified and psyched at the same time.

There are a lot of Medieval Academic blogs out there. In fact, Medieval academic blogs have their own category on my RSS feed. I’ve never taken a college-level class in Medieval or Renaissance history, but my academic background always skirted around the edges of history, and I’ve taken graduate level courses in American Historiography, Material Culture, and Museum Studies. I pride myself that I am able to keep up with most academic texts, and I will admit to an unabashed love of college/university libraries. Last spring one of the blogs I read had a call for papers for a conference on Medieval and Renaissance topics that was to take place in April, right here in New Hampshire! I was so surprised! I have looked at all the colleges in NH and none of them offer graduate level MedRen courses. Colleges do not need graduate level courses to host a conference, but still I was not expecting to see something like this in a relatively short distance.

When I saw the call for papers I looked up the conference’s website, which was fairly limited, but included a large number of photos of college students in bad “medieval” garb. I have heard and sometimes seen the divide between academia and reenacting, the photos intrigued me, did stuffy academics barely tolerate the bad costumes? Were they wearing the bad costumes? I emailed the contact person on the call for papers about possibly interviewing her for the Living History Podcast, and said that I would be happy to volunteer my services at the conference itself. I have no idea what the professor must have thought of my email, I mentioned my employment at another college, and my reenacting experience, but I did not submit a resume. I know reenacting’s reputation, I did not want to seem like I was busting in to the middle of some place I did not belong. The professor emailed me back, but then did not respond to my second email for a few months. Then I wrote her, but when she wrote me back I did not respond for a few months. We were not very good at communicating.

Finally yesterday evening we did manage to connect. I drove to Plymouth State and we met for a half an hour. Our meeting was really good. The professor was super nice, and happy to hear about what I thought I could contribute. She told me about some of the great things they have planned for The Forum (that is what they all call the conference.) It turns out, what she really needs is an assistant, someone who has administrative skills and event management experience. I am an administrator with event management experience! And The Forum is totally in an area of my interest! But Plymouth State is almost an hour from where I work, and over an hour from where I live. I am not in a good position geographically.

After we met, we headed to a meeting of the Medieval Society club, the student club that is the source of the photos, and would help out at The Forum. The MedSoc (Medieval Society) meeting was also interesting. It was an organization run by students who had a lot of other priorities, and more enthusiasm than actual knowledge, but with guidance had potential. Oh how I wish there was one of those at the college where I work. I could be such a great resource! I have tons of extra clothing, a huge library of books, and have access to my biggest resource: Stephen, knows more and is a better teacher and leader than I am.

So here I am, with an opportunity to do what I love, albeit in a volunteer capacity. But it is such a long drive, and a lot of it would happen on weekday evenings. I need my sleep to be at all functional. At this point the conference is only two months away, and I’m not likely to get really involved until it is a month out, right? Right?

Please tell me I won’t regret giving away the next two months.

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When is a cabbage not a cabbage?

Not too long ago Deirdre Larkin of the Cloisters Museum (part of the Metropolitain Museum of Art) wrote an article on the cloisters blog, The Medieval Garden Enclosed, about Medieval colewort and kales which are part of the cabbage family. Since the Germans are well known cabbage lovers, and I spend a lot of my time reenacting Renaissance German I was delighted with the article, and intrigued with this part:

"Vegetables have changed far more since the Middle Ages than the medicinal plants or wildflowers grown here at The Cloisters, and it is more difficult for us to represent them accurately. The brassicas have changed the most. Our large, tight-heading cabbages do not much resemble the small loose-leaved medieval colewort." 

But today I was reading  Food in Medieval Times  by Melitta Weiss Adamson. Adamson had this to say about cabbage:

“Of European ancestry, cabbages were originally headless, and were eaten by the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans. Not until the first century B.C. do we hear of headed cabbages that may have been cultivated in northern Europe first. In the Middle Ages the headless kale, or colewort, was a staple food of the Scots, while headed cabbage was favored by the Dutch and Germans. Other varieties belonging to the cabbage family that were cultivated in medieval Europe, especially in Italy, were cauliflower and broccoli. Headed cabbage was usually boiled or made into sauerkraut, as it still is today. The fact that in Bavaria cabbage was eaten three to four times a day, as one sixteenth-century physician tells us, illustrates how important a foodstuff cabbage was for the common people. In the upper-class cookbooks, however, cabbage is rarely mentioned. Not only did it lack exclusivity, it was also thought to generate melancholy and cause nightmares. Its one redeeming feature was that it was considered an antidote to drunkenness. Cabbage juice with honey was recommended for people who had lost their voice, and cabbage leaves were used to dress wounds."

Now I’m confused. One is saying that in Medieval Europe the cabbage head as we know it had not yet been developed, the other is saying that certain cultures did have cabbage in head form. Although Food in Medieval Times was printed before the Cloisters article (2004) all of the sources listed on the article are much older (the newest is 1999.)

There is a good chance that the problem is in the huge timeframe covered by the term “Middle Ages” and in the large geography covered when one says “Europe” so they could both be right! Now I want to know: when and where is the earliest documented head of cabbage? When can we safely say that most of Europe had some form of cabbage that formed into a tight head? And which came first, cauliflower or broccoli?

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Humanities are Important

The academic blogs I read have been blowing up lately with the talk of budget cutbacks and how they are affecting the humanities at schools and universities in Britain and in the US. Here is a letter to the president of SUNY Albany who cut 5 whole programs of study, almost all in humanities. The letter is really quite clever, and addresses all the reasons for the cuts using examples from literature found commonly in classes in the departments that have been cut. Meaning: your reasons are faulty as you would have known, had you actually taken any of the classes in departments that you’re cutting.

I found that link on a blog that also has an article on the value of learning history that says the value of learning history is critical thinking skills, learning to question what you are told, and learning to look for the bias in all sources. At least, that is what I took out of the rather long entry. You’ve got to get past the first couple paragraphs to get to the good stuff (which is a lot like my blog posts, actually.)

I am not an academic, but I think that teaching is important, and I think that the humanities are very very important. Yes to help us make decisions, yes to think critically, but for me the important thing that the humanities do is give meaning to everything that we do. I look to history to answer the eternal why.
Why are food and meals important?
Why are families structured the way they are?
Why are there different forms of government all around the world?
Why do I get up and go to work every morning?

Some people find these answers in the study of biology and animal and human behavior, some people find them in religion or any number of other places. Some people do not ask these questions, and those I think are the saddest of all. When I ask those questions I see a long horizon of history stretching out in front of me where all the possible answers for all the possible whys can be found, if only I look hard enough.

Last night on the way home from work I was listening to Fresh Air, to Terry Gross interview Carlos Eire about his new memoir. Terry was talking to Eire about how he became a historian and about his studies of religious iconography. All my thinking about the importance of history, about education, about the humanities gelled when he said:

"You know, symbols encode, deep deep truths and allow us to perceive them in a non-rational way. And by non-rational, I don't mean irrational. I actually mean that these symbols speak to us at a level that is deeper, and affects us and shapes our personality much more than any logical discourse could. You know, the United States is a very symbolically impoverished culture. So most Americans have trouble understanding symbols and how symbols affect them. But people who are in advertising have it all figured out."

Especially the part about the US being a symbolically impoverished culture. To me it was the same as saying we are a historically impoverished culture, because the history that we claim as ours only goes back a couple hundred years. I’m sure Eire might explain it differently, but to me a symbol is anything that one can draw meaning from, and I look for meaning in everything! I find meaning by looking at history, and not just American history, not just European history.

Because I am asking why and am actively searching for meaning and because I think others out there might be too; that is why I spend so much of my time on Living History. Sure, there is the escapism, and the social circle, but I could get the escapism from novels, and the social circle from any number of other geeky pastimes. I’ve talked here on the blog about the fact that I do living history in order to educate myself and educate others, but I don’t think I’ve answered completely the question: why is education important? There are so many answers to that one, but the important one to me, the one that I think might need to be pointed out to those making important budgetary decisions, is that history helps bring meaning to our lives and helps us answer the whys we might encounter in our daily lives.

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First Person Blogs

Some blog entries are easy to write. Others, for no particular reason, I agonize over and the writing just comes out all stilted and weird. This is one of those posts. I am determined to put it up though! So here goes:

Among all my blog searches, rss feeds, and quest for all things Living History related on the internet I come across some beauties every once in a while. Today I want to tell you about blogs from the first person perspective. Yup, blogs written as if they were in a different time, far removed from our own. There are basically two different styles these blogs can take: actual historical text, just digitized in blog form; or reenactors and modern folks writing as if they were a historical character.

Historical texts

Every day I learn about more and more primary source material that is being digitized and made available on the web. Most of these are in archives or library collections, but some of them --particularly those that were written as diary entries in the first place-- are put up bit by bit, blog-style. A blog that I have been enjoying written by "Two Nerdy History Girls" had a post that contains a good list to be starting with here check the comments of this post  too, tons more are mentioned.

Modern Interpretations

There are a few reenactors out there that are writing blogs from the perspective of the persona they are portraying. My favorite is this colonial impression and this later impression, of a doctor both done by the same individual. He wavers between totally history based posts, and some the wink at the current era, but I find he does a great job balancing both.

There are a few blogs that I’m not sure if the writers are reenactors, or what their relationship is to the history they are writing about this Mozart blog is a bit of a mystery to me, but still fascinating. A now solved mystery is about the author of Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog in fact, there was so much mystery and hype about that blog, that a bunch of medieval scholars have written a book about it! I have not yet read the book, but it is on my Amazon wish list!

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