My Favorite Flowers

Today was the gloomy variety of March days, and I was thankful to have these cheery daffodils, given to me by one of my friends, to brighten my table. I think part of the reason I love daffodils so much is because they seem to herald the beginning of spring. You can watch them bloom in a matter of hours, and they seem to be so full of eager life when their petals have fully opened.

MOMCC in Kansas City

Yesterday I returned from three days in Kansas City, KS, where I attended the Spring MOMCC conference (Midwest Open-Air Museums Coordinating Council). Not only was I able to enjoy three days without looking at any snow, I was able to spend time with employees and volunteers from a variety of other museums and historical societies. Each spring and fall since I began working at Living History Farms, I’ve watched some of my coworkers head off to MOMCC and return excited about the people they’d spent time with and the workshops they attended. I was excited when my supervisor told me she wanted to send me this year. MOMCC ended up being a very different experience than I anticipated. A lot was packed into the three days, so the following are just a few highlights.

The conference was hosted by Mahaffie Stagecoach Stop & Farm Historic Site. (This is the only intact stagecoach stop left on the Santa Fe Trail.) On Thursday I took a slat sunbonnet workshop. I started sewing it while I was there, but it’s only about half finished. We were able to look at several historic sunbonnets while we worked on ours to see the variety of things that were done with them. My favorite bonnet was the doll slat sunbonnet, which was constructed precisely how we were making ours – just smaller! We also read some primary accounts of mid-nineteenth century women talking about how annoying it was to wear this large bonnet, with wooden slats in the brim to make it stand straight out from their faces, but how very practical it was at the same time.

Friday I attended workshops on the different costumed interpretation traditions, the history of “Bleeding Kansas,” and the importance of your museum’s mission in planning programming. I also went to the foodways, clothing/textile, and artisans resource groups. Saturday I went to workshops on how to incorporate research into your interpretation and on how to fold and pack nineteenth-century clothing for travel without it getting all rumpled and wrinkled. This is quite the feat if you’ve ever seen some of the fancy 1870s overskirts people wear!

Friday night we toured Mahaffie and rode in their reproduction stagecoaches. We crammed five women into our stagecoach, and it was quite cozy. I couldn’t even sit back in my seat. I can’t imagine traveling any sort of distance in one! My friend Lucy and I spent a lot of time in the kitchen looking at their cookbooks, several of which we have at our museum, and exclaiming over their tiny woodstove that they were managing to bake biscuits in. It certainly made me thankful for the large six-burner woodstove I get to cook on at Living History Farms. We discovered that they had a round woodpile also! We take great pride in our round woodpile at LHF, so I took a picture of Lucy next to it just as two Mahaffie interpreters rounded the corner. The gentleman proceeded to give us a hard time about it, saying we were only taking the photos to showoff to our co-workers how much better our woodpile was than theirs. They threatened to confiscate my camera later in the evening over it too! Honestly, I just thought it was neat that they also had a round woodpile, although it is true that ours is about four times bigger than theirs. However, they justified its size by explaining that they just butchered four pigs, so they had to burn through a lot of it. It was much bigger several weeks ago.

After several days of talking with other museum folk about where they work, I must say I am glad that I work at LHF. I love my museum, and I am thankful for my place there.

Happy St. David's Day!

I smiled when I turned my calendar this morning and saw that today is St. David’s Day! Whenever I hear of St. David, I am reminded of leeks, daffodils, and my semester abroad in Wales during my senior year of college. While there I studied at Trinity College in Carmarthen. There were about a dozen American students in my program. While we were encouraged to take classes that were apart of Trinity’s regular course offerings, thus getting to be in class with Welsh students, we were also required to take a Welsh culture class that was just for the American students. It was in this class that I first learned of St. David, the patron saint of Wales, and the tradition of wearing leeks on St. David’s Day.

St. David was born in Wales in the 6th century and made his mark by founding monastic settlements and churches as he helped spread Christianity among the pagan Celtic people of Wales. He also became the arch bishop of Wales. The leek became his symbol because of the strategic role it played in a battle between the Welsh and Saxons. In order for the Welsh to not confuse friend with foe, St. David told them to wear leeks in their hats to distinguish them from the Saxons. The Welsh were victorious as a result!

St. David was canonized in the 12th century, and as the Welsh began celebrating his feast day, it became tradition to wear a leek on March 1 to commemorate him. At some point, though, the women started pinning daffodils to their bodices, perhaps deciding that wearing a type of onion was not very feminine. (Our instructor told us that if we were in Wales during the spring semester we would see fields and fields of daffodils blooming.) Our instructor told us of a humorous contest that eventually became part of this leek wearing tradition – that of the longest leek! It was quite simple; the gentlemen would measure their leeks to see who was wearing the largest/longest one. I’m not quite sure what you received if you won or even what it proved to win this contest; I can’t quite see it being a mark of your masculinity, although I think that’s what it originally signified!

(I have a great photo of one of my friends holding a leek, but I can't find it right now, so I put in a picture of St. David's Cathedral in Wales instead. It was a beautiful place to see!)

Oh, I should also add that remembering St. David and leeks also reminds me of cock-a-leekie-soup and my dear friend, Clarissa, which makes me smile too!

Time to be Active!

If you had told me a week ago that I would buy a Wii, I would have laughed and said that I would never have any reason to spend that kind of money on a gaming system. Well, that reason came in the form of snow and ice upon snow and ice which has prevented me from going out for my daily walk for much too long now. I like being active and dislike going to a gym. Last week I reached the breaking point. I’ve been doing way too much sitting recently, so I started looking at compact exercise equipment that would give me a good work out without taking up much space in my small apartment. I talked with one of my friends about what I was thinking about getting. He told me I might think it a crazy idea, but he thought a Wii Fit might actually be the best option. His family has it and loves it. As I looked into it further, it seemed like it would be the best fit. It’s compact, has variety, and would get me moving again. So off to the store I went. I set it up successfully last night, which is a small feet in and of itself since I am not too technologically oriented, and I love it! Last night I went for a short run and played some tennis and baseball. This morning I did a hula-hoop activity and some strength training. The Wii has confirmed that I still have bad hand-eye coordination, a poor sense of rhythm, and not the best balance. Ah well, things to improve on I suppose as I watch the 50mph winds swirl the falling snow around outside once again. Perhaps I should try some yoga!

The Lion King

Last night my sister and I attended The Lion King. I’d seen the Broadway musical when it was in Des Moines four years ago and was excited to see the performance again! My sister and I were about a dozen rows from the stage – far enough away to see the entire stage and close enough to see the performers’ facial expressions as well as the details of the costumes and puppets! It is amazing to think of all the individual talent that went into the creation of the show and was shared with us.

After the performance we stayed for a short Q&A session with four of the performers: two individuals from the ensemble, Tony Freeman who played Zazo, and Ben Lipitz who played Pumba. From them we learned that they actually have two complete sets. While one is being used, the other is in transit to the next location and assembled so when the show closes in one city, the performers can fly to the next city and be ready to rehearse/perform the very next day while the set is being torn down in the city they just left. Something usually goes wrong every performance. Last night, for example, the black curtains blocking the backstage from the stage quit working. The performers had to be extra quiet and had to be careful to stay out of the audiences’ line of sight. While one of the ensemble members, who is single and doesn’t have a mortgage, loves to travel all of the US performing, Freeman expressed how hard it can be to be separated from his wife and daughter for long periods of time. With their performance schedule, if the performers want to see their family, their family has to come to them. The performers only get two weeks vacation a year and often aren’t able to make it home to celebrate the holidays with their families. Despite these challenges, they love what they do. Freeman has been Zazo for nine years, and Lipitz has been with the show for seven years. They each mentioned what an exciting experience it is to tell this story each night in live theater. Hearing more about what it takes each individual to perform their part made me appreciate the show all the more.

Oh, I should also mention the other exciting component of our evening – the weather. When I bought our tickets about six weeks ago, I did so with the realization that with it being January, we could have a lovely evening for the performance or we could have a terrible storm which would prevent Rachel from driving to Des Moines from Lincoln and from us attending the performance at all. I crossed my fingers that it would be the former rather than the later. Unfortunately it was the later. Rachel came a day early to make sure she arrived before the forecasted ice storm. Yesterday morning we woke up to a world encased in ice. We had to skate, quite literally, across the parking lot to my car to chip all the ice off of it so we could go to dinner and then the performance. Fortunately, the roads were not slick, and we did not fall traversing the ice going to and from my car. The storm certainly added an element of danger to the experience, turning it into an adventure

A Truck, the Tree, and a TV

A Truck:

Almost two weeks ago, my brother bought a new truck after planning and talking about doing so for the last several years. It’s a large Ford F150, with an extended cab and 5 ½ foot bed. With two wheel and four wheel drive, he feels his truck can get through anything, and indeed it seems it can. With his truck he is more than willing to play the hero, transporting us through the ice and snow that our little cars are helpless against. It was his truck that enabled our family to have Christmas this year.

I drove to Lincoln Monday, thankful to be able to arrive ahead of a massive storm system that was preparing to move through the Midwest. It moved slowly, arriving in Lincoln later than scheduled but living up to its potential, dropping rain, ice and snow all across the state. Christmas Eve services went ahead as scheduled in Lincoln, although they were cancelled in many communities west of us. The weather was deteriorating as the time for us to leave for church approached, and Dad didn’t want to risk it. My mom, dad, sister and I had our own little service at home, while my brother and sister-in-law went to church.

They arrived in the midst of swirling fluffy snow a bit later in the evening for our traditional meal of clam chowder, cheese and crackers, and snowman roll. When it was time for my sister to leave at 10pm for her overnight shift, my brother was more than happy to give her a ride there and to take me for a ride in the new truck. The roads were bad but not horrible, and he was quite pleased to demonstrate just how effective four wheel drive is compared to two wheel drive when driving through snow-filled streets. He laughed at me when I still grabbed the handle on the door, certain that the back end of the truck would still swing out and smack one of the cars parked quietly on the road!

Christmas morning, Peter and Liz picked my sister up at work and came over for gifts and dinner. The roads had become quite horrible overnight. Without the truck, Liz said, they wouldn’t have been able to make it across town. Peter had bought his truck just in time.


The Tree:

Growing up, we had always had a live Christmas tree. Getting poked by pine needles and having sap residue left on your fingers as you decorated was just part of the festivities. When I went to college, my parents started using an artificial tree. I missed the fresh pine smell the most, but I had to admit that not having hundreds of pine needles to clean up once we took the tree down was a nice change. We wouldn’t have to worry about the tree falling over and soaking our gifts either as had happened on past Christmases

This year, in Victorian fashion, we didn’t decorate our 5 foot, artificial tree until Tuesday night. Dad had actually set it up about two weeks ago with Mom adding lights a week later. It was finally time for the ornaments to be hung! We hung beaded angels, stars, umbrella, gazebos, and icicles. The finished effect was quite nice. But not two hours later, as Mom and I sat at the dining room table, we heard a rustle, a whoosh, and a plop as the tree landed on its side. We picked it up, Mom weighted the base, we redecorated the side that had smashed against the carpet, and we rearranged the gifts under the tree, thankful that none had gotten wet. All seemed to be well.

Christmas Eve morning I was awakened to Mom’s hurried whisper, “Allison, the tree fell down again! Can you come help me?! I was just sitting at the table and there it went.” I crawled out of bed to embark on our mission to rescue the tree, but it was not to be. We tried taping the base with duck tape, but when I’d let go of the trunk, it just listed to the side, pulling the duck tape up with it. We tried tying it up, but there wasn’t an effective place to tie it to. Finally, we just decided to give up on the tall tree and nab my sister’s small two foot tree so we’d at least have something to put our gifts under!

“The fake tree fell over?!” my brother said later. “How is that possible?!” How indeed.

A TV:

Six weeks ago my brother called me to see if I would be interested in going in on a flat screen TV for our dad for Christmas. He thought it would be an awesome gift for him; he would never suspect it in a million years, and he would absolutely love it. I agreed. It would be the perfect gift.

We set our plan in motion. The day after Thanksgiving, my sister-in-law braved the 5am Target crowds to secure a spectacular TV at a great price. The day before Christmas Eve, my brother delivered the 32” Sony TV to our house and hid it in my mom’s closet.

On Christmas morning, Mom kept Dad busy in the kitchen so Liz and Peter could hide the clues and Peter could set up the TV in Dad’s study. The surprise was almost spoiled when Dad decided he needed to go upstairs to get a hat to wear during gift opening. His head was cold. Rachel, Liz and I looked at each other trying to figure out how to stop him without giving anything away. Fortunately Peter came down the stairs as Dad was just getting ready to head up, blocking the way. He forbade him from going upstairs and found Dad’s stocking cap for him to wear.

Gift giving proceeded as usual. Finally, there was just one gift under the tree – Dad’s first clue. He unwrapped one clue and then another, making his way upstairs, the rest of us following along behind. When Dad opened the last clue, the instruction manual for the TV, Dad opened it and said, “Are you serious, you have to be kidding.” He just stood by the study door, disbelieving. “Open the door and see!” Mom said. He opened the door a smidge, hardly believing his eyes. “Wow,” was all he could say. “Wow. Wow.” Then a round of hugs. We all admired the TV before traipsing back down the stairs to get our turkey dinner on the table.

We played Wii that afternoon on the big screen and later the guys watched basketball. Dad watched Lord of the Rings last night. Everything is so much sharper now and that much better. He is looking forward to watching his PBS specials in high definition. He most certainly is set for years to come, and how special for us to be the bearers of such a gift!

Good-Bye to Kinko's

Today I officially closed the FedEx Kinko’s chapter of my life with a good-bye note and plate of chocolate chip cookies to my coworkers.
I began working at Kinko’s in October 2005. As a recent college grad, I had landed an internship at Living History Farms for the summer. When my internship ended, there was a position open for me to continue on as a floater. However, as summer turned to fall, and the last day of season drew closer, so too did my guarantee of full time work at the museum. My winter hours at LHF would depend completely on the number of individuals who decided to book a historic dinner or bring their students out to participate in one of our education programs.

A part time job would be necessary to supplement my LHF income and guarantee the bills, and the student loans, would still be paid. I started at FedEx Kinko’s in October. That winter, if I wasn’t at LHF, I was at Kinko’s filling paper, helping customers run double-sided copies, taking orders, and learning how to run the auxiliary equipment.

When the season began again on May 1, 2006, I returned to LHF full time and only worked two nights a week at Kinko’s in order to keep my job for the following winter. For the next two years, I expanded my hours at Kinko’s during LHF’s winter season, and then scaled back when I could work fulltime at LHF.

However, as my job responsibilities increased at LHF, I found the two evenings a week at Kinko’s to be just a little too much for my packed schedule. My manager was gracious enough to let me take a leave of absence from June until November. He then allowed me to begin my leave of absence in April for this past season. I was to have returned this month, and I had every intention of doing so, but last Thursday, I called my manager and officially terminated my employment.

Last week I was hired to be the Lead Town Interpreter- 1875 Walnut Hill Shops at Living History Farms. It is a promotion of sorts, although I will continue doing much of what I’ve already been doing over this last year: making schedules, planning trainings, supervising the professional sites. Some of my new responsibilities include advising and being a resource to the supervisors of the General Store and Drug Store. The most significant difference is that now instead of being hourly and full-time seasonally, I am salaried and full-time year round!

Ever since I started working at Kinko’s I wanted to be in a position to just have one job, but now that I can have just one job, I feel a bit sad and not as excited as I thought I would be. In some ways, I feel that I am losing a bit of my identity. I had carved out my place at Kinko’s, built relationships with my co-workers there and had regular customers that I enjoyed chatting with. Now, in order for me to move forward in my new role at LHF, I have to say good-bye to that part of me.

So, first, what I won’t miss one iota about Kinko’s:

• Enforcing copyright law, particularly for family photos at Christmas and Senior photos in April.
• The long lines of impatient customers who are upset that it is taking so long to pick-up their order or place their order.
• Apoligzing profusely to an irritated customer that their job wasn’t done correctly even though I had absolutely nothing to do with their order.
• Throwing away old family photographs that were left on the copier because they had been held in lost and found for the prescribed amount of time.
• Wearing my uniform of navy pants that never fit quite right, a belt that was too big and a black and purple shirt. (They are getting new uniforms soon, so I don’t have to turn in my current ones. I suppose I can always put them on again if I do end up missing them!)

But then there are things I will defiantly miss:

• Chatting with Dianna and Heather during slow periods by our register near the doors. Dianna always had something interesting happening with one of her kids or grandkids, and Heather was always thinking about something interesting or wondering about some topic we could discuss.
• Seeing some of our regulars: the elderly lady who made color copies of her watercolors of flowers and gardens, the woman who copied all the brochures for these group tours, the gal from Earl May Gardens and Nursery down the street, the guy who tried to get Heather and I to caucus for Ron Paul during the 2008 election and kept informing us of the latest conspiracy for the US to become one country with Mexico and Canada.
• Knowing about concerts, conventions, restaurant openings, etc. in the Des Moines area simply because I helped the customer run their job.
• The quiet activity of getting the store ready in the morning: filling copiers, straightening paper, dusting, cleaning glass, etc. I could usually just think about my day and all the things I wanted and needed to do – usually at LHF!
• My discount (I didn’t copy things that often, but when I did, it was nice to have!)

Kinko’s was a great place to work. I have no doubt that it was God’s provision for me during the time I needed it, but now He has provided a new job and with it, a new challenge, for me. It’s time now for me to drop the title of Kinko’s employee and dive headfirst into my new role at LHF!