This week began with a bang on July 4. Several bangs actually, as I helped operate the cannon for the park's July 4 celebration. Sad puns aside, the artillery demonstration, musket demonstration, and nearby bake oven demonstration are the primary living history events for Valley Forge, and only happen on special occasions. They also draw large crowds, and provide a different way for park rangers and volunteers to interact with the public than during normal operation. While waiting between shots, I was given a primer on the NPS's new emphasis on facilitated dialogue. This method of interpretation relies on the interpreter to engage the public directly and solicit their input in new ways, involving them in the dialogue and relating to their experience. It steps beyond telling a story and answering visitor questions. However, it challenges the more seasoned interpreters who are often reluctant to adopt a new style. Also, it can only be applied for smaller groups (using it for 150 people simply doesn't work), and it requires a lot of preparation.
Since Tuesday was the fourth, we did cleaning on Wednesday instead. Following that we set the vault up to take pictures of our new accessions from Hopewell. We used white fabric as a background and special lights to mitigate shadows. We took two pictures for each: one with the accession number and measure, and one without (in case someone wants to use it for public display). I will need to take pictures of several weapons for my exhibit, so this was excellent practice for that. However, I expect challenges stemming from the length of 1700s firearms. I finished the day with more research and exhibit planning. On Thursday I took a guided tour of the park with the Chief of Natural and Cultural Resources. She has played the key role in park planning for the past 15 or so years, and pointed out all the changes that have been made during that time. I also saw many parts of the park I was unaware of, and got a greater appreciation for how many natural and cultural resources the park has, and how few staff and little money the park has to steward its vast resources. I also got a view of some of the methods the park uses to deal with this problem. Often, all that can be done is to stabilize a building, leaving it without a good interior or in many cases even a floor but at least still standing. Some buildings are used for park housing, but that program generally loses money. Some buildings are leased for various uses, with specific restrictions and with all profits going back into conservation. That program brings in money for the buildings, and often lessees put their own money into restoring the building in accordance with park guidelines. I also saw in many of the locations a huge amount of potential for interpretation of all the other history in the park, including industrial history, agricultural history, recreational history, etc., but sadly that potential will probably never be reached simply because it isn't the period of significance in the park's enabling legislation, because those stories are completely overshadowed by the story of the winter encampment, because most visitors are primarily arrive to learn the story of the winter encampment, and because the park is already maxed out in what it can afford to interpret and support anyway. The only way that potential could be reached is if the park doubled or tripled or maybe more in staff, visitation, and resources, which if possible is still in the distant future.
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My internship continues to progress. First up this week was cleaning, as usual. However, after this we had to organize lots of archeology that was just brought into the collection. Since there was not enough room the way the drawers were currently set up, we had to rearrange the cabinets to make room. It appears that half of collections work is simply finding places to put things. After this, I did research and content development for my exhibit, but I was quickly sidetracked when I started reading about pocket pistols. These were small, rifled, screw-barrel pistols which could be carried concealed in pockets, and were often carried for personal protection while traveling and in cities. This opened up a whole new class of civilian weapons for me to talk about, which can be related directly to the concealed carry of handguns today. Back to collections work. Valley Forge recently received some new accessions from Hopewell Furnace, and our next job was to put them into the collection. We followed the best practice of putting the accession numbers on using special paint to write the numbers. Typically we would choose the least conspicuous place to write the numbers, but Hopewell had put numbers on previously, so we figured the best place would be right near wherever Hopewell’s numbers were (which were generally inconspicuous). After this, we proceeded to physically re-number a section of archaeology accessions, which had accidentally been given the same numbers as the archaeology we catalogued earlier. Also, I noticed some of the archaeology finds were incorrectly labeled—for example, a spark plug was described as a bolt. I noted this in the paper records so they could be re-labeled in the catalogue. We then put slides which a janitor had saved from the trash back into storage. Following this I continued my research, focusing on turn-off pistols and the finer distinctions between fowlers, trade fusils, and regular fusils. I realized just how blurry, and perhaps artificial, the lines are between them, and that in my exhibit I will have to find a careful balance for explicit, understandable definitions of slippery subjects. Thursday was a training day for all the new and seasonal employees and interns in both Valley Forge and Hopewell parks. The parks are administratively connected, although they maintain separate collections, sites, and site staff. So I spent the day learning about the parks, the NPS and NPS operations, and meeting new staff from other departments. It made me realize just how big the NPS is and how varied its responsibilities—not only does Valley Forge need to conserve and interpret the winter encampment, but also manage the ecology and environment, and maintain federal law. For my second week, I worked four days starting Monday.
Our first task was to clean up the vault tour we set up last week. This meant checking the accession numbers on all the objects and placing them back in the cabinet we got them from. While down in the vault, I then did some research on the weapons in Valley Forge's collection to choose some to put on my exhibit. I made a list of all those I thought could fit well, including all the fowling pieces in the collection and all the rifles. I wanted to use some muskets as well, of which Valley Forge has many. So I narrowed them down by which ones were more likely to have been owned by civilians, including a worn dog-lock musket and one that was stamped by New Hampshire with a stamp used when the colony was impressing civilian arms into colonial service. I also selected a French musket for variety. I avoided picking muskets made for government contracts or imported by the colonies to fight the American Revolution. I then attended a meeting about a door lock in one of the buildings. While I won't provide specifics, it was interesting to see how a relatively minor issue which had a simple fix could be argued over and cause such a large commotion among park leadership. While it did feel like it might have been blown out of proportion, it was good to see the different perspectives of different department leaders, and how each department thinks a bit differently. I then checked out how Valley Forge's Omeka site works, to help prepare my exhibit. I made a lot of style changes on my Omeka exhibit theme to make it more readable and less stale. This involved me learning more CSS and HTML, which made it take longer than it would have for a seasoned CSS veteran. As usual, Tuesday was housekeeping day, and I helped clean Washington's HQ and Varnum's just the same as I had last week. After this, we moved several reproduction objects (camp equipment/furniture mostly) from storage in a dirty garage to a cleaner storage space. We also hosed down several objects to move later to the Muhlenberg brigade huts. On Wednesday we finally went to clean the exhibit cases in the stables by Washington's HQ. The stables have Pennsylvania clay as a floor, and it gets all over the cases, and eventually starts building up inside the plexiglass. Ideally indoor cases should be kept indoors, which works in theory. In reality however you only have the resources you have, and you get no choice but to make them work. So we opened the cases and cleaned them out. Hopefully they won't need to be cleaned for another year or so. After this we moved the objects we prepped for the huts over to the huts and placed them on exhibit there. The exhibits are constantly evolving as new objects are added and the rest are rearranged. After this I continued research on my weapons exhibit. Thursday started by moving archival boxes down into the archives. These boxes had records from the latest archaeological dig, which had been done prior to an asbestos remediation project. Any time the park builds or changes the landscape, they must first do archaeology on the site to preserve any artifacts, so new archaeology is often going into the collections. We would deal with the actual objects later, but for the moment getting the boxes from the office into collections was enough. Once we got archives in place, we looked for records on weapons for me to use as research. Most of the records focused on military weapons, and were not that helpful for civilian weapons, although I did learn more about longrifles and their development. After this I continued work on my Omeka theme, and then got outfitted to fire a cannon on July 4. |
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