It was Hartwick College’s Fall break, so it was pretty quiet in the Museum.
I did some work securing some of our exhibit cases to protect the objects and set up our humidifiers to run over the winter.
I worked on some NAGPRA and repatriation compliance.
I attended a town of Oneonta meeting about a proposed Data Center, which I oppose and which, it’s clear from the packed room, so did most of the audience.
I did some work planning our upcoming Hartwick Spring break kids camp.
In MUST205, we talked about label design, and making labels that are engaging without being overwhelming.
I finished reading “Deep Past” by Eugene Linden. It’s a science thriller in the Crichton tradition, about a paleontological dig that both uncovers evidence of ancient non-human consciosuness, and also sets off a geopolitical firestorm. I found the prose kind of clunky and plot uneven, and the scientists in it are all universally terrible at what they do. There’s also some rather lascivious language about a young female grad student that rubbed me the wrong way. Kind of an interesting concept, exploring how consciousness (and culture) may have developed outside of hominins, but overall, meh.
I did some more work on the Museum’s NAGPRA obligations.
I worked on our upcoming co-campus Indigenous social dance.
We had our opening reception for “Memorializing the Underground Railroad” and “The Study of One Thing”. Perhaps because it was Hartwick College’s “True Blue Weekend”, we had an astonishing turn-out; over 400 people over the course of the day. I’m really proud of the work we did and humbled that we can present both fascinating and important exhibits.
I did some important work furthering my institution’s NAGPRA responsiblities.
In MUST205, we talked about label writing, and I tried to impress upon my students the importance of short, emphatic museum labels!
I did some planning work for this year’s “The Horror in the Museum”
This weekend, I showed my kids “the Wizard of Oz”. It’s such an iconic and ubiquitous movie that I forgot how strange, surreal, and creepy it is.
With the rain and the leaves changing, I’ve been getting comfortable with the arrival of the Fall. As part of that, I made a playlist called “Fall Colors” to accompany me while I work. I don’t use spotify, because it’s an evil company; this is just stuff in my collection, with some kind of tone or concept that suggested the Fall. Without further ado:
Mansion on the Hill - Hank Williams
All the world is Green - Tom Waits
Belarus - Low
Black Water - Timber Timbre
By the Mark - Gillian Welch
Corpus Christi Carol - Jeff Buckley
Cross Bones Style - Cat Power
Delia’s Gone - Johnny Cash
Devil got my Woman - Skip James
Fleurette Africaine - Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus, and Max Roach
Graveyard Blues - Roscoe Holcomb
Guess I’m Doing Fine - Beck
He Doesn’t Know Why - Fleet Foxes
I can’t Hardly Stand it - The Cramps
I’ll Be Rested (When the Roll is Called) - Blind Roosevelt Graves
It Serves you Right to Suffer - John Lee Hooker
Kerosene Hat - Cracker
Louis Collins - Mississippi John Hurt
Maggie’s Farm - David Grisman, John Hartford, and Mike Seeger
I spent most of the week putting the finishing touches on “Mememorializing the Underground Railroad: The Harry Bradshaw Matthews Collection”. The exhibit looks great, and is a testament to Harry’s decades long enthusiasm for and interest in this important period in American history. We’ll be having the opening reception on Saturday, opening it along with “The Study of One Thing: The Zen arts of Sensei Jody Hojin Kimmel”.
In MUST205, we talked about how to hang 2d works on walls, and I taught my students the math equations I use to make them look great!
In my endless quest to move away from Amazon, I spent some time migrating my books wishlist to a static page on here.
Good things–Inspired by Dan Sinker, I’m going to occasionally post some good things I experienced this week; music, movies, books, fun places all apply.
I’ve found myself listening to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' album Ghosteen. Although the album is bathed in sorrow, Cave manages to fill these soft, sad songs with hope and bright light in the darkness. “Sun Forest” performs this careful alchemy, combining apocalyptic imagery of wildfires and dying animals with children floating toward the sun, and unnamed love with green eyes, waiting at the end.
Thursday was Alanna’s birthday. I’m lucky she’s in my life and delighted every chance I get to celebrate her!
I’ve been scrambling to finish installing two exhibits: “The Study of One Thing” and “Memorializing the Underground Railroad”. This week, we had a visit from Sensei Hojin’s assistant, who brought a few more pieces for the exhibit, and looked things over. We also got some of the final text materials printed. For “Memorializing…” I’ve been getting all the books positioned, and I’ve sent off the title for printing. The labels should go up today.
I finished reading Cassandra Khaw’s short ghost novella “Nothing bu Blackened Teeth”. I like Khaw’s prose (and loved her surrealist fantasy novel “The Salt Grows Heavy”), but this story was kind of thin gruel; a Japanese haunted house is taken over by a group of friends for a wedding, and the tensions in their relationships are exploded by the supernatural. It was fine, but didn’t grab me the way “Salt…” did.
In MUST205, we talked about how to tell stories with objects, and how to evaluate objects for their suitabiility for display.
I did some NAGPRA work with one of the tribes we’ve worked with, and I’m very hopeful that we’ve worked out a good plan for transfer.
It was our kiddos first day of school on Thursday, and they both dove right back in to school. I’m so proud of both of them.
I guess-lectured in Hartwick’s Museum Education class, and talked about the history of educational programs at the Museum (at least as I understand it!)
I continued to work on installing “Memorializing the Underground Railroad”, and I hope to have all of the cases ready by early next week.
On labor day, we went fishing at Wilber Lake. It was messy, but fun, and reminded me of fishing with my dad and my great aunt Carol up at Okoboji when I was little.
Hartwick’s semester started. I had to get the Museum employment schedule sorted out, hiring and training new workers and organizing the returning folks. I am also teaching a new-to-me class entitled exhibit prep and design. And I’m trying to finish the installation of “Memorializing the Underground Railroad” and put finishing touches on “The Study of One Thing”. Whew!
My folks are in town this week, which has been both a personal delight for me, and also great to have some extra childcare while I navigate the whirlwind of the first week of the semester.
I both started and finished reading Harlan Ellison’s famous novella “A Boy and His Dog”, a violent, rough story about a mostly amoral and selfish protagonist in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. And his dog. It hasn’t aged well, but Ellison’s brilliance for energetic and propulsive plots and prose elevates it from its worst characteristics. (Also, the great Joanna Russ’s review essay on the film adaptation is monstrously good and insightful about both the movie and the story.)
I finished watching Monolith, which I felt like didn’t cash the checks it wrote.
We spent Sunday getting our front yard back into a reasonable state after getting a drainage pipe replaced last week.
Today, we’re picking up our son from Camp Stomping Ground. I can’t wait to have my boy back, and hear about his adventures.
Much of the week was spent working on our newest exhibit on the Underground Railroad. It’s slow going, but it’s going to be really amazing when it’s done.
One problem underscored by GPT-5’s underwhelming rollout is that it exploded one of the most cherished principles of the AI world, which is that “scaling up” — endowing the technology with more computing power and more data — would bring the grail of artificial general intelligence, or AGI, ever closer to reality.
Sunday we dropped my son off at Camp Stomping Ground. He’s gone for two weeks, and I am already missing the crap out of him.
Most of my time at the Museum this week was spent putting up our newest exhibit “The Study of One Thing”, featuring the artwork of Buddhist monk Hojin Kimmel and her students. It’s a rich and visually immersive exhibit, full of color and shape across multiple media.
I read Grady Hendrix’s “How to Sell a Haunted House”. It’s a delightful, scary, and funny ghost story about family, the past, and puppets. Lots of puppets. Hendrix hasn’t let me down since I first marvelled at the creepy brilliance of Horrorstor a decade ago, and this book continues his winning streak of playing with horror sub-genres in entertaining and thoughtful ways.
We finally got our drainage line fixed in our house, after at least a year of dealing with leaks in our basement.
Alanna and I finished watching all of Fleabag, which is as funny and heartbreaking as everyone says.
Alanna and I watched “Force Majeure”, a dark and strange franco-scandanavian comedy about a family who goes on a ski trip, and what happens when they survive an avalanche. It was funny, and uncomfortable, and ambigious, but insightful in ts own bizarre way.
I am zeroing in on finishing the design and planning work for an upcoming exhibit called “Memorializing the Underground Railroad: The Harry Bradshaw Matthews Collection”. This is going to be a great exhibit of books, images, and objects about one of the greatest radical social movements of all time, and its connections to Otsego County.
I picked up my son in Erie after a week in Iowa with my folks. We got this week with him, but next week he’s off to Camp Stomping Ground. How the time flies….
I did some work moving forward our bi-campus plans for indigenous people’s day celebrations.
We said goodbye to our summer intern and our summer Museum assistant. Thanks, Nerissa and Ethan, for all your hard work.
We went to the Glimmerglass opera house to see their performance of “The Odyssey”, a youth opera. It was fun and silly and the kids loved it.
