Author: kittycalash

Living history enthusiast and museum professional, obsessive writer and costume lover.

Stitch Counting

On By kittycalashIn Clothing, Reenacting3 Comments

There are other derisive terms for the authenticity snobs, but stitch counter will do well enough for me.

I didn’t mean to turn out this way, but I did. It might have something to do with being interested in historical costume for as long as I can remember, or spending summer afternoons at the Chicago Historical Society, or a grandmother who could turn fabric and thread into anything. But inauthentic clothing and gear grates on me, and that’s one reason I’m incredibly unlikely to trail along with the “colonial” women behind a militia unit in a local parade. I just can’t trot along next to a woman wearing Hush Puppies and a short gown made of fabric last seen on Bob Ross’s couch.

This is not to say that I’m perfectly authentic—I have problems with gear and clothing, mostly revolving around fit and using a sewing machine on some long seams, or seams that get stressed, and let’s not get into what I carry in my sewing basket. But I keep trying to learn more, and trying to figure out what would fit my persona of the past. Here’s what I do know:

Like my grandmother, I’m picky. I would never have given up stays unless my child would starve if I didn’t sell them.

And like Elsa, I care about my appearance—I’m just less successful in presentation. So how my clothes went together would have mattered to me.

Shoes. Guaranteed, we would have managed shoes, since my great-great grandmother made her own.

As much as I try to get into a real lower-sorts place, I can’t. Tidy, orderly, as clean as possible. That’s just part of who I am.

So what about those women in their upholstery-like prints, plastic glasses and little cotton caps plopped atop modern haircuts? What to do about them–and their men? One man asked us yesterday where we’d gotten Dave’s uniform–where’d we find the hunting frock and overalls?

I made them, I said. By hand.

I Love a Parade…Until I Don’t

On By kittycalashIn Events, History

The boys were in the Dighton, MA Memorial Day Parade today. I sat in the car, I didn’t even take photos. That’s how it is some days.

Here are the things I saw: Two Rehoboth, MA Special Operations Hummv’s, in urban camo.

The Lions Club truck, with stuffed toy lions affixed to cab and grill.

A brigade of tractors, including one from 1942, noting FDR’s presidency.

It was not immediately clear if the Special Operations vehicles were on hand to deal with an uprising by the tractor-borne army of angry squash farmers of Rehoboth. It was not immediately clear why Rehoboth needed Hummvs while Providence seems to have none, and North Providence has closed fire stations. My best guess is that Rehoboth has someone better at tapping into federal homeland security and/or grant funds.

But the weirdest, saddest things were these: no Civil War reenactors in a Memorial Day parade, and the line of tractors that could appear to consign family-farm-based agriculture to a past as foreign as the Revolutionary War.

The New Installation of the Old Barnes

On By kittycalashIn Museums

Today’s New York Times contains a front-page article on the new location of the Barnes Foundation that can be summed up as, the Barnes, Only Better. Intriguing.

I followed the story of the Barnes and the orphan court case because many of the arguments took place at the time my employer was considering the dastardly act of deaccessioning and selling a piece of furniture to generate endowment funds. The Barnes is also one of my favorite places to visit when I go to see my mother, who lives in Merion Township.

The Barnes has a fascinating history, given that the founder, Dr. Barnes, had stipulated that the collection never be moved, loaned, or reinstalled. Moving the Barnes out of the restrictive environment in Lower Merion Township therefore required, in essence, breaking Dr. Barnes’s will. The legal implications of donor intent vs. long-term museum health were what interested me in the Barnes case, but there’s so much more to the Barnes than museum legal studies.

More, as in Glackens. Bellows. The Cezanne-versus-Renoir matchup. The Barnes was a quirky installation of wonderful paintings, icons, juxtaposed with metalwork, kind of primitive Pennsylvania furniture, and African art. Barnes’s installation was saturated in its time period, like walking into every essay, article, and art history book you’d ever read on the Moderns. I’m looking forward to visiting the new-old installation when I go to Philadelphia in June.

Museum Madness

On By kittycalashIn Museums

Or, why it has been hard to think about reenacting, cooking, sewing, or much of anything this week.

Technically, I work for a historical society, not a museum, but the madness is pretty much the same, just with more books. It’s a fun season, when the visitor numbers at both the museum (school groups and conferences) and the library (genealogical tourists) are ramping up, construction has begun, and the fiscal year is ending and the new year’s budget in planning.

It’s a lot to have going on at once. We also just had two positions open up in the library, so there’s been a lot of filling in as the receptionist and the page, and interviewing candidates for the positions.

To all this, add rain: this is when Providence is at its wettest, and while the weekend looks to be lovely, yesterday was drenching, with thunderstorms. As a result, the “pit” outside the library basement door flooded, and overflowed into the basement. That led to wet-vacuuming and the arrangement of a sump pump for the pit. As my Buildings and Grounds Super was arranging the cords and preparing to plug in the sump pump, he slipped and fell 12 feet into the pit.

I got the call in a meeting with the Executive Director and Director of Finance, and ran back to the library. My guy was OK, and they hadn’t called an ambulance, despite clear instructions. Instead, one of the Librarians took him to the quieter hospital in a better neighborhood. He’s OK, if by OK you mean alive and walking and talking.

He’s not OK, in the sense that he broke his arm at the wrist, seriously bruised his shoulder, hit his head, and will be in a cast for 6 weeks.

If that wasn’t madness enough, here comes the cherry on top: the cleaning assistant has left for Las Vegas for two weeks, trying to break into comedy. So we have a plan to hire someone else we know temporarily.

One of the visitor services managers at the museum, though, has made it plain that she doesn’t see why the B&G Super won’t be back in and working by Friday, Mondy at the latest. I’m looking forward to explaining that we don’t expect a man who fell 12 feet into a concrete pit to come straight back to work with a broken arm, though I know her initial reasonableness and expression of concern will be followed—quickly—by temper-tantrum demands for all the tiny fallen sticks on the lawn to be removed posthaste.

Perspective, folks: safety first. We have to fix the pit problem. It functions as a fire exit from the basement, so we can’t cover it up. It’s behind a fence, so in theory it’s protected. Clearly, though, something has to be done. And not just picking up sticks, or finding the genealogical records.