How to Work Better

Mural in Zurich:

http://www.swiss-miss.com/2011/08/how-to-work-better.html

Pickle Party! Immigration and Pickle History in the NYT, and in Lowell

Nice article I failed to link to a couple weeks ago when it was published in the New York Times: Immigrant Identities, Preserved in Vinegar?

One of the biggest battles over assimilation occurred a century ago in New York City, and the battleground was food. Politicians, public health experts and social reformers were alarmed by what they saw as immigrants’ penchant for highly seasoned cooking...Strongly flavored food, these officials believed, led to nervous, unstable people. Nervous, unstable people made bad Americans.

No immigrant food was more reviled than the garlicky, vinegary pickle. 

Speaking of which...Seeing as early-20th century immigration and industrial history are deeply interconnected pieces of our country's evolving story, Lowell National Historical Park presents Immigrant Food Traditions: Pickles on September 8 at 7:00 p.m. Demonstration, talk, and a movie! Check it out!

So, kosher dill or half-sours? Is there really any contest?

This is the best I can get at the supermarket in Mass., ok? Yum.

Back on Track in Richmond with...Mocha Dick and Confederate Industrial Ruins

Ok, getting Museum at Work back on track from de facto summer hiatus. After about a million different plans for first week of August, I ended up visiting my charming brother in DC, who was accommodating and delighftul enough to drive me all the way to Richmond to see this fantastic, totally rad installation at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Presenting...Tristan Lowe's Mocha Dick:

Tristin Lowe’s colossal sculpture Mocha Dick is a fifty-two-feet-long recreation of the real-life albino sperm whale that terrorized early 19th-century whaling vessels near Mocha Island in the South Pacific. Mocha Dick, described in appearance as “white as wool,” engaged in battle with numerous whaling expeditions and inspired Herman Melville’s epic Moby-Dick (1851). Lowe worked with the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia to make the sculpture: a large-scale vinyl inflatable understructure sheathed in white industrial felt.


 Unbelievable. Naturally, I HAD TO GO. IT WAS SUPER WORTH IT.

I think this is a brilliant and effective museum touch:

Next up, the National Park Service Civil War Visitor Center at the site of the Tredegar Iron Works. In search of my National Park Passport stamp, I admit that I had no idea we were stumbling into the remains of the Confederacy's main iron works. Pretty creepy. I also admit that we skipped the private museum, had a lovely chat with an NPS volunteer, and then poked around the industrial remains. In addition to a partially intact waterpower system, most of the remaining infrastructure was post-Civil War era manufacturing equipment, and the Park Service has displayed a number of turbine pieces outside so visitors can explore the 19th century technology up close and personal, including:

• touching
• smelling
• peering
• taking stupid pictures
• climbing
• "whoa"-ing

All of which provided this loudmouth anti-Confederate Northerner an opportunity to make some interesting intellectual and emotional connections with this unusual site. And take a couple dumb pictures. 

My brother could have made some good connections too if he hadn't had to say, "Em, the park rangers are going to yell at us" every fifteen seconds. That no-touch stigma is hard to shake.

Back to Tennessee

I've never been to Tennessee. I should probably go though, because I now know two great songs about going back to Tennessee. Whoa, man. Boy do I love having a blog...yeah, this has something to do with industrial history.


Of course, the Grateful Dead: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7oNS-bDZqc

And, from her really, really good and brand new album The Harrow and the Harvest, Gillian Welch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRA3sQoCluo

This made me wonder what's so great about Tennessee, and then I found this: http://www.bemishistory.org/ Click it! Bemis, Tennessee (Bemis also being, weirdly, the most annoying of my childhood parental nicknames): Where Industry and Friendliness Blend Into Progress. Early 20th century southern cotton mill ideology at its most succinct!

Anyway, after my snotty northern socialist self got over that old-timey corporate line, I got to thinking about the thousands of very local industrial history sites around the country. The website isn't the slickest, but its grassroots community focus, pride, and content is apparent -- an online exhibition, local events, ways to contribute memories, conduct family research, and get involved in preservation. And that's an immediate audience connection that bigger, shinier museums sometimes struggle to capture.

Anti-Unionism is alive and...cheesy.

Oy. Some more classic anti-union propaganda from Target, via Gawker.

Watch it here.

Ouch, Target, you had me lulled into a comfy state of tampon-buying consumer satisfaction. 

Patronizing? Misleading? Shameless? Cheesy? False interpretations of labor history? Oh no they didn't! (Apparently, thanks to Lewis Hine and unions in the 1930's, we don't need unions anymore.) It's capitalism laid bare!

The Workers: MASS MoCA, I love you.

Dear MASS MoCA,

I have been trying to write this blog entry for two months, struggling to find the right words to say it. It's simple, really: I love you. We are like, totally soul mates. It's ok, I know you have lots of other visitor-soulmates; in fact, I think an open relationship is the best kind of relationship a museum and its visitors can have.

I've known it for a long time. But just when I thought you were practically perfect, this BLOWS MY MIND. And my little heart. A new exhibition: The Workers, May 29, 2011-March 25, 2012.

Ok, from MASS MoCA:

We all know what Rosie the Riveter looked like, and what she stood for. [Oh boy, do we!]

Ford-era production line labor -- and the rise of powerful unions -- left us indelible portraits of work in mid 20th century America. [Don't make me swoon!]...

But what does work look like today in a global economy marked by outsourcing, rapid migration, disruptive economies, and a state of labor that seems fractured, precarious, and almost invisible? With video, sculpture, photography, and performance art from 25 artists, this exhibition examines the way labor is represented today (and how some contemporary workers choose to represent themselves. [Emphasis mine.]

The timing, and the place, could not be more fitting: Once the site of a bustling factory itself -- whose closure in the face of intense international competition left nearly a third of it's community out of work -- MASS MoCA is perhaps uniquely positioned to present this timely show... [Yes! YES!]

And as if all that wasn't enough:

In conjunction with The Workers MASS MoCA curator Susan Cross has invited Bureau for Open Culture -- a nomadic contemporary arts program directed by curator and art historian James Voorhies -- to inhabit one of the museum's buildings for the first four months of the exhibition. Set within a previously unused industrial building on the grounds of MASS MoCA, Bureau for Open Culture presents I Am Searching for Field Character, an exhibition series of public conversations, performances, installations, and workshops with a slew of visiting artists, writers, designers, and thinkers, a well as a beer garden which operates every Thursday and Friday night between May 26 and September 30.

Let me get this straight: CONTEMPORARY ART AND LABOR, HISTORIC INDUSTRIAL SPACES, NOMADIC ARTS PROGRAMS, SUPER-RELEVANCE, AND A...BEER GARDEN??? And then there's the BOC project publication: Bureau for Open Culture: On Symptoms of Cultural Industry. [Preview: WHY is it we are so moved by decaying environments? What propels the creative and cultural, the spontaneous and unpredictable in response to the dilapidation, vacancy, poverty and hardship of crumbling capital? Oh. My.]

I could not possibly make up anything dreamier. Ok, so I'll try not to get too excited before I've experienced it all.

No, I think I'll just got with it.

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Un-Industrial

So yesterday I saw Jon Brooks: A Collaboration with Nature at the Currier Museum. Highly recommended...but it closed today. Psych!

It's ok, he has a great website where you can see a lot more of his work, and his unbelievable house!

But this is not (really) just another excuse to blog about art. His pieces range from functional furniture to whimsical new furniture(esque) forms. They interpret natural wood forms and furniture conventions to create something new, organic, and artistic. It struck me while I was in the exhibition that I was seeing, among many things, an antithesis of industrial processes and aesthetics.

It's art, so maybe that's not super surprising; but it's not just that this is handmade furniture, it's that it moves beyond deep conventions, it totally reimagines something -- furniture -- that we're used to seeing in factory-made and/or highly stylized form.

Industrially made utilitarian objects -- like, 99% of the stuff a lot of us interact with -- are standardized, designed to reflect convention, divorced from natural forms and properties, mass-produced. It's a pretty basic observation, but the contrast made an impression and led me to look again at the industrial 99%.

So, taking it one step forward: seeing things in a provocative new way? Bring it to more (industrial) history museums! How rad would it be to see Brooks' stuff in, like, the Grand Rapids Public Museum's Furniture City exhibit (Grand Rapids -- "the first center of mass-produced furniture in North America!") ? Or -- omg -- a historic house.

Compare Jon Brooks' Citron Altar...

Citron Altar, 2007. Jon Brooks.

...With, say, this:

One of my favs from the exhibition:

Tons more on Flikr!

Museum for Obeast Conservation Studies

Artist Rachel Herrick's "Museum for Obeast Conservation Studies" is a pretty unique contemporary art endeavor. It has nothing to do with industrial history, but puts a sharp lens on museums, among other things, and I feel like blogging about it.

From her website, "MOCS and my work with North American Obeasts satirize the social stigma around fatness through the legitimizing tropes of science."

I won't explain it much more than that...just go check out the website: http://www.obeasts.org/.Working alongside the unique satirizing of social stigma, the work is a smart, surreal reflection of the formal power of (slick, modern) museum convention and conservation narratives. The website is pretty uncanny...sharp, unsettling, clever, museum-y.

Physical exhibition on view at the Maine College of Art! "MOCS @ICA Portland," advertises the MOCS website. "Dang, this looks interesting, they must mean Portland, Oregon," I thought. Imagine my pleasant surprise when it turned out to be Maine! Exhibition closes June 12; as soon as my decrepit car gets fixed I'm schlepping up to Portland. Updates to follow.

Shorpy: Homestead Factory Town, 1910

Factory Town: 1910

Homestead, PA. Homestead Steel Works, Carnegie Steel Co., 1910.

What do you do with a canal to the moon?

This is a delightful song from episode 400 of This American Life. It's all about the Erie Canal and the trials and tribulations of dealing with semi-obselete historical-industrial infrastructure:

http://podcast.thisamericanlife.org/special/400_Bonus_Nancy_song.mp3

Rad!

Parks-in-progress! Labor history! Community comment!

Cesar Chavez Special Resource Study Newsletter #1

http://www.facebook.com/chavezstudy

Right now! The National Park Service is conducting a series of public meetings on a special resource study to consider designating an NPS site or affiliated area in recognition of Cesar Chavez and the farm labor movement. Circle-chairs and a flip chart! I think I've just identified my NPS dream job: Public Meeting flip-charter, extraordinaire.

A recent public meeting on the Chavez Special Resource study.

This would be (I think) the first NPS area dedicated primarily to an exploration of the history of organized labor/labor organizing. The national park system doesn't need to (and shouldn't) try to represent every major theme and prominent moment in our national heritage. But the combination of a unique and broadly relevant story, and a significant number of meaningful historic locations that could be included in a park or trail, gives this proposal real promise.

[I suppose I would think so.]

The really exciting part of this process is the Park Service's commitment to holding a well-organized series of public comment meetings, not as an afterthought or gesture, but (it seems), as an actual, integral part of the planning process. There are big, basic questions -- where would it be? how would it be organized? where does local community need and interest lie? These public meetings should really be able to shape the answers.

See newsletter #1 for a schedule of meetings (sorry, AZ and CA only) and more info.

And, a little debate on the subject: http://www.nationalparkstraveler.com/2011/05/should-cesar-chavez-site-be-added-national-park-system8070

Free stuff for when you don't have a budget: DIY clip art

Clip art is the worst! It's generic and cheesy. It's not cohesive -- start using it and next thing you know you've got ten images in ten different (cheesy) styles.

I won't go on. If you want to read a longer and more articulate rant against clipart, see Interpretation by Design: Why Clip Art is Evil.

But what's a museum kid to do? Your supervisor want a snappy poster for next month's family program! You don't have a budget! Clip art is free...colorful...tempting. I'll admit, I've done it.

As suggested in the aforementioned Interpretation by Design posting, making your own can be a great alternative. It takes a little more time -- second only to budgets in things you probably don't have...but it's fun, reusable, and in my possibly irrational opinion, totally worth it!

Ok, I'm a pretty terrible artist, but here's how I got my hands on some free, cohesive, non-generic, and pretty cute -- if I may say so -- images for a recent programming publication. Maybe this is obvious...but it took my a while to get it right:

1. Find some pictures of whatever you want on Google Image Search.
2. Print them out.
3. Draw over the important part of the image with a black Sharpie.
4. Put a blank piece of paper on top and trace your underlying Sharpie lines in pencil. 
5. Make any alterations and adjustments to your pencil-image.
6. Retrace over the pencil lines in Sharpie.
7. Put ony more blank piece of paper on top and trace your underlying Sharpie lines in Sharpie -- this creates a clean, pencil-free copy.
8. Find a coworker who has a scanner, and scan your clean, 3rd-generation Sharpie images from step 7.
9. Use 'em! (You can use a really basic free photo editor like MS Office Picture Manager or even...Word...to clean them up. With black and white line images I'd recommend upping the contrast as much as possible and setting the white background as the transparent color before you drop them into your publication.)

Results -- not exactly the work of a professional artiste, but a great alternative for interesting, professional-looking, kid/family-oriented publications:

The Memory Keeper

Yankee Magazine? Yankee Magazine! The Memory Keeper -- worth a read.

Joe Manning's Lewis Hine Project is an ongoing attempt to track the lives and descendants of hundreds of young mill workers photographed by Lewis Hine throughout Massachusetts as part of an early 20th century National Child Labor Committee investigation. Hine photographed kids at work in mills, mines, sweatshops, and farms around the country. As a snapshot of the history of work and exploitation, the photos are powerful; but what happened to these kids? Finding out how their stories played out is an incredibly compelling way to more deeply understand the history, meaning, and experience of work in people's lives.

Seems like this collection is ripe for such efforts around the country...anyone heard of other individuals, museums, or organizations attempting to track the lives and descendants of Hine's subjects?

From the article:

"These children returned to their spinning machines and their looms and went back to work. They grew up and lived their lives. Many of them likely forgot their brief encounters with Hine. Almost none of them ever saw their photographs or heard how they were used.

"For me, this is an enormous album of unfinished stories," Manning says, gesturing to his binder. Hine had taken only snapshots: two-dimensional renderings of a single moment in time. Manning needs more than that: "I look at one of these kids, and my reaction is: Whatever happened to this kid? Is that it? Is this all I know? Is this all I'll ever find out?" That's Manning's goal: He wants to find out what happened next."

Featured folks from the article:



Dana Smith for Yankee Magazine, 2011. Jenn Ford, great-granddaughter of Mamie Laberge, with her great-grandmother's photograph.



Lewis Hine, 1911. Library of Congress. Mamie La Barge at her machine. Under legal age. Location: Winchendon, Massachusetts.

Lewis Hine took many more pictures of Mamie Laberge and her family during his visit to Winchendon than are featured in the article. Check them out at the Library of Congress.

Link: The "Dot Room" Video

And now, a brief interlude for something delightful on a Saturday morning. I think this video perfectly encapsulates a peak museum experience:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sanhelsington/4176481018/

I'm not usually much for cute vids, but...this is super cute. So there.

[By way of Hyperallergic.]

Free things for when you don't have a budget!

Let's start a series! I'm calling it: Free things for when you don't have a budget!


Because who has a budget?! Some of the best museum programs come from scavenged, borrowed, homemade, free, re-purposed, or imaginary materials. Sometimes I think it's more fun that way. Sometimes that's how I know I'm in the right field...

Ok, here's a good one I wish I found a long time ago. Stop using Gimp because you can't afford Photoshop in making your snappy museum publications! Instead...try Pixlr! It's online, so no downloads/IT permissions needed, and less clunky. Best for free photo editing I've found.

[I'm not, like, on the Pixlr dime or anything.]

Anyway, here's a little piece of what I made today using it...from photo to this:

Keeping Things

Museums keep things.


And we interpret, preserve, explore, and reimagine them. Today, the New York Times has a nice interactive feature called Belongings, which takes a personal look at the good old question of why we keep the things we do.


"There are three million immigrants in New York City. When they left home, knowing it could be forever, they packed what they could not bear to leave behind: necessities, luxuries, memories. Here is a look at what some of them brought."

Check it out here.

Putting Visitors to Work

Museum at Work? Why not put visitors to work?

One of my most memorable participatory museum experiences ever was at Mystic Seaport. It's pretty simple, they make a bunch of visitors work together to raise the sails of a 19th century ship. A staff "chanteyman" sings a work song to keep the pace. You're actually standing on the ship, doing it.

The physical novelty of my experience as a visitor served to underscore the extreme historical routine-ness of it. For me, I realized, this was a total break from my normal rhythms; for sailors 150 years ago, it was the most basic, even monotonous rhythm of their lives at sea.

It's an effective interpretive program because it's a relatively simple, immersive, authentic, and cooperative activity. Strangers rely on one another. It's dramatic. The sails are big, and real, and put up a lot of resistance against the rough rope. Mystic's interpretive staff make it clear that you have to take it seriously, too -- everyone on the line has to plant their feet properly, pay attention to the rhythm of the song to know when to pull the rope, and place hand over hand correctly as they pull.

I really didn't want to be the one to mess up. It feels like there's really something at stake. Check it out: in this video they're raising a whale boat (I think), rather than the sail, but the environment, effort, and chantey are similar enough to give an impression:

Can other museums put visitors to work in a similarly safe but powerful way?

Trying Out

Is there any historic industry more dramatic, frightening, and fascinating than whaling?

No. Proof: Moby Dick. More proof: some amazing nighttime photos from the New Bedford Whaling Museum of "trying out." That's when, after taking a whale, the whaling ship becomes a fiery 24-hour factory dedicated to cutting it up and rendering the blubber. Allow Herman Melville to evoke the scene more elegantly, with my unnecessary emphasis added:

Here be it said that in a whaling voyage the first fire in the try-works has to be fed for a time with wood. After that no wood is used, except as a means of quick ignition to the staple fuel. In a word, after being tried out, the crisp, shriveled blubber, now called scraps or fritters, still contains considerable of its unctuous properties. These fritters feed the flames. Like a plethoric burning martyr, or a self-consuming misanthrope, once ignited, the whale supplies his own fuel and burns by his own body. Would that he consumed his own smoke! for his smoke is horrible to inhale, and inhale it you must, and not only that, but you must live in it for the time. It has an unspeakable, wild, Hindoo odor about it, such as may lurk in the vicinity of funereal pyres. It smells like the left wing of the day of judgment; it is an argument for the pit.

By midnight the works were in full operation. We were clear from the carcase; sail had been made; the wind was freshening; the wild ocean darkness was intense. But that darkness was licked up by the fierce flames, which at intervals forked forth from the sooty flues, and illuminated every lofty rope in the rigging, as with the famed Greek fire. The burning ship drove on, as if remorselessly commissioned to some vengeful deed. So the pitch and sulphur- freighted brigs of the bold Hydriote, Canaris, issuing from their midnight harbors, with broad sheets of flame for sails, bore down upon the turkish frigates, and folded them in conflagrations.

And now, some eerie photos of this incredible, seafaring factory work.

And one close-up:

Exhibit: Vertical Urban Factory

A new exhibit at the Skyscraper Museum in NYC takes a unique, relevant approach to industrial history with Vertical Urban Factory:


Vertical Urban Factory features the innovative architectural design, structural engineering, and processing methods of significant factory buildings from the turn of the 20th century to the present. Now, over a century after the first large factories began to dominate our cities, the exhibition poses the question: Can factories present sustainable solutions for future self-sufficient cities?


An interesting reminder that factories were once fundamental to the pre-sprawl urban experience, and a potentially powerful platform for considering current realities and future possibilities.


 New York Times review here.

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire: March 25, 1911-2011

Today is the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire. On March 25, 1911, 146 garment workers in New York City were killed in a workplace fire. Infamously, management had locked the factory's exit doors. A wave of safety reform legislation and memorialization followed. For a moment, the dangerous realities that faced some of the nation's most marginalized industrial workers -- young, female, immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe -- gripped the nation's attention.

Recently brought to my attention: the New York Times has assembled extraordinary coverage of the many facets of the fire: http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/triangle-shirtwaist-factory-fire/?ref=nyregion

Some particular highlights of museum-think interest:
Triangle Fire: Clinging to Scraps of Memories
Triangle Fire: A Frontier in Photojournalism (interactive)
Garment Work in New York 100 Years After the Triangle Fire (video)
In a Tragedy, a Mission to Remember
Remembering the Triangle Fire, 100 Years Later

And, last but not least, from President Obama's resolution marking today's 100th anniversary:
Despite the enormous progress made since the Triangle factory fire, we are still fighting to provide adequate working conditions for all women and men on the job, ensure no person within our borders is exploited for their labor, and uphold collective bargaining as a tool to give workers a seat at the tables of power...As we mark the anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, let us resolve to renew the urgency that tragedy inspired and recommit to our shared responsibility to provide a safe environment for all American workers.

More factory music

The Lowell Factory Girl, courtesy of modern-day Wobbly David Rovics. More music in museums.

NYT: Grab a Brew While They Face Death

Grab a Brew While They Face Death
Today, the Times introduces us to "Coal," a new series a la "Deadliest Catch," "Ice Road Truckers," etc. on Spike TV. With less Arctic -- it's about coal. Mining. In West Virginia:


It’s an uneasy modern dynamic. The men on these “documentary-reality” shows sacrifice their bodies and risk their lives doing down and dangerous jobs to try to provide a good life for themselves and their families. But what the producers and viewers want is what they call “good TV” — in this case, working-class fantasies aimed at men craving televised booster shots of testosterone.

Then, mix a little capitalist-class fantasy into that sudsy all-American brew:

• "People have no idea how important the coal industry is to America," says Mike Crowder, CEO of Cobalt Coal, in a video on Spike's website.

Leave it to Times commenters to bring us back:

• "Egad! Must be backed by the coal and gas industry? Manly men want to leave the coal in the ground," says Times online commenter Jim S., of Illinois.

Ok, so what's so commercially successful about TV that celebrates/showcases/exploits traditional (read masculine) industry that industrial museum don't got? Besides being accessible from the comforts of one's couch. I don't know, I tragically do not get Spike TV. It feels weird to think about coal mining as escapist entertainment -- but really, is this so different from my own coal-fascination and horror? I've never even been near a coal mine, but I have some sort of idealized/romanticized/escapist/earnest/ironic love of mining songs.


So maybe it's about nostalgia, whether it's Spike nostalgia for a myth of all-American industry, manliness, manual labor, or left-wing New England lady-blogger nostalgia for a myth of old-time authenticity and class struggle. Museums shouldn't trade in nostalgic myths, but the feeling of personal connection contained in them is potentially valuable when harnessed more critically: it comes back to people, our different experiences, the stories we tell, and the values we attach to one another.


Also, TV: Undercover Boss and Secret Millionaire make me want to puke.

Welcome to Pine Point

Welcome to Pine Point

Go have a look at this incredible online interactive multimedia mind blowing documentary about the town of Pine Point way up in Canada's Northwest Territories. The mine built it, a community grew, the mine closed, the town was completely razed.

This site is a testament to people and memory and postindustrial spaces totally unlike anything else.

See also:
Museum 2.0: Welcome to Pine Point: A Multimedia Exploration of Nostalgia, History, and What it Means to be Human. Great anaylsis by Nina Simon at Museum 2.0 linking the techniques used and connections made here to the museum experience.

UPDATE: OK, so http://www.nfb.ca/ is my new favorite website. Enjoy documentaries, animations, alternative dramas and interactive productions on the web, on your personalized home page, or on your iPhone. Free for personal use and on a subscription basis for schools and institutions. Where have you been all my life, National Film Board of Canada??? Canadians are so nice!

King Philip IV...Live!

And now, from the world of non-industrial museum news... Check it out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvBbVA36y1U&feature=player_embedded&safety_mode=true&persist_safety_mode=1

From Improv Everywhere: For our latest mission we staged an unauthorized autograph signing in the Metropolitan Museum of Art with an actor who bears a striking resemblance to King Philip IV of Spain. Standing in front of the 400-year-old Velázquez painting, the "King" greeted museum patrons and offered free signed 8x10 photos.

The Met, not surprisingly, put a stop to this rather quickly. I think this is a rad, irreverent in-gallery experience that the Met should be begging these guys to do more often.

gothamist.com

The highest settlement in the world is a gold mining town

From photojournalist Mark Ovaska, by way of NPR, a remarkable series of photos from Rinconada, Peru. This is what a modern-day gold rush very, very high up in the Andes looks like. The vision of the industry's human and environmental impact is astounding...see the whole Glacier Gold series here.



From NPR: A miner makes his way up a steep trail during a shift change in La Rinconada, Peru. Revolving shifts allow miners to see daylight every few days. Copyright Mark Ovaska, 2010.



NPR: Coal Reignites A Mighty Battle Of Labor History

From All Things Considered: Coal Reignites A Mighty Battle Of Labor History

Great story about the 1921 "battle of Blair Mountain," in West Virginia, and current controversy over adding it to the National Register of Historic Places. Preserve the space of a landmark event in US labor and mining history, or open the site to mountaintop removal mining? This story is an unusually direct glimpse into the tensions that often arise between preservation, economic realities, and memory in dealing with local labor heritage and industrial history.

A sign commemorating the battle of Blair Mountain in Logan County, W.Va. NPR.

Key points:

King believes this is hallowed ground, like Gettysburg or the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., places where America's history was forever changed. But he's had a hard time making that case to the folks in Logan County — a place where every fourth person is out of work.

There are only about 16,000 miners in West Virginia today. Mountaintop removal doesn't require as much manpower as underground mining. These are coveted jobs; they pay well. So for the most part, miners are more interested in seeing the economy grow than preserving what they see as just another mountain.

"This is a political fight, this is a social fight, this is a fight about our history, our heritage, our culture," Simmons says. "It's a fight about what kind of society West Virginia is going to be going forward and what has been in its past."

Sounds to me like labor heritage interpretation at its best, and most relevant.

UPDATE (ish): The plot thickens?  http://www.sierraclub.org/environmentallaw/lawsuits/0312.aspx

American Experience: Triangle Fire

Highly recommended! American Experience: Triangle Fire. PBS is currently streaming the entire hour-long documentrary online:  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/triangle/player/

The film focuses not only on the fire itself, but on the extraordinary struggle to unionize female garment workers in the year that led up to the tragedy. One point made in the film stuck out, so much so that I wrote it down. In going out on strike to fight for improved working conditions and wages, thousands of these women "walked away from the only thing between their families and starvation" -- their dangerous, low-paid jobs.

That's what I call interpretation! A simply, evocatively made point that applies not only to this particular series of events, but that gets at the essence of Progressive Era labor struggles. Whether in New York, Lawrence, Paterson, etc., a powerful mixture of community, conviction, and desperation drove workers in this country's burgeoning industrial centers to take enormous personal risks for a chance at something better.

Alex Levine, Photographer-Genius

My fabulously talented brother Alex "Wix" Levine took this incredible photograph, a stunning visual representation of a spectrum of museum visitors.

Someone's ready for the cafeteria.

Grumpy Old People, Alex Levine. All rights reserved.

Industrial Light & Magic: 1915

Shorpy does it again!

Steampunk + Industrial History Museums =...Duh?!

Ok, article from Boston.com like a week ago: Citywide steampunk festival pays homage to Waltham's history

Did you know that International Steampunk City is the "secret identity" of Waltham, MA? Me neither! Anyway, May 6-8 the Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation -- and the entire city of Waltham, apparently -- will be hosting a huge steampunk event.

Talk about getting experimental with industrial history! Awesome opportunity to delve into the aethetics of Victorian-era industry in new and imaginative ways, or catering to a very specialized subculture? Either way it seems like a pretty natural match. I'm super curious to see how this plays out for the CRMII, and psyched to venture down there in May...

Salon: What Wisconsin's governor is really threatening

Today, in the ongoing and infuriating saga of Gov. Scott Walker and his assault on public employees/collective bargaining rights...an enlightening article on the history of the labor movement and the National Guard: What Wisconsin's Governor is Really Threatening

"This would be the first time in nearly 80 years that the National Guard would be used to break a strike by Wisconsin workers, and the first time in over 40 years that the National Guard would be used against public workers anywhere in the country. The last time was the Memphis sanitation strike in 1968, just before Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination."

"Down in a deep dark hole"

Presenting the definitive list of..some really good songs about mining! Why? Because I'm into that kind of thing, and that is what self-indulgent blogs are for. Right?

Oh, and because for most people, music has a tremendous power to make an instant connection and to elicit emotional response. There's an incredibly rich history of American song related to American industry, making labor songs a resource more museums might explore as an alternate access point, enrichment, or subject unto itself.

The American Textile History Museum, for example, has worked successfully with high school students to record contemporary renditions of traditional cotton mill songs, now featured in the museum's cell phone audio tour.

These are mostly -- but not exclusively -- about coal. Because I'm hung up on coal these days. But you get a little hard rock mining (click it, and laugh inappropriately...at the domain name, not at the worst hard rock mining disaster in US history) and steel mills thrown in here too, lucky!

• Gillian Welch, Miner's Refrain (see post title)
• Bob Dylan, North Country Blues [You just have to go get a legit version of this song. Or watch Joan Baez sing it on YouTube, I suppose.]
• Loretta Lynn, Coal Miner's Daughter
• Steep Canyon Rangers, Call the Captain
• Devo, Working in a Coal Mine
• The Grateful Dead, Beat it on Down the Line
• The Johnson Mountain Boys, Blue Diamond Mines
• The Decemberists, Rox in the Box
• Woodie Guthrie, Hard Travelin'
• Steve Earle, The Mountain

...Want even more? Who wouldn't?!

NYT: Art and the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire

Today in the New York Times: In Art, Recalling a Century Old-Tragedy

As the March 25 centennial of the Triangle Shirtwaist approaches, artist and film maker Anthony Giacchino is using art to visualize and commemorate the 146 victims of the 1911 factory fire in an unconventional, directly engaged way:

"I just kept thinking about the number 146,” he said. “I would put names in front of the buildings, but it still did not give me a sense of it. Why not send letters? They’d probably come back. Then I’d be able to see what 146 looks like.”

Helped by Scott Frawley, a student at Fordham University, he compiled a list of addresses and wrote them on envelopes; for six unknown victims, he simply wrote “Unidentified Fire Victim.” Inside each was a short message — in case the address still existed and the current occupant opened the envelope — asking people to reflect on the tragedy, as well as a poem written by Morris Rosenfeld days after the fire.

Mr. Giacchino warned his letter carrier to expect a deluge of returned letters. So far, 130 have come back.

More Sloss

WOW. More good stuff from Shorpy.

Sloss City Furnaces, 1906.

Google Art Project

Not exactly industrial heritage, but...this is pretty interesting. http://www.googleartproject.com/

Explore museums from around the world, discover and view hundreds of artworks at incredible zoom levels, and even create and share your own collection of masterpieces.


This isn't really a new idea, but now that Google's picking it up maybe it'll take off. Pros: increased access! Cons: You're losing context, and contact with the "real thing."


And what's a museum if not a space for engagement with "the real thing?" Sounds like a 21st century existential crisis! Or, maybe a 21st century process of evolution.


I still don't think that a virtual visit to, say the No. 9 Coal Mine & Museum would be as unforgettable without a little bit of real-world soot.

LA Times: House Republicans unveil plan to end federal arts and humanities agencies and aid to public broadcasting

House Republicans unveil plan to end federal arts and humanities agencies and aid to public broadcasting

Trying to take down the NEA, NEH, and CPB? Seriously bleak. Viva la culture wars.

Love.

Mining, and Other Scary Industries: Fun for the Whole Family...?

Fun for the Whole Family: Welcome to the Black Hills Mining Museum, located in the mile-high city of Lead.

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 Underground Exhibit

Our newest major exhibit opened in 2002. This re-creation of a big part of a miner's life will leave you smiling — and shaking your head in amazement! [World Mining Museum]

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Welcome!

Join us for an unforgettable experience as we travel underground to explore the world’s oldest continuously operated anthracite coal mine! [No. 9 Coal Mine & Museum]

Do industrial museums have to have something inspiring, uplifting, or "entertaining" for their visitors?

A quick Monday morning Googling of "mining museum" revealed the above phrases from museum websites.

I have this thing where I get really bummed out when I think about coal mining. Maybe it's because I'm so completely removed in every way from the actual experience that it gives me the creeps -- the working conditions, psychological impact, corporate stuff, environmental impact, danger, health hazards, etc. I know that for plenty of people past and present it's just part of life, they deal.

Anyway: fun, exclamation points, unforgettable, amazement. These museums really want you to visit...and due to their subject matter probably aren't on every family's vacation itinerary. But the tone feels off. I'm picking on mines, but can industrial museums of all kinds connect to visitors emotionally without the "fun!!," while leaving them curious, empathetic, and active...rather than super depressed?

Check out the LOC's Lewis Hine Child Labor Committee Collection, subject heading coal miners. I find these to be some of the toughest historical photos ever taken to look at, and look in the eye.



 Trapper Boy, Turkey Knob Mine, Macdonald, W. Va. Boy had to stoop on account of low roof, photo taken more than a mile inside the mine. Witness E. N. Clopper. Location: MacDonald, West Virginia. Lewis Hine, 1908.