Conversation Out of Controversy

Often, people think of museums as institutions filled with artifacts and static exhibits, imparting information and stating historical facts.  But many modern museums are evolving from edifices with objects and answers, to arenas with questions and conversation spaces.  These museums discuss broad themes, stimulate debate, and encourage people to talk.

Well, people certainly have been talking about the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.  There has been discussion surrounding the institution since it was established as a national museum in 2007, and five years later people are still talking - and the building is not even complete.

As a national museum, Canadians have a sense of ownership of the CMHR, and controversy has surrounded many aspects of its development.  Multiple issues are up for debate – from how much it is going to cost and who will foot the bill, to the architecture and location of the building.  Content and exhibit space are hot button topics as well.  Who and what will be represented?  Is the museum to commemorate those who lost their lives as a result of genocide and other atrocities?  Or should we celebrate those who have triumphed over adversity?  How much should focus on Canada specifically, how much internationally?

Conversations have been at the core of developing the CMHR and its content.  A Content Advisory Committee was put in place by the Minister of Canadian Heritage to gather input from Canadians regarding the content of the museum.  Focus group testing was done in 2008 in cities across Canada, and again in 2009.  The goal was not only ask what stories need to be told in the Canadian Museum for Human Rights; but also to start an early process of story-gathering, and to stimulate a desire to engage with the museum now and into the future.

Discussion is important; debate encourages a sharing of differing ideas and options.  The questions get hard, and the answers are not always pretty.  The CMHR has already provided Canadians an opportunity to contemplate the history of the struggle for human rights, both nationally and internationally.  Part of the museum’s mandate is “to encourage reflection and dialogue,” it has succeeded in this - even before there are official doors to open. 

The CMHR and the conversations it encourages, have the potential to provide us with a better understanding of Canada’s role in the human rights struggle – past, present, and future.

*This piece was written for an op-ed assignment for my Public History class.

Adventures With Arduino

Me: Guess what I did in Digital History today? 

Doug: What? 

M: I played with an Arduino board! 

D:  You played with a what?  Arduino board?  Like that waffle-board looking thing? 

M:  Yeah, an Arduino board !  You know...a little computer-like thing that...um, it has all these inputs and outputs.  We plugged it into a computer, copied some code, and made a light bulb turn on!  And then we turned it on and off with a button, then we made it blink and fade.  We tried to get two different lights to fade in and out at the same time, but we couldn't quite get the code right.  Okay, it was a lot cooler than it sounds now.... 

D:  And this was in your history class.....?


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Admittedly I am not a techie.  My foray into HTML last semester was a leap for me, so actually programming?  That would be crazy!  What an interesting challenge!  Prof. Turkel opened the class by telling us that we would be making two things this semester:

1. stuff
2. mistakes

As he pointed out, it's not often professors encourage you to make mistakes.  He said he'd rather have us dream big, fail spectacularly, and learn something along the way than to play it safe.  I figured even if it's scary, what's the worst that could happen, I make a mistake?  Cool!


For those of you, like I, unfamiliar with Arduino it's "a popular open-source electronic board that is capable of controlling just about any DIY hardware project."  I figured if this girl could handle it, so could I:

So armed with our box-o-Arduino supplies, and big dreams (or at least big dreams in the making) my partner Adriana and I dove in!  Our kit came with an instruction manual, but we find illustrations much easier to follow so with the help of this comic we got to work.  Adriana had downloaded the software onto her computer, so we sped through the instructions, hooked up all the wires, copied the code into the computer, and voila - our light blinked! 

Now, if that description of how things happened leaves you a little lost and confused, you are exactly where I was in class.  I was so excited to see something happen (i.e. make a light blink) that I wasn't really paying attention to what we were doing.  In fact, everything was pretty much happening all at once.  Adriana was entering the code into the Arduino program, I was following the illustration and hooking up all the wires in the Arduino board and breadboard, but I can't say as though I understood exactly what we were doing.  I was just excited to see this happen:

However, at this point I realized that I had done little more than show I was capable of cutting and pasting code text, and following an illustration to put wires in the right place.  And while the end result was cool - I didn't really understand what I was actually doing.  So we slowed down and Adriana and I went through the code step-by-step.  When you put a sketch (or code) into the Arduino software, it looks a little something like this:

Sketch for fading LED

The light-grey text (following the //) is not actually part of the code, but it's included in the Getting Started with Arduino book to help you understand what each line does.  So we went line by line to figure out what the sketch was telling the Arduino board.  Once we had a basic understanding, we wanted to try something new (dream big right?) and have two different lights hooked up and have them fade in and out at the same time.  So we copied and pasted the sketch over again and made a few changes (there is a "verify" button on the software that double checks your sketch to make sure it's correct), added a second light and BAM - nothing happened.  Well, not quite nothing, but just the first light worked, not the second.


We were really bummed at first, we thought we were wizards and had everything figured out.  But then we realized what we had done...made our first mistake!  So rather than fail, this was just an opportunity to learn what we had done wrong.  Unfortunately, at that very moment, class was over and we had to pack up and call it a day.


But the thing about Arduino is once you start thinking about it, it's hard to stop.  There were numerous Tweets flying around that evening among classmates, with suggestions, solutions, and cool websites to check out.  Adriana eventually figured out our mistake in the sketch.  (If I understand it correctly, we had created a second "loop" or entirely separate part of the code, or the Arduino was only reading the first part - hence only one light coming on.)  


The nice thing about Arduino being open-source is that you can find a lot of people on the web sharing what they are doing and the codes that go along with their projects.  So if you're really bored creative, you can do something like this:

Pick Me Out A Winner Bobby

There are many ways in which people connect with the past.  It could be reading a book, looking at photographs, or visiting a site or museum.  In our Interactive Exhibit Design course, we have been encouraged to select an item we might find lying around our house, and by performing an action, imagine that this object somehow connects us to the past.  With the aid of imagination and a little magic - this ordinary item becomes a "history appliance."  

My colleagues have come up with some truly innovative ideas.  There are objects for every interest: the traveler, the java junkie, the fashionista, the meteorologist, and even those who would like to do more than just curl up with a good book.  With all these entertaining ideas, it is clear that we could take this "history appliance" in any possible (or seemingly impossible) direction we wanted.  However, there was one suggestion that caught my eye as I was reading the assignment, and as much as I brainstormed - I was continually drawn back to my original idea.  The suggestion: "an item of sports equipment" - the idea: a baseball bat.

 
Now, I had started to feel that baseball has played a much larger role in this blog than it actually does in my life.  Don't get me wrong - I'm a fan, and I interned at the Hall of Fame - but there are many other things that interest me, and I am certainly no baseball or sport historian.  But once this idea popped in my head I couldn't shake it.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to hit that game-winning, record-breaking home run? (For my Canadian friends, it's the equivalent of a hat trick.)  With this bat you could experience that feeling.  Simply slip on this batting helmet (equipped with surround sound headphones), pick up the "Wonderboy", and swing for the fences!


The bat will gauge your swing and respond with the appropriate home run experience.  Perhaps yours is the "Shot heard round the world," and you hear this:

Or are you a lefty?  Take a swing and experience Roger Maris breaking Babe Ruth's record:

You could even tailor your experience, if there is a particular announcer you want to hear.  Consider Hank Aaron's 715th home run.  You could choose to hear Curt Gowdy (NBC), Milo Hamilton (Braves Radio Network), or Vin Scully (Dodgers Radio Network.)

For a more authentic experience, you can even opt out of the announcers, and keep it to the roar of the crowd and cheers of your teammates.  For a more in depth experience, screens could project the image of the stadium as you round the bases.  There are so many places the "Wonderboy" could take you.

There is something magical about listening to an exciting moment in sports history.  It's the kind of experience that makes the hair on your arms stand up.  The combination of your favorite player and that amazing announcer:

And then there are those moments I would rather not recreate with the "Wonderboy"...

Midway Musings

At the start of winter break, many people asked how my first semester of grad school had gone.  Following the hectic final two weeks, I rarely had the energy to elaborate beyond "good."  Now that I've had a few days to do absolutely nothing relax, it seems like a perfect time to look back at the past few months and reflect on why I felt so busy all of the time!

Who says grad school doesn't have field trips?!  Here are just a few of the sites I visited this semester:

• Fanshawe Pioneer Village
• Banting House
• Oil Museum of Canada
• Uncle Tom's Cabin Historic Site
• Fort Malden National Historic Site
• Windsor's Community Museum 

Of course you can't forget about classes, here's a selection of some of my projects:

• Public History - Theory, History and Practice
• Heritage Designation Project for London Advisory Committee on Heritage (more on this project later, as it deserves its own post)

• War of 1812 Smartphone App secondary source research

• Understanding Archives: The Management of Primary Sources in the Digital Age
• Arrangement & Description Project for London Life Troupers Fonds 
• Essays on Ethics in the Archival Profession and Photographs in Archives
• Presentation on Digital Archival Exhibits: Anne Frank: An Unfinished Story

• Digital History
•  Blogging and Tweeting

There was plenty to do outside of the classroom as well:

• Curatorial and Collections Research Assistant at Fanshawe Pioneer Village 
•  Beta tester of the Tecumseh Lies Here Augmented Reality Game
• Ontario Augmented Reality Network Workshop  
• Homecoming Display of the UWO Medical Artifact Collection

• Assisted in packing the UWO Medical Artifact Collection
• Poster Session Proposal (accepted!) to the National Council on Public History 2012 Annual Meeting with Adriana and Laura (more on this later as well...)
• Mounted LACH Project Exhibit

Media Credit: Adrian Petry

Of course, midst all this hard work I still found time for game nights, homecoming parties, trivia nights, birthday celebrations, and general shenanigans with the rest of the #phgp (public history group people.)


Winter break doesn't mean I'm going to completely slack off from my scholarly duties.  Here are a few of the things I hope to accomplish:

• Internship search
• French flashcards
• Blog Posts

Hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday season, and those in academia are enjoying a much deserved break!

Winter Break Book Selections

As a child (and I may be dating myself here) I can recall one of the things that signaled the beginning of the holiday season was the arrival of the Sears "Wish Book" in the mail. This fabulous catalogue displayed all the toys that my brother and I could possibly hope to find under the tree on Christmas morning (along with clothes, and other less desirable items.) We would spend hours pouring over the pages, dogearing the items we intended to include in our letters to Santa.

These days catalogues have given way to online shopping.  I remember the shocking news of Sears discontinuing their "Big Book" in 1993, and now the company offers an online version of the catalog - complete with Wish Book.

Canada had a similar store in Eaton's.  T. Eaton & Co. a dry goods store and haberdashery opened in Toronto on December 8, 1869.  The store was successful and grew rapidly, becoming the first store in Canada to have electric lights and elevators.  In 1884, Eaton's introduced the first mail-order catalogue to Canada, it offered everything from clothing to farming equipment, and even pre-fabricated houses. 

As Canada's population became more urban, shoppers were less reliant on catalogue purchases.  In 1976, Eaton's announced that the Spring-Summer catalogue would be their last.  Many Canadians were in shock.  Unfortunately, the whole chain folded in 1999 and Eaton's corporate assets were acquired by Sears Canada. 

Fortunately, for those feeling nostalgic this time of year, Internet Archive provides a window into Christmas shopping past.  The Eaton's Fall and Winter Catalogue 1913-1914 is available in its entirety online for perusing pleasure.  These days my desire to browse for toys has lessened (unless I'm shopping for my nephew) and I've never had much success purchasing clothes I couldn't try on, but the book selection looked interesting.  While nothing beats walking into a bookstore and diving into the stacks, end of semester assignments often allow little time for shopping.  Plus, with the magic of the internet I can browse the 1913 selection.

With winter break just around the corner, I'm looking forward to some leisure time and a little reading for pleasure - a luxury grad students can't often afford.  So I picked out a handful of books from the 1913 catalogue and using more internet magic, managed to locate some grad-student-budget-friendly (read:free) copies.  Here are some of my holiday reading selections.

Since this time of year always inspires me to try new recipes in the kitchen i decided to check out the cookbook section.  What better women to turn to for hosting advice than the First Ladies?  The White House Cook Book: A Comprehensive Cycolpedia of Information for the Home, is touted as being "comprehensive, filling completely, it is believed, the requirements of housekeepers of all classes.  It embodies several original and commendable features, among which may be mentioned the menus for the holidays."  While this 600 page book full of the "choicest recipes" would have set me back $0.75 in 1913, the full text is available online for free today. 


While preparing my meals fit for a President, I thought I might want to brush up on my table manners as well.  Fortunately for me, right under the cookbooks are numerous books on etiquette.  The Encyclopaedia of Etiquette: A Book of Manners for Everyday Use, seemed like a promising resource.  Eaton's describes it as "a guide for your every-day conduct on all occasions, whether in private or public.  Deals with calls, cards, dinners, table manners, balls, wedding, receptions, musicales, invitations, correspondence, etc."  With this handy manual I never have to worry about not knowing the proper use of a finger bowl or if it would be appropriate to bring my ladies maid to the next house party.


The next book I found is one that was on the shelf in my childhood bedroom.  I think it may have belonged to one of my parents as it had seen a lot of love before I started reading it.  The Little Lame Prince is a story for children about a young prince whose legs are paralyzed due to a childhood injury.  The prince is given a magical traveling cloak by his fairy godmother; he uses this cloak to go on various adventures, and develops great wisdom and empathy in the process.  I can recall enjoying, if not fully understanding the story as a child, and though my hard copy is packed away in a box somewhere, I can enjoy this digital copy as an adult.  "If it draw a few tears, they run into smiles; and the last page leaves us with a gentle, quite feeling, such as grown men and women call peace."

There are a handful of books that I frequently reread, each time enjoying as much as the first.  It doesn't seem to matter that I know what is going to happen, or how the story will end, it still touches me each time I pick it up.  Stepping Heavenward is one of those books, and I'm glad I came across it in the Eaton's catalogue and managed to find it online.  My paper copy is well loved, but like so many of my books right now, it too is packed away in a box in the basement.  I can think of no book I would rather take a break with over this holiday season.  This is a journal-like account of a 19th century girl who learns, on the path to womanhood, that true happiness can be found in giving oneself to others.  It reminds me so much of my halting attempts at a journal in my youth and I am captivated by Katherine's story.


Earlier this year, I went on a history field trip which included a stop at Uncle Tom's Cabin Historic Site.  This site commemorates the life of Reverend Josiah Henson.  An active abolitionist and participant in the Underground Railroad, Henson's memoirs served as a source for Harriet Beecher Stowe's anti-slavery novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin.  While at the site, I was inspired by Henson's story, one that I knew nothing about prior to this visit.  I was familiar with the book, but have never read it.  But with a full text version available from the Internet Archive, I am able to tackle this 19th century best-seller whenever I find the time.


Along with the books with which I was familiar, I wanted to look into a couple new titles.  This highlighted one of the downsides of the book selections in Eaton's catalogue.  Though there was an abundance of fiction titles from which to choose, there were no descriptions.  So as much as we are warned to not judge books by their covers, I was forced to pick on title alone.  My first choice Not Like other Girls, sounded promising.  I hopped over to Amazon.com to see if they had a summery of the book.  I was in luck, "this is a ripping yarn written in the manner of Jane Austen.  Three daughters and their mother fall into gentile poverty after their father's death left them somewhat destitute...They are 'not like other girls' as the book is titled, because they manage to earn admiration and respect despite their reduced circumstances...The book is an interesting window into gender politics of the late 19th century."  One of the things I discovered trying to find a copy of this book online is that it was published in volumes.  The first one I opened was just the second volume - or the middle part of the book.  Something to keep in mind if you undertake a scavenger hunt like this in the future.


The final book that I selected was from the "high-class recent fiction" list of books in the Eaton's calalogue.  The Woman Haters by Joseph Lincoln sounded like an entertaining read.  This one, like my last selection, also posed a bit of a problem when I looked for the full text online.  There was a misprint in Eaton's and the book was listed as The Woman Hater (singular, not plural.)  Turns out there is a novel by Charles Reade of that name.  It was easy enough to sort out the difference, and find the book by the correct author.  Without a description I Googled the title and manybooks.net provided me with a summary for my last read, a "light and amusing tale of a Cape Cod lighthouse keeper and a young new Yorker who becomes his assistant."  I especially enjoy the depiction of the salty lighthouse keeper on the books cover.

I wasn't entirely surprised at the selection of books available online, I am familiar with many Epub books.  I expected to find the well-known titles easily, but the lesser-known ones were a pleasant surprise.  Not only are you able to read all the books I selected online, but they can also be downloaded to a mobile device, like an e-reader.  I have a Nook Color, so I can add all my winter reads to this device and bring them wherever my holiday travels take me.  I was hesitant at first to get on the e-reader bandwagon, I am such a fan of books, and there is nothing like browsing in a bookstore.  But it's hard to beat the convenience of holding dozens of books and magazines (not to mention pdf articles for class) on one device.  With so many of the classics accessible on sites such as Internet Archive, Project Gutenberg, Google Books, and Hathi Trust, my personal digital library need never be empty.