Happy Independence Day!

This 4th of July weekend I plan on doing a number of patriotic, all-American things.  First, I plan on watching baseball games (nothing particularly new or special there - I'm a huge sports nut).  Baseball and American flags waving just seem to go hand-in-hand.  I reference, on left, a guide to the flags of Wrigley Field.  I just LOVE this illustration and many of the others from the same era.  Check out this neat website of Cubs scorecard art through the years and remind me why I don't study the history of something more like this. Many of the drawings were done by the same artist who did many of Wrigley gum's early ad campaigns.

After checking in on my favorite National League (Cubs) and American League (Twins) teams, I plan on drinking a Leinenkugels beer.  While I usually give Wisconsin a pretty hard time, those guys really got it right with this beer.  The Leiny's factory in Chippewa Falls is pretty much the beer version of Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory.    

Once I've completed one or more delicious midwestern brews, I plan on eating about four Hebrew National hot dogs.  Hebrew National's slogan is "We Answer to a Higher Authority," and boy do they ever, those things are damn good.  Man, if you think I'm bad, it could be so much worse.  Seriously (if you only click on one link today, let it be this one).

I also plan on participating in the great American tradition of blowing crap up (or watching others professionally blow crap up).

On the academic side of things, my research really sped up this week in the archives.  I set a new personal record for most time spent with a single box last week while working on the Committee on Anthropological Research in Museums (CARM) records.  I immediately broke that record when looking though the very next box. Thankfully, God heard my prayers and the last couple of boxes were filled with only moderately useful documents. 

In other words, I've been productive enough to take a long weekend over the next few days.  I have to keep reminding myself that I still have a few more weeks to scratch a few more things off the summer to-do list.  And yet, I still feel like I've blinked and missed half of the summer.

Have fun this weekend!  And please be careful if you plan on blowing anything up yourself.  You need most if not all of your fingers to read this blog the rest of the summer. 

Tombstones From My Home State? In Front of the Archives? Should I be Worried?

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the National Anthropological Archives is located in the Smithsonian's Museum Support Center in Suitland, Maryland.  It is a haul for me to get there from where I live in the city, but I find it to be worth the wait, especially considering some of the factors highlighted in Phil's recent posts (going to bigger archives can be a pain).  

As far as I can tell, the Museum Support Center consists of two main buildings.  The one pictured above is the main facility housing much of the behind the scenes material for the museums on the Mall.  At the same site the National Museum of the American Indian has its new Cultural Resources Center (CRC).  I've never been in the CRC myself, but I've seen pictures and it look like a stunning new facility.  

Down the road, the museum has another support facility for the Air and Space Museum.  You can tell its not a regular office building because they have one of these sitting in the parking lot. Just chillin'.  

Upon walking onto the grounds of the Museum Support Center (after showing ID of course) you have a pleasant walk towards the main building, pictured above.  The Smithsonian has done a nice job adding outdoor sculptures to what would otherwise be a  normal looking government building.  Still pretty plain, right?  

Not so fast.  

I noticed one day when walking into the building that a number of tombstone-like objects adorned one side of the facility.  Upon closer inspection, the objects all bore the names of places and quarry companies, most of which were from my home state, Minnesota.  You can probably see why I walked past these things for a couple of weeks thinking that they were, in fact, tombstones.  When I looked more closely, however, it was clear that the inscriptions bore no names or dates, just the name of quarry companies and cities, including Minneapolis and St. Cloud.  

I finally asked around inside the Museum Support Center this week.  Most of the security guards I asked shrugged their shoulders.  They asked me to let them know when I finally figured out what the heck they were.  My archivist at the NAA told me that she wasn't quite sure what they were, but she promised to e-mail around.  She mentioned that they just kind of showed up one week awhile back -- as if the secret geology police had moved them there in the middle of the night.  A few hours later she was able to give me a tentative answer.  

Apparently, geological specimens, at one point, would be carved and adorned in order to show where they had originated from.  The collection comes from the Smithsonian's mineralogy collections and may have been on display at one point.  

Again, this is the tentative answer the staff was able to provide.  I've never seen any pictures of carved geological specimens on display, but it wouldn't surprise me.  Moreover, I study mainly art and anthropology so I could have easily missed displays of this kind.  It has long been commonplace for paleontology and geology exhibits to display polished petrified wood like this. Petrified wood, as it occurs in nature looks more . . . well . . . natural.  

The Smithsonian's online catalogue contains a number of beautiful images of geology exhibitions including this gem (pun intended) from 1903.

But the 1903 exhibit shot does not show any of the mysterious quarry stones.  Nor does this shot from 1919.  The 1919 picture, however, clearly contains a polished stone, center right.  The stone appears to be clean, however, and not adorned with its location like the stones outside of the Museum Support Center.  Later images of gem and mineral displays at the Smithsonian show mainly smaller specimens.  This image from 1930 provides an example.  

My hunch would be that the answer may not lie in the geology exhibitions, but rather in the collections and displays of the Arts and Industries Museum.  The main hall of the A&I Museum circa 1927 can be viewed here.  I think it would make sense to consider geological mining an "industry" to be displayed in exhibitions showing the various geological resources in North America.  

Apparently, my home state of Minnesota was reppin' it at some point in the nation's attic.  

I'll continue to poke around to see if I can find a more complete answer.  

National Anthropological Archives: Day 1

After taking a bus to the train station, then a train to the Mall, then a shuttle to the Smithsonian's Museum Support Center, I began work in the archives this morning.  The trip takes a little over an hour.  I plan on trying a different route tomorrow to shorten things up.   

Getting started was a pretty painless experience, given the fact that the Smithsonian is a big place and the archives there are pretty vast.  The people have been exceedingly friendly and helpful.  

This morning I dove into the Army Medical Museum files.  Combing through this material is somewhat like looking for needles in a haystack, except that I find a needle every couple of hours.  So maybe it is more like buying a bunch of lotto scratch tickets, winning big from time to time, and winning just enough to buy more tickets with a few others.  The general narrative of the transfer of human remains has been laid out pretty clearly by other scholars, but little has been done to illuminate the details of how this collection was brought together and later transferred to the Smithsonian.  Some of the details, as I learned today, are more than a bit gruesome and bring to light some of the more painful legacies of the racial struggles of our nation's history.  

As a side note, this project is also giving me an opportunity to work on reading 19th century penmanship.  If you have any words of wisdom on reading mid-to-late 19th century writing, I would love to hear them.