Monthly E-News from Michael Bouman, Executive Director
Missouri Humanities Council
Contents:
- Sac and Fox Heritage Exhibit in Versailles
- "Bus-eum" Touring Exhibit on German-American Internment, 1941-1948
- Missouri Conference on History, St. Louis, April 19-20
- Pettis County Museum's Grand Opening in Sedalia
- Blog-in-progress, and other modernizations
- Library of Congress Web Site on "Preserving Family Treasures"
- Poetry and Children by Julie Douglas
- Reflections on Guerilla Season
Sac and Fox Heritage Exhibit in Versailles
The Morgan County Historical Society Museum is a fascinating place to visit. This month it's all the more so because of the touring exhibit designed by the Sac and Fox people with the help of Greg Olson. The exhibit opened last June at the Mark Twain Museum in Hannibal. Tribal elder, Henrietta Massey, is pictured below giving an invocation in the Sac and Fox language on opening day. The exhibit has traveled in Missouri, Iowa, and Illinois since then. You can see it in Versailles until the end of April, and then it moves to the Kirkwood Library for the month of May. It is currently booked through the end of 2007.
The Morgan County Museum is a fascinating place. Gradually, "Do Not Touch" signs are disappearing as Curator Carl Morgan figures out ways of letting people get more enjoyment out of the collection. These days the visitor is able to read the newspaper account of the sinking of the Titanic. It's one of many old pages that Carl thought to make available to visitors by using clear plastic casings for the fragile paper.
The museum occupies the former hotel. Some of the rooms upstairs are furnished as hotel rooms would have been in various historical periods. In the main lobby, you can see a traveling clothing salesman's display book showing the latest fashions for gentlemen in 1921.
The Sac and Fox exhibit is more thought-provoking than virtually every other exhibit on Native Americans in our local museums. Why? Because it is focused on a system of beliefs that are contained within a simple story. I often think about the kinds of stories that express a system of beliefs. There's the story of Alexander Doniphan's refusal to carry out an order to round up Joseph Smith and his band and execute them all in the public square. I saw the text of his refusal on the wall of the Clay County Museum. It struck me that I was looking at one of Missouri's cultural treasures in these words: "I will not do it, because it is murder." Another system of beliefs is embedded in the Christian parable of The Good Samaritan. The story explains who we (the people) are to look out for, and how much (everyone, and without limit). I don't think you can read the Sac and Fox story of The Twelve Boys and come away unmoved by its power of explaining what really matters. In a way, the fashion book from 1921 also asserts what matters. It's interesting to take those two forms of assertion into mind during the same museum visit.
The museum is at 120 North Monroe in Versailles. It's open Tuesday-Friday, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and Saturday 9 to 12 noon. (573) 378-5530
German-American Internment, 1941-1948
Regular readers of this E-News will remember a piece by Arthur Jacobs in January 2006 on the deportation of his family during World War II. Arthur returned to live in a foster home in Kansas, he graduated from The College of the Ozarks, and served in the U.S. Armed Forces.
The internment of German-Americans during the World War II era is the subject of an exhibit that has been touring the Midwest for several years. The exhibit tours inside a bus; hence the term "bus-eum."
Our grant to TRACES: The Center for History and Culture is supporting the Missouri tour this month. From what we have heard from our neighboring states, this is fascinating material, well worth a visit. I have summarized the tour schedule on this page:
http://mohumanities.org/E-News/April07/vanished.htm
Missouri Conference on History, April 19-20
I've linked to a flyer describing the sessions and activities at the 49th Missouri Conference on History. The events will take place at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in St. Louis. I think anyone who teaches or studies history will find several things of intense interest here. For example, there's a round table discussion Friday morning about how schools can create lasting partnerships when they implement "Teaching American History" grants from the Department of Education.
The Keynote address, delivered at the luncheon on Friday by Professor James Giglio of Missouri State University, is titled Stan Musial and the Significance of Sports Biography. Great timing for this topic, eh?
http://mohumanities.org/E-News/April07/MOConfOnHist.pdf
Grand Opening of the Pettis County Museum
Who says museums are the domain of retirees? Not in Pettis County, Missouri! Charles Wise, the President of the Historical Society there, is an undergraduate. The fact that he was passionate about history got him elected to a leadership post. The Grand Opening of the new museum will be Saturday, April 14th. There will be a 10 AM ribbon cutting, followed by an open house and special displays till 5 PM. There will be a fundraising raffle in conjunction with the event, as well as a movie night the following afternoon, Sunday, April 15th. The movie is The Great Dictator, a Charlie Chaplin classic featuring Sedalia native Jack Oakie. There is no charge for the movie, though donations are welcome. For more information on this event, email Charles at cwise@murlin.com
Blog-in-progress and other modernizations
My colleagues and I are trying to help new communities of interested people come together in ways we haven't tried (or understood how to try) before. Beth Felice, whose role is like the scout who rides out ahead of a wagon train, is learning how to use internet tools none of the rest of us knew anything about a few months ago. We not only have a blog at MHC, but we have ways of finding humanities news for it. Before you know it, several of us will get the hang of "blogging." In my own small way, I'm learning to use the digital recorder to create audio downloads of my "columns" in the E-Passages. This is our baby step in the direction of actual pod-casting, which is not a form of catch-and-release fly fishing. Take a look at what happens on a blog:
http://mohumanities.blogspot.com/
"Preserving Family Treasures" Web Site
We all have them, dog-eared old photos we've been meaning to protect "soon." We may have a Family Bible or a collection of letters Dad wrote Mom while he was a soldier. Or we may have old news clippings or certificates lying around where the bugs can nest in them. Now there's help in learning how to do a better job. The Library of Congress has put up a new web site called "Preparing, Protecting, Preserving your Family Treasures."
http://www.loc.gov/preserv/familytreasures/index.html
This website provides simple instructions as well as links to more comprehensive information. So, whether you've made a New Year's resolution to take care of keepsakes or you've had some sort of household disaster, this site's for you.
This month my colleague Julie Douglas has written a piece that will help parents expand on the Mother Goose rhymes and bring more poetry into the lives of children.
http://mohumanities.org/E-News/April07/poetry.htm
Reflections on Guerilla Season
Two months ago I met Eric Langhorst, a history blogger in Liberty. Eric teaches 8th grade history, and he weaves his students' work into his blogs. He was sitting in on a workshop I was conducting at the Clay County Museum, where his students had created new labels for the objects. I thought this museum was very lucky to have someone of Eric's talent on the board. You can view his blog at http://speakingofhistory.blogspot.com
Eric told me about assigning a Civil War novel titled Guerilla Season to his class. It's written by a woman named Pat Hughes, who lives in Philadelphia and works for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Using the internet, Eric arranged for Pat Huges to engage the 8th grade students in the study of her story. Eric told me that an 8th grade class somewhere in California got wind of his class's assignment and began an internet "correspondence" with his class about Guerilla Season. USA Today ran a story on this project last November:
http://www.usatoday.com/life/2006-11-14-blogs-education_x.htm
The day after I met Eric, I ordered Guerilla Season and assigned it to myself. My book report is attached at http://mohumanities.org/E-News/April07/guerilla_season.htm
I've recorded a version of the report in mp3 format. There's a link to the recording under the title.