Monthly E-News from Michael Bouman, Executive Director
Missouri Humanities Council
Contents:
New Program Directions for 2006
I think a lot of people in Missouri are going to have some exciting new opportunities to grow themselves and the institutions they manage. The Missouri Humanities Council has taken advice from people all over Missouri and has created a new strategic plan that focuses on improving the infrastructure of our local institutions that involve us in thinking about who we have been, who we are now, and what we might become as a community of diverse people.
The details are on the next page. The core of my message is, if you are connected with a local or county historical organization or a historic house, now is a good time to make plans to modernize the ways you involve the public. Now is the time to lay out plans for what you will have become by the date of our statehood bicentennial. That's 2021. It seems a long way off in 2005. Yet if your institution can identify a single "baby step" you can take in 2006, and another in 2007, you will have accomplished important and sustainable change before 2021. That's the meaning of a new initiative called 21st by 21. We want to transform what seem to be 19th century interpretive practices into state-of-the-art by 2021. In the next five years we want to jump-start fifty exemplary "baby steps" at local institutions, steps that will introduce experiential, interactive learning opportunities. Fifty institutions by 2010. Maybe fifty more by 2015. Maybe 150 vastly improved local institutions by 2021.
This is the sort of strategic planning I like. It outlasts my own career and the terms of our board of directors. We're not given talent so that we can play small. Let's play big. There's no better time than now.
http://www.mohumanities.org/E-News/Oct05/NewDirections.htm
Smithsonian Offers "Barn Again" Exhibit
The Smithsonian Institution's Traveling Exhibition
service is in the process of donating their retired "Museums On Main
Street" exhibitions. Several copies of Yesterday's Tomorrows and
one copy of Produce for Victory have already found good homes.
One copy of Yesterday's Tommorws that is still traveling in Washington
state will be returning to DC in January, 2006, and will be available
at that point for donation.
The deadline for applications for Barn Again! is November 1, 2005.
This exhibit was a huge favorite with Missouri towns when it toured here
in 1998. It's about barns in America, sure, but host towns created
activities that celebrated "life in a place that farms."
There seems to be a great deal of interest in Barn Again, and the Smithsonian
already has quite a
few applications in for it, but it is not too late to apply.
If you are interested, please check the MoMS website,
http://www.museumonmainstreet.org
for additional information about the
application process and selection criteria. There is a link on the home
page.
If you have any questions, please call Carol Harsh at 202-465-5267.
Carol Harsh
Co-Director
Museum on Main Street
Smithsonian Institution, SITES
(202)357-1760
(202)465-5267 (cell)
harshc@sites.si.edu
Key Ingredients Exhibit in Bates County
If you're in the vicinity of Bates County in western Missouri in the next four weeks, be sure not to miss the activities at Poplar Heights Farm in Butler in connection with the Smithsonian "Key Ingredients" exhibit. It's all about foods and culture, and it's simply wonderful!
http://poplarheightsfarm.com/html/key_ingredients.html
By Marianne Inman
Swoosh…Plunk! Swoosh…Plunk! Swoosh…Plunk!…"Fish
On!"
And
every fisherperson lined up elbow-to-elbow in the river reels in the lines
that have been relentlessly and in unison "swooshed" and "plunked"
into this rapidly flowing stream.
When the number of red (sockeye) salmon entering the Russian River in Alaska rises to 5,000 per day, splashes from annoyed snagged fish and the occasional zing! of a broken line add to the sounds of rippling water and the calls of seagulls looking for fish carcasses as freshly caught salmon, weighing 6 to 8 pounds each, are cleaned right in the stream. (Cleaning fish in the river is mandated for ecological reasons, and it also helps avoid encounters with hungry bears in the campground.) Within hours these bright red filets of natural, wild salmon are sizzling on outdoor grills at nearby campsites.
The five types of Pacific salmon swim in abundance in Alaskan waters. King (chinook) salmon can reach 100 pounds while silver (coho) salmon normally range from 10 to 15 pounds. Pink and chum salmon are less prized, as they are milder in flavor and paler in color, but they are also lively, sizable, and fun to catch. All swim upstream to the water of their birth to spawn, thus perpetuating their life cycle. Most stop eating once they leave salt water and thus do not always snap at lures in the way that other fish do. Many move in such great numbers that a fish can be caught—or snagged (these must be returned immediately to the water since it is illegal to keep a fish hooked anywhere but in the mouth)—on almost every Swoosh…Plunk!
In
my own experience, the silver salmon is the most elusive of the five.
I lived and fished in Alaska for 8 years and caught each of the other
four varieties before a silver salmon gave itself to me. According to
Alaska Native tradition, which celebrates the unity of all living things,
animal food sources give themselves to those who are respectful of the
creature. My first silver salmon was resting near the bank of the river
as I looked down into the water one late August afternoon, unfortunately
without my fishing rod. As I called for help, someone nearby handed me
his, the line of which I quickly dropped into the water, letting the lure
float into the silver’s mouth…which opened (not coincidentally,
I believe) to allow the hook to enter. Just seconds later the fish was
on the shore. I am convinced that this fish wished to give itself up since
it did not dart away despite the time and noise involved in equipping
myself. Dinner that evening was a special treat!
Marianne Inman is the President of Central Methodist University in Fayette. On November 1 she will become Vice-Chair of the Missouri Humanities Council.
By Betty Marshall Ergovich
At a very early age "rummaging" was one of my favorite pastimes. I believe my insatiable curiosity was the cause of it.
I lived in a large house in Southwest Missouri, with my family consisting of my brother, my grandfather, and an uncle. In my uncle's room was a humpback trunk that my late grandmother had filled with quilts, a few letters, and several lockets of hair held together by thin ribbons.
When I was eleven or twelve years old, I made a routine visit to the trunk and opened one of the removable top compartments, which I had not explored for quite some time. I noticed a large envelope with a lump in it, opened it and removed the contents. There were three sheets of very old paper and a very small, blue book, entitled Dew Drops. Each sheet of paper had writing on both sides consisting of two separate poems and one page similar to a diary. My great grandmother's name, Priscilla Narcissa was on one page, so I knew she was the author. (The name, Priscilla Narcissa always fascinated me, since I thought it sounded so sophisticated compared to my simple name, Betty.)
Over time I re-read the poems a number of times and wondered many things, and as a young woman and then a young adult I decided I needed to know more facts about the items I had discovered and had claimed as my property. The writing was difficult to read and the spelling didn't always seem to be correct. One poem was titled "Rebels Lament" and contained the phrases "on Mississippi clime," the "bloody field of Corinth," and "the rebel Price." The second poem, "Dieing Soldier," (pictured above) mentioned what appeared to be "bundvistis bloody field," which I thought to be Buena Vista. I decided these must be about soldiers in a war, but did not know what they had to do with Priscilla Narcissa (she was always referred to by both names). Then I noticed she gave me a clue – on the right hand margin of one of the poems she wrote:
"In eighteen sixty, the war was hatched in Dixie,
"In eighteen sixty-one the dreadful war begun,
"In eighteen sixty-two General Price did his force renew."
That was all the information I needed to go on a mission to research the Civil War. I found that Confederate General Sterling Price had commanded the Missouri Home Guards in 1862 at Corinth, Mississippi. I still have not been able to identify what appeared to be bundvistis. The closest I came was finding a battle in Buena Vista, Mexico, in 1847, which doesn't seem to fit into the story.
I learned that the Shaker religion was noted for publishing some really small miniature books. One volume (1.25 by 1.75 inches), published in 1852, was called Dew Drops of Wisdom and contained aphorisms for each day of the year. The inscription on the inside cover confused me. It read:
"1861 This is a gift from my sweetheart John Hammack to P.N. Hammack."
I surmised that P.N. could only be Priscilla Narcissa, who was married to David A.J. Butler. She was the mother-in-law of my grandfather, so I began questioning him about her. After a visit from his two elderly sisters, collectively they remembered that Butler was Priscilla Narcissa's second husband. Her first husband, whose name escaped them, was killed in the Civil War and that was all they could recall.
I really went to work on what little I knew and tried to piece it together. In what appeared to be part of a diary (on the back page of one of the poems) dated January 1866, she described a trip she made to "Benton County, Arkansas to see my husband’s people". I sent inquiries to everywhere I could think of and, believing John Hammack was from Arkansas, I obtained his Civil War records from the National Archives. These records indicated he had served in Co. H – 15th Northwest Arkansas Infantry Regiment – Confederate, and had been killed on December 7, 1861, at the battle of Prairie Grove, Arkansas.
From
the county clerk's records I learned that Priscilla Narcissa King Hammack
and David A.J. Butler were married January 2, 1870, in Lawrence County,
Missouri.
Together all of this information answered some of my questions, but it caused many more. I realized I was not just trying to find a cause or explanation for the treasures I had found, but wanted to know more about my ancestors. I researched more and discovered two great-grandfathers who fought in the Missouri Militia (Union) and two distant cousins who served in the 17th Tennessee Infantry (Confederate) and surrendered with General Robert E. Lee on April 8, 1865, at Appomattox Court House, Virginia. One of them was General Lee's wagon master. So, I feel I was well-represented on both sides of the conflict.
Those poems I found years ago started me on a lifetime of interest in history, and the more I learned, the more I enjoyed it. Now I call my "rummaging" a more dignified name – "Research."
Betty Marshall Ergovich is the Director of the Westport Historical Society in Kansas City. Two poems are transcribed here, "The Dieing Soldier" and "The Rebel's Lament"
Historian Gary Fuenfhausen has written a wonderful piece on his restoration of an antebellum house in Arrow Rock which he remembers seeing when he was a child. Gary provided an array of photographs to illustrate his story. See the story here:
http://www.mohumanities.org/E-News/Oct05/ArrowRockHouse.htm
I'm not one to observe anniversaries in a job, but my colleagues threw a little surprise party for me in honor of my completing ten years here. I've written a little reflection on a decade that began with fears of the elimination of Federal support for the arts and humanities and ended with a hurricane that shaped our conceptions of homeland disaster.
http://www.mohumanities.org/E-News/Oct05/Decade.htm