Doings

Hello faithful readers!

I say that because if you're still reading this, you are definitely faithful. Sorry for the very long hiatus. My dog does indeed have cancer and we'll be putting her down tomorrow. But enough about that. I'm here to catch you all up on the doings at the museum.

 On the 20th of January we had a book signing at the museum! I heard it went very well, I didn't go that Friday because Saturday I went with my friend. :) Anyway, the book signing was for a book being written by George Wallace Jr. about his father and his family life. Since, I am not from Alabama, I don't know much about Governor George Wallace. I can say that everyone thought the book signing went very well, and according to the director they quickly ran out of books. One of the girls told me that it was interesting, but Mr. Wallace left out anything that could have been controversial. Either way it was a good event that got us some publicity.

So, the visit with my friend on the 21st went really well. Hopefully, when we're both not quite so busy, we'll be able to set up a schedule where we both go out to Cherokee at least once a month. Having someone else to work with me is a big help. We got so much done! In fact, I'm thinking of leaving the inventorying of upstairs to her. After, I go through a quick look through the boxes to see what is artifacts and what is archival material, as well as if there is anything else I can use for the exhibit.

Now to get into what we found:

Isn't this dress lovely? This is the flappers dress that I mentioned which was worn from the late 1930s until the 1950s. It was worn by Bonnie Brasfield who was a dancer, a singer, and daughter of Lawrence Brasfield. If you haven't heard of Lawrence by that name you may have heard of Boob Brasfield - his stage name, or Uncle Cyp and Aunt Sap - the characters he and his wife played on the Red Foley Show. If you haven't heard of him at all, then you may have heard of his brother Rod Brasfield, who did skits with Minnie Pearl on the Opry Radio Show.

If you'd like to see one of his brother's skits you can see it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xkn6yqACcWs&feature=player_embedded#!

I couldn't find anything from when Bonnie or her father and mother performed but if you find anything please comment and tell me!

We also found this gorgeous dress here which was handmade in the late 1800s. The detail on the dress was wonderful and we were both very happy to have found it in such good condition.













One of the other great things we found was a World War II Army Air Force jacket.

The patch on the picture below led me to suspect that it may have been an early Airborne patch. When I returned home I immediately looked it up and found out that it is the insignia for an Airborne Engineer Unit. From this little patch I am able to gather that Wellman, the name written in the jacket, was an Airborne Engineer and was therefore part of the support services. Pretty cool right?

It makes it a lot easier now that I'll have someone who can help me inventory. The last two Tuesdays I've gone to the museum I've been able to focus on putting information into the database and inventorying the first floor. Hopefully things keep moving this quickly. Even if my friend can't continue going with me I should be okay because the Director told me last Tuesday that I may have a high school student volunteer who can help me out. (To which I happily thought of trying to twist another mind to the wonder of public history.) Also this summer I'll probably have two helpers from a college in Rome who are going to intern at the museum! Yay! For both the supervisory experience, and the help. Cause I need it.

So I mentioned that I'm going through the boxes upstairs to mark off which ones are artifacts and which are mostly archival. I'm doing that so we can get through the artifacts quicker, and then can start on the archival and photo material after because the artifacts are vastly more important at this point in time. Anyway, its really good that I'm doing that because I was upstairs Tuesday and I found another box of cameras. Go figure! Shame on me for even bothering to think there would only be one.

Anyway, in the box was the card for the old Argus 75 that I had found in the first box. It said just the most beautiful thing on it too. It said that the camera should still be working! Yay! Because I was planning on taking pictures with a Polaroid, I'm donating to the museum, and a Konica, also being donated. (Both are 80s era and are the last group I need to round off the non digital cameras.) What I found further in the box was even better. The instructions to load it! The director, who I mentioned the box and the card to, remembers having one when he was younger and he thinks its a 35mm film! Which is really easy to get your hands on! So I'll check on that for sure next Tuesday.

What do you all think of having pictures taken of the various sites around the county? Wouldn't that be really good to put in the exhibit. I thought the kids might like to see both images from a non digital format, and a digital format. Kids today probably don't really know about cameras that even take film. Though, they've probably seen pictures from film cameras but, they might not link the two together.

Oh and I also discovered the boxes of telephones upstairs too, which is fantastic!

That's it for tonight. See you next Thursday!

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