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As most of you are aware, every First Lady has their project. Michelle Obama has taken on childhood obesity, Nancy Reagan took on the ‘war on drugs’. Jackie Kennedy focused on the preservation and restoration of the White House.

In the following news broadcast, Jackie Kennedy gives a brief narrative on the history of the White House, and why it is important to preserve and contribute to the aura of the mansion. Throughout the hour long interview, she goes room by room describing what work was done. Everything from refurnishing to changing the style of tables in the banquet hall. All of her work was in the name of preservation, and keeping the history of our nation and the residence of our President alive and well. Jackie truly went to great steps in discovering relics in storage, and using the knowledge of Historians and various experts in making sure her findings were accurate.

The fact that both John and Jackie were avid history buffs makes this story  much more interesting, at least in my humble opinion. It’s refreshing to see the respect and admiration to the past from a couple who one would think would be too preoccupied to acknowledge.

Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=6EFEF6A4BF31464A&feature=iv&annotation_id=annotation_762207

One of my favorite history-related sites to visit is the Library of Congress collection of historic photograph and print collections.  I love to look through the different groups of photos (they have thousands so I have never actually seen any of the collections all the way through.  My favorite are the WPA posters; particularly the 1930’s prints for the National Parks.

WPA Prints

I love tongue-in-cheek history that can be shared with everyone.  This next link satisfies this desire.  The other T-shirts are also funny.

Girl Power-Now with Kagan!

This next post isn’t necessarily history, but it did remind of some of discussions on preservation.  I thought that this was a unique approach to temporarily add value to certain historic but neglected properties.

Before I die: NOLA

These links are a little random, but so are my historical interests.

Ok…The Last America Pirate was awesome; the idea behind the course was spectacular, and I am not at all surprised at the amount of work her class put into the project. When something catches your attention like that, it is hard not to be excited about adding a bit of tom-foolery to history!
This got me thinking about my History and Conspiracy Theories class with Dr. Walker last summer. We studied some of the most fascinating “research” I think I’ve ever seen! So, for this blog, I have chosen to share with you a few of my favorite hoaxes in the spirit of Trick-or-History. Some will make you smile, others cry, others make you wonder who in the world spent all their time compiling so much, ummm, data? to prove their point, and others will just make you LOL. Yes, LOL. Who knows, you may even change your mind about some of these events…
Enjoy!
Stanley Kubrick’s Moon Landing as seen through The Shining

This site is full of fun historic facts

After reading about Edward Owens and the class project, I couln’t possibly share anything else today! Alas, perhaps a more intellectual pursuit further along in the week. But for now, just enjoy the hoax!

For the readings this week I have two suggestions…the first is an article on the same website Tabatha suggested everyone check out. It is about funding public history through grants (as you might guess from the title).

http://www.publichistory.org/features/grantfunding.html

My other suggestion is a visit to the Washington Women’s History Consortium. It is a really fun site to explore, it has digitized collections from a number of universities and museums in Washington, thematic collections, oral histories, and lots of resources. You can explore at http://washingtonwomenshistory.org/.

Happy reading!

I really like the idea of transforming old, defunct buildings and structures into new practical and forward looking spaces, much like Union Station in St. Louis. It made me think of Trolley Square in Salt Lake City. http://www.trolleysquare.com/history-gallery.php P.s. There are some great images here, and it seems like a pretty smart way to display high quality photos. Simple but smart.

Turns out that I am actually into facadism, I like the idea of maintaining an aesthetic integrity and historic quality, while updating a building’s utility. I loved the work done in Boise not too long ago, when the south 8th Street (BoDo) historical district was updated. http://www.cityofboise.org/Departments/PDS/Historic/HistoricDistricts/page11057.aspx But I don’t know if I’m that into the bureacracy, “land use law”, zoning, government regulation . . . sound like a lot of technical writing. Not really my idea of a good time, but that’s just me. Historic Preservation (Tyler, et al, 2009) explains just how many hoops surround the whole preservation vs. development issue. I’m glad there are people out there who do this stuff. Who knows, maybe I could end up being one of them?

For me, I am interested in the ideas surrounding “landmarks” and “heritage” and how it changes meaning over time. What is interesting to me is how these struggles represent cultural values, why certain locations and artifacts have special meaning, and how these set of values are used in the conceptual struggle between “public” and “private”. This stuff is hard to wrap my head around. But walking around downtown I have begun noticing the aesthetic integrity of some of our downtown blocks. I’ve noticed that they tend to maintain an average height, the ‘tall’ buildings tend to be the flashy ones like the Idanha and Adelmann buildings, or completely modern. I think it’s a nice mix. Here is my favorite photo that expresses those sentiments.
p.s. I know the author and have permission to post this here.

So just for good measure, I thought I should share my favorite facade ever, the remnants of the library at Ephesus in modern Turkey. It is supposed to have been quite like the library at Alexandria in design and size, being second only to the more famous of the two. I wonder what kind of legal and practical work it takes to keep this thing standing in good condition? Who oversees it? I’ve never checked, maybe I will. I wonder if they could ever build it onto something, or would I prefer to see it in its humble remains? I don’t know, I’m officially on the fence on this one.

This first website is a blog off of a Public Historian themed WordPress. It is an interesting analysis of how twittering is similar to telegrams and the trend of twitting historical diaries. It has some links to interesting sites like Massachusetts Historical Society’s John Quincy Adams twitter project. It is a fun short read that connects public history with the tech world. Just read the first blog entry.

http://publichistorian.wordpress.com/

The second site is my favorite!  I would encourage exploring the whole site. It is devoted to jobs as a public historian. It includes “Views from the Field” under the Employment tab which interviewed a variety of public historians. (Similar to what we did in class) It gives ample definitions of what it means to be a public historian under the About Public History in “What is it?” The link I provided will take you directly to the Public History Employment section and gives description of jobs in public history. Do not be distracted by the “View Current Job Openings” link. It appears the website may have gone back into hibernation (see their “history” under the about PHRC tab).  Although a lot of the information is older, it has great ideas and is very optimistic about the field of public history.  

http://www.publichistory.org/employment/index.asp

I found three different websites on Idaho’s mining/ghost towns.  All three have different types of interactive maps with icons for you to click on to view more information about each town.

www.idahoptv.org/outdoors/shows/ghosttowns/map.cfm

This is from Outdoor Idaho and has several of Idaho’s mining towns on their interactive map.  Each link to the towns have a lot of information and both historical and modern day photos.

www.ghosttowns.com

This interactive map has ghost/mining towns from all over the country.  You can click on the “states” tab and then click on “Idaho” to see all of Idaho’s towns.  You can either click on a county or click on the list of towns or list of counties.  Each link has information about the town but there are no pics.  Hope you like banjo music!

www.ghosttowngallery.com

This is another interactive map used Google maps.  It has towns from all over the west including about 7 from Idaho.  You can click on the Google icon to see the towns.  Has some information and lots of modern day photos but no historical ones.

After going through all three you should be ready to go strike it rich!

I found the chapter on heritage tourism very interesting. When I was younger one of my dream summer jobs was to be a tour guide and I think this is perhaps one of my favorite approaches to public history. I thought it was really interesting that the book discussed not only creating and interpreting a historical narrative for visitors but also for residents as well. In my own work on my graduate project I have found that people who work at the WCA have no idea of the amazing things the organization did when it was the YWCA. Many of the employees are just as excited to read their history as the public. I think when you live somewhere; you take its history for granted. What to others may seem fascinating may be common place for you. What for them is the corner were a great battle took place, is for you the corner where you meet you friends to go to coffee. History is all a matter of how you relate to. That is another reason why I am happy to see the newer- “quirkier”- types of tours that have begun cropping up in the last decade. Sure history is about the formal record of a place, but it is also about the informal or less perfect side of a place as well.

While waiting for my train, I stumbled upon this little gem in the iTunes store. I may be a bit bias, being from Massachusetts with family who campaigned for JFK, but in only watching this 12 minute clip, I’m already extremely excited about watching this series. It’s produced by the Harvard Kennedy School (of Government), and is in celebration of the 50th anniversary of his inauguration. I was lucky enough to go to the JFK Library and Museum and see a wonderful exhibit, and this tops off the experience.

It’s free on iTunes… (just type ‘JFK50’ in the search while in the iTunes store)

JFK50 – Let The Word Go Forth

I found the discussion of Heritage Interpretation and the Downtown Ann Arbor Historical Street exhibits Program pretty fascinating, considering that it is “the first of its kind in the nation” (324). According to the program’s website (http://aastreets.aadl.org/) the first exhibit was installed in 1999. This is pretty striking to me, considering that the basic premise of the program is fairly simple – interpretive signage with historic photographs of the sites. I think that making the signs transparent so you can project your view onto the actual sites is pretty amazing. I’d encourage everyone to check out the website. There is a great video on the main page that describes the program, and there is a gallery of the images used for the sites included in the program.

We have similar projects here in Boise, such as the Chinatown binoculars, and interpretive signs of this nature are more common today, and I can think of several places in Boise where interpretive displays like this could go. Nevertheless, I think that mobile tours and augmented reality are clearly picking up where projects like the one in Ann Arbor have left off.