Sweet Success

Last weekend my John Doyle Bishop lecture at MOHAI was a big success. I'm still glowing and I feel truly lucky to have the job I have.

If you don't know me personally and have therefore escaped having me gleefully shove this in your face and require you to read it, please take a moment and read this fantastic article that was published on the Seattle-PI website: http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/John-Doyle-Bishop-Irishman-put-Seattle-fashion-4381050.php

Now that the lecture is over, this week I felt very clear-headed and actually had some time to catch up on some important tasks. Here is a rundown of what I have been up to:

-Cleaned my work desk for the first time since moving to the new office space. Discovered a surprising number of while artifact gloves buried among the papers.

-Took Wednesday off to make up for working all day Sunday. I bleached the bathroom ceiling (that room is like a mold incubator) and listened to some Beyonce.

-Checked in with a woman who I am house/cat-sitting for in a few days. The tutorial started with the basics--"here is where we keep the cat food"-- and ended with "here is how you turn off the gas if that giant earthquake they've been warning us about happens while you are here." You know, I think it is impossible not to sound a little bit crazy and paranoid when talking about disaster preparedness. But it wasn't like she was telling me about sounds waves that the aliens are sending to destroy our happiness. A big earthquake is a legit thing and I'll be dang happy to know where the gas turn-off is if it happens. Now I can't stop thinking about earthquake preparedness. Today when I finished a gallon of milk I filled it back up with water and put it in the pantry as an emergency supply. I'm trying to think of a not-crazy way to explain it to the roommate when she notices.

-Got back to vacuuming. Spent most of Friday on a small mat made by Native man named Hwechlchtid, also known as Salmon Bay Charlie. It is a small but intricate piece and previously had some bug damage so I turned down the suction and took it slow. Listening to Bach made it a particularly calming and meditative process.

-Started plotting my next Seattle fashion project. Public Programs already suggested that maybe I make a fashion/textile lecture an annual thing. I picked this year and month because it was Bishop's 100th birthday. I have a few ideas of who to feature, but someone does have a 100th birthday in 2014. I'll give you a hint: It is my other dead gay boyfriend named John.

You Had Me At Flatbed Truck

The countdown to my John Doyle Bishop event has begun. Less than one week! Get your tickets now!!!

On Thursday this week I jumped out of bed remembering that there was another JDB event coming up that I said I would attend. When was it again? Oh right, the very next day.

Every year the Irish Heritage Club of Seattle paints a green stripe along the parade route the night before the St. Patrick's Day celebration. Before there was an official parade in Seattle, John Doyle Bishop would try to paint a stripe down the street in front of his store--a stunt which he was arrested for more than once. When there finally was an official parade he was the first Grand Marshal, and the green stripe is still painted every year in his honor. Since this year is Bishop's 100th birthday and I'm doing the program at MOHAI, the Irish Heritage Club encouraged me to come participate.

It started out at an Irish bar downtown by the stadiums. Of solid Russian-German heritage, I fraudulently wore green and tried to mix casually with the crowd. At the appointed hour we loaded into a flatbed truck decorated with green streamers and party store shamrocks. We rode the truck for a few blocks to the beginning of the parade route, at which about half of us got out to walk.  They fired up the green paint thing and we all strolled behind the bagpipers and the people holding the sign (officially it was the John Doyle Bishop Laying O' The Green Stripe because it isn't Irish without the liberal use of O')(also- aren't bagpipes Scottish? Someone please explain). We walked right down the middle of the street for about a mile, woo-hoo-ing at confused drivers and pedestrians.  At Westlake we stopped, painted a shamrock, and then some people did a jig. It was pretty much the most Irish thing that has ever happened to me. I invited a couple of my friends to come with and they were basically like "Do we actually get to ride on the flatbed truck? Then yes, I am coming."

Obviously the fashion side of Mr. Bishop is what has interested me the most, but his Irish heritage was really really important to him. I've held dresses from his store and suits he owned, but somehow he seemed more present for me at this event than among the rolling racks. It was just so pleasantly nutty.

Much to my delight, the Laying O' The Green Stripe got a little write-up in Seattle P-I and I was quoted.

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Irish-paint-Seattle-street-green-for-St-4360130.php

Me and the Irish. Working together to keep Bishop's memory alive.

Where has the time gone?

My blogging has be sort of sporadic lately, hmm? My reason for slacking this week was that I only got one weekend day. I worked Saturday for "Bring Your Artifact to MOHAI Day" where the public was encouraged to bring in items for us to identify and/or provide suggestions for further research. 

It was sort of sparsely attended but it was fun and provided good practice for identifying things. Our staff photographer was there and she took some shots of me. Most of them were reminders that I tend to excel at being non-photogenic, but this one I liked:

Photo courtesy of MOHAI

This is me trying to remember if I know anything about pearls.

The Great Dictator

This week I raised an army...

an army of ROLLING RACKS

and PADDED HANGERS

...by harnessing the raw power of VOLUNTEER LABOR!

MUA HA HA HA HA HA

Yes, apparently my plan for world domination involves supporting the shoulders of historic garments and then carting them around on wheels. 

Other news that might interest devoted readers:

-- I gained new respect this week for New Day Northwest-- the local morning cheesefest which MOHAI was featured on recently. Olivia and I have been watching the latest season of RuPaul's Drag Race and have fallen in love with Seattle-based queen Jinkx Monsoon. Apparently the same week I was helping haul the Sonics trophy to the studio, Jinkx made an appearance to promote her starring role in Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Cool stuff NDNW. I guess there is more to you than strange fashion advice and free country music CDs. 

-- My upcoming John Doyle Bishop event has been getting some actual (local) press. Read about it here and here. 

-- Last Sunday MOHAI had an Oscar party and I was asked to provide commentary during the red carpet pre-show. I teamed with my fantastic friend Curt to provide charming banter about the history of fashion at the Oscars. The insider sources who attended the event (my parents) said we did a good job, but more importantly we looked fabulous doing it. I wore a purple dress that I found at a church yard sale in New York, and Curt looked dapper in a suit with a tie that matched my dress. My greatest regret in life right now is that no one took a picture. 

Amazingly, I found a picture on the internet that was pretty close: 

Not sure who these people are, but they are doing a pretty good job of being nearly as stunning as Curt and I. 

They See Me Rollin'

This week I nearly maxed out my credit card on a $3,000 clothing-related purchase.

Chrome-plated steel rolling racks. 50 of them. 

Ok, so it was a work purchase. They needed to get ordered this week but the museum credit card was in use, so I got the go-ahead to buy them with my own money and get reimbursed. 

The deal is that our new storage space has several niches where we can store clothing on rolling racks. Initially we were going to roll a long rack into each spot (there are 12 long racks clogging the aisles in the old space), but then realized that if we bought racks that were as long as the niches were deep, we could line up several of them and increase the storage capacity of those spots. Brilliant. 

Then we wrote a grant to pay for them. Double brilliant. 

But the real story here is that I AM IN LOVE WITH THESE ROLLING RACKS. I bought a small batch of them a couple of weeks ago just to make sure they were good quality and we were investing in the right thing. And somehow they just triggered this irrational enthusiasm in me. I assembled two the first day they arrived, and then that night I had a dream about them. When I woke up the next morning I couldn't wait to get to work to start assembling the rest of them. THEY ARE SO PRETTY AND SO EASY TO ROLL AROUND AND DID I SAY PRETTY AND ALSO THE WHEELS LOCK!!! 

Is this how men feel about sports cars?

Austen Translation

If you know me, you know that I love Jane Austen.* Even if you don't know me or Jane Austen, you probably know that her works are something of a pop culture cash cow. I have mixed feelings about this. Sometimes I take a purist "don't mess with Jane" attitude, but sometimes I willingly buy into it. I mean, I own a modern-day Pride and Prejudice movie made by Mormons which I have watched more times than I'd like to admit. There is a right way and a wrong way to mess with Jane, and I'm going to lecture you on it now.

Last Sunday, my roommate and I decided that we wanted to enjoy all the fun parts of the Super Bowl (snacks, spending time with friends, sitting around in oversized shirts, Beyonce) but skip the boring parts (football). So we bought some food, rented some Friends (the TV show, not the social concept), put on some Destiny's Child hits, and danced around in our favorite dumpy clothing (for me it was a gigantic shirt with raccoons on it). Our video store rents everything 2 for 1 so we had to get another show or movie. I advocated for Lost in Austen a miniseries in which a modern day fan of Jane Austen finds herself transported to the world of Pride and Prejudice. I thought it might be fun.

It turned out to be pretty unwatchable. The main character was unpleasant and obnoxious and as she wreaked havoc in the P&P world, I just got more and more disgusted.

Her period-inappropriate bangs were particularly grating

I resolved to give it a full hour, but only made it 40 minutes. I then tried to skip ahead and see if it got better, but instead ended up at a point where Jane was miserably married to Mr. Collins and Bingley was running off with Lydia. Ugh. Bleh.

Strangely, in the same week, I had a second opportunity to be entertained by the mangling of Miss Austen. Local theater company Jet City Improv is donating something to the museum collection, and the guy facilitating the donation told me about their latest "improvised play" called Austen Translation. It sounded intriguing, so on Friday I went.

Photo from the Jet City Improv website

There was a narrator and every actor had an assigned first name, but how they were related to each other, their social status, and who falls in love with whom was all made up that night.

It was awesome.

My night was the tale of Elinor Quackenbush, who was courted by new-in-town clergyman Frederick Fredericks and local braggart Walter Cavindish. Scenes were regularly stolen by her dim-witted twin sister Harriet, and elder sister Violet who was of "a sickly constitution and often near death." In the second act, Violet kept appearing with new arm-slings and eyepatches, and when Elinor said something particularly cruel to her she ran off stage sobbing "You know I'm allergic to my own tears!" It really looked like Elinor was falling for Mr. Thomas, but after a twin-based mistaken identity marriage proposal, Thomas and Harriet ended up together and Mr. Cavindish made a surprisingly charming declaration of love ("All my life I've known I was better than everyone else, but that changed when I met you"). It was ridiculous yet satisfying at the same time.

Austen Translation was more irreverent with Jane's work than Lost in Austen, yet somehow it was way better.  I think Lost in Austen went wrong because it messed with things that make Pride and Prejudice good in the first place. Watching the story unfold incorrectly because Elizabeth Bennett has been replaced by Annoying McStupidBangs wasn't fresh or exciting, it was just sad. But Austen Translation poked fun at Austen tropes while creating something new. It was goofy, awkward, romantic, funny, and exciting because no one knew exactly where it was going.

I'll leave you with one of the best "yep, this is improvised" moments from the show. The characters we had already met were going to church, where they were encountering people who weren't yet identified.

Un-introduced male character: I find these meetings so uncomfortable. I hope I can say as little as possible.
Second un-introduced male character: Are you going to start the sermon soon?

Apparently next month they are making up a Gilbert & Sullivan opera. YES.

*I should get points for resisting the urge to start this post with "It is the truth universally awknowledged..."

Advanced Vacuuming

This week I vacuumed one of MOHAI's most significant, and most fragile artifacts: The Petticoat Flag.

No, the image isn't flipped. I'll get to that in a sec.

The story of the petticoat flag is that it was made during the "Battle of Seattle" in 1856 -- a conflict between U.S. troops and Native people. During the fighting, settlers fled to a nearby blockhouse for shelter. A group of women decided to spend the time sewing this flag, using strips of red wool and white linen from their petticoats. The blue may have been a petticoat or a blanket, and the hang loops on the top are made of printed cotton. (About the orientation: It doesn't look nice on both sides so we can't just flip it over. It was originally meant to hang vertically which would have put the stars in the upper left corner).

Textiles weren't cheap or easy to come by in those days--certainly not for women in a small pioneer town. Add to that the fact that they were probably giving up clothes off their bodies for this task, and I find the story very touching. 

Stirring historical context aside, this thing is super old and in not great condition. The linen has yellowed, the blue fabric is thin and shredding to bits, and the red wool has survived multiple assaults by hungry bugs. That picture above is old, and just looking at it makes me shudder. Since then it underwent serious conservation work and that sucker is now stitched down flat on a padded board. None of this casual, wrinkled "I unfurled this with a swish of my wrists" look. That isn't even the scariest picture we have of it: 

Horrifying. I can hear the fibers weakening from here. 

Now we avoid touching it or moving it whenever possible. Instead of taking it out of its display at the old museum and packing it, the entire display was rolled onto the moving truck. Once inside the new museum, the old case was opened and the flag was carefully whisked into its new home. The new case is tightly sealed and has this special glass that is opaque until you trip a sensor and then a dim light makes the flag fleetingly visible. 

As I was gazing at it in its new home, I started noticing all this dusty crap on it. At first I panicked because I thought it was frass (aka bug poop), the telltale sign of insect activity. But I had checked it very carefully before it left the old place. How could it have exploded in bugs during one moving-van ride? My next theory was that it was dust from the old plexiglass cover that slid onto the flag as the cover was removed. That made more sense considering some of the "stuff" appeared to be glitter, and we all know that no bug is magical enough to poop glitter. 

Problem was, the only artifact vacuum we had on site didn't have the knob where you could control the amount of suction. And seriously, if any artifact in the collection needed to be vacuumed on low, it was this one. So basically "vacuum the petticoat flag" was on my to-do list for about two months before I finally found an opportunity to have someone schlep the variable speed vacuum to and from the new museum for me. But this week I did it and it was actually a little less terrifying than I expected. I also gave the white edge of the padded board a good clean, so if it does turn out to be bug activity, the frass will be visible immediately. 

Although if that happens, you'll probably see me fleeing to the nearest blockhouse.