1st and 2nd Museum Shifts (Great Read!)
So, my first day (Feb. 1st) on the job was pretty tight. It was a six-hour combo deal of goodness.
PART ONE
I showed up about three minutes late and was all freaked out that somebody would be upset with me, but to my joyous surprise nobody was. Nancy, who was (to coin a term) docenting at the time, was really understanding and said it was quite alright.
It started out a little slow and I talked to Nancy for a bit. She asked me why I was there and what I already knew. I let her know, and then she shared some stories about what she knew about the exhibit that I didn’t. Somehow we got on the topic of all the places I wanted to go and where she had been. It was fascinating, really. I’m usually not good at small talk but……
Some are born to small talk, some achieve small talk, and some have small talk thrust upon them.
It was fun. As the day continued on more and more people started rolling in. Nancy spoke to the first couple of groups of people that rolled in, but eventually I got to try my hand at it. It was fun, really… being able to answer questions people had and figuring out how to cleverly dodge answering questions you didn’t know the answer to without them realizing you hadn’t, in fact, answered their original question.
Some older couples came in and talked about how they remembered a lot of what was on display. It was really cool to see them smiling wide because they remembered this. It was a part of their history.
The last hour and half was fairly slow. I led one man downstairs to Mercy-Faith because he needed help researching the history of some of the county’s trees. Good fun. Also, Nancy showed me this big book of loose papers and pictures. She’s apparently in charge of organizing all the textile information for the museum. She’s been working on it for years and still has quite a ways to go, she said. Apparently a lot of the documentation on the County Historical Societies artifacts were lost when the basement of the museum was flooded some number of years back…
After that, nothing extraordinary happened. And so comes…
PART TWO
The other docent that showed up for the next three hours was Pat. She was interesting to work with. I received a bit of interesting opinions from her.
A few minutes Jen came in to docent as well. We started out by counting the money that was supposedly supposed to be counted during the first shift.
I remember Pat telling me that she thought it was such a silly practice to have the money counted three times a day, such as is the apparent custom at the SLOCHS Museum.
One particular memory that sticks out in my mind is one girl who came in and was wandering around silently for quite a bit. She really seemed to be taking in the exhibit.
The reason I remember her because as she left I thanked her for stopping by and after smiling at me she replied by remarking,
“Yeah, it’s like a little treasure in every corner.”
It was really good to see that there were younger people that really seemed to take a natural interest in the exhibit.
Later I copied down the Chinese text displayed on the picture of the legend of Shu Sing Gung, the Immortal one. For some reason I really am partial to that particular artifact.
Also I took a walk about the exhibit to better familiarize myself with it and I talked to Jen briefly about some of the items on display. Like the super cool dragon head.
Then the activity slowed to a stop and before long it was closing time. We started to count the money, but they said it was alright and that they’d take care of it when locking up. And in such a manner my day at the museum was concluded.
~ André “Drey” Katkov
