Ever wonder what happens to the stuff you leave behind at museum?

Check out my post on the Uncatalogued Museum's blog:

http://uncatalogedmuseum.blogspot.com/2010/04/how-long-should-participation-last.html

One of those moments...

Today is one of those days in the small Museum field when you never feel like you have enough time. In between volunteer training, helping with a mailing, a conference call, budget work, membership programming, and more all in one day, things can feel a little hectic.

So when you hear that visitors are walking up the walk an hour after you've closed sometimes you have to take a deep breath to calm down. It is my policy that if at all possible in my schedule, I let visitors in. In the end, aren't they the reason we're here? So turning them away is something I do my absolute best to avoid.

This afternoon I took a break from catching up on emails and the long list of other stuff to field one man's questions about Laurel. He came with his two sons and he had found somewhere on the internet information quoting Gertrude Poe that had to do with an old exhibit. After trying to find the information he had found and showing him more information on that exhibit, we convinced him he should do a tour.

So I had the opportunity to show him and his two inquisitive sons around the museum. The sons were the first kids to the exhibit that I've been able to work with one on one and we did the scavenger hunt while I talked with their father about the "big" themes present in the exhibit. The father, a longtime Laurel resident, was genuinely excited to learn about the Mill and the history of the house. He marveled at how clear the images from 1910 were and the entire family was excited to see an image of the old Laurel High School, a place they are quite familiar with in their lives today.

After showing them the exhibit and the basement, I let them leave with their hands full of our kid's pamphlets, walking tours, program material, and more. It was very exciting to give a tour to a family that was genuinely interested in the history of Laurel. It almost made me forget that it is supposed to snow tonight!

A Friendly Ghost Story

This past Sunday at the Laurel Museum we had our Kids Fall Fun Day. Featuring the wonderful world of Pumpkins, this 2 hour event brought about 30 children and their families. We had some fun crafts like pumpkin weaving and pumpkin seed mosaics. We also had a pumpkin patch for children to pick their own pumpkins that they then decorated. We had lots of tasty pumpkin related food--pumpkin pie, pumpkin cookies, pumpkin whip, pumpkin butter, etc.

We also told the public that we would be having an age appropriate ghost story. I took up the charge to be the person to tell the age appropriate ghost story. I spoke to one of our wonderful volunteers who is also the vice principal at a local school for some rules on what I could and could not talk about.

Here were my parameters:
It can not be scary.
No one can die.
You can not talk about dead people.
Try to make it related to the history of Laurel and the house.

Hmm. Sounds easy, right?

The ghost story was to begin at 2:15 and right around that time people started trekking to the spot we picked for our ghost story.

As I watched the little ones trickle in, I realize how much of a challenge this will be.

We had kids ranging in age from those who could barely walk to those who were already putting on makeup. It might be a little difficult to reach all of them with the same story.

But that's fine. Who doesn't love a great challenge? Certainly not small museum directors--we live for the challenge!

So I begin telling them the story.

I start by talking about the Museum building and how 4 families would have lived in the house.

I asked them where the people would have worked (The Mill), how old they had to be to start working (8yrs), etc.

I tell them about a little girl who was only 5 yrs old named Samantha who was left alone in the house to do chores while all of her family went to work. Her mean older sister liked to play tricks on her and hide things from her so that she couldn't finish her chores.

My story was interrupted by one boy who insisted Samantha could not have told us this. I asked him why, and he said "Because she's dead". I realized at that point I had never given a date for the story and asked him how he knew she was dead. And he said because this happened like a long time ago. GREAT!

I responded, "Yes, this all happened over 100 years ago." Whew! I almost didn't tell them the date. And I thought, yes, she is dead, but you brought it up so I didn't technically go outside my set parameters.

Now back to the story...

Luckily, the little girl had a friendly ghost named Rebecca who would help her with her chores. Rebecca helped Samantha find the bucket to get water from the river for doing laundry that her mean sister would hide from her before she went to work. Rebecca also helped Samantha find the soap and other things her sister would hide.

All of this concluded with the children coming up one by one to plunge the washer plunger into the clothes bucket three times.

Throughout the experience I tried to keep their attention by asking questions. I asked them things like if any of them ever hid things from their brothers and sisters. I also kept asking them how old the little girl was and how long she had to wait before she could work at the mill.

Some of the kids were really annoyed that the story wasn't scarier. According to our evaluations, others seemed to really enjoy the story.

In the end, it was an interesting experience of us all. I learned that maybe I should plan out the ghost story a little better next time so the kids don't end up doing laundry. But I'm not sure. I think some people liked the "hands-on appropriate for all ages ghost story." We'll see. Maybe Samantha and Rebeccawill make another appearance sometime soon.