Objectivity

Today I was just shuffling through large object boxes in the NLEM storage facility where I am currently working (aka the “police treasure trove”!). I’ve handled some really cool stuff since I’ve been here: a piece of the World Trade Center, delicate and beautiful arrest warrants from the early 19^th century, rows of police badges from seemingly every precinct in America… but nothing really prepared me for what I saw as I took the lid off of Box #7 this afternoon: a crimson red Ku Klux Klan mask, made of a stiff linen fabric and obviously sewn on a home sewing machine. The small, neat hemlines told me it had been made with care, probably even with pride. The mask was just lying there, benignly, on top of a layer of special Japanese unbuffered tissue paper. Beneath it were two sets of KKK robes: one crimson, one white, both similarly swaddled for preservation purposes.(I really didn't feel like putting up illustrations of this object, so here's a link to the Google image results for KKK mask if you really need visuals.)

Now, normally I’m not an object-based girl. I don’t get the thrills my coworkers get from handling and inspecting museum treasures gingerly with their gloved hands. I get distracted with wishing that I had a real reason to don that sheriff’s Stetson hat, or swing that wooden noise-maker-looking thing around (my boss explains it’s a “police rattle,” which they used before sirens to get the attention of crowds, mid 19^th century. I guess they are VERY LOUD, but ours is brittle, and therefore no one will ever use it to make a sound again…. boo). I’m glad I guess that I work mostly with archival materials, because with documents, I have the chance to use my objects to their fullest extent! I get information out of them, exactly like their original users did! And I get info not only from the written words; as an archivist, I learn things from the handwriting, the date, the paper, the seal, the stamp, the enclosures, etc.

Back to today. I finally experienced a real, visceral reaction to an object, one that was surprisingly strong, and unpleasant. The white of the paper showed eerily through the gaping holes where the eyes—the morally blinded eyes of its owner— would have peeked out. I did not not want to touch it, or even continue to look at it for very long (and I DEFINITELY had no desire to put it on). I just wanted to put it away. It was a very vivid experience, different from all other times I’ve seen KKK masks, in movies or plays (like Genna’s The Foreigner at BYU! That was good times.) No doubt it was my prior knowledge of the lawlessness, the horror, and yes, even the conspiratorial drama that the men who wore this kind of thing effected that was affecting me (Nice English there, no? :).

I couldn’t put it away quickly like I wanted, I had to fill out a condition report first. But I breezed through that pretty quickly, picking the object up by the corners of the tissue paper, seriously almost holding my breath the whole time. It’s still weird to me that something so simple, so obviously homemade, could affect me like that. I told me boss it made me a little sick. She explained that it was donated by an FBI field agent who had been on the case of the KKK during the Civil Rights Era. Fairly good backstory, right?

We had a whole debate at lunch about whether or not we as museum professionals would treat this object differently (aka refuse it) if it had been offered to us by, say, its original owner. Technically, we shouldn’t (treat it much differently). We have to look at things from a broader perspective. The object is most assuredly an interesting addition to our collection, which has the stated aim of creating “a greater understanding of the law enforcement profession and the critical role it plays in American society” through all of its accessions (all the new objects it collects).

The last few weeks, though… well, this whole first year of graduate school, actually, have taught me that I am really bad at this kind of thing- suspending my personal beliefs and reactions in order to adhere to a higher set of standards or beliefs that all fall under the category "objectivity." I have an intellectual temper like no other. You start telling me an opinion or belief that I can’t agree with, I tune you out, or worse, get angry. Obviously, this is a major flaw I get to work on! (Must learn to be more encyclopedic in scope, more benevolent in judgment, and/or more able to patiently listen to opposing viewpoints and then craft and deliver a succinct defense of whatever I think is the real truth! Someday… I'll be good.)

How would the meaning of that mask change if it had been given to us by a Klansman who wanted it to be “immortalized” in the collection? By taking it from an agent, haven't we accomplished that already, in a certain way? Eventually, my colleagues and I came to a tenuous and sticky conclusion that where it came from doesn’t change the object’s value to the museum itself. This sticky consensus is very emblematic of the type of ethics-laden questions curators and museum directors have to deal with all the time. It’s part of the job. As museum professionals, we’ll take this historical object, iron it, pack it in tissue paper, store it in a long line of textiles,and use it to tell the story, to tell the truth, about an important and horrific vigilante movement in the American South. (Ironically, Box #7 sits in between boxes containing bullet-proof vests and the uniforms of Lucius Amerson, the first black sheriff in the South since the Reconstruction). In my final analysis, the ideas that this mask and robe may evoke, the story of American law enforcement that it helps tell, gives us is its final value. We do NOT value it for its original function.

That is my favorite part of being a museum professional. Finding things that open up my and others’ eyes a little more and ask us to push back. All this in order to make us realize that we are a part of the history that came before us, even (or rather, especially) the history that makes us sick and challenges us to leave a better legacy than others have done. Such is the glory of objects.

I still hate that mask though.

Back to the secret files of J. Edgar Hoover… I love my job.

the turn. oh help.

FACT: I turn 25 in 20 days.

<- Normally I look like this on my birthdays. This is not a stance I adopted in a huff after graduating BYU unmarried, no. I can actually remember during the Young Women's entrance interview at age 12 looking up at my bishop with tears in my eyes and anguish filling my little voice as I whispered, "I don't want to grow up." My poor terrified tween soul. Like Peter Pan, I have never, ever heard a convincing argument for the act of growing up. It's just never appealed to me. Two months ago, I won't lie, tears filled my eyes again the first time I said the words "I'm almost 25" to my dad (the "5" part kind of died in my throat, that's how hard it was to say). But I've had a lot of time to contemplate life recently, couch surfing as I have been for one entire month now.

I have three things to say.

To my year 24: You were full of surprises, thank you so much. From day one, when best friend Jessica-Brothers-newly-Clayton sprinted through the SLC airport at 6 am to hug me at my gate, to the sunshine-soaked stint as a lifeguard in the woods, to the unforgettable night I was played Thrice's The Weight, you drove me to my knees, answered my prayers, and made me smile in ways I did not expect. I've gone on the very most and the very least romantic dates of my entire 9-year dating career this year. I've experienced record-setting snowpocalypses (two of them!). I'll not soon forget the triumph of that day-after-finals email from my professor a month ago, congratulating me on a successful final paper argument and admitting that he did not think I could pull off, given my sub-par midterm presentation. (BOOYAH.) I really appreciate the new friendship that was born on the upper deck of an Outer Banks mansion a few weeks ago, as HH and I discussed life and watched the moon rise. Kindred spirits are sprinkled out across every phase of life I think. Hallelujah!

To the next three weeks: Not much you can dish out can beat this weekend's awesomeness. You've got your work cut out for you. But I still believe you will be as great as the rest of 24.



Adam the lion defends us at the Law Officers Memorial Wall



We instigate a new yoga program in the middle of the Natural History Museum (Seen here: Downward dog and "The Splay-legged Giraffe")



God handed me a belt on the Mall, because I needed it. Here's to looking at life through Pollyanna eyes!



To year 25: you're a nice, well-rounded, silvery number. Bring it.

And I have Otis McIntire to thank for it...

It's Friday. Not just any Friday, but THE Friday. The first day in about the last 45 that I haven't had to wake up before my time and do necessary and pressing things every hour of the day until I drop into bed ("Honey tell me the truth: are you having to schedule in an hour a day where you can think?")

So why did my soul still feel the red-brown color of a hundred-year-old barfed-on Oriental rug today? (FYI my soul does not turn blue when sad. It turns murky vermilion.*)

I have the memory of squealing through Robin Hood last weekend to keep me warm.

I have sunshine to revel in, snowpocalypse blues being a thing of the past.

I have the anticipation of beating my racquetball partner soundly this afternoon and attending my first-ever Nats home game tonight.

I even had my favorite Iranian falafel sandwich by the C & O canal to turn up the corners of my mouth.



Still I spent most of today fighting the urge to take a hammer to or stuff a stick of dynamite in... something. BUT! I'm just writing right now to say that I think I'm over the worst of it. Guess why.

Sometimes, when sandwiches, friends, hopes, heat, sports, and Glee can't do it........ a big, possibly homeless, black guy comes around the corner of the canal in Georgetown wearing a bright pink, smiling, styrofoam cartoon whale on his head. No I am serious. The pink whale clashed horrifically with his artfully argyled jeans and baggy hoodie. I have no idea who he was, or why, WHY on earth he chose to wear the world's largest sea mammal on his noggin. But I'm pretty certain that this brave and potentially unhinged soul, who passed by me just as I felt my murky mood couldn't sink much deeper, tipped the scales. Life is still worth living. :)

GO NATS!

*When deliriously happy, my soul turns into a Jackson-Pollock-esque splattering of emerald green, royal blue, and bright yellow.

An open letter to a little sister who went to school with a hole in her pants.

Honey,

When I went over to visit a boy a few weeks ago, it was raining, and as I followed him down his hardwood stairs, I slipped on my damp Chucks and fell-- bump, bump, bump-- on my tail bone down three hard-as-rock stairs. It hurt soooo much but I just popped right off and started to laugh. He did not join me in laughing, which was weird. I give people FULL permission to laugh when I lose my balance, which happens often.

Later, I was biking with the same guy, who was wearing me down stamina-wise (22 miles! MY BUTT!!!). Just after making the swaggerish claim, "I could kick your trash in swimming!" to try and save face... I took a tree branch straight to the face. Didn't EEEEEVEN see it coming.

Then, there was the time I fell down the escalator at the Suncoast Casino in front of Sam F., my junior year super-crush. Or the time I seriously sprained my ankle falling off a sidewalk (again, in the middle of a date, and there might have been swearing involved). I also ran into a pole at twilight in Paris. So (un)romantic.

How about when I opened an umbrella in someone's face and caused their lip to split open (on a blind date to a Jazz game in SLC)? Remember when I had to ride down Snowbird mountain in a toboggan at the end of the day and my friends thought I was dead, when really it was because my legs were so shot that I literally would have collapsed on the snow if I had had to snowplow six more feet?

Once, I came home from doing baptisms at the Provo temple and was standing in a ring of friends, just chatting, when I sort-of fidgeted my foot around in one of my shoes (they were borrowed, beautiful ankle-strappers, courtesy of the lovely Katie Worsley), when my ankle just suddenly tweaked downward off the shoe and I collapsed in a heap. In front of the ward hottie, who just stared at me and mimed catching me, even though he obviously couldn't have (my descent was too quick for him and his gallantry!)

And then, there was the granddaddy of all Lindsey-is-retarded moments, when I closed my eyes for a second to pant while on a treadmill in the Provo 24-Hour... and opened them in time to feel myself at the very edge of the belt, and then got shot backwards across the room onto my back! Undeterred, I hopped right back on the treadmill, having forgotten that it was still spinning around at a decent running pace of 6 mph. In quick succession, the spinning belt knocked my extended foot out from under me, caused me to crash to my knees on the treadmill belt (skinning both of them), and then shot me, again, off the back of the treadmill, roughing up my shins on the back cylinder as I passed by. I clambered up, still undeterred (the iPod blaring high-energy Beyonce helped block the pain). I reached around to turn the speed knob DOWN this time, and about 5 seconds later, I snuck a glance at the line of treadmills to see if anyone had noticed. At least FIVE runners had STOPPED their treadmills and were staring, mouths open, at me; the guy directly to my left mouthed, "ARE YOU OK??" incredulously, to which I just breathlessly replied, "Yea! Whew! I'm fine!" Then I turned around to face the tv monitors again.... and tried in vain to ignore the shooting pains of sweat seeping into the open wounds on my knees and shins.

If you would like more stories like that, I have them. Or if you have favorites I've missed, please remind me :)

Never let it phase you, and enjoy laughing at yourself. It's good to be a clown.

Love,
Ynny

Gossip and Lasting Sacrifice

I absolutely loved my friend M.C.'s post last week, right here. If you're too lazy to click it and read (although you should, she's a great writer), I'll tell you what I got out of it: 1. Benjamin Franklin, if you read his autobiography, was a completely brilliant, stuck-up #$$, and 2. more importantly, there is a great deal of value in being real while simultaneously being positive. Don't wait til something awesome and news-worthy happens to write a blog, basically.

I'd been thinking about the idea of being real and forthright right before M.C. published her eloquent thoughts. Someone called to my attention the fact that I put a lot of my idealism, my super-awesome museum/art blather up here, with very little.... gossip, for lack of a better word, about myself, to balance it out. :) Do you concur?

So I thought of a bunch of stuff to write and confess on this blog to make up for that imbalance... but I don't want to overwhelm all 8 of you, so I'll start with this: I think I've been watching too much Glee.

Juicy, I know!

Haha. There are several wicked awesome real-life stories that that little revelation entails, for more info, see me (one of the perks of being my friend, not just my blog reader). But I would just like to point out that I really deserve a little Glee this week especially. It's Police Week, the week when they place the names of 194 men and women killed in the line of duty in 2009 on the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial's walls. They bring in the grieving families and coworkers of the fallen officers to see their names. They treat them like royalty-- motorcade escorts, trained support counselors, camps for the children, etc-- in an attempt to help them through the monstrous task of mourning and learning to live again (cheesy as that sounds... you'd understand if you were here). This week, 20,000 people will pass by the memorial to lay flowers, mementos, pictures, sometimes guitars, toe shoes, car doors, and coffee cups-- any and everything-- at the wall, in memory of their friend or loved one. Often times they just stand and stare, or cry. Or laugh (my favorite).

This week my job has been to talk to the families at the wall, make sure they have paper so they can do a rubbing of their loved ones' name, give them tape to stick their little mementos on the wall, hand them tissues, and just listen. It's been three days, and I already feel like I have attended one hundred funerals. Here at the wall, I have been brought nearly to tears at least 6 times already as I contemplate the ultimate sacrifices that these people, who are often very simple, humble, and funny, are ready to make. They really and truly accept and live amazing principles like valor and sacrifice. And they're so nonchalant about it. I randomly hear stuff like this all the time, "Well, in my third shoot-out, I realized this was a suicide-by-cop scenario, so I let down my gun and got behind the car..." and the more I speak to the police officers, the more I realize that they are just about the last people on earth who take seriously the cause of protecting people. They are some of the last and greatest people I know of. They stand and stare down what can only be classified as pure evil on a daily basis.

I've heard horrific things in three days' times (three to go). I've seen the numbness on the faces of those who are here for the first time, here for one tragic, horrible reason: a spouse, a father, a work partner, has been shot/stabbed/crashed their car while responding to an emergency call, etc. Their emotions are written all over their face, their powerful grief and love and ideals hang in the air around the memorial. Bagpipes go off, big women sing Amazing Grace, brass bands play, and flag guards and solemn processions abound.

I think they deserve a lot of Glee. After work yesterday I went to Zumba to shake it off, then I visited my very favorite pregnant friend, to laugh and remind myself of the flip side of life, all that is good and positive, all the things that my new friends at the wall so valiantly serve and protect.

Yep. I watch a little too much Glee. It, along with cookies and flowers and long showers and kind friends who let me sleep on their floor and late nights of laughter, make my life. Thank heavens!!!

"In valor there is hope."
—Tacitus

"The wicked flee when no man pursueth: but the righteous are as bold as a lion."
—Proverbs 28:1

Ps I'm taking my camera with me to the wall today. You'll see pics of this awesome place soon.
Pps I realize that my supposedly juicy post turned into another idealistic one, but I don't care. That's WHO I AM! (One of Glee's most favorite things to tout: Being who you are. Got it.)
Ppps Update: Day four was a little more family reunion, a little less tragedy, yay. I got assigned to the jewelry counter at the retail store (someone must have noted my face after my shift yesterday :). Christensens, you'd be so proud. I must have sold well over $4,000 worth of goods today. Not bad when the average price of my inventory is around $40!
Pppps. Rest in Peace, handsome Detective Ridley, age 23, from the Bronx. Your mother is so proud of you. She told me all about your last act.

Yep :)

On being teleological

Teleology–noun. Philosophy.

1. the doctrine that final causes exist.

2. the study of the evidences of design or purpose in nature.

3. the belief that purpose and design are a part of or are apparent in nature.

4. (in vitalist philosophy) the doctrine that phenomena are guided not only by mechanical forces but that they also move toward certain goals of self-realization.

I first came across the word "teleological" last semester in my aesthetics philosophy class of DEATH, and it was one of the few words, besides Logos, that really warmed my soul whenever I read it, after I first figured out what it meant (as opposed to deconstructivism, which still just makes my soul feel like a tired, sad little raisin every time I see it).

In case the above dictionary.com definition doesn't do it for you, here's the Lindsey watered-down version: when you describe anything as teleological, you are recognizing that it has a purpose, and that it is en route to achieving its final destiny. You say something is teleological when you believe you see it mid-journey, whizzing towards some ultimate (hopeful) awesomeness. You go hiking in the woods and see the world's most amazing sunset and are moved to exclaim, "What a teleological phenomenon!" because you feel that this sunset is not only following its regularly scheduled scientific retirement into night, but it is also kindly fulfilling its God-given mini-purpose of letting you know that He loves you, specifically, in that moment (and also letting you know that He loves beauty and His whole earth, too).


The reason I was thinking about teleology today is because I fully embrace the idea that nature, people, time itself, and everything that surrounds me has a final purpose in the grand scheme of things. Up until this week, I myself was teleologically barrelling towards my finals and the successful close of my first year of grad school. All my thoughts, time, and most of my emotions were wrapped up in securing myself some good grades and in really doing the world a solid by giving it 29 pages worth of my bebe thoughts about Frederic Edwin Church's 1865 painting, Aurora Borealis, left.


And now, there is no endpoint. I feel a little empty. A little deconstructed even (NOOOOO!!!!). I came home Thursday after 1.5 hours of sleep in the past 48, having just handed in my last paper, and what did I do? I cracked open a textbook. I hadn't really gotten to peruse it this semester, and I was mocked considerably when caught.

Just call me Hermione. On finals week crack.

So, the big question is, am I teleological anymore, now that the gauntlet has been successful run? I sincerely hope so. I can't stand the thought of sitting still, or just meandering around aimlessly. I have an internship, yes, and I will learn a lot therein... but nothing quite gives you the same sense of heady direction as a semester's curriculum to be learned (except maybe the act of dating someone... haha :).

As I pondered this favorite word of mine, snapshots of select modern artworks began to crop up in my mind's eye. This seems perfectly reasonable, in retrospect: no longer commissioned by kings or the privileged class, no longer able to act as the world's source for visual stimulus (that role has been usurped by youtube and modern advertisements), modern art, as opposed to the art of centuries past, simply screams out, in its very un-understandableness (un-understandability?) for you to help define its end point, its purpose. I AM A MONOCHROMATIC CANVAS WITH SLASHES IN IT! DEFINE ME! (Google Image search Lucio Fontana for more of that sort...)

I can think of no better, more... calming adjective for this work, Condensation Cube, 1963-2008, than teleological:



It was one of my favorites to visit when I worked at the Hirshhorn. What you see is pretty much what I saw: a clear plastic cube that comes up to the middle of your thigh, it has about an inch and a half of supremely clear distilled water in the bottom and an ever-varied pattern of condensation droplets streaking the sides, which changes depending on the time of day and the season (although in my experience, these streaks were almost always grouped into the corner of the cube that was nearest the window. Methinks this photographer cheated to get this all-over condensation look). Despite its simplicity, it is a work that really stops people in their tracks, and I think that is because they sense immediately that it is making bare its own destiny, its own journey. Behold! I am a never-ending variation on the theme of water condensation!

As you look at it, you are caught up in the simple patterns, imagining what it would look like if the whole thing were covered in drops. Or you stare closely at it, trying to see if you can spot any drops rolling down the sides. Or you are wondering what would happen and what the cube would ultimately look like if you gave it a giant shove down the escalator... :) By making itself so plain, by revealing over and over again the trick that will continue to be its reason for creation and also its reason for continual adoration by visitors and curators, Condensation Cube, 1963-2008 is a really (dare I say it?) beautiful example of the simple idea of teleology, as it always is, in action.

Blackboard

6 days left. My 25 page paper looks like this ^ so far.

Yes, it's almost 7 pm on a Friday night, and I am blogging. Because that's the point of these things: to be myself, in writing, on the web. Well, the above picture is most certainly me at the moment. Forcing myself into the close quarters of the library all weekend so I could get some real headway on this final paper. As I explained to my missionary brother this week, I like to think of my assignments as my "sheep." ("I wanna be a shepherd." "A Shepherd?" "Ya. I wanna get some sheep and tend to them." "Get out of my office." What movie??) Ahem. Jesus told--no, invited-- us to pray over our flocks and our fields, well, these little things are what I cultivate, just one sliver of all I dream of adding to the world. So, I'm praying. And brainstorming like H***!

I got a queer sense of enjoyment out of this exercise- scratching out postulations with chalk on a board like some math geek (only my theories revolve around art and beauty). What do you know, the old school method has a few advantages! Mapping out my arguments across a planar surface, erasing and rearranging them where necessary, actually helped smooth out a lot of the mental road blocks I had on the path to that glorious "A." Knock on wood.

I should be getting back to work now.

Friends, I have some news for you: maybe one of the other reasons why I felt oddly delighted to be at that chalkboard this morning is that, in the middle of my scratching, I got a phone call from a staff member at the National Law Enforcement Museum, who was pleased to offer me the summer archival internship that I interviewed for earlier this week. I am THRILLED with this opportunity! The NLEM is essentially a "museum-without-walls" right now; it has a staff, and a collection, and a very important mission, but no permanent building. They're in the middle of a capital campaign to raise the money to build a permanent home, underneath a park in downtown DC (in a similar fashion to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews in Berlin by Peter Eisenman, which is amazing...). The NLEM will be right near the National Law Enforcement Officer's Memorial, a beautiful space directly across the street from the National Building Museum!

"Archives??" you are thinking. You don't know me that well. I actually have a fairly decent background in working with primary documents and collections from several jobs past, and it is only about to get better! I am juuuuust OCD enough to really be good at organizing thousands of documents at a time, although the stack of papers and books scattered around my apartment argue otherwise. I am so excited to tell you what I see and what I learn as I go along this summer. GO COPS!

I'm just a wee bit thankful this evening for the opportunities that I have at the moment... and I feel like I am almost ready to start building up a newer, bigger, and more fantastical set of dreams. (AFter fiNaLS). Because if there's one thing I've learned in the past few weeks/months/years... life is always going to surprise and delight you. If you ask it to.

Time to go.

PS A big, heartfelt cross-country hug to DaniandDave, MeganandJared, and Mike, Jess, Lilly, and new baby Peter! I love you guys SO SO MUCH!!!!! (And to Jess, who has been steadfastly offering up her brother's hand in marriage this past month so that I could come home to Utah this summer :) Sorry to disappoint... next year maybe. PS I love you!

Rock, Hard Place

Yesterday I started writing about the crazy volcano images we're all looking at, then I switched in quick succession to such meh topics as my archival work, the Owl City concert I'm attending in two days, faith, how to efficaciously commiserate and simultaneously commemorate the scourge known as finals week, and, again, how much I miss my family, particularly the funny ones. None of it made the cut ("ODviously!" What movie??).

This morning I crafted a near-perfect facebook status, but my reluctance to actually join the human race in their online drivel-reporting prevented me from hitting the button and committing to its publication. (The status, in case you're dying to know, reflects my somewhat jaded view of online social media. It reads, "I love/hate the Lakers/Jazz/finals/sunshine/my boyfriend... [random inspirational or movie quote]... listen to my bands X,Y, and Z... [narcissistic link to my blog]... and the worst thing ever: Look, FB- my baby pooped!")

What I'm trying to communicate through this list of the past 48 hours' worth of half-baked thoughts is that I am currently suffering from both writer's block and writer's overload. I need a fresh jolt of creativity... and also, less mental stimulation. Maybe at the end of next week, after I have exhaustedly handed in my fatty papers, I will know peace and smart writing again.

It has an end, right, void? If you are reading this and have no finals, are enjoying the freedom to work and earn money, or watch a movie, or use your mind to contemplate whatever you want, give thanks!!!

That being said, here's a few pictures from a recent art event I attended (Hat tip Maggie and Caranine)... because when you've got nothing else to say, when the words come slower than frozen ketchup out of an old school glass bottle, pictures can still spin an interesting story!

Best regards,
Thoroughly Modern Lindsey

Heroes

NOT the tv show.

If you need something to listen to while you read the following, this song was playing in my head the whole time I wrote this bad boy.

We'll start here: who are the people in your life (or in history) whose words and actions really dictate in some way what your thoughts, words, and actions will be? They are probably people you think of as having their hearts set on the same kinds of treasures you do. A lot of my heroes are heroes because they perform the role of motherhood and womanhood so incredibly well; our treasures are conjoined at the family. Most of my other heroes are those who have an insatiable desire to make a difference in the world, who actually DID it. Or at least spent their lives trying valiantly. William Wilberforce comes to mind. My gosh I love Amazing Grace. Tangent.

As I related a few posts down, the big paper topic I'm working on this semester is Frederic Edwin Church, who was the cat's meow in American art from about 1850-1870. My (pseudo)professional opinion: he's a'ight, as far as art historical figures go... not my greatest hero though.

I got a very big research-ical shock last week while I was doing some reading about Church's 1859 voyage to Newfoundland; who should have accompanied him on the first leg of his journey to sketch icebergs and the arctic but (drumroll please...) Mr. Louis Agassiz himself!!!

... None of you found this revelation as exhilarating as I did. Louis Agassiz is one of my heroes, an important man in the history of science (aka'd "The Father of the Ice Age"), whose story has fallen a little bit by the wayside in this day and age, only to be picked up and examined now and again by scientific historians and pedagogues like myself. His is an incredible, and incredibly moving, story. I first learned about him from Vicki Jo Anderson's text The Other Eminent Men of Wilford Woodruff, and I will summarize her version of his story here. I'll bet as I tell it to you, you can see all the reasons why he makes a hero for me in particular:

Born in 1807 in Switzerland to a fifth-generation clergyman and a kind and stalwart mother, Louis Agassiz was never pushed beyond normal boundaries in education. His mother did hapen to notice and cultivate early on his intellectual tendencies and intense love of nature; most of his childhood was spent tenderly caring for a large range of animals housed within his estate, by permission of his parents. At age fourteen he was determined to memorize the Latin name of every single known animal and plant! He attended the University of Munich in pursuit of a medical degree, but his love of nature was already growing and taking a hold of his passion. He flourished under the tutelage of a philosophy professor named Schelling, who cemented in him the belief that the various animal forms could be understood as individual "thoughts" of a divine Creator.

Agassiz later describes himself as the "librarian of the works of God." <3 He wrote over 75 theses on topics in many different scientific disciplines, including anatomy, surgery, obstetrics, and pathology, and after moving to Paris, assisted one of Europe's most prodigious minds, Professor Georges Cuvier of the Center of Natural History at the Jardin des Plantes, in the work of establishing our basic classification system of animals (into four branches: the Radiatas, Mollusks, Articulata, and Vertebrata. FYI. :). When Cuvier died, Agassiz took up his work writing about fossilized fishes, and championed the idea held by his former master that nature was, again, the work of a Divine Intelligence. Notably, Agassiz never took the step in imagination that Charles Darwin would, linking fossils into a grand scheme of gradual evolution. Agassiz stated instead that "the whole history of geological succession shows us that the lowest in structure is by no means necessarily the earliest in time." Aka, according to Anderson, that, "Anatomically, evolution may have looked sound, but geologically it just couldn't work. The mere existence of the well-developed shark (Selachians) family is in direct contradiction to the idea of a gradual evolutionary development because the sharks are found abundantly in the earliest of the Palaeozoic fossil beds." Try again, Darwin. You're missing a link or two. Louis Agassiz instead puts forward the belief that "Facts are the words of God, and we may heap them together endlessly, but they will teach us little or nothing til we place them in their true relations, and recognize the thought that binds them together." This thought is the word of God, the world's greatest scientist, who made us, and the world, and all the animals, plants, and natural phenomena therein. Yes, these things may be in a state of continual conflict as Darwin illustrates, but this fact fully aligns with the Christian conception of the world as belonging to a fallen state. Tangent.

After Cuvier's death, the renowned naturalist Alexander von Humboldt took Agassiz under his wing, or rather, launched him into the sky, loaning him money to live on and securing him a professorship in Switzerland where he really began to perfect the craft of teaching. He established his city, Neuchatel, as a great European center of learning. Agassiz is known as one of history's most brilliant and passionate teachers (and this statement I have seen echoed in many other texts about education and even a devotional, not just Anderson's mini-biography). Agassiz preferred to take his students out of doors, sans textbooks, during the summer ("If you study nature in books, when you go out of doors you cannot find her"), and during the winter, he insisted on getting students each a specimen to examine. "Look at your fish"; that was his instructions at the beginning of one semester, and each week his students would bring him observations about their specific animal, and he would nod, smile, and simply say again, "Look at your fish." By the end, he had a classroom full of proud students who could rattle off intricate ideas about icthyology and fish anatomy and habits simply because they had to dig deeper and deeper for answers as they observed their single fish. Agassiz believed in obtaining knowledge for oneself, in cultivating a sharp eye and a quick, questioning mind. "The mind is made strong not through much learning," he said, "but by the thorough possession of something."

While in Switzerland, his attention turned from fossils to the mountains, particularly glaciers. Living, sleeping, and teaching on them, he was the first to discover that they were actually moving. Agassiz came up with this unheard-of idea that the continent was once covered in slowly moving ice (perhaps this idea came about after he almost lost his life in an underground river, which he fell into after he convinced his students to let him rappel 80 feet into an unstable glacial cavern). He presented his ice-sheet thesis to the leading scientists of the day at an annual meeting of the Helvetic Society, of which he happened to be the president. His remarks were received terribly; he was actually booed by the participants! His friend Humboldt encouraged him to have more research to back up such wild claims in order to avoid such a presentation disaster in the future. Agassiz took up the advice gladly, eventually proving the now concrete fact of science: that our Earth underwent an Ice Age that radically changed the face of its land formations.

In 1846 Agassiz went on a speaking tour of the United States, and the freedom--and uncultivation-- of education here impressed him so much that he relocated, despite invitations to teach by Emperor Napoleon III and the King of Prussia. His most notable American accomplishments include the establishment of the Museum of Comparative Anatomy at Harvard, the establishment of the Natural History Museum at the Smithsonian Institute, and his work in Washington to establish some governmental ground rules for effective, scholarly scientific work and publication. He chose to become a citizen in the midst of the Civil War, right about the time he was accompanying Frederic Edwin Church on a trip to the Arctic.

While teaching at Harvard, Agassiz and his wife, Elizabeth Cabot Cary, who was noted for her literary and executive talents, began a boarding house for female students. Agassiz arranged for professor friends from Harvard to teach the girls... and eventually Elizabeth and Louis reopened their school as the famous Radcliffe University. Louis was a great advocate for women's educational rights, even employing women in his museums. His student Clara Conant Gilson described her experience with this passionate man of science by saying, "His eyes ... would moisten with tears of emotion as thoughts of his Creator came rushing to mind, while he traced his [the creator's] footsteps in the science he studied. His eyes mirrored his soul. I think there was never but one pair of eyes such as Professor Louis Agassiz." Vicki Anderson notes that he was "easily moved to tears or laughter and made no attempt to hide his feelings." Quel sweetheart!

One of the biggest reasons why his impact is not well known today is because his works, so enriched by the belief in nature as a second Bible, or a thoughtful work of God, went against the grain of the wildly influential school of thought set in motion by Darwin's Origin of the Species, published in 1859. Agassiz spent the last fifteen years of his life defending his beliefs in "Nature's God," stating that "In our study of natural objects we are approaching the thoughts of the Creator, reading His conceptions, interpreting a system that is His and not ours." His stand on evolutionary issues still has a voice today, and I admire both the theological conviction behind his work and also his intense devotion to facilitating education-- good, solid, passionate education in his chosen discipline-- through research and personal, innovative, teaching methods.

(Most of the above can be found, better written, in Anderson's text, pgs 9-17).

K, hop off the soapbox now, Lindsey. Deep breath. Can you trace all the other reasons why he would be a hero of mine? I love this man. Someday I want to shake his hand in heaven and take an anatomy course from him. I am completely convinced that I will have the opportunity to do so, too. Vicki Anderson's The Other Eminent Men of Wildord Woodruff contains mini-biographies of the fifty other men besides the signers of the Declaration of Independence and the American Presidents who appeared in vision to Wilford Woodruff in the LDS St. George temple in 1877, requesting their temple work be completed. This event holds a lot of historical fascination for me, and I love reading these men's stories, thinking about the positive impact they had in many ways on my own life, and on the world I inherited.

I have many other heroes too, you know. I could go on all day. Many of them will read this blog, in fact. :) But Agassiz is one of my favorites, and I wanted to introduce you to him this Sunday, hoping that it may impel you to look around you, if you haven't already done so, and find those people whose passion, insight, and diligence directs your own. Heroes help us talk the talk and walk the walk because they have done so already. I'm grateful for the abundance of heroes I have in my own life.

Have a great week!

Cartoon me

According to the other attendees at a recent Sunday game night, I am more this character

than this one
I wasn't sure I could fully appreciate this characterization, but then I realized that it pretty much describes me to a T at this juncture. Also, I realized I can be grateful my friends didn't vote me in as this:

Have a wonderful post-Easter week, y'all. I sure love my religion, and my Savior. It's always wonderful to be reminded what great things he really did, and how he really feels about all the people in the world. I want to be like him the most.

.... Ok I'm not done yet. I'd been waiting to see if any picture of the Savior jumped out at me this season that I could share with you, and I found one on another art blog. The author does a much more thorough and thoughtful job of explaining why it is such a wonderful work, and so I'll just link the photo to that blog, no need to add on my superfluous commentary. Again, Happy late Easter!

Elder Marcus

My little bro (serving a mission for our church in Florida) is the BOMB, he is so funny. His letter this week was so classic that I just have to replicate parts of it here. Note that some of it shows we definitely come from the same art-analytical family background:

I also read up on Abinadi and his enduring ever-faithful testimony and sticktoitiveness to preach the gospel. And I've noticed again, that he probably wasn't an old man. Probably a younger guy. And King Noah was DEFINATELY not a big fat dude, with a palm tree on his head, and with babylonian shoes like Arnold Friberg portrayed. The guy has an epic long battle up a flight of stairs. If he was a big jabba-the-hutt man, he'd have a heart attack and die the first 3 steps up the tower. I think we really need to switch all the "famous book of mormon pictures" done by Friberg, and put in Walter Rane's work. He's undeniably my favorite LDS artist. I used to like Liz Lemon Swindle alot, and still do, but Rane's work is verrrrry appealing to me, and have a much broader sense of realism, and a much greater scope of emotion. You should look up his work. Tis good...

...Have a blessed week. Work out your own salvation. (emphasis on the work, not just say, "save me" and your good) I'm getting really tired of born agains. We've talked to alot lately, and I'm tired of proving them wrong. :) YAY!!!!!

SCRIPTURE POWER!!!!!!

Elder M. Dewaine


(Me again) So cute. And maybe a little prideful. And still so cute. My error-laden blogger upload thing won't let me show you the two pictures he's talking about, Walter Rane's Abinadi Had Testified and Arnold Friberg's scene of Abinadi testifying before a very chubby King Noah (couldn't find the actual title of that work, either... there's way too many dodgy blogs out there citing this image improperly). Oh well. Probably for the best. Have a great week!! :)