Cyclophobia

After years of experiencing all the symptoms and never knowing why, I finally have the right diagnosis: CYCLOPHOBIA.

I hate riding bikes.

Don't shun me. I know I'm alienating myself from 85% of my American peers by telling the truth, but you know what? You can't like everything, and I've already made room in my life for such universally-loved activities as Office marathons, cookie-making, playing with babies, listening to Michael Buble, running, travelling, taking pictures, hanging out with friends, etc. Let me hate bikes, ok?

Me right before the crash landing on my face incident.
Note the lack of helmet. I thought I was so cool.

I have my reasons. The bike crash at age 11 that handed me severe road rash for a month and a 2" scar on one knee forever. The slight concussion I got after losing control of my (borrowed) bike and sliding down a concrete hill on my face. Never being able to pop a wheelie or successfully get airborn on a bike. The date where we biked 22 miles and I couldn't sit down properly for 4 days. That time we tried to bike to the coast in Belgium and had to give up after four sweaty hours without seeing an inch of coastline (jerky lying bike rental owner guy...). Oh, and the most effective cyclophobia trigger ever: I never transitioned to operating bikes with gears. I have no idea how they work, despite several friends' best efforts to teach me.  Is there some magical amount of pedalling I'm supposed to be doing at all times that shifting the gears takes care of magically? Which gear knob goes up when I go uphill again? I still haven't got a clue. And in most of my attempts, I just end up making more work for myself and destroying my thighs and my butt-bones and in some cases, the bike chain itself. Meep. :) 

I don't know what was up with my hair, but look!
There's my beloved Volcom hoodie that I will be resurrected with some day. <3.

My sole happy biking memory came in 2007, when we had to ride bikes through the Netherlandish woods to get to the gorgeous, intimate modern art museum, the Kroller-Mueller. I was riding the kind of bike that 8-year-olds typically rock, the kind that has one gear, where to brake you just have to push the pedals backwards. It was pure serendipity, I felt like Maria von Trapp and I definitely broke out with "Do Re Mi" in the middle of the woods. Ah, bliss. That was the day I unexpectedly came upon the live version of van Gogh's Cafe Terrace at Night, one of my favorite paintings ever. Mmm big cheesy grin while remembering that day...

Ahem. Like I said, I finally put the puzzle pieces together. Cyclophobia. The symptoms:

- walking everywhere and wishing fervently for a longboard

- demurring whenever your father asks you why you don't get a bike, and issuing the lazy-man excuse that "I never know what I want/I'll get one when I'm richer/when it's warmer/when I stop knowing how to run!"

- making snide remarks about those serious bikers walking around with the padded-butt shorts and clip shoes and winged helmets, er, aerodynamic safety gear. Seriously, you look RIDICULOUS, dude!!!

- excessive fear of pro bikers making fun of me as I toddle along on borrowed bikes

- inexplicable annoyance with the following otherwise perfect wedding announcement:

Get off!

- inability to tell the difference between a Craigslist junker, a mountain bike, and one of those $2000 numbers with 500 gears and laser-guided speedometer/gps/rocket launcher systems. (I DO know, however, that a good beach comber has a little metal fin over the back wheel and no gears and sometimes a basket and a bell and bright colors, which makes it my favorite if I had to choose one).

- Excessive whining during a jaunty bike ride along the gorgeous GW trail.

- Visions of losing control and plowing head-on into rush hour traffic on the GW Parkway that's right alongside the GW trail.

- Excessive fear of running over twigs.

- Excessive fear killing squirrels

-Avoidance of friends' bike gangs by invoking homework, tiredness, or a fake date

-Strangely enough, no fear of blowing a tire. Does that even happen with bikes? No, don't tell me, I don't want to know.

To anyone else who might be a secret sufferer of cyclophobia, I'm writing today to tell you you're not alone. In fact, speak out! We deserve to be heard! Bikes are scary and when you crash on them you hurt your head because you don't have time to get your feet under you like you do on a board and my quads hurt and I hate looking like a sissy walking my bike up this hill but there's no other way because my quads are literally burning through my shorts and look out for that car!!!! I'm so unprotected out here on this stupid hunk of tiny metal and rubber tubes, and that leaf is going to make me flip over and OW that was a big bump, I don't think I can have babies anymore, and I HATE BIKING!!!!!!!!!!!!

Happily, there is a cure for Cylcophobia. Its name is Car.

Chapter 2

I decided to put the "World Traveller" chapter of my digital dream board on hold for a few days. Chapter 2 is entitled Lindsey The Mormon.

As you saw in the Chapter 1 below, I recently discovered the Collage thingy in Picasa (I'm a late bloomer, I know) and it's been delightful to stroll through memory lane and piece together my favorite pictures under different themes. I think the pictures that best exemplify my commitment to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints are those pictures that have the temple, BYU (the church-sponsored school) or the MTC in them (where my brothers and many of my friends went to learn scriptures, languages, and how to be a missionary).

There are eleven different temples featured above- who can name them all???

In last week's Relief Society lesson, we were talking about the priesthood of God, and the teacher asked us to think about how priesthood holders have bettered our lives. I realized that, without our organized and dedicated lay priesthood holders, there would be no Sacrament service... no ward... no ward friends... there would be no temples to attend! There would be no General Conference. There would be no missionaries called, and thus there would be no church growth. In short, without the priesthood, every way I learn about the gospel would be gone. For all intents and purposes, the gospel would be gone from my life. It made me so grateful for the hundreds of thousands of hours of planning, organizing, praying, counseling, leading, and working that so many priesthood holders have kindly put forth in order to successfully maintain the wards I've belonged to throughout my life.

Because of the gospel of Jesus Christ, I have unique ways of achieving peace and understanding as I make my way through the world, which I find more and more confusing every year that I live. I have a testimony that it is only through obedience to the principles of the gospel, and through thoughtful, prayerful action, that I can find the strength and resolve to move forward and try to achieve my goals. Having attended this church all my life, I know how to pray to my loving Heavenly Father when I want guidance, and I know I have a wonderful set of scriptures and priesthood blessings to read and ponder when I am seeking extra guidance, or just upliftment. Because of the gospel, I have met hundreds and probably thousands of people with whom I can share the joy of service, faith, and love. I have made about 80% of my friends through the church, and I can definitely say that ALL of my friendships, Mormon or not, are better because of what I believe, because of my participation in this gospel. I am incredibly grateful for the gift of sweet and hilarious friendships.

Even on my days when I feel very much on my own, I am grateful to have the gospel because through it I have learned about my Father in Heaven and the plan he has for me, his daughter, to return to him and be made more like Him  through the atonement of His son, Jesus Christ, my favorite example. I am content with who I am, because I know Heavenly Father made me, and He will help me to be my best.

All my heroes are such because they loved God and followed His suggestions to leave a positive mark on this crazy world. All of my finest hopes hinge upon me joining my wonderful family (present and future) in following the sweet, fascinating, and good commandments of God, and finding a lot of joy in that journey.

Funny side note: on our way home from the temple this week, my friends were discussing how we, as little girls, planned to get married at such-and-such a temple, and I just had to laugh and relate the fact that from a very young age my mom firmly and resoundingly told me I was never getting married anywhere but the Las Vegas Temple. I think I had casually expressed a hope that we could hop on down to the crystalline San Diego temple whenever I got married, and my mother just looked at me with an unusual degree of temerity and firmness and said, "NOPE. You're not getting married anywhere but Las Vegas- way too much family to ship anywhere else." So there you go. I accepted it. I love my Las Vegas temple, right up there on the East hills overlooking the valley.  I am excited to one day soon go through the temple on my own and learn how to better follow my Father in Heaven and Jesus Christ and belong to an eternal family.

Lindsey the Mormon, signing out.

Something Blue

I've been feeling a little blue lately, maybe it's the oncoming fall, or the post-move boredom (there's nothing else to paint/fix/hang?? REALLY?) so I decided to make a dream board, a la 8th grade, of all the things that remind me of the life I love to live and the person that I ultimately want to be.

And I'm going to make this dream board digitally, on this blog, in several sessions. Get ready yo.

Chapter 1- the Long/Snow/Wakeboarding Princess. You know how you see some older ladies and it looks like they just got stuck in one fashion and lifestyle moment years ago and have never moved on? 2004 would probably be my year (if I was that obtuse). I will always wish I could still rock my studded belt and skater kicks and spend my nights competing in Krispy Kreme donut eating contests, stuffed in the back of a Jeep with 6 boys.

Timeless 2004 memories include:

I get a broken nose, 10 stitches, 4 staples, and sprained wrist while longboarding (Provo Canyon, I still love you). I also attended the most perfect concert ever, The Starting Line, MXPX, and Yellowcard... with some random guy from Idaho I had picked up while headed to Snowbird. He had a perfect shag haircut, was preparing his mission papers, and the night was pure punky bliss. I had exactly 4 favorite articles of clothing: my grey Volcom hoodie, my black Starting Line sweater, my oversized BYU sweats, and my DVS's. I plan on asking God to resurrect my grey hoodie and my DVS's with me in the millenium. No seriously.

Good times. Next chapter: the world traveller.

Day 609ish

I passed the year and a half mark of living in Virginia not too long ago. Let me tell you, it is STILL a constant surprise, one heck of an interesting and surreal experience, for this Vegas girl to be out East. It still feels like it's just some weird cultural stunt or experimental phase I'm going through, rather than my home, my landing spot. (Anyone else feel like that?) Weird. Good and bad. Crazy, frustrating, and curious. Occasionally blissful (particularly when there's food and friends involved!!).

This afternoon I was looking over my pictures from summer 2008 and reminiscing- my gosh that was probably the happiest, most serendipitous summer I've ever lived. I remembered so clearly random fun times like this:

and this:

And this:

And this:

^ That boy comes home in 5 weeksssssssssssssssssssssssssssss. :D Family is just about the most magical thing in the world! Seriously, every time I've noticed a frown on my face the last couple weeks I've just envisioned seeing Marcus at the airport and away goes the frown and up goes my mood. I even discovered that plotting out an epic prank for Marcus' first day home motivated me into keeping a record pace on my long run this weekend (Apparently the secret to successful sports therapy is playing the glad game. Who knew?).

After browsing around my pictures a little more, I got off my computer, grabbed my camera, and documented a little bit of today, Summer 2010. THIS is what's happening in my world currently (as promised to the parents and the BFFs). Let's hope this thing works, I don't do videos:

iTour of LINDSEY'S LONG-AWAITED NEW ROOM

Because I feel like I haven't talked about art in MONTHS, below is a print from Urban Outfitters (I am ashamed) that really struck a chord with me, which is a pretty big accomplishment for anything visual at the moment; I've been trying to fill that blank picture frame you saw in the video, and it's been so hard to decide on only one image! When you only have ONE shot, one frame, one place of exceeding importance and honor to put something visual, the pressure is INTENSE! Yikes. None of these former loves will do, but I think this print below may be the winner. Well, actually I've got a plan to create a digital print of my own in a  similar design, with a sketch out of the Las Vegas mountain range instead of these random mountains.  Any other suggestions, friends? What's on YOUR walls these days? Anything new?

I'll Follow You Into the Dark*

*Lyric from a song I actually hate, it sings about being content to fall in love and then just die, believing in no afterlife. Man the song sure is catchy, though, and it certainly means to be meaningful to its audience. But I believe in a much grander purpose to this common (well, sometimes uncommon) human experience called love. Eternal families, baby! Made in places like these:

I've been thinking about going there, not quite yet maybe but soon. I just turned 25, that's the generally accepted age when Mormon women who are not getting married or going on missions may enter the temple to receive their endowment, which is a set of covenants with God, like a baptism.
I've got a little deep thinking about this decision yet to do, I want to feel 100% ready to go in before I go. It's an amazing place; the spirit of God is always there, in its sweetest, most peaceful form. It is an almost tangible presence, which I feel whenever I get near a temple or even just look at pictures of them like I did today at church and tonight, here in my newly-painted room. The temple just feels... heavenly. Like the normal stresses melt away when you're there and you can think about what is really, truly important in this life, which kind of thinking leads you to speak to your Maker, whom you always sense loves you so much.

Wow, I actually didn't mean to write all that as I sat down tonight and opened up blogger. But there it is, and just on a secondary, more secular note, my internship at NLEM is winding down this week, though not before I got to participate in a sweet tactical training simulation and weapons target practice session at the District Police Academy on Friday- SO AWESOME! I shot a multitude of rounds with a Smith and Wesson special something-or-other revolver (the gun cops used til the 80s), a .23 Glock semi (the current law enforcement ordnance), and an M-16 rifle (on both fully and semi-automatic settings). I also "shot" a bomber in my simulation. My trainer was really impressed, he said most the cadets either miss and kill the hostage or miss and hit the bomb their first try. Nope, I got off a clear head shot (yikes, I know...). I have to admit, the whole process was very scary for me, I didn't like going into the simulation not knowing what scenario I would encounter. Thank goodness for real law enforcement officers who face unknown evils every day and have to make split-second decisions with MULTITUDES of factors, known and unknown, playing in.

Ahem man some wild tangents here tonight. So, I have made the decision, for a number of reasons, not to go back to the building museum to be a teacher this year. I love that job, but I want and need a little more stability during this second year of grad school. So it's back to sending out resumes like leaves on the wind, hoping for something part-time with stable hours, who knows, maybe something in another area of arts or management that will continue to help me prepare for a good career. Wish me luck. And have a great week! Oh, and because I feel like I need to leave you with something more, I would like to introduce you to the article that FINALLY made me understand what POTUS stood for (don't call me stupid if you're a politco and know it already. Just shh and read). This made me laugh harder than I have for a very long time (unfortunately I was at work when I read it... BAD). The entire McSweeny's website, FYI, is solid gold, it's soooo witty. Although the occasional inappropriate comment and/or swear word does appear, you've been warned.

.... my heck the topics on this post really run the gamut. Next week I suppose I'll speak on tempeh and Richard Meier. And maybe throw in something about Toy Story 3 or Chacos, I don't know. Eclectic surprises await...
PS. President Of The United States.

This being a responsible citizen is just not working for me.

I have this list that's been building up in my head all summer of the mature, sensible things I suspect other youngsters my age and religious bent are doing that I'm not. They're all responsibile actions, the kind that benefit the doers' mental well-being, as well as their roommate relations, dating lives, future job opportunities, health, and probably their future spouse and kids's welfares and probably even impact their eternal salvation. Yet, I lack motivation (though not desire) to pqarticipate in the following actions/:

-Put money into a Roth IRA.

-Kick sugar back to its place at the TOP of the food pyramid where it belongs.

-Go on dates outside the ward boundaries.

-NOT go on Google reader 10x a day at work.

-Floss daily.

-Drive my own car or bike.

-Develop "hobbies." (Gol that is maybe the ugliest word in the English language, next to BLOG)
-"Networking."

I laugh in the face of flossing- hahahaha!


Instea, I get fired up abou an alternate set of goals. These are my heart's desires that probably not ONE of my sensible friends have considered doing, which ultimately makes them all the poorer (at least in spirit, in my opinion). Ahem.

Quirk list:


-Go on a date with a DC-area homeless man (Imagine the stories he could tell me!)
-Be a homeless woman (twelve moves in the space of two months- CHECK.)
-Earn a superfluous $40k degree.
-Go wading in a public fountain in every major metropolis in Europe.
-Donate the full value of a luxury car to charity before buying one (a tall order that I've had in place since I was 19. I figure it's a good way to check my pride whenever I start telling myself I DESERVE a $40k BMW).
-Jump off a bridge (a low one, into deep water, the East Coast version of cliff jumping. NOT suicide)
-Rock a pink streak in my hair like a high schooler.
-Get my yoga instructor license from some random school in Florida.
-Get married in the temple wearing Vans (used to be Chuck Taylors, but they're too popular now).
-Publish a blissfully nerdy scholarly article in some minisculely-subscribed academic journal.
-Date a collegiate Lacrosse player.
-NOT go sky diving (I have no desire to, ever. I know my limits.)
-Promote this event wherever possible: http://candlelightserenade.com/ If you live in Utah, GO to this awesome concert-- check out the A-list headliners! I'm so impressed with it, and I would be even IF my wonderful friend Genna weren't directing it! It's for an amazing cause, and it'll be a rocking summer jam session. If I were in Utah, I'd be there.

-And finally, cook the following. Ok I'm cheating, I've cooked all these already--I LOVE summertime recipes and I just wanted to share the bounty! Thank you, Pioneer Woman, for being my #2 distraction website after Google Reader. Click the pictures to get the recipes. Make #4, the roasted red pepper sauce, immediately. It might very well be the best thing you ever cook!

Bon appetite, to all you good citizens out there.

...

"We are forever incomplete, but fragments of some ungraspable whole. Our unfinished natures — we are never pure actualities but always vague potentials — make life a constant struggle, a bout with the persistent unknown. But this extension into the abyss is also our salvation. To be but a fragment is always to strive for something beyond oneself, something transcendent — an unexplored possibility, an unmapped avenue. This striving is always an act of freedom, of choosing one road instead of another. Though this labor is arduous — it requires constant attention to our mysterious and shifting interiors — it is also ecstatic, an almost infinite sounding of the exquisite riddles of Being."-Eric Wilson

Who would have ever thought you could love something so much?

Grown-up purchase #1 (well, #2 I guess if you count my new bedspread):



.... I might have hugged it after my friend Ryan and I finished putting it together. Which process took 2 hours. %$#* IKEA instructions!

It's so beautiful!!!

"I LIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVE!!!!!!!!" -Mooshu from Mulan

I am alive!

And I am writing to you from the comfort of my newish laptop that seems to be (knock on wood) newly virus free. I wrote a whole angry conspiracy-theory blog three weeks ago about how all computers secretly have it out for me, but as I neared the completion of said rant, my stupid computer froze me out and it was lost. Believe me, if I had published it, you'd have been in agreement- seriously my track record with technology BLOWS.

Computey and I have reconciled in the past two days, though, thanks to Kaspersky Virus Removal tool. And much, MUCH more importantly, I write to you tonight from my very own room, in my very own house!!!!! I haven't lived in a house in 7 years, and of those 7 years, I have always shared a room with various wonderful girls. But as you know from several posts back, I just turned 25. And like family, it was about.... time.

Time to move into a house, be close to the Pentagon City metro stop, and inhabit my own room so that I could study to my grad student heart's content without interruption. And also, just feel like a real adult. Yep, that's what I had decided on May 10th, when I sublet the (shoebox-sized) apartment spot I'd been renting since I first moved out here in January '09. I sublet it with one quick call to a girl at BYU coming out for the summer, and then I started walking up a hill to meet two friends and together sign a lease for the world's most gloriously refurbished townhouse, which we had found earlier that week. Halfway UP that hill, I recieved a call from one of these friends informing me, agitatedly, that our landlord had sold that townhome to someone else half an hour before, and we were officially out of luck. And I was out on the streets.

Thus began an epic 68-day chapter of my life known as "Homelessness." Some of you have heard all about it. Over the last two and a half months I have moved TWELVE times, staying with friends in the area who were gracious and wonderful enough to offer me their spare couch, bed, air mattress, etc, a week or so at a time, so that I might not literally be sharing my bed with the bums out on the street. I held out for the exact contract I wanted (single room, under $600/month, walking distance to metro, cool roommates, HOUSE), and happily, my friend Laney called me a month into my homelessness and let me know that, come July 17th, I could have her roommate's spot. It was a done deal and then i just had to wait out the final 5 weeks. Here is a visual flow chart of my itinerate wanderings up til last Saturday (I am LOVING having a computer to play on, let me tell you!!!):

True, it's a shoebox of a room I live in. BUT it has hardwood floors, windows on TWO sides, a tallish ceiling, and alllllllllllllllll of my stuff in it. It is mine all mine. My couch-surfing stint taught me the life lesson that it is only after you lose something that you truly realize the blessing it was in the first place. The sight of all my stuff, in one place, at my disposal, and four bare walls ripe for the decorating brought tears of gratitude and joy to my eyes that first night. And I am still squealing with delight over each new discovery in this house (today it was the rotating dinner schedule amongst the roommates and TIVO!!!!!!!!!! This place ROCKS!!)

I have absolutely no idea where in this mess my phone charger is (problem.), and it took me a solid 20 minutes to find my curling iron on Sunday.... and I have yet to buy a chest of drawers or a desk or shelves, which means that this whole living out of boxes thing is just gonna keep on going until I can locate and purchase such items. I am looking forward to the challenge, though, and the joy of DECORATING my little corner room had me totally unable to concentrate at work today. Look out world, I am about to be CRAFTY! Jayci Judd, you are going to be so proud of me. I am even planning to sew my own curtains! I took my first step today, retiring my wonderful stripey Target bedspread that I bought when I was 17, and purchasing a grown-up down-filled luxury number (for super cheap at Marshall's. My mom raised me well). My ultimate design scheme revolves around the following palatte:

Cornflower blue, Sunshiney Yellow, Silvery Grey, White and Black accents.

I am also hoping to add a touch of shiney, classy Emerald green if I can locate a suitable accent piece or material (pictured below is Kiera Knightly in Atonement; apparently this emerald dress beat out Scarlett O'Hara's scarlet ensemble to win best movie dress of all time, which I think is total bunk.)

I can't wait to begin! If you have any thoughts or websites or product suggestions, please, Please, PLEASE send them my way, I am absolutely clueless when it comes to decorating and design. I've looked at the coco+kelley blog (thanks Maggie), and boo, they don't seem to sell too much stuff. So I have to do this on my own. My visiting teachers and I have a trip to IKEA planned for Saturday... but I am kind of a whiney purist and want to stay away from their mass-produced trendy items as much as possible. What color should I paint the walls? It's a small, well-lit room that I don't want to feel any smaller. Hee hee hee...

GASP! Look at this couch! Anthropologie.com, why must you do everything so perfectly!?!?! You're like the Marion Cotillard of decorating. Everything I want to do and be, you have already been and done, flawlessly. Be French. Sing like Edith Piaf. Kiss Russell Crowe. Be some dream-hacker's haunting and stunning lover/muse (INCEPTION WAS AMAZING!)

K that's enough for now. Lindsey, signing out, and falling asleep in her little haven.

I'm in the New York TIMES!!!!

In a round-about way of course. :)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/08/us/08hoover.html?ref=us

Wednesday, my museum held a press conference in a top-floor room at the super chic Pew Charitable Trust building in Penn Quarter (looked like the one at right but much bigger, and two of the walls were solid glass, looking out over the J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building and the National Archives). We four troopers who are stationed out at the NLEM's offsite storage facility had been preparing for this conference for about two weeks, selecting objects from the collection to display to reporters, and listening to/critiquing my boss as she practiced her speech.

The press conference was held to announce that the museum has acquired the estate of J. Edgar Hoover, who, in case you didn't know, is a BIG FREAKING DEAL. He was the Director of the FBI since it became the FBI (1924) all the way til 1972. Aka 48 years as the head of the nation's premiere crime fighting institution! John Dillinger and the other machine-gun slinging gangsters of the 20s? He cut his teeth on their arrests. WWII spies? He was all over them. Communists? He had them shaking in their boots. We at the museum have received everything in his home at his death and more, including his papers, photos, china, uniforms, and a crazy assortment of awards and curios presented to him by rich, famous, powerful, and grateful people all over the world (hundreds of items!!).

Please note how the article mentions the archival needs of the collection. That's ME who is fixing all that right now, as the graduate archival intern (We have a very small staff). Also note where it says, "Ms. Baty and other museum staff members are creating an inventory of all the items. The team has counted about 2,500 items, and Ms. Baty said there may be more than 4,000 items when all is said and done." Other Museum Staff Members = Me and the other intern, Elena. My friend Marissa of course read the article after I had posted it to my Gchat, and she remarked that the article made it sound like there were 20 of us hustling through this process. Nope. A total of four of us. :) I love my job, I'm getting to do so many things way above my pay grade! Oh, and the picture in the article? The photo of Hoover is cropped because my gloved hands are holding up the sides of that frame. I'm SO enjoying the closest I'll get to museum fame right now.

My workweek awesomeness didn't stop there: the next day, we four squealed to see our release written about in the NYTIMES, the Washington Post, the Washington Examiner, several notable law enforcement blogs and newspapers, and many other smaller interest group websites. So cool.

And after that (and after a free lunch at 5 Guys), Laurie introduced me to the historian at the FBI and he invited me to come visit him at FBI headquarters and do a little "shopping" in the FBI's Hoover files, to look and see if there's anything they have that I would like copies of for my archives.

I'm going shopping through the former Director of the FBI's official FBI files in a week and a half. Hehehehe. I'm so excited, I have ALWAYS wanted to go into the beautiful Hoover building. It's so striking (Brutalistic architecture- some people love to lambast it but I think it's very appropriate for its purpose and setting). Plus I just want to know what the freak is going down in there! So mysterious, so imposing. And so closed to visitors since last year. Hehehe but I'm going in!

K it is late and night and I've got to go. Sorry for the lack of posts lately; my computer unfortunately contracted a virus so I can only write when borrowing a machine, like now.

Vacation's All I Ever Wanted

So this will be brief.

My name is Lindsey, and I am going camping in five minutes. My sister Wee is awesome.

mY name is Wee i get 5 sentensces, i tired cause i wokeded up at 630 to write words. I ate a brownie. it was delectablej. I think my family is the best because we are cool and prety. Also, im in love with alex/twitch but ynni got to hug him, shes great ttoo.

Click me! Wee and Ynny Know You Wont Regret It- It's Alex and Twitch's SICK AWESOME hip-hop routine on So You Think You Can Dance, "Get Outta Yo Mind."

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.