Paw through enough manuscript collections, and you’ll eventually run across some advertisements printed on a thick, porous paper, usually with a pink or blue backing. For those not in the know, it’d be easy to dismiss these little items, which come in a variety of shapes and sizes–and often in bright colors– as simple promotional cards, but in fact, they had an ulterior and important function in 19th-century household and business environments.
This N&W Railway ink blotter promotes the company’s J-class locomotive no. 600, built in 1941 (from the Wayne Perkins Collection, Ms2010-078).
Through the 18th century, the best countermeasure that correspondents, clerks, and other writers had against the inconvenience of slow-drying ink was to sprinkle sand (or sometimes its more costly alternative, salt) over their handwriting to set the ink, then shake the page to remove the temporary coating. The early 19th century saw the invention of the blotter, a handheld device with felt attached to a curved base that could be rocked over the written page to absorb excess ink. About fifty years later, a soft, thick, porous paper was developed as an effective means to absorb excess ink and speed the drying process. Pressed against the written page, the blotting paper soaked up the surplus ink and allowed the writer to complete a task more quickly and with fewer smears and smudges. The paper was also used in used in removing the excess ink from the pen’s nib, making for fewer drips and stains.
Following its introduction, blotting paper quickly replaced sand as the method of choice in drying ink. As noted in an opinion piece within the July 6, 1883, edition of the Maryland Independent, lamenting the end of an era:
It is not so many years since blotting sand was an article of foreign export and domestic use. … Some of the merchants of to-day remember when, as clerks in stationery stores, they occupied leisure hours and rainy days in putting into convenient packages blotting sand that came from Block Island by the barrel … The use of blotting sand led to the manufacture of sand-sifters, which in itself was an industry of some magnitude. A piece of paper has displaced them, sand and all.
It was only a matter of time before some enterprising individual determined that desktop blotting paper would provide an excellent medium for commercial advertising, and in that same Maryland Independent piece, the writer notes that the sale of ink blotters would be even larger if the marketplace weren’t flooded with free blotters distributed by companies peddling their goods and services.
Among the advertising ephemera found in the papers of Fields M. Young (Ms1985-018) are ink blotters from several companies hoping to do business with the Grayson County, Virginia, merchant.
In a November 10, 1895 article about the role of job printers in a recent political campaign, the Omaha Daily Bee related the opinion of a printer who claimed that ink blotters were a much more effective form of advertising than traditional campaign cards: “Cards were thrown away, he argued, while blotters were kept for use on the desk and thus held attention of the voter to the name of the candidate. The blotters, good ones, could be furnished at $3.50 per 1,000, printed with the name of the candidates …”
As a free and useful item for household or business consumers, the blotters proved very popular. The Topeka State Journal of April 20, 1900 reported: “A man went through the court house a few days ago distributing advertising blotters. When he started he ahd two large bags full. When he escaped he had a few left, but very few.” At the turn of the 20th century, competition from blotter advertising led newspaper publishers nationwide–at least those not connect to job printers who benefited from printing the blotters–to denounce the medium as an effective form of advertising.
These blotters, all from businesses in southwestern Virginia, performed double duty by including a calendar, a ruler, a football schedule, and a list of early aviation records to insure that consumers would be less likely to discard them (click for full-sized images) (from the O’Shaughnessy Family Papers, Ms1987-052).
The development of quick-drying ink and improvements in fountain pen design were harbingers of doom for the advertising blotter. In the 1940s, Parker Pens promoted a new design by claiming that it made the use of blotting paper unnecessary. Though blotters continued to retain their place among other promotional giveaways in the advertising world for several more years, the mass manufacture and ready availability of the ballpoint pen sounded the medium’s death knell. Blotting paper can of course still be purchased for many other uses, and I suppose it’s possible that there’s a manufacturer out there somewhere who’s churning out desktop advertising blotters for some niche retro market, but the day of the advertising blotter–like that of blotting sand before it–has long passed.
By the time this 1942 blotter employed patriotism and Mickey Mouse to sell Sunoco Oil, the advertising blotter was nearing the end of its popularity (from the O’Shaughnessy Family Papers, Ms1987-052).
About a month ago, I had a chance to look through the Byron Nelson Cooper Papers (Ms1973-004) for the first time. I don’t routinely transfer collections of faculty papers from storage just for my own entertainment, but I’ve been exploring collections weekly as part of a live Twitch broadcast, Archival Adventures, for nearly two years (the full playlist of past episodes is on YouTube and the live show airs Wednesdays on twitch.tv/VTULStudios).
I try to include materials from all of our collecting areas on the show and I thought a geology professor’s papers might contain some interesting things. While the collection did have some interesting geology-focused items (including an envelope of actual rock samples), the standout for me was Cooper’s writing. His speeches, lectures, and creative writing feature a strong narrative voice filled with personality and humor.
Note: There’s also a lot of misogyny and possibly some racism (I honestly haven’t had time to fully read Whisky for the Cat, included later in this post, but some skimming of it made me think there may be some Hispanic stereotyping happening.) Since these are historic documents, it’s not surprising to find these types of sentiments reflected as they were quite common at the time. Knowing about these problems in advance, one can look to see what else the documents have to offer beyond the problematic biases while still recognizing that the problems exist.
First, a bit about Byron Nelson Cooper. He was born in Plainfield, Indiana on August 19, 1912. We don’t have any information about his life before college but we do know that he attended a geology field camp run by Oberlin College before graduating from DePauw University in 1934. According to the Geological Society of America’s memorial of Cooper, this was his first introduction to Virginia geology. He then went on to earn master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Iowa with both of his theses focusing on the geology of southwestern Virginia. While researching the region, he established familial ties to the area through marriage to Elizabeth Doyne of Pulaski County. After his Ph.D., Cooper was an assistant professor of geology at Wichita University for five years (1937-1942). He then served as associate geologist of the Virginia Geological Survey for four years before joining Virginia Polytechnic Institute as the head of the Department of Geological Sciences in 1946. As head, Cooper led a two-person department to become nationally recognized. He also consulted for business, industry, and local governments throughout Virginia on geological matters, particularly issues relating to water supply. He died on March 26, 1971, suffering a heart attack in his office on campus at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.
Untitled Speech, 1964
Reading the text of his lectures, speeches, and other writings, it’s not hard to see how his leadership inspired excellence from the Department of Geology. Cooper is an excellent writer, crafting persuasive phrases that retain the audience’s interest. In Box 6 of his papers, there is an untitled speech from mid-December of 1964. The speech is clearly meant to inspire students in the program to work toward their maximum potential. (The last page seems to be an excerpt from another speech regarding campus unrest and student solidarity which is also quite interesting.)
I don’t know what Cooper’s voice sounded like, but I can almost hear him speaking with conviction the lines he has written.
If you live for tomorrow with the objective of
making today’s dreams come true tomorrow, you
begin to pace yourself and to deny yourself small
rewards in favor of engineering bigger things. In
a matter of months one can gain a pretty accurate
assessment of his personal power and of his capacity for
work, and time enables one to not only
play the game but to keep his own side.
…
Every quarter or semester in a university is
a test of planning ahead. You learn to work,
you learn to meet deadlines, you learn to avoid the pitfalls
of goofing off. You learn how to pilot yourself to avoid
most of the bumps. Each setback only stiffens the determination
to win in the end. The daily lesson is the mind’s food, unless
you feed the mind it doesn’t grow.
…
Some silly students believe you learn in college
what you have to know + then you go out + use your
knowledge. This just is not so. You leave here with a
bullied and bruised head + many facts though they
be filed in your mind will never be recalled. You
do leave even if its by flunking out –
with an enlarged view – of the world + of yourself.
…
The great men of history have possessed a sense
of their histories being even as they lived. If
you tie your wagon to a star + work to reach the
goal you have set – you have given your life meaning
but perspective and some historicity – and in the
process if you do so I assure you that you will have
one helluva good time in the best sense of that
phrase.
Really, this entire speech is quite inspiring (if one can get past the students being constantly referred to as men). If offers some great perspective on what is important in the educational experience and acknowledges the fact that not all learning on campus comes from the details learned in the classroom. You can find a full transcription of the speech on Virginia Tech Special Collections and University Archives Online.
How to Catch a Genius, undated, likely 1957
While exploring the finding aid, two other pieces of writing caught my attention thanks to their titles. The first is How to Catch a Genius, a play in two acts with a prologue and an epilogue. It’s a comedy about a professor (Dr. Claude Sidney Magnabrayne) coming to Virginia Tech for an on-site interview and the unacknowledged and vitally important role that the women of the university community have in persuading potential professors to accept offers of employment despite the clueless behavior of their husbands (Dr. George A. Blurt being an example). Again, this piece is misogynistic in its portrayal of women. It’s also full of stereotypes including ones about politics, brainy-but-clueless academics, stressed-out over-drinkers, and many more. While the play is undated, its portrayal of women and the stereotypes seem to fit the 1950s or 1960s. The play itself gives us a clue about the date being portrayed (if not the date it was created). At the beginning of Act I, there is a bit about a phone number:
As Scene
1 opens, we find Sid leafing the pages in the local phone book for the
Covington, Kentucky Area Code. So he dials 606—-then 5-5-5--
then 1-2-1-2. (For those unfamiliar with Long Distance dialing, what
Sid is trying to do is find out his own phone number which was changed
recently—as a matter of fact about 26 months ago.)
The important part in dating the item is the parenthetical addresed to “those unfamiliar with Long Distance dialing” and the notation that Magnabrayne’s phone number changed 26 months earlier. From the context of the play, it’s clear that we’re mid-20th century. According to the North American Numbering Plan Administrator (NANPA), the numbering plan we’re familiar with today (1-digit country code, 3-digit Numbering Plan Area code, 7-digit local number) was developed by AT&T in 1947 to allow consumers to dial long-distance calls without operator assistance. The plan began implementation in 1951. The NANPA database also tells us that area code 606 was put into service on January 1, 1955. This tells us that the play is set around March of 1957, 26 months after Magnabrayne’s phone number would have changed from something like “Covington-5000” to the 606 number given in the play. Given the 1957 setting of the play (which is probably also near in time to when the play was written), it’s not at all surprising to see the misogyny and stereotypes present in this piece.
The play itself is a short humorous play that would have been entertaining for faculty since it makes fun of a common experience. We don’t know why the play was written, whether for entertainment or some other purpose. Perhaps it was intended as a fun training tool to help orient faculty to the recruitment process for new faculty. I do find it interesting that the play is centered around recruiting a forensics professor. Forensics in this case is referring to public speaking rather than scientific analysis of physical evidence. Given Cooper’s skill with turning a phrase, this evidence of his interest in the field of forensics stood out to me. I think my favorite part of the play comes in the epilogue when Cooper basically suggests that recruiting Magnabrayne was ultimately all Myrtle Blurt’s doing:
Who can say that Mrs. Blurt may not have rendered the telling
act of consummate kindness in driving Sid Magnabrayne back to his
motel after the power went off. You know she just could have called
the Vice President and asked him to cut the power off and thereby
end those awful Beethoven symphonies. Sort of funny the way that
power came on just as she drove her guest up to the motel. He could
have stalked out of the house and headed back for Covington if that power
had not gone off during the playing of the redundant Sixth. Or perhaps
something she said about Blacksburg just convinced Sid Magnabrayne
that B-burg was the place for his Tillie and their six geniuses.
Remember, Sid Magnabrayne just could be President here some day,
and if my surmises are true, wouldn’t Myrtle Blurt have a reason to smile
knowing that she helped get old Sid Magnabrayne to sign.
The play, with a full transcription, is available on Virginia Tech Special Collections and University Archives Online.
Whiskey for the Cat, undated, likely 1960s
The last item I wanted to share today caught my eye because of the title. On the finding aid, it just said Box 6, Folder 28: “Whiskey for the Cat” n.d. (no date). How could I ever resist taking a look to see what this item was? What I found is 85 handwritten pages of what appears to be the first chapter of a novel. While the document is undated, I suspect it is set in (and likely written during) the 1960s based on a sentence on page 84: “In the brief span of the seventh decade of the twentieth century man suddenly begins to understand himself and the world in which he lives.”
As with the play, this story is set on a university campus. This time, it’s set at a fictional university in the midwest. While the book chapter is clearly in a crime or detective fiction genre, I notice what seem to me to be small bits of Cooper’s signature humor that poke through here and there. For example, the fictional university is named Enneagh University (pronounced Any University). Again, this work of fiction seems like it would most appeal to someone who had lived and worked at a university, but it’s also well written. Cooper crafts scenes well, providing just the right amount of detail for the reader to be able to imagine the scene without becoming bogged down in details. It does have some outdated language usage such as referring to the faculty and staff of a university as the “indigenous population” of a university town. Today, the term Indigenous peoples is understood to refer to the earliest known inhabitants of a geographic area and would correctly be applied to one of the many Mississippian peoples who inhabited the region referenced in the text.
Most American universities go into some
level of hibernation during the summer and anyone
who has lived through a summer in the Middle Mississippi Valley
can readily understand why summer is the idling
period of the university year. It is too hot
and sultry in the midwest during the summer for
heavy thinking. The indigenous population in a
university community – the professors and
ancillary personnel who keep the faculty in line
have had it after nine months of intensive
association with students and they need time to
regain a modicum of patience and compassion to
fortify them for the next year. The ancillary
personnel need uninterrupted time during the hot months
to clean up the accumulation of junk, paper, the
cigarette butts with their indestructible cork tips, and the
decorative graffiti deposited on desk tops, toilet stalls,
dormitory rooms, and classroom walls has to
be cleaned off or painted over. The university admini-
stration needs the summer to process its final admis-
sions of new students conduct the on-campus visitations of bewildered
parents who want to examine the environment into which
their John’s and Mary’s will move as unprepared children
(or so the parents think).
Given the length of this item, I haven’t yet had time to read it in its entirety; however, skimming through, it seems that in this first chapter (I have not noticed any point where a Chapter II begins) a university professor and his student endeavor to solve a mystery involving marijuana, organized crime, and murder on a typical American midwestern college campus. There are again stereotypes present in the work, with the professor and student being likened to Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson. There’s also possibly some racism present in the stereotypes with two criminal characters being Jose Rivera and Steuben Kessel (Kessel being noted in the text as “an alien whose work permit had run out”). But, I get the impression that this story is less blatantly misogynistic than the other works since I didn’t notice it in the portions I have read. A full transcription of this 85 page document is not yet available, but it will be on Special Collections and University Archives Online.
Looking over these three items, I notice a consistent authorial voice while also noting that Cooper can work in different genres and fit into them well. He seems equally comfortable writing a rousing inspirational speech, a situation comedy script, and a detective novel. They each fit their genre well, while still incorporating elements that can be seen in the others. These are just three folders from six boxes of material and I haven’t had time to search thoroughly to find what other stories might be in the collection, but I do hope I can find the time someday because I was very entertained by the inspiration, comedy, and drama I found in the papers of the former head of the Department of Geology.
If you’d like to look through the Byron Nelson Cooper Papers in person, you are welcome to visit us on the first floor of Newman Library. Please note, this collection is housed in off-site storage and you should contact us in advance to request materials be brought to the library for your use.
With the Halloween season upon us, our thoughts naturally turn to the eerie and macabre, and so I thought I’d tell you today about the morbid souvenirs collected by a creature who once haunted American cemeteries from coast to coast.
Okay, Homer Davis was no ghoul. But if I’d opened by saying that this would be a post about somebody who enjoyed visiting cemeteries as a pleasant past-time (as many people do) and took photos of the noteworthy graves that he found within them, you’d have been less inclined to take a moment to read about a nice little collection here in Special Collections and University Archives that deserves some attention.
The Homer E. Davis Papers (Ms2001-051) contain materials collected by a Civil War enthusiast and amateur historian, including Civil War maps, memorabilia, and publications—the types of things found in any number of other such collections. Born in 1922 and a veteran of World War II, Homer Davis was working as a stockbroker when health problems forced him into early retirement in 1971. It was this forced retirement that led to an unusual component of his collection. In his newfound leisure time, Davis began visiting and photographing the gravesites of Civil War generals. Because that’s a relatively short list of people, Davis’s interest soon expanded to the resting places of other Civil War veterans, and eventually he began documenting the graves of other noteworthy individuals, including politicians, entertainers, authors, and others. And so the Homer Davis Papers include photographs documenting approximately 12,000 gravesites in all 50 states.
Davis was hardly alone in his interest in graveyards. Cemeteries have long been frequented by those seeking a tranquil retreat or a link with our shared past. The hobby of visiting cemeteries with a view toward preservation of gravesites through photography is a relatively recent one, however. Today, millions of gravesites are photographically preserved on findagrave and other websites through the efforts of “gravers,” but during Davis’s active years, 1971-1982, few people were making a systematic effort at photographic preservation, and it’s a good bet that some of the gravesites visited by Davis have since fallen into ruin or have even disappeared, with his photographs being their only surviving record.
A few random gravesite images from among the thousands photographed by Davis: poet-author Carl Sandburg, abolitionist-statesman Frederick Douglass, and actress-singer Lillian Russell.
Though without attention to craft, seemingly composed in haste, and sometimes lacking in sharpness, Davis’s photographs preserve the setting and appearance of the subject matter. He often took multiple photos of a single gravesite, attempting not only to document the entire monument, but the inscriptions thereon. Like a good hobbyist of any kind, Davis was a stickler for details, and the verso of each photograph contains the name of the interred, the location of the grave, the date of the photograph, and a brief description of the deceased’s claim to fame. Complementing the photo collection are Davis’s cemetery research folders (one for each state and the District of Columbia), including research notes, correspondence, local maps, and—most significantly—information on individual cemeteries.
Among the lesser-knowns memorialized by Davis is Timothy Dexter (1748-1806) of Newburyport, Massachusetts, identified by Davis on the verso as an “[e]ccentric merchant and author of a humorous autobiography. The town clown.”The back of the photograph documenting the grave of Philip John Schuyler contains a mini-biography of Philip John Schuyler, Revolutionary War major general and congressman.
Tragically, Homer Davis’s life was cut short as a result of injuries received in an automobile accident during a Michigan graving excursion in 1982. When Peggy Davis, his wife and graving companion, died in 2000, Davis’s papers (and a sizable Civil War book collection), were donated to Special Collections and University Archives. (A selection of Davis’s gravesite photos from southwestern Virginia were scanned soon after the donation and may be found in our Imagebase.)
Because the Davis papers were the first that I processed at Virginia Tech, I have a bit of a soft spot for them, and I hope they’ll see more use in the future. Certainly, they’d be of interest to anybody researching general burial practices and specific burial places, or possibly the nature of celebrity, or somebody exploring graving as a hobby or even the compulsive world of hobbyists. In fact, Special Collections and University Archives and our researchers have been the ultimate beneficiary of the disparate passions of a number of hobbyists, from the collections of amateur ornithologists Eugene Law and Harold Bailey, to the railroad memorabilia collected by Wythe County’s Wayne Perkins, and from the research notes of several family and local historians to the scrapbooks of many Virginia Tech students. But none are quite as unusual as the legacy of Homer Davis.
Millard L. Foley was a bird salesman in Salem, Virginia active during the 1950s and 1960s. The M. L. Foley Collection (Ms2012-031) is a collection of correspondence related to his business. It was purchased by Special Collections and University Archives in 2012 for inclusion in our Local and Regional History and the Appalachian South collections and, despite my interest in birds, I had never had occasion to look at it before this summer. When I did look through it, I discovered some interesting correspondence between Foley and clients.
Most of the correspondence is pretty basic and rather what one would expect of correspondence from a small business offering mail-order sales. There are many inquiries from readers of Allen Publishing Company’s Game Bird Breeders, Pheasant Fanciers and Aviculture’s Gazette (also known as Bird Breeder’s Gazette or simply the Gazette). These are typically followed by a customized form-letter response. There are, however, a few series of correspondence that stand out from the rest. And there’s one in particular that caught my attention and seemed like a fun highlight for the blog.
The series of letters begins simply. Henry Safranek of Lebanon, Connecticut sends a simple inquiry to M. L. Foley asking about Elliot’s pheasant hens and Cheer pheasants. It’s short and basically the same as the other correspondence in the collection, but it begins a back-and-forth that is pretty neat to read.
Lebanon Conn. Oct 17 1959.
Mr. M.L. Foley
Dear Sir:
I am interested in buying 1 or 2 Elliot hen phesants, also pair or trio of cheers. Please let me know what you are asking for them.
Thank you Henry Safranek Lebanon Conn.
Foley sent his typical response. In a letter that is all business and responds directly to Safranek’s questions, Foley let him know that he was out of Elliot’s for the year and that he had some Cheers available. Very simple, businesslike correspondence. Nothing remarkable.
October 19, 1959
Mr. Henry Safranek Lebanon, Conn.
Dear Sir:
Thank you very much for your inquiry on ornamental pheasants. I am very sorry that I do not have any more Elliots. I sold the last pair only yesterday. I have one trio of Cheers, breeders, left. The two hens laid 43 egges this season. But I will tell you that the Cheer cock is afraid of these two hens and will breed only occasionally. Another cock will have to be placed with these hens. I am offering them at twenty dollars ($20.00) for the two hens and with or without the cock.
We would appreciate your order and give it our most prompt attention.
Yours very truly, M. L. Foley
Things start to get interesting with Safranek’s next letter. Within a couple of days, Safranek’s second letter arrives with further inquiries. He also provides some description of his prior experiences as a bird breeder and an explanation of why he is looking for an Elliot’s hen.
Lebanon Conn. Qct 23 1959
Mr. M.L. Foley
Dear Sir: Thank you for your reply to my letter and am sorry that you have no Elliots hen left. I only bought my pair last spring and lost my hen from eating rat nip. We have been troubled with pack rats this summer and one must have carried a piece of bread into their pen as I lost her the next day.
I don’t know much about rare phesants as this is my first year with them, and although your offer on the cheers is O.K. I don’t know where I could get another cock bird from. So think my best bet is trying to buy a young pair to start with.
My Elliot hen laid about 20 eggs half of which were deformed and which I did not set. Out
(2) of the 10 which I did set 5 were good but I lost them after they hatched. I had them with 6 bantam chicks under a bantam hen. I guess that they were much to flighty for her and she killed them on me the second day.
I use to raise 4 to 5 hundred ring neck under bantams each year but no longer have time to take care of that many birds, so as a past time I thought I would try a few pairs of rare phesants.
The only person that I have met that raises rare phesants around here is Mr. Steve Rebello of Sumerset Mass. who has some of the most beautiful phesants I have ever seen. I bought a young pair of Lady Amhersts from him and raised 8 young ones. I was both suprised and happy that they bred the first year.
I see by your ad. in the Gazette that you also have Erckel’s francolins. What are
(3) you asking for a young pair as I would like to try raising some.
I would also appreciate it if you could send me the name of any reliable place here on the east coast where I could buy an Elliot hen, as the express charges are so high when you have birds shiped from out west.
Thank you Henry Safranek Lebanon Conn.
Hens dead from apparently eating rat poison? Deformed eggs? A bantam chicken hen murdering all the young pheasants!? The drama in this one letter is amazing. But, the series continues. Foley doesn’t take the bait of the ornithological drama in Safranek’s letter. His response is very businesslike and indicative of his usual style of customer service. He provides the information asked for, the appropriate prices, and an offer of service, but doesn’t delve into the tales of troubles with the birds.
October 31, 1959
Mr. Henry Safranek Lebanon, Conn.
Dear Sir:
Ralph Meachum of Rockingham, N. C. or Walter Oakie of Winston Salem, N. C. will probably have an Elliot hen for sale. I visited them a short time ago and they had some at that time. I would say that the express charges would be about seven dollars.
Ihave one pair of proven breeders in Erckels and one pair of this years hatch left. Am offering the breeders at $25.00 and the young at $10.00. You should be able to get a Cheer cock from Meachum or Oakie or Rebello for about $8.00. If you should like to have any of these birds, I would be glad to ship them , upon reply from you.
Yours very truly, M. L. Foley
Then, we suddenly have a letter from Safranek for an order of some Erckel’s Francolins. What’s odd is that this letter is in cursive and the handwriting seems very different from the printed text in the other letters. I thought at first that this might have been a letter from Henry Safranek and that the others were possibly from his son. In researching that, I discovered that the author of these letters was likely Henry Safranek, Junior (born September 1, 1927; died September 17, 1991). So, I was correct that the letters were written by Henry junior but he was 32 years old at the time and, as far as I could find, didn’t have children of his own, so they weren’t written by a child with this one by a parent. I did, however, find that he had a sister and, from a later letter, I know he lived near or with his mother. So, maybe one of them wrote this letter for him? Anyway, other than that, everything seems to be in order. Maybe we’re done talking about dead birds? Is this the end of our dramatic correspondence?
Lebanon Conn. Nov. 7, 1959
Mr. Foley, Dear Sir,
Thank you for the nice letter you sent me and the information I asked for about the Eliott Hen.
Enclosed you will find a check for $10.00 for which I want you to send me a pair of the young Erckels you wrote about in your letter
So kindly send by express to my nearest station which is.
Henry Safranek Willimantic, Conn.
over.
I thank you again yours,
Henry Safranek. Kick Hill Rd. Lebanon. Conn.
I wasn’t able to find a response to the order letter from Foley. Presumably, he sent the Erckel’s Francolins with a note and the note wasn’t copied into the collection. Our next entry in the series is from Safranek again. This letter is much longer and we have yet another dead bird! This time, the weather seems to be to blame. Safranek asks about housing conditions for the young birds, debeaking the birds to combat possible cannibalism, and recommendations for breeders to purchase another hen from.
Lebanon Conn. Nov. 19 1959
Mr. M.L. Foley
Dear Sir:
I received my birds Tuesday afternoon, and they arrived in very good shape. They were O.K. but today Friday when I came home from work I found the hen dead. we have had a week of very cold weather It hasn’t been above 32° since they came and has been down to 14°. I will now have to locate another hen. Do you leave your francolins out all winter? I have a small coop in their pen which they have been using. and they have plenty of cover. They are a rather pretty bird. and I sure hope to be able to raise them. would you know where I might buy another hen. I see that you have debeacked them, do they
(2) have a tendency to be cannibalistic?
I really don’t have any idea as to how to produce higher fertility in phesants, as never was faced with that problem when raising ring necks. I always keep extra cocks and in the spring used those that were most aggressive and showed the most development. Also having the breeding pens together where the cocks could see each other seemed to help, by making them jealus I would say.
I have only one pair each of phesants so I am afraid that I will have to just rely on luck and will try your feeding program on them, for now. I believe that to much interbreeding has been one of the reason that rare phesants have this draw back.
I sent to Paul R Hartzog of Niles Michigan for my Elliot hen and also bought a pair of black or dark throated goldens from him. They are the best birds that I have bought so far. My first Elliots came from North Carolina and although they were feathered beautifully they had crooked.
(3) toes and that has been enough to stop me from buying any more from him. When you pay 35 to 40 dollars a pair for birds plus express I think that you should get the best or at least should be told before hand, about such things. I also bought a pair of young Blue Manchurians from him that are extremely nice and hope to raise some this comming spring.
I would appreciate any information that you found helpful in raising your Elliots as my chicks were so active that is what must have prompted the hen to kill them as I wrote you in my last letter.
I always used eggs and hand pressed cottage cheese on my young phesants beside keeping good phesant starter in front of them.
Also in regards to higher fertility in phesants I read where one breeder put his cocks under lights for about 4 to 6 weeks before putting them in with his hens. This proved to be very helpful in making game phesants and don’t know how it would work with ornamentals.
(4) If you have extra birds that you could try it with it might prove to be beneficial.
As I have only started last spring with rare phesants, will have to rely on the trial and erro system for now. I sure appreciate any information anyone gives me that they find helpful and might be helpful to me.
Thank you + Regards. Henry Safranek
Next, we get a letter from Foley expressing condolences for the dead bird and providing advice on raising the birds and on who to buy a new hen from. Still avoiding that drama. Things are still businesslike but a bit of Foley’s personality begins to show through. It’s a bit more personal than any of the other letters so far.
November 29, 1959
Dear Sir:
Was very sorry to here that the hen died. I am quite sure that it died of shock. Although we had not had any freezing weather until a few days after I shipped them. Shock is usually what kills birds in shipment also. I have seen healthy birds die just from catching them in the pen and releasing them again in a few minutes. Either from shock or a heart attack. In very hot weather I never disturb my birds at all. When they start to flying or beating against the wire they may die from shock or over exertion or a heart attack. I am by no means an expert on birds or claim to be. I am just relating to you my own personal experiences. Francolins will pick feathers as much as any of the other birds. I set my eggs under bantams but put them in an incubator the last two days for hatching. From sad experience I have found it is better to raise the young in brooders rather than under hens. Especially the rarer birds. As for putting the cocks under lights I would think that the hen would start laying too soon and you would lose some eggs from freezing unless you checked very closely many times a day. I lost some last year and am not nearly as far north as you. I intend to to go to North Carolina soon and will try to locate another hen for you. If you can get one I will ship it and will give you a pair of Nice Goldens. The freight want be any more. Where did you get the Manchurians?
Sincerely, M. L. Foley
The next letter from Safranek is another lengthy discussion of his bird raising experiences. The discussions are becoming more of a back and forth at this point and less of a customer spilling their troubles out to a vendor. At this point, it’s apparent there is a bit of familiarity developing between the two.
Lebanon Conn. Dec. 14 1959.
Mr. M. L. Foley
Dear Sir:
I received the birds today Monday and they are all O.K.. I want to thank you for your trouble in getting me the Erckel’s hen and also for the pair of goldens, which you sent. If I have any luck with my birds next year, will send you either a pr. of Dark Throated goldens, or a pair of Amhersts, if you would like them.
I have been away on vacation all last week so did not read your letters until this Saturday. I called the Express office at once but they did not have the birds in. They came tonight at 5:30 Dec. 14th.
Since I wrote to you the last time I ordered a pair each of Swinhoe’s and versicolors, from Paul Hartzog. Which I have received.
I am afraid that I am buying more birds then I will be able
(2) to handle and have called it quits for this year.
I now have 10 pr. of phesants counting your goldens plus the Erckel’s a 2 year old pr. of Black Shouldered Peacocks and a 2 year old trio of Blue’s all of which I bought last fall I have all my phesants together in one large 18’x24′ pen, with the exception of the Blue Manchurian which have a 12’x18′ pen of there own. I bought my manchurians from “OAKIE”. They have gave me no trouble so far in keeping them all together and hope to be able to leave them that way until about the first of March when I will seperate them.
I bought a pair each of cheers, Bel’s and w.c. Kalij from Mitchell’s game farm in Anchorville Mich, and would have sent them back if I knew for sure that I would have gotten my money all back. They were the most bed ridden birds that I have ever seen. I have had them about a month now and still cannot get my crested Kalj hen looking like anything. She was almost dead when I got her, so I wrote to them about it but never did get an answer. They were like rails and had the dullest looking feathers, no shine and even
(3) the coloring around their eyer was a very dull almost purple color. I have been feeding them graded raw carrots + grapefruit skins, which they seem to like very well especaly the cheers. Plus cooked potatoes and pears. Beside keeping a mixture of 50% scratch feed and 50% Turkey fatting pellets in front of them at all times.
They have all begun to look like something now, but I have little hope for the w. c. Kalj hen.
The Erckel’s male has become a real pet and hope that before long will have him eating out of my hand.
I only want one more pair of phesants and they are Impeyans which I hope to afford next fall.
In regards to using lights on phesants, you only use them on your cocks. For about 4 to 5 weeks before putting them in with your hens. I wish that I could remember where I had read that article and could send it to you. I do know that Beacon Feeds made reference to it in there pamphlet on raising phesants and will try ang get you one of there booklets the next time that I am near one of there feed stores.
(4) Enclosed you will find a check for $5.00. I want to thank you again for your troubles and the goldends and hope to repay you some day.
Regards. Henry Safranek Kick Hill Rd. Lebanon Conn
The next letter comes after the new year from Foley to Safranek, though it is addressed “Dear Sir” and there is no indication in the letter just to who the letter is directed. I was able to determine that this is a letter to Safranek based on the letter that follows it. That letter from Safranek to Foley in mid-January is sadly the last in this series. In these two letters we learn more about these men than in any others in the series. Foley is a hobbyist beekeeper in addition to raising and selling birds. Foley also apparently co-owned a construction firm as his main job. We learn so much in this letter about him. Then, in the following one, we learn about Safranek. We learn that he lives within proximity to his mother (possibly with her, but that’s unclear) and that he used to be in the Army.
January 10, 1960
Dear Sir:
We really enjoyed the maple syrup on buckwheat cakes yesterday. Thank you very much. Hope you liked the honey. I have ten stands of bees that I try to take care of plus the birds. The bees are a lot of work at certain times but I enjoy doing it. This year I had 210 pounds from eight of the stands which is a reasonable average for this area. The other two were or are new swarms. They wern’t in too good condition when I bought them and it took most of last year to build them up. I have a really fancy set up for a hobby bee keeper. I like everything about abeet keeping bees except the bottling of the honey, and that is really a job. I live only a few blocks from downtown Salem and four miles from the heart of Roanoke. The city limits ajoin. So there isn’t to much bloon for the bees. If you have any spare time you might try them as another hobby.
I am half owner of this company and we do from small to medium commercial work. We just completed a $116,000.00 sewer line construction in Mt. Hope, W. Va. We have about a $60,00.00 job to start soon in Morgantown, West Va. We work all over W. Va. and most of eastern Virginia. I have to depend a lot on my wife to take care of my birds, but so far I have been able to work close to home during the egg laying and hatching season. I don’t think it is going to work that way this year.
I have 12 pens 15×10 ft, 3 pens 14×15, 3 pens 15×17 and 1 pen 12x 30ft. All are 7′ high. Hve just finished a 12x36x12 ft high duck pen. Am waiting on my Federal permit to get a pair of wood ducks. The duck pen has a spring in it and I buried an old bath tub in the spring to make a duck pond. Therefore have plenty of clean water and no trouble. Hope to get a pair of Mandarin ducks soon. Also have seven 4×8 pens with wire floors. You must absolutely raise your Cheers on wire until they are nearly fully grown.
I have as breeders the following, 1 pr Blue Manchurian 1 trio Cheer 1pr Silvers 1 trio Golden 2 trio Reeves 1pr Erckels 2 pr Elliots 1 pr & 1 trio Swinho 1 trio Amherst 1 pr W G Kalij and also had Blacknecks Ringnecks Mutants and Bobwhite quail but am not going to raise any more of the last four.
This is too much letter, so long,
M. L. Foley
Lebanon Conn. Jan. 14, 1960
Dear Sir: Mr. Foley
I received your very nice letter today and am glad that you enjoyed the maple syrup. I wanted to get it to you for Christmas but, the store where I usually buy it was all out and they had to order more. You know how long it takes to get things around christmas. I also want to thank you for the honey, which we have been using to glaze sweet potatoes an to base chickens with, when we roast them..
At one time there were a lot of bees kept around this area but since about the early 40s most of the small farms which had them have been turned over to raising chickens and everything that one thinks of as a quaint little farm has just about dissapeared, from around this area.
Although we live out in the country about 7 miles from Willimantic and 35 miles east of Hartford, I own less then an acre of land and have to depend on using my neighbors land for raising any thing.
I have just finished cutting enough cedar poles to build a 30 x 125 foot pen this spring and hope to start some small pens to raise my young ones in this weekend. I have always raised my young ones in small pens 2x4x2 with a 1×2 ft. coop at one end. This worked out very well for me and will take care of a hen and about 12 chicks for 2 to 3 weeks. Moving them every day to new grownd is the only problem. I am glad that you told me about the cheers so will have to make other arangements for them. I did try a small battery brooder once and had leg trouble with my birds so have never tried it since.
That sure was a very nice deer that you got this fall and you should be proud of it. I don’t do any hunting myself, We do spend alot of time at the shore though. I have a small runabout with a 35 horse motor on it and spend almost every Saturday and Sunday water skying claming, Crabbing or just riding around on Lond Island Sound with it.
I’m afraid that I am also guilty of havnig to have someone take care of my birds. I have to be at work at 7 am so my mother feedsand waters them in the morning and when I get home I do what is left to be done. Mother is always giving me hell for having stuff around and having to take care of it but she really enjoys it as much as I do.
An old army buddy of mine came from Roanoke and always wanted me to come home with him but I never did. I was stationed in the Honor Guard at Washington D.C. for 2 years and had plenty of opportunity to make a trip down with him, but I’m not fond of really hot weather and D.C. was enough for me. He had and old motorcycle which he pushed back and forth on. I think I could have taken it. I did make several trips to Luray and up into Cumbland Maryland. Infact we took a trip to Luray this fall up though Penn. into New York it is very nicecountry down through there and my Mother and Aunt really did enjoy it. I wanted to take the (over)
entire sky Line drive into Winston Salem and back through Norfolk Va. along the coast home. We met some very nice people at Luray caverns who said that Spring is the best time to go South when all of the Roderdendrums are in blossom so we decided to make that trip another time. We enjoy travling very much. So from now until spring I will have to really get busy and get all my pens made. Because when the summer comes we are off. We are planing on making a trip through Canada and around the Great Lakes this year if all goes well.
Regards Henry Safranek Lebanon. Conn.
These last two letters are very personal and there seems to be a genuine connection. Sadly, I do not know whether the two ever met in person or whether their correspondence continued. Foley continued writing letters over the next few years but there are no more in the collection to or from Safranek. Foley’s main correspondent from this point on is a man in Barranquilla, Colombia named Jose Raimundo Sojo who helped Foley source ducks for his bird business. I have yet to fully read that correspondence but if I find any more bird murders, I’ll be sure to blog about those letters, too. Of course, you can stop by Special Collections and University Archives and look through all the letters yourself! Just ask for the M. L. Foley Collection (Ms2012-031).
Not quite a year ago, I took a call at the Special Collections and University Archives reference desk from Dr. Henry H. Bauer, Emeritus Professor of Chemistry and Science Studies and Emeritus Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences here at Virginia Tech. Dr. Bauer had been contacted not long before by a researcher exploring the life of British author Digby George Gerahty, better known by pseudonyms Stephen Lister and Robert Standish. Hoping to pass them along to his new acquaintance, Dr. Bauer wished to retrieve from the papers he donated to SCUA in the 1990s any copies of his brief correspondence with Gerahty in the summer and fall of 1980.
I was intrigued as to the exact contents of the correspondence, but thought I had a good sense of how the exchange would read. Maybe Gerahty wrote to pick Dr. Bauer’s brain about the particulars of some chemical reaction he wished to feature in a story. Maybe he wrote to run some dialogue by Dr. Bauer to ensure a scientist character sounded authentic. Surely, Gerahty was the one seeking information and surely the answer would be based in some cold, hard truth tested a thousand times in a sterile lab.
You must realize from the title of this post that I had set myself up for a bit of a shock.
With the growth of a literate middle class and the greater availability and affordability of paper and printing, childrens literature came into its own in the mid-19th century, and here in Special Collections and University Archives, we hold many of examples of colorful, richly illustrated childrens literature from the late 19th / early 20th century.
Included within our holdings are at least two movable books, publications that enhanced young childrens reading experiences by allowing them, though the use of pull tabs, flaps, and other gimmicks, to simulate action. Among our holdings are at least two examples of movable books: a reprint of Ernest Nisters Revolving Pictures (1892) and a 1979 reprint of The Dolls House by Lothar Meggendorfer, considered the father of the pop-up book, a form that continues to be very popular today.
Though his books didnt rely on movable parts, Peter Newell (1862-1924) was an innovator in creating novelties that appealed to young readers. The rare book collection includes two unusual books published by Newell. In both The Shadow Show and The Hole Book, as well as his other works, Newell manipulated the book form to help tell his stories.
Peter Newel (frontispiece from Through the Looking-Glass (1901))
Peter S. H. Newell (1862-1924) was born to a family of farmers in Illinois. He studied at the Art Students League and by the time he was in his mid-twenties had become a popular illustrator for various periodicals, his work regularly appearing in such publications as Harpers Weekly, Scribners Magazine, and The Saturday Evening Post. He was particularly noted for his imaginative caricatures, some of which would be regarded today as racially insensitive.
In The Hole Book (1908), also one of Newells more popular works, the story follows the path of an errant bullet as it causes mayhem through a neighborhood. The storys inventiveness is found in Newells imaginative use of an actual small, round hole that pierces each successive illustration in the book.
A sample illustration and rhyme from The Hole Book
Similarly, The Slant Book (1910) tells the story of a runaway baby carriage, with the story being enhanced by the books shape, which, instead of the usual rectangle, is a slanted rhomboid. (Newman Library holds a 1966 reprint of The Slant Book in its circulating collection.) Newells idea for The Slant Book led him to file a patent claim, in which he wrote, In books made according to my invention the shape of the book itself and of the pages therein suggests the action or motion in which is intended to characterize the illustration contained therein. Newell was granted patent 970,943 on September 20, 1910. It was one of several patents granted to Newell for book and toy designs.
Newells A Shadow Show (1896) relies on the translucency of paper for its gimmick. Rather than telling a story, the book simply presents a series of rather oddly contrived colored illustrations. When the reader flips the page, the previous pages illustration appears in silhouette, revealing a much different subject. Unfortunately, the copy in the rare book collection has not held up well over time, and the illustrations have all transferred to adjacent pages, making the silhouettes difficult to distinguish.
A sample from A Shadow Show(Due to the condition of the original, this digital copy has been altered for illustrative purposes.)
Newell is perhaps best remembered for his first book, Topsys and Turvys (1893) and its two sequels. In the Topsys and Turvys series, each page contains an illustration and accompanying first line of a rhyming couplet as a caption. When the page is inverted, a much different illustration is revealed, and the caption appearing below the flipped image completes the rhyming couplet, explaining the illustration. Illustrations from these books continue to be frequently used as examples of optical illusions. A digitized version of The first Topsys and Turvys book may be found on the Library of Congress website.
In addition to providing illustrations for popular magazines and publishing his own books, Newell also illustrated the works of other authors of childrens literature, chief among them, perhaps, being his illustrated edition of Through the Looking-Glass (1901), which also may be found in the rare books collection. Later, Newell tried his hand at comic strip illustration. For 18 months in 1906/1907, Newells The Naps of Polly Sleepyhead appeared among such acknowledged comic strip pioneers as Buster Brown and Little Nemo in Slumberland. A second strip, Wishing Willy, wasnt so successful and lasted through only six installments in 1913.
Id planned here to provide the briefest of overviews on our holdings in childrens literature but instead got sidetracked by this Peter Newell tangent. Suffice it to say, the few books mentioned here comprise just the smallest part our childrens literature holdings, many of which overlap with our collection focus areas in the history of food and drink, the Civil War, local and regional history, etc. Together, these works can provide a different perspective on their subject matter or be used to examine popular culture and early childhood education in earlier eras. Or they can can simply be enjoyed for what they were intended: fun reading for the young and young at heart.
The title of this occasional series may be something of a misnomer, as the materials discussed arent hidden at all but instead are readily located through existing online discovery tools. Still, though adequately described for retrieval, these items may remain hidden to interested users who overlook them because they’re housed in such unlikely locations.
Any manuscript repository of significant size or age is bound to have its share of outliers, collections that simply dont fit into any of the repositorys primary focus areas but somehow find their way into the repository, through one route or another. With our collection focuses here in Special Collections at Virginia Tech being well known, researchers recognize us as a go-to resource for primary and secondary sources in several subject areas, including university history , women in architecture, the history of food and drink, local and regional history, and the Civil War in Virginia. The casual user, however, may be surprised to learn that a number of our collections dont relate to any of these things. Many of these are legacy collections, materials that were acquired before the department narrowed its scope to a few well-defined focus areas.
And that explanation brings me today to write about an item that we simply call the Wyoming Photograph Album (Ms2017-026), which had been housed within the department for a number of years before recently being made more widely accessible through the creation of an online finding aid.
Measuring 11 x 12 inches and containing 75 photos, the album documents the journey of a group of unidentified menmost likely a surveying teamthrough central Wyoming around the turn of the 20th century. A photo on the first page of the album, bearing the stenciled title “A Trip Up the Sweetwater River, explains the event commemorated by the collection.
On the pages that follow, the albums anonymous creator has pasted photos that chronicle a journey that was deemed of sufficient personal significance to be memorialized.
The albums first few pages include photos of several public buildings and private residences in Cheyenne. While Cheyenne isnt on the Sweetwater River, the city was likely the departure point for the groups journey. From Cheyenne, the group made its way north to Glendo, then westward to Casper, and eventually south to the Sweetwater, with a photographer documenting the landmarks of both the natural and built environments throughout the trip.
Oregon State Capitol, completed in 1890
Wool freighters and oil refinery, Casper, Wyoming
Bothwell’s Dam, Sweetwater River
Schoonmaker’s Dam at Devil’s Gate, Sweetwater River
Cowley’s Dam, Sweetwater River
Castle Rock, Wyoming
Included among the photos are images of ranches, livestock, dams, rock formations, rivers, and mountains. Together with these sights, the scrapbook records the surveyors at work and hints at the hazards of early travel across the plains of Wyoming.
This photo of a broken wagon near a ditch (referred to elsewhere in several places as Bothwells Ditch) is captioned Breakdown.
Elsewhere, the scrapbook records the simple pleasures of camp life, as in the chow-time photo below, captioned Camp Sweetwater. The inclusion of a National Biscuit Company crate in this photo allows us to somewhat narrow the date of the photograph, as National Biscuit (today better known as Nabisco) was formed in 1898.
This detail from the camp photo, showing a young fellow enjoying a biscuit, allows us to place the album within a broad timeframe.
The team eventually made its way into Wyomings gold- and iron-mining region, and several photographs document the areas mining enterprises and settlements. The level of clarity in some of these images is remarkable, and the photos provide a glimpse into early development in the area.
Mine at Lewiston, Wyoming
Clarissa Mine, Atlantic City, Wyoming
Freight team, Atlantic City, Wyoming
Atlantic City, Wyoming
The scrapbook ends, as we may assume the journey also did, near the Wind River Mountains in western Wyoming. Unfortunately, the final photograph, captioned A Remembrance of the Past and which may have provided some clue as to the identity of the scrapbooks creator, was removed.
At least one photograph in the album is attributed to C. C. Carlisle, and a little online digging led to information on a Charles C. Carlisle (born 1876). His biographical sketch in I. S. Bartletts History of Wyoming (1918) notes that Carlile, a civil engineer, worked in various capacities connected with waterworks and civil engineering during the first two decades of the 20th century. An article in the June 16, 1904 edition of the Wyoming Tribune mentions that a survey of the central part of the state being conducted by assistant state engineer Carlisle had measured the Sweetwater River at Devils Gate. It seems safe to conclude that this is the survey documented by the photo album. Further digging by an interested researcher might reveal whether Carlisle compiled the album.
Outlier collections sometimes contain outliers of their own. Tucked into the front of this album, consisting entirely of Wyoming scenes, is a photograph of a man on horseback at Gibson Park, Great Falls, Montana in 1899. The man is identified as Wallace Coburn.
Wallace Coburn, Gibson Park, Great Falls, 1899
Wallace David Coburn (1872-1954), a Great Falls rancher who gained national renown as a cowboy-poet through publication of his Rhymes from a Round-up Camp, later operated a movie theatre. The theatre serving as his springboard into the field of motion-picture entertainment, Coburn established his own film studio, Great West Film Company. Great West appears to have produced only one film The Sunset Princess, based on Coburns own poem, Yellowstone Petes Only Daughter. The would-be mogul later appeared in a few films produced by others, most notably the silent anti-German propaganda film, The Kaiser, the Beast of Berlin. Why Coburns photo appears in this album devoted to a survey of the Sweetwater River will likely remain unknown.
The Wyoming Photograph Album would of course be of interest to anybody researching irrigation and development along the Sweetwater River, early Cheyenne architecture, and the regions mining history. (Astute researchers could undoubtedly make some connections that I havent even considered.) So while this stand-alone collection may seem a misfit of sorts housed here among our collections, its potential value to interested researchers makes it worth a little extra promotion on our part. The album can also serve as a reminder to researchers in other subject areas not to overlook far-flung resources when searching for relevant materials.
This semester, I embarked on a new adventure: Teaching a Lifelong Learning Institute (LLI) class! From their website: “The Lifelong Learning Institute at Virginia Tech is a member-driven, volunteer organization that draws on the wealth of academic and community resources in the New River Valley to provide intellectual, cultural, and social experiences for curious adults 50 and older.” My course is called “Finding Hidden Treasures in the Archives” and its goal is to introduce the students to Virginia Tech Special Collections and University Archives, as well as learn the basic of archives/special collections generally. Since much of our instruction in the department is based around 1 session with students (2, if we’re lucky), this 5-session course with 9 students has given me a place to experiment and try out some crazy ideas! We started the first Monday in October and have one final session on the 29th. Each week, we’ve had a theme, a mini lecture on the theme & how it relates to our materials/how our materials represent the theme, learned about special collections resources, and gone hands-on with materials.
Here’s what we’ve been up to (in short form–more details in a moment):
Week 1:An Introduction to Special Collections and Archives–Who we are; What we do and why we do it; What we collect
Week 2:War and Conflict–a look at the home fronts and the battlefields of the Civil War, World War I, and World War II
Week 3:Hidden and Silent Voices–documenting and discussing underrepresented communities
Week 4:History of Science–a crash course in engineering, flight, aerospace, and technological marvels
(and coming up on Monday, for Week 5:Society and Pop Culture–celebration through song, advertising, food and drink, andfun locations–essentially, what people do with leisure time)
The cover slide for Week 2 featured a letter I’ve actually blogged about before, which contains a drawing of a bird (https://scuablog.lib.vt.edu/2017/11/20/ansil-t-bartlett-letter/)
Although I had some plans at the outset, I’ve also tried to be proactive and flexible. So, if the students were interested in a particular topic or had particular questions, I’ve tried to visit and address those through the materials and themes. As a result, some recurring “bits” have evolved. Each week, we talk about challenges to collecting materials around the theme (from the archives perspective) and challenges to researching around that theme (from the researcher perspective). So, for example, when we talked about underrepresented and minority communities:
Each week, we’ve also talked about the kinds of materials in we have that include representation of the theme. Of course, that can vary, but it’s allow us to talk about the wide range of formats we house in Special Collections. This past week, while talking about the history of science, technology, and science fiction, we looked at personal and professional manuscript materials, photographs, published books, secondary sources, maps, and even listened to part of recording of a 1969 “Face the Nation” interview with Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, and Michael Collins (digitized from reel-to-reel). Since the Michael Collins collection also includes artifacts and even a painting, it was also a great opportunity to talk about some 3-D objects like this statue and our 19th century stove:
Each week, we’ve also talked about and looked at resources available through Special Collections: digital collections, finding aids, catalog records, and LibGuides. I’ve made up one “cheat sheet” for our resources and collections, and hope to have another done for our final session about locating materials online and at other archives and special collections. And as the final part of each week, we go hands-on with materials. Some of initial plans have gone out the window, but during our week on war and conflict, I tried something new. We had nine items (three from the Civil War, three from World War I, and three from World War II), one for each student. They had a few minutes to study their item and come up with some keywords. Using a whiteboard, we were able to list out some of those keywords and see where the similarities and differences emerged across and between conflicts.
The nice thing about teaching around a theme is that I’ve been able to look for–and find–connections between our main subject areas that I might not have otherwise considered. So, for example, when we talked about the history of science/technology, I started thinking about transportation. I pulled together a picture of a mule-driven team for hauling coal, images of railroad engines, and pictures taken of the lunar module from Apollo XI. The idea of getting from one form of transport to another was something I had certainlythoughtabout, but never put together in this specific way to share with an audience. And the thing that has surprised me is how many questions the students have! (The “curious” part of the description of LLI is no lie!) There are lots of questions about the materials, but also many on the more practical, logistical, and functional aspects of archivists and archives (or what I lovingly call “how the sausage is made”). While I love to talk about these topics, when teaching a single 50 minute session, you don’t usually have time to get into those kinds of details. The majority of my work is behind-the-scenes, with a focus on making materials accessible, so it’s fun to able to talk about what I do in a day, show people the finished product, and share my enthusiasm forwhy I do it.
While we still have a week to go, I have had SO MUCH FUN teaching this course. I’m especially looking forward to our last week, when we’ll look at diaries, sheet music, photographs, ephemera from social events, a scrapbook, and food & cocktail history (among other things). There is a lot we have historically done with our leisure time, but we don’t often try to talk about all of it at once! So, I hope we get to talk about why we do them (what makes them “fun”), what these kinds of activities have in common, and how they differ. Instruction isn’t something I do too often, but I love engaging with students of any age, when it gives me a chance to be an advocate for archives. I really enjoy sharing our collections and connecting students (and researchers) to materials. With this LLI class, I think we’re all learning from each other….and having fun!
Use one or more images to create your own #VTArchivesRemix
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Use one or more images to create your own #VTArchivesRemix
Make an animation. Make a gif. Make a collage. Write some microfiction. Write a poem. Get out your digital black-out marker to create some redacted poetry. Make something entirely unique that was inspired by an image or string of text. Remix and stretch your creativity. Archives are here to inspire!
Archives matter. They preserve records of human history and offer glimpses into the past. Historians mine them for the sources that make up their books and artists, musicians, and writers pull inspiration for their creative works. Genealogists seek out threads of family history and alumni find scholastic treasures.
October is American Archives Month and to celebrate special collections departments everywhere we’re holding an Archives Remix event all month long. Take some inspiration from the Virginia Tech Library archives and stretch your creative muscles by producing a visual or written work that uses one or more of the VT Special Collections images that are posted above.
Share your work on social media (Twitter or Instagram), tag #VTArchivesRemix and @VT_SCUA, and let us know which image(s) inspired your work. We’ll be sharing your artwork and written pieces all month long!
Send us your creations:
Crumbling under the weight of words:
Send us a piece of microfiction inspired by one or more of the images. Economy is key, so make sure to exercise efficiency of language. Submissions should be 200 words or less.
Altered images:
Use one or more of the images to create a new visual work. Think beyond boundaries and remix the images with your own work or repeat elements of the same picture to create something entirely new. Stills or animations, collages, videos, photographs, memeswe want to see it all.
Brief and bold:
Poetry is the ultimate in brevity and elegance of prose–no room for stray words or useless turns of phrase. Take inspiration from a fleeting image or line of text. Redact words on an existing page to unveil something entirely new. We can’t wait to read your poems, written or redacted.
Choose from the following images to inspire your own works:
Use one or more images to create your own #VTArchivesRemix
Use one or more images to create your own #VTArchivesRemix
Use one or more images to create your own #VTArchivesRemix
Use one or more images to create your own #VTArchivesRemix
Use one or more images to create your own #VTArchivesRemix
Use one or more images to create your own #VTArchivesRemix
Use one or more images to create your own #VTArchivesRemix
Use one or more images to create your own #VTArchivesRemix
Use one or more images to create your own #VTArchivesRemix
Use one or more images to create your own #VTArchivesRemix
Use one or more images to create your own #VTArchivesRemix
Use one or more images to create your own #VTArchivesRemix
Use one or more images to create your own #VTArchivesRemix
Use one or more images to create your own #VTArchivesRemix
Use one or more images to create your own #VTArchivesRemix
Use one or more images to create your own #VTArchivesRemix
Use one or more images to create your own #VTArchivesRemix
Use one or more images to create your own #VTArchivesRemix
Use one or more images to create your own #VTArchivesRemix
Use one or more images to create your own #VTArchivesRemix
Use one or more images to create your own #VTArchivesRemix
Use one or more images to create your own #VTArchivesRemix
Use one or more images to create your own #VTArchivesRemix
Use one or more images to create your own #VTArchivesRemix
Use one or more images to create your own #VTArchivesRemix
Use one or more images to create your own #VTArchivesRemix
Use one or more images to create your own #VTArchivesRemix
Use one or more images to create your own #VTArchivesRemix
Use one or more images to create your own #VTArchivesRemix
Use one or more images to create your own #VTArchivesRemix
Use one or more images to create your own #VTArchivesRemix
Use one or more images to create your own #VTArchivesRemix
Use one or more images to create your own #VTArchivesRemix
Use one or more images to create your own #VTArchivesRemix
Images from VT Special Collections
Use one or more images to create your own #VTArchivesRemix
Use one or more images to create your own #VTArchivesRemix
Use one or more images to create your own #VTArchivesRemix
Use one or more images to create your own #VTArchivesRemix
Use one or more images to create your own #VTArchivesRemix
Use one or more images to create your own #VTArchivesRemix
Need a little extra inspiration?
Read this incredibly moving microfiction piece, Sticks,by George Saunders.
View some collages and gifs from the Mid-Atlantic Region Archivists Conference (MARAC) and from the Library of Congress.
Rachel Visser, We Love Our Demon Daughter, courtesy of MARAC Archives Remix Contest.
Spirit, image courtesy of MARAC Archives Remix Contest.
Gif created by jekahben and shared courtesy of MARAC Archival Remix contest.
Heather Dillion, In Pursuit of Escher, courtesy Smithsonian Magazine.
Matthew Farris, Compiled telephoto shots of elk roaming a barren, reclaimed strip mine, Image courtesy Smithsonian Magazine photography contest submission.
Learn about redacted poetry and read some phenomenal examples.
Delve into practice with this Atlantic article about the process Lydia Davis uses to create her very short stories. It’s worth visiting just to read her 69-word composition In a House Besieged.
Check out the following link if you want to see more images and consider also entering the Virginia Archives Month 2018 Archival Oddities Remix Contest.
Among the many things to admire about Olive Chadeayne are her devotion to detail, her naturalistic sensibility, and her ability to effortlessly merge the two. Undoubtedly, the artful blend of looseness and rigidity in her renderings makes them delightfully appealing. There can be something preternatural about architectural drawings – human-made constructions floating around in space can feel a touch unearthly, even austere and uninhabitable. This is perhaps why the loosely freehanded plants, shrubs, and trees in Chadeaynes work can appear so beautiful, even though, examined on an isolated basis, they might appear insubstantial. Their effortless inexactitude is a perfect foil to the precision of an elaborately drawn house – a softening of interrelating straightedges.
Ms1990-057, Olive Chadeayne, Folder 17
Ms1990-057, Olive Chadeayne, Folder 17
Ms1990-057, Olive Chadeayne, Folder 17
Its wonderful to look at a drawing and be greeted by an ameboid palm, a delicate swirl of eucalyptus or pine, the diaphanous outline of an elm, or the weightless curlicue of a shrub. They lend textural complexity and balance to an image, along with other highly stylized details.
Ms1990-057, Olive Chadeayne, Folder 17
Ms1990-057, Olive Chadeayne, Folder 17
Ms1990-057, Olive Chadeayne, Folder 17
Ms1990-057, Olive Chadeayne, Folder 20
Residence for Lineaweaver, September 1940
Of course, inexactitudes and approximations abound in architectural drawings. Architects and designers see these as collaborative gestures toward a client, for whom they want to grant enough space to impose their own creative vision. The looseness can be an invitation to play and imagine – a blurring of boundaries between architect and client, between dwellings and natures endless bounty. Enjoy!
