Friday!

This is a BIG day. A HUGE day. 

Mostly it's a day of waiting.

Today is the day I find out whether or not I was accepted into the MLIS program. That's Masters of Library and Information Science. Yes folks, I am looking to be an archivist and/or librarian. 

Years ago I got to work at the Fort Sill Field Artillery Museum in the collections department. And part of my time there was spent doing an inventory of their collections: over 100,000 items across 5 buildings. Items as tiny as service medals to items as large as tanks. And I loved it. My parents are both interested in history and were able to draw me in through the narrative of personal items and places. 

Full disclosure: my parents were Civil War reenactors. And oh yes, my brother and I got to play along too. As a young teen this was not my preferred way to spend the weekend (and I spent most weekends with my nose in a book) but you couldn't help overhearing people talk about the reasons they were drawn into the micro culture of reenacting. And for ALL of them it was a love of history. There was some amazingly fun times: impromptu baseball games, everyone playing instruments around the campfire, when we camped next to the Calvary and they'd let you brush the horses. There was also the heat, and the bugs, and the fact that no matter how hard I tried I looked like I'd been hit by a very tiny, very selective tornado. 

But there was the always the pull of the personal items and books from the era that people would bring along to show and share:a woman's diary from 1863 that detailed her wardrobe, household affairs and how to plan meals with the food shortage; Daguerreotypes of soldiers long gone. Every person I met was a historian by choice, and it was fascinating. 

As for my own interest in history, it is far reaching and widespread. I love to read accounts of people from various points in time. I love to see the artifacts in museums and libraries. I like to imagine how people saw their world as we see our own: unremarkable and everlasting.

I am hoping very much that I'll be accepted into the program. I would love to be a part of a society that preserves the past, makes items available to the public, and keeps an eye to the future. 

And that picture up above? Those are Garden Goddess Stones. They were inspired by Byzantine icons and matryoshka. There's a tutorial over here.