The Artifact Project

THE ARTIFACT PROJECT Stories from the collections of the Grand Rapids Public Museum

THE ARTIFACT PROJECT Stories from the collections of the Grand Rapids Public Museum

THE ARTIFACT PROJECT Stories from the collections of the Grand Rapids Public Museum

The Artifact Project |

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Our objects tell our stories—what we create, what we discover, what we treasure. The archives of the Grand Rapids Public Museum are filled with these stories. But the nearly 250,000 artifacts that make up the Museum’s collection are stored behind closed doors, hidden from view. What if there were a way to open up these doors, to release the power of these artifacts and the stories they tell?

The idea for the Artifact Project was conceived during the fall of 2011 in the Collaborative Design class of Kendall College of Art and Design. The challenege was simple: bring greater visibility to these artifacts stored in the archives of the Grand Rapids Public Museum. Using a combination of photography, web-based catalogs, and social media, an online space for experiencing and sharing the stories of these artifacts was envisioned.

With the help and support of the Museum, and the dedication of a group of loyal volunteers, the project began to take shape during the summer of 2012. Community members were invited to tour the Museum’s archives and write responses to the pieces that spoke most to them.Then, each of these chosen artifacts was professionally photographed. Over the course of thirty days, we posted these stories and essays on a blog which helped us raise money to furnish a professional photo studio for the Museum. This book is the culmination of that effort. But it is just the beginning of this project for the Grand Rapids Public Museum. We look forward to the day when the nearly 250,000 artifacts—and their stories—are shared with the world.

Find more information and view additional images at artifactgr.org.

The Grand Rapids Public Museum is the oldest museum in Michigan. By the most conservative count there are over 250,000 artifacts and specimens in the collection, making it, arguably, the state’s second largest museum. Owned by the people of the City of Grand Rapids, the institution serves the residents of West Michigan and visitors from all over by collecting, preserving and making available the “real things” that define us individuals and as a society.

The artifactgr.org project is a first of its kind endeavor to take the public collections even more public. This is being done not only by improving access via the world wide web but also by inviting citizens to share their perspective on the importance and meaning of what we have taken in over the last 154 years.

The Pulitzer Prize winning author David McCollough said “History is who we are and why we are the way we are.” Therefore, our future truly is informed by our past. Involving ourselves purposefully in the past is the path to an enlightened future. The artifactgr.org project is a most democratic way of blazing that trail. Where this project leads is up to the users and owners of the museum and its collections, its up to us. Thank you for your support of the museum and this project. Thank you to Kendall College of Art & Design, Site Lab, and Tom Wagner, the originators of this project. They, together with the Grand Rapids Public Museum, have a dream for artifactgr.org to go beyond what we can see today. I hope you’ll join us in taking the museum, our community, our society at large from the past, through the present, and into the future, through the interpretation and sharing of all that we have in our amazing collection. And, I hope you’ll join us in identifying what we should be adding to the collection today in order to help inform the next generations of museum users.

Grand Rapids and West Michigan has a long history of visionary leaders. The artifactgr.org project is a visionary undertaking that is ideal for our community. Leadership is in the local DNA, but so is sharing for the greater good. Artifactgr.org is well grounded upon our history and our values. Come on inside the Grand Rapids Public Museum.

Dale A. Robertson President & CEO Grand Rapids Public Museum

Since it’s founding in 1928, Kendall College of Art and Design has grown in harmony with a region powered by creative spirit, collaboration, and entrepreneurial thinking. Kendall’s faculty and students eagerly embraced the chance to collaborate with the Grand Rapids Public Museum (GRPM), which contains the history of this region, in innovating the use of the museum’s historic collection.

The group came up with the idea that rather than tell viewers a story about their community, the museum could use its collection to help viewers tell their own stories. Doing that would create a powerful intimacy between viewer and collection, and renew the sense of a communityowned history that the Public Museum embodies.

The collection, freed from the chains of someone else’s narrative, leads viewers to discover things anew. During the pilot of this project people began to weave their own stories into the collection, and magic arose.You can feel it in this book, which is the record of this project.

A particular chair of dental torture in the museum’s collection, which looks like an escapee from a Tim Burton film, found me, and forced me to tell its story. After that encounter, the streets of Grand Rapids began accosting me with their artifacts and the history of the city grew around me.

I realized that every street, every neighborhood, every household contains curious objects that hold within them the seeds of our history and the power to tell a story. Rarely do we allow them to speak to us. The GRPM, by containing the best examples of our past and helping them speak, allows us to hear stories in our surroundings that would otherwise be mute. This is the magic.

Imagining a world of the past, without airplanes, computers, refrigeration or electricity, a world that feels, looks, and even smells nothing like ours, opens up a world of possibility that can carry us into the future.

When our imaginations enter the objects and times past, we become collaborators with the GRPM. I am glad that Kendall College of Art and Design helped to innovate and to open the imagination. I am glad we contributed to the magic of this volume.

Dr. David Rosen President Kendal College of Art and Design

SiTE:LAB is normally a nomadic arts organization. A typical project starts by finding a location, usually a vacant building in downtown Grand Rapids and convincing the owner to give us access for a few months. A team of volunteers makes any site improvements needed to safely open the building to the public. And then a flood of artists and college art students converge on the building to install site-specific projects throughout the space. The resulting exhibition is open to the public for one-night-only. And then everything gets packed up and we start all over again at a new location.

But 54 Jefferson, the vacant former home of the Grand Rapids Pubic Museum, has always been different. We find ourselves wanting to return to the space again and again.

In 2010, Paul curated Michigan—Land of Riches, an enormous exhibition in which over 200 artists, primarily students from seven colleges and universities, installed over 50 site-specific projects into every available space in the building. In 2011, SiTE:LAB returned to 54 Jefferson for ArtPrize, where eighteen large scale installations shared a fascination with our need to collect and display objects that somehow define our existence. And in 2013, we embark on a series of projects that will explore the potential for the building’s future.

Our relationship with 54 Jefferson is not just about the building. We have been enormously fortunate that the museum has not only (repeatedly) loaned us its former home as a location, but has also allowed participating artists access to its vast collection which is stored in an adjacent stateof-the-art storage facility. Perhaps not surprisingly, the entire SiTE:LAB team has become fascinated with the museum’s collection, and with questions of how we might use our backgrounds in art and design to expand access to the collection and enhance users’ experience with it.

It is with great pleasure that we see a bunch of our SiTE:LAB team, led by our resident photographer Tom Wagner, provide both the vision and the volunteer hours needed to initiate the artifactGR project that ultimately led to this book. We congratulate them on the success of this endeavor.

Paul Amenta

Tom Clinton

SiTE:LAB Curator

SiTE:LAB Exhibition Coordinator

TABLE OF CONTENTS by author

TABLE OF CONTENTS by artifact

Rickey Ainsworth....................................Fra Mauro “Winter” Painting.................................. 78 Tommy Allen..............................................Simplex Clock............................................................... 90 Toni Bal.........................................................Wheelchair..................................................................... 46 Kim Buchholz............................................Iona China....................................................................... 34 Dalin Clark...................................................Fossil................................................................................. 82 Thomas Consiglio....................................Harley Police Motorcycle......................................... 18 Gregory Crowell.......................................Harpsichord................................................................... 26 Miranda Curtiss........................................Voigt Cream Flakes Box.......................................... 36 Lee Davis.....................................................Button Dress................................................................. 10 Lee Davis.....................................................Eggs.................................................................................. 16 William ‘Bill’ DeBruyn............................Steelcase Wastebasket............................................ 84 Anna Dornan.............................................Wooden Boat................................................................ 28 Elizabeth Dornan.....................................Lobsters........................................................................... 30 Tess Dornan...............................................Pocket Watch............................................................... 44 Tommy Fitzgerald...................................Roper stove and oven............................................... 66 Steve Frazee..............................................Asian Shoes................................................................... 55 Dana Friis-Hansen...................................Bicycles............................................................................ 96 Mary Ellen Fritz........................................Green Flapper Dress................................................. 14 Geoffrey L. Gillis.......................................Bolivian Shrunken Head........................................... 12 Nancy Goodman.....................................54 Jefferson Building................................................ 86 George Heartwell....................................Canoe............................................................................... 8 Sarah Herscher.........................................Hamilton Beach Shake Machine.......................... 24 Bill Hill...........................................................Rudell Pharmacy objects........................................ 68 Mark Holzbach..........................................Wonder Horse.............................................................. 17 Charles Honey...........................................Electric Guitars............................................................. 58 Collin Hunt..................................................REO Speedwagon...................................................... 38 Evan Hunt...................................................Popcorn Machine........................................................ 67 Roberta F. King........................................Piece of a broken diorama..................................... 98 Chris Knape................................................Civil Defense Sign....................................................... 75 Lisa Locke...................................................Buffalo.............................................................................. 92 Kara McKnabb..........................................Flowered Dress............................................................ 70 Andrea Melvin...........................................Wedding Gown/Bridesmaid Dress..................... 80 Jennifer Metz.............................................City Hall Tiles................................................................. 50 Sarah Nagy.................................................Merchant Marine Uniform....................................... 52 Tom Newhouse.........................................Girard Ottoman........................................................... 22 Tim Priest....................................................Silver Dust Detergent Box...................................... 49 Paul Propst.................................................CoStruc cart and drawers....................................... 60 Janice Propst.............................................Paragon Cutter............................................................. 83 Pam Ralston Hunt...................................Santa Express............................................................... 42 Dale A. Robertson...................................Robert E. Lee Sash..................................................... 6 David Rosen...............................................Optometrist’s Chair.................................................... 39 Amy and Steve Ruis...............................Table.................................................................................. 76 Max Shangle..............................................Expand-O-Matic.......................................................... 20 Tom Simmons...........................................Basket............................................................................... 25 Wally Wasilewski.....................................Detroit Jewel Stove.................................................... 54 Phil Wilson..................................................Brown Jug...................................................................... 40 Anna Zaharakos.......................................The Iron Lung and Margaret Pfrommer........... 62 Evan Zeiger................................................Underwood Typewriter............................................ 37

54 Jefferson Building................................................Nancy Goodman..................................... 86 Asian Shoes...................................................................Steve Frazee.............................................. 55 Basket...............................................................................Tom Simmons........................................... 25 Bicycles............................................................................Dana Friis-Hansen................................... 96 Bolivian Shrunken Head...........................................Geoffrey L. Gillis....................................... 12 Brown Jug......................................................................Phil Wilson.................................................. 40 Buffalo..............................................................................Lisa Locke................................................... 92 Button Dress..................................................................Lee Davis..................................................... 10 Canoe................................................................................George Heartwell.................................... 8 City Hall Tiles.................................................................Jennifer Metz............................................ 50 Civil Defense Sign.......................................................Chris Knape................................................ 75 CoStruc cart and drawers.......................................Paul Propst................................................. 60 Detroit Jewel Stove....................................................Wally Wasilewski..................................... 54 Eggs...................................................................................Lee Davis..................................................... 16 Electric Guitars.............................................................Charles Honey.......................................... 58 Expand-O-Matic..........................................................Max Shangle.............................................. 20 Flowered Dress.............................................................Kara McKnabb.......................................... 70 Fossil.................................................................................Dalin Clark.................................................. 82 Fra Mauro “Winter” Painting..................................Rickey Ainsworth.................................... 78 Girard Ottoman............................................................Tom Newhouse......................................... 22 Green Flapper Dress..................................................Mary Ellen Fritz........................................ 14 Hamilton Beach Shake Machine...........................Sarah Herscher......................................... 24 Harley Police Motorcycle.........................................Thomas Consiglio.................................... 18 Harpsichord...................................................................Gregory Crowell....................................... 26 Iona China.......................................................................Kim Buchholz............................................ 34 Lobsters...........................................................................Elizabeth Dornan..................................... 30 Merchant Marine Uniform.......................................Sarah Nagy................................................. 52 Optometrist’s Chair....................................................David Rosen............................................... 39 Paragon Cutter.............................................................Janice Propst............................................ 83 Piece of a broken diorama......................................Roberta F. King........................................ 98 Pocket Watch................................................................Tess Dornan............................................... 44 Popcorn Machine........................................................Evan Hunt................................................... 67 REO Speedwagon......................................................Collin Hunt.................................................. 38 Robert E. Lee Sash.....................................................Dale A. Robertson................................... 6 Roper stove and oven...............................................Tommy Fitzgerald................................... 66 Rudell Pharmacy objects........................................Bill Hill........................................................... 68 Santa Express...............................................................Pam Ralston Hunt................................... 42 Silver Dust Detergent Box......................................Tim Priest.................................................... 49 Simplex Clock...............................................................Tommy Allen.............................................. 90 Steelcase Wastebasket............................................William ‘Bill’ DeBruyn............................ 84 Table..................................................................................Amy and Steve Ruis............................... 76 The Iron Lung and Margaret Pfrommer...........Anna Zaharakos....................................... 62 Underwood Typewriter............................................Evan Zeiger................................................ 37 Voigt Cream Flakes Box..........................................Miranda Curtiss........................................ 36 Wedding Gown/Bridesmaid Dress.....................Andrea Melvin........................................... 80 Wheelchair.....................................................................Toni Bal........................................................ 46 Wonder Horse...............................................................Mark Holzbach.......................................... 17 Wooden Boat................................................................Anna Dornan............................................. 28

Robert E. Lee Sword Sash | Dale Robertson My favorite artifact at the Grand Rapids Public Museum is a sword sash.The sash is currently on display in the museum’s “Thank God for Michigan” exhibit on the Civil War. It’s label reads this way: “The sash was obtained from a Confederate wagon train captured by Union Soldiers under the command of General Byron E. Pierce. Based on provenance provided by the donors, it mayhave belonged to General Robert E. Lee, his nephew Fitzhugh Lee, or another Confederate officer (General Pierce was a resident of Grand Rapids, MI. He served proudly on behalf of the Union, rose through the army ranks and ended his service as brevet Major General of the United States Volunteers).”

I happen to prefer the provenance provided in a public writing on the Civil War, “Men of the 3rd Michigan Infantry.” Here the story says: “… Pierce was in command of one of the divisions which was following Lee’s army just before surrender. At 6 o’clock on the evening of April 5, his command suddenly came up with a Confederate division which was convoying the headquarters train of Lee’s Army. So important was the train that is was escorted by the best division in the Confederate Army. Chargers and countercharges were made, muskets rattled, sabers flashed, and overturned wagons, frantic mules and horses, the Blue and Grey mingled in the strife. The result was a victory for General Pierce’s troops and the rich supply train fell to the federal forces. The members of General Pierce’s staff divided the spoils, and to him fell a rich silk sash, the personal property of General Robert E. Lee. This sash, which was of heavy yellow silk, the ends trimmed with cream colored tassels, was long cherished by the General, but later given to the Kent Scientific Museum (now the Grand Rapids Public Museum), where it is today.”

So, to me, it’s Robert E. Lee’s sword sash. As an aside, many of what our museum has and any other museum has, is open to interpretation by the public of what the object really is and where it truly came from. Perfect, by my estimate. It’s how it should be. There is enough here regarding the sword sash to allow me to form an opinion and I’ve formed mine.

Why is it so compelling? The sword sash represents, conveys, and reveals all the complexities of the time and the human drama pre, present, and post the era of its use. The War Between the States was a watershed, if not the watershed, moment in our history that continues to impact our society to this day.

Robert E. Lee is regarded by historians as a fine and talented general, and at the time most likely the nation’s most talented army officer. He is forever identified in our history as a central figure in our landmark national struggle. His story of loyalty to his home state of Virginia over the Union reflects and drives home the fact that the origins of our nation was by and through the states. And, it reflects that the orientation of our people nearly 100 years after the birth of the country was still rooted in state citizenship. That all began to change after the Civil War. From that point on we began to see ourselves as citizens of a nation, the now and henceforth evermore United States of America. Regional and local differences continue to exist, and 150 years after the war began vestiges of the conflict remain.

Amendments made to the Constitution following the close of the war, known as the Civil War Amendments, cause debate even now. There is no doubt that The Civil War, or the War Between the States as it was referred to in my elementary school history books, was a major and profound event in our nation’s history. It still captures the interest and imagination of people. It means different things to different people and carries differing weights of impact to our citizens. In my own interpretation, the war is both a demarcation in our history and our functioning as a society and a connection and pathway into the development of a societal order that continues on to this day. That is what the Robert E. Lee sword sash represents to me, Dale A. Robertson.

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Button Dress | Lee Davis My mom used to sew. As most women who grew up during World War II and through the 50’s, sewing was how many women filled their closets. My mom was good.

In fact, she was very good at sewing and would have me point out things I liked in catalogs as I was growing up, and then she would make the pattern for an outfit that was much like what I saw in those catalogs. Then we would shop for fabric. This was where my mom would enter nirvana. She bought fabric like a squirrel hunted nuts. And she would buy yards of whatever caught her eye—she knew if she’d like a blouse out of one fabric, she’d need approximately 1-3/4 yards, or a coat out of another fabric with a larger pattern she’d need approximately 3-1/4 yards.

She would take special trips to Chicago and Minneapolis to go fabric shopping, and she would buy fabrics from the mail-order swatches that came every month from her fabric “club”, and sometimes, she would even shop for fabric from the local fabric store—but that was where everyone shopped, so it was only frequented as a last resort when there was NOTHING else available. So when she was ready to make the outfit that she had designed from the catalog picture, we shopped for fabric in her sewing closet, and we shopped for fabric in the steamer trunks she kept, and we shopped for fabric in the boxes stored under the bed or in the basement or in other closets and corners of the house.We called the fabric “mom’s addiction” and it was sort of a family joke. Of course we knew better than to tease her too much, because we knew we’d need that supply source once an outfit was spotted and coveted for the upcoming school season or for a special occasion.

As I got older and as mom stopped sewing quite as much as she used to, more store-bought clothes started filling my closet. One day one of the buttons to the cuff on my shirt needed replacing, and of course I went to mom looking for a replacement. She carefully eyed the rest of the buttons on the shirt and went off to her sewing corner in her bedroom. Carefully tucked under her shelves of bobbins and thread and needles and thimbles were shoe boxes and cigar boxes and plastic bins—all full of buttons. Mom went right to the box she needed to get me a small white shirt button—but I couldn’t believe what I saw; it was like she was hiding a whole jewelry store right under our noses and I had no idea all of these beautiful objects existed

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right here within arm’s reach of me! We all knew about the fabric, but had no idea that she had also gathered such a gorgeous and varied collection of buttons over the years too.

There were wood buttons and glass buttons, beaded buttons and buttons made from whalebone.

There were ceramic buttons, metal buttons with insignias and crests on them, fabric buttons, leather buttons, large, medium, small and tiny buttons. I couldn’t help myself—I took the boxes of buttons and emptied them all out on the bed; I ran my hands through them all and picked up the shiny ones and the unusually shaped ones—“where did you get this?” and “what was this from?” and “do you have more of these?” came pouring out of me as mom realized that while she might be a junkie for the textile, her daughter was a junkie for the bling.

It is said that “clothes make the man” and this might well be true, but I think that the buttons make the memory. This dress is a simple black dress that could have been worn to any event—and as a dress it is lovely. But then, it was loved. It was made better and much more unique and memorable by bringing in the embellishment and style of buttons. Now the dress has meaning. It has meaning for the person who wore it and for the people who saw it when it took to the dance floor. The memory of the colors and the sounds of the buttons hitting each other as the dress would swing around. The “ooohs” and “aaahhhs” of people at the event are all carried in each beautiful button.

Cecil Cowell knew the power of buttons too, and donated her decorated coat to the Museum in 1977. It is a coat, but more than that—it’s a work of art. And the memory of winning top honors as the favorite object from the Museum’s Collections manager, Marilyn Merdzinski is in every button that was put in place on that coat.

The power and beauty of the button … never to be underestimated!

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Canoe | George Heartwell Come back with me. Way back. European settlers had discovered the New World but had only begun to push into its interior, through the Great Lakes, up the mighty rivers. There were a few trading posts along Lake Michigan’s shore. The Anishnabek knew of them, some had even visited them, bringing pelts and blankets, returning with beads and implements, even guns and powder.

Come with me to the banks of the Grand River, at the mighty rapids that cascaded down eighteen feet over one-half mile. A village of framed houses with skins stretched between the wood members huddles on west the bank of the river, civilization with its spine set against the wilderness. Pulled up on the shore, just beyond the water’s reach, is a fleet of boats. Their builders are Odawa, the predominant people of this area.

Each craft is carefully constructed from the bountiful storehouses of nature around the tribe. Ash for the frame. Bark for the skin, stitched together with deer sinew. Pine tar applied liberally along the joints. Lighter than the hollowed tree trunk crafts, a man could hoist this canoe on his shoulders and carry it above the rapids. Sliding the boat into the water he could paddle along the shoreline for miles upstream beside dense pine forests and cedar swamps lining spring fed creeks, past fertile floodplain fields.

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He might be gone for several weeks, depending on the hunt. Always he returned with the craft loaded with deer, beaver pelts, medicinal herbs, berries or nuts.

The return of the boat would be heralded by the children as the women come out of the huts to greet the returned hunter and carry the deer carcasses for skinning and tanning, butchering and smoking; the beaver pelts for scraping, tanning and stitching into winter wraps, warm against the chill wind that rattles in the winter branches of ancient oak trees.

Other barks return to the village, similarly loaded. Here one carries firewood, stacked and loaded so deeply in the canoe that merely an inch of freeboard keeps the boat from capsizing. Another comes with two sturgeon, identical spear marks behind their heads, gutted and ready for curing, their eggs preserved in a basket lined with ferns, a delicacy for the feast that would welcome the hunters back.

That night around the flames of the community fire, to the sound of the drums, singers and dancers celebrate the success of the hunt, the bravery of the hunters and the virtue of the canoes that brought them home.

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Eggs | Lee Davis Oology.

A beautiful word, all full of circles and soft shapes as the letters come together. The oological collection is full of beautiful shapes and colors that all come together in bins full of small, smaller and the very smallest of blue, white, black speckled and brown spotted bird eggs. The objects are wonderful, but they were selected to pay a very small tribute to Mary Jane Dockeray, who joined the museum right out of Michigan State College in the fall of 1949. She was brought in by Director Frank DuMond to be a fulltime Nature Lecturer and she found herself creating a program that had her talking to four schools a day. She understood the beauty and importance of nature and shared her love of the natural world with school children all over the area.

Eggs are symbols of beginnings; of things to come; of wonder and anticipation. Mary Jane Dockeray took the opportunity to begin her career with the Public Museum and grow it into a way of sharing her love of nature with school children. She was then given the opportunity to start Blandford Nature Center and took a 10 acre parcel of land and eventually grew it to 143 acres by the time she retired in 1989. She has enlightened children and families to the magic of the natural world over many years of service. Thanks to her dedication to the sharing and spreading of knowledge and curiosity, everyone who sees these collections or experiences nature—either learning to tap a sugar maple or identifying mushrooms in the wild—have been gifted a perfect egg of knowledge to nurture and grow for themselves.

Wonder Horse | Mark Holzbach The Grand Rapids Public Museum archive includes a Wonderhorse exactly like the one my parents gave me in the early 1960’s while I was still in nursery school. I have happy childhood memories bouncing around on this particular toy that has very sturdy strong springs and withstood my intensive use, bordering on abuse. Seeing it in the archives of the public museum was like encountering an old friend. A little internet searching revealed that this particular “mustang” model was manufactured

by Wonder Deluxe in Collierville, TN and it apparently rode a wave of popularity around the “wonder horses” that accompanied cowboys in popular entertainment.

I wasn’t very aware of any particular identity that went with this horse, but I loved it as a recreational motion machine. I think if I had been born two decades later, we may have named him Ritalin.

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“Expand-O-Matic” | Max Shangle

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“Expand-O-Matic” Buffet and Table is an example of furniture that speaks to design striving to solve a problem. Whether it is as in this example, the needs to provide post-World War II demand for furniture for small spaces (think; track houses/apartments) or to address “new” trends in architecture (think; ‘modern’ open floor plans) design pushes innovations in form and function. Often when one thinks of residential furniture it is the style or fashion that is readily thought of as “the design” but the reality is that true furniture design is a cohesive blend— addressing need (function), scale, manufacturability, materials, and style/fashion.

In his book Innovative Furniture in America from 1800 to the Present, David A. Hanks chronicles designs that are thought provoking, quirky, cutting edge and even strange that strive to serve needs, a market and a moment in fashion. The degree of success of any design is measured is how well (if) the need is met, the market and the moment are met; furniture design is no exception.

Was the “Expand-O-Matic” a success in its day? I don’t know. Would it be a success if reintroduced today? Doubtful. Is it an interesting, even compelling design story? In my view, absolutely! When I was teaching furniture design one of my favorite assignments was to ask them to design a “multi-functional” piece of furniture, purely from a form, structure and scale point of view. No need to worry about “style” the object won’t care if it is French, English, period or modern and for this assignment neither do I.With major caveats being that their solution had to serve more than two or more distinct functions equally well, be manufacturable and have a market. Where on the surface this would seem to be a “fun” challenge—the reality is designing a product to serve one function really well is tough enough, understanding the constraints of manufacturing and materials takes real knowledge and positioning a product in a market is never simple. In our study collection at Kendall College of Art and Design, we have an English style (George I) library table circa 1810 with a green leather top and lion paw feet—a delightful object with a secret. The leather top serves to provides a surface to insulate valuable books from making contact with would what otherwise be hard wood and is ideal as a writing surface when using a quill-pen. The lion paw feet conceal casters allowing for mobility (to move near a window perhaps); but there is more. The secret under the top (hinged) is an engineered contraption that becomes steps leading to a ladder and two handrails. Care or need to put your library book away on a high shelf? Although it wouldn’t meet today’s “safety standards”, I can attest from first-hand experience that the hidden steps, ladder and handrails function perfectly well! Both the “Expand-O-Matic” and our library table clearly surpass the design criteria of the “multi-functional” design assignment, beyond that, each in their own way fit the demands of style and fashion of their day.

The “Expand-O-Matic” was designed to serve multi-functions as well; a room divider, a buffet, a table and chair storage (they fold); it has secrets and as I said earlier it is an interesting, even compelling design story. Manufactured for the mass-market; wood, glass, plastic-impregnated bamboo, finish and fabric combined to make a statement of style/fashion, form and function.Today the “Expand-OMatic” serves as an interpreter of a point in history in terms of both style and need and an inspiration to think differently when considering a design problem.

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Pharmacy Items | Bill Hill You know how it is.

Sometimes it’s a slant of light in a dusty barn, sometimes it’s the first notes of a song, sometimes a curl of woodsmoke that sets off the fireworks of memory.

This time it was a trayful of antique bottles and packages from Rudell’s Drugstore, that existed once upon a time in the city of my youth, on the corner of Ashmun and Maple. The city was just a small town in the UP, Sault Ste. Marie, but at that time it was the whole world.

Drugstores, then as now, seemed to carry everything and then some : Rudell’s had live leeches, glass eyes and postcards as well as well as medicines mixed with mortar and pestle.

Three items in the Archive tray caught my eye:

Doo-Dabs:The new way to clean and whiten all white shoes How do we get along without these now? About the size of a stick of gum, they have only to be moistened at one end to release the charge of white polish onto your sooty white bucks, scuffed up the night before at the dance.

Old House Orange Bitters 30% alcohol! Caffeine, Angostura! These are over-the-counter ingredients to home remedies and creative cocktails. Remarkably, they were legal during Prohibition, and probably quite popular.

And the label, reassuringly conservative (“Importers since 1794”), but done in a bold tangerine and silver, gets it all right.

Japanese Refined Camphor Camphor was widely used for achy muscles or to clear the congestion that comes with colds. It provides the signature smell of Vicks Vapo Rub. It was also used around the house to repel rodents and to keep the moths at bay. It came from the wood steamed off the camphor laurel trees of Japan and Asia. All in a handy green tin.

These are a few of the 13,000 catalogued artifacts from Rudell Drugstore, where I would repair with my hot dime, to buy a ten cent comic—Aquaman, Donald Duck, something compelling— but only after creating a little misdirection by wandering through the dark and dreamy store, past the cherrywood fixtures, the brass lamps, the stuffed cases and counters deep in shoe whiteners, camphor tins and strange bottles.

It was a wonderful place, a museum ofw a drugstore, standing still in time since the early 1900s. Disney and the Smithsonian competed with our museum for it, so rare it was.

And it still, in a very material way, exists. First, in a miniature version in the Public Museum, and then, gloriously, but hidden, in the Archives.

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Harley Davidson Police Motorcycle Thomas Consiglio For over one-hundred-years Americans have obsessed over motorcycles.There is one name always associated with the powerful, industrious, and (let’s be honest) dangerously fast two-wheeled machine: HarleyDavidson. The motorcycle company, founded by William S. Harley and Arthur Davidson in 1903, has a history so rich and so vast it cannot fit into a single museum. Even still, the Grand Rapids Public Museum (GRPM) stores a vintage, 1989 Harley-Davidson Police Interceptor in the basement of their storage facility.

Harley-Davidson (H-D) made selling police fleet motorcycles a critical part of their business. Michigan saw the first H-D police motorcycle in action. In 1908, H-D delivered a police edition motorcycle to the Detroit Police Department, and from then on police departments across the country acknowledged the maneuverable machine to be a tactical advantage in the business of fighting crime.

The Grand Rapids Police Department (GRPD) was no different. In the early 1900’s GRPD had motorcycle policemen patrol the streets on Indian motor bicycles (GRPM also stores a 1913 Indian in their basement, similar to what the earlier policemen rode), but in 1930 Officer Thomas Marshall was photographed sitting on his H-D outside the Police Department garage. Police edition Harley-Davidsons crossed Lake Michigan from Milwaukee and into the streets of Grand Rapids.

Hurt by the Great Depression, H-D marketed their bikes as “The Police Motorcycle,” and since then over 3,400 U.S police departments adopted H-D as their crime-fighting bike of choice.

But, as always, and to quote Bob Dylan, “the times they are a’changin’.”

A July 2012 article by the Detroit Free Press detailed how the Michigan State Police fleet of motorcycles will no longer be exclusively American made. H-D, based out of Wisconsin, has been the All-American motorcycle manufacturer for over a century. But, the Michigan State Police are making a switch. Earlier this year, in April, they purchased nine German-made BMW R1200s. continued on page 101

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Bison | Lisa Locke When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. ~ Wendell Berry 26 | The Artifact Project

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The peace of wild things…

A peace that pulls me in, enfolds me. gives me joy and comfort; stirring the senses and staying my soul.

Aren’t we all wild things? You and I? Evolving from the same ancestors as our furry and feathered and scaly friends?

On my recent tour of the Grand Rapids Public Museums’ archives to choose something to write about for the Artifact Project, I hadn’t taken twenty steps into the first large, windowless room when I saw my subject staring me in the face. With large deep brown eyes, it was the Bison from the old diorama. It’s hard to describe the physical reaction I had—overcome by the remnants of a cool brute intensity, a fearsome wildness, possibly speaking to my own? It touched something deep inside me. As I continued the tour, my Bison followed me; through aisle upon aisle of human creations: historical displays of inventiveness, craftsmanship, curiosity, greed, playfulness, vanity, extravagance, sense of adventure.

I was struck by the profound contrast. On display were both our capacities to envision and create and to delude and destroy. I was seeing it all through the eyes of the bison, standing there, stuffed, by the door. This keystone species of the western plains, whose role in their ecosystem impacted the health and survival of the plant and animal life around them. And we took them to the brink of extinction, diminishing their population from 30 million to just over 1,000 by 1890, altering the entire landscape.

He was speaking to me. Not just of despair but of hope – that we can pull back from the brink of our own destructiveness.

But in order to create solutions, we must have a profound understanding of the problems—which are now of global proportions – and of ourselves.

As we dry up our rivers, we guarantee our thirst.

As we level the mountaintops, we pollute our valleys.

As we create chemicals in our labs, we accumulate toxins in our tissues.

As we overfish and overfertilize and overgraze, we assure our grandchildren’s hunger.

As we pave and dredge and invade unspoiled ecosystems, we hasten mass extinctions, ignorant of what we’ve lost.

As we drill, frack, and burn; fell rainforests and bleach coral reefs; as we purchase and discard our plastic water bottles; we are changing the character of our oceans, their water levels, temperature, biological and chemical make-up, even the depth and direction of their currents. A system so vast, it was thought to be safe from our reckless reach…

July 6 was the anniversary of Silent Spring, Rachel Carson’s visionary book on the dangers of pesticide use. Hers is a remarkable story of what one brave and determined person can do. Through scrupulous scientific research, reason, and a large dose of courage, she confronted the giant chemistry industry and succeeded in spurring a reversal in national policy, leading to a ban on DDT and other pesticides. Further, her victory inspired a whole grassroots environmental movement that led to the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

But arguably, her greatest gift to us was her scientific and poetic ability to share her own child-like sense of wonder. She introduced people around the globe to the fantastical mysteries of the natural world; explaining complex biological and chemical processes, concepts of ecology and conservation— warning of the human forces of destruction that threaten them.

She wrote, “We stand now where two roads diverge. But unlike the roads in Robert Frost’s poem, they are not equally fair.The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster. The other fork of the road—the one ‘less traveled by’—offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of the earth.”

We have proven our unlimited capacity to do harm to the planet and everything on it. We are becoming the ultimate invasive species, with the ultimate victim being ourselves. In the last few years,

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we’ve seen widespread organizing of garlic mustard pulls. But who or what will pluck us from those roads on which we don’t belong, stop us from further upsetting the balance of nature? The thing about invasive species we tend to forget, is that they do belong somewhere. They have their niche in the natural order where they contribute to the balance of nature, and they thrive.

We need to find those places, figuratively and literally. We need to understand our boundaries.

And we need to do it quickly—individually and collectively.

Is there hope? Yes, there is hope. But that hope depends on each and every one of us and all the passion and the action and the protest we can muster.

There is so much more we can do; through our choices about the food we eat, the purchases we make, the energy we use, the water we waste. Learning from our creature friends who survive on renewable resources and produce no damaging wastes. We underestimate their remarkable ingenuity… and our own.

And when despair for the world grows in you…come into the peace of wild things. “Lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty.” “Watch the black ants bore deep and mysterious holes in the peonies.” “Marvel at the grasshopper with her enormous and complicated eyes.” Patiently observe the making of Earth. Look deep into the eyes of a child, of a whale, of a bison. Let them know who we really are. They are counting on us…

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Hamilton Beach Milkshake Machine Sara Herscher Walking through row after row of machines, kid’s toys, furniture, and tools, I was inspired by so many beautiful artifacts. But there was one particular item that caught my eye; a minty 1950’s green Hamilton Beach milkshake machine. Now, in all my 13 years of life, I have never made a milkshake.

I believe smoothies have taken over the popularity of milkshakes. Instead of going to a diner to pick up a milkshake, we now go into Gaslight Village to grab a smoothie. So, living in my generation, I happen to know how to make a smoothie. Here is my recipe my sister and I use for a modern alternative to an old-fashion milkshake.

Delicious Smoothie Recipe Serves 2 Ingredients • 1 1/2 cups frozen strawberries • 1 banana • 1/2 cup milk • 1 1/2 cups yogurt (your choice of flavor) • 1 tablespoon vanilla • 1 cup crushed ice Directions Blend the strawberries, banana, milk, yogurt, vanilla, and ice until smooth.

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Girard Ottoman | Tom Newhouse The Alexander Girard Round Ottoman has special design meaning for me. Upon graduation from the University of Michigan School of Art and Design I joined Herman Miller Inc. I was a a staff designer there from 1972 to 1978. My initial duties included showroom and exhibit design.

Though in their elder years, Alexander Girard, Charles and Ray Eames and George Nelson were still designing various products for HMI during that period. I was fortunate to assist all four of those amazing modernist designers with various showroom installations and product launches of what would be their final HMI designs. They had all worked collaboratively for over 30 years for Herman Miller and others, from their vibrant separate studios….Nelson in New York City, The Eameses in L.A. and Girard in Santa Fe. I was able to closely study and compare the beauty, sculptural qualities, function, similarities and differences in their products and their creative processes.

George was a gifted writer as well as designer. Charles and Ray were masterful at applying new materials and processes such as molded plywood, molded fiberglass and cast aluminum. Sandro, as Alexander Girard was always called, was masterful at color, texture, pattern, textiles, and expressive graphics. Raised in Italy and based in Santa Fe, NM, he had a keen interest in Latin American culture, with its flamboyant use of color, pattern and decorative expression. This was a wonderful counterpoint to the modernist approaches of George and Charles. Ray seemed more expressive in her attitude, in the limited time that I spent with her.

There seemed to be a special simpatico between Sandro’s approach and that of Ray. All this leads me to the marvelous Girard Collection Round Ottoman. This expressive “concentric ringed” piece is from the large Girard Collection that Sandro designed for HMI in the mid 1950’s for the famed La Fonda del Sol Restaurant in NYC. In my opinion that collection was sculpturally more animated, playful and expressive than anything HMI had ever manufactured before. Sandro added a very important aesthetic input that enriched the amazing body of work that Herman Miller manufactured from the 1940’s to the 1970’s.

The fact that the Round Ottoman is from D.J. DePree’s personal residence in Zeeland, MI makes it even more special to me. I was very fortunate to design D.J.’s retirement office in HMI’s corporate headquarters building. He worked in that office well into his late 90’s. I visited the DePree house on several occasions and recall seeing the marvelous Round Ottoman.

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Paragon Cutter | Janice Propst In our current world of brutally hard-edged, utilitarian machine design this Paragon Cutter captures one’s aesthetic sense and reminds us of a time when machines were extravagant in appearance. The iron construction allowed for a cast Art Nouveau styled framework reflecting late 19th century designs. Its sculptural feel encourages the eye to willingly move from the functional cutting platform to its sweeping curved legs and details. The designer, E. L. Miller proudly includes his patent date and place of manufacture in raised letters on the side of the cutter. Its place in a printing shop is akin to furniture in a home.

The Paragon Cutter’s stylized appearance represents a time in our history when designers had such a passion for their machines, they were willing to go beyond pure function by including artistic embellishments.

These machines replaced the hand-built one off machines of the early 19th century. They in turn would be replaced by our more the more modern practical devices of the early 20th century.

Asian Women’s Shoe | Steve Frazee “You will make our family proud,” father said.

“You must, if you are to earn a wealthy husband,” mother said.

“See how beautiful and rich we are,” the ladies said.

“See how sensual and alluring the ladies are,” the men said.

“Young bones are soft and break easily,” I said to myself.

I was beautiful. I was rich. I was adored.

Then the communist came and took everything.

I could not stand in the fields. I could not work. My husband was dead.

Now I am old and have nothing….except these exquisite little feet.

Aren’t they beautiful?

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Santa Express | Pam Ralston Hunt I love the Public Museum and have visited many times, but I never expected to find an artifact with a connection to my own Grand Rapids history. I’m not a native; I moved to GR as a young adult in 1984 (and frankly, for years thought of it as a stepping stone to the next place). And although my husband and I and our teenage sons claim GR as part of our home turf, I wouldn’t have looked for personal nostalgia among its artifacts.

If you were a child here in the 1950s you may have ridden the “Santa Express,” a tiny three-car monorail train, suspended from the ceiling, that trundled around Herpolsheimer’s department store.

When I first encountered that train it was sporting a dinosaur/jungle motif, and the old Herp’s building had become Mackie’s World.

I recall that wet, chilly weather had sent my son Evan and I in search of an indoor venue for our day of “exploring.” As a working mom who never quite got comfortable with her little ones in daycare even part time, I treasured my “exploring” days with my sons, and on that day I was happy to have Mackie’s World.

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I don’t remember much else from the place, but that ride combined his two favorite things—trains and dinosaurs—and it captivated my boy! I hadn’t thought much about that day in long time until I saw the train again recently, but I can still see his shining eyes and hear his little voice saying, “Go again!”

He doesn’t remember the ride, but I remember how it touched that mother-spot in my heart that catalogs those beautiful moments…the ones that make you wistful when you turn around to find your children nearly grown.

Blogging about the archives was meant to be an exercise for my boys, teaching them to discover their own connections to their hometown and the value of preserving the things that represent community. The surprise was the lesson for me: when a place brings you your partner in life, your children, a professional community you love and awesome friends, it is home—and it’s worth keeping your eyes open for the artifacts that remind you of these gifts.

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18th Century Italian Harpsichord | Gregory Crowell Like cooks or gardeners, musicians depend on having the correct tools to achieve the proper results; every musician knows that a player is only as good as her instrument. But not all instruments are suited to all purposes—a hammer is the wrong tool use when tackling thumb tack, and a banjo might be great for Bluegrass music, but it hardly fits the bill when it comes to, say, a romantic ballade. A chance encounter in 2010 led me to come to know an instrument in Grand Rapids that could have great importance for our understanding of one of history’s most important and beautiful musical instruments.

That summer, my friend Gayle DeBruyn, knowing that I had a deep love for the harpsichord, told me that there was an instrument in the Public Museum of Grand Rapids that I might find interesting. I get calls all the time from people who have found a “harpsichord” in their attic or garage—only once has such a call resulted in the discovery of a significant instrument. But there is always hope, so I made an appointment with the Museum to see what they had. After ushering me through the aisles housing the small but interesting collection of musical instruments (including two rare ophecleides— but that’s another story), we turned a corner, and I literally began to gasp for air. Before us stood an original, eighteenth-century Italian harpsichord! My first reaction was of excitement, but my second was of embarrassment—I had driven past this building for some fifteen years, never knowing that this treasure lay within.

The harpsichord, which had been a very important domestic and performance instrument for some four centuries, fell into a period of dormancy in the nineteenth century. Efforts to revive the instrument in the early twentieth century were varied in their success, but usually failed in one important aspect—the sound. As much as these revival instruments (as they have come to be called) might have looked like pianos, their makers were on a quest to make them sound as un-piano-like as possible, and the results often yielded a very unmusical twanging or pinging sound. More recently, however, instrument makers have turned to studying surviving old instruments in an effort to understand what they really sounded like, and to find the sort of musical tool that would suit the sparkling and colorful music of a composer such as Domenico Scarlatti. Gradually, this intense study has allowed a new picture of the harpsichord to emerge, an instrument whose singing and sustaining sound gives it the right to be compared with the lute and its namesake, the harp.

Unlike these instruments, however, keyboard instruments are loaded with ephemera—delicate bits of cloth or felt or leather that deteriorate with time and use. In addition, loose bits, such as the harpsichord’s jacks—small strips of wood that hold the quills that pluck the strings—are often lost or stolen over time. Often, vital information is destroyed when historic instruments are restored to playing condition. Fortunately, the Grand Rapids harpsichord is unrestored, and so it retains much of its ephemeral material, including original action cloths and jacks. Of particular interest is the material that plucks the strings. Traditionally this material has been bird quill (some modern instruments use a special kind of plastic). Only very rarely have other materials, such as brass, been used. The Grand Rapids harpsichord is particularly interesting because it miraculously retains its original plectra, which are made of leather. Studying this rare survival from the eighteenth century might well allow instrument builders to understand what sort of leather was used, and how it was cured and treated.

At this point, once can still only imagine the rich, lute-like sound this instrument must have had when it was new. continued on page 101

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Wooden Toy Boat | Anna Dornan In the hands of a child, everything is magical. All things are meant to be explored and played with. Everything is spectacular, everything is new, no matter how old, and everything is exciting.

In the hands of an adult, things are ordinary. A toy boat is empty, a chair is a chair, and a kettle is nothing more than functional, but sometimes grownups see that one thing. That one thing that makes them remember what it was like the have those little hands of a child. A toy car, a tree house, a book, a model ship, anything that brings the magic back into their lives, it’s those things that make them smile again. It’s funny how when they happen upon those simple little things their minds are filled with color and their eyes are jolted open with the readiness of a child. It’s those happenings that bring all of this about.

Daddy’s boat was wooden. Made from little pieces, all put together to make the model ship. At night I used to dream of the boat, pirates, always pirates, in the mind of a child how could it not have been pirates. The ship was filled with treasure chests. Like water out of a fountain, gold flowed out of the chest and onto the wood deck. The pirates laughed and danced around their caches of stolen money. In my dreams I was the captain of the mighty vessel. I wore a long velvety coat with gold buttons, a hat with large fluffy plumage, and leather boots not anything like those that I wore on the farm, real pirate like boots, ending right below my knees with big buckles. Then I got older and the sadness came. The cloud of dark depression that blackened the skies over the whole world, it started in Europe but soon enough it came to us and my life changed. In school all the boys talked of warships: aircraft carriers, battleships, cruisers, and destroyers, massive hunks of steel blasting rounds at each other.Yet all I could see was daddy’s boat, bobbing in the water the pirates had gone and big burly men in full naval dress had taken their place. The chests that once overflowed with coins had been replaced by seal crates of perfectly packed bullets. My perfect world had been corrupted by war.

After the war ended, daddy’s boat was still there, but daddy was gone. Now the boat was nothing in my mind, just a toy boat. I had grown up, faced the real world and it was no longer magical. Nothing was magical, so I left, went out to experience something more in my life, something real, something unlike the fake pirates and the formulated navy men. I wanted to move someplace big, someplace important, a city with lights and fast moving cars zipping down the roads at all hours of the day.

I found what I had wanted, but still nothing was magical.

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I stayed and got a boring job, lived a boring life. For years I let my family keep living in that little house, in the middle of nothing, until the letter came, the letter announcing the death of my mother. I headed home for the great shores of Michigan, the waters that I had always imagined daddy’s boat in. Lake Michigan bright and wonderful, it had been the ocean to me all those years ago, when daddy’s boat was filled with life.

Now it was just a lake, like any other lake, a beautiful sun and abundant piles of white sand, but nothing magical like it used to be.

Inside, home was the same, as dull and boring as ever, as miserable and depressing as ever.

The chair at the head of the table, were my father used to sit and the tea kettle sitting on the stove, with my mother’s initials engraved into the side; all the things that reminded me of them. On the mantle above the fireplace was daddy’s boat.

Covered with dust the wooden boat had gained a dull patina. I hated the boat.Virtually untouched by time, the boat had lasted while other things hadn’t. I picked it up, daddy’s boat.

I touched it. Never had he let me hold it.

Never was I allowed to feel the rough grain of the wood, but now I did. I held it eye level to me face. Laughing I set it back down. As a child I would stand on a stool looking at the boat, just in front of my eyes I could see right across the deck. Now on my own two feet I could do the same. I fingered the little disks on the side of the boat, painted with little X’s and stripes.

Carefully I set it down. Magic sprang up around me. It was magical again, everything was magical again. It was as though I had walked into a trove of long forgotten treasures, frozen in time and waiting to be seen, waiting to be loved again, waiting to be happened upon.

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Basket | Tom Simmons

Brown Jug | Phil Wilson The crisp, technical description of the museum registration indicates a ceramic jug, 20 cm in height, 17 cm in diameter, with a brown glaze. That’s it. Also the donor, of course, and the date of acquisition, other information not pertaining to the object in question. But the actual significance of this‘brown jug’ to the life and culture of this country in an earlier era is not immediately apparent, but let’s just call it a whiskey bottle.

This jug has a lot to do with corn, actually, and with avoiding dysentary, and with getting through the day 150 years ago. Corn because when the east coast settlers spread over the Adirondacks into fertile midwestern lands and began to harvest more grain than they could consume, there was a transportation problem: all that bulky grain had to go back over the mountains or down the river(s) to find a market.

That kind of economic inconvenience looked for a way to reduce that bulk and at the same time add value. So, make whiskey, lots of whiskey.

It’s now possible to get a clean, safe, drink at the kitchen sink or any other of many convenient sources available, but the thought that the next glass of water might bring on a disabling bout of cramps and gut ache used to be on the mind of a thirsty person. A bit of whiskey would clear up the uncertainty over that water and perhaps ease the troubled mind as well.

Dysentary and the troubled mind were definitely part of the experience of Civil War soldiers, drinking from rivers, creeks, and unfamiliar wells, enduring long periods of boredom, terrifying battles and brutal wounds with little by way of pain relief. That is why the official infantryman’s daily mess was supposed to include at least a pint of whiskey.

So much whiskey needs something by way of a container and one that’s cheap and can take the rough handling of the rural, backwoods life. Before glass and metal were used and widely available, stoneware pottery did the job. Clay is one of the most common materials available and pottery one of the oldest solutions to the container problem.

A potter could dig his clay at no cost and was paid at the rate of a few cents per gallon. The ‘brown’ of this jug is simply a thin layer of slip, the liquid form of a particular clay which forms a glaze in the kiln. This kind of pot usually has finger marks and careless wipes across the bottom where it was held and dipped and quickly swiped more or less clean. It is almost elegant in its minimal, functional form: a wide, stable base curving gradually to a small opening with just a stout strap for carrying or pouring.

That’s what we’re looking at really, a whiskey bottle of which there are still many, many examples that can be bought for as little as ten bucks. Some are far more beautiful ovular forms, with a fine, orange peel-textured salt glaze and caligraphic cobalt brush strokes. But this piece is in its simplicity represents a the kind of handmade object that is at the center of human culture throughout history.

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Way in the back of the third room in on the second floor of the Grand Rapids Public Museum Archives, sitting on the floor is a huge woven basket with a dimpled floor. I don’t know what is would have been used for.

The rim of the basket reminds me of a wood boat. The bulwark is made from a sapling uniform in diameter for its entire circumference. The splints of the basket are made of hundreds of strips of lathing harvested at just the right time of year to insure the right pliability. The tension of each strand is precisely the same as its neighbor. The pattern of the splint looks just like petals of a fresh flower overlapping them.

The woven piece has a huge variety of distant cousins for neighbors in the Archives: a Kelvinator four-burner electric range from the late fifties, an air raid siren from the cold war and hundreds of precise furniture extolling the high level of manufacturing of Grand Rapidian furniture of the late 19th and early twentieth century.

Most everything in that room was made right here in West Michigan. Most had design teams creating concepts, engineering teams figuring the most productive way the produce thousands of exactly the same unit, sale teams roaming the country selling their companies wares buyers negotiating terms for procurement for the raw materials. There were hundreds of people involved in making the same thing over and over again.

The basket maker learned the right time of year to harvest the raw materials, the right width to cut the reeds. One basket was enough for the maker’s needs.

The basket is just right.

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Painted Lobsters | Beth Dornan “They’re coming!” Philippa cries. “Positions!”

I glide behind Philippa, supporting her midsection. She arranges her legs; her tail and flippers curled under. I now see what she sees; a young family approaching our tank.

“Now!” She commands, and propels herself upward. At times like this I feel I am merely scenery.

Philippa spins and arches, her legs and claws graceful as she ascends.

A boy warily approaches the tank. He sees her. Philippa turns toward him and I don’t need her to whisper the word “tango” to know what’s next. She presses her thorax against mine, we join crusher claws and point our legs toward him.

The boy’s eyes grow wide and he raises a finger. But his father takes his hand and that extended finger is pointed away from us. At Cleo. Big, clumsy, Cleo. Arturo’s hand reaches in and pulls Cleo from the tank. The father steers the boy away.

All is silent as we wait for Cleo to return. Philippa’s face is pressed against the smoky tank glass.

“There she is!” Philippa cries, her voice breaking. “She’s ravishing.”

And she is. Her shell is no longer the tarnished copper color of ours, but gleams a ruby red. As Cleo passes the tank she does not wave or acknowledge us. She is resting for her big debut.

“Why, Prospero?” Philippa sighs. “Why is it never us?”

I stroke her antenna lightly. “It is not our time,” I say.

“But when, Prospero? They are big and ugly and uncoordinated, and yet, they are chosen to dance. If only people would notice our grace and style.” continued on page 102

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Indian Motorcycle | Eric Kuhn Motorcycles terrify me.

Well, not motorcycles themselves, but the idea of riding one out on the open road, surrounded by people in cars that do not pay attention, terrifies me. I have ridden off cliffs on a snowboard, surfed in Northern California in November, skateboarded on 14 foot half-pipes, and in empty swimming pools on abandoned property. But I have never, and probably never will, ride a motorcycle.

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Now you are probably wondering why I chose a 1913 Indian Motorcycle as my Artifact to write about?

Two reasons…

Reason 1. Look at this thing! It is beautiful.

The engineering, design, and craftsmanship are amazing. I was fortunate enough to be there when Tom Wagner was shooting these images, and we just kept finding more and more beauty hidden in the bent steel of this 100 year old piece of machinery. I have been very fortunate to work on the ArtifactGR project and have spent lots of time in the Bernard Joseph Kuhn on one of his Indian Motorcycles archives, and my eyes have always come back to this motorcycle.

Reason 2. My grandfather. He passed away a few years ago, and to be honest was a bit of a curmudgeon, (he would have probably agreed with that characterization). I remember being a kid and visiting his house and there being a list of rules a mile long, and those rules were not to be broken.

Before his death, (I was in my mid 30’s), while at a family gathering, my brother, my grandfather, and I somehow got on the topic of motorcycles. I knew he had owned a car repair garage and ridden motorcycles when he was younger, but on this day he really got into the stories of buying bikes, fixing them up, riding them, selling them, and then doing it all over again.

He couldn’t really recall how many Indian motorbikes he had owned, not because of his advanced age, but because there were just too many to recall. He and his buddies would ride from here in Grand Rapids to Fort Wayne, Indiana, for lunch, just as an excuse to get out and ride. He had some great stories and told them with the passion of a much younger man. At that moment my impression of him changed. I could see him as a young man out with his friends for a ride, doing what they loved.

I no longer saw him as just a man in his mid 80’s with a list of rules.

When I meet people, I try to remember that we all have our passions and that we all have our histories, and sometimes, what is presented to the outside world is the sum of those histories, and sometimes it is not.

Bob Davis, the original rider/owner of this Indian motorcycle “…apparently had a daring streak as a young man. After high school he persuaded [his parents] George and Alice to buy him a brand-new motorcycle, a 1913 Indian motorbike, a beautiful low-slung machine with magneto-fired cylinders, acetylene headlight, and a small handlebar bell for a warning signal…

“Unluckily, after enjoying his prize for a couple of years, Bob had a serious accident (on the bike), and his parents curbed his use of it. The bike went down into their basement [at 535 Fountain Street NE], and there it sat for close to fifty years.” This is quoted from The Davis House: A Brief Account of A Long History, by James Van Vulpen.

The Davis Family later donated this very motorcycle to the Grand Rapids Public Museum, and here it is in all its beauty.

A special thank you to David Rosen, the current owner of the ‘Davis House’ where this artifact I have chosen was hidden away for decades. He shared the above quote from a book about his new home, thereby adding the personal and present to a bit of Grand Rapids history, and this Artifact. David is also a fellow blog contributor to the ArtifactGR project.

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Dresses | Mary Ellen Fritz Admittedly, I give very little thought to my own wardrobe. I really don’t have to. Dressing like most modern women I know, my clothing is practical, machine washable, affordable, and comfortable. I’ve spent all summer deciding which pair of stretchy yoga pants to spend my days in. It is not a reach to say my personal style is Mom-based. I no longer even pretend to read Vogue. So you may find it odd that of all the amazing artifacts in the Grand Rapids Public Museum’s collection, it is the fashion collection that really spoke to me.

Row after row of beautifully constructed garments throughout the centuries; wedding dresses, military uniforms and Mad Men-era loungewear. But two particular dresses, located right across the aisle from each other, really caught my eye: An 1890’s circa black velvet evening gown and a 1920’s sea blue flapper dress.

The first gown was truly an amazing creation.Very formal, beautifully detailed lace bodice with a high collar, fitted (tiny) waist—boned, of course, for serious structure, with deep, full puffed sleeves that fit tightly at the elbow. The dress was sheer black silk organza—beautifully beaded with jet and crystal beads in a delicate, refined pattern—so elegant. The wide waist band and full skirt fell over a sumptuous mound of black silk velvet to the floor.

I think every women of a certain class would have owned a dress like this—it was surely the 1890’s version of the LBD. It could have been worn to dinners, parties, the theater, weddings or funerals. This was definitely a custom dress, designed and fitted for this particular woman, and one of only 6-8 dresses she might have owned. It had to be hand cleaned by a skilled servant—the same person who might have helped this woman get dressed. And the woman would have worn a corset underneath it to maintain the beautiful lines of this perfectly cut dress. And that corset also had boning sewn in, designed to hold in (squeeze) the body. We all know now how this corseting restricted basic movement, breathing and other internal organ functions (a side benefit is that corsets and structured dresses helped provide excellent posture).To add to the burden, the dress was really heavy. I wasn’t allowed to touch this gorgeous museum piece, but I’ll bet it weighed 18 pounds.

But all women, from the middle class up, would have grown used to wearing this restrictive clothing since adolescence, with corsets and heavy, tight fitting layers. Beauty came at a very high price in terms of women’s health and freedom of movement; fainting couches were a functional piece of furniture in those days for this reason. The hair that went with this era of clothing was also formal, elaborate, structured, piled high on the head with a lot of maintenance required.

In severe contrast, the second dress from the 1920’s was a soft aqua, sheer silk chemise, covered from top to bottom in thin silver beading in a modern Art Deco pattern.This dress couldn’t be more different from the first gown; just a little thin slip of a garment with a deep U-neck, sleeveless, and stopping just below the knee. It hangs straight down from the shoulder with no defined waist – just skimming the body as it floats by. (I assume one would wear a skin colored slip for some degree of modesty. My grandmother was a flapper after all.) But can you imagine the sense of freedom and the ability to move in this little dress.You could sit, stand, run, walk, breath, laugh, eat, drink and dance the night away.

Without fainting! And correspondingly, women began to crop and bob their hair into simple chin length styles that were much more “wash and wear”. How must these huge physical changes in clothing styles have filled women of the 1920’s with new possibilities for their futures?

It is amazing to see such clear evidence, through these striking Grand Rapids Public Museum artifacts, of the changes in women’s lives that happened within a 30 year period. Of course, it took years of social and political struggle to achieve the changes that would ultimately empower and enhance the lives of women. And I don’t mean to imply that the complex story of women’s rights can be told through the study of fashion history, but there is no denying that something as common as clothing had a significant impact on a woman’s daily life. I think there is tremendous power seeing both clothing that reflects hundreds of years of oppression and the grand freedoms to come. Observing these dresses and their expression of real change for women’s lives was a profound and wondrous experience for me.

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IONA China | Kim Bucholz There it was—same pattern, same color, same china! On a recent tour of the Community Archives & Research Center I found treasure sitting amongst an aisle of beautiful vintage and antique china and crystal pieces. But this specific set of china, consisting of miscellaneous dishes, caught my eye. Not only was I attracted to the contrasting patterns on the plate design, but I recognized this particular design as being the same pattern of china in a collection I inherited from my grandmother, who inherited it from her mother.

I first recognize the colors. Muted greens and pinks decorate the inside perimeter of each ivory, crazed plate. Crazing, as I researched, is the term used to describe hairline cracks in the glazing of fine china, mostly dating from the late 1800’s to the early 1900’s and is a sure-tell sign of the highest quality.

The contrast of pattern that I so admire reminds me of early art deco decorations from the 1920’s and Depression era. The geometric print encompasses symmetrical diamond, triangle, and oval shapes, that while extremely detailed, is actually quite simple, at least next to the whimsical, floral pattern that is printed below it. The floral pattern is also symmetrical, but extremely small and intricate; a floral lace.

The entire plate is then completed with gold plated trimming. The pieces in my set are showing soft signs of wear and age as this gold trim is now fading slightly, though I feel this adds distinctive qualities of beauty to the collection.

In my collection, each plate has an original manufacture stamp. “T.S.T. -IONA- China” is written inside a small outline of a creamer and/or gravy boat shape with the numbers 1 5 22 stamped underneath this logo.T.S.T. stands for Taylor, Smith, and Taylor, one of the most popular brands of collectible antique and vintage dinnerware in America. The company, named after Charles Taylor, John Smith, and William Taylor, began producing fine china in 1899 in West Virginia up until 1971 when T.S.T. was purchased

by Anchor Hocking and all original T.S.T. patterns (such as this one) were discontinued in the early 1980’s.

Due to the discontinuation of these patterns, I have been unable to connect these possible pattern numbers to a specific set (Anchor Hocking no longer has extensive T.S.T. patterns on file), which makes this collection that much more valuable. I am told the pieces within the Public Museum’s collection were originally used by the Voigt family, whose family home remains an original Victorian museum, one that I visited almost every year growing up in Grand Rapids through school field trips or family outings.

I was always captivated by the extensive amount of home decor that the Voigts had on display, whether from exotic travels (oriental carpets, tapestries, porcelain figurines, fashion items, etc.) or ornate furniture pieces from the booming industry in Grand Rapids. This made it easy for me to understand how this china collection may have been used or displayed. Perhaps the set was stored inside a china cabinet when not in use, or possibly the pieces were displayed as hanging art.The Voigt family may have even displayed their china in the same manner that my great grandparents, John VanderJagt and Nell DeWinter, displayed theirs—as formal place settings on a dining table in the morning room. My mother remembers the morning room being quiet; a peaceful sitting room used for small gatherings to socialize or for leisurely afternoon reading. I close my eyes and feel as though I am there, sitting on a bench near a large bay window, overlooking gardens that compliment the floral lace design of the china table setting.

Being inside the Voigt house I feel a sense of identification, a feeling of knowing how my great grandparents, emigrants from the Netherlands, also lived. I have personally experienced and enjoyed splendor of the same china collection that the Voigt family experienced. By recognizing this simple pattern from shelves upon shelves of patterned china in the Public Museum’s archives, I was able to piece together bits of information that have helped me connect to the roots and culture of this community.

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Voigt Cream Flakes Box | Miranda Curtiss It seems a bit silly to be writing a whole entry on an old box. Even as I type this I can imagine readers saying “Really? Out of all the cool things you could have chosen… you chose a box?!” And I can confidently reply—Yes, I really did choose to write about a box. But, if I may defend myself, it’s not just any old box. It’s a historical box used back in the late 1800’s (and through the early 1900’s) for Cream Flakes (cereal) produced by the Voigt Cereal Company.

Although the Voigt Family has a special place in the heart of Grand “Rapid-ians” due to their contribution to food production and the, now, famous home, I chose this box for another reason.

I could have scoured the museum archives for days looking for the perfect item. Maybe one of the pretty dresses, or a tea set, or even an old armoire. But this box (and many others like it) stood out for two reasons… material use and reusability.

The box, as you would expect, functions to ship the individual boxes of cereal from location to location—just like today’s boxes right? This box, however, is made of wood, so it stands up to weather conditions and, as my second point, is reusable! It ceases to amaze me that most aspects of the big “Green Movement” we’ve all been hearing about was actually a way of life 100+ years ago. People were conserving their resources and investing in quality products. They didn’t do it to keep up with society—it was simply how people lived.

This crate saw multiple shipments throughout its life span (unlike the cardboard boxes that often get thrown away after one use) and could be re-purposed at the end of its life. Like so many other things from this era purpose was breathed into everything that was made. Society didn’t have time to mess around with meaningless trinkets, like banana slicers (yes, it’s a real thing) or poorly made furniture from the chain store that will only last a few years. Many people from this time really invested in things; they purchased and valued what they had.

Although I have a pretty strong opinion on investing in quality products, I tend to fall short of the goal. Most of the items I have are low-quality, cheap, and from the chain stores. I try to convince myself that it’s OK because I’m still a college student trying to work her way through school, however that’s really not a good excuse.

So now my question to you: Why spend money on an item that will only last a year when you can invest in more expensive solution that will last 2, 3, or even 4 times longer?

Patient’s Chair | David Rosen Skeletal and sleekly sinister, the chair’s spine grins like a skull and each arm seems a scythe carried on the shoulder of the grim reaper. If form bespeaks function, then this form cries torture.Yet its hypnotic beauty produces only the softest of whispers: I am an instrument used to inflict pain of a primal and primitive kind. The small rests at the chair’s top keep your head steady as the back reclines you so that bright sturdy metal chisels and tongs can be pried between your teeth.

This is the face of dentistry before the armature of suffering was hidden beneath padding and ornamented with footrests and put into a field of soft colors and soft rugs and soft music and soft hands in gloves.

With those embellishments removed, all that remains is truth—the terrible business of pulling apart one piece of your skeleton from another. Here with remarkable beauty worthy of Tim Burton or Edward Gorey is celebrated the image of promised pain and fated mortality. Beware to look upon this chair. Beware to know thyself.

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Typewriter | Evan Zeiger Click clack, clack click, The story we’re writin’ has to be slick.

Lest the editor come and give us a whoopin’, We’d better keep the Underwoods goin’ click click.

The reporter came in with a real nice leak So the story had better be sleek.

Lest the other papers get the story, We’d better keep the desks groaning creak creak.

Can’t stop the typin’ at all, gotta keep em’ hummin’.

There’s no time for co-workers’ chummin’.

Lest the deadline go by, We’d better keep them typewriters runnin’.

This could be big, this could be great, It could give a writer a new slate!

Lest our chance go by, We’d better have somethin’ worthwhile to celebrate.

Interviews, stories, careers built on this thing.

This wonderful, wonderful, wonderful piece of writing bling!

Lest somethin’ better come by, We’d better keep using this wonder machine.

The next day the Sunday Papers roll off the presses, Fashion sections filled with the latest new dresses.

Lest the public respond in ill-favor, We’d better hope some readers the story fetches.

REO Speedwagon | Collin Hunt The band REO Speedwagon is one of my favorite bands, and I’ve always known it was named after a car. So when I saw an old car with an REO nameplate on it in the Public Museum archives, well, naturally it caught my attention. I thought it was an actual Speed Wagon at first. But when I did some research I found that it was a Model B Runabout and was the fire chief ’s car from 1910. It still has most of the bells and whistles (literally). The reason this interested me is because the REO Motor Car Company was based out of Lansing, MI. They built cars, pick-up trucks, fire trucks and other special-use vehicles from 1905 to 1975. I think this is a cool piece and it should be on display at the museum for more people to see.

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The delivery boy tosses the paper from his scooter, That story we wrote made everyone wanna read her.

Lest we get run out of business by them other papers, We’d better start typin’ with that new computer.

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Pocket Watch | Tess Dornan In the abandoned streets of London, young Eliot ran in the shadows. It was the year 1912. Thieves were about and were known to steal at midnight.

But Eliot was never safe. Last week he was caught by some guards for stealing a loaf of bread. He escaped with a bad knife wound and his face on a wanted poster.

Eliot was homeless and an orphan. He had spent the last two nights sleeping under the London Bridge.

Suddenly he was knocked to the ground. Somebody had fallen on top of him. Eliot tried to push the man off but he was pinned.

“Move and you’re dead,’’ a rough voice said.

Eliot was silent and still, until suddenly, the man moved away from him. The man reached into his vest and pulled out a knife.

Another voice said, “Leave the boy. He’ll be arrested soon anyway.”

A far-away voice yelled, “Stop! Thieves!” and the men left him.

As he pushed off the ground his fingers brushed something cold, and he stuffed it in his pocket and began to run. He ran as fast as he could until he was back at his bridge hideout.

Eliot pulled out the object he found. It was a silver pocket watch with a diamond in the center of the watch face.

“This must be what they stole!’’ Eliot said, admiring the watch. He slipped the watch in his pocket and curled up against the bricks, falling into a silent slumber.

Eliot awoke to the sound of hooves banging on cement and knew it was time to move. He jumped up and ran over the cobblestone street to the market, looking for something to eat. His eyes wandered until they stopped at the bakery door. Warm crumpets and chocolate tea cakes were sitting outside to cool. Eliot walked over, looking about, and was about to reach for a cake when a frail voice called out.

“I could buy those you know.’’

Eliot slowly turned around and was face to face with a girl with long hair about Eliot’s age. ‘’I could buy those you know,’’ she repeated.

“Yes, please,’’ he whispered.

“Why would you even steal?” the girl asked, pulling out her purse to pay for a bottle of milk and two cakes.

“Do you have money?

Eliot shook his head and took the cakes.

“Thank you,’’ he said.

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They sat and ate.

Eliot heard a noise nearby.

“You lost it,” a familiar gruff voice said. It was the men from the night before.

Eliot grabbed the girl’s hand.

“We must go…” he said, realizing he didn’t know her name.

“Bethane…I’m Bethane.

But why must we…”

He pulled her through the market until they were safely beneath the bridge.

“Look at this’’ he said and pulled out the pocket watch.

Bethane took the watch and opened it carefully. “ You stole this,” Bethane said, standing up, and placed it in her purse.

“No, I didn’t….I found it.”

“Liar!” she said, turning away from him.

“This is the queen’s.”

“I found it…two men knocked me down last night and when I got up, there it was.”

Bethane looked at him sadly. How could this boy have stolen the watch?

“Come with me,” she said, reaching for his hand.

They ran until they were at the entrance to the palace.

“Let us in. We have something that belongs to the queen,” Bethane said, kicking at the gate.

Two policemen nearby spotted Eliot and turned in his direction.

“We’ve been trying to catch this thief for a month!’’ one said, grabbing Eliot’s arm. Eliot tried to break free but it was no use, they were so strong.

“He found the watch, you should be kissing his shoes right now’’ Bethane said, irritated, as she pulled the watch from her purse.

The police loosened their grip.

“If you didn’t steal it, then who did?”

Eliot told the story of the two men. The police let go of Eliot, disappointed, and snatched the watch out of Bethane’s hands.

“The queen will be grateful,” a palace guard said. “An award will be given to both of you.”

Bethane looked at Eliot. “Perhaps instead of a reward, there might be a job for my friend.”

That day, Eliot became the apprentice timekeeper for the palace. His job was making sure all the palace clocks were clean and running. Even the pocket watch.

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Shrunken Head | Geoffrey Gillis The Old Museum The shrunken head is no longer on display.

He is buried under sensitivities and recognitions.

Locked away by regulations.

They cannot return him to himself in the Amazon.

So, he lies in the attic looking toward eternity in a locked, dusty cabinet–– where even touring groups of writers are forbidden to ask.

In 1950, he stood proudly in a glass case on a pedestal just inside the South Seas room.

Marked only “Bolivian Shrunken Head”.

The boy saw first black coal.

Then, shocked, and on his toes, he made out lips sewed shut hair too long for the pruned face.

Horror to mystery to scientific curiosity.

What was he like and how did this happen?

Who would shrink him and why?

Geography, anthropology in a rectangular room.

Gargoyle carved war clubs and a big racket like spiked loop to snare and spear him.

And shrink his head to hang on your hut.

Later, he would guard the top of the wide marble stairs of a quiet grey, concrete mid-western Museum.

Not air conditioned, but free for any kid to walk in without somebody to pay $9.

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Rectangular rooms with glowing minerals, stuffed birds and bison and mastodon skeletons.

See for yourself.

And the canteens and knives and aviator’s helmets that our fathers and grandfathers carried in their wars against the Confederates and Kaisers and Nazis.

They told us their stories about losing a hand in the Battle of the Bulge or falling out of the skies over France.

And how, really, the great General Leonard Wood won The First War, not ‘Black Jack’ Pershing.

Monumental, glass with a magnate’s name, carousels, and a coffee shop; a view of the river and lines waiting to view carefully planned traveling exhibits.

The new museum speaks through story cards, directional signs and docents to those with $9 for a children’s book.

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Wheelchair | Toni Ball This photo is of a wooden wheelchair from the early part of the 20th century. What do you see? Oak planks fashioned into a back, seat, and leg rests? Do you see the caning insets that give this utilitarian vehicle a flair that is mindful of craftsmanship long past? Or maybe you see the engineering of this chair and how similar it is to wheelchairs now, almost a hundred years later.

Wheelchairs in the hospital, in the ’50s, were much like the one depicted here—large, so large for a tiny four year old or seven, eight, nine, ten, or eleven year old. Children’s sizing was not yet in vogue. The chairs were wide and wooden but piled with pillows under your bottom, behind your back, as well as under the cast so it wouldn’t bounce on the upraised wooden leg rest.

Having had a relationship with wheelchairs since I was four years old has certainly given me experiences that most of you reading this have not had. Has anyone ever spoken very loudly to you as though you are hard of hearing because you sit in a wheelchair? Or has a clerk ever asked if you needed her to read “the tag” to you since being in wheelchair surely means continued on page 103

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Lumen Martin Winter’s “Fra Mauro” | Rickey Ainsworth During my time as an eight-year-old supernerd, I never felt more in my element than during my frequent visits to the Roger B. Chaffee Planetarium.

The local astronomy club held meetings there, and on those nights, I’d cajole my father into bringing me early and letting me stay until his (or the planetarium curator’s) patience was entirely exhausted.When we weren’t gazing up at the planetarium’s starry sky, or listening to an astronomy lecture, I could, without exception, be found wandering the exhibit hall just outside the sky theater.

Many of the artifacts in the planetarium exhibit hall seemed enormous to eight-year-old me, which seemed fitting for a place dedicated to planets, stars, and galaxies. I’d spend ages hovering over a large mechanical model of the Solar System. It was almost always stuck or broken, but that never mattered because, “Dude! Check out these rad black lights!” The hall’s giant Earth globe was another popular favorite. Its creaky, clunky motor made the globe’s escape seem marvelously inevitable. When the ball started rolling, I’d finally be able to perform my well-planned, Indiana Jones-style dash as it chased me through the museum’s Gaslight Village. I was a weird kid.

One item in the exhibit hall was even larger than the Earth globe. It was a giant painting; one that stands out in my memory, although at the time I rarely if ever spared it more than a passing glance. That piece, Fra Mauro by Lumen Martin Winter, is the artifact I recently spotted at 54 Jefferson and immediately chose for ArtifactGR. Lumen Winter, as I’ve recently learned, developed his love of painting, horses, and painting horses during a childhood in the early 20th-century American West. Decades later, as spaceflight entered the forefront of U.S. American consciousness, he too turned his imagination—and subject matter—skyward.

When Apollo 13 lifted off in 1970, astronauts James Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise were wearing Lumen Winter-designed mission patches on their arms. His design depicted three horses soaring high about the Earth, along with the phrase ex luna scientia, or “from the Moon, knowledge.”

An oxygen tank explosion cut their mission short, but in place of luna scientiam they brought us an inspiring tale of bravery and ingenuity in the face of overwhelming odds.

In the years following the Apollo program, Lumen Winter focused his creative efforts on commemorating the triumphs of human spaceflight. Fra Mauro, a blue and green abstraction of the Moon’s face, is one such painting. continued on page 104

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Tile from Old City Hall | Jennifer Metz These tiles from the demolished Old Grand Rapids City Hall make me so annoyed. I like how they look and I am glad they didn’t end up in a landfill, but I wish they were still gracing the old Elijah Meyers designed City Hall (1888) which was destroyed in 1969. I was a baby when it happened, but from what I have heard and read it was a ridiculous mess and a local tragedy. The massive, solid, makesyou-feel-good-about-your-city’s-government building was said by those in power to be extremely unsafe and it really could not be used anymore with the sophisticated technology of 1969! (Side note: when you hear the key words “unsafe,” “green space,” “obsolete for technology,” start questioning the whole argument—usually this commentary is coming from someone benefiting from the demolition of the structure). There was a fight too and a good many Grand Rapids residents spoke up, took out whole page advertisements denouncing the plan, and one great lady even chained herself to the wrecking ball, but it happened anyway. The uplifting part of the story is that the outrage over the demolition kick-started the Historic Preservation efforts in the state with the creation of enabling legislation for the protection of historic resources and locally making way for the legal protection of Heritage Hill and creating a Historic Preservation ordinance.

We have to remember it was a time in the United States when only modernism was taught in architecture schools, the architecture of the late 19th century was considered quaint, but dark, fussy and unimportant and really only appreciated by the few forward-thinking hippy-types who liked cheap rent. The mainstream was building ranches and bi-levels, moving out of the city, and working in rectangular boxes. Let me also put on record that I love an elegant and welldesigned glass box and I have nothing against modernism, but it was easy for builders and bad architects to rip off the general idea and not get the details of that simplistic style right, leaving us all with a lot of crappy architecture from the mid to late 20th century. (This abundance of poor quality architecture is in part the reason that modernism fell out of favor and there was so much bad architecture, people longed for something better, some connection, and some soul-enhancing element to their spaces).

The ultimate irony is that the replacement buildings for the Grand Rapids City Hall and the Kent County Building were an exquisite International Style set designed by Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill and the plaza included the magnificent La Grande Vitesse stabile

by Alexander Calder. So we lost something amazing and gained something also amazing which is confusing, but this doesn’t excuse the demolition of the 19th century buildings—the original arguments to tear down were hollow. The message that should be taken away from this is to take care of what you have and when you build new—build high quality and well-designed new structures that are contemporary.

The same silly arguments came back nine years ago when the midcentury SOM complex was threatened with demolition for a hotel which would have wrapped around the Calder like a snake. Luckily the horrible idea died for monetary reasons, but it worries me that not many people cared what happened to the SOM buildings or the Calder’s context at the time. Maybe now that time has passed and the International Style is so beloved again if threatened we would be fight for them and win this time.

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Merchant Marine Uniform | Sarah Nagy “The Merchant Marine has the largest ratio of casualties of any branch of the services….” stares back at me from the page of a New York Times article dated June 10, 1944. “MERCHANT SEAMEN ARE D-DAY HEROES” reads the title. “Undaunted by the threat of air attacks, sea mines, surface fire, submarines or coastal battery…” I knew my Grandfather had gone to war, but did I really realize what that meant? I grew up hearing stories of his travels during WWII, but they were nothing like this.They were stories of catching octopus off the coast of Italy with a local boy, a shipmate bringing a donkey on board to the Captain’s dismay.

Crewmates sliding off the ship and into the ocean for a swim, Grandpa clonking around the metal deck in wooden shoes on night watch, or getting dressed up and going to port with warm welcome from the locals. I envisioned a time of adventure, but what more was there that I didn’t know?

Unfortunately, there are many today who do not quite know exactly what the U.S. Merchant Marines did during the war—or maybe haven’t heard of them at all.These seamen carried personnel, supplies, and equipment needed by the Allies to ultimately defeat the Axis powers during WWII. It took 7 to 15 tons of supplies to support one soldier for one year—and with roughly 16 million U.S. troops alone serving in a war that lasted from 1939 to 1945 you can imagine this was a huge undertaking. From 1940 to mid 1942 the Germans sank more of our ships than were built—but that didn’t last long.The total of experienced Mariners at the war’s beginning went from 55,000 to over 215,000 at its peak, and the number of U.S. ships being built went from well under 200 to almost 2,000. There were United States Merchant Marines sailing all around the globe—from the North Atlantic, to the South Atlantic, Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean, and well into the Pacific. Without this aid and relief to troops the war could have been postponed months, if not years.

My Grandfather, William Alfred Bechill Jr., grew up in Detroit but moved to Chicago at the beginning of the war. My Great Grandfather worked for Chrysler and had been transferred because of wartime production. It was a cold December day in 1943 when my Grandpa, Bill Bechill, enlisted at the age of 17. He needed consent from his parents to leave, to which his mother had said, “He’ll find a way to go regardless,” and so began his journey. continued on page 105

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Detroit Jewel Stove | Wally Wasilewski A trip down Jefferson can find some amazing things. On Jefferson in Grand Rapids, the old museum still stands with old jewels inside. In it there’s a Detroit Jewel that could’ve been made on Jefferson in Detroit. Before it was known for autos in the 1880s, Detroit was known for its stoves.

Founded in 1864, incorporated in 1866 and reincorporated in 1907 as Detroit Stove Works, this closely held public corporation was, in 1920, manufacturing stoves and furnaces in Detroit under the “Jewel” name. W. T. Barbour was president and J. A. Fry served as secretary and general manager; later they advanced to chairman and president, respectively. In 1923, the company acquired Art Stove Co. and in 1925 added Michigan Stove Co. to the family. They then changed the corporate name to Detroit-Michigan Stove Co. In 1927 the company placed a giant, 30-ton replica of an old-fashioned kitchen range on the roof of its factory near the approach to Detroit’s Belle Isle Bridge. Originally built for the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, this replica was billed as the largest stove in the world.

1926 was Detroit-Michigan Stove’s best year for a long time, with net sales of $8.1 million. Detroit, Michigan Stove raised its revenues considerably by acquiring A-B Stoves, Inc. of Battle Creek, Michigan, in 1945. It also added a metal-fabricating division that turned out parts for automotive and other manufacturers. By mid-century, the company’s Detroit plant consisted of 23 buildings and its products included electric as well as gas ranges for homes.Welbilt Stove acquired Detroit-Michigan Stove in 1955.

Getting back to this little gem… She is a gas-powered beauty that has been able to keep her shine.

Her older years are treating her well as she waits to be on display. I’m not sure of her history, but by the looks of her, she was a very well kept gal. She probably was installed in only the best kitchen somewhere in the Grand Rapids area. I’m betting some furniture baron’s lady was given this beauty.

Baking bread and wonderful cookies were the smells that filled the home. And on cold winter days, she provided warmth to the kitchen and the rooms above. Just imagine waking up to the aroma of fresh bread in the morning while the eggs and coffee were heating on the stove.

When her wraps come off, I see a bright and warm future for this Detroit Jewel. She’ll proudly display and show her shiny white shell for all to admire.

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Fox Typewriter | Jeff Hill Clack…clack…clack…clack…clack…clack…clack…clack came the sound from Mr. Shipman’s class on the first day of school. Or maybe it was Mr. Bongard, or Mr. Davis, one of those somewhat familiar but long forgotten middle school teacher names.

You knew you had to take typing, but you didn’t really know why. It wasn’t even an elective, it was mandatory. “Typing? Am I going to be a secretary when I grow up?” The room smelled of old oil mixed with ink. Thirty two desks lined up in neat rows, each with a typewriter poised at the ready. It was all so military looking.

You picked out a desk and sat down. The first day, you learned terms like pica and elite, and carriage return, and white out, and a host of other meaningless jargon. “Let’s begin.

Place your left hand on the ASDF keys, and your right hand on the JKL; keys.You’ll notice the F and J keys have little dimples so you’ll know you’re ‘home’ when you feel those on your pointer fingers.You’ll eventually be able to type without looking at the keys.”

“Seriously? No way.” you thought to yourself.

Set margins.

Beginning exercises: Asdf jkl; asdf jkl; jjjjjjjfjfjfjfjfj a;a;a;a;a;a; (“Ahhhh, my pinkies hurt Mr. Shipman!”) qwerty uiop zxcvbnm Clack…clack…clack…clack on the four count. 1, 2, 3, 4 clack…clack…clack.clack clack…clack…clack…clack The whole class sounded like a chorus, a chorus of clackers. Bing, whiz, bang! Clack…clack. clack…clack Asdg “Shoot!” Then you learned about white out, and painting on paper.You took out the little black and white bottle, twisted the cap off, and painted with the little brush over the “g.”You blew on it so it would dry faster, the smell of paint rushes into your nose.You clacked over your white out. “Shoot! Wasn’t’ dry!” So you had an “f ” but it was a smudged white paint mess of an “f.” Painted again, and again. Smell of paint grew stronger. Finally you had four layers of white out paint and an “f ” perched on top of it. “Yes, finally!”

Slowly over the next couple of weeks, the clacks got quicker. Clack clack clack clack, clackety clack clack clack. Some of the kids had gotten really good. Clackety clickety clackety clickety clackety bing whiz bang!

The dog went for a walk The boy rode his bike The car goes fast Clickety clackety don’t come backety.You started to find a rhythm, and clacks become quieter and faster. Clickety click clickety click click click clickety click clickety click clickety click click click. “My pinkies still hurt Mr. Shipman!”

You were picturing words in your mind and they were beginning to appear on the page, and make semse. “Shoot!” more whiteout.

You began to get faster and faster, but almost too fast for the typewriter, as the arms kept getting tangled together; especially when you typed particular words. <shift> All work and no play make <shift> Jack a dull boy. <shift> All work and no play make <shift> Jack a dull boy.

When you came back to typing the next year, they had switched to all electric typewriters with autocorrect. “No more white out??!!”

Asdf jll “Shoot!”You hit the autocorrect button, cachunk, the “l” was magically gone.

“Sweet. continued on page 106

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Electric Guitars | Charles Honey There she stands, sleek and sexy, like a John Glenn-era rocket ready to launch: the Gibson Flying V. I am not whispering “It will be mine. Oh yes, it will be mine,” like Wayne Campbell eyeing a Fender Stratocaster in “Wayne’s World.”You see, the Flying V belongs to the Grand Rapids Public Museum, along with the well-weathered Gibson acoustic in the case behind it. Part of the museum’s display of musical instruments situated near the Planetarium, these handsome axes stand as testimonials to the care and artistry of the former Gibson guitar factory in Kalamazoo—and to the dreams of would-be rock guitar gods everywhere.

These two guitars, along with a demure white electric in the archives, are the only ones in the museum’s vast collection. Which I would count as a shame, perhaps even a dirty shame. Because guitars are beautiful things to behold and even more so to hear—especially when played loudly and with plenty of attitude. We should always have more of them, in museums and in the hands of would-be guitar gods.

Loud guitars with attitude have loomed large in my personal history ever since I first plunked out the eternal riff of “Pipeline” by the Chantays. When I was 15 I was given my first electric guitar, a 1957 Gibson Les Paul Special, by my older brother, Mike. This was only right and proper, since Les Paul fashioned the first guitar named after him in 1952, the year of my birth.

My picking up the Les Paul quickly put an end to my career on trombone (a fine example of which sits in another case at the museum). Playing Eric Clapton riffs in front of high school girls vs. playing the trombone in the marching band— well, what is there to talk about, really?

I have since used that Les Paul often in performances by my band, the Honeytones,

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whether stunning Festival crowds or annoying the neighbors. Anyway, the Les Paul with its singing solos and dinosaur roar is one of the most splendid products Gibson ever made down there in Kalamazoo. But so is the Flying V, if for no other reason than it just looks so awesomely cool. It was first produced in 1957 to counter the knock that it was, in the words of former Gibson honcho Ted McCarty, “a fuddy duddy old company.” Gibson touted the naughty-looking Flying V as “a real asset to the combo musician with a flair for showmanship.”

Many young rock guitarists wanted that flair, all right. Among them was Dave Davies, who as lead guitarist for the Kinks wielded the Flying V through raucous performances of “You Really Got Me” and “All Day and All of the Night.” For me, a longtime Kinks devotee, this vision of Dave on shows like “Shindig!” has remained burned deep in my reptilian rocker psyche.

The museum’s instrument is a 1989 reissue of a 1967 model that was used by a Kiss cover band.

Could there be any more prestigious provenance, or any higher bar except perhaps the ones that cover band played in?

As for the humble acoustic mounted behind the randy V, it is more Woody Guthrie than Gene Simmons. It dates from about 1945, the gift of one John Howard who had his nickname, “Happy Jack,” emblazoned across its sunburst top. I find this a suitably jaunty name, and one that happily presages the Who hit single of some 20 years later.

I’m afraid I don’t know much about the white electric in storage, but have no doubt it is worthy of more prominent display. Indeed, I must believe there are many more beautiful guitars, whether of the sexy-sleek or humble variety, worthy of being showcased at our magnificent museum. Why, we could fill the foyer with gleaming axes arrayed beneath the whale. We could even end the exhibit with an all-star jam of Grand Rapids’ finest guitar gods and goddesses.

We could call it VanAndelstock. Or something like that.

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Herman Miller CoStruc | Paul Propst The rolling cart with the bright colored drawers appears to be the perfect place to store the cheerful toys of a child, however, what is pictured are CoStruc components, a few pieces of a larger system of containers that serve a far more serious function. Hospitals use this system of containers to maintain a useful and clean environment as a way to improve the health of both their patients and employees. CoStruc is a product offered

by Herman Miller Inc, which is one of West Michigan’s innovative furniture companies.

The story of CoStruc begins in the 1960’s when Robert Propst required a bit of surgery and spent several days in a hospital. The operation was a success, but a few days later a staph infection appeared on his arm. To cure this, Robert was confined to bed for many weeks with his arm held over his head dripping with medication. He quickly came to hate this routine, and began asking how he had ended up like this. Doctors could not say exactly where Robert had become infected but admitted that hospitals were prime breeding areas for staff infections. The problem was in the cleaning of the rooms and most critically the furnishing in the room, all of it wood or metal nightstands and cabinets like those used in homes and business offices. None of these items could be practically and successfully disinfected.

Robert Propst was an inventor, and at this time directed Herman Miller Research Division. As he sat in bed, he began to think of a solution to this cleaning problem. CoSturc was his solution, and the name stands for coherent structures. Coherent refers to the way all the separate pieces agree to adhere to the rules of the system. Structures refers to the way the separate pieces can come together in a large variety of way to create all the cabinet needs of the hospital.

Here are just a few of the rules of the system. Each piece of CoStruc can be easily and quickly removed from its current structure using just your hands and no tools. No great amount of training or strength is required to separate the pieces. Once the pieces are separated, all the pieces can be washed and disinfected using manual or automatic washing techniques.

No piece has a sharp corner, crack, or cranny that is hard to clean. Once clean, pieces can be reassembled as easily as they can apart, and a large variety of complex structures can be composed to fit the patients’ and hospitals’ unique needs.

Robert Propst died in 2000, but he would be pleased to know that CoStruc is still available and in use in hospitals where a cleaner place is a safer place.

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Iron Lung | Anna Zaharakos When my daughter Eva and I walked through the archives of the Grand Rapids Public museum we were enthralled and drawn to so many beautiful and inspiring objects. Being in the textile design profession I naturally assumed that a textile article would be our object of choice. Much to my dismay, I am writing about something quite different, the iron lung.

I spent a significant portion of my studies in industrial design, specifically focused on design for the physically challenged. Although I decided not to continue on this path professionally, my intense involvement over a two-year period is one of the most significant times of my life. In reaching out to this community I met an amazing number of truly inspiring individuals. One individual in particular, Margaret Pfrommer, fundamentally changed my life.

In our recent exploration of the Public Museum archives, my daughter and I noticed this strange looking piece of equipment. I was “taken aback” when Gayle informed us that it was an “iron lung.”

I had never seen one before. Chills ran through me, as we stood and contemplated the reality of being the patient that this was engineered for. I was actually fighting back tears and chills in that moment, for what I also saw was the teenager, Margaret Pfrommer, not that much older then my daughters.

I first heard Margaret Pfrommer speak at a RESNA (Rehabilitation Engineering Society of North America) conference in Washington, DC, in 1981. At that conference I was introduced to the professional world of the physically challenged. I met the engineers, researchers, and designers of solutions for this broad range of products. I also had the honor to meet Margaret and to invite her to come speak at the University of Michigan.

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1960’s Tablet Desk | Pamela Patton

Margaret was a critical member of the Northwestern University Engineering Team, headed up by Dr. Childress. She was involved and aggressively active in the development and refinements of a number of technologies including the “puff and sip” wheelchair systems. She also consulted to a variety groups, testified before congressional committees, and was involved in improving home healthcare strategies for independent living. Her passion and devoted commitment was to improve the lives of those like herself.

At the young age of 19, in 1956, she contracted polio, a strain of the poliomyelitis virus. Within days, Margaret went from being an active young woman to completely bed ridden, all extremities numb. Her prognosis was bleak; if she lived, she would require life support systems and totally dependent on others for her daily existence. Her life came to prove that this was far from the truth. Although confined as a high level quadriplegic to a wheel chair, and in need of daily assistance, she was anything but dependent.

Margaret needed the help of a respirator to breath and talk, the only movement she was capable of was the movement of her head. She used a straw to answer the phone, operate two computers, and manage an extensive interactive electronic file system. She used a voice command program for composing letters and memos. Making the arrangements for Margaret to visit University of Michigan required a number of challenges, however with her determination, we overcame all the hurdles that a high-level quadriplegic needing 24 hour life support requires in making a trip.

When Margaret spoke at the exhibit, she described the experience of having spent some time in an iron lung, locked into a horizontal machine that used mechanical ventilation, known as “negativepressure.” The thought of being captive to this machine is almost unimaginable. Margaret was part of a small segment of the population that could be kept alive by the iron lung, but faced with the challenge of living one’s life in and out of this continual confinement. Margaret became part of the development trials for the positive pressure ventilation technologies that used a mouth-piece and lip seal. This ventilation technology allowed her the ability to be at home and in the wheelchair.

When Margaret spoke, you could not help but be humbled and awed. She was an inexhaustible advocate and pioneer for independence and equality for the physically challenged. When she finished speaking to the audience that day in 1983, life for me shifted at a very fundamental level. From that point on, I knew that the barriers that seem to present themselves in our lives are barriers only based on our choice and perspective. Margaret made a choice at a very young age—meeting her, hearing her, and contemplating her challenges was humbling and inspiring. Nothing stopped Margaret. Her strength of spirit and intellect transported her to an amazing and active life till her death in October of 1998. Throughout my life when I have felt overwhelmed I have often thought of Margaret, and my perspective, attitude, and choice is easily shifted.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to remember Margaret Pfrommer.

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I was thrilled and honored when Gayle DeBruyn asked me to write an Artifact blog. I wandered the rows of archives, seeking an item that would resonate with me.

Then I saw it. My heart began to race, my palms sweat, and a flood of memories came pouring back. The item? My nemesis: A 1960’s tablet desk.

“What’s the big deal?” you are no doubt wondering—unless, like me, you’re left-handed.

Recall your grade school classrooms. Rows and rows of tablet desks, neatly lined up and facing forward—and every single one had the “arm” on the right side, forcing lefties like me to squirm, contort, and twist in a valiant effort to write on the right-hand side. I clutched my writing instrument so hard that I still have a callus on the second finger of my left hand, which was often streaked with lead or ink as I drug my hand through the freshly composed letters. Write. Drag. Smudge.

Why were there no tablet desks for lefties? I did a little research.

A study carried out by the University College London (UCL) found that the proportion of left-handed people stood at just 3% of the population only 100 years ago, whereas now it has increased to 11%.

Professors at UCL concluded that this increase might be attributed to the style of teaching in the early 20th century where strict classroom rules forced all children to learn to write with their right-hand. Even as recently as the 1960s some schoolchildren’s left hands were tied behind their backs to ensure that they wrote with their right. (Lefties were also known as “gibble fists” in the 18th and 19th century and were severely discriminated against.)

My left hand wasn’t tied behind my back. Instead, my secondgrade teacher, Mrs. Bone (yes, that was her name), would simply send John Parzgnat (a fellow lefty) and me outside to play during cursive penmanship lessons, until we were caught by the principal and returned to class, where we were basically ignored during said lessons.

The struggle—me against the desk—continued until 5th grade, when Mrs. Shaw, herself a lefty, gave me private penmanship lessons.

My writing became legible and I learned to adapt. Oftentimes, I would sit in one tablet armchair, and write on the surface of the tablet to my left. As I grew older, I would survey any new classroom, hoping against hope that there would be one left-handed tablet desk. If there was, I pounced on it like a bird on a French fry. If not, I would physically turn the whole desk, so that when I turned to the right to write, I would still be facing forward, and therefore not accused of copying the paper of the person to my right.

Today, I take pride in my lefty-ness. We lefties are members of an exclusive club. We are creative. We are “in our right minds.”

Yet I still do an internal “happy dance” whenever I see any desk configuration with its writing surface on the left.

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54 Jefferson Building | Nancy Goodman A recent quick walk through the old public museum at 54 Jefferson Street was such an amazing and delightful tease. Housing the museumâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s archives, the back section of the building is becoming an organized collection of artifacts. I could easily have spent an hour or more in each aisle and wish for more time.

The multitude of objects would awaken a child-like curiosity and imagination in any of us. The large array of subject matter could also be a treasure for academic research.

There are several people with a vision of what such a collection could mean to the community. They plan to have the artifacts accessible online.The collection would be available and recognized nationally and internationally.

I was awed by the vast archival materials and would enjoy further study of any number of items in the collection. However, my initial passion is toward the building itself and the two other structures in the city that are managed by the museum.

The Van Andel Museum Center on Pearl Street opened in November, 1994. Since that time the museum on Jefferson has been closed to the public.

The original museum was founded in 1854 as the Grand Rapids Lyceum of Natural History, among the oldest history museums in the country. In 1865 it merged with the Grand Rapids Scientific Club. In 1868 they formed the Kent County Scientific Institute and Museum. It became a premier educational organization and remains a nationally accredited institution.

The building at 54 Jefferson was opened to the public in 1940 with the corner stone date of 1938. It was designed by local architect Roger Allen and was built with the aid of funds from the Federal Public Works Administration (PWA). continued on page 106

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Kent County Civil Defense Sign | Chris Knape

Floral Dress | Kara NcNabb 1895 Her dress billowed around her bare feet. She breezed past the butcher shop and the pharmacy with a book hugged to her chest. Anna Harrison always had a book—and something to say. She smiled at the milkman, “A pleasant day to you and the cows, Mr. Hayes.” With a twinkling eye, he tipped his hat to her. She kneeled to greet little Emma, the locksmith’s five-year-old daughter.The two exchanged smiles and a few words, while Emma handed her a Black-eyed Susan. Anna tucked it behind her ear. She smoothed Emma’s tousled curls and continued on, crossing the street in my direction.

In that moment, I was grateful for the printing press behind me. Its rhythmic chug swallowed the deafening thump of my heartbeat. Otherwise, she surely would have heard it.

I was suddenly aware of the dopey grin plastered across my face. It was growing larger by the minute. Sweltering day, ain’t it? What brings you into town today? Can I help you carry your things? Hello...

Words swirled through my head, fighting to escape. But my lips were paralyzed, the words trapped inside as my imagination ran wild. I diverted my gaze as she walked past me. My chance had come and gone, again. I was too nervous to say a word.

My gaze shifted to her dress as she walked by. Red blossoms stuck out amidst swirls of green and blue, beautiful and full of life, like her. Everyone adored Anna. Perhaps it was the allure of her mint green eyes that promised to listen, beckoning the divulgence of one’s deepest thoughts. Or the exuberance in her greeting, tailored to each passerby, acquaintance and stranger alike. continued on page 107

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The symbol at the bottom of the “Evacuation Route” sign contains the letters CD, for Civil Defense.

I remember first noticing the CD logo during the annoying and disconcerting tests of the Emergency Broadcast System in the late 1970s—the ones that interrupted perfectly good reruns of “Johnny Sokko and his Flying Robot” and “Green Acres.”

I also recall seeing the symbol on signs like this one along highways when we went on family road trips.

There was a time I figured the signs would guide my family to some sort of fortified safety bunker in the event of a nuclear war. This was the kind of romantic scenario that went through a kid’s mind back in the 70s and 80s.

The naïve days of atomic bomb survival tactics like “duck and cover” were over. Few baby boomers wanted to talk with their kids about the real horror that awaited in the event Brezhnev got trigger happy.

My mom, on the other hand, was pretty nonchalant about responding to my questions the few times I asked her about the subject. When I was around 9 years old I asked her what it meant if the EBS tone wasn’t “only a test.”

“It means we probably don’t have long to live,” she told me.

One time she mentioned that we might try evacuating to someplace in Ohio if a nuclear war broke out (perhaps following a CD Evacuation Route sign). Then, she added, since Detroit was a major center of industry, it was likely we’d all be piles of ash before we got far. Even if we survived, she explained, we’d die a painful and horrible death in the radiation-strewn wreckage.

My mom, changed in ways I will never know by the death of my seven-year-old sister in 1980, was not one to mince words about these sorts of things.

So, the CD logo, like the faded “Fallout Shelter” signs that once adorned my elementary school, became a symbol of the end of the world—the source of a thousand bedtime prayers answered by nightmares.

When I saw this in the archives, it was as if a switch was flipped.

My 10-year-old self, who played Missile Command at the arcade and watched “Wargames” on the big screen, was there in the archives storage room with me, relieved the sign had been relegated to a museum.

A moment later, I was alone again, a 39-year-old father of three, standing next to a dirty round piece of metal amid a million other artifacts. That’s when I realized that arrow pointing toward an evacuation route never really pointed the way ahead. It pointed up.

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Wedding Dresses and Bridesmaid Dress | Andrea Melvin Blue, plaid, maroon, yellow, beige and white....when walking down the aisles of wedding gowns housed in the Grand Rapids Public Museum’s historic clothing collection, one wouldn’t know it.

The aisles of over 140 gowns show the evolution of wedding traditions and fashions over the last 160 years. The rainbow of colors and variations in design from long trains to bustles, short hems to sleeveless styles show what West Michigan women chose to wear on one of the most important days of their life. Some of the Museum’s oldest gowns are simply a woman’s best dress. They are functional and easy to launder and were likely worn many times. This is not the case for the majority of American brides today.

The tradition of wearing white on one’s wedding day actually only goes back to Queen Victoria in the 1840s and became the social norm by the 1880s-90s. Called the “white wedding” tradition, the rituals that evolved around the wedding event during this time period—such as the ceremony, cake, music and the reception—are still very common today.The white gown was a key component, originally used to impress the groom’s family and exhibit wealth by wearing a dress that—what a shocker!— could easily get soiled and would only be worn once.

Among the collections of wedding dresses at the Grand Rapids Public Museum, there are only a handful linked to other members of the bridal party (groom, bridesmaid, flower girl and groomsman).

The Museum’s tuxedos and men’s suits have very little information associated with them. We often do not know who wore them or where they were worn. In more recent years, renting has become the norm for the wedding tux, making it even less likely to see the grooms’ attire in the Museum.

Bridesmaids likely do not approach the museum to donate their dresses because it was not THEIR big day. Wedding dresses in the Museum collection were often donated by the bride or her family wanting to document an important rite of passage. It is not surprising that the bridesmaid is less sentimental about the occasion than the bride.

Some sources say that the history of the bridal party dates back to the Anglo-Saxon era and that early on bridesmaids dressed just like the bride (so evil demons wanting to lay a curse would not be able to identify the actual bride and groom). Others say that early bridesmaids were provided with inferior dresses because they were actual servants (or maids). Some bridesmaids just did not like the dress they had to wear—after all, they didn’t pick it out! It is for these reasons that it is also not surprising that there are only about five bridesmaids dresses that found their way into the Museum collection.

The wedding gowns at the Grand Rapids Public Museum give us the biggest clues about changing traditions in wedding ritual and the culture surrounding the wedding. Today the wedding industry is booming and is said to be “recession proof,” with dresses averaging about $1000 each in Michigan1.

Other sources state that smaller weddings are on the rise though and that there is an increasing number of couples interested in having smaller weddings2. They are having less elaborate ceremonies, spending less on their attire, having a smaller bridal party, inviting fewer guests and choosing a small venue like a backyard or city hall. This can be for both economic reasons or the urge for a smaller and more intimate celebration. One wonders if we are indeed in another changing phase for wedding traditions... maybe my dress could represent this new era?

1 http://www.mlive.com/business/index.ssf/2012/08/weddings_cost_michigan.html 2 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/12/fashion/the-reinvented-wedding-smaller-and-cheaper. html?pagewanted=all

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Fossil | Dalin Clark I’ve loved rocks for as long as I can remember. They are beautiful, fascinating and completely useful. For ages, rocks have been used to create a sense of permanence for important events.Think about Stonehenge, the pyramids, Plymouth Rock, the Blarney Stone, the Grand Canyon, the Rock of Gibralter.

Buildings of a certain era were marked with grand cornerstones where the date of the building’s opening was stamped into its foundation. Piles of rocks made lasting fences and reliable wayfinding markers. They became weapons, tools and handy liners for fire pits.

Rocks continue to create houses and marriages. The traditional gift that seals a proposal, after all, is a sparkling rock.

I think fossils are the best kinds of rocks. On the outside, they’re just another pretty face, but on the inside, it’s a whole different story. Here, cells have been captured to tell us exactly what was happening millions of years ago. Fossils are truly beautiful snapshots of the past.

At the Grand Rapids Public Museum, there is a fine collection of fossils, rocks and minerals.

Additional specimens are carefully preserved in the archives, just waiting for the chance to tell their tales.

Take this beauty from the Paleozoic Era, for example. It’s hundreds of millions of years old. That in itself always makes me stop and think. Even the cavemen are whippersnappers by that count.

Experts estimate that the Paleozoic Era was roughly 544 to 245 million years ago. It was a time of dramatic geological, climate and evolutionary change. Fish, arthropods, amphibians and reptiles were rapidly evolving. Life began in the ocean, but eventually made its way to land. Huge forests covered the continents and eventually formed the coal beds of Europe and eastern North America. Toward the end of the era, large reptiles were known to live on land and plants started to resemble some those we know today.

This was the time that single-cell creatures were evolving to more complex beings and it is believed that the fish and fish-like creatures that evolved during this time still make up more than half of the vertebrates that inhabit the world today. There were also at least two ice ages during the Paleozoic Era, which ended with the greatest mass extinction event in history. Experts think that 95% of all marine species met extinction at this time.Yet we know from the fossils that those survivors continue to thrive.

Years of research help guide our understanding of the world’s evolution, but it’s spectacular to see it with your own eyes. Go see the fossils. Look into the past. And see how it changes your perspective on the future.

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Silver Dust Blue Detergent Box Tim Priest Heavy duty Silver Dust Blue detergent, you know, for washing clothes. Isn’t it evident on our packaging? We clearly show a beautiful Libbey Juice Glass to fully illustrate that our product not only washes baby clothes, work clothes, fine fabrics, walls, linoleum, tiles, dishes, whitewall tires, and all washable surfaces but also gets you started on your very own collection of mid-level quality drinking ware.You’ve undoubtedly heard of the gold leaf process in glass ware decorating.Well ours is similar to that but done with a far cheaper, less valuable precious metal—silver. Still the result is the same—a beautiful drinking glass from which to enjoy juice whilst you launder your white walls. I’m not even sure why any other detergent product is on the market at all. This one does it all!

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Steelcase Grained Wastebasket | William DeBruyn I love wood—from a walk in the woods under tree canopies—to the furniture and architecture they become.

I also love the rhythm of a factory—it hums, it is predictable, constant, and true. At least it was in the 1950’s when I started working for Steelcase Inc. My father left Delft, Netherlands as a young boy in 1913 and came to Grand Rapids through Canada.

The story is unclear whether he was running from a war or chasing a lovely girl—both are plausible.

Grand Rapids was a known Dutch community, so it was an obvious place to head toward. Familiar landscape, and familiar names. He never returned to Delft, never wanted to really. He was quite content to start a new life in Fischer station (you might know it as Ideal Park). A train station, the Buist General Store, and Ideal Park made a fine place for a boy to explore. I was pretty little when my sister Dean brought me to this museum. I have always been more of an ‘outdoor’ guy, so I don’t remember going often, but I remember that is was a special place.

Dad, his name was Aarend (folks called him Arie), worked for Hekman Furniture on Buchannan.

When I was old enough I managed to get a job there working after school making fine furniture.

In 1952 I joined the Army and served in the Korean War. I was the 10th (and last) child of Arie and Johanna. My brothers— all three—served our country in World Wars I and II. Now, I suppose you wonder what all this has to do with a wastebasket—hang on... I will get there.

The day I returned to Grand Rapids, I was on my way to Hekman to ask for my old job back, but first went to see my brothers who were working at Steelcase, a factory behind Hekman. I was hired on the spot. Steelcase wanted me to start right away but I convinced them to let me take a week-long vacation first.

I spent most of the next five years in the paint department working with my brothers.

Here is the wastebasket part: In the early 1900s it occurred to folks (insurance companies especially) that cigar and pipe ashes in wicker wastebaskets were not a good combination. Fire proof safes made way to metal filing and storage. Metal Office Furniture Co. would meet the needs of fire proof office furnishings. With new technologies in spot welding and steel fabrication, manufacturers could now create tight 90 degree corners out of steel to make waste baskets, desks, and files that did not burn. Thing is, folks still wanted the furniture to look like wood.

So—like the metal dashboards of cars, and hotel Servidors, Metal Office began using engraving equipment to put wood grains on metal furniture.

They purchased equipment from Grand Rapids Panel Company that had earlier been used to put hardwood

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grains on softwood furniture. In 1958 I was offered the opportunity to learn this craft and apprenticed under Bill Eberts, and when he retired I took over. A customer could select the wood species, finish color and size (there were two)—I remember the most popular being Walnut. The baskets were formed, welded, and then taken to the paint room where they sprayed a ground coat color and then we would put the grain pattern on with a hand roller. We would feather in the edges and then the baskets would be varnished. We worked on ‘baskets’ between other jobs. Steelcase grained metal file cabinets and desks of all types including executive roll-top desks, secretarial desks that stored typewriters, and desk accessories including ash trays.

Before I retired in 1993, I restored many of the desks in the Steelcase Archives. Beautiful brass hardware from Keeler Brass, leather and linoleum tops for smooth writing surfaces, and many desk accessories including waste baskets. When I retired, Steelcase retired the graining department too.

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Simplex Clock | Tommy Allen Give Pause.

It has been many years since I was invited to the archives at the Grand Rapids Public Museum. I cannot recall why but I do recall I had the same overwhelming sense of awe at what was in the collection.

When asked this time, it was to visit the collection to support a new purpose, a new kind of mission that acknowledged our present tools and their ability to create a leap back for others in the state of Michigan’s second largest public museum collections.

As I wandered about on my task to find just one object, the perfect object to lend my voice or share my connection, I felt like a modern-day ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears Not too hot, not too cold, but just right for ArtifactGR.org As I wandered past the too-numerous-topersonally-count tagged artifacts, I noticed a simple stone drinking fountain dismantled and laying in pieces on the floor. I was reminded about the purity of water and how it quenches our thirst.

I moved past an old switchboard and imagined how communication has changed and wondered in a comical way what would happen to the job of the person who served in this short-lived roll of physically plugging us into the places we wanted to be. They could go the tech route or just become a telephone operator but the switchboard when removed from us, never needed to return. We had moved on.

And then I saw a bank of clock faces across the room. Too odd and short to be floor clocks but they intrigued me.

As I inched closer, I noticed they were actually beautiful time clocks with the Simplex model really catching my eye for its Mad Men era of style and beauty.

As I looked at it, I marveled at the sunrise pattern rendered in an elegant modernist fashion. Or was it sunset. It served many purposes.

Remember setting the table as a child? A chore, right? Most of the time I didn’t think so. Odd, right?

As a child my family ate together around our table every night. I remember it. It had tapered brown wood legs and the top was a fake wood grain laminate.

It was round most of the time but had two leaves just in case. There were only four of us, mom & dad, sister & me. Every night someone set the table, every night we ate a delicious meal after both of my parents worked all day.

Every night we prayed before we ate and had a Bible story after we ate. In the middle we talked about what we did that day…and about the sailboat or about building a deck or what was growing in the garden. We talked a lot.

It often took a while. Our friends were often annoyed especially those who were invited to eat with us and also those that waited outside to play again.

As an adult I developed a zest for cooking, for the tools that go with it, and the books & magazines with pictures and the delicious recipes with which to make real meals. As my husband, Steve, and I began our lives together we would entertain. Taught by our parents and aunts & uncles to have dinner parties and gather people into home spaces, we set that table.When we began our life together, said table was from Kohls. It was fakey beech wood topped and white legged. It had chairs to match. It sat four comfortably, six not so comfortably. The whole set probably cost $129.99. It was cheap and held together for many years. It also held family together. I remember setting this table hundreds of time for friends and family. Sometimes with placemats.

Sometimes with tablecloths. Sometimes off to the side as a serving buffet. But each time that table was used, it had a purpose.

Now we have an old antique table with pullout leaves from below. Seats 10 rather well. Matching carved chairs, likely from an amateur carver we surmise.

Rather comfortable, rather newly reupholstered, and used again and again to eat elaborate meals and tonight’s soup. It’s been used again and again to talk about deep subjects, to laugh over a delicious meal and to sign a contract or two.

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Table | Amy Ruis

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Broken Bicycles | Dana Friis-Hansen Ok, in comparison with others, I’m hardly a serious bicyclist; I often ride my commuter bike to work, to work out, and around town on errands.

When wandering the aisles of the storage archives of The Public Museum I came across a shelf with a layered tangle of old bicycles. I recalled how important my bicycles were during my youth and realized the confluence of bicycle tracks in my life since moving to Grand Rapids. So I guess you could say as I sit at my keyboard, today’s the day I’m going to get serious about bikes.

A few childhood memories that maybe you have too: My first bike was a tricycle and my father bolted blocks onto the pedals so I could reach them.

Mastery of the trike led to a “real” bike, red, with training wheels. Which eventually came off…

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I can still recall the thrill of learning how to ride “no-handed” (which I confess I like to do nowadays when whipping across the Blue Bridge).

A few years later, in November when the bike had been put away in my cellar, it seemed to disappear, and I was deeply confused and upset, thinking I had lost it, but my parents reassured me it was stored in the attic, a space that was impossible for a child to access. On Christmas Morning, my bike made its return as a homemade stingray chopper bike, painted blue, with high rise handlebars, a banana seat, and a sissy bar.

Next, around 6th grade, was a ten-speed with wrapped drop handlebars. My parents also let me ride outside our neighborhood, too. I rode bikes like these through high school, college, and a little bit after—it meant freedom, independence, self-reliance.

Fast Forward to Grand Rapids, July 2011: Fast forward to age 50, and I had just landed the job of Director of the Grand Rapids Art Museum.

My partner and I moved here from Austin, and had our stuff shipped ahead and unloaded in our apartment above the UICA. After a long flight, I will never forget opening the door, surveying the piles of boxes and jumble of furniture, sighing about the July heat and the unpacking job ahead. Then I noticed the handlebars of our bikes sticking out of the mess, and suggested we start the unpacking tomorrow, and go out for a ride tonight.

New to town, we recalled that there were some recommended restaurants up on Cherry Street, and headed up there…landing at the Green Well where we enjoyed Michigan beer and a tasty dinner.

I’ve been biking around GR ever since.

October 2011: Signed up for Inside Grand Rapids, an intense 3-day introduction to the issues facing our city, meeting longtime leaders and new arrivals like us. We rode our bikes to the first day session, at a building appropriately named “Bicycle Factory” on Front Avenue amongst the expanding GVSU campus. We were a little puzzled to find a shiny new 3-story building that looked nothing like a Bicycle Factory. We learned from local developer Paul McGraw that when the beautiful 110-year old brick factory building was about to be renovated for apartments above a commercial first floor, a fire claimed the structure, so in memorial to it, the original name remains on the new one. It turns out that was the home of the Grand Rapids Cycle Company, one of six bicycle factories in the city. According to WOOD-TV, this company was the largest and put out 30,000 bicycles and the factory employed 200 people in its prime in the late 1800s. Bicycle manufacturing in Grand Rapids was abruptly halted in 1899 as most of the bike makers were bought out and shut down by the bicycle trust out of New York. By 1903 the bicycle industry was completely gone from Grand Rapids, and many other cities as well.

February 2012: Grand Rapids Magazine hits the newsstands with me on its cover—on a bicycle!

The Museum’s Director of Marketing and PR had pitched the fact that I often ride my bicycle to work to be featured as part of their February “Fitness Issue” (ironic given my unfit state, but anyway…).

Johnny Quirin took a great shot of me in front of the Museum on my way to work, scarf blowing behind me, lunchbox in my basket, and a thermos hanging off the side. I was shocked and thrilled to be on the cover, but it was a fun photo and fit well with my goal of being immersed in the sustainable, urban culture of Grand Rapids.

September 2012: From all the artifacts available in the collection of the Public Museum, I selected this artifact, an upside-down, damaged bicycle built by the defunct Grand Rapids Cycle Company.

With tires separated from the rims, it has some issues, but as a kid my father taught me to flip my bike over to tend to the tires, oil the chain, and adjust the gears, and I feel the urge to do this to the antique bike in front of us.

My childhood was shaped by my bicycle (and bicycling) history, which is full of fond memories.

As an adult, I ride with pride because of the way it saves energy, makes me a healthier person, and allows me to enjoy traversing the city with direct contact with the street, building, pedestrians and other cyclists. Bicycling gives me better contact with the world, past, present, and future.

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Roper Stove and Oven Tommy Fitzgerald Old Fashioned Pot Roast 1 5lb Chuck 1 Large Red onion, wedged into 8s 2 Cups chopped (into 1 inch pieces) celery 1lb baby carrots 6 turnips peeled left whole 6 parsnips, peeled left whole 6 beets peeled left whole 10-12 b size redskin potatoes, cleaned left whole 1 pack fresh rosemary, leaves pulled, left whole 2 T of each Kosher Salt and course ground pepper About a cup fresh pealed, whole garlic 1 cup olive oil 1 bottle red wine

- Preheat oven to 550 degrees or highest temp - In large turkey roaster, put oil, all veggies, garlic, rosemary, and S&P and toss like a salad - With hands still oily and spicy, place roast on top of veggies and rub with oily hands to evenly cover roast with “the love”!!

- Roast uncovered for about 30 minutes or until nice browning occurs on roast - Now pour entire bottle of red over the top of roast, fill bottle with water and proceed to add to roaster - Cover roast with tight lid, kick down the heat to 250 and roast for at least 2-3 hours or until meat starts falling apart - Feel free to thicken the pan juices with flour or cornstarch for the best gravy EVER!

Kernel King Popcorn Maker | Evan Hunt Are you the King of Pop? Hiya, ladies and gentlemen! King Kernel here with a “pop” quiz for ya. Let’s find out how much ya know about one of my favorite subjects: popcorn! You’ll find the answers at the bottom of the page.

Ready? Heeeeeere we go!

True or false.

1. Popcorn dates back at least as far as the 1500s.

2. More popcorn is consumed in movie theatres than anywhere else.

3. Microwave popcorn was the very first use of microwave food heating.

4. A kernel of popcorn contains a small drop of water.

5. Christmas trees were the first known use of popped popcorn for decoration.

6. When popped, popcorn comes in two basic shapes - Snowflake and Mushroom.

7. Most of the world’s popcorn is grown in the United States.

8. The popcorn plant is a member of the vegetable family.

9. The first popcorn machine was invented by an Italian restaurateur.

10. The kernels that don’t pop are called “old men.” answers on page 111

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Broken Diorama | Roberta King Trouble on the River The crew of six men, shanty boys, as they were known had been working since dawn. The weather was spring warm and they wore colorful wool shirts in red, green and blue. Some wore jeans, others were in brown canvas pants, precursors to Carhartts. Some of the crew was French, as shown by their grey berets. “Deplacez ce bois,” said Jacques to Pierre as they shoved giant White Pine timbers down the sparkling, pristine river. They balanced on the wood—poking the timbers with cants and pikes, to better maneuver the logs down the river to mills where they would be stripped of bark and used to make sofas, chairs and desks for Grand Rapids’ burgeoning furniture industry. The smell of pine filled the air and their hands and boots were tacky from the sap.

The work took coordination like an orchestra—for everything to work on the river—the men had to be working in unison despite the noise and chaos. One wrong move and a man could slip under a log and not be found until the raft of logs met the sawmill, sometimes days or weeks later.

In his four years of logging, Mike, the crew leader had not lost a man to drowning. It would be part of his job though, to retrieve a body if one of his men were to slip. He dreaded even the thought of it. In a grey shirt with suspenders at over six foot four, he was tall among men in the 1860’s, but led his men with a fair hand. “Ok let’s move these logs and watch out,” he called. The water was high, ideal for the work they would do that day, all for the pay of $20 a month. And all the food they could eat.

Just before lunch it was over. Just like that, the men were toppled, sprawled among the logs and in water. Only Mike remained standing. His crew, for the most part was face up, except for Karl. He lay facedown across three logs almost cheek to cheek with Pierre. Both were wearing bright green shirts that caught Mike’s eye. “Karl, are you ok?” he called, trying to get his friend’s attention. Mike felt glued to his log, he could not move to help his men.

It was horrible. Pike poles and cants were tossed everywhere like toy Pick Up Sticks. There was no blood that Mike could see, and oddly, the men were still smiling. Jacques and Pierre’s berets remained firmly on their heads, but a log had fallen on Jacques face. Mike averted his glance. “It’s all over,” he said.

It wasn’t a logjam or a dam letting loose that took the men, it was the digital age that ended the life of this diorama log crew.

The word diorama was first used in the early 1800s and literally means “through that which is seen.” Dioramas are still used in museums as they have been since the 1900s. Some are life-size, like those with animal specimens. Dioramas give context to objects, showing animals in a habitat cavorting with other species that might be in the nearby woods or stream. Miniature dioramas, like the loggers at the Public Museum of Grand Rapids Archive help tell stories that otherwise people might not be able to understand, that of frontier life, a famous battle in a war or a peek into a one room school house. Dioramas are detailed and complicated, just like the lives of the people depicted.

But, as more modern story telling devices are used, old dioramas are sent to the archive where they remain, protected and preserved, but probably not to be displayed again.

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Harley Davidson Police Motorcycle continued from 25

The State Police defended their choice to buy BMW’s by citing an analysis which states the BMW is faster (topping out at 131 m.p.h.) and accelerates from 0-100 m.p.h. in less than 11 seconds.

It takes a Harley a little more than half a minute. Simply put, and according to the State Police’s vehicle evaluation team, the BMW police motorcycle surpasses the overall performance of a H-D. However, the majority of the State motorcycle-riding police officers still sit atop HarleyDavidsons. The question becomes whether this recent shift in police motorcycles will signal the decline of H-D as “The Police Motorcycle,” and make way for BMW as the new cop in town.

Harley dealers in Michigan, along with representatives of H-D, couldn’t be reached for comment in the article.Yet, they were able to quote someone who offers a unique perspective on Michigan motorcycling, especially as an H-D rider. This particular motorcyclist rides a police edition Harley, an advanced version of the 1989 Interceptor. But, he isn’t a cop. He is my father.

Vince Consiglio, or Dad as I call him, has been riding a motorcycle throughout the state of Michigan and all over the U.S. as early as 1970, putting 20,000 miles a year on his numerous bikes since 1974. Along the way he’s shifted gears on several different Harleys, from a ’71 Sportster, to the three-wheeled Servicar, and many, many police editions, including his most current 2012 H-D Police Road King. He is always cut a deal for the police bikes, being the President of ABATE of Michigan (American Bikers Aimed Towards Education), and a Chief Instructor for the Motorcycle Safety Foundation (MSF).

In the last few months or so, ABATE and my Dad has repeatedly been featured in the local news. Back in March they repealed Michigan’s long-standing mandatory helmet law. It’s because of them that you’ll see some motorcyclists cruising the roads of Michigan without helmets.

In the Detroit Free Press article,Vince Consiglio called the State’s purchase of BMW’s “pretty disappointing.” It’s no surprise he was disappointed, seeing as he’s ridden no other brand but Harley since 1971. He’s proud to ride an American machine, especially a Midwestern one. Once he bought a Harley, he transformed into a motorcycle madman. And, over the years, he’s fully, exponentially, and one-hundred-percently encapsulated the motorcycle lifestyle that has captivated so many Americans; in fact, he does so in his own way, and in extreme fashion.

My Dad is the sort of rider who will ride year round if he can. He owns a Harley with a sidecar attached, used exclusively for riding through the snowy winter months of Michigan. For clothing, he’ll stack layer, upon layer, upon layer over his body to fool himself he’ll stay warm riding in below freezing temperatures.

Throughout the seasons, weather is unpredictable in Michigan; my Dad is predictable; he will ride his motorcycle.

I’ve grown up seeing the American obsession with motorcycles firsthand. When we went on vacations as a family it was a mother and her sons in the luggage-packed car, with the father riding fast and far ahead on his H-D motorcycle.

H-D is an iconic American company, serving the people’s passion for speed, thrills, and the wonder of the open road. Although I’m not an active motorcyclist myself, it’s in my blood. From a young age I remember hearing the reverberating roar of the engine firing up. As a two-year-old I was strapped into the sidecar with my older brother and taken for a ride. As a teenager I’d ride on the back as a passenger wearing shoulder pads and a helmet with a facemask, and cruise directly to the field for football practice.

When I saw the 1989 H-D Police Interceptor stored as a museum artifact, you can see why I had to write about it. Though all the artifacts were dead silent, I could hear the motorcycle engine roaring, as I do deep within my dreams.

Harpsichord continued from page 36

Stories continued

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This instrument has a story to tell that goes beyond technical details of its construction. It retains its original decoration, which is elaborate; indeed, there is little doubt that it was originally built for a wealthy, probably aristocratic household. In fact, there is a painting on the inside of the lid of a noble woman sitting in a lavish garden, playing a harpsichord not at all unlike the instrument her image adorns—perhaps this is a portrait of the original owner. While I believe that I might be close to determining who built this unsigned harpsichord based purely on technical grounds, identifying its original owner would help us to establish even better when and where it was built, and what sort of music it was meant to play. This little harpsichord has so many stories to tell!

Those of us interested in recapturing the lost sounds of the past turn to such instruments as the Grand Rapids harpsichord as a rich source to mine for information on how things were done and why. This allows builders to make copies of historic instruments, in a quest to recapture their sound. This is, ultimately, not really a matter of recreating the past, so much as it is of reawakening in us a musical voice that can still speak o us as human beings. Unlike bits of cloth or leather, our ability to respond to music does not dimihish with time or use; we are ready at all times to be moved and delighted. As the little harpsichord in Grand Rapids stands poised to give up its secrets, we await an important voice from the past that promises to enrich our present.

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Lobsters continued from page 42

I know she’s right. Our years of training have made us lithe and we without question the best dancers in the tank. But time and time again, the brute lobsters seem to be chosen over us.

Minutes later Cleo is carried past us again. She’s exhausted, lying belly up on a shiny, white divan. At that moment I realize who can help us: Arturo’s daughter, Agnes.

We call Agnes “the artist.” After the show she takes our friends and paints them in beautiful colors to dance again elsewhere. Our home sits between where the people wait to be taken for the show and a room where Agnes plays, reads and paints.

It isn’t long before Agnes arrives. I swim to the top of the tank and stage-whisper her name, “Agnes!”

She looks around before she realizes where the sound is coming from.

“Why are you talking to me?” Agnes asks.

“Why wouldn’t I talk to you?” I counter.

“You’ve never spoken to me before,” she says. ”I’ve talked to you for years and you’ve never uttered a word.”

“For that, I am sorry. I am Prospero.”

“And I am…”

“Agnes, I know. Agnes, my dear friend Philippa and I need your help.”

“Do you want to escape? I can take you to my room and we can all live there.”

“Escape? Oh no. We want you to make us beautiful.”

Philippa has joined me, but does not speak.

“We’ve seen how you’ve painted our friends and we’re hoping you will paint us, too.”

“Oh, I will. Someday.”

Philippa’s voice is clear and calm. “We wish to be painted now.”

Philippa rests her claws on top of the tank so Agnes can see her. “We must be as beautiful as our dance.”

Agnes looks at her kindly. “And so you shall be.”

Agnes spreads newspaper over the table and opens tiny pots of paint. She pulls me gently from the tank and wipes my shell dry with a towel. “And how shall I paint you, sir?” I look back at Philippa in the tank. “I want Philippa to glisten like a mermaid adorned in jewels.”

Agnes nods. “Then I shall make you Neptune, king of the sea.”

I relax in her hands as she begins her work; the paint warm upon my shell. Soon my claws are an iridescent green and my legs look like pearls circled in jade. Philippa joins me on the table, looking blissful as Agnes paints her shell.

After Agnes is finished, we recline together.

“Philippa, my love, you are breathtaking.”

She closes her eyes and smiles. After we have dried, Agnes returns us to the dark tank.

The next day, we hide ourselves, preparing for our debut. The other lobsters are wary and jealous, moving slowly around us. Not only are we the best dancers; we are now, without a doubt, the most beautiful lobsters in the tank.

Arturo flips the light on over the tank and turns to walk away, but something catches his eye. It’s Philippa’s flippers, shimmering green and gold. Arturo flips the lid off the tank and reaches in, scattering lobsters as he searches for us. He picks me up, his eyes wild and his hand shaking.

“Agnes!” He bellows. “What have you done?”

He tosses me on the table and turns back to the tank. I see Philippa pirouetting in the center of the tank, spinning with her legs extended and her flippers out. I see the look of joy on her face as she spies Arturo’s hand and realizes she is being chosen.

Agnes peeks around the corner as her father plops Philippa next to me.

“Agnes, why? Why have you poisoned my tank?”

Agnes approaches him warily. “I painted them so they could be free. They’re dancers, Papa, not dinner.”

Arturo shakes his head and begins shouting commands to his staff. “Get buckets.” “Drain the tank.” Let’s salvage what we can.”

“Chef, prepare a bisque!”

Philippa and I are carried away into brightness and warmth.

“Showtime!” I say to Philippa.

“Our time,” she responds.

We are lowered into a dark place and the warm light above us disappears. We sense movement below nd around us, and instead of briny water, we’re surrounded by stifling heat and smells.

We must be backstage.

I lay my claw upon Philippa’s, and together, we wait for our debut.

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Wheelchair continued from page 60

you’re either blind or can’t read. Experiences, perceptions, strangers, disabilities—mine and others’, all shape a reality for each of us that cannot be compared to or the same as any other individual.

In 1952, the polio epidemic had been hitting hard all over the US, even in the remote Upper Peninsula of Michigan where I was raised after being born in Cadillac. It was in Marquette, Michigan, at St Luke’s Hospital that my first experience in wheelchair life occurred. I have memories of wheelchairs, braces, crutches, learning to walk six times over during my childhood but learning to skip once, just before I turned four, stands out as one of my very first remembrances of family and fun.

The day I learned to skip was such a momentous and memorable occasion for me. My dad’s oldest sister whom he revered and respected so much was visiting our family. I was three, just a few weeks before polio hit. Our family was going for a walk and as we walked toward our destination, my aunt started skipping and I was fascinated. I tried to mimic her but was awkward until she slowed her step to show me the skip. Then I did it! And did it and did it and did it. It was the first activity I remember consciously thinking that I could no longer do when I came home from the hospital with braces and crutches. I remember being sad about that.

I see myself in the chair, in the photo, as a small child, not knowing what hit me, but knowing that my reality had changed.

Besides realizing that I could no longer skip, I didn’t think much about that reality shift except for wanting to keep up with all the neighborhood kids, once I could walk again after each hospital stay which averaged anywhere from four to nine months at a time, with holiday passes home. At the hospital we were all in wheelchairs, none of us were anyone special. Back home, I was the lone kid in a wheelchair, or afterwards, in braces, demanding acceptance while trying to fit in and be normal.

The reality that can’t be seen by strangers or even other children comes from an invisible effort—requiring affirmation of our total selves while determined to become part of what society considers possible, rational, and reasonable. Initially, the chair becomes who you are. It takes an honest and compassionate person to see past a disability to the person sitting in wheelchair. And I don’t mean to imply that all of us in wheelchairs are honest and compassionate as we observe the rest of you.

I wonder who sat in this wheelchair in the photo? It could have been a senior in high school in 1934 who was a virtuoso in the choir, destined for life long successes on the operatic stage, who succumbed to the polio virus. She would have been stranded at home, possibly having a teacher come for lessons. High schools in the early part of the 20th century were laden with steps—outside as well as inside. The teen in a wheelchair at that point in time would have been isolated but for immediate family, and friends who usually dwindled in the swirl of their own life’s activities.

Maybe it was a veteran of World War II who had lost a leg in battle. He’d be dumbfounded as to how he was going to live in a wheelchair when he had fields to plow and livestock to feed and tend when he got back home. He just couldn’t imagine that this was his new reality, partly because he already knew that persons in wheelchairs just sat in the house or on the porch being tended to and visited with, sleeping in a downstairs room while everyone else slept in bedrooms upstairs.

Sleeping downstairs became the norm for me in 1989. I missed going upstairs in my parents’ house to sleep in the bedroom that was reserved for me when I visited. Now I was relegated to the den off the living room that was actually the forgotten storage room of the house even though there were a desk and bookshelves there. It just wasn’t the same. Upstairs was a neat organized room with curtains and dresser and familiar linens on the bed. Downstairs was comfortable enough but still a concession to not being able to walk up the stairs.

The last time I was in a wheelchair as a child, I was eleven years old and grew four inches during those six months. The wheelchair I used then, in the early ‘60s, had changed from the vintage wooden chair of the photograph and hospital. Now it had a soft seat and back with metal sides but still had spokes on the wheels. The leg rests were covered in the wonderful new synthetic material, naughahyde, which actually meant vinyl and was blue. Four inches taller now, I walked with a long leg brace through adolescence, high school, college, and then as a young adult embarking on a teaching career, always trying to keep up physically or try harder intellectually.

During my 30s, a rehab doctor mentioned that the discovery of Second Syndrome Polio would probably land me in a chair.

Never having felt like I ever fit any mold, I rather dismissed it but then decided to plan it for my early fifties when I could retire from teaching and go on to a second career. I decided being a court reporter would be a fine sitting down job if one had to be confined to a wheelchair. I could take classes sitting down, I could get into a courthouse that had to be accessible, and I could sit for the job. It seemed so neat and tidy.

And so it arrived, Second Syndrome Polio, in my early 40s. I bought a house, took a new teaching job, and went into a wheelchair for the rest of my life, all in the same month. This time the wheelchair wasn’t wooden with cane inserts, not soft seated nor too large for me. Aluminum pipe made up the frame’s construction and with custom seating, I was sitting in a comfortable chair that rolled easily with knobby tires and a covered gripping rim to save wear and tear on my hands. However, the fancy wheelchair could not stop me from claiming loss of memory due to shock, October through December of 1989. I was in year nineteen of my teaching career and was dumbfounded that I would not be walking through the next eleven years or beyond. Nor would I be walking up the steps of my new house or anyone else’s for that matter.

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as I learned to know myself in a wheelchair and made it clear to students and other relationships that the chair was not the person. Many lessons were derived from this simple fact that I could apply to so many adolescent situations. Middle school kids are compassionate and hungry to know who they are but most of all adaptable when they have the facts—we all did fabulously together!

Do you think you could adapt to life in a wheelchair in the 21st century? They are now made with aluminum or titanium, light as a feather. Or they come motorized and are heavy as a small car and need a van with a lift to transport. But those are only the chairs. The only reason wheelchairs exist is for the persons who can no longer walk on two feet. It sort of doesn’t matter what the chairs are made from, does it? What does matter is our perception of strangers we see in wheelchairs as we go about our busy daily lives.

You have probably seen professional people in wheelchairs in the 21st century as well as homeless people. Each of them has a story of life and perceptions—theirs towards you and yours toward them. One of them might be an extraordinary potter who lives off the pittance she makes selling her wares at street art fairs. One could be a dad who walks his daughter to school every day—he rolls, she walks—walk and roll, if you will.

Currently, I have been living in a wheelchair for the past 23 years. I could not have predicted that living life from a wheelchair would be at worst isolating but at best liberating. I have the liberty to be who I am with the added bonus of learning some valuable life lessons about personhood and perceptions. Those of you who have not been fortunate enough to live life from a chair, check your perceptions. Then smile with yourself and at the rest of us.

Fra Mauro “Winter Painting” continued from page 62

Dedicated to the Apollo 13 astronauts—a flat lunar plain called Fra Mauro was their intended landing site—Winter donated this giant work directly to the Grand Rapids Public Museum collection, and it’s regularly been on display since.

Unfazed by an eight-year-old’s indifference, this painting watched over my own early explorations of space; museum experiences that cemented my lifelong love of astronomy. Over the next seven years, it silently observed my path from planetarium intern to part-time production assistant and show presenter.

The museum’s mid–1990s transition to the newly built Van Andel Museum Center (and with it, a brand new planetarium) was one of the most thrilling experiences of my life, but as we worked to clear out the old exhibit hall, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of loss over the familiar objects I knew I wouldn’t be seeing for a while.

While I haven’t run across that old mechanical, black-lit Solar System, the immense Earth globe did find a home in the new museum. It’s still a popular attraction outside the current Roger B. Chaffee Planetarium. Occasionally, when it is surrounded by kids, a little part of me hopes that one of them is secretly hatching an Indiana Jones escape plan down the museum’s grand staircase.

It took slightly longer, but Lumen Winter’s blue-green Moon also reemerged from the collection, joining us at the new building.

From a prominent location near the new sky theater’s entrance, Fra Mauro saw another million-or-so planetarium visitors. And, of course, it continued to keep an eye on me as I worked and learned, developed, produced, and presented content, and had a blast every step of the way.

It’s been twenty-five years since eight-year-old me first started making a pest of himself around the planetarium. Today I manage planetarium operations, which I’ve come to learn—when done correctly—mostly means giving young, talented, passionate people the freedom, encouragement, and resources to make magic. I was—and still am—extremely lucky that my predecessor and mentor here at the planetarium knew that secret better than anyone.

Fra Mauro has been suffering in recent years; a little too much wear and tear from environmental factors and visitor traffic. A few months ago, it was taken down to be inspected, cared for, and safely stored at the Community Archives & Research Center (at 54 Jefferson; very appropriate, as the CARC offices were built on the site of the old Chaffee Planetarium).

I’ve been too familiar with the painting for too long to wager delving into any kind of serious art criticism. I wouldn’t know where to start. However, if you were to catch me in an unusually candid mood, I might admit that, speaking personally, as a work of art, Fra Mauro has never done much for me. I mean… I don’t hate it, but… Well, at this point, more than twenty years into our relationship, does any of that really matter? One way or another, I’ve come to care a lot about that mottled blue-green ball; perhaps more than I care about any other work of art. And in some strange, over-anthropomorphizing-like-crazy way, I like to imagine that painting cares a little for me.

Wherever the next chapters of our stories take us, I probably won’t be seeing much of Fra Mauro for a while. But you never know. We’ve developed a knack for walking into each others’ scenes.

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Merchant Marine Uniform continued from page 66

Eager to aid in the war effort and see the world he began training at Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, New York, and was aboard his first ship, the SS Charles W. Eliot, by April 8th, 1944. They arrived in Great Britain by months end, and from there headed to France. They arrived off the coast of Normandy on June 26th, discharged all of their troops and cargo on the 27th, and prepared to depart the following morning to join a convoy back to England. The Eliot had just begun to maneuver into convoy formation, five other vessels preceding her, when just as she straightened out about four miles from the harbor she struck a mine, which exploded with such force that the ship literally lifted out of the water. The crew had barely gotten to take a breath before the Eliot hit yet another mine, which exploded under the stern and simply put, just broke in two. A first aid boat soon arrived and took most of the seriously wounded ashore—while the remaining crew gathered into just three lifeboats as the others were destroyed. It took 10 minutes for the ship to sink, and what was left floating in the water was finished off later that afternoon by German bombers. The remaining crew was picked up later by British soldiers and taken back to Gosport, England— where my Grandpa was treated for wounds to the head, shoulders and hand. A day later he lost all of his personal belongings…and was soon headed back to the U.S. on an American ship called the SS Robin Locksley.

The second ship my Grandfather boarded in the U.S. was the SS Joseph Holt on September 24th, 1944. They were headed for Antwerp, Belgium, where more surprises lay ahead for the crew. While in port in Antwerp, a German Flying Bomb struck the Holt of the ship and Bill was blown to the Deck from just below the Flying Bridge. He was taken to a former German post turned U.S. Medical Aid Station on the outskirts of the city and was treated for lacerations among other things. He ultimately lost his sense of smell from this incident. Later while in the city he was blown to his side by a VII Rocket along with several other seamen and U.S. Army Personnel.This was the same rocket that landed and exploded on an Antwerp Opera house during a USO show, killing hundreds.

This was during the Battle of the Bulge, and these were not the only two attacks he experienced.

He was later transferred to a ship called the SS Eufaula Victory, which he sailed on for quite sometime. After the war he continued to sail on the Eufaula and traveled to such locations as Africa, South America and the Caribbean. He completed his service December 20th, 1946…three years to the day from enlisting. He received awards such as the Atlantic War Zone Bar, Mediterranean-Middle East War Zone Bar, Combat Bar with 2 Stars, and of course the Merchant Marine Emblem.

If you haven’t guessed, the Merchant Marine uniform you see above, the artifact of which I am writing, was the actual uniform issued to my Grandpa, William Alfred Bechill Jr., during WWII. My Grandfather, the rest of my family, and I have decided to donate the original garment to the Grand Rapids Public Museum to educate future generations on who the U.S. Merchant Marines were and what they did to ultimately win WWII. Although I heard many stories from the war as a child as I previously mentioned, it wasn’t until a couple of years ago when I sat in the living room with my Grandma and Grandpa and flipped through the pages of a scrap book she had made for him filled with photos, IDs, telegrams, letters, articles, and any other items acquired during the war.

When I got to the back of the book, on the last page, there were some rather disturbing images showing bodies in the streets of a European city, a sight my Grandfather, like so many other service men, had often seen. He said that he hated for us to be able to look at that. My Grandmother however, who herself worked for the Army Air Corps Material Command during the war as a Secretary, stated that she thought we should see it. We should know how many good men and women lost their lives. We should know this because it should never have to happen again. We should learn from the past so that history will never repeat itself.

If there is something that I hope you can take away from this article it is the importance of preserving history—the importance of museums. When our grandparents, our parents, or we ourselves are gone—who will tell our tale? Who will make sure to look to the past for wisdom for the future? What will there be to learn from if the things of today are not preserved for our children— and our children’s children’s children. I was lucky enough to have Grandparents who inspired me to learn, to explore, and to remember— but when years, and decades, and centuries have past, I know that I have done my part to tell the story of those people who will not be here to tell it themselves.

The Merchant Marine is currently not featured in the Grand Rapids Public Museum’s permanent Veterans Exhibit, and in fact this is the only Merchant Marine uniform in their collection that features dozens of other military uniforms. There are plans to redo this exhibit, and I am strongly advocating for this uniform to be featured on permanent display to bring awareness to this courageous branch of service, which has gone largely unsung.

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Fox Typewriter Continued from page 70

Let me try that again.” Qserfrj, autocorrect, autocorrect, autocorrect, cachunk, cachunk, cachunk.

“No more painting!”

Then you were typing papers: one page papers, two page papers, ten page papers.You almost preferred typing them to hand writing them. 20 words per minute, 25 words per minute, 27 words per minute, 30 words per minute, on and on you pressed. The teacher held competitions for the fastest and neatest.You actually won one of the contests.

Clicketyclicketyclicketyclicketyclicketyclickety You looked forward to the opportunity to type more.Your mom pulled out an old Smith Corona from the basement that used to be your grandma’s.You began to crazily drive everyone at home crazy from your crazy typing skillz (no autocorrect needed).You were knocking out papers and writing letters and making flyers and typing your name on forms that needed to be filled out.

You were a writer.

Fast forward to today.You’re reading this essay and memories are possibly filling your brain; memories of Mr. Shipman and middle school and being late for class and winning the occasional contest.You think to yourself that you should probably write something, but what? “My blog?”

“Fiction? I’ve never tried fiction before. I’m not a fiction writer. I only write articles and journal entries and press releases and in my wordpress blog once in a while.”

Now it’s all AP Style and conjunctions and not ending sentences with a preposition and deadlines and figuring out your voice and ornery editors and watching the word counter and interviewees who won’t get back to you and google docs and problems with smart-quotes and editorial calendars and trying to be relevant in short tweets and responding to email after email and being proud that you use “you’re” and not “your” like so many people on Facebook and you use your phone more where you’ve switched from asdf-jkl; to hunt-n-peck and you actually look forward to hauling out your laptop so you can hear the clickety clickety clickety clickety again.You almost want to haul out the old Smith Corona. Nah. Stops to drink more coffee.

You’re a writer. Go write.

54 Jefferson Building continued from page 80

It is faced on the south and west sides with broad and smooth surfaced limestone above a base of polished black granite. The main entrance has paired projecting bays on either side of the symmetrically balanced façade. There are glass display units framed by the polished black granite flanking the entry with glass block windows above. The simple angular detailing emphasizes the Moderne (late Art Deco) style.

While the exterior has remained in good condition, the interior is undergoing a rebirth.

The Grand Hall is once again displaying its former beauty. The glass block windows, which had been boarded over, are now open to the space and shed a soft glow of light from the balcony level. The double staircase leads up to the windows and a walkway with original railing surrounds the main floor. The side walls had been covered with green shag carpeting which has been removed. The walls then were treated with skim coated plaster and painted an off white. The original terrazzo floor has been retained. The public will have an opportunity to experience the space during Art Prize 2012 where 18 artists will display their work.

The reuse of existing structures such as the museum building is an important part of the continuing revitalization of Grand Rapids. The plan for 54 Jefferson is for the Grand Hall area to become an active, viable multi-use space that will respond to the changing needs of the community. The archival section will be a valuable addition to the historic wealth of this area.

The other two buildings mentioned are the Charles P. Calkins Law Office building and the Carl Voigt house.

The Calkins building, believed to be the oldest extant frame structure in Grand Rapids, was built between 1835 and 1837. It was originally located on the northeast corner of Monroe and Ottawa and was moved to its present site at the triangular shaped park on State Street in 1974. It sits across from the museum, south-east of Jefferson.

The tiny Doric and simple temple-front law office was built for attorney C. P. Calkins who came to Michigan from Vermont.

The one room miniature Geek Revival structure was restored as a pre-civil war law office in celebration of this country’s 1976 bicentennial. The interior is not currently open to the public. The building is maintained by the museum. Historian Gordon L. Olson authored a book on the history and restoration of the building in 1976 with revisions in 2009-2010.

The 1895 Voigt house at 115 College Avenue was designed by Grand Rapids architect William G. Robinson. The building is located in the Heritage Hill Historic District and is open to the public by arrangement with museum as a Victorian House Museum.

The red brick building displays many late 19th century characteristic s seen in the Queen Anne style. It has a wrap-around balustrated porch, conical roof corner tower, gabled and textured dormers, projecting bays, and a steeply pitched hip roof.

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The interior has richly wood carved details, parquet floors, stained glass windows, with silk and tapestry wall coverings. The interior was last furnished in 1907 and was donated intact to the Grand Rapids Foundation in 1971. It eventually was turned over to the care of the Public Museum. The Voigt family lived in the house for 76 years and left it filled with their belongings.

Mr.Voigt started a mercantile business with W. G. Herpolsheimer and later opened the Voigt Milling Works which he owned and operated.

The house is a great time capsule of family furniture and artifacts. The interior and exterior have been kept in pristine condition and is operated by the present Van Andel Museum Center.

Flower Dress, continued from page 82

She was charismatic, but like the delicate greenery that wisped from one blossom to another, grace filled her every move, her every interaction.

Tiny buds dotted the ivory fabric; I wondered what color would splash from their tiny cocoon.

Likewise, I couldn’t figure out what was hiding beneath her sunny surface; a spark ignited behind her eyes every time she reached town.

With one breath of her presence, she was no longer just a plain and simple girl wearing a plain and simple dress; her very nature tangled you up in its vine of sweet, soft petals.

And then the dress billowed out of my sight as Anna vanished into the clothier.

I picked up my bread bag and swung myself onto Charlie’s saddle. “Giddyup, boy,” I whispered, leaving behind on that bench all the words left unsaid for a girl I’d never met. Someday, I thought.

Someday, I, Jack Montgomery, will have the courage.

1954 Bed springs squeaked as Edith plopped down, sighing loudly. She tapped her fingers together nervously, as she eyed the book on her nightstand. Big city lights adorned the cover. With a single glance, excitement pulsed through her veins. She could practically hear the hustle and bustle of the city that never sleeps.The thrill pushed aside any lingering doubt of the announcement she’d made an hour before.

Her finger traced the green stem on her dress, landing on a red bloom. The dress had been her grandmother’s. It was a confidence booster, she’d tell Edith. “When you feel good about the way you look, sunshine radiates out of your every pore.”

Her grandmother, Anna, grew up a poor farm girl. “Our feet padded dirt floors. Winters were cold and blankets didn’t have much to them. We packed together like sardines on those nights. We clung to one another’s body heat, my three sisters and two brothers and me. Sometimes it was so cold we could see our breath.

“So we made up a game. Our frosty exhales shaped themselves into stories. Susan’s puff claimed the shape of a rabbit, which hopped into Mary’s forest. My brother John puffed out a wolf that lurked behind the trees, awaiting his next meal. Of course, if left to my brothers, that sweet bunny wouldn’t be seeing the next day’s sunlight. As it scampered for dear life across the crunchy leaves, my exhale produced a canoe, waiting at the water’s edge to carry the rabbit to safety. And happily ever after it hopped.”

That was her grandmother, a soft-hearted storyteller, wise and weathered: a result of being the oldest of six, motherless children.

“My mother died from tuberculosis when I was eleven. My sisters and I kept the house running,” her grandmother would explain. “When we weren’t in school or working at the furniture factory, we planted, tended and harvested the garden. We took turns cooking meals. The filthy dust needed to be wiped down and the rugs shook out twice a day. We hauled water nearly a mile to the house daily. On Monday, my sister Alice did the washing. On Tuesday, Mary ironed, while I mended socks or pants or shirts.

“Since I was the oldest, I got to take trips into town every Wednesday. I stole these precious moments by myself to read the books and newspapers that Mrs. Hayes, my schoolteacher, gave me. I loved getting lost in those stories, imagining the characters as my friends or my mother. Women had sewing machines and beautiful shoes. They wore layers of elaborate clothing topped with fancy gowns. Not a hair of the coiffed pile atop their heads was out of place.

“Some women even went to college to be doctors. They weren’t stifled by the monotony of domesticity. They learned about the world right alongside men. I wanted, more than anything, to leave my sleepy little town and learn about that world, too. I wanted to study philosophy and science and the Far East. But my father couldn’t afford to send me anywhere except to a husband.”

Edith loved her grandmother’s stories; she often imagined herself living in 1895, wondering whether she would have had the same interests or made the same decisions. Her fingers moved from the red bloom to the tiny black buds. Stark, black lines broke up the gentle petals held together by the winding greenery. The dress embodied a quiet strength for Edith, a determination discovered through her grandmother’s tales of treks beyond the countryside.

“I horded pennies here and there when the clerk returned the change from my shopping list expenditures. I fell in love with the brilliance of so many fabrics during my visits to the clothier,” she told Edith when I found the dress hiding in the back of her closet. “It felt like forever, but one day I finally had enough money to buy something beautiful from Sears. It was a new mail-order catalogue back then. Walking past the peanut brittle in the grocery store window had been tempting, but I held tight to my pennies. The dress wasn’t much, only a challis, but wearing something more than the rags I’d stitched together myself was a dream come true. In a sense, it brought me closer to those women in the big city.

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“The day it arrived, I slipped it on and instantly felt like I could be anything—maybe even a doctor. I only wore this dress after I had washed up. There was no way I was going to mussy up my pride and joy by letting that fabric touch the perpetual film of dirt that layered my skin. I started bathing on Wednesdays, before I went into town. And I didn’t wear it much, hoping it’d last forever.”

Fifty years later, Anna had given her granddaughter the dress. Edith slipped it on for those occasions that required an extra bit of poise. She wore it on her first date with Gregory. She wore it on her first day of college. She wore it tonight on her last date with Gregory. She planned to wear it for her first job interview in New York City.

Not only had Edith acquired Anna’s dress, she inherited her wanderlust, too. Her grandmother’s stories of making it to the big city were vivid in Edith’s imagination. Anna’s dream never came true; perhaps a bit of Edith’s determination to be on stage was for her grandmother. She imagined writing letters to Anna, spinning tales of life on the sidewalks of New York, the people she’d meet, women who resembled Vogue cover models, men in expensive suits who would sweep her off her feet while she rose to stardom under the bright city lights. She’d confirm everything Anna had ever imagined and more about life in the city.

Leaving Gregory tonight tore a hole in her heart, but she couldn’t imagine life as a farmer’s wife. She had grown up on the farm her grandparents owned, chasing chickens, tending the land, milking the cows. She longed for something she couldn’t find here. She needed the soul of that city she’d been dreaming about since she was eight-years old. Her suitcases were packed. She’d been saving her pennies, just like Anna had. At twilight tomorrow, she’d board a train to Manhattan, saying goodbye to this town that kept her going nowhere.

2012 A soft floral print caught Erin’s eye. Pushing aside the other clothes, she pulled the dress from the rack. Her heart raced as she took in every detail. Wispy, green leaves stemmed from one splotch of red petals to those of a delicate blue. The blooms spilled across the silky ivory fabric. Erin draped the double waistband over her hands. It anchored a pleated bodice that curved into the smock of its neckline. A find like this was rare. And since Erin indulged in only two things, flowers and vintage dresses, the discovery was thrilling; she felt like a six-year old on Christmas morning. She imagined the woman who originally wore this dress. That’s what Erin loved about vintage clothing; they came drenched with stories of lives lived long ago.

Erin had been perusing the antique store in attempts to take her mind off her sudden sorrow. It had been months since the break up, but the memory of Jack was suddenly tormenting every strand of rationality. Their split had been sensible and relatively painless. They just couldn’t be; that was all there was to it. She was simply thankful for what she’d gained.

Stumbling upon a story of a haunted house, however, sent her spiraling into sadness. No one else would have appreciated the ghostly tale; it was a fascination they discovered together. A day later, she received an email from him; it was signed with a word from the secret language they’d made up during a road trip out West. Memories of their whirlwind romance hung heavily in her chest.

Tears burned her cheeks for the first time since they parted ways. She was suddenly aware of the suffocating silence that accompanied losing her best friend.

Forgetting him for a moment, Erin pulled the fitting room curtain closed and quickly undressed. She slid into the dress, tugged the zipper and turned around to face the mirror. Despite it’s fragile appearance, the dress was comfortable and strong. She sighed happily. Everything about it was perfect. Clothing was an extension of not only Erin’s personality, but her spirit, too. She knew feeling lovely in what she wore would spark an instant mood boost. And when she felt good about herself, others noticed, too, it seemed. Whether it was a compliment or a reciprocated smile, the good piled on, to the point where she felt capable of anything.

Her confidence soared, and it all started with a simple piece of fabric.

She smoothed the dress across her hips and her finger caught an opening. Erin swooned. A hidden pocket! She slipped her hand inside and felt a piece of paper.Yellowed with age, she unfolded it to discover the delicate swirl of letters: Dear Grandmother, I’ve come to realize the beauty of my plain and simple life on the farm. I wanted so badly to get out of there, to make a life for myself, to discover this life I could only read about. Now that I’ve been in New York for a year, I know the stories are fantasy – or simply the stories of the wealthy. Life isn’t easy. It’s hard to keep a job in this business. Just as quickly as I get one, it’s over.There’s no promise of a next job.

Fortunately, my customers at the restaurant keep me going. I daydream about what their lives are like, fabricating a story for each one.Who are they? Where do they come from? Why are they dining at this smoky little bar? It’s a fun game of pretend I play to pass the time. But I’m on my second strike right now and am worried I’ll lose my job. I’ve missed work because of auditions. Since I came to New York to be an actress, I can’t help but think, what if missing that audition was my one shot at finally making it?

My friends aren’t here, Grandmother. It’s hard to trust anyone. Everyone in my circle wants one thing; they want to make it big.You quickly learn that someone is always in your way, and you’re always in someone else’s way.You and grandfather aren’t here, my family isn’t here, Gregory isn’t here.The men I meet are intoxicating, oozing with charm and power (or so they imply), but they’re nothing like Gregory.

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Gregory made me laugh, he was always a calm amidst my storm.When I was with him, I felt like the luckiest girl in the world. I believed no one else could ever come close to the happiness we found together. He was, and still is, the only man I see myself growing old and gray with, playing Scrabble on our front porch while grandkids skip rope in our driveway.

What I’m trying to say, Grandmother, is I get it now. I understand why you chose to stay on the farm.The grass isn’t always greener on the other side. A part of me wanted to move to New York for you, because you never got to fulfill your dream. But I see now that dreams can change, and yours evolved into a life with Jack Montgomery, the man who swept you off your feet. I guess I learned the hard way, Gram.Your stories were meant to teach, but it took leaving and living for me to learn you don’t know what you have until it’s gone. Leaving Grand Rapids was a mistake; I’m moving back as soon as I can save enough money for a train ticket home. I’ll write you soon.

Love, Edith P.S. For what it’s worth, you’re too gentle for the stony characters you would have encountered here.You’re suited well for the rolling hills and endless trees in Michigan.

Leaving the dress on, Erin stuffed her shorts and t-shirt into her purse. She ripped the sales tag off, handing it and a wad of money to the cashier before hurrying outside.

Mesmerized by the story she’d found tucked in the dress and jarred by the name of Edith’s grandfather, Erin couldn’t help but wonder, “What if my Jack is an Edith? What if I’m an Edith? Are we testing whether the grass is greener elsewhere?” Shaking her head, compelled by her few-days lapse in clarity, she plopped down on a street-side bench next to a pot of Black-eyed Susans. Pulling out pen and paper, she eyed the yellow flowers as she contemplated her next move. Scribbling furiously, Erin responded to the email she’d received from him yesterday. She knew what she had to say.

Jack, When you say you want to take a walk, does that mean you’ve decided to overlook the thorn in our relationship? Because I know a thing or two about you, Jack.The words that fall from your lips are pretty; they’re poetic.To be on the receiving end, the only one on that end, was magical.Your words are drenched with beauty and depth; second-guessing their truthfulness would have been absurd. Something about plainand-simple me inspired you to say these lovely things. But in hindsight, your words are ornamental, a pretty package; that’s all. They’re nothing more than a process—your process—that weaves the truth into an indecipherable web.Trying to find the sense is suffocating.

So, no, I can’t go for a walk with you. And, Jack, I hope you’ll understand when I say perfection is unattainable.There’s beauty in the mystery and simplicity of the words left unsaid.

Outfitted for courage, Erin placed her words left unsaid on Jack’s doorstep.

C D

Who could that be? I thought as I heard the doorbell chime. I pulled my front door open but saw no one. A striped carnation attached to an envelope lay on the ground. My heart sunk. It had to be from Erin, my flower girl. I looked up, scanning the sidewalk. There she was. The drone of the passing cars put her out of earshot.

My gaze shifted to her dress. It was one I’d never seen before. Red blossoms stuck out amidst swirls of green and blue, beautiful and full of life, like her. From the moment I met her, I was captivated by her tenacity. But she had gentle eyes: eyes that compelled me to spill my inner most secrets. I traced the hard black lines that broke up the delicate petals, ending as buds waiting to explode; what color would they be? Memories of what we’d been flooded my senses, but it was getting tangled deep within each other’s colors that had broken us.

I shut the door and rolled the striped carnation between my fingers. She loved flowers. Erin liked games, too. She liked mystery and the play of words. What secret language did this flower hold? I flicked on my computer screen to ask Google.

I smiled at her wit, her style, her game, her truth, but my heart shattered to a million pieces as I read the answer to my question.

“I love you, but I can’t be with you.”

Reeling with emotion triggered by the message of a flower, I realized those tiny black buds of the new dress were her, too: a thorny surprise.

C D

Erin’s peace drew closer with each step that carried her further from his porch. Someday their existence together would be nothing more than a fleeting memory.

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Simplex Clock continued from 90

I loved the darkening marks around the 8- and 4-hour marks indicating what I think were the hours of time when work was completed.

When I saw these marks, I realized how much this time had passed as I thought about how work has changed for me but for so many around me.

For many years, in my early years, my parents would scratch their heads trying to understand what a creative person actually does in this world. As time would go on the questions began to cease and now when introducing me to others on my journeys home, mom simply says, “This is my eldest son. He’s from Grand Rapids and he, well, at least what ever he is doing must be working because he has not had to move home like the others.”

I smile. And do so because as I venture on this life free from the boundaries of time and the need to be in one space to conduct work, I am liberated and sad at the same time.

I am liberated in that I can get what I need to get done in many places around the world. I have been free of a time clock for some time but I miss them too.

I miss a period of time when we were not so available. I miss the concept of punching out as my father did as an engineer at GM to return to his life. I miss the lines when I think we were a bit happier than we are today.

So as I look back at the time clock on the wall strapped to a fence, locked up, but not really as time keeps demanding our time.

I feel good for all we have done as humans to get us to here…to get me this far in knowing time is much more fluid in how it flows.

But what I really want is a way to disconnect this Simplex life and connect back with the other simple life. The one I was born into as a child where time clocks came much later after spending time playing in a sandbox, on a swing, climbing a tree.

They say we are once an adult and twice a child. I think it’s not about dependency as children or our behavior needing supervision, but I think it is in knowing how to unplug and just enjoy the moment free from the demands of work.

The Simplex time clock reminded me to mind my time.

ANSWERS 1. True Explorers first witnessed Aztec Indians using popcorn in ceremonies in the early 16th century. 2. False Most popcorn – around 70% – is made and eaten at home. 3. True Microwaves were first used for heating popcorn in the 1940s, and popcorn is still one of the top uses for microwave ovens. 4. True It’s this moisture that expands and causes the soft inside to burst the hull open. 5. False The Aztec Indians actually used popcorn as decoration for ceremonial headdresses, necklaces, garlands and decorations on statues.

6. True Snowflake is bigger and pops better too, that is the reason it is used in movie theaters and ballparks.

Mushroom is used for candy confectioners, as it does not crumble. 7. True Americans also eat more popcorn than citizens of any other country. 8. False The first mobile popcorn machine was introduced by confectioner Charles Cretors at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. 9. False The popcorn plant is actually a member of the grass family. 10. False Gotcha! The unpopped kernels are called “old maids” or “spinsters.” Sources: The Popcorn Board and Buzzle.com So how’d you do? If you scored…

0 – 1 correct answers—you’ve got a bushel of brushing up to do.

2 – 4 correct answers—now you’re popping!

5 – 7 correct answers—you’re practically a popcorn diva (or duke)!

8 – 10 correct answers—crown yourself the new King of POP!

Table continued from 91

Wandering around the museum archives was a trip. A figurative trip to the past where I recognized so many things—but the thing that struck me most was the varied tables. I started to imagine the families that sat at those tables. I started to imagine what era they were from and how they looked and what utensils they used to cook with and whether it was used for family or friends or for doing homework.

As I created my store, Art of the Table, I really stuck close to the theme of gathering.

Gatherings, no matter the size almost demand tables. They also demand the right plates, flatware, glassware, food and wine. What gathering is complete without a majority of those things, right?

What I really surmised while looking at tables is that sadly, many families today don’t think of tables as a gathering place. Meals are eaten in front of the TV, standing in the kitchen or gobbling things down in the car on the way to X,Y & Z. I often lament the loss of traditional family gatherings at tables. Every day I hope that my store will encourage people to enjoy active gathering at tables. No matter what it looks like; square, tall, round, glass, old, stained…every day I hope that you and I and many others are encouraged to have and are afforded food, drink & fellowship around crafted boards we call a table.

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Acknowledgements

ArtifactGR artifactgr.org Tom Wagner Co-Creator Gayle Debruyn Co-Creator Paul Amenta Co-Conspirator Kate Folkert Designer Sara Fall Kickstarter project coordinator, Designer Aaron Bannasch Assistant Director Eric Kuhn Blog master Mary Butman Instagram master Lou Schakel Mentor, Photography Rachel Yarch Photography Jon Hawkins Photography Bud Kibby Photography Kristin Underhill Photography

Thank you to all the blog contributors, writers, visitors, interviewees and dreamers who came to play. You made this not only possible, but worth doing. Yours forever, artifactGR

Grand Rapids Public Museum grmuseum.org Dale Robertson CEO Karen Wilburn CFO & Director of Administration Chris Carron former Historian & Director of Collections (now Director of Collections, The Childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Museum of Indianapolis & head of ArtifactGR, Indiana Chapter)

Marilyn Merdzinski Director of Education and Interpretation Tim Priest Collections Manager Alex Forist Collections Curator Andrea Melvin Collections Curator Jared Yax Assistant Curator/Collection Tech

Book Design Kate Folkert

Kendall College of Art and Design kcad.edu David Rosen President Max Shangle Dean of the College Gayle DeBruyn Assistant Professor Paul Amenta Adjunct Professor

artifactGR, Kendall (KCAD) alumna

Web-Blog Creation and Coordination Eric Kuhn Aaron Bannasch Gayle DeBruyn

artifactGR, SiTE:LAB artifactGR, SiTE:LAB, GVSU alumnus artifactGR, SiTE:LAB, Assistant Professor at Kendall (KCAD)

Gallery for artifactGR at the Old Public Museum, Artprize 2012 Sara Fall Amanda Sherman

Site:Lab site-lab.org Paul Amenta Co-Founder Tom Clinton Co-Founder Gayle DeBruyn Sustainability Czar Grant Carmichael Technology Eric Kuhn Technology Tom Wagner Technology Sara Fall, Aaron Bannasch, Amanda Sherman

Photographic contributors Bud Kibby Lou Schakel

artifactGR, SiTE:LAB, Kendall (KCAD) alumnus mentor and professional photographer, Holland, MI

Kickstarter Campaign Sara Fall Instagrammer

Storming the Castle Productions Tom Wagner Director Aaron Bannasch Assistant Director Gayle DeBruyn Producer Kate Folkert Designer Kristin Underhill Associate Producer

112 | The Artifact Project

artifactGR, SiTE:LAB, Kendall (KCAD) alumna artifactGR, SiTE:LAB, Kendall (KCAD) alumna

Mary Butman

artifactGR, Kendall (KCAD)alumna

Project Direction Tom Wagner Gayle DeBruyn

artifactGR, SiTE:LAB, Storming the Castle Productions, Grand Rapids Public Museum

The Artifact Project |

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THE ARTIFACT PROJECT Stories from the collections of the Grand Rapids Public Museum

THE ARTIFACT PROJECT Stories from the collections of the Grand Rapids Public Museum