Externship Notes, Alexandria, & Grapes

[eredien]

So I've started my externship. The museum is really small (fitting four people plus exhibits and archives in is a stretch) but really fun. I helped change the exhibit yesterday (got to handle a book published in 1680, yay!) and learned why mylar and plexiglass are friends to museum exhibits (unlike most other plastics, they don't give off gases that cause harm to old paper and other fragile objects). I also learned how to cut matboard. Today I started making a sign for the new exhibit--it's on popular perception of hearing and also the evolution of ideas about and teaching methods for Deaf people. Hellen Keller's poetry, in true late 1800's fashion, is really quite awful. I'm happy--the fact that I knew enough about the topic to fill up most of a 2x3 foot board is pretty neat. I love it when the reading I just happen to have done for fun over the past six months suddenly becomes indispensible. I also rearranged half of the vertical file, which was a complete mess. Now people can find the Xeroxed minutes of association meetings from 1876 and the children's book where the dinosaur gets the trachaeotomy.

They say it might snow tonight, tomorrow, or Thursday, up to a half-inch, which would close work (!!!!!?!). If it does, or even if it doesn't, I'm going to go out with my camera before I leave and take a few pictures of Alexandria. It's really a nice town. The rowhouses are all really friendly, and all perfectly unique. I keep looking all around me when I step outside, seeing new details of moldings; it seems that everyone is walking an exotic dog on a red leash.. Today I saw the most perfect brick Queen Anne with dark green shutters and trim with Victorian Gothic windows on the second floor. The house where I am living has its original cast-iron stairs (the people I am living with are very nice, by the way).

Also, try this. It is equally as good as salted pomegratate seeds, but has the exact opposite flavor. Cut (or bite) a seedless red grape in half. Put pepper on it--not so much you can't see it, but not so much that the cut part of the grape is completely obscured. Eat it.
They're really good.

And I am drinking tea!

Comments

[nightengalesknd.livejournal.com]

You are doing stuff on Deaf education?

How absotively posilutely neat. We so need to talk. . .

Nightengale

[gallian.livejournal.com]

heh. she beat me to it.

[nightengalesknd.livejournal.com]

Well, it's not like we don't stalk each other across the internet anyway. . .

[eredien]

Oh, watch that typing there. One extra "s". ;)

Yes, it's a topic I'm interested in for both general reasons (Deaf culture is neat) and other reasons (book research).
Book recommendations? Recommendations of where they teach sign language classes in Boston?

[nightengalesknd.livejournal.com]

(really really confused expression) Extra s?

Boston, I'll defer to Gallian.

Books:
This may sound dumb, but I like the Conner Westphal murder mystery series for Deaf culture and just general fun. Author = Penny Warner. They are a _fast_ read. I have if you'd like to borrow.

You've read Oliver Sachs if I recall myself correctly.

There's a great book written by a CODA whose name/author I simply cannot remember. Ask when I'm not brainfried. Might have been "Train Go Sorry."

I have 5 ASL books, from text to phrase books to dictionary "this big" (Hands held several inches appart) If you ever wanna take a look, lemme know.

I assume you read the new Hellen Keller bio?

What exactly _are_ you working on up there?

Nightengale

[daisho.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure it's a good thing for the books one enjoys to become required reading. I'd be worried that it might feel like a chore if I had to go through them, rather than dipping in when I chose. Clearly your mileage varies, though. :)

Glad to hear the placement is going well and the place where you're doing it is pleasant. And as I said to artangel, tea is a good friend to have. :)

[eredien]

Didn't say it was required--it suddenely just became more useful in a way I'd never thought it would be, really. I like that. :D

And tea is great!

[daisho.livejournal.com]

If it's merely handy rather than necessary, that's fine. As is the tea you'll hopefully have the chance to sample as and when you make it across the Pond. :)

[copperwolf.livejournal.com]

What's the difference between an internship and an externship?

And what's a Queen Anne style house?

[eredien]

Queen Anne was a Victorian style of architecture common in America
(don't remember if it was also popular in Britian or not) during the last few years of the 1800's and up through the first decade or so of the 1900's (approximately). Some examples can be seen here, although the homes I am thinking of are rowhomes and so look much more quaint and squished-together than these large gingerbready palaces.

I think an Externship is the same thing as an internship really--I don't really know what the difference is. I would say "during your vacation instead of during normal school time," but they offer them during the school year, too. I would say "you have to travel to it," except that you have to travel to get most internships, too. I would say that you pick the place where you're going instead of being invited, but precious few internships these days handpick people, and most of them you apply to yourself. So really, I have no idea.

[daisho.livejournal.com]

FWIW, detached houses in the Queen Anne style aren't at all common in Britain, because most front doors are at ground level, rather than raised on a porch.

Edwardian town houses (of which this model is an example) are about as close as we usually get. :)

jealous

[lotusbiosm.livejournal.com]

I am very jealous of you. I have had museum internships, but I never got to anything nifty. (well, handling orginal documents signed by hall of famers and a piece of paper w/ George Washington signature was cool). I want a nifty internship.
Anyway, it sounds great.