Speaker 1: Does your supermarket have notions? Look for the signs cheesemongers,
Speaker 1: Marista's pretend farmers' markets, forty three identical olive oils, and
Speaker 1: the word artismal written on every available surface. If in doubt,
Speaker 1: get yourself to your nearest Aldi, where you'll get all
Speaker 1: the quality with none of the madness at prices. You'll
Speaker 1: love Aldi. It's not complicated.
Speaker 2: Oh hey, twenty twenty four, Ali here, and I did
Speaker 2: not expect to run an Encore presentation this week, and
Speaker 2: I hate that, I am, But I found out this
Speaker 2: morning that this beloved guest who had become a friend
Speaker 2: to me over the last many many years, has passed
Speaker 2: away this morning. And I haven't heard all the details,
Speaker 2: but I'm just so sad and shocked. And his family
Speaker 2: asked that we share some memories of him, and this
Speaker 2: is such a fun time that we had and a
Speaker 2: really great portrait of who he was. So next week
Speaker 2: we're going to resume with all new episodes. But this week,
Speaker 2: take a walk with me and enjoy getting to know
Speaker 2: my friend Ronnie Klein, including a really beautiful voicemail from
Speaker 2: him at the end. Hey, Hi, Hi, it's your buddy
Speaker 2: Alley Ward So let's talk about dusty books and stuffed
Speaker 2: buffalo and relics that would make Indiana Jones just randy.
Speaker 2: So museums are those hollowed institutions that we use as
Speaker 2: marble tiled storage lockers for history. In this week's episode,
Speaker 2: I sat down with someone who gets to wear the
Speaker 2: gloves and just ignore the velvet rope things and stick
Speaker 2: around after the crowds filter out and keep watch for
Speaker 2: vintage ghosts. Let's talk about musology, which is a word.
Speaker 2: But first I like to thank you listeners for making
Speaker 2: this podcast possible. It wouldn't exist without you, So thank
Speaker 2: you for the Patreon donations which allow me to pay
Speaker 2: an editor, Hi Stephen, and for buying merch at ologismarch
Speaker 2: dot com. There are cool t shirts and stuff up there. Also,
Speaker 2: you rating and subscribing in review helps so, so so
Speaker 2: much because it keeps ologies up in the charts for
Speaker 2: other people to discover and say, hey, cool podcast. So
Speaker 2: consider it like voting. It's free and it helps keep
Speaker 2: good things happening. Also, I'm a creep and I read
Speaker 2: every review because I'm thirsty and they make my day.
Speaker 2: This week, the review I want to read is from
Speaker 2: someone calling himself, Nick the jag Off, don't need to
Speaker 2: know why such a nice review essentially said that I'm
Speaker 2: a wild mix between a spirit animal, soulmate, crazy aunt,
Speaker 2: a devil on my shoulder, and a teacher can't get
Speaker 2: enough loves the podcast, and then gave me two stars
Speaker 2: out of five. I think that was an accident, Nick
Speaker 2: the Jagoff, because your review was so glowing and so nice.
Speaker 2: But I saw that two out of five stars and
Speaker 2: was like just a slip of the finger. But I
Speaker 2: enjoyed your words, and I enjoy all of your reviews.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for leaving them. Okay, back to museums.
Speaker 2: So museum the word comes into Greek for the muses.
Speaker 2: These were goddesses who served two and spire poets. Zeus
Speaker 2: had nine daughters, all muses of different things like poetry
Speaker 2: and astronomy and dance at comedy tragedy. So nowadays our
Speaker 2: muses would be like the muse of tweets and one
Speaker 2: for memes and amuse for freestyle rap or photocropping or
Speaker 2: winged eyeliner parallel parking needs amuse. They're all arts now.
Speaker 2: This ologist has been an Internet friend of mine for
Speaker 2: a few years. I feel like we're homies. His Instagram
Speaker 2: museum Rannie is filled with all kinds of magical antiquities,
Speaker 2: so I was so excited to meet him in person.
Speaker 2: He's a museum collections manager. He oversees twenty two museums
Speaker 2: for the California Department of State Parks. Twenty two. That's
Speaker 2: more museums and I have friends. I drove to an
Speaker 2: industrial district outside of Sacramento one winter's morning to this huge,
Speaker 2: pristine warehouse. It was filled to its metal gills with
Speaker 2: immaculate shelves, caring the kind of treasures you'd find in
Speaker 2: an antique mall if it were also in heaven and
Speaker 2: you were dead and everything was perfect. He gave me
Speaker 2: a tour, and then we pulled up seats in a
Speaker 2: conference room and chatted about everything from recent fires and
Speaker 2: Sonoma threatening his state park museums and evacuations, and his
Speaker 2: favorite museum pieces ever, and what curators really think when
Speaker 2: you take selfies in their exhibits. Also, there's information in
Speaker 2: here about mummies and shrunken heads, that changing attitude toward
Speaker 2: his story, and hot dogs. He's great. Please ready your
Speaker 2: ears and behold the precious wonder of musiologist Ronnie Klein.
Speaker 3: I don't think I've ever been interviewed ever. Really, this
Speaker 3: doesn't work, you can trash it. I'm okay with it, Ronnie.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to trash this. Tell me about the
Speaker 2: first museum that you went to. Do you remember?
Speaker 3: I do. It was on a field trip. Okay, it
Speaker 3: was in the Sacramento It was the California State Railroad Museum,
Speaker 3: and I do remember kind of just being kind of
Speaker 3: I don't know, I feel like we were free and
Speaker 3: just running around like crazy kids and jumping through things
Speaker 3: and exploring the museum ourselves, no guidance whatsoever.
Speaker 2: Where were the docents during this?
Speaker 3: I mean sweet docents. They're very sweet, but sometimes they're
Speaker 3: a little older than the children that are running around.
Speaker 2: Do you like any museum movies?
Speaker 3: I realized that there are no good museum movies really
Speaker 3: that I've seen. I even watched a movie this week
Speaker 3: in anticipation for this question, thinking it was going to
Speaker 3: be a good museum movie if you were doing your homework.
Speaker 3: I was. It was. It's called Bringing Bringing Him Home, Baby,
Speaker 3: Bringing Back Baby, and it's with Cary Grant, oh Audrey Hepburn. Okay,
Speaker 3: romantic comedy. I'm like, okay, this is up my alley.
Speaker 3: It's going to be great. And then it was just
Speaker 3: like it was very frustrating. It has good reviews.
Speaker 2: What museum did it take place in.
Speaker 3: A natural history museum? So Carry Grant was a zoologist
Speaker 3: and he was putting well, he was a zoologist, but
Speaker 3: he was putting together a dinosaur. Well, so but any news, Yeah, right.
Speaker 2: What about night at the museum?
Speaker 3: No? Okay, I mean, you know, it's fine. And I
Speaker 3: was like researching. I was like, there has to be
Speaker 3: a good museum. So I was asking other museum friends
Speaker 3: and trying to find asking other curators, like, what do
Speaker 3: you know of any museums that like feature a curator.
Speaker 3: There has to be like some sort of movie where
Speaker 3: Tom Hanks is a curator that's like sitting with his objects,
Speaker 3: longing for Meg Ryan. But there was no thing at all.
Speaker 2: Doesn't wonder Woman have like a day job as a
Speaker 2: museum curator.
Speaker 3: I've never seen a wonder Woman.
Speaker 2: I think she might like work in a museum in
Speaker 2: the daytime. Did a little googling and yes, wonder Woman
Speaker 2: aka Diana Prince forgot she had another name. Is supposed
Speaker 2: to Moonlight or daylight rather as an art historian. So
Speaker 2: her office in the movie I went and looked has
Speaker 2: like ancient swords and a primate skull just hanging out
Speaker 2: on her desk like a half eaten bagel. She's got
Speaker 2: a microscope. It's kind of like my personal pinterest Wonderland,
Speaker 2: and I remembered it was cool, but I had forgotten
Speaker 2: that it was supposed to be at this little place
Speaker 2: called the Louver. She's supposed to work at a louver?
Speaker 2: Heard of it? Yeah, that part like slip Madome. Oh
Speaker 2: and you know who else is on? Did you ever
Speaker 2: see Scandal?
Speaker 3: No? See, I'm terribout watching things.
Speaker 2: There's a villain in Scandal who is like a secret operative,
Speaker 2: but his cover day job is the curator of the
Speaker 2: Smithsonian And you're like, oh, you're the curator of the
Speaker 2: SMITHSONI in DC, like you could never get away with
Speaker 2: having a second life. So who handles popa Pope's outlook inbox?
Speaker 2: And like wonder Woman's voicemails? Do you know how much
Speaker 2: work it is to be a curator of antiquities? Already?
Speaker 2: You got staff meetings, so much insurance paperwork. Who has
Speaker 2: time to be a spy? Or save the world. I
Speaker 2: don't know. You're about to find out how much work
Speaker 2: it is. I got a calm down. When you go
Speaker 2: on vacation, do you go to museums or are you
Speaker 2: like enough?
Speaker 3: No? I try to go to museums. Yeah, it's funny
Speaker 3: because I mostly adventure around California, so I do working
Speaker 3: for California State Parks. So state parks are kind of
Speaker 3: the best and best at both worlds. You get museum
Speaker 3: and you get hiking, So state parks kind of like
Speaker 3: bring it all in. So I kind of stick to those.
Speaker 2: So tell me the difference between a national park and
Speaker 2: a state park and just a park park. I'm sorry
Speaker 2: that I don't know this.
Speaker 3: No, So a national park is being their funds are
Speaker 3: being cut by Trump.
Speaker 2: Okay, cool. So there are fifty nine national parks in
Speaker 2: the United States and they're overseen by the federal government
Speaker 2: for better or for worse. But there are also over
Speaker 2: ten thousand state parks in the US and they're operated
Speaker 2: by each individual state. Now, don't sleep on state parks, folks.
Speaker 2: Apparently they're super dope and underrated, so admission is cheaper,
Speaker 2: they're usually less crowded, they have trails, and campsites and
Speaker 2: museums on them, like the twenty two museums that Ronnie overseas.
Speaker 2: Dude knows museums. Do you have a favorite museum ever?
Speaker 2: Or is that a dick question to ask?
Speaker 3: You know, it's an interesting question because I do. So
Speaker 3: I got into the museum profession a little bit late
Speaker 3: in the game. I'm thirty seven now, oh my god,
Speaker 3: I know, but I'm one year in too as a
Speaker 3: museum collections manager. Okay, So on my thirtieth birthday, I
Speaker 3: went to Jack London stat Historic Park.
Speaker 2: Quick pause for some much needed context on Jack London.
Speaker 2: You're gonna want to know this. I didn't know this
Speaker 2: until I just looked it up. And now I'm low
Speaker 2: key obsessed with Jack London too. I guess like not
Speaker 2: to step on Ronnie's personal brand, but dude, I love
Speaker 2: Jack London now, okay. So Jack London was born in
Speaker 2: eighteen seventies, and he was one of the first like
Speaker 2: celebrity writers to really make it big like he predated Hemingway,
Speaker 2: and he had serialized stories in magazines and he went
Speaker 2: on to write a grip of novels like White Fang
Speaker 2: and Call in the Wild and His work usually involved
Speaker 2: nature and adventure. He was also a war correspondent. He
Speaker 2: was an advocate for unionization and for animal rights. He
Speaker 2: had this crazy life that involved his mother surviving a
Speaker 2: suicide attempt via gunshot well pregnant with him. Then he
Speaker 2: was raised by Virginia Prentiss, a former slave, and at
Speaker 2: one point he became an oyster pirate what and then
Speaker 2: went on to go to the Alaskan gold Rush. He
Speaker 2: resided in the South Pacific on a boat called the Snark.
Speaker 2: Dude could live, he could also die early at the
Speaker 2: age of forty of kidney disease or maybe maybe possibly
Speaker 2: morphine overdose from managing the pain of it. So he
Speaker 2: died in his sleeping porch which I looked this up
Speaker 2: as a screened off breezy area in his home in
Speaker 2: Glen Ellen, California, and on the property he and his
Speaker 2: wife's ashes are under a mossy rock you can go
Speaker 2: look at anyway. Ronnie is a fan of Jack London
Speaker 2: and onward. When you hear his name, feel free to
Speaker 2: take a large swig of whatever beverage is in front
Speaker 2: of you to honor him. Or you could do like
Speaker 2: a small dance with your butt in your chair. I
Speaker 2: don't care, just celebrate. So before Ronnie started working in museums,
Speaker 2: he visited this Sonoma Valley, Glen Ellen property on his
Speaker 2: thirtieth birthday just for funzies.
Speaker 3: Because I always really love Jack London. Wanted to go
Speaker 3: see that museum. You like, it's a house museum on
Speaker 3: one end and it's a regular museum on another. So
Speaker 3: his house museum is my favorite because you get to
Speaker 3: walk through the halls that he lived in. You get
Speaker 3: to see the study that he wrote, you know, all
Speaker 3: of his books in and see where you there's a
Speaker 3: room where he died in No, and so you know,
Speaker 3: fast forward seven years later and I'm the collections manager
Speaker 3: of that museum.
Speaker 2: Oh I have.
Speaker 3: It's amazing. It's really cool. So I look back, like
Speaker 3: on my phone and I look back at all these
Speaker 3: photos of my thirtieth birthday of me walking through these
Speaker 3: halls and never thinking, never imagining that I could be
Speaker 3: the collection manager of that museum.
Speaker 2: So what does it mean to be a musicologist and
Speaker 2: is it a it's a musicologist and not a museumologist.
Speaker 3: Right, It's interesting in America people say museum studies instead
Speaker 3: of musiology. In Europe, musicology is more popular, but it
Speaker 3: seems like we're bringing it back, musicology back, bringing it
Speaker 3: back to America. It's kind of an old timey term, but.
Speaker 2: I mean, hell yeah, we're bringing it back with this
Speaker 2: particular episode.
Speaker 3: If I well, and I think that, you know right now,
Speaker 3: it's weird. I think about museums in a different way
Speaker 3: today than I did maybe two years ago. I think museums,
Speaker 3: in my mind, have become more important socially than they
Speaker 3: have the were two years ago. And I think it
Speaker 3: is a musiologist like responsibility to take care of collections,
Speaker 3: but you could be someone that writes exhibit panels, creates exhibits,
Speaker 3: does the lighting for exhibits. It's very broad, but I
Speaker 3: think in general it means, for me, you have responsibility
Speaker 3: to invite the public into your space and have it
Speaker 3: be a space that everyone is welcome. Especially if you're
Speaker 3: a public museum, that should mean that everyone in the
Speaker 3: public is welcome, no matter who they are.
Speaker 2: You don't have to be a savant about lanterns to
Speaker 2: go to a mining museum.
Speaker 3: Not at all. That's the thing that I think it's
Speaker 3: a misconcept which I would love to start changing, is
Speaker 3: that anybody should go to every museum to learn something.
Speaker 2: So you don't have to be an aficionado of the topic.
Speaker 2: Just go to museum and you might pick up some inspiration,
Speaker 2: or you might pick up even one fact is worth it.
Speaker 3: Nowadays with technology and the Internet or whatever, you can
Speaker 3: just go in Wikipedia and read about anything, so like
Speaker 3: I think it'd be it's a goal, and it should
Speaker 3: be a goal for every museum to supply information and
Speaker 3: an experience that you can't pick up from Wikipedia.
Speaker 2: How do you feel about people who go through museums
Speaker 2: and photograph all the artifacts? Do you think it's good
Speaker 2: that they have a picture of it or are you like, oh,
Speaker 2: I wish that people were a little bit more in
Speaker 2: the moment. Then again, you have pictures from Jack London
Speaker 2: that you're glad that you have. But how do you
Speaker 2: feel about the intersection between people's personal technology and these
Speaker 2: tactile artifacts that you're in a space with.
Speaker 3: I love it, and I think that's hopefully that's a
Speaker 3: lot of the younger musiologists. I feel the same way.
Speaker 3: I think. I mean my Instagram, I'm constantly taking pictures
Speaker 3: of things I'm doing in my museum and sharing them
Speaker 3: and video and putting them in music, And because I
Speaker 3: think that you just you want to share the experience
Speaker 3: with everyone, especially like if you take a picture at
Speaker 3: Hurst Castle, for example, nothing beats being there and seeing
Speaker 3: the image, you know, going to Hurst Castle, walking through
Speaker 3: the halls, smelling the smells, you know. So yeah, just
Speaker 3: sharing the images just hopefully excites people to want to
Speaker 3: come to the museum.
Speaker 2: Tell me a little bit about musiology. What's the educational structure, like,
Speaker 2: like do you study in a classroom about museums? Do
Speaker 2: you go to museums and a lectures like here's how
Speaker 2: this has been curated.
Speaker 3: Well, the museum world is very I don't know, it
Speaker 3: seems like it's a very It's almost sometimes like a
Speaker 3: secret society. It's hard to get into. But so I major.
Speaker 3: I have a major in history. But while I was
Speaker 3: going to college, I spent four years working as a
Speaker 3: student archivist at California State Park's photographic Archive, and that's
Speaker 3: where I was introduced to the Californy State Parks Museum world.
Speaker 2: So from there, he graduated in two thousand and nine,
Speaker 2: but the recession hit and he thought, oh, maybe he
Speaker 2: was going to be a teacher.
Speaker 3: I didn't know what I was going to do, something
Speaker 3: in history. So I ended up leaving and starting a
Speaker 3: hot dog cart and onea yeah, it's very So I
Speaker 3: had it on my bucket list to have a hot dog.
Speaker 2: Cart, and I already love you.
Speaker 3: When the recession hit, I was like, well, I guess
Speaker 3: now is a better time than any just have a
Speaker 3: hot dog cart. So I ended up having a hot
Speaker 3: dog cart on a corner street of downtown Sacramento for
Speaker 3: two years. What was it called State Bear Sausage and Dogs. Okay,
Speaker 3: I secretly made my own sausages in my home and
Speaker 3: sold them there illegally, which was a hit but amazing,
Speaker 3: and I had five out of five stars on Yelp.
Speaker 2: When I left, I looked it up and his hot
Speaker 2: dog cart was legit, like he served wild boar sausage
Speaker 2: and he had a Mediterranean dog with feta and cucumbers.
Speaker 2: There's a photo I found of a b aproned Ronnie
Speaker 2: This is all smiles with a colorful umbrella in the
Speaker 2: background on a corner in Sacramento. He's holding up a
Speaker 2: hot dog like a tiny pork trophy.
Speaker 3: But so anyway, so I did that for two years
Speaker 3: and then I realized do I want to be doing
Speaker 3: this when I'm fifty? And I thought, ah, now, what
Speaker 3: do I really want to be doing? And it was
Speaker 3: working in museums.
Speaker 2: So what was that epiphany? Like, was there a moment
Speaker 2: where you were like, you were like stuffing a sausage
Speaker 2: casing with a ski mask on because it's illegal, and
Speaker 2: you were like, no, I can't do this, or were
Speaker 2: you more inspired by something in a museum, Like what
Speaker 2: was that moment where you're.
Speaker 3: Like, so, okay. So I strategically placed my hot dog
Speaker 3: cart on the corner of the headquarters for California State
Speaker 3: Parks in downtown Sacramento, and so I would always have
Speaker 3: connections the State Parks people that I used to work
Speaker 3: with or even new people, and so I would always
Speaker 3: have that connection.
Speaker 2: How fucking genius is this?
Speaker 3: And the more and more I saw those people, the
Speaker 3: more and more I realized that I really belonged working
Speaker 3: for a califern and state parks. That's so cool.
Speaker 2: So you'd you'd like sling sausage and then you're like
Speaker 2: these are my people.
Speaker 3: Definitely, yeah, totally, that is amazing.
Speaker 2: Did you put your you put your hot dog cart
Speaker 2: there on purpose because you liked state parks.
Speaker 3: There was there were corners to choose from, and I
Speaker 3: knew that was the corner. I scoped it out. I
Speaker 3: knew that that was the corner. If I had the opportunity,
Speaker 3: that's where I would be. And that's where I was.
Speaker 3: It was the wind. It's the windiest corner in Sacramento.
Speaker 3: Like it's you would not believe how windy it is,
Speaker 3: and you would not believe how much wind affects a
Speaker 3: hot dog cart that goes off of propane gas. Really
Speaker 3: very wendy, very upsetting.
Speaker 2: But it was worth it.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I loved it. I mean I would probably
Speaker 3: never do it again, but it was a bucket listening
Speaker 3: and it was amazing. I owned a hot dog cart.
Speaker 2: Dude, did you ever read Confederacy of Dunces. No, it's
Speaker 2: a hawk talk carts really New Orleans. It's fascinating and
Speaker 2: it's infuriating and it gives you so many emotions. But
Speaker 2: it's definitely about like hashtag hot dog cart life. So
Speaker 2: side note, this book's backstory is as fascinating as its
Speaker 2: actual plot. So rejected by publishers. The author of Confederacy
Speaker 2: of Dunc's, John Kennedy Toole, tragically committed suicide at the
Speaker 2: age of thirty one, and I'm sorry, that's two mentions
Speaker 2: in one episode. That's the last one, I promise. So
Speaker 2: his mother, Thelma, found this shabby smeared carbon copy of
Speaker 2: the manuscript atop a cedar armoire after his death, and
Speaker 2: she made it her mission to get it published. She
Speaker 2: sent it around and around and around. She was rejected
Speaker 2: over and over until she badgered one publisher so much
Speaker 2: that he relented. He promised to read it. He was like,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna read like two pages of this just so
Speaker 2: I can reject it. And he did. He was like,
Speaker 2: oh dang, this is really good. So it was published
Speaker 2: eleven years after Toole's death. The title of the book
Speaker 2: is based on a line from a Jonathan Swift essay
Speaker 2: that reads, quote, when a true genius appears in the world,
Speaker 2: you may know him by this sign that the Dunces
Speaker 2: are all in a confederacy against him. Confederacy of Dunces
Speaker 2: went on to win a Pulitzer. So that thing you
Speaker 2: want to do, just go do it, and if you
Speaker 2: know it's good, don't give up. Keep doing it. I
Speaker 2: own the prize. Like Ronnie and Museums. When you decided
Speaker 2: to go into museology. Did you have to go back
Speaker 2: to school court?
Speaker 3: You know, I didn't because while I was a student assistant,
Speaker 3: I was working with people that became curators for California
Speaker 3: State Parks. Since I knew where I wanted to work,
Speaker 3: what I did was I went back and I volunteered
Speaker 3: for free and kind of apprenticed under people. I helped
Speaker 3: clean paintings that were taken out of different historic buildings
Speaker 3: and help take mold off of different leather good leather objects, briefcases,
Speaker 3: and what.
Speaker 2: Do you use to clean paintings? And I have a
Speaker 2: question and confession for you. This was going to be
Speaker 2: one of my secrets at the end of the episodes,
Speaker 2: but I'm just going to ask you right now. Okay,
Speaker 2: forgive me if you've heard this story. But I was
Speaker 2: in a museum in Santa Barbara and I had to
Speaker 2: write a paper. It was for an art class, art
Speaker 2: history class, and I was taking notes on a Dutch
Speaker 2: portrait from the sixteen hundred. It's beautifully done and I
Speaker 2: was up close to it. And at the time I
Speaker 2: used to wear my watch on my right hand. I
Speaker 2: now wear it on my left even though I'm right handed.
Speaker 2: I don't know I was goth. It was like I
Speaker 2: thought maybe it was counterculture to wear it on the
Speaker 2: wrong hand, It's it was a mistake. I had a
Speaker 2: pen in my hand taking notes at an overcoat on
Speaker 2: because it was raining, and I stretched my hand up
Speaker 2: to check to pull my sleeve back, to check my watch,
Speaker 2: and I heard this zruge and ballpoint pen across the
Speaker 2: face of a Dutch painting from the sixteen hundreds. I panicked.
Speaker 2: It was the worst moment of my life. Worst. And
Speaker 2: I was thinking, what am I gonna do? What am
Speaker 2: I gonna do? Like, I'm screwed. This thing is worth
Speaker 2: like a million dollars. My I am broke. My parents
Speaker 2: can do not have the money to help with this
Speaker 2: at all, Like I was borrowing money to buy books,
Speaker 2: and this is the most dishonest thing I've ever done.
Speaker 2: I just left. I left the museum. I couldn't handle it.
Speaker 2: I was so afraid. And someone from the same class
Speaker 2: is like, hey, did you see that pen mark? And
Speaker 2: I was like, and she was the old Linda. She
Speaker 2: was the only person I ever told about it in
Speaker 2: class until years later. But how screwed was that painting?
Speaker 3: Why would you tell, for one, like, who would you tell?
Speaker 3: I would run? I would run really fast. I don't
Speaker 3: know who I would tell. I mean, geez, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I was like, if if I tell someone, then maybe
Speaker 2: they'll arrest me. But either way, they're gonna have to
Speaker 2: clean it or they're gonna have to throw this paint
Speaker 2: in the garbage. But it was just like it was.
Speaker 2: It was a moral quandary, unlike any I've ever been in.
Speaker 2: What can they do?
Speaker 3: They take it to a conservaive Okay.
Speaker 2: Side note, I didn't know what a conservator was during
Speaker 2: the interview, but I just looked it up and it's
Speaker 2: a person who helps restore shit that gets messed up
Speaker 2: in museums, so boom, there is a person for that.
Speaker 3: And then the conservator gives it back to them, okay,
Speaker 3: And it looks like it's never been touched by a
Speaker 3: ballpoint pin before. No one will ever know. I mean,
Speaker 3: you know you did ruin it. It will be ruined forever.
Speaker 3: At the at the heart of the matter, the painting
Speaker 3: is ruined. It's never going to be the same. The
Speaker 3: original artwork is ruined, but to the public it looks
Speaker 3: the same.
Speaker 2: Is it really ruined?
Speaker 3: I mean, it's not the same.
Speaker 2: They to paint over it or do they clean the
Speaker 2: ink off?
Speaker 3: I am not a conservator, but I would hope that
Speaker 3: they can remove the ink somehow, you know, like distilled water.
Speaker 3: Water and distilled water and a Q tip does amazing
Speaker 3: things with patients.
Speaker 1: God.
Speaker 2: Okay, you know there was a video that was going
Speaker 2: around the internet recently about a painting that was being
Speaker 2: cleaned and they were taking off years of varnish and
Speaker 2: it had yellowed and it had a really sepia color
Speaker 2: and underneath the painting was very like vibrant and had
Speaker 2: a lot more you know, had cooler tones. Is that real?
Speaker 2: When they take when they really.
Speaker 3: It's amazing in dresses, like I've seen videos of dresses
Speaker 3: where they just submerge these dresses that kind of have
Speaker 3: a yellow tinge to them, and then they bring them
Speaker 3: out they're beautifully white. So and what we think of
Speaker 3: like how things looked back in two hundred years ago,
Speaker 3: because we do have a varnish over everything. Yeah, but no,
Speaker 3: everything was bright.
Speaker 2: I know we have such a CPA memory very much though.
Speaker 2: Do you have a favorite artifact or one that you
Speaker 2: just every time you see it or think about it?
Speaker 2: You just go, oh, that's so cool.
Speaker 3: There's quite a few. I mean, like I said about
Speaker 3: Jack London that does have a special place in my heart,
Speaker 3: and his wife Charman is starting to have takeover my
Speaker 3: love for his stuff. I'm starting to love her stuff
Speaker 3: more and more the more I know about her. So
Speaker 3: anything that she had. There's a holster that she that
Speaker 3: she had and she wore during their trips to the
Speaker 3: Pacific Islands, which was amazing. There was there's a photograph
Speaker 3: of her in the hulster, which I think it was
Speaker 3: Cosmopolitan magazine, I cannot remember. Yeah, back back in the
Speaker 3: old days, like in the early nineteen hundreds wouldn't publish
Speaker 3: the photograph because it showed a woman wearing a holster,
Speaker 3: so it was very like risque.
Speaker 2: But they probably had a whole article on like fourteen
Speaker 2: ways to tickle his bottom someone and he loves you exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally. And she was very progressive like an equestrian,
Speaker 3: she was a very adamant to not ride side saddle,
Speaker 3: and she even like altered her dresses and like she
Speaker 3: was the first person start altering her dresses so she
Speaker 3: can ride normal, like not ride side saddle. What a
Speaker 3: band she's really awesome. Yeah, and when after Jack London
Speaker 3: passed away and she had like all of these like
Speaker 3: fun affairs with like Harry Houdini and hello.
Speaker 2: Exactly time machine party with her.
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally correct. Charman was her charmian.
Speaker 2: Charmian. Yeah, she was Jack's second wife and was five
Speaker 2: years his senior. Oh scandaled, gasp, smelling salts, fainting couch.
Speaker 2: She was also a new woman, which was the old
Speaker 2: timey late eighteen hundreds term for feminist. I'm going to
Speaker 2: rename myself charmian. She steel her life, I.
Speaker 3: Do, I do. Yeah, so anything of hers, you can
Speaker 3: still go to her powder room and there's like a
Speaker 3: secret entry and a secret spiral staircase that is like
Speaker 3: it goes into her powder room. It's really neat.
Speaker 2: Oh man, can the public access that they cannot?
Speaker 3: And they don't know where it's at?
Speaker 2: Oh my god. Okay, So this brings me to a
Speaker 2: question that I feel like I didn't know until I
Speaker 2: started working with the Natural History Museum. But what you
Speaker 2: see on display in these like acrylic cases and with
Speaker 2: these placards that say what it is is a fraction
Speaker 2: of what a museum actually has in collections. We just
Speaker 2: toured a warehouse full of stuff that I like was
Speaker 2: boggled by, Like everything for bascinet or bas NEETs? Is
Speaker 2: that a bassinet?
Speaker 3: Is that? I'm sure there are bast nets there, Yeah.
Speaker 2: To lanterns, to wagons and stuff like why how do
Speaker 2: you choose what goes on display versus what stays in
Speaker 2: these collections that are off limits?
Speaker 3: It's a very interesting selection. Well where we toured today,
Speaker 3: like we walked past probably one aisle that we walked
Speaker 3: through hadn't know two hundred more or more lanterns. So
Speaker 3: you know, unless you're a lantern museum, you really can't
Speaker 3: display two hundred or more lanterns. But we do keep
Speaker 3: them because people donate them and we don't want to
Speaker 3: turn down donations. Researchers are more than welcome to come.
Speaker 3: And I think it's like this pretty much with most
Speaker 3: museums that if you're a researcher, or if you're just
Speaker 3: someone that's researching your family history, you don't have to
Speaker 3: be like a professional researcher. You can just be a
Speaker 3: newbait that's interested in something, just as long as you
Speaker 3: search it out. I would have more than happy to
Speaker 3: open my doors and show you. But then also there's
Speaker 3: also rotating exhibits too, and I think those I want
Speaker 3: to do more of those in my museums where because
Speaker 3: I don't just have one museum. It's a very unique
Speaker 3: experience that I'm working in where I manage the collections
Speaker 3: of over thirty thousand items in twenty two different parks.
Speaker 3: What so we can't get to them all unfortunately, Like
Speaker 3: it's very hard to get to most of them, but
Speaker 3: most of them are collected in like a lump of
Speaker 3: five different locations.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's so many items. Wait, twenty two different parks,
Speaker 2: thirty thousand items. Yeah, do you how do you keep
Speaker 2: a record or spreadsheet?
Speaker 3: Well, there's multiple spreadshee. We use what's called the TMS,
Speaker 3: the Museum System Database, and many museums use it. The
Speaker 3: Smithsonian uses it. We are opening it up so that
Speaker 3: the public can go on if they want to research lanterns,
Speaker 3: or if they want to research anything really fimbles or
Speaker 3: wigs or dairy containers. We have them so you can
Speaker 3: just find them and then you can come and look
Speaker 3: up all your dairy containers and you'd be you know.
Speaker 2: What is your house like? Are you very organized? Are
Speaker 2: you do you like nick knackery or do you are
Speaker 2: you very clutter free? Like how is being a musiologist
Speaker 2: changed the way you live?
Speaker 3: That is a good question. My house is orderly until
Speaker 3: you get into the very back room, like it's you know,
Speaker 3: some people have like a junk drawer.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't say in the back room is a junk room,
Speaker 3: but it's just a room at the end of the
Speaker 3: day where you like open the door up and throw
Speaker 3: something and then close it really quick. But other than that,
Speaker 3: I do like older paintings or even if it's like
Speaker 3: a painting that a husband made of his wife in
Speaker 3: the nineteen fifties that I found in a thrift store,
Speaker 3: like I appreciate that and I'll maybe purchase that and
Speaker 3: put it up in my house.
Speaker 2: What was it like getting the job of being a
Speaker 2: curator of all this? Like what was the interview process like?
Speaker 2: And how did you know you were qualified for it?
Speaker 2: And what happened when they said you have the job?
Speaker 3: Oh? So okay. This is a very unique situation to
Speaker 3: the California State Parks, which I encourage a lot of
Speaker 3: people who are interested in the field to look into
Speaker 3: because a lot of people miss it and it's a
Speaker 3: really great opportunity. So what I did was gain all
Speaker 3: this experience. I had four years of experience as a
Speaker 3: student assistant, and then I also apprenticed for a while,
Speaker 3: and so an exam opened up.
Speaker 2: So to get a job with the State park System,
Speaker 2: you don't just interview and charm your way into a
Speaker 2: ranger sat. You have to take an exam first before
Speaker 2: they will even sit down with you, no matter how
Speaker 2: much they like your hot dog cart.
Speaker 3: And you have to qualify within the top three rankings
Speaker 3: to be reachable to be to have an interview for
Speaker 3: the job. So thank god. Yeah, so it was very
Speaker 3: intense and I took the exam. I ranked one, which
Speaker 3: is amazing. I was very happy about that. And then
Speaker 3: I and then once you take the exam, you had
Speaker 3: to wait for a job to open up. Oh my god,
Speaker 3: So a job did open up.
Speaker 2: Did you kill someone?
Speaker 3: No? But I I you know, the job that opened
Speaker 3: up was an hour and a half drive away from
Speaker 3: my house.
Speaker 2: Nuts, and its laborious as as doing a hit on someone.
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally, but you know, I don't mind. It's very
Speaker 3: peaceful drive. But so I live in Sacramento and the
Speaker 3: job that opened up was in Sonoma, and it was
Speaker 3: also my dream job because it involved Jack London, stated
Speaker 3: his Dorg Park. So I applied for the job and
Speaker 3: then I got it, And that's how it works.
Speaker 2: How did they tell you that you got it? Did
Speaker 2: they send over like a carrier pigeon or DoD they
Speaker 2: do something with antiquity to like send you a telegram?
Speaker 3: And I just heard my my boss get the call,
Speaker 3: you know, they called the reference check call. God, it
Speaker 3: was amazing. Was another o my desk and I just
Speaker 3: heard her like, oh so good.
Speaker 2: Was she sad to lose you though?
Speaker 3: Yeah? She I think she hung up the phone and said,
Speaker 3: damn it, Ronnie, Oh my god.
Speaker 2: Did you celebrate?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 3: It was amazing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what'd you do?
Speaker 3: Did I actually celebate? I'm sure I just probably went
Speaker 3: for like unlimited sushi. Yeah, that's my celebration.
Speaker 2: That's so dope. So what is your day like? Like
Speaker 2: day to day? Do you come in like see like
Speaker 2: if anything's been missing or broken or needs it tending
Speaker 2: to or like, you know, you're up in Sonoma. I
Speaker 2: know that we had this scheduled for last month around Thanksgiving,
Speaker 2: but Sonoma was going through some of the worst wildfires in.
Speaker 3: Statutory Yeah, so my day to day schedule for since then,
Speaker 3: since October has been kind of not day to day schedule.
Speaker 3: Like I we did evacuate. We were able to we
Speaker 3: have an emergency evacuation plan. The fires were coming, it
Speaker 3: was very intense, and we were able to evacuate all
Speaker 3: of the threatened areas, which included six moving trucks of
Speaker 3: objects Oh my gosh, and we brought them to the
Speaker 3: facility we're at today, which you know, as you can see,
Speaker 3: this place is huge. So it was able to house
Speaker 3: all of those artifacts and all of those objects, so
Speaker 3: we were able to get out.
Speaker 2: How did you pick though, I mean you can't move,
Speaker 2: you can't move several different homes worth of artifacts, Like,
Speaker 2: how do you pick what to take? It's like it's
Speaker 2: like that horrible thing, like if you had to evacuate
Speaker 2: your house in a fire, what would you take? And
Speaker 2: you're like, I'm a stuff by stuffed animal, but that
Speaker 2: but with like priceless artifacts in many locations.
Speaker 3: So the curator that I work with, who's been there
Speaker 3: for thirty years, she devised a disaster preparedness plan and
Speaker 3: which included a laminated sheet of objects to take first
Speaker 3: in the emergency, any kind of emergency. So we just
Speaker 3: grabbed those laminated sheets and then we started evacuating those immediately.
Speaker 3: We had more volunteers than we knew what to do with,
Speaker 3: so before we knew it, we got everything that was
Speaker 3: on the list out and so we just then what
Speaker 3: So then we just started evacuating everything, and we did
Speaker 3: get out everything which was down to.
Speaker 2: What like down to the rugs.
Speaker 3: And stuff or down to the rugs down to boxes
Speaker 3: of books. So we did a great job. It was
Speaker 3: really cool and things thankful to I'm very thankful to
Speaker 3: her because she had it all planned out, so it
Speaker 3: was amazing.
Speaker 2: And then what's the process of moving that stuff back in?
Speaker 2: And none of the structures burned.
Speaker 3: Down, None of the structures burned down. We actually were
Speaker 3: thermal gelling, which is like spring this big hose full
Speaker 3: of jello over all all of the houses, the historic
Speaker 3: houses and structures to if the fire came then it
Speaker 3: would like not burn them. So we did that. The
Speaker 3: fire didn't come and we had to remove all that,
Speaker 3: but we were able to get everything here and then
Speaker 3: the process of moving it back has been that's what's
Speaker 3: taken so long. You know, it took like one day
Speaker 3: to get everything out, two days to get everything out,
Speaker 3: but it takes months to actually organize it and put
Speaker 3: it all back in.
Speaker 2: Is there anything else that you're discovering and moving out? Like, oh,
Speaker 2: I didn't realize we had this comb that was fallen
Speaker 2: under a floorboard.
Speaker 3: I know, I don't think, so.
Speaker 2: No cool discoveries. You know, when you move you're like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, I forgot I had this bracelet.
Speaker 3: Well, one thing that has been pretty cool is we're
Speaker 3: going we've had time to go through the diaries of
Speaker 3: day to day occurrences at the museums from the eighties.
Speaker 3: I don't know when do you have time to go
Speaker 3: through these? So we're just slipping through a book. And
Speaker 3: at one time in the eighties, California State Parks had
Speaker 3: a wine tasting bar set up in a museum, which
Speaker 3: is not allowed now. So now I'm thinking we need
Speaker 3: to bring back wine tasting bars, just.
Speaker 2: Don't do it in like a historically preserved area.
Speaker 3: Yeah, next time.
Speaker 2: And hair gel and.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's amazing. Like when I worked at the Photographic
Speaker 3: Archives as a student assistant, going through photographs of like
Speaker 3: the nineteen fifties, of curators smoking and drinking or well
Speaker 3: mostly smoking over like historic artifacts. It's amazing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I wonder about that sometimes, like how much damage
Speaker 2: was done to artifacts just from people smoking indoors totally?
Speaker 2: It's yeah, like all the yellowing and stuff. You're like,
Speaker 2: how much of that is just like Winston Salem's.
Speaker 3: Well even like archaeologist. I was talking to an archaeologist
Speaker 3: the other day and he's been doing it for forty years,
Speaker 3: and he said that, you know, back in the early days,
Speaker 3: they would take the down of different animals and just
Speaker 3: throw it at each other for fun. But now you
Speaker 3: can find out so much information and you know things
Speaker 3: that you didn't know back then from.
Speaker 2: There's this one archaeologist on Twitter I follow that I
Speaker 2: want to get She's a bioarchaeologist and she digs through
Speaker 2: old toilets and like some grapes to figure out things
Speaker 2: about people. And I'm like, oh my god, I get
Speaker 2: her own. I'm looking at you. Bioarchaeologist slash osteologist Steph
Speaker 2: ham Halfer aka bones Underscore Canada on Twitter. Yeah, what's
Speaker 2: the difference between a musiologist and an archaeologist.
Speaker 3: Well, a musiologist is just focuses on the museum itself.
Speaker 3: Archaeologists are more out in the field working. They have
Speaker 3: more of a science background, and some musicologists have a
Speaker 3: focus on the care and collection of objects, integrated pest
Speaker 3: management systems to monitor their objects make sure they're doing Okay,
Speaker 3: that's one of the worst things about my job is
Speaker 3: that you have to kill so many insects, Like I'm
Speaker 3: setting up pheromone traps for moths and you know, but
Speaker 3: it has to be done. I think in one of
Speaker 3: your previous episodes, like someone said, like bugs are the worst.
Speaker 2: Yes, and the ornithologist who had been held up at
Speaker 2: gunpoint on the job, so the worst thing about his
Speaker 2: job was carpet beetles.
Speaker 3: Yeah, carpet beetles are terrible. Cigarette beetles, carpet beetles. The
Speaker 3: Beatles have fun names too within the museum community. What
Speaker 3: do they call them, Well, just like cigarette beetles, cigarette beetles.
Speaker 2: So you have to set up pheromone traps where they're
Speaker 2: like ooh, smells like ladies and then they hop in
Speaker 2: there and they're.
Speaker 3: Like dah, yeah, yeah exactly. It's kind of sad too,
Speaker 3: but you know, you take these special pheromone capsules and
Speaker 3: you put them in the sticky traps.
Speaker 2: And you can you smell anything? No, okay, you don't
Speaker 2: have long enough antenna.
Speaker 3: I guess not.
Speaker 2: They can smell like a molecule of a pheromone from
Speaker 2: miles away. Moths are amaze there. They can detect it
Speaker 2: with their antenna. Let's talk about moth horniness. So a
Speaker 2: female moth releases one billionth of a gram of pheromones
Speaker 2: to signal like a tiny winged Tiffany Hattish and researchers
Speaker 2: have reported that a male Indian Luna moth can locate
Speaker 2: a female six point five miles eleven kilometers away. They
Speaker 2: are like, let's get this on. So pheromone traps are
Speaker 2: like getting messaged by a bot and then the bot
Speaker 2: kills you. Do you want to do some rapid fire?
Speaker 3: Sure?
Speaker 2: Okay, now you've listened to the podcast before. We got
Speaker 2: so many questions on Patreon, and I think you're a patron.
Speaker 2: I think did you do that so that you could
Speaker 2: cheat and look at the questions first.
Speaker 3: Fifty fifty This is for you and to also know
Speaker 3: what I'm getting into.
Speaker 2: That's amazing. Okay, But before we take questions from you,
Speaker 2: our beloved listeners, we're going to take a quick break
Speaker 2: for sponsors of the show. Sponsors. Why sponsors, You know
Speaker 2: what they do? They help us give money to different
Speaker 2: charities every week, and for every episode we donate to
Speaker 2: a cause of the ologists choosing. And this week we're
Speaker 2: standing by to see if we can contribute to a
Speaker 2: memorial fund for our friend Ronnie Klein. So thanks for
Speaker 2: listening and thank sponsors. Okay, your questions these are patrons
Speaker 2: have asked. Colin mccarvill wants to know how do you
Speaker 2: feel museums have evolved and how do you think they're
Speaker 2: going to change in the future.
Speaker 3: Well, museums in America, for one, have we're set up
Speaker 3: by rich white men to promote rich white men, so
Speaker 3: you know, go fast forwarding to modern day. They're evolving
Speaker 3: because I think museums need to interpret not what the
Speaker 3: rich whiteman's perspective is, but what the person of that time,
Speaker 3: the average person or the person like everyone's perspective, including
Speaker 3: the rich white men's perspective, but also including the poor
Speaker 3: person that maybe isn't white's perspective. So I think that's
Speaker 3: where museums right now are changing. And even in California,
Speaker 3: the school curriculum is changing with it as well, which
Speaker 3: is going to be pretty amazing in the next five years,
Speaker 3: you know, to see the change. So when you walk
Speaker 3: into maybe a museum that like as a mission, it
Speaker 3: talks more about the Native American life, not as someone
Speaker 3: that was saved by the mission, but someone that was
Speaker 3: you know, held there against their will. So it's going
Speaker 3: to be pretty exciting, you know, exciting to be able
Speaker 3: to expand that education.
Speaker 2: So the narrative is getting more objective than it has
Speaker 2: been in the past. So his story is not.
Speaker 3: I was thinking about that last night, like I couldn't
Speaker 3: sleep last night, and the word his story, it just
Speaker 3: kept coming back to me, and I'm like, God, damn,
Speaker 3: I wish week would change the name of history. Just
Speaker 3: how do we change it? And I was just going
Speaker 3: through my head and I was like, our story, their story,
Speaker 3: like what can you change it to?
Speaker 2: And mytory?
Speaker 3: But you know what, and that sounds kind of weird
Speaker 3: or now, but probably his story. His story sounds weird
Speaker 3: too if you ever heard it. So if you just
Speaker 3: keep calling it our story, then everyone will call it
Speaker 3: our story.
Speaker 2: I mean, language is elastic, so yeah, it evolves. So
Speaker 2: that's interesting. That's that's good to know that it's evolving
Speaker 2: like that. I'd never thought about it.
Speaker 3: Isn't it weird to think about women's history, women's his
Speaker 3: story like that seems so weird to me.
Speaker 2: That just gave me anger and goosebumps. Oh, it's so crazy.
Speaker 2: How barely out of the dark age is, like you
Speaker 2: still are in so many darks, like this is still
Speaker 2: a dark age. This is a dark We're in a
Speaker 2: dark age.
Speaker 3: We're in a dark age.
Speaker 2: Laura Eisen wants to know have you ever used cooler,
Speaker 2: weird stuff from the museum to impress a date?
Speaker 3: Oh, unfortunately I haven't.
Speaker 2: God, Ronnie, I know you could steal so much cool stuff.
Speaker 2: What's the most expensive artifact you've ever dealt with or handled?
Speaker 2: That's such a cheesy question, but I'm sorry I'm going
Speaker 2: to ask.
Speaker 3: You know, it's interesting because some of the artifacts are priceless, yees,
Speaker 3: so we don't know how much you know, So I'm
Speaker 3: just just from the sentimental point of view, Like just
Speaker 3: the other day, I was holding Jack London's camera, which
Speaker 3: he's an amazing photographer, and took photos of the what
Speaker 3: was it, the nineteen oh eight seven earthquakes, oh six
Speaker 3: six San Francisco and San Francisco, and his photographs are amazing.
Speaker 2: So these photos appear in a book, The Paths Men Take,
Speaker 2: published in twenty sixteen and on the state Park's website,
Speaker 2: which I'm going to add to all the episode links
Speaker 2: at aliward dot com, slash ologies and side note. Ronnie
Speaker 2: also says that some artifacts that aren't on display can
Speaker 2: get loaned to museums all over the world, kind of
Speaker 2: like a shirt that you lend to your roommate before
Speaker 2: a trip, hoping she doesn't get invested on it.
Speaker 3: We do, you know, share them so other muss can
Speaker 3: display them and share the story of Jack.
Speaker 2: Linton as well, Like, Hey, we're doing a canoe exhibit.
Speaker 2: You got anything cool? And you're like do we?
Speaker 3: Totally? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Liked? Can you send it over? Get it?
Speaker 3: Can you send it over?
Speaker 2: I sorry, I don't know what that was about. Okay.
Speaker 2: Mary Anne Moss wants to know, how do you recommend
Speaker 2: tackling visiting museum when you're short on time? She always
Speaker 2: feels like she hadn't. She says, I always feel like
Speaker 2: I haven't done a place justice unless I've seen everything,
Speaker 2: but a lot of time that's not possible, and also
Speaker 2: follow up question, what do you do about museum fatigue?
Speaker 2: Sometimes you're like, I'm so tired, I've seen so much stuff.
Speaker 3: I think you have you know the technology, let it
Speaker 3: work for you. So before you go. You know, if
Speaker 3: you're the passenger of a car and you're driving there
Speaker 3: with like your boyfriend or girlfriend, you have an hour
Speaker 3: to kill. Just look it up on Instagram, on Yelp
Speaker 3: and something and see what is there, and then you know,
Speaker 3: if you want to breeze through a lot of it, fine,
Speaker 3: but I think you should find one thing that you
Speaker 3: are interested in and really focus on it. Okay, So
Speaker 3: have you heard of this thing called mus Sage. So
Speaker 3: there's this thing called museum Sage that it's like a
Speaker 3: program that someone started where and they're doing it at
Speaker 3: certain museums to where they'll take you and in the
Speaker 3: lobby and they'll blindfold you what and you start you
Speaker 3: pick like locations like turn left here, turn right here,
Speaker 3: to whatever, and they guide you up to whatever you choose,
Speaker 3: whatever painting or sculpture or object. And before you take
Speaker 3: the blindfolds off, blindfold off, you think of a question
Speaker 3: you should like ask yourself deeply, something that struggling with
Speaker 3: it could be like, you know, will will I ever
Speaker 3: get this job? Or what should I do with my life?
Speaker 3: Or what kind of car should I buy? Whatever you
Speaker 3: want to do, But you just think of it yourself
Speaker 3: and they take off the blindfold and you stare at
Speaker 3: whatever they show you and you find the answer. Oh
Speaker 3: my God, and that painting or.
Speaker 2: Whatever, Oh my god, that's amazing.
Speaker 3: So I think always focus on one You should always
Speaker 3: just choose one thing to really focus in on, because
Speaker 3: I think you can really find a lot about yourself
Speaker 3: or about anything you want in that one thing.
Speaker 2: I looked on their website, which is conveniently Museum Sage
Speaker 2: dot com, and they have videos, you guys, videos like
Speaker 2: this one where a woman named Kim asks a twelfth
Speaker 2: century of oz what to do with her career. So
Speaker 2: whenever you're ready, you can open your eyes. Christmas, I know, Okay,
Speaker 2: this is not what I expect. What will Kim do?
Speaker 2: I'm so invested.
Speaker 3: We have a tribe Liaison who coordinates with the Governor's
Speaker 3: liaison with Native Americans, and so it's very We're probably
Speaker 3: a little bit different in that regard since we are
Speaker 3: a government agency.
Speaker 2: Zoe treplick. Great question. Have you ever encountered any haunted
Speaker 2: artifacts or any objects that just gave you the willies?
Speaker 3: So there's a house museum that I take care of,
Speaker 3: and it's the Valeo Home in Sonma, and Valo's life
Speaker 3: is known to haunt the house what and hate English speakers?
Speaker 3: So anytime you speak English in there, she gets very mad.
Speaker 2: No way, Yeah, have you been there?
Speaker 3: I have been there.
Speaker 2: What does it feel like?
Speaker 3: I wait for her to yell at me and she
Speaker 3: hasn't yet. I mean, I think you know, when you
Speaker 3: want a ghostale year, it never happens.
Speaker 2: There's such jerks.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I always wanted, though there is. I also take
Speaker 3: care of a building called the Tuscano Hotel. And one
Speaker 3: time I was trying to film a video for Instagram
Speaker 3: and the music wasn't working and I was like trying
Speaker 3: to do like a Billie Joel song to like some
Speaker 3: sort of weird thing or something, and then the music
Speaker 3: didn't work. But when I replayed it, there were men
Speaker 3: voices talking in the background and there are definitely no
Speaker 3: men there.
Speaker 2: What do you believe in ghosts?
Speaker 3: Sure? Sure, yeah, I'm open to it. I would love
Speaker 3: to see a ghost.
Speaker 2: You wouldn't be freaked out.
Speaker 3: I know, I would love for Jacquelin to come hang
Speaker 3: out with me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's just like you're homie.
Speaker 3: M h totally.
Speaker 2: Hannah wants to know what is your favorite exhibit you've
Speaker 2: worked on.
Speaker 3: I was getting preparing an object to be on display
Speaker 3: and it was a dress made of human hair and
Speaker 3: so so I was picking out dead bugs from the
Speaker 3: early nineteen hundreds from this dress with like tweezers and
Speaker 3: microstan like. So I had a lot of fun working
Speaker 3: on that. All it is is work.
Speaker 2: Jennifer Overbe wants to know. I've heard museums have basements
Speaker 2: chock full of cool stuff hidden away. She so, in
Speaker 2: terms of the collections, why are you so sneaky with
Speaker 2: your stuff? And how do I get down there.
Speaker 3: Come see my stuff?
Speaker 2: Okay?
Speaker 3: Always yes, if you're interested in anything that is, it's
Speaker 3: not hidden away as much as it's taken like improper conditions.
Speaker 3: The climate is proper for them to be stored. And like,
Speaker 3: like I said, if we have two hundred lanterns, you
Speaker 3: know you want to be able to take care of
Speaker 3: the lanterns and have them in a proper environment that
Speaker 3: can they can be there forever. So if someone does
Speaker 3: want to research them, they'll be there for.
Speaker 2: Them to So just ask for more tours.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can get a tour if you asked. If
Speaker 3: you ask, you can see stuff.
Speaker 2: Blake Hawkins wants to know, on average, how many pieces
Speaker 2: in a museum's collection are authentic versus well crafted replicas.
Speaker 3: Now, if it's an actual museum, I would say most
Speaker 3: of it is authentic. But house museums are a different
Speaker 3: story because you do need to set up the house
Speaker 3: and make it look like it's from that time, and
Speaker 3: a lot of times you acquire houses maybe one hundred
Speaker 3: years after the year you want to interpret, so you
Speaker 3: do piece together objects from that time period, but maybe
Speaker 3: not necessarily from that house specifically.
Speaker 2: Okay, so there might be a phone on the wall
Speaker 2: that is of the same year, but it wasn't that
Speaker 2: particular phone that was used.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and if you can go off of like photographs,
Speaker 3: you try to match things up as much as best
Speaker 3: you can.
Speaker 2: Claudia Louis wants to know if you ever feel overwhelmed
Speaker 2: by the amount of history around you.
Speaker 3: No. Never, I love the amount of history around me,
Speaker 3: though I do feel overwhelmed that I should know everything
Speaker 3: so I guess in a sense, yeah, because there's so
Speaker 3: much to know, and especially with my position having thirty
Speaker 3: thousand objects and twenty two different parks. Each park has
Speaker 3: its own, like hundred history that spans hundreds of years,
Speaker 3: so it is I guess that is overwhelming in a sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Do you get texts or calls in the middle
Speaker 2: of the night, like, ah, something broke or is it like.
Speaker 3: From the fire? You know, when we have the fire,
Speaker 3: it's like, Okay, let's rally the troops and let's get
Speaker 3: this going.
Speaker 2: Oh, I was so worried. You were like, can we
Speaker 2: postpone the interview? And I was like, yeah, I think
Speaker 2: that's fine. Like your entire city's on fire and you
Speaker 2: are a curator of museums. Yeah, that's a good idea.
Speaker 2: Jason Newman from the Facebook group also know is there
Speaker 2: a friendly rivalry between different museums of the same type,
Speaker 2: like or do natural history museums make jokes about modern
Speaker 2: art museums? No?
Speaker 3: Actually, I think that there's a good relationship between the museums.
Speaker 3: For me especially, I think that it works. We work
Speaker 3: great together.
Speaker 2: You guys play nice. Yeah, totally, You're not like super
Speaker 2: museum bitches. Britt Pitcher wants to know, can I come
Speaker 2: be your friend?
Speaker 3: Of course?
Speaker 2: Nick van Aker wants to know. Do you have an
Speaker 2: artifact or specimen that you would love to see on
Speaker 2: display in a museum that never will be because it's
Speaker 2: too gross or too big or too fragile.
Speaker 3: Hmm, right now, there are some you know, Native American
Speaker 3: objects that are used for ceremonial purposes. They probably want
Speaker 3: every be displayed. Oh wow. And also they are like,
Speaker 3: there's we have a shrunken head from an island that
Speaker 3: probably won't go on display right now. So what are
Speaker 3: some really neat stuff?
Speaker 2: Do you have a lot of human artifacts?
Speaker 3: Surprisingly, it's very interesting, not necessarily human bones, but hair.
Speaker 3: Hair is big. I mean, especially in Victorian era, you
Speaker 3: have a lot of human hair.
Speaker 2: They made a lot of Memento Mary's things out of that,
Speaker 2: right Yeah. I need to look up how shrunken heads
Speaker 2: work because I don't even know. I'm like, do they
Speaker 2: take the skull out?
Speaker 3: I don't. I don't get it. I saw my first
Speaker 3: one when I was like ten and a Ripley's Believe
Speaker 3: it or not exhibit, and I don't know.
Speaker 2: Does it haunt does the image of it haunt you.
Speaker 3: It's creepy. Yeah, it's very creepy.
Speaker 2: You know. There's a curios store in Seattle that's just
Speaker 2: like on the pier that has a couple of mummified
Speaker 2: humans and I'm like, how does it work. I'm like,
Speaker 2: is that legal?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't understand how that works.
Speaker 2: A corpse in like a dead it's very weird. Side
Speaker 2: note on that, so yes, to make a shrunken head,
Speaker 2: one first removes the skull and then stretches the face
Speaker 2: skin over a small wooden ball and boils it. So
Speaker 2: in terms of DIY project, I give this one a pass. Now,
Speaker 2: these were ceremoniously made in the Amazon rainforests. They were
Speaker 2: thought to harness an enemy's power. And then the tourism
Speaker 2: trade caused a bump in sales both real and of
Speaker 2: fakes in the early nineteen hundreds, and that is where
Speaker 2: we get the term headhunting ding horrifying. Also, that shop
Speaker 2: on Seattle's waterfront is called ye old Curiosity Shop, very
Speaker 2: on the Nose, and it's been there, owned by the
Speaker 2: same family for four generations since the eighteen nineties. And
Speaker 2: the tell me that's just straight up on display in
Speaker 2: a glass case like a fucking croissant is named Sylvester,
Speaker 2: and I just went down. I want you to know
Speaker 2: a two hour rabbit hole about him, but I'm just
Speaker 2: going to condense it and say he's thought to be
Speaker 2: a wild West outlaw who was shot in the gut
Speaker 2: and quickly embalmed in Arsenic by a con man named Soapy.
Speaker 2: But then he fell into the hands of the Seattle
Speaker 2: Curio Emporium in the nineteen fifties. Also, he got shot
Speaker 2: in the face with buckshot at one point in his life,
Speaker 2: never went to a doctor, and his skin just healed
Speaker 2: over it. He's not for sale, but evidently it is
Speaker 2: legal to buy and display human remains. However, birth control
Speaker 2: pills are not available over the counter, and you can't
Speaker 2: buy wine coolers in some counties. Oh well, okay, back
Speaker 2: to rapid fire. These are great questions. Okay. Heather Crowther
Speaker 2: wants to know who writes the blurbs next to the artifacts?
Speaker 2: Was it a curator a historian?
Speaker 3: Who gets that job probably depends on the museum. For
Speaker 3: California state parks have an interpreter who writes the exhibit panels,
Speaker 3: does the research and everything. And so for me, I'm
Speaker 3: a curator right now, so or museum technician technically, which
Speaker 3: is pretty much a curator. So I don't get to
Speaker 3: do that, but we do have input.
Speaker 2: Our museum people. Chill, this is my own question.
Speaker 3: I think.
Speaker 2: So are they uptight because they're like everything has to
Speaker 2: be perfect?
Speaker 3: I think it depends, okay on age? Okay, no, it
Speaker 3: really doesn't. I mean, I'm not ages, but yeah, I
Speaker 3: think the Honestly, I think the older someone is has
Speaker 3: worked in the museum, you know, they've been there for
Speaker 3: like thirty years or something, so it's their baby. And
Speaker 3: then when something's your baby, you do become protective of it.
Speaker 3: So you know, you have these new young museum professionals
Speaker 3: that are like, what, let's give the world this, and
Speaker 3: then you know people that have been there for thirty
Speaker 3: years are just a little more protective.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Amy ten Bers ten Bears, I'm sure I'm saying
Speaker 2: it wrong. Great question. What are the most annoying things
Speaker 2: visitors do? She says, people so off dampen her enjoyment
Speaker 2: of museums with their behavior. How do you stay sane
Speaker 2: working with that every day?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 2: What do visitors do that You're like?
Speaker 3: What? No? Touch? Touch? Touch? I like reach across any
Speaker 3: kind of velvet rope any standien.
Speaker 2: Side note, those velvet ropes that are used in museums
Speaker 2: and nightclubs to convey just like don't are called stanchions,
Speaker 2: and they come from the French for beam or support.
Speaker 2: And did you know you can buy them on Amazon
Speaker 2: for like ninety dollars, So for less than a Benjamin,
Speaker 2: you can erect a velvet rope on your own porch
Speaker 2: and you can feel like a very elite baller every
Speaker 2: time you come home. Okay, back to museum etiquette.
Speaker 3: People don't care and selfies are fine, but you know
Speaker 3: selfie is over the stanchion or trying to touch things
Speaker 3: that you shouldn't. It boggles my mind. Like you can
Speaker 3: go on YouTube and watch all these crazy mishaps. If
Speaker 3: people just wanting to touch things, it's so weird. I
Speaker 3: don't get it.
Speaker 2: Shannon Felt says, real talk, do you have that ancient
Speaker 2: tablet that makes the museum come to life at at night? No,
Speaker 2: to be fair, he's probably lying. He probably does have
Speaker 2: an ancient magical tablet and it's just not telling us. Okay,
Speaker 2: so your job, what is your least favorite thing about
Speaker 2: your job?
Speaker 3: What sucks? Oh, I knew you were going to ask this,
Speaker 3: and I guess it would just have to be the
Speaker 3: paperwork when you're you know, filling out loan agreements. That's
Speaker 3: not fun, but it doesn't like suck suck. I mean,
Speaker 3: even if I'm like working on something out like a
Speaker 3: gravestone or out in the rain in the middle of
Speaker 3: both a Napa State Park, You're still in the middle
Speaker 3: of both a Napa State Park and next to a gravestone.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2: So it's most of the desky sure, Yeah.
Speaker 3: I'd desk stuff. Who wants to do desk stuff when
Speaker 3: you can just go across the hall and photo around
Speaker 3: with an object?
Speaker 2: Yeah, although yeah, and you're allowed touch it because you're
Speaker 2: wearing gloves and stuff, right, totally right, and because you're
Speaker 2: responsible if it breaks.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: A favorite thing about your job.
Speaker 3: Just honestly just going. So I get to my work
Speaker 3: every day before the sun comes up. Really yeah. I
Speaker 3: get there at seven in the morning, and so I
Speaker 3: leave the house at four or I get up at
Speaker 3: four fifteen every day. Oh my god, I know. So
Speaker 3: it's pretty crazy, but I get there and I get
Speaker 3: to like I'm the first one there. And I love
Speaker 3: just like having the keys and opening the door to
Speaker 3: my building and it's like a wooden door in these
Speaker 3: eighteen hundred barracks and it's just really I just like
Speaker 3: walking into it. It's it's fun.
Speaker 2: This is a I should figure this question out myself.
Speaker 2: I might have to google this. But why do museums
Speaker 2: smell so good? Why do old books smell good? What
Speaker 2: are we smelling when we smell old cool stuff?
Speaker 3: I just think we're smelling history. Yeah, I think history
Speaker 3: smells good. Yeah. I was just Oh, I just got
Speaker 3: a cologne that I never haven't tried yet, but it's
Speaker 3: called book What. Yes, it's amazing, So I'm like excited
Speaker 3: to try it so that I don't even know who
Speaker 3: makes it. I just got it for Christmas, like a
Speaker 3: little sample of it.
Speaker 2: Huh.
Speaker 3: But someone was like, oh, I know you would like
Speaker 3: this and it's just book.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, I would need to order that, Okay,
Speaker 2: quick aside, why do old books smell so good? Well?
Speaker 2: I just google the shit out of this, and it
Speaker 2: turns out that paper is made of cellulose and lignin
Speaker 2: from wood pulp, and when they degrade, they throw off
Speaker 2: volatile organic compounds that smell a lot like vanilla and almonds.
Speaker 2: So it turns out there are a few colognes formulated
Speaker 2: to smell like old books, and they have names like
Speaker 2: paperback in the Library, book and dead Writers. But I
Speaker 2: applaud all of them for not opting for the less
Speaker 2: huff friendly name of bookworm. Do you have any future goals, Like,
Speaker 2: is there anything in terms of being a musologist that
Speaker 2: you're like, I want to do this before the end
Speaker 2: of my career.
Speaker 3: Totally. I do think that a lot of exhibits can
Speaker 3: be updated and can be more inclusive, and I do
Speaker 3: want to change that. So I do have that as
Speaker 3: a goal.
Speaker 2: To see what Ronnie Clein's day to day life as
Speaker 2: a musiologist entails, follow his very wonderful Instagram It's museum Ronnie,
Speaker 2: And as long as you're there, you might want to
Speaker 2: check out Granny the Dog, which is his scruffy rescue
Speaker 2: pup who is very cute. I am proud to say
Speaker 2: I was her first follower. I was on that. He
Speaker 2: was like, hey, I've got it. Boom follow. You can
Speaker 2: also follow Ologies or Ali Ward with one L on
Speaker 2: Twitter or Instagram. You can join the amazing Facebook Ologies
Speaker 2: podcast group, which is admined by Aaron Talbert. Thank you
Speaker 2: and thank you Steven Ray Morris for editing this on
Speaker 2: a very very tight turnaround while I succumbed this week
Speaker 2: to various shit storms such as a New York blizzard
Speaker 2: and the flu very very slow hotel WiFi. The theme
Speaker 2: song was written and recorded by Nick Thorburn of the
Speaker 2: band Islands, and if you make it through their credits,
Speaker 2: you know I share a secret with you. Okay, here's
Speaker 2: this secret for this week. I've shoplifted one time in
Speaker 2: my life because I can't deal with the guilt of
Speaker 2: doing it otherwise. And it was when I had very
Speaker 2: low blood sugar and I was in a write aid
Speaker 2: and I had to get a cliff bar, like immediately.
Speaker 2: I was feeling very woozy and the line was out
Speaker 2: the door they were taking forever and I stole the
Speaker 2: cliff bar. It was carrot cake flavor. I feel bad
Speaker 2: about it still to this day. And at one point
Speaker 2: I thought about getting a carrot cake cliff bar and
Speaker 2: somehow anti shoplifting it and smuggling it back in, but
Speaker 2: I thought that would be weirder, so write Aid, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: I owe you probably two dollars and sixty nine cents
Speaker 2: or something okay for Bye packidermatology, mombiology, r doo, zoology, lithology, Yeah, technology, meteorology, paratology, nathology, zeriology, selinology,
Speaker 2: and of course a twenty twenty four secret. Ronnie had
Speaker 2: left me a voicemail summer that I had still saved
Speaker 2: and I listened to it this morning and he was
Speaker 2: talking about this eight four year old journalist, Tom Brokaw,
Speaker 2: who has the same kind of cancer that my dad had,
Speaker 2: so he had left me a message about him. It's
Speaker 2: the cancer multiple myeloma. We did a hematology episode about that.
Speaker 2: But Ronnie leaves me this message and apologizes for rambling,
Speaker 2: and then at the very end of the message, Ronnie
Speaker 2: said this about Tom Brokaw, And when I listened to
Speaker 2: it this morning, it just destroyed me. But it feels
Speaker 2: like the best way to end this episode. So thank
Speaker 2: you Ronnie for being our favorite musiologist and a great friend.
Speaker 3: He is such an amazing person that we should never
Speaker 3: forget him, you know. So anyway, Bye,