information gathered to

further enhance our

educational and

interpretive programming.

As an educator, I felt

school programs and

educational materials

needed to be more fully

explored. Also, I wished

there were more sessions

on specific historical

content as well as the “how

to present” a program.

ALHFAM is a down to

earth organization that

provides group support,

(Continued on page 2)

By Martha Johnson Director of Interpretive Programming (retired) Genesee Country Village & Museum Mumford, NY

Volunteer Harbor History Museum Gig Harbor, WA

In September I attended

my third Western

Regional ALHFAM

Conference. ALHFAM is

not new to me as I have

been attending both the

Annual, Mid-Atlantic and

New England Regional

conferences since the

1990s. However, it was a

different experience as a

recent transplant to the

west coast.

As part of the conference

a Town Hall meeting was

held and one of the

questions asked was,

“what can ALHFAM do for

you?” This question

caused me to stop and

ponder. I was employed

in museum education and

interpretation for 18

years, but have been

retired for the last 12

years. I currently have no

museum

involvement except as a

volunteer. So why am I

still drawn to ALHFAM?

I came to museum work

through the backdoor, so

to speak, and I really

had little knowledge of

the museum field or how

other institutions

operated. With the

urging of the museum’s

first CEO, I attended an

ALHFAM meeting in

Staunton, VA. It was an

eye-opener and I was

hooked!

On reflection, ALHFAM

helped me grow in a

profession that I have

come to love. I’ve

learned many new skills,

gathered information,

and met like-minded

individuals so willing to

share. By holding the

conferences at various

institutions, I was able to

see places I may never

have visited. Behind the

scenes tours allowed me

to see first-hand how

other museums

operated. It helped me

realize the things we

were doing well and

what we needed to

improve. I used the

Reflection and Vision

ALHFAM Western Region F A L L / W I N T E R 2 0 1 2

S P E C I A L

P O I N T S O F

I N T E R E S T :

Reflection

and Vision

News and

Newsletters

2013

ALHFAM

Conference

Of Chicken

Coops and

Forest Fires

PIG’S

Western Regional

Representative:

Mick Woodcock

Newsletter Design:

Zaira Valdovinos

Newsletter Editor:

Eileen Hook

On reflection, ALHFAM

helped me grow in a

profession that I have

come to love. .

P A G E 2

ALHFAM is a down

to earth organization

that provides group

support, advice,

factual knowledge

and encouragement.

The conferences are

informal gatherings

filled with fun, good

food, entertainment

and useful and

educational

programs.

Reflection and Vision Continued... advice, factual

knowledge and

encouragement. The

conferences are informal

gatherings filled with fun,

good food, entertainment

and useful and

educational programs. As

a newcomer to the west

coast, the regional

conferences have

provided a way for me to

learn the history of the

area and a means to

meet new acquaintances.

ALHFAM is not just about

living history. It also

encompasses agriculture

and farming. I worked in

a large living history

museum with farms and

gardens; agricultural

topics sometimes got

buried when telling the

stories of the 19th

century. It is a topic that

ALHFAM is able to help

museums bring forward,

especially in today’s

world, that’s so far

removed from farming

practices and food

origins. I would have

never expected that at

this year’s conference I

would receive an

excellent lead on holly

farms, of all things, for a

talk I will be giving.

Attending conferences

can be difficult. Museum

staff members usually

wear many hats and

often are over-worked.

Money is always an

issue. Regional

conferences are more

localized and expenses

can be kept a little lower.

Usually professional

conferences are geared

toward administrators

and directors. However,

at ALHFAM all staff,

seasonal or permanent,

and volunteers can find

sessions that will help in

their duties. In the past, I

encouraged my seasonal

interpreters to attend

ALHFAM, particularly the

regional conferences.

Today they are

permanent staff

members using the

confidence and

knowledge they gained

and maintaining valuable

connections to others in

their field.

I used to have a poster in

my office with a quote

from Marcel Proust: “the

real voyage of discovery

consists not in seeking

new landscapes, but

having new eyes”. It is

one of the reasons I have

and will continue to

attend ALHFAM

meetings. I’ve learned

over the years that you

don’t have to reinvent the

wheel as much as

perceive its possible

uses as a totally different

implement. At this year’s

regional conference, I

had the chance to review

mending techniques I

learned as a child, which

led me to programming

ideas I could offer the

museum where I

volunteer--not about

mending, but about life at

sea.

Sometimes it is healthy

to step out of our busy

work life and hectic

schedules to refresh and

renew. We can look

back, reflect on what we

have done, see what

others are doing and

envision what we need to

do in the future. Perhaps

then we can acquire a

new vision, see the

journey with new eyes.

That may be what

ALHFAM can do for you.

Martha

Johnson

A L H F A M W E S T E R N R E G I O N

How has ALHFAM

contributed to your

life? Consider writing

a reflection for our

next Newsletter.

Details on next page:

P A G E 3

Message from our Regional Representative The issue you are reading is officially the “Winter” edition, mostly because I failed to get the notice for the fall edition out in a timely manner. As our sites attempt to do more with less and budgets are pared to below minimum, work loads go to overload. That said, I do apologize for this and will see if we can’t get back on track. To that end, we have the following schedule:

Spring 2013 – article deadline February 1st, publication in March. Topic – Curation. Summer 2013 – article deadline May 1st, publication in June. Topic – Foodways. Fall 2013 – article deadline August 1st, publication in September. Topic – Special Events. Winter 2013 – article deadline November 1st, publication in December. Topic – Achieving a Period Look

I will be sending out advance notice of these deadlines so start working now on your favorite topic.

-Mick Woodcock

A note from the Newsletter Designer It has been such a pleasure to design the newsletters for our region. I apologize for any delays in their timely arrival. One interesting piece of news is that there are folks who are subscribing to our ISSUU site (virtual site where I post the newsletters) that are not in our region or in ALHFAM.

So people from other parts of the country are excited to read our newsletter and find out more about living history. Here’s the link in

case you want to share it with friends and colleges http://issuu.com/zairadynia/docs Content: Please let us know if there is other content you are interested in seeing in the newsletter. For example:

The Mountain Plains region includes news items from sites within their region. The Mid-Atlantic region included names of New Members to the Region Others include Book Reviews in relevant topics. Reflections on events and programs. News from any of the interest groups.

What other ideas do you have? This newsletter is for you! What do you want to know about? Newsletters are content driven, so let’s get our Western Region ALHFamily driving! -Zaira Valdovinos

News and Newsletters

Call for Presentations, Sessions and Papers On June 14-18, 2013, Hale Farm & Village, an outdoor living history site and a premier collection and museum of the Western Reserve Histori-cal Society, will host the 2013 ALHFAM Annual Meeting and Confer-ence. Nestled in the picturesque Cuyahoga Valley National Park, Hale Farm & Village depicts mid-19th century rural life in Northeastern Ohio through dozens of historic structures, farm animals, heritage gardens and artisan demonstrations. The University of Akron will provide meet-ing, dining and lodging facilities for the conference and is located within 50 minutes of Cleveland Hopkins International Airport and 20 minutes of the Akron-Canton Regional Airport.

Guided by the theme; Bringing It All to the Table: Feed Your Body, Feed Your Mind, museum professionals everywhere are encouraged to gather with colleagues around a common table. Here conference at-tendees will acquaint themselves with old friends and new associates, while enjoying good company, good food, and rousing conversa-tion. And what better place to gather than the time-honored table that is familiar to everyone and is oftentimes described as a positive and productive setting for stimulating discourse, high spirits, instruction, respite and shared aims. Appropriately the table serves as a special place that is witness to life's most important things.

The 2013 conference will address issues and concerns currently facing living history and agricultural museums. Proposals for presentations, sessions, papers and workshops are now being accepted and should focus on individual, institutional and communal achievements that serve up innovative programming initiatives or organizational efforts that are creative, essential and relevant in today’s marketplace. How do museums cultivate and nurture civic engagement for greater involve-ment and investment in their organizations? What can we glean from new demographic shifts, technological applications and curriculum schemes? What are the current and best practices of living history in-terpretation and museum methodology that effect organizational rich-ness? What are the processes for dishing-up success? How do we deliver the goods to our audiences and reap the rewards of a good yield in the face of new challenges and opportunities?

Submission deadline is December 1, 2012

2013 Keynote Speaker will be

Patrick Conway, Jr. Pat is the co-owner of the Great Lakes Brewery. The 25 year old brewery’s mission is to be “the premier craft brewery in the Great Lakes region.” The brewery produces 100,000 barrels annually and distributes to 13 states and Washington, DC. Patrick has been involved with Hale Farm & Vil-lage for 5 years in a project called “the pint size garden.” The garden which covers 1/2 acres grows produce for the brewery’s restaurant in downtown Cleveland. The company is very inter-ested in sustainability and using locally grown foods. It was recently named one of the Top Workplaces in the area by the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Work-ing with his alma mater, the University of Chicago, he has recently recreated a brew recipe on a 4,000 year old Sumerian clay tablet. Special clay fer-mentation vessels (gakkuls) were cre-ated and yeast from barley bread were used when customs officials would not allow yeast samples form a Lebanese brewery to be exported. You can read all about this by going to the website: www.greatlakesbrewery.com

P A G E 4

Of Chicken Coops and Forest Fires

By Mick Woodcock

You know you aren’t at an ordinary museum conference when you hear two people commiserating about varmints getting into their hen houses. This could only be an ALHFAM meeting and indeed it was the Western Region’s meeting in Bend, OR September 27-29!

Hosted by The High Desert Museum, whose highway entry sign proclaims “WILDLIFE – LIVING HISTORY”, this site was the gathering point for members from across the West in general which includes both the Western and Mountain/Plains regions. ALHFAM Vice President Debra Reid came and conducted a town hall on what members thought the organization might provide extra in the way of services. She also conducted a session on how to find out what your site has to offer that no one else can.

The conference started Thursday evening with a reception at the Bend Brewing Company. Members drifted in as they arrived in town and partook of a variety of finger food and a no host bar that consisted of a sizeable list of locally brewed beers.

Friday was a day given over to sessions. The day started with the Town Hall, then moved to concurrent sessions “How to Find Out What Your Site Has to Offer that No One Else Can” and “Reform! Reform Needs to be the Watchword!” This was followed by lunch and the region’s business meeting which covered future sites of meetings and a presentation by Dan Thyer from Historic Nevada City on the 2013 tri-regional meeting.

The afternoon was divided into two concurrent session blocks. The early one had “Hand Sewing: Plain and Fancy. No Machinery Required!” and “Training First Person Interpreters for your Museum”. The clean up slot had “Training Well: How to Go from a Great Idea to a Great Visitor Experience” and “Crowning Glory: Victorian and Edwardian Hairstyles for Modern Interpreters”.

We took a break and then traveled to the Old Mill District, a rehabilitated lumber mill site turned into a thriving shopping area to have an early supper at the Flatbread Pizza Co. A good time was had by all with some folks staying late to walk on the banks of the Deschutes River or have ice cream in one of the local shops. We were lulled to sleep with the wafting odors from the local forest fire west of town.

Saturday found us viewing the exhibit halls “Spirit of the West” and “By Hand Through Memory”. After a short break we had a tour of one of the collections vault where white gloves were donned and numerous objects were examined that included clothing of different types, firearms from the museum’s collection and gambling artifacts from a previous exhibit called Sin in the Sagebrush.

Afternoon free time was spent touring the outdoor portions of the

A L H F A M W E S T E R N R E G I O N

P A G E 5

museum which are devoted to wildlife and the living history area which includes a sawmill and 1904 ranch. A special public program was going on with children digging (or planting) potatoes, pressing cider, grinding corn and generally having a good time.

After a break to head off to the hotel to change into period garb, we were back at the ranch for the evening meal and auction. Beef stew, fresh bread, salad and pie made for an excellent end to an all too short conference. The auction netted $321 which was then added to by Associated Foundations with an additional $500.

Folks are already excited about the meeting in Nevada City next year. If things work out, the region, with the support of Associated Foundations, will be sponsoring three workshops FREE to ALHFAM members. More on that will be forthcoming in a later newsletter.

PIG’s Are you in

terested?

ALHFAM Professional Interest Groups are an informal gathering of ALHFAM members interested in exploring and sharing information on specific topics and skills.

You can join a PIG by contact-ing the chair of the group(s) that interest you, attending meetings during annual and regional conferences, and communicating with other PIG members between meetings. PIGS are encouraged to plan, sponsor and offer workshops during annual and regional meetings

and submit Bulletin articles.

What are they?

FPIPN (pronounced Pipin) First-Person Interpreters Network Contact: Ron Carnegie r.carnegie@verizon.net

CPR Collections, Preservation, and Registration Contact: Martha Katzhyman martha.katzhyman@gmail.com

GRUNTS Government Raised Unincorporated, Non-Uniformed Troops Contact: Andrew Duppstadt andrew.duppstadt@ncdcr.gov

HAT Historic Apparel and Textiles Committee Contact: Sarah Wilson LeCount slecount@rochester.rr.com

Machinery Committee Contact: Franz Klingender fklingender@technomuses.ca

NERDS New Electronic Resources and Data Systems Contact: Heidi Gladfelter heidi@marketearlyamerica.com

PIE Programs, Interpretation, and Education Committee Contact: Maria-Sophie Desaulniers mdesaulniers@technomuses.ca

FARM Committee Contact: Ed Shultz eschultz@CWF.org

POTS Historic Foodways Committee Contact: Kimberly Costa kaecosta@comcast.net

Replica Committee Contact: Mick Woodcock mick@sharlot.org

SAP Seeds and Plants Contact: Karen Becker karen.becker@virginia.gov Mike Beckett michael.beckett@dnr.state.mo.us

PROFESSIONAL INTEREST GROUPS