Things I Vacuumed Today

A few weeks ago one of my blog-reading friends asked if I had vacuumed anything interesting lately. When I responded with an actual answer of a few things that I had vacuumed, we agreed that maybe I should just give up the blog and change to a twitter account listing weird things I cleaned at work. To us, this seemed hilarious.

What do you think, readers? Would you like to get fascinating life updates from me like:

-Vacuumed wooden beer crate

-Washed Hypercolor T-shirt

-Used cotton ball to clean orange helmet

-Used Q-tip to clean shot glass

-Stuffed smelly wedding dress into fume hood

I love my job, but it often strikes me as a really weird gig. When I try to explain what I do, the first question people usually ask is, "Ok, so what do you actually do all day?" And then I have to respond with something like, "Well today I tenderly washed a novelty T-shirt from the 1990s in a bath of water and gentle surfactant."

Clara's Nightmare

When I moved back to Seattle, I wondered how it would effect the way I dress. I had started dressing up more in New York, and I kind of wanted to keep that going. But Seattle is such a casual city I wondered if I wouldn't start just throwing on my awkward jeans and saggy T-shirts and not care. But I'm very proud to report that I've been consistently dressing up for work. Most days it is skirts and dresses, and often heels to complete the look. I knew I had done well when one of my co-workers noticed that I was wearing pants one day (don't worry, they were nice pants) and asked if it was the first time since I started my job. I was able to tell her confidently that it was actually the third.

So the other night I had a dream that confirmed just how attentive I've become to what I wear. In the dream I was at work, going about my regular day. There were lots of mirrors at work (much like my new apartment) and every time I passed one I was confronted by the fact that I was wearing a really hideous outfit. I had on a white turtleneck with some sort of Christmas pattern on it and a pair of giant mom jeans. The whole thing was very unflattering and lumpy and I basically looked like Jerri Blank from Strangers with Candy (pictured above). I may have had the same haircut too. Every time I saw myself in the mirror I was like, "Why am I wearing this? Why did I stop caring? If only I could go home and change!" The worst part of it was that no one commented. Horror of horrors, NO ONE WAS SURPRISED TO SE ME LOOKING THIS WAY.

When I woke up I was relieved it was just a dream and took extra care that day in picking out my clothes. But it begs the question- what kind of person have I become? What does this say about me that I'm having nightmares about not wearing a good outfit? I'm basically a ditz stereotype from a teen movie.

But then again, I'm a fashion historian! I have to keep up appearances. This week the sketch artist for the Seattle Times got a tour of MOHAI and I doubt he would have drawn me if I wasn't so fabulous. You have to check out this awesome little article about the museum move. He even captured my pink tights!

Black Bart / White Apartment

Yesterday I had the following at the top of my to-do list:

-Remove shirt from cowboy

Yep, my life is pretty sexy.

One of the interactive exhibits in the new museum will be "Black Bart," an arcade game from the the 1962 Seattle World's Fair. Basically it is a life-size cowboy, dressed all in black, whom you challenge to a game of quick-draw. His pants are molded plaster or fiberglass (whatever the rest of his body is) but he wears a real shirt. The shirt is original to the fair but is torn and dirty. Since his gun arm is going to be constantly swinging back and forth at the new museum, the shirt is only going to wear out more. So for weeks, one of the things on my to-do list was to strip Black Bart of his original shirt and measure him for a prop one.

He had recently returned from the conservator in a crate, and so I needed to get the help of all the packers (not Green Bay, but the people packing objects for the museum move) to open the crate, stand him up, and maneuver him while I wrestled with his shirt. It was comically difficult. Once the job was done I had to cover him up with a sheet of packaging material because he looked so creepy and exposed. The conservator had worked on his face and had wrapped his head in white cloth to protect it. So basically we had a full-sized human, lying in a coffin-like crate, with tight black pants, pale exposed chest, and a bag over his head. He looked like some victim of a BDSM game gone terribly wrong.

In news unrelated to shirtless men, I got an apartment! Last week my friend Olivia and I got the keys to a great place on Capitol Hill. With the Holiday busyness neither of us has moved a scrap of furniture yet, but it will happen sometime this next week or in early January. It was all repainted and re-carpeted before we got it, so it feels like an exciting blank canvass.

It also has mirrors everywhere, so I am likely to become even more obsessed with getting dressed each morning.

We also have plans to turn our living room mirror into a giant, ridiculous version of a high-school girl's mirror, complete with images of boys we have crushes on and cutesy notes from friends. If you have anything to contribute please do. Images of actor Adam Scott or presidents from the 19th century will be particularly welcome for the gallery of crushes.

Vacuum vs. Choirgirl

I distinctly remember the moment in grad school when I became absolutely sure I didn't want to be a conservator. It was when I was vacuuming a textile in my conservation class and it took FOREVER because museum vacuuming has to be done with a small nozzle, one spot at a time. No dragging. You have to pick the nozzle up and put it down on each inch of the fabric. I thought I would go insane.

Little did I realize that even if I avoided becoming a conservator, I would still have to vacuum things. It is one of the best ways to clean fabric without wet cleaning (which introduces a whole lot of risks), so I've been doing a lot of vacuuming. Most of the projects have been small, but last Friday I had a big one.

We have this large, gorgeous kimono that is going on exhibit at the new museum. I found a bug carcass on it (luckily, no sign of active infestation) and so it was decided that the best thing to do was to give it a thorough vacuuming. Somehow I imagined it wouldn't be bad.

My iPod has been having trouble holding a charge, so I left it at home and figured I could use my computer to play pandora or something. It didn't take long to figure out that crappy internet speakers + sound of vacuum = no audible music. So I vacuumed in silence. I got through about one twelfth of the exterior and already felt like my brain was about to bleed. I started alternating between tiny sections of the kimono and long breaks in my office.

At lunch we had a special staff & volunteer holiday potluck. While we ate there was a slideshow of MOHAI people at events and at work. I was in one picture, and I was vacuuming something. It was like I could hear fate cackling, "Clara Berg! Welcome to your life!"

After lunch I returned to the conservation lab and tried to think of a way to keep my brain from going completely numb. I had only finished a small fraction of the project and had a lot to go. So I did the most reasonable thing I could think of: I started singing Christmas music to myself. It wasn't the kind of music you hear at the mall, but solid, old-timey carols that I learned in various choirs. Personet Hodie, The Wexford Carol, In Dulci Jubilo, Jesus Christ the Apple Tree, and the like. Music for Christmas nerds. I hoped that the vacuum would mostly drown me out but I noticed people giving me strange looks as they walked past. So I started waving and shouting "Yep! I'm singing to myself! How is it going with you?!" My defense against insanity looked a lot like the condition itself.

The amazing thing was that it totally worked. I stayed focused and happy, and the work seemed to just fly by. By the end of the day I was almost finished.

On Monday I completed the project, but decided to do everyone a favor and brought in my iPod and its charger. I resisted the temptation to sing along.

My own office!

One of the perks of my new job is that I get an office to myself. The staff at MOHAI has expanded over the years and there are a lot of people crammed into places intended for just one or two. In fact, I think that other than me the only people who have their own offices are the director, the deputy director, the head of advancement, and the head librarian (and her walls are glass so it barely counts). Anyone else at my level in another department can only dream of space to themselves.

Clearly though, part of the reason I have my own office is that no one else is eager to steal the space. It is a little cinder-block corner with poor lighting and a shared wall with the freight elevator. There are a bunch of pipes running along the ceiling and once my predecessor got rained on when one of them burst.

As fate would have it, I was exiled from this private paradise for the first two months on the job. On my first day my boss tried to get me set up on the computer in there and when she went to check the internet connection, the cable thingy just fell apart in her hand. What followed was a tech support comedy of errors and I basically just ended up working on a different computer in a different area. It happened to be the same desk and computer that I had worked at two years ago, so it felt like I had just returned to my old life. I actually didn’t mind it too much, but the two heads of my department lobbied hard to get me back in my office. It was very kind of them, but I sometimes wonder if my innate chattyness was making them weary of sharing a space with me.

Whatever the motive, I did finally get a new computer, and last Wednesday I moved into the office. Grim as that space is, I am pretty excited to have it. I’ve brought in my books and notebooks from grad school, and done my best to arrange the army of lamps that my predecessor left behind. The internet still doesn’t really work in there, but at least I can start putting up my pictures of John Doyle Bishop.

What I work with

I am really enjoying my new job. It does strike me though, how odd some of the things are that I work with. In grad school we learned about the best of the best—so one might imagine that getting a real job would mean being buried in Chanel and 16^th century embroidery. But working in a regional history museum the story is a little different. For someone who doesn’t care about the history of Seattle, a lot of the stuff we have is just weird old junk—not monetarily valuable in the way an art museum’s collection usually is. Here are some of the Seattle treasures I’ve been working with recently.

-Socks made out of burlap

-Puppets from a local children’s TV show

-Giant shoes used by someone in from the Seattle Sonics

-A 1991 CD single of “Smells Like Teen Spirit”

-The first down jacket made by Eddie Bauer

-Cardboard signs from the 1999 WTO protest

-A pair of 1890s button boots made by Nordstrom

-Hiking pants from REI

-A plaid Eddie Bauer shirt with sleeves cut off, worn by a gay activist in the 1970s

-A turquoise sequin gown (with matching sequin shoes) worn by Miss Seafair 1997

-A briefcase phone from the 1980s (which weighs about 25 pounds)

-And my favorite “only in Seattle” artifact: A toy hydroplane decorated with Mariner Ichiro Suzuki’s number and name, as well as a logo for sponsor Oh Boy! Oberto, local makers of beef jerky. Where else in this country would those things together even begin to make sense?

Oh wait, I found an ad for it:

Keep it weird Seattle. Keep it weird.

What do you know about Febreze?

My boss occasionally comments that working at MOHAI is like "stepping back in time." This is not a nasty comment about the organization being backwards or even a cheesy statement about how magical museums can be--it is about the people we deal with. Both she and I get contacted by the public with questions and donation offers. The people we talk to are usually old, and when asking them to send you relevant information you have to ask questions like, "do you have access to the internet?" and "do you know anyone who has ever used a scanner?"

The other day I received a letter that completely boggled my 27-year old brain. It was addressed to my predecessor, but it fell to me to answer it. It was from a woman who had written previously about a mold problem that had appeared on some vintage garments. While treating the dresses according to my predecessor's advice, a friend of hers had added her own twist: after treating the garments she was spraying them with Febreze. Now if you are a conservator you are recoiling in horror, but to those of you without that background, just know that generally it is never a good idea to just spray random chemicals in the direction of historic fabric. Plus, a simple read of the label proves that Febreze makes no claims about killing mold or treating mildew- all it is is a "fabric refresher."

But her unwise conservation decisions were not what surprised me. I went to grad school to learn things the average person doesn't know, so I shouldn't be shocked that the general public isn't as up on clothing care as I am. The surprise was that she had never heard of Febreze. The letter explained that her friend had discovered this fascinating product called Febreze and she was writing to ask if I had any knowledge of, or experience with this mysterious new invention.

But the even more astonishing thing was this: the communication was sent in the form of a hand written letter, and the writer enclosed a self-addressed envelope for me to send my reply. A self-addressed envelope in which to send my reply. In other words, for this woman, there was no way for her to get information about Febreze other than by picking up a pen, writing a letter to her local history museum, and waiting for her letter carrier to bring the reply several days letter.

I was so charmed that I dropped everything and responded right away (although my letter was typed and printed out). I tried to be as diplomatic, non-condescending, and helpful as I could. I feel a little bad for making fun of her on this blog, but I think this is a case where the internet is a pretty safe forum.