My Mountain is Waiting

You're off to great places, 

Today is your day!

Your mountain is waiting, 

So...get on your way!

~ Dr. Suess

I am excited to share with everyone my next adventure. I will spend my next year in Flagstaff, Arizona as the Anthropology Collections Assistant at the Museum of Northern Arizona.

Flagstaff, Arizona
A few weeks ago I knew almost nothing about Flagstaff other than the fact that it is in Arizona. Everyone immediately thinks of the Arizona desert, the blistering heat and tall saguaro cactus. But Flagstaff is different. If in doubt, just take a look at these photos (which are not mine) from Flagstaff.

The highest temperature ever recorded in Flagstaff is 97, and it is apparently the only city Arizona that has never recorded a temperature of 100. With cool temperatures and a high elevation comes winter snow. In fact, Flagstaff averages 100 inches of snowfall a year, making it the fifth snowiest city (with a population of 50,000 or more) in the US. And yep, that's a ski lift right there. Just 7 miles outside of Flagstaff. Who knew?

Through my internet exploration I have discovered several random and interesting facts about Flagstaff:

• Pluto was discovered at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff
• Coconino County is the second largest county in the contiguous United States
• Flagstaff's elevation is just under 7,000 feet. That's high up there, folks!
• Flagstaff sits on the historic Route 66 (as does Yukon, OK, where I spent a lot of time this past summer)
• While Flagstaff is not a huge city (just over 68,000 residents), Northern Arizona University adds an additional 25,000 people to the population
• Because of its high altitude, olympic athletes like to train in Flagstaff
• Flagstaff is just a 90 minute drive from the Grand Canyon

Yes, I'm Terrified
Is it fair to say that I'm a little terrified? You bet. I'm about to drive over 800 miles across a barren wasteland to live in a city I've never been to. Yep, terrified would be one word for it.

But I'm also excited. I'm excited about this new adventure, the work I will do and the things I will learn. Per the job announcement, I will work on a variety of collections projects at the museum. The Museum of Northern Arizona serves as a repository for some National Park Service collections, so I will be working with archaeological artifacts, including Coconino National Forest collections, Bureau of Indian Affairs collections and other NAGPRA projects. For those of you not up to date on the lingo, NAGPRA is the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. This federal law was enacted in 1990 and involves human remains, funerary objects and religious artifacts.

Museum of Northern Arizona and the Colorado Plateau
The Museum of Northern Arizona collects, studies, preserves and interprets the natural and cultural heritage of the Colorado Plateau. The Colorado Plateau is basically the four corners region of Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico. In this area are 10 national parks and 17 national monuments. In other words, the Colorado Plateau is filled with cultural, geological and paleontological treasures. MNA's ethnological collection includes significant Hopi and Navajo collections, Zuni and Apache objects, and smaller numbers of objects from a variety of Pueblo tribes.

The Colorado Plateau (In case you were wondering, I didn't take this picture either)

Later this week I will make the drive out to Flagstaff. I plan to update this blog on a more regular basis, but I will admit that I often don't post as often as I would like. I'm also more likely to post on

other platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, where posts require little more that the push of a button - so follow me there!

It's hard to leave Texas behind. It's hard to leave my friends and family behind. But my mountain is waiting, and it's time to get on my way!

A Summer In Washington

A Summer in Our Nation's Capital
I began this post a couple of weeks into June. I have since begun several other posts that have, like this one, never gone live. I had incredibly good intentions to blog every couple of weeks. While this obviously has not happened, it's the thought that counts. Right?

Okay, so maybe imagined blog posts don't really count for much.

This post will just have to count for what would have been a summer of very fascinating posts that you will now just have to imagine, as I did.

The summer is now almost over. I have only one day left in my summer internship, which it feels like I just begun. Needless to say, the summer has flown by. I have been blessed to live with some of my favourite people in the world - Stacie and Nat McConnell. As I took on an unpaid internship, I was so thankful to have such wonderful friends to open their home to me.


When I began applying for internships way back in January, I never expected that I would be spending the summer at an internationally-acclaimed museum in our nation's capital.



United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Nevertheless, for one more day I am a government employee as an intern in the collections branch at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Since June 1, I have assisted with a variety of collection-related tasks.

My duty station is in Maryland, at the museum's offsite collections storage facility. Over 97% of the museum's collections are in the offsite facility, whose security and secrecy rivals the FBI (though, if an FBI agent comes to talk about art crime, he will also inform you of all of the ways a criminal could blow up the building). The other three percent are in downtown Washington, mostly on display in the permanent exhibit.


My main project for the summer involved looking at collection's incoming files. When we receive a collection, we begin a file that includes a custody receipt for the objects, any emails about the collection, movement notes, etc. This file eventually becomes a permanent accession file, which will house any information regarding the accessioning of the collection. Accessioning is the legal transfer of ownership of an object from a donor to a museum.


The Ever-Important Deed of Gift
We have a large number of collections that have not been accessioned, and my job was to look through the accession files and the database to find out why. I then added an entry for each collection to a spreadsheet and assigned it to a museum staff person to remedy the issue.

95% of these collections are lacking proper documentation. While some collections need purchase receipts or copies of a donor's will, the majority need a deed of gift. This is a legal document that enumerates the extent of the collection and transfers ownership of it to the museum. Without this signed document, the museum cannot accession a collection. As some of these collections have been at the museum since the early nineties, getting signatures from all of these donors will not be a fun task.


Intern Miscellanea
My supervisor is Heather Kajic, the Chief of Collections Management, and she is wonderful supervisor. Heather has ensured that I will leave my internship with a wealth of knowledge about the good and bad of collections management. Therefore, a couple of days each week were spent doing a variety of tasks unrelated to my project. I dusted. I condition reported. I made boxes. I accessioned. I went on field trips. I rehoused archival material. I pulled requested objects. I updated the database. I cut sticky notes. I vacuumed carts. I vacuumed objects. I lifted heavy boxes.

I learned.

Most importantly, I am ending my internship having gained a wealth of knowledge and experience. And ultimately, isn't that what an internship is all about?

Was it perfect? Of course not. I certainly wish all internships were paid. And I now have an insider's knowledge of the issues that this institution faces. But what I gained from this summer is invaluable. I have a better understanding of my profession and I am better equipped to enter my field when I graduate in a year.

This has been a summer well-spent.

I Would do Anything for Love

Everything is Better with Bacon 
I made meatloaf on Monday. Pioneer Woman's meatloaf to be precise. Yumm. I'm a fan of meatloaf, and this had bacon wrapped around the beef. Bacon totally makes a dish more healthy. I think I heard that somewhere. Or maybe not, but bacon most definitely makes everything more delicious and this was tasty meatloaf.

I read that the recipe serves eight and I thought about halving it. I wanted to make sure I had leftovers for the week and thought I'd better make the whole recipe, just in case. 10 slices of leftover meatloaf later I realized that I should have just halved the recipe. Looks like I've got dinner for two weeks. And thank goodness for freezers.

In her recipe introduction, Pioneer Woman wonders why meatloaf gets such a bad rap. It's ground beef mixed with seasoning, eggs, milk, bread and cheese. And in this case wrapped in bacon. Seriously, what's bad about that?

PW thinks it might be the word loaf. Or the words meat and loaf together. Or perhaps memories of disheveled seventies rock singers. I think it has something to do with school cafeterias. Bland and made of who-knows-what, cafeteria meatloaf is not the same and is not nearly as delicious. It's an unappetizing grey colour and I'll admit, the greasy cheese pizza always looked much better. If this is your view of meatloaf, you should make meatloaf with good beef and bacon. I can almost guarantee that you'll be a meatloaf-lover convert.

Warwick Castle
Speaking of meatloaf, I have a lot of fond memories from Warwick Castle in England. This English castle was originally built by William the Conqueror in the 11th century. Portions of the current stone structure date back to the 13th century.

What does a 13th century castle have to do with meatloaf, you ask? Well, not much I suppose. But I'm talking about Meatloaf the disheveled seventies rock singer, not meatloaf the meat that is made infinitely better by bacon. I hope that clears things up.

I once had a serious asthma attack at Warwick. Change in my environment often triggers my asthma, and trips to England tend to include some difficulty breathing. As it turns out, visits to historic sites are considerably less enjoyable when you spend the day collapsed on bench and wheezing. You should just take my word for it.

Other visits to the castle have been much more pleasant. Warwick is owned by the Tussauds Group and is now under the Merlin Entertainments (according to trusty Wikipedia, this is the second largest leisure group behind Disney). In other words, the castle is home to flashy entertainers, the world's largest working siege machine (a massive trebuchet), and elaborate wax figures preparing for a royal weekend party. When I was young, I did not understand that the wax figures inside the castle were not real. I desperately wanted to stay and watch a wax woman fill up wax basin with wax water.

Medieval Torture 
In 2006 my family visited Warwick yet again. The wax figures hadn't made much progress and that wax basin was still unfilled. We enjoyed a full day of touring the castle and the beautiful grounds. We cheered for jousting knights and saw plenty of trebuchet action. I also sat in the stocks and practiced my medieval torture skills on my best friend who suffered on the rack. Oh how I love good, wholesome fun.

The Warwick experience is a bit flashy and focuses heavily on entertainment and money. However, I think it is a lovely place that successfully interprets the castle's history. Because it is incredibly theatrical, it makes for a grand time. [Insert here a lengthy and heated discussion about the monetizing of historical sites and the principles of historical site interpretation]

An Unexpected Performance 
Our historical journey through the castle ended on an interesting note. As we were leaving we heard musical chords coming from beyond the castle walls.

I would do anything for love...
I would do anything for love...
But I won't do that

Yep, Meatloaf was rehearsing for his evening performance at Warwick Castle. Meatloaf's riffs blaring across loudspeakers isn't exactly what you expect to hear from the stones of a medieval castle. Nevertheless, on that day a disheveled seventies singer provided the soundtrack for our medieval experience.

And that is why meatloaf always makes me think of Warwick Castle.