LISTSERV - BULLAMANKA-PINHEADS Archives

In early 1999, my brother and I spent weeks together moving our aging mother out of the home of our youth, her home for 60 years, built the year I was born, documented thoroughly inside and out, including the gardens and landscape, by family photo albums and the original builder's plan book still in the attic along with samples of every wall paper and dried up paint can used over the years, from the days of wheat pasted paper hanging from the ceiling on a humid night as my parents tried to do-it-yourself patch an ice-dam caused leak-stained living room corner, to the days of mat-tack quick fix of the bathroom shower wall when the Donocona board underneath began to take on a life of its own. As a heritage building and garden preservationist and a museum curator, I was struck by the wealth of information documenting the life of the people who had lived in the house and the thorough encyclopaedia of middle class East Coast style represented in the "collection" contained in every room and basement cranny. What to do with it all? After careful consideration of the task and the responsibilities, we managed to fill two large dumpsters with absolute junk while an auctioneer hauled a huge truck and trailer with the "Valuables" away from the tiny 1-1/2 story "cape cod cottage" whose footprint was no more than 700 sq ft. We gasped at the tippage bill from the village dump for 8 tons for debris. I marvelled at the simple house structure that had managed to hold the weighty accumulation for so long, noting a central bearing wall that did not quite line up with the joists below, and the resulting wave in the dining room hardwood floor that had oozed into existence over the years as my parents accumulated their upstairs treasures and memories, a perfect illustration of plate dynamics with tension and compression visibly at play.

I mention the process of clearing the house for its historic relevance, because as we progressed, we experienced a regression in time through the appearance of the rooms as they became more and more open, resembling the various stages in the life of my parents in reverse, de-accumulating bit by bit what they had accumulated. I was especially struck by the final appearance of the open rooms with lots of floor space, just what my brother and I remembered from our early childhood playtimes in those places. We even found hidden boxes with some of our favourite toys and enjoyed, once again, racing little cars across the polished hardwood floors, putting just the right "english" on the thrusts to make them spin a 360 about 10 feet out or challenging each other to the perfect smash-up with Lincoln Log and Build-A-Brick buildings. I couldn't help thinking about the challenges in historic site interpretation when managers try to decide what era to represent. In one week we experienced living details of the entire history of the house, each epoch presenting a total picture on its own and all wound together with integrity and continuity. As the new owner took possession, I heard the words "restore the place" mentioned with enthusiasm. I could easily imagine the steps necessary from a professional view, but wondered just what she thought restoration meant. Would she tear out the now-giant cedars and 2000 pine trees planted in 1944 so the place would look more like the long gone farmer's field that actually surrounded the house when it was built. Which of the never-quite-right wall papers and paint tones would she choose to compliment each other today, when in the past the right combination was never quite arrived at. Historically, the place was always in a spiralling state of wishful and hopeful of expectation that perhaps when the next room was redecorated all would be well.

A year ago in September, my brother and I spent the final weeks with my mother as she died of cancer, observing and participating in the medical art of controlled decay as pain was effectively managed in order to achieve the best quality of life possible as long as possible, quite remarkably successful too as far as I could understand and observe it. After seeing the physical household hardware of a life dissolved and dispersed, it was remarkably similar to observe the organic body following the same path. I was conscious of the preservation and restoration of treasured antiques eagerly being engaged in as well as the absolute trashing of some things, not so different from being in the hospital and seeing some people being healed and rehabilitated while some were being guided gently into the Ultimate Passage and turned into dust.

In March, Christine and I attended a conference titled "The Return to Wonder" at the University of Southern California in Santa Barbara, in which museum folks from across North America and Europe delved into the museological history of Cabinets of Wonder and the concept of revitalizing the use of wonder as a tool for creating knowledge in museums today. Later, with a day to spare in LA, we visited the Museum of Jurassic Technology. Life hasn't been the same since. It sure has become a lot more fun! If you read "Mr.Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder" you will remember Geoffrey Sonnabend's theory that there is no such thing as "Memory", only "Experience and the Process of Forgetting". I mull it over daily as I go about restoring the treasured old 1877 Grist Mill in Keremeos, BC www.heritage.gov.bc.ca/grist/grist , or developing participatory interpretation programs for visitors, or creating museum exhibits at the Kamloops Museum, Kamloops, BC, or giving lectures in Heritage Interpretation at Selkirk College in Nelson, BC (an ad for the Nature & Heritage Interpretation Diploma Program there), or teaching a course in Trade Show Management & Exhibits at the University College of the Cariboo in Kamloops, BC, or chat with my inspiring friend Henry Yorke Mann who at 70 continues to be a most amazing designer, one of whose homes, built in 1969, has already been given official protected Heritage Building status by the West Vancouver City Council www.henryyorkemann.com/index2.htm

But the whole point of writing all this is that I have been joyfully BP-lurking through days of challenge for a year and a half as my mother experienced cancer, and then my brother was diagnosed with a similar cancer two weeks after her death, and lots of weeks have been spent with them each along with continuing to run a Provincial Historic Site under a bizarre government management system, apparently the only one of its kind in the world (ask and I will tell you more), and redesigning a city museum so construction can begin any day now, and occasionally taking the LAP to Boston Pizza for dinner to enjoy lurking pleasures of feeling connected to people with some similar interests when there seem to be none within sight here.

However, a few weeks ago, I dropped my LAP, a crashing God-Awful slip-out-of-the-case to the concrete floor of the workshop during a moment of haste and distraction at the end of a busy museum day, and my e-connection to the world cracked its modem slot leaving me e-less. Parts ordered ... yada, yada, yada ... wrong part ... reorder ... wait ... wait.., but now its time to visit my brother as he consults more thoroughly with the cancer god, and fortunately he has an e-mail I can use, so......today downloaded hundreds of messages from recent weeks and discover many filled with anti-lurker and pro-lurker sentiments, a good discussion too. So, that was the point of now saying hello across the e- and sharing reflections about preservation, memory and the art of controlled decay. With every x-ray and body scan I witness, I am reminded of using black-lights on the walls and spotlights along the floor to seek out significant UV clues and erosion patterns, and carefully sanding bull's-eyes in painted walls, and looking through microscopes at paint chips to see what lies hidden beneath the surface. As the doctor taps gently to test the quality of tissue and hollow, I am reminded of searching for studs and wondering if there is a sub-floor layer. As the bones weaken with erosive tumours, I recall the powder-post dust below my favourite 8x8 hand-hewn column in the Mill. The temporary shoring I have placed beside it seems not at all unlike the metal pin they want to insert in my brother's femur. But always decisions challenge the path of simplicity. How does the pain and discomfort of a major operation for a metal pin balance the life expectancy of the rest of the body? Do I just replace the entire beautifully aged pine post or cut and splice a new piece into it where needed? How does declaring 8 tons of stuff from my parent's house to be junk balance the historic information concealed in it? Who cares? Well, I am glad to assume the responsibilities, but when it begins to feel a little lonely (especially when dealing with the government bureaucracy) it is nice to connect a little and refresh the spirit through a friendly lurk beside those BP pros on the move.