The Significance of “Significant Objects”

Yes, again, a slight hiccup in the Italian adventure to call your attention to a very cool blog that is out in the ethersphere for your pondering pleasure.

This week marks the final installment of the “Significant Objects” project—a fabulous experiment that involved about $120 worth of thirft store items and a whole lot of creative talent. The goal was to get short fiction writers to write stories about objects that the proprietors of the project found and photographed. Everything from a Missouri State shot glass to a geisha bobble-head doll to a tiny umbrella-shaped paperclip holder has been featured on the Significant Objects site and then offered for sale on eBay—along with an intriguing story as its description. The point of the project was to see if the “story” of an object (no matter whether real or make-believe) added to its value. 

Those of us in the museum biz know for certain that this concept is true. In fact, entire collecting policies are based on such beliefs. Even people like me are writing entire novels based on collections of objects and images left behind by other people. But what does the general public think? Well, $3,000+ dollars later, the experiment clearly shows that object stories are as valuable, if not more so, than some objects themselves. 

I love this whole concept and plan to use some of the stories with the students and teachers who come to the museum. Everyone always wonders when they see an object on display in an exhibition, “What’s the BFD? Why should I care?” Because, as this project clearly shows, an object and its story are far more valuable together than as segregated parts. The other element to me as a museum educator, is that through projects like this, we learn to read the object itself, not just the words that surround it. After all, the writers had to take their cues from somewhere…

http://significantobjects.com

Pausing at the Po

I’m just going to pause in my Italian journey here to mention an amazing collection of photos I stumbled upon at the Colorado Historical Society/Denver Public Library. It seems the 10th Mountain Division trained in both Colorado and on Washington’s Mount Rainier in preparation for expeditions into the mountains of Italy. Their endeavors were extensively photographed and are now largely available online. 

I’m taking the liberty of posting one of the most haunting photos I’ve seen of a place much mentioned in my dad’s diary (nearby targets, mostly), but still unseen by me. Lake Garda will have to be another real-time adventure, but for now, I’m exploring it as it was some 60 years ago online. You can too. 

Check out the collection of 10th Mountain Division photos at: 

http://history.denverlibrary.org/images/index.html

WWII image from the 10th Mountain Division

Copyright © 1995-2007 Denver Public Library, Colorado Historical Society, and Denver Art Museum

Time Traveling in Pompeii

 

In my dad’s box of WWII stuff, I found a little greenish ticket. “Tour C.I.T. Agency, Special Tours, Organized for the A.E.F. POMPEII, All fees included-Do not pay more.”

It was No. 5853, torn from a book, probably at the rest leave office, and issued to curious soldiers. Knowing that dad had been a Latin major in high school (very surprising for a guy who spent his life as salesman), I wasn’t surprised to see that this, along with a ticket to the Vatican museum, was something that he’d saved. 

So I went there. To Pompeii, to the place I’d heard so much about in my years working at the Getty Villa, to a place my father had visited and photographed some 60 years before.

Shortly after we met our English-speaking guide, I showed him my little book of photographs and asked if he knew where in Pompeii the pictures had been taken. It wasn’t on the market street, where giant pots had once held “fast food” olives, meat, fruit, and cheeses. It wasn’t in the villa section where visitors can peer through iron gates and spot the remains of conpluvium pools and inner peristyle gardens. It wasn’t near the brothel with recently restored wall paintings. The picture I had featured a small statue of Apollo and some pillars. “It’s in the oldest part of Pompeii, the part built when Pompeii was a Greek colony,” explained our guide. And so he took us there. 

It was early in our “Italy Bellisimo” tour, and my busload of new acquaintances were very generous and curious about my photo scavenger hunt. We passed the book around so that those who wanted to see the pictures could. When the crowd cleared, I snapped a modern-day version of my own, and others took pictures of me. I stayed there, in that spot, where my dad had photographed his uniformed buddies so many years before, to listen. I’d have been happy to stay the rest of the day, listening to the echoes, wondering what Dad and his buddies had thought and saw while there; how they felt in the midst of that much history. 

It’s easy to feel small and insignificant in the layers of time—to know that, like Pompeii—or war, disaster can strike anytime. But somehow the shifting layers help put things in perspective, make us grateful for the familiarity of our own time, and for the wisdom revealed by others who have walked on this planet before.

The trip to Pompeii was too quick for settling a soul. But not too quick to be captured in my memory. So far, I was getting a sense of the wheres and whens of my dad’s experience in full sensory detail, every bit of which is stockpiled for use in my novel. With each day of writing, I pull a little twig or a overarching branch from that stockpile of research and blow it up or slide it in as background, depending on the scene, depending on the need. Some of the research will never see a page, but it’s always there, invisibly supporting each line. As is, I often think, my dad.

 

Pompeii "now"—June 2009

 

Pompeii "then"—March 1945

 

 

 

Searching for Ghosts on Capri

Let’s be real, we’re not talking Ghost Busters or the Twilight Zone, we were simply looking for the places where the people in my photographs had once been. Since 60 years is “nothing” in Italia time, the places remained, but (obviously) the people were long since gone. Or were they? For some of the long passed, the Marinia Piccolo on Italy’s island of Capri would be some kinda heaven. So with my little photo book in hand, my best friend and I ventured down the ancient, switch-back path to see if we could actually find the spot where the photos I had from my dad’s WWII collection had been taken. 

The stone-paved path that clung to the cliffsides of Capri sported spectacular views. Since my dad had been there on rest leave after the war in Europe had ended (May 1945), the island was pretty much party-central as far as his diary and other sources tell. He met a girl on the ferry going over, they swam at the Marina Piccolo, dined and danced at both the Hotel La Palma (the finest on Capri) and at a villa that had been made available as a Red Cross headquarters during the war. That same villa, if local legend and Rick Steves’ book hold true, also served as a meeting place for Eisenhower and Churchill during the war.

We saw that villa, distinctive for it’s terra-cotta color, on the distant hillside as we wandered down the path just as we had earlier that morning when we had taken a boat ride around the island. Now, in the afternoon heat, we flop-flopped down the path to the only other beach on the rocky island besides the Grand Marina. 

The last fingers of pathway take you left to the pay beach, and right to the public beach. We knew from the photos in the book that the place we wanted was the pay beach–it was the little bathing huts that gave it away. They were still there, and much improved.  So we showed our pictures to the lifeguard and the older and taller Richard Gere look-alike who ran the place. They smiled and delighted in the old photos of their place, and gave us a deal on sun lounges “for the price of a sun chair.” How could I pass that up? We paid the money and wandered down to the beach where there were two more lifeguards waiting to help us. I showed them the photos as well, and the older of the two got stoked about the boats in one picture. They were old wooden kyaks–the likes of which my dad had mentioned paddling–and, so the younger explained, “were still there.” The two guys walked me back into the boat shed and sure enough, the kyaks were resting on racks, looking pretty much the same as they had 60+ years before.

After doing my usual thing–trying to replicate in present-day photos what had originally been taken many years before–my friend and I went for a swim in the deep blue waters off the pebble-strewn shore. It was the first time I really felt the significance of the adventure I was on–out there floating in the swells of the Adriatic Sea–and the presence of my dad. Perhaps swimming there just brought back memories of his swimming with us kids, maybe the intense sun had finally fried my brain, but it felt like he was there, proud that we had traveled half-way around the world to discover his little secret place.

The experience left me quiet for the rest of the day, but a line of words kept running through my brain (as words often do), begging to be written down and made into a poetic scene. “There are ghosts at the Marina Piccolo…” Real or imagined, there is no doubt in my heart that I led here for a reason. What that reason is, I still don’t know. We’ll all have to simply wait and see. 

 

The Marina Piccolo on Capri, June 2009.

 

Marina Piccolo as it appeared just at the end of WWII (June 1945). Note the kyaks on the beach--they're still there!

Wooden kayaks in the boat shed at the Marina Piccolo, Capri--still there after 60 years. Amazing!

In Search of the Tiber Terrace

Research Adventures continued…On Foot in Rome:

Back home, I had wondered why dad and his buddies would have checked in at one place, only to bail and go stay “downtown.” After finding that Rome’s public bus only goes so far and hoofing it for miles along the winding Tiber River, we figured it out. In fact, since I hadn’t been able to find the place on Google maps, I’d pretty much figured the old Army Air Forces Tiber Terrace Club that had offered a plethora of activities to wartime soldiers had been torn down. Afterall, it was hardly “classic” Roman architecture–more along the lines of 1930s Deco Does Showboat. But we were girls on a mission. So we went hunting anyway.

Our ingredients for discovery included photocopies of a couple old photos, a 1945 handout from said Tiber Terrace, and a map of modern-day Rome. The handout listed all the activities that had once been offered, and yes, the address. We were golden. All we had to do was find #89 Lungo Tevere Flaminio. No problemo, or so we thought.

Now don’t get me wrong. We found Via Flaminio, no problemo. But number 89 was a bit more elusive. We saw some bus drivers hanging out and ran to ask them if they knew where it was. They waved their arms down the street telling us in English as broken as our Italian that it was waaaaaaaaay down thata way. We kept walking, and soon spotted a couple of construction workers taking lunch break on a bench overlooking the river. We showed them the old pictures. “Had they seen this place?” we asked. They looked then shook their heads without a word. So we kept walking. At long last we came to a section of river that had a number of buildings in that signature 1930s-40s style. It felt like we were getting close. We found #79. Another block and we’d be there, surely. It had to be right here. But where? No sign of such a building in sight. Instead, all we found was a hedge, and behind the hedge an open lot. I’d been right. It had been torn down. Disappointed but used to such discoveries in my History Geek day job, I wandered along the hedge, peering into the hidden zone, speculating about what had been. There was a bridge nearby, so that was where I headed to go get a “Now” picture of the late great Tiber Terrace.

I soon discovered the bridge–a monument in it’s own right–turned out to be the gateway to the Olympic Stadium. We’d had no idea. Just as I had no idea that once out on the bridge, the ancient gods and goddesses of curiosity would turn my head the other way–to look away from the vacant lot, beyond the bridge, across a tennis court, and through the tree cover to a rounded outcropping of a building that was so familiar I knew at once we’d found our mark. 

It was the portholes that gave it away. The old Tiber Terrace was there, sans the old signage, in full glowing color. That’s the one thing you miss in old photos, the color. But here in the afternoon light, the terracotta paint job gleamed. I’m pretty sure the clouds parted and the winged statues on the bridge began to sing. 

We ran from bridge to front door of what was now #16 Via Flaminio (what happened to #89 we’ll never know) prepared to beg our way in. But we didn’t have to. Thanks to a Filipino birthday party that was in full swing, we just charged right in. It was a hot day, and the basketball court-turned pool called to us. The rollerskating rink and ping pong tables seemed to have long since disappeared, but the spirit and function of a recreation center certainly remained. One guy, who looked like he ran the place, kept eyeing us as if wondering whether we were spies. Was it the camera and the fact I kept taking snap shots? Was it the determined way Han followed him into the “staff only” area? Was it that we perched under a tree near the birthday party happenings but were a little too fair to pass as birthday guests? Who knows? All I really cared about was that we’d found the prize, lived it, and photographed it in the “now.” 

I suspected this Tiber Terrace was the place where dad had picked up a pamphlet titled “A Soldier’s Guide to Rome,” where the pictures of him roller skating were taken, and where he’d done a little dancing with the local girls despite having left a fiance back in the States.  But like him, we picked up our gear, grabbed a bottle of water, and headed back into town.

 

Handout for WWII Servicemen from the old Tiber Terrace Club that listed a wide range of activities.

"Old Tiber Terrace" in Rome 2009

Street view of old Tiber Terrace in Rome 1945.

 

One of the 1945 images we used to try to find the place. River view, as we discovered.

 

 

Hunting for Ghosts in Rome

Armed with a diary from 1945–just March to May–some photos, and some addresses from random tickets and papers my dad had saved, I went to find a pair of 60-year-old footprints amongst the millions in Rome. I had three destinations in mind, and I give a lot of credit to my best friend and many-time Roma Traveler for helping me find them. 

First we went in search of a “room in town at Via Belisario 8, Apt 18 – 5th floor. $1.50 p/night.” I’d Googled the address before flying half-way around the world so had discovered that there was actually a B&B there now as well. We found the place easily enough, even a directory near the door showing an Apt 18. But the building had transformed from “apartment-hotel” of the 1940s to individual residences with the B&B Pars located there in one downstairs unit. 

The owner of the B&B, a delightful woman who spends time both in Italy and Canada, was kind enough to let us in. She had been there two years and claimed that the building had never been a hotel. But the abandoned Porter’s office and curved-glass clerk’s booth in the building lobby gave away its past. Even the old key and message boxes were still intact. I imagined my pop grabbing the key, tossing it up, and catching it again as his buddies ran up the five flights of stairs to Apartment 18. Rome was waiting. All those hours he’d spent studying ancient history in high school Latin club were about to pay off…

Bella Italia

On June 26, 2009 I launched on a research adventure to Italy, in search of a few key places my father had visited some 60 years before. I’m working on a teen novel based on his WWII experiences, and it was time to go in search of the “real” story. Armed with old photos that I’d tracked to Rome, Capri, and Pompeii, I set out with my best friend and an unsuspecting tour group to see if these places still existed–and if so what they looked like now.

The next few blog posts will log the stories of these amazing discoveries. What we soon learned is that sixty years in Italian time is “nothing.”

Welcome to Rome…

 

 

Graffiti found near the American Academy in Roma. Seemed fitting...

A Flying Museum

 

No, it isn’t a museum that flies, but it is a museum about flying, particularly during WWII. Located in Mesa, Arizona, the CAF Aircraft Museum was the second B-25 adventure we had during our jaunt to Arizona in search of a B-25 flying experience. 

 

As it turns out, we spotted the newly restored Made in the Shade B-25 as she came in for her second test flight after having been grounded for 22 years. The folks there at CAF have done a remarkable job on her restoration and lucky for us, we got to peek inside once they rolled her into the hangar. A million questions get answered when you actually get to see inside the type of plane you’re writing about. Stories are about personal experience, and I would have had a hard time writing about the flight experience in this latest story if I hadn’t been able to climb inside and feel the tightness of the spaces, the thinness of the plane’s shell, the noise, and the smells. 

And there’s more. Inside the CAF Museum are not only more planes, but flight suits, jackets, goggles, hats, and even bomb shells. It’s a valuable three-dimensional resource that was a great surprise to find. Thanks to their displays, I now know the difference between winter and summer flying suits–much needed by those in Europe. All these seemingly random details combine to lend truth to stories of historical fiction. And that’s important to me, even if the reader will only encounter them on a subconscious level.

CAF also operates the B-17 Sentimental Journey and has a number of other aircraft available for viewing in their hangar. Some info is available online at www.arizonawingcaf.com, but for full impact, go visit (preferably in the winter when eggs don’t fry on the tarmack).

 

WWII B-25 restored and operated by CAF Aircraft Museum in Mesa, Arizona.

Washington Museum Association Conference

I’m off this morning to the Washington Museum Association Conference in Pullman, WA. Putting my work with the Whidbey Writers Workshop and Washington State History Museum to good use, I’m speaking twice. Once on Thursday, “Right-Sizing” Your Education Programs During the Economic Crunch” and once on Friday with “Writing to Connect with Young Audiences.”  Both presentations draw from a number of projects located at various museums around the country as well as the children’s literature field.

These conferences are great fun, and putting together these presentations always helps me align my thoughts on key topics facing museum educators, exhibit developers, and writers around the country. The only problem is that these subjects could be day-long workshops in their own right! One hour is a tight fit.

Ah well, I like a challenge.

B25 Research Adventure Part 1

Research for any story comes in many forms. For my current teen novel project, I’m having to enter a world in which I have very little experience and knowledge, despite years of work in the museum field. I’m having to transport myself back to the 1940s, during World War II, and into the heart and mind of a bombing crew. Aside from sorting through a boxload of dusty photos, mouse-chewed letters, and a diary from 1945, I decided to transport myself physically through time and space by going for a ride in a B25. 

I searched online, emailed back forth with a few folks around the country, and finally landed on the web page of the good folks at Warbirds Unlimited in Mesa, Arizona. Their motto is “live history,” and let me tell you in all my nearly 20 years in the museum field, I haven’t discovered anything quite like it. Historians use their imaginations a lot, but this is as close as you’ll get to traveling to another time. Consider the factors:

The environment (it’s a “working” but authentic restoration of the original right down to the seat belts), the noise (it’s a total mind-buzz requiring the use of serious ear muffs), the altitude (about 3,00-5,000 feet low), the motion (enough skittering side-to-side and up-and-down to make breakfast perk-o-late), the smell (a little diesel, a little metal, a lot of human sweat, a little nephew puke), and finally the vastness of the view (about 300 degrees in the tail gunner position). 

I sat in the tail gunner position during the last part of ride, breathing deeply and trying to tap into what my dad would have thought being stuck out there in the tail for 59 missions over the mountains and valleys of Italy. If every great story is built of character emotion, surely this story will be about pride, determination, resignation, and being scared shitless a huge percentage of the time. 

The flight was “only” 30 minutes, but all of us agreed (my niece and two nephews who had come along) that it was truly the longest 30 minutes of our lives. By the end, both Dylan and I were carrying bags of barf (no more scrambled eggs for me or a while), and all of us were exhausted. Just that little taste gave us a feel for what those bomber crews must have felt like (times about 1000) as they set out on every mission not knowing if they would live or die. 

No matter what my writer friends say, I wouldn’t pass up this experience as an means to tap into the emotions of my characters for anything. In fact, when I think of a B25, I’m still a little queasy. No wonder my dad never wanted to talk about the war…just kidding. But in truth, I’m a lot like him, figuring out how to handle the literal ups and downs for whenever I might have the chance to go again. People really can pull off amazing feats when they have no choice. 

Well folks, that’s it for this post. Special thanks to Ray, Leon, Bill, and pilot Jack Fedor of Warbirds Unlimited for making this experience both well orchestrated and extremely enlightening (all four of us nominate Crew Chief Bill for Sainthood). And to my brave niece and nephews, Haley, Krister, and Dylan, many thanks for helping me “tap the gramps.” This story will be richer for it, baby! 

Coming in Part 2: Our visit to the CAF Aircraft Museum to see their recently restored B25J, “Maid in the Shade.”