4/7/2019

Weekly Update 4/7/2019

When I was at the archives, doing my volunteer work this week, I took a picture of the deeds book, so I could show what it is I’m doing. The handwriting on this sample is wonderful; it is not always the case and some is quite hard to decipher. But from the written records, I’m creating a database. I’ll be doing this for a few hours on Mondays until I die. Or go blind.

Monday was Library Book Club. This month we read The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah. It was about spousal abuse, so I didn’t like it much. But she is a very popular author, and that’s what we do at this book club. The discussion was also quite interesting because most of the ladies are my age, and we have memories about Vietnam, and how it changed some of the people we knew who fought there.

I had a couple of interesting, but difficult tours this week. One was at BC. I’ve done this group before. They are seniors from a local nursing home, and they come on a van that’s small enough to navigate through much of the cemetery. That’s a good thing, as they would not be able to walk around, some are in wheelchairs (those would be the ones who slept the whole time). One insisted on informing the van driver every time she saw another car anywhere in the cemetery (and there were lots as this is a busy time of the year) to be careful not to hit them. One kept asking me when would the tour be over so they could go home. And one wanted to know if I golf (where did that come from?) But I wasn’t doing anything else that afternoon, why not? The other difficult one was the first tour on Friday afternoon at DH. A grandma, adult daughter and 3 kids (maybe 3, 6 and 7 years old). The kids were out of control, and the adults did nothing. Perhaps that was because grandma’s phone kept ringing and she would have to dig through her purse to find it. The littlest one kept hiding behind doors, where we keep our fire extinguishers. I finally told her to stay out of the corners of the rooms and away from the historic – and expensive – wallpaper. The middle child kept asking questions that had nothing to do with the tour (how do you make a quill pen, or ink? Where did they grocery shop?) I finally told him that this was a tour about the house and the Davenport family, and while his questions were interesting, I didn’t know the answers and I had only a short amount of time to talk about what I did know. The adults should have been more in control, but I guess they didn’t see the need to rein the little darlings since they’d paid for a tour and expected to get one. Some of the other tourists complimented me and said I had done a good job with what I was given. But not being a teacher, or having any education background, I don’t really know how to handle this; I expect parents to understand about the historic nature of museums, and play in role in protecting the collections. I did the best I could.

Saturday, I went to a Tea House that Lunch Bunch had been to several months ago, and enjoyed it again. Because we were there in the cold winter months when we were last here, sitting on the porch was more pleasant this time. Because it was National Tartan Day, Dave and John wore their kilts.

Sunday, it was a lovely day. So I joined friends at City Market to listen to some rock music. I didn’t need to wear my hearing aids, as it was plenty loud, but this is something I rarely do, and it was fun.