The Adventures of the Roaming Southerner: Naked Statues and Folk Music

THE HEAT WAVE IS OVER!!!! Today should be a cool 85! Which seems hot, but its cool compared to the past three days of 100 degrees. I am used to the heat, I am not used to buildings not having air conditioning. Thank goodness JMM has it. But this whole sweating in my living room is not cool. This morning when I got to JMM instead of going with the other interns to learn past perfect Ryan and I followed Elena on her tour. This morning’s tour was a group of third graders from a local Catholic school. I am glad that we got to follow Elena. Since we are in the education department we will both be giving tours of the synagogues and the museum in the near future. It was a great learning experience. The kids asked many questions and it was good to see how Elena acted to all the questions. My favorite part was when a little boy said after getting to the top of the synagogue where the women sit, “I wish I was a girl, they do have the best seats!” It was priceless. I also enjoyed it when one of the third grade girls argued with me about Finding Nemo. Her group was the one working on the archeology activity. They had to decide if they had found a spittoon or a vase. I explained to them what a spittoon was used for (which got some great faces). Elena then told them that most dentists still use a kind of spittoon. I said it was the thing that Nemo went down in the movie. She said I was wrong it was the toilet. Wrong kid, wrong. But its all good, I kept my cool and before I could tell her to re-watch the movie some other kid told her, she was wrong. Priceless. I really like that the museum has activities for students to do in the exhibits. I think that it gives the students a better connection to the history. It also seemed like they liked doing all the activities.

After the tour, we rejoined the others and learned how to research in past perfect. I think this will be a good tool to learn, but it’s a tad confusing so I am going to need some help at first! However, the JMM has a great collection so there should be lots of stuff for the projects we will be working on this summer. I could just go crazy in the photo collection room. Then it was time for lunch, which is always my favorite part of the day. After lunch, it was time for our second workshop. Elena my mentor gave a workshop on photography in museums. We learned how to set our cameras to manual and take pictures. I liked this workshop, but I don’t remember half of my manual settings or how to change them. I really need to find my camera’s instruction manual!! Nevertheless, it was a good overview of how to take pictures and who to take pictures of. Once we were done with the workshop, we were paired up and sent on a photography scavenger hunt. Ryan and I were partnered up. Before we left, we had to pick a toy to photograph in the wild (outside). I naturally picked the statue of David, I thought the naked statue would make funnier pictures to take. So we hit the streets around the JMM. This scavenger hunt was a chance for us to get to know the neighborhood and work with our fellow interns. We had to take several pictures of each thing because we had to keep changing the settings. Let me tell you two people walking down the street talking pictures of random things, while carrying a lion and a tiny statue got us many a strange look. One of the challenges was to ask someone to let us take their pictures. Talk to strangers, well my mom said never to, but you know me. I can resist the chance to talk to random people. I decided to go into Attman’s Deli (which is apparently the place to go for a corn beef sandwich, yum) and see if I could get someone to pose for me. Well most of the people looked at me funny when I walked in with my big camera, so I thought I should play it safe and find someone who did not look at me as if I was crazy. Good luck. I spotted two police officers eating lunch. Police are supposed to help in an emergency and this was a emergency, I needed to take a picture. I went up and said “Hi, I am an intern at JMM and we have to practice taking pictures for the museum. Could I please take yours? It will only take two seconds and two shots!” They both looked at me like I had just asked them doughnuts were square. I thought for a minute they were not going to help me. But after a few more seconds of asking and them laughing and trying to decided which one would take the picture, I came out of the deli with my picture. They also said, “Have a good day. Be safe out there.” It was awesome, I felt like I was on set of some cop show. Good times. We then headed back to the museum to upload our pictures, which will be judged by the staff.

We then went to talk to our mentor Elena. We talked about museum stuff for about five minutes and then spent the next hour talking about everything from Quidditch (Ryan plays on his college’s team), to accents, Baltimore food, and my personal favorite, which place has the best BBQ North or South Carolina.

Tonight Angela and I went to Ottobar to see Johnny Flynn and the Gussex Wit. I was not sure how the concert was going to be, because Indi Folk Rock songs on not usually what I listen to. I was a good concert. The three bands were good; I liked the music (not always the lyrics, some of them were so random). I also immensely enjoyed the man who danced by himself. He had a painted mask on his face, bells on his feet and arms and a Mohawk. It was epic. He was just a movin’ and a grovin’ to the music all by his self. I wish I had that much confidence in my dance moves. Well today was one packed day and I cant wait for tomorrow.