That Picture of JFK

Whatever happened to that picture of JFK?

Whatever happened to the Jesus on the wall?

Objects have power, some intrinsically so due to their use or appearance, others through their associations with people, places, and events. Growing up Irish Catholic in a small town in South Jersey, I recall framed images of JFK and Jesus hanging on the walls of our home. Pope Paul VI was probably around somewhere as well, but those are the two that stick in my memory. Thinking about it now, I probably saw the same images in the homes of my friends, at St. Mary's Elementary School, and at church on Sunday. JFK was, of course, the first Irish Catholic to be elected President of the United States. He was a rock star in our house, bigger than Elvis. And Jesus, well, Jesus was all around us, or so we were taught.

Those images were a part of the landscape of my childhood. My parents carefully packed and carried them from one residence to another over the years. Other objects drifted away silently without notice. Only years later would someone ask, "Whatever happened to the two felt Christmas elves that mom use to perch atop the living room drapes—Santa's little spies?" Or "whatever happened to the console stereo?" Before 8-tracks, cassettes, compact discs, or digital players, we listened to music on a beautiful, polished cherry hardwood cabinet with a turntable embedded in its center and speakers at either end. Some of my earliest childhood memories involve listening to Peter and the Wolf, William Tell, Mary Poppins, and Peter, Paul & Mary (the same album that covered Bob Dylan's Blowin' in the Wind). I learned to operate that turntable before I could read or write. My older sisters complained bitterly to my mother when they came home to find a broken needle, scratched Supreme's LP's, and/or album covers with crayon-colored Beatles' teeth. Years later, I was thrilled when my brother-in-law gave me a  number of vintage records from that era. It was only when I tried to play them that I realized my childhood sins had come full circle.

In my profession as an exhibit developer, we use objects to tell stories visually. Objects and images, displayed in evocative fashion, encourage visitors to find entry into those stories and discover truths about our collective past. Exhibitions of objects can be displayed to shine a light on particular individuals at particular moments, or they can be used to tell a larger story,  illuminating how much all human beings have in common, even when separated by great distances, divergent cultures, or eons of time. During my early career at the Chippewa Valley Museum in Eau Claire, I recall our collections curator going on about a red, plaid woolen coat. It had been worn by a young girl from one of the city's working class neighborhoods. The coat's patched inner lining, frayed sleeves, and stained elbow and chest pocket offered evidence of its use over many Wisconsin winters. It didn't take much to imagine a young girl sledding on a neighborhood hill or skating at a local park. You could picture that same coat hung along with others on a line of hooks at school, or at home in the mud room with wet boots and shoes on newspapers below, and wet stocking caps and mittens slung over a nearby radiator.

At the museum, I used to enjoy wondering through the collections stacks searching for inspiration for our exhibits. I found the domestic artifacts especially evocative because they were simultaneously familiar and foreign. It was easy to imagine the purpose of any number of kitchen utensils or sewing room tools, and yet so many of them had either been replaced by new technologies or abandoned by evolving circumstance. We had any number of spinning wheels, brought by immigrants moving to what they thought was the frontier in the late 19th century. Most survived still very much in tact because they were hardly used. The availability of inexpensive ready-made cloth made them superfluous in the New World. Their sentimental value enabled them to remain in the family, passed from one generation to the next, until they eventually found their way to the museum. In truth, much of our collection was built by donors on their way to the dump who thought to stop and ask if we were interested. We would sometimes find objects abandoned like orphans on our doorstep with explanatory notes pinned to them.

I had the experience of going through the belonging of my parents after they passed, just as my wife has more recently done with her mother. Going through the belongings of someone who has resided in a home for decades feels like a geologist pealing back layers of time. Just below the loose, superficial veneer of recent correspondence, bills, magazines and medications, you reach the still-in-play level of clothing. Below that, a much deeper level of "retired" items contains any number of hardly worn sweaters and other gifts, mostly from well intended children trying to think of something nice to give Grandma for Christmas. Below that, there are the evening dresses, furs, jewelry, and maybe a hat box or two, evidence of a much earlier time when a fuller range of activities, family and friends was still in the mix. Stored randomly within these drawers, like glacial erratics, you'll find vacation figurines, souvenirs from the trip to Yosemite, seashells from the beach near Panama City, or artwork from children and even grand-children carefully wrapped and put away for safekeeping.

Diane seems determined that she will not leave such sedimentary layers behind for our children to unearth. Every six months or so, she goes on a throwing out binge and I end up making a Good Will run. Her latest effort is inspired by a book she read recently, which suggests that you pitch things not in chronological order, oldest out first, but in a prescribed order of topical categories (start with clothing). I feel like I've heard this sermon before, and yet each spring I find our basement ping pong table cluttered with any number of boxes, random blender parts, leaky irons, old curtains, TV remotes, defunct Christmas decorations, and of course, the ubiquitous phone cords.

I'm not a hoarder by any stretch, but I do admit to the enjoyment of seeing objects around me that reflect my life and the people with whom I have shared it. Every room in our home has photographs of our family, mostly our kids. Looking around my office as I write this, I can see the two-headed Lewis and Clark mug filled with pens and markers, and an Indiana limestone coaster under my coffee cup, both tokens from design projects early in my career. On the bookshelf, I see the Native American hand drum that my son wanted for his second Christmas and the flask that we found in his room after he moved out. On my desk, a themed alien lighter from the UFO Museum in Roswell reminds me of a research trip with my daughter and our unexpected close encounter at the grave of Billy the Kid. Diane thinks I need to clean my office, but I'm keeping my trinkets, along with last summer's solar eclipse glasses and the plastic figurine of the Pope standing in his white Pope mobile that we bought for my brother in Italy, but which I just could not part with. Papa Francesca baby!