Main Page
Contents
- 1 Disgusting Article in the Valley News
- 2 Breaking Up with the ‘’Valley News’’
- 3 Upcoming Events!
- 4 Books, Books, Books!
- 5 Catawiki
- 6 Publicity and Press Clippings
- 7 Material Culture Studies, Including The Electric Organ
- 8 Shoppe with Us! The Museum Gifte Shoppe
- 9 Volunteer at the Museum
- 10 Links
- 11 Hours
- 12 Admission
- 13 Directions and Parking
- 14 The (Virtual) Restroom
- 15 Parking—Please Notice!
Disgusting Article in the Valley News
By now many of you have seen the article that appeared on the front page of the Valley News on Sunday, 20 December, 2009.
Many of you know Bob and Elizabeth Pickering too. They are pretty much constantly next door, acting as general property managers for the former ProCam building. They also occupy the largest single retail space in the building. His harassment of Museum patrons is known to most of you. His racist and bigoted language is also well known. He has called me, my friends and loved ones by the usual schoolyard bully taunts, usually referencing our perceived sexual preferences. He has called my friends and loved ones (the ones that happen to produce more melanin than I do) that famous word that begins with “N”.
The Valley News didn’t contact any of the victims of this speech however. They dismissed my list of incidents as “alleged hate speech”. Daniel Johnson (Bob’s employer and landlord) calls my complaints “subjective. In fact, Mr. Johnson was quoted at length, in paragraph after paragraph, in the article about “all the good” Bob does. From my vantage point—I can only surmise—that if Mr. Johnson speaks so glowingly of Mr. Pickering's character, he must share some of the Pickerings’ attitudes about the many diverse groups that come in and out of the Museum.
The Valley News did print Michelle Roy’s and my letters to editor on Saturday, the 26th, Letters to the Editor in the Valley News, December, 2009
I’ve written a much longer letter to the editor, that begins below, and has its own page here on our wiki. It’s good news for the Rutland Herald (an award winning newspaper) and 7 Days but sad for another local daily with an uncertain future. I hope everyone knows that I wrote both of these letters because I care.
‘Meantime—need we repeat—stay away from Mr. and Mrs. Pickering. Don’t Park On Any Of Our Neighbors’ Properties (we are getting more explicit signage make up) and pick up the ‘’Spectator’’ when it resumes publication!
Breaking Up with the ‘’Valley News’’
Dear Valley News
This is a letter about us—about our relationship. And its a hard letter to write. I’m sorry to tell you this, but after 17 years, I think its not working between us. Maybe you think that my telling you this in a letter is cold—impersonal even—but try to remember, our relationship has been all about cold, hard type. Every morning, seven days a week, you’ve provided the type, and every morning and given you my eyes and at least some of my brain, especially when there was coffee involved! But lately it seems like I’m doing all the reading (and subscription paying) and you’re not covering the things that I’d like to see covered, and when you do some local reportage, its shallow, vapid and makes the neighborhood I live seem like someplace I don’t even recognize. In other words, I’m reading you, but are you writing back?
I want you to know that I remember the good times. When I first located to the Upper Valley on a permanent basis, I was worried that there wouldn’t be any decent, discerning local reviewers for the eccentric art and music shows that a bunch of us organized in a small exhibit space we rented on South Main Street. And then Bill Craig showed up. He was a reviewer who believed in criticism with meat on its bones. He liked most of our shows. But when he didn’t like an exhibition he would savage it in his weekly arts column. The artists involved were horrified (there was Ego at stake after all) but I really appreciated that someone cared enough to be a critic. Then there was the article Bill wrote about the Woodstock Kennel Club when he reminded us that the dog is an animal that “returneth to its own vomit”. You published his—sometimes edgy pieces—and I was proud of you. Over the years Ive read some great pieces of investigative journalism and some wonderful entertaining bits that plugged the Museum here in a very meaningful way. But the paper seems to be getting more and more tepid. Remember our date for the Halloween Parade here? I sent you about three or four press releases for that, but you didn’t provide any coverage whatsoever—one of the largest, and certainly the most colorful, events of the year...Read the full letter here.
Upcoming Events!
January is Ukulele Month here at the Museum! Not all of our performers will be playing ukes, but String Band, Old-timey, and Corn will be themes! The fun begins on the 9th with Over a Cardboard Sea, Modern Times Theater and The Dolly Wagglers. Then on the 14th of January its the Two Gentleman Band and on the 14th of February its our Valentines Variety Show! Check out our full schedule here!
Books, Books, Books!
Come see our books!
- The new Vermont Monster Guide—Its all part of our in-depth scholarship dealing with cryptids, therespids and the "Other" in aquatic biological classification systems. Signed by the authors Steve Bisette, Joe Citro and Cat Garza the copiously illunstrated tome give us schpeels about the Giant Eels, the Connecticut River Monster, (Hydrohippokampos athesphatos lymanae), the Fur Bearing Trout, Fish With Pincers and other anomolies and wonders of the Aquatic Fauna Department of the Museum. In our Gifte Shoppe—only $21.00, us!
- A fine new Pictorial History of the Town of Hartford, Vermont, published this year by Arcadia Press, and full of historic pictures of our town, only $21.99!
- Weird New England, again, signed by the author, Joe Citro. A wonderful book about a Weird Region and all the Weird things in it, like the Main Street Museum. New and very slightly used copies are Yours for only $18.00 us and up!
- And our pamphlets, What is It? We Have It? You Want to See It!, and the Description of the Collection both newly and nicely bound with hand stitched bindings! $3.00 and $5.00 respectively.
Catawiki
The Main Street Museum's Catawiki is a unique digital initiative in material culture studies utilizing open-source code to describe the artifacts in our collections and to create a completely fluid, adaptive taxonomic structure for their interpretation. The Catawiki uses the same "wiki" code utilized by "Wikipedia" and is able to be modified by users from any internet access point. The categories currently acting as a organizational foundation for these structures are:
- Objects as Evidence of Human Culture, for instance: Pet Toys; Geographically or Historically Significant Items (Relics); Manuscripts; Art; Military History; Textiles and Clothing; Shoes; and "Things, or Fragments of Things Once Owned by, or Associated with, Notable People Particularly Notable Vermonters".
- Biology: Living, or Apparently Once Living, Objects, including
- Flora: "The Invasive and Native Species of Windsor County" for instance, or "Dried Roses from Robert Todd Lincolns House in Manchester, Vermont" and "Camellia Blossoms and Leaves from the Varina and Jefferson Davis Memorial".
- Fauna includes: Homo-sapiens; White-tailed Deer and Other Mammalia; Reptiles; Birds; Entomology (Insects); Corals; Flocked Pets; Other, or Unidentified Species; etc.
- Inanimate, or Apparently Inanimate Objects, or Boxes of Rocks including Minerals, Man-made Minerals, Silt from the 1927 Flood, Round and/or Rusted Things.
- And, of course, Miscellaneous or Other Things.
- Vinculum (or Overlapping) Categories can be accessed from the sidebar to the left and include: Carbon; Color as a Hysterical Reaction; Cute Things; Flocking; Objects Chewed by Pets; Teeth, More Teeth, Things with Nail-holes; "Things Made from Animals or Parts of Animals" and Tramps and Hobos.
Publicity and Press Clippings
Read what we write about ourselves. Read what others write about us.
Testimonials
The Main Street Museum—White River Junction's answer to the Library of Congress.
—Peter Welch, U. S. House of Representatives, 2007.
It is only due to organizations such as yours that the important works of our Country are brought to the attention of the public.
—Marie Reilly, Museum of Bad Art, Dedham, 1998. learn less...!
The Main Street Museum forces one to contemplate the nature of museums and curating. Why do we save what we save? How do we decide what to discard, what to display, what to hide away, and what to destroy. —Joe Citro, Weird New England, 2004
Material Culture Studies, Including The Electric Organ
History is false. It has to be. —Jules David Prown
Its really all about questions. We are a museum. We collect and preserve objects. (And other things too. But objects, mainly.) And then we do what all museums are supposed to do. We discuss the objects. We have conversations with you, the viewer, about the objects. And we have found, over the years, as we do this, that each object raises a number of questions. Sometimes it seems that each object has about five or 10 questions associated with it. And each question we research raises five or 10 more questions. And we might do this five or ten times for each object. And it also seems that we only end up answering about one question for each ten that we ask the object, or the object asks of us. But with so many questions—just multiply 5 to the 5th power—that still means that we have come up with a lot of answers in spite of ourselves. All in all, we think that the questions are more fun than the answers. But you are free to decide for youself.
Read what we've written about objects. Read what the experts have said as well. This is just a starting point. We have only just begun to really think about things, and our relationships to things.
Our fully functioning blog features discursions on material culture studies, miscellanea and much more! Museumology Blog continues the heartfelt commentary of the previous blog of the Main Street Museum at Blogspot. You can read the latest entries, musing about roadtrips, history, collections and collective insanity, and post your own responses here.
A German critic, W. Bürger, writes "Our Museums...are veritable graveyard-yards in which have been heaped up, with a tumulour-like promiscuousness, the remains which have been carried thither...all are hung pell-mell upon the walls of some noncommittal gallery a kind of posthumous asylum, where a people, no longer capable of producing...come to admire this magnificent gallery of debris. —G. Brown Goode, Museums of the Future, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C., 1891: p. 427
Shoppe with Us! The Museum Gifte Shoppe
The Museum Gift Shoppe features souvenirs, a wide variety of books on museums and museum-y things, our own booklets with hand-stitched bindings, and wonky gifts that no one in their right mind would purchase!
Volunteer at the Museum
The Main Street Museum is a great place to visit, and a great place to volunteer. You can do everything from staffing open hours (Thursday - Sunday, 1 - 6 p.m.), to helping out with arranging and maintaining displays, researching and writing museum labels, bringing the refreshments or setting up for special events like concerts and First Fridays open house nights, or helping create special exhibits and special events. Internships are occasionally available for meaningful projects. Past interns have researched and written labels for a Nitrous Oxide Canister, Tramps and Hobos, White Tailed Deer, FiestaWare and more. Interns also engage in field/study trips around Vermont and New Hampshire—to Burlington, to St. Johnsbury and the Fairbanks Museum, to historic Windsor, Vermont, and to the St. Gaudens National Park in nearby Cornish, N.H.—as well as conducting in-depth tours of the areas' varied thrift stores and other repositories of material culture for collection excursions on behalf of the Museums ever-enlarging categories of artifacts. Whether it be free-wheeling research, carpentry, photography, event planning, landscaping, or music - whatever it is that you like to do, we'd love to talk to you.
E-mail us at info@mainstreetmuseum.org for more information, or call us at 802-356-2776.
Links
Other Museum-things.
- "As in totemism, we participate in each other as we participate in the object." —Sartre, Les jeux sont faits, 1943, and Norman O. Brown, Love's Body, 1966.
Hours
The Museum at 58 Bridge Street is open Thursday through Sunday, from 1 to 6 p.m.
Admission
The Museum suggests a $5 donation for visiting our collections. (Members of the Museum are admitted free of charge). Reservations are not necessary. Discounts are available for groups. Children under age 12 are admitted free of charge if accompanied by an adult. No one is turned away for lack of funds.
Directions and Parking
Museum Headquarters are located at 58 Bridge Street, in downtown White River Junciton, adjacent to the Lehman Bridge, between the railroad underpass and the White River. Parking for Museum patrons is available by the Museum Riverside in the back of the Museum Building, on the street (Railroad Row works!) or in the Courthouse/Depot Parking lot.
The (Virtual) Restroom
Parking—Please Notice!
Please Don't Do Business with the Guy with the Cap
Vehicles parked next door on the former Pro-Cam property—otherwise known at "the Stolen Bike Store"—or at the Home Comfort Warehouse WILL BE TOWED AT OWNERS EXPENSE!
VISITORS—PLEASE PARK ON THE STREET when attending our events. White River Junction is quite safe. Railroad Row is close by. Public parking lots are conveniently located by the Railroad Depot. Please do not park in our buildings riverside lot unless you are familiar with the parking situation here.
DO NOT PARK CARS ON THE SIDE OF OUR BUILDING, or on the adjacent property of Daniel Johnson, or the well-lighted Home Comfort Warehouse lot in back of the Museum! CARS WILL BE TOWED WITHOUT WARNING FROM OUR NEIGHBORS PROPERTY, even from our Right-Of-Way!
Bob Pickering is in charge of parking on our neighbors property. He wears a baseball style cap and both he and his wife have been abusive to Museum Patrons in the past. The museum has filed "Notice Against Trespass" papers against Mr. Pickering. Please alert museum staff if they are seen on museum property, or if they approach museum patrons. THE MAIN STREET MUSEUM TAKES NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ACTIONS OF EITHER BOB OR ELIZABETH PICKERING
Daniel Johnson employs Mr. Pickering. In the event of trouble or concerns please report his actions directly to Mr. Johnson at design-build@valley.net, or 802.291.7080 or to the Hartford Police, 802.295.9425.
We're sorry for all the trouble —The Management.
The Main Street Museum, 58 Bridge Street, White River Junction, Vermont, 05001-1909, info@mainstreetmuseum.org, 802.356.2776
