Holiday Party 2009

The holiday party has come and gone, so let’s address the pressing concerns first:

Contrary to all sartorial expectations and hopes, SCDAH director Eric did not, in fact, wear a bow tie. Instead, he chose a normal tie, red with blue stripes.

And the food was excellent.

Also, the beautiful table decorations, hand-made by our own Ben Hornsby, garnered high praise. The gift baskets were lovely, the crowd congenial, the guests appreciated, the punch divine. If you missed it, we probably talked about you in your absence, because after all, we wished you could be there.

Many thanks to our overworked committee, and to those who helped bring food, and to those who suffered fools for the camera in accordance with the recent Directorial Coercive Digital Photography Policy of Dec. 2009, which was contrived at the last moment to compensate for the fact that the archives has no working video camera to record such events. We apologize for the inconvenience, and point and laugh as well.

State library people, we love you. Art people, too. Former employees - you too.

Paul (left) claims to not show up in photos, but he does. Barely.

Also left, our own, rarely spotted, Darlin' Patrick of the Archives.

Gift bags!

I Come From the Land of Plenty

Yes, I just quoted Men At Work at you, and no, I don't feel bad about it. Let's kick off the holiday season with a brief talk - not about the strong whiff of retail despair coming from the stores in the mall, but about Revisionist History. Changing the story. Straying from the truth. Embellishing, if you will.

You've all seen those little historical themed holiday villages, right? The kind that come with the inevitable Victorian manor, general store, ice skating pond, and several cute figurines in clothing appropriate for some time between 1880-1930? Iron lampposts, fake snow, a couple of decorated trees - they're everywhere. And yours, my dear friend, is vastly incomplete. Because you don't have a Wal-Mart.

I can't find it online - I keep getting lost in Village People stuff and bread - but at least in stores, Wal-Mart is offering an addition - an historicized Wal-Mart store to add to your quaint village for only $12. Never mind that Sam Walton opened his first Wal-Mart in 1962. Now you can pretend it's always been around. Discount corsets, stiff original gold-rush-era Levis, depression glass, firewood, and cast-iron irons for all!

(Anyone with the time to find this product online and link it would be appreciated.) -AL

An Archival Thanksgiving

This year, I am thankful for getting back to the simple things in life:

- Money, as in having, as in not having enough, but having barely enough to splurge all out a few months ago and purchase health insurance for the entire family for the first time ever, for at least the next six months.

- The lights are on, at least partially, some of the time, but not in the hallways, and that means we can still pay our power bill, barely, and we’re not archiving by candlelight, which everyone knows is a royal fire hazard, as seen in the Great Fire of Archive #47 back in 1927 when a sleepy archivist forgot to snuff his flame before dozing on his desk, destroying most of the records of the record-breaking Blass-Hoyton merger; the company going up in smoke in the crash of ’29 and both founders ending their lives ignobly selling apples on the corner, singing Disney songs.

- Paper. I can print things, things like recipes that will never actually get made because really, we’re too tired to cook, and who actually has five roasting pans anyway?

- A rolly office chair. It’s fun to scoot around in circles when no one is watching. The chair doesn’t corner very well, so maybe Santa can bring an upgrade. Also, that time I raced a cart down the corridor – good times.

- The last company holiday party I attended, I left with so much swag I nearly fell out of the car. They even splurged on the fancy battery-operated blinky-light trinkets that are not only reusable – the batteries can be replaced – they have actual off switches. (Clearly, this wasn’t an archive event – batteries are not archival material.)

- Tweed newsboy caps. Why not? Hats should make a comeback, so that we can then bring back manners. As in, take your hat off when you walk inside a building, unless you’re a woman, in which case your hat cost so much and looks so fabulous we may well just bury you in it, and wouldn’t you be the best-dressed person in a coffin at that funeral?

- Worst case scenario, we still have a few personal belongings that could be sold to replace income, such as one car, a television, and possibly my spouse’s cat.

- Dave Barry could be working here. No one would be safe then. -AL