No Connection

Lately when I walk through our current exhibit, Through a Different Lens: Three Connecticut Women Photographers, the smart little iPad mounted on the gallery wall has been staring back at me with three heart-rending words: “No Internet Connection.”

Is that a cry for help?

“I need you!”

Or an accusation?

“I have no connection and it’s all your fault! Museum visitors hate me! I promise them touch-screen interaction and delightful videos, and they feel nothing but annoyance and resentment. Why don’t you love me?”

First, let me explain the purpose of the iPad in the exhibit. Then I’ll get into deflecting the blame for its failure onto someone else.

Celebrating Birthdays at the CHS!

This past week I celebrated my 31^st birthday (not a milestone year at all!) – at home, in my pajamas all day, glued to hour after hour of non-academic television shows, and watching the snow fall outside. By the end of the day, my Connecticut yard was blanketed with about 10 inches of snow. I did venture outside to shovel a path for my Border Collie, Poncho, and, along with my husband, played a little soccer with him. This was one of the highlights of birthday #31!

Poncho and his favorite soccer ball on a much warmer day. 

 

We are celebrating many other birthdays at the Connecticut Historical Society this winter!

History and STEM

In a nation where the focus is being put on the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM for short), many of us in the fields of humanities are beginning to question our relevance.  With an education that included four years at a liberal arts college, I am definitely among those who hope to keep our history relevant in times of shifting focus.  So…let’s talk about history and STEM…

Camera.1956. Gift of Mrs. Frieda B. Cantarow. 2001.88.1.

Mr. Veeder’s Neighborhood

As if secret panels and an in-home car wash weren’t enough to delight visitors on our monthly Secrets of the Veeder House Tours, we’ve now added new information on the rapidly developing West End neighborhood that Mr. Veeder chose as the site of his home.  Before he began building the stone colonial revival home for an estimated cost of $143,000 in 1925, the land belonged to the Goodwin family farm. The Hartford Courant waxed sentimental about the rapid development in the area in same year that Veeder’s construction began:

“It was not many years ago when out Asylum Avenue, west of Woodland Street, the rolling fields of the Goodwin estate drew much comment. To the north and south fields stretched out, lending the aspect of the country right within the city.”

In 1889, Farmington Avenue had yet to experience the boom in development that would come in the 1910s and 1920s.