archives – Page 2 – Benjamin L. Clark, writer

17 September 201629 November 2017

In the Museum: A JFK Autograph Mystery

“That’s it?!”

I admit, it doesn’t look like much, but the cameraman’s tone stung. This book is a treasure at the museum where I’m curator. But with a book collector’s eye, yes it’s in tough shape. But what a story behind it!

Someone somewhere in our large organization decided to create and promote some short videos about fascinating objects in our collections. They needed a list of suggested artifacts and this one was high on our list.

In 1940, a young John F. Kennedy’s senior thesis at Harvard was published as Why England Slept. Not long after that, an autographed copy from the young man from a prominent family was given to Father Edward J. Flanagan, of Boys Town fame. Father Flanagan was one of the most famous Catholics in the United States in 1940, just two years following the film that earned Spencer Tracy his second Oscar.

We’re still not 100% sure how the book came to have been gifted to Father Flanagan, but he and young Jack Kennedy’s sister Eunice Schriver served on a committee studying juvenile delinquency around that time, and that was the best guess according to long-time staff at the museum.

Then I found this November 1940 photo online at the JFK Presidential Library of young JFK signing the book for Spencer Tracy. Father Flanagan wasn’t the only priest played by Tracy, but he did play him twice. First in 1938 in Boys Town, and a little-known sequel Men of Boys Town in 1940.

It makes sense if this was on the set of Men of Boys Town with Tracy reprising his role as Father Flanagan. Did young Jack Kennedy sign a copy for Father at the same time as Tracy’s? Someone on staff asked if JFK made it out to Father Flanagan, giving it to Tracy!

Nothing turns up in our archives of correspondence between Tracy and Flanagan about the book, but there’s a decent probability Father Flanagan was on set at Men of Boys Town, so he could be just out of frame in this photo! We’ll probably never know.

We do know that we’ll have a nice video telling the fascinating story behind this particular book and the strange and roundabout way it came to the museum.

More About Working In Museums:
VHS is Dead
How to Research Like a Novelist

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29 July 201626 May 2020

VHS is Dead: Obsolete in the Archives

Formats come and go.

Ask the 8-track audio tape and VHS’s rival the Betamax. Curators and archivists are ready for it … right?

From the Archives, a 3M T60 Professional VHS Videocassette

To be clear, it’s the venerable VCR that is ceasing production, not VHS tapes. There’s a proud history of media outlasting the players … Sony only stopped producing Beta tapes this past March.

Being the age I am, I remember home video being a new thing. As a youngster, my family going for a Friday night/ weekend splurge to the Video Station (I think that’s what it was called) and renting VHS tapes and a VCR. We didn’t own one ourselves. They had VHS and Beta tapes and players I remember, but there was way more selection on VHS, so that’s what we always got. The players came in this big hard plastic carrying case. It was a while before we had our own VCR. My Dad won it in a sales competition at the car dealership where he worked then.

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The first thing I ever bought online was a VHS tape. (I think. There’s a good chance it was actually a book, but for the sake of this blog post, it was a VHS tape.) I had read somewhere that the greatest cinematic car chase ever put on film was in the 1960s for an early Michael Caine caper film called The Italian Job. The cover of my copy had this mobster guy and this sexy lady back with a map on it — neither image really had much to do with the movie. It did get some looks on my shelf of tapes in college, though.

The people at the Video Station had never heard of it. The people at every video store in town had never heard of it. No one at the library had heard of it. But, Web 1.0 certainly knew about it! As quick as you please, the tape was on my doorstep! I couldn’t believe how simple it was.

The cover of my copy had this mobster guy lounging and this sexy lady’s back with a map on it — neither image really had much to do with the movie. It did get some looks on my shelf of tapes in college, though. (“Uh, what kind of movie is this?”) If you’ve never seen it, it’s actually a lot of fun. Not really a mystery, but crime/ thriller/ caper film. It does have one of the greatest car chase scenes of the pre-CGI era.

So, what does VHS obsolescence mean for us in museum and archive land? We need to be sure we have good equipment on the shelf and know how to maintain and clean it. We also need a plan to migrate our VHS tapes to other formats. Afterall, you don’t want all that great content being stranded on formats you can’t access. We have enough of that already (I’m looking at you 3M Sound On Slides)

Will VHS become collectible some day? Will there be rare video shops, like rare book shops? Will devotees come in and say things like “It smells so good in here, reminds me of a Video Station circa 1986.” Will the analog tape speak to photography-on-film buffs? Will people start to glow talking about the grain of the film? Will they be like vinyl records some day?

9 Reasons VHS can be Expensive/ Rare

25 Rare Films That Never Made it to DVD (Including Sherlock Holmes, a version of the Godfather and other stuff I’d love to see)

I have my doubts. Beta already has a cult following that is decades old. On that front of the video format wars, VHS lost. I think it’ll be the people searching for the content more than the pleasure of the format.

Like this post? Here’s more about life behind the scenes in museums and archives:
BINGO! At the Intersection of History and Slang
How to know Things are Bound to get Worse
How to Research History Like a Novelist

About the Author: Benjamin L. Clark writes and works as a museum curator.

21 July 201626 May 2020

How to Research History Like a Novelist – Warm water & paper towels

Tip-tapping out some new words in my current story and my main character uses “Warm water and a handful of paper towels…” And it occurs to me, ‘Wait. When were paper towels invented?’ (I readily admit, this doesn’t sound like the most riveting action, but … you’ll see.)

I don’t stop every time a question like this occurs to me while writing. It kills flow. Usually, I put a bracket [] around it and come back to it — I drop brackets in for fact checks, or anything that needs extra attention after the first draft is done, like when I need character names. Sometimes I just don’t have a name ready, so I write [bad guy’s favorite plumber] or whatever so I know who it is and find a suitable name. But a quick glance at Wikipedia

1921, Brown Co. Paper Towels — By 1921 (when this promotional photograph was taken, the brown, folded paper towels from Nibroc Paper Towels were everywhere. Similar products are still in use today. Photo courtesy of the Brown Company Collection, Plymouth State University.

should answer this important paper towel question for me. Right?

According to the article I found on Wikipedia, paper towels were invented in 1907 and look to be commonplace by the 1920s. Perfect. For my later 1930s story, my main character could totally use him some paper towels.

Running an image search, I found a wonderful, in-depth history of the leading manufacturer of paper towels in the period, the Brown Company of New Hampshire. The article mentioned that during the Depression (i.e. during my later 1930s story), “Demand decreased. Profits shrank. In 1935, Brown Company filed for bankruptcy and the Brown family lost ownership.”

So, the later 1930s were not a booming time to be in the paper towel business, nor a great time of using them. So, it looks like instead of “Warm water and a handful of paper towels…” it’s going to be something different. For now. The whole scene may get scrapped in revision, but that moment is now far better, and a small moment to reveal more of my Character’s character, and that’s a good thing.

As a National History Day judge, I’m among the chorus of historians who bemoan the use of Wikipedia as the only stop for research by students. Not that Wikipedia isn’t amazing. Not all that long ago, the question of when paper towels were invented would probably leave me at the mercy of an old-ish marketing pamphlet giving precious little actual information, and I’d have to wait a few days to get that answer through a research librarian. But really, Wikipedia is only a starting point. Without what was there (and first of all, let’s appreciate the fact there was an entry on the history of paper towels in the first place!), I wouldn’t have had my other information for search criteria to dig just a little deeper.

If I really had to know as close to 100% as possible, I’d dig up financials of places like the place my hero is using paper towels at the state, county, or city archives. I’d check with the corporate collections, and even try to interview some people who were alive in that place and time. But this is just paper towels. Wikipedia saying yes they were available would be fine for 99.999% of readers. The only reader whose reading experience would be ruined would be the timber industry historian, but you know what; I want that person to read and enjoy my books too.

So, thank God for the internet, but really, thank you for the people putting their research ‘out there’ never really knowing how, when, or to whom it may prove useful.

Like this post? Here’s more about historical research:
BINGO! At the Intersection of History and Slang
How to know Things are Bound to Get Worse

About the Author: Benjamin L. Clark writes and works as a museum curator.

14 July 201626 May 2020

How to know things are bound to get worse.

Working in museums and archives, I occasionally run across something that just cracks me up. I saw this response card this week and had to share it.

I have worked in State, County, and City government. It can be rough when you’re understaffed, underfunded, unappreciated … the list goes on. I can feel for Mr. Scully.

Frank Scully, a writer, and humorist was appointed Secretary of California’s Dept. of Institutions had a pretty funny response to his own professional trials and tribulations (Not Printed at State Expense).

Whether this “psychic interior sabotage” went beyond his boss hiring his own daughter to work in the department, I have no idea. But this assessment comes from the pen of the man who wrote in seriousness about UFOs. In fact, according to Wikipedia (so it must be true), his name was the inspiration for the name of Dana Scully on the X-Files!

He sounds like a fascinating person! Also, I love response postcards. There are quite a few you can find online from famous authors of days past in response to autograph hunters and people requesting appearances and speeches and the like.

Like this post? Here’s more about historical research:
BINGO! At the Intersection of History and Slang
How to Research History like a Novelist

About the Author: Benjamin L. Clark writes and works as a museum curator.

22 April 2016

To new beginnings

This is definitely not my first blog post.

I had a blog about book collecting and bibliophilia for many years over on blogger. I’m active over on tumblr too, but that isn’t so much blogging as a constant stream of amusing/pretty/cool stuff. I post a lot of photos and quotes and things I happen to like, (i.e. typewriters. I love me some typewriters.) It’s more immediate too, so there will be music links and funny memes, you know, tumblr stuff. Here, I’ll share links to articles, tools, and especially historic research resources I find helpful. I may occasionally post music to write to, or cool images.

Here, I’ll talk about my research, my writing, whatever I’m working on as I progress toward my writing goals. What are those goals? Well, in the short-term, I’ve managed to get a piece of flash-fiction placed with cool series from Akashic Books. Next is to finish another short (but longer than flash) piece and get it placed somewhere. Longer term, I’m working on what I’m seeing as a novella series, and then another series of full-length novels. Both series are historic thrillers/mysteries. One of those series grabbed me by the collar and is dragging me along.

What I’m working on now: a novella set in and around 1930s Denver. I was not alive in the 1930s nor have I lived in Denver, so there’s some research to do. This story also features a main character who I think will be a series character. Anyway, the short has been a lot of fun, using info I’ve dug up previously, but haven’t used.

I’ve gotten to know the main character in this one pretty well. He first appeared as a supporting cast member of my first attempt at a novel back in 2007 or so. Through edits, rewrites, and dumping the whole thing and starting over a couple times, he’s emerged as one of the two main characters of that novel — he was too fascinating, and too much fun to hang out with compared to my original main character.

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Anyway, thanks for reading. No spoilers, but amazing poster served as a bit of inspiration this week: