Ologies with Alie Ward - Museology (MUSEUMS) with Ronnie Cline

Episode Date: March 13, 2018

Museums! Mummies! Paintings! Hot dogs! Alie sits down with her dear internet friend and museologist Ronnie Cline, who manages 30,000 artifacts over 22 California State Park Museums. Get the hot gossip about behind-the-scenes museum life, vintage ghosts, following your dreams, changing the tone of history and the time Alie ruined a 16th Century Dutch portrait. Also: why Jack London is your new dead celebrity crush.Follow @MuseumRonnie on InstagramMore episode sources & linksSupport Ologies on Patreon for as little as a buck a monthOlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, pins, totes!Follow @Ologies on Twitter and InstagramFollow @AlieWard on Twitter and InstagramSound editing by Steven Ray MorrisMusic by Nick Thorburn

Hey, hi, hi, it's your buddy Allie Ward. So let's talk about Dusty Books and Stuffed Buffalo and relics that would make Indiana Jones just randy. So museums are those hallowed institutions that we use as marble tiled storage lockers for history. In this week's episode, I sat down with someone who gets to wear the gloves and just ignore the velvet rope things and stick around after the crowds filter out and keep watch for vintage ghosts.

Let's talk about museology, which is a word. But first, I'd like to thank you listeners for making this podcast possible. It wouldn't exist without you. This is an entirely independent podcast made just the scrappy old fashioned way by a couple of people in no networks and it's supported only by listeners like yourself. So thank you for the Patreon donations, which allow me to pay an editor, hi Stephen, and for buying merch at oligesmerch.com. There are cool t-shirts and stuff up there.

Also you rating and subscribing and reviewing helps so, so, so much because it keeps oligies up in the charts for other people to discover and say, hey, cool podcast. So consider it like voting. It's free and it helps keep good things happening. Also I'm a creep and I read every review because I'm thirsty and they make my day. This week, the review I want to read is from someone calling himself Nick the Jagoff. Don't need to know why. Such a nice review essentially said that I'm a wild mix between a spirit animal, soulmate,

crazy aunt, a devil on my shoulder, and a teacher, can't get enough, loves the podcast, and then gave me two stars out of five. I think that was an accident, Nick the Jagoff, because your review was so glowing and so nice. But I saw that two out of five stars and was like, just a slip of the finger. But I enjoyed your words and I enjoy all of your reviews. Thank you so much for leaving them. Okay, back to museums.

So museum, the word comes from the Greek for the muses. These were goddesses who served to inspire poets. Zeus had nine daughters, all muses of different things like poetry and astronomy and dance, comedy and tragedy. And nowadays, our muses would be like the muse of tweets and one for memes and a muse for freestyle rap or photocropping or winged eyeliner. Parallel parking needs a muse. They're all arts.

Now, thisologist has been an internet friend of mine for a few years. I feel like we're homies. His Instagram, museum Ronnie is filled with all kinds of magical antiquities. So I was so excited to meet him in person. He's a museum collections manager. He oversees 22 museums for the California Department of State Parks, 22. That's more museums than I have friends. I drove to an industrial district outside of Sacramento one winter's morning to this

huge pristine warehouse. It was filled to its metal gills with immaculate shelves bearing the kind of treasures you would find in an antique mall if it were also in heaven and you were dead and everything was perfect. He gave me a tour and then we pulled up seats in a conference room and chatted about everything from recent fires and Sonoma threatening his state park museums and evacuations and his favorite museum pieces ever and what curators really think when you take selfies in their exhibits.

Also, there's information in here about mummies and shrunken heads that changing attitude toward his story and hot dogs. He's great. Eyes ready your ears and behold the precious wonder of museologist Ronnie Klein. I don't think I've ever been interviewed ever. Really? This doesn't work. You can trash it.

I'm okay with it. Ronnie, I'm not going to trash this. Tell me about the first museum that you went to. Do you remember? I do. It was on a field trip. Okay. It was in Sacramento.

It was the California State Railroad Museum and I do remember kind of just being kind of, I don't know, I feel like we were free and just running around like crazy kids jumping through things and exploring the museum ourselves. No guidance whatsoever. Where were the docents during this? They're all asleep. I mean, sweet docents. They're very sweet, but sometimes they're a little older than the children that are

running around. Do you like any museum movies? I realized that there are no good museum movies. Really? That I've seen. Okay. I even watched a movie this week in anticipation for this question thinking it was going to be a good museum movie.

You were doing your homework. I was. It's called bringing, bringing home baby, bringing back baby. And it's with Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn, Romance or Comedy. I'm like, okay, this is up my alley. It's going to be great. And then it was just like, it was very frustrating. It has good reviews.

What museum did it take place in? In a natural history museum. So Cary Grant was a zoologist and he was putting, well, he was a zoologist, but he was putting together a dinosaur. Well. Oh. But anyway. Fake news.

Yeah. Right. What about Night at the Museum? No. Okay. I mean, you know, it's fine. And I was like researching. I was like, there has to be a good museum.

So I was asking other museum friends and trying to find, asking other curators, like what do you know of any museums that like feature a curator? There has to be like some sort of movie where Tom Hanks is a, a curator that's like sitting with his objects longing for Meg Ryan, but there was nothing at all. Doesn't Wonder Woman have like a day job as a museum curator? I've never seen Wonder Woman. I think she might like work in a museum in the daytime, did a little Googling. And yes, Wonder Woman, aka Diana Prince, forgot she had another name, is supposed to moonlight

or daylight rather as an art historian. So her office in the movie, I went and looked has like ancient swords and a primate skull just hanging out on her desk like a half eaten bagel. She's got a microscope. It's kind of like my personal Pinterest Wonderland. And I remembered it was cool, but I had forgotten that it was supposed to be at this little place called the Louvre. She's supposed to work at the Louvre.

Heard of it? Yeah. That part like slipped my dome. Oh, and you know who else is, um, on a, did you ever see Scandal? No. I'm terrible at watching things. There's a villain in Scandal who is like a secret operative, but his cover day job is the curator of the Smithsonian and you're like, I'm sorry, you're the curator of the

Smithsonian and DC. Like you could never get away with having a second life. So who handles Papa Pope's outlook inbox and like Wonder Woman's voicemails? Do you know how much work it is to be a curator of antiquities already? You got staff meetings, so much insurance paperwork. Who has time to be a spy or save the world? I don't know. You're about to find out how much work it is.

I got to calm down. When you go on vacation, do you go to museums or are you like enough? No, I try to go to museums. Yeah, it's funny because I mostly, um, adventure around California. So I do working for California State Parks. So state parks are kind of the best and best of both worlds. You get museum and you get hiking. So state parks kind of like bring it all in.

So I kind of stick to those. So tell me the difference between a national park and a state park and just a park park. I'm sorry that I don't know this. No, so, um, a national park is, um, being their funds are being cut by Trump. Okay, cool. So there are 59 national parks in the United States and they're overseen by the federal government for better or for worse. But there are also over 10,000 state parks in the US and they're operated by each individual state.

Now, don't sleep on state parks, folks. Apparently they're super dope and underrated. So admission is cheaper. They're usually less crowded. They have trails and campsites and museums on them, like the 22 museums that Ronnie oversees, dude knows museums. Do you have a favorite museum ever? Or is that a dick question to ask?

You know, it's an interesting question because I do. So, um, I got into the museum profession a little bit late in the game. I'm 37 now. Oh my God, I know. Oh, but I'm one year into as a museum collections manager. Okay. So, um, on my 30th birthday, I went to Jack London State Historic Park. Quick pause for some much needed context on Jack London.

You're going to want to know this. I didn't know this until I just looked it up and now I'm low key obsessed with Jack London too, I guess, like not to step on Ronnie's personal brand. But dude, I love Jack London now. Okay. So Jack London was born in the 1870s and he was one of the first like celebrity writers to really make it big. Like he predated Hemingway and he had serialized stories and magazines and he

went on to write a grip of novels like White Fang and Call of the Wild. And his work usually involved nature and adventure. He was also a war correspondent. He was an advocate for unionization and for animal rights. He had this crazy life that involved his mother surviving a suicide attempt via gunshot, well pregnant with him. Then he was raised by Virginia Prentice, a former slave. And at one point he became an oyster pirate.

What? And then went on to go to the Alaskan gold rush. He resided in the South Pacific on a boat called the snark. Dude could live. He could also die early at the age of 40. Of kidney disease or maybe, maybe possibly morphine overdose from managing the pain of it. So he died in his sleeping porch, which I looked this up as a screened off breezy

area in his home in Glen Ellen, California. And on the property he and his wife's ashes are under a mossy rock. You can go look at. Anyway, Ronnie is a fan of Jack London and onward when you hear his name, feel free to take a large swig of whatever beverage is in front of you to honor him. Or you can do like a small dance with your butt in your chair. I don't care. Just celebrate.

So before Ronnie started working in museums, he visited this Sonoma Valley Glen Ellen property on his 30th birthday just for funsies. Because I was really loved Jack London wanted to go see that museum and you like it's a house museum on one end and it's a regular museum on another. So his house museum is my favorite because you get to walk through the halls that he lived in. You get to see the study that he wrote, you know, all of his books in and see where you there's a room where he died in.

No. And so, you know, fast forward seven years later and I'm the collections manager of that museum. Oh, I have got to cry. It's amazing. It's really cool. So I look back like on my phone and I look back at all these photos of my 30th birthday of me walking through these halls and never thinking, never

imagining that I could be the collection manager of that museum. So what does it mean to be a museologist? And is it a it's a museologist and not a museumologist, right? It's interesting in America, people say museum studies instead of museology. In Europe, museology is more popular, but it seems like we're bringing it back museology back, bringing it back to America. It's kind of an old timey term. But I mean, hell yeah, we're bringing it back.

Yeah, so this particular episode, if I. Well, and I think that, you know, right now it's weird. I think about museums in a different way today than I did maybe two years ago. I think museums in my mind have become more important socially than they have to where two years ago. And I think it is a museologist like responsibility. To take care of collections. But you could be someone that writes exhibit panels, creates exhibits,

does the lighting for exhibits. It's very broad. But I think in general, it means for me, you have the responsibility to invite the public into your space and have it be a space that everyone is welcome, especially if you're a public museum. That should mean that everyone in the public is welcome, no matter who they are. You don't have to be a savant about lanterns to go to a mining museum. Not at all.

That's the thing that I think it's a misconception, which I would love to start changing is that anybody should go to every museum to learn something. So you don't have to be an aficionado of the topic. Just go to museum and you might pick up some inspiration or you might pick up even one fact is worth it. Nowadays with technology and the internet or whatever, you can just go on Wikipedia and read about anything. So like, I think it's a goal and it should be a goal for every museum

to supply information and an experience that you can't pick up from Wikipedia. How do you feel about people who go through museums and photograph all the artifacts? Do you think it's good that they have a picture of it? Or are you like, oh, I wish that people were a little bit more in the moment. Then again, you have pictures from Jack London that you're glad that you have. But how do you feel about the intersection between people's personal technology and these tactile artifacts that you're in a space with? I love it.

And like, and I think that's hopefully that's a lot of the younger museologists feel the same way. I think, I mean, my Instagram, I'm constantly taking pictures of things I'm doing in my museum and sharing them and video and putting them in music. And because I think that you just you want to share the experience with everyone, especially like if you take a picture at Hearst Castle, for example, nothing beats being there and seeing the image, you know, going to Hearst Castle, walking through the halls, smelling the smells, you know.

So yeah, just sharing the images just hopefully excites people to want to come to the museum. Tell me a little bit about museology. What's the educational structure like? Like, do you study in a classroom about museums? Do you go to museums and lectures like, here's how this has been curated? Well, the museum world is very, I don't know, it seems like it's a very, it's also sometimes like a secret society. It's hard to get into.

But so I major, I have a major in history, but while I was going to college, I spent four years working as a student archivist at California State Parks of Photographic Archives. And that's where I was introduced to the California State Parks Museum World. So from there, he graduated in 2009, but the recession hit. And he thought, oh, maybe he was going to be a teacher. I don't know what I was going to do. Something in history.

So I ended up leaving and starting a hot dog cart and owning a. Yeah, it's very. So I had it on my bucket list to have a hot dog cart. And I already love you when the recession hit. I was like, well, I guess now is a better time than any to just have a hot dog cart. So I ended up having a hot dog cart on a corner street of downtown Sacramento for two years. What was it called? State Bear Sausage and Dogs.

OK. I secretly made my own sausages in my home and sold them there illegally, which was a hit. But amazing. And I had five out of five stars on Yelp when I left. I looked it up and this hot dog cart was legit. Like he served wild boar sausage and he had a Mediterranean dog with fed up and cucumbers. There's a photo I found of a bee aprond Ronnie is all smiles

with a colorful umbrella in the background on a corner in Sacramento. He's holding up a hot dog like a tiny pork trophy. But so anyway, so I did that for two years and then I realized do I want to be doing this when I'm 50? And I thought, no, I what do I really want to be doing? And it was working in museums. So what was that epiphany like? Was there a moment where you were like you were like stuffing a sausage

casing with a ski mask on because it's illegal? And you were like, no, I can't do this. Or were you more inspired by something in a museum? Like what what was that moment where you're like? So OK, so I strategically placed my hot dog cart on the corner of the headquarters for California State Parks in downtown Sacramento. And so I would always have connections with state parks people that I used to work with or even new people.

And so I would always have that connection. How fucking genius is this? And the more and more I saw those people, the more and more I realized that I really belonged working for a California State Parks. That's so cool. So you'd you'd like sling sausage and then you're like, these are my people. Definitely. Yeah, totally. That is amazing.

Did you put your you put your hot dog cart there on purpose because you like state parks? There was there were corners to choose from. And I knew that was the corner. I scoped it out. I knew that that was the corner. If I had the opportunity, that's where I would be. And that's where I was.

It was the wind. It's the windiest corner in Sacramento. Like it's you would not believe how windy it is. And you would not believe how much wind affects a hot dog cart that goes off of propane gas. Really? It's very windy, very upsetting. But it was worth it. Oh, yeah, I loved it.

I mean, I would probably never do it again. But there was a bucket listing and it was amazing. I went to a hot dog cart. Dude, did you ever read Confederacy of Dunces? No, it's about hot dog carts. Really? New Orleans. It's fascinating and it's infuriating and it gives you so many emotions,

but it's definitely about like hashtag hot dog cart life. So side note, this book's back story is as fascinating as its actual plot. So rejected by publishers, the author of Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Tool, tragically committed suicide at the age of 31. And I'm sorry, that's two mentions in one episode. That's the last one I promised.

So his mother, Thelma, found this shabby, smeared carbon copy of the manuscript atop a cedar armoire after his death and she made it her mission to get it published. She sent it around and around and around. She was rejected over and over until she badgered one publisher so much that he relented. He promised to read it. He was like, I'm going to read like two pages of this

just so I can reject it. And he did. He was like, oh, dang, this is really good. So it was published 11 years after Tool's death. The title of the book is based on a line from a Jonathan Swift essay that reads, quote, when a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign that the Dunces are all in a Confederacy against him.

Confederacy of Dunces went on to win a Pulitzer. So that thing you want to do, just go do it. And if you know it's good, don't give up. Keep doing it. Eye on the prize, like Ronnie and museums. When you decided to go into a museum, did you have to go back to school for it? You know, I didn't because when I was a student assistant, I was working with people that became curators for California State Parks.

Since I knew where I wanted to work, what I did was I went back and I volunteered for free and kind of apprenticed under people. I helped clean paintings that were taken out of different historic structure buildings and to help take mold off of different leather good leather objects, briefcases and doctor's bags. What do you use to clean paintings? And I have a question and confession for you. This was going to be one of my secrets at the end of the episodes,

but I'm just going to ask you right now. OK, forgive me if you've heard the story, but I was in a museum in Santa Barbara and I had to write a paper. It was for an art class, art history class. And I was taking notes on a Dutch portrait from the 1600s, beautifully done, and I was up close to it. And at the time, I used to wear my watch on my right hand. I now wear it on my left, even though I'm right handed.

I don't know. I was goth. It was like, I thought maybe it was counterculture to wear it on the wrong hand. It's it was a mistake. I had a pen in my hand, taking notes at an overcoat on because it was raining. And I stretched my hand up to check to pull my sleeve back to check my watch. And I heard this. And ballpoint pen across the face of a Dutch painting from the 1600s. I panicked.

It was the worst moment of my life, the worst. And I was thinking, what am I going to do? What am I going to do? Like, I'm screwed. This thing is worth like a million dollars. My I'm broke. My parents can do not have the money to help with this at all. Like I was borrowing money to buy books.

And this is the most dishonest thing I've ever done. I just left. I left the museum. I couldn't handle it. I was so afraid. And someone from the same class is like, hey, did you see that pen mark? And I was like, and she was the only Linda. She was the only person I ever told about it in class until years later. But how screwed was that painting?

Why would you tell for one? Like, who would you tell? I would run. I would run really fast. I don't know who I would tell. I mean, jeez, I don't know. I was like, if I tell someone, then maybe they'll arrest me. But either way, they're going to have to clean it or they're going to have to throw this painting in the garbage.

But it was just like it was it was a moral quandary unlike any I've ever been in. What can they do? They take it to a conservator. OK, side note. I didn't know what a conservator was during the interview, but I just looked it up and it's a person who helps restore shit that gets messed up in museums. So boom, there is a person for that. And then the conservator gives it back to them. OK, and it looks like it's never been touched by a ballpoint pen before.

Oh, so many years, so many years. No one will ever know. I mean, you know, you did ruin it. It will be ruined forever at the at the heart of the matter. The painting is ruined. It's it's it's never going to be the same. The original artwork is ruined. But to the public, it looks the same. Is it really ruined?

I mean, it's not the same. Do they have to paint over it or do they clean the ink off? I am not a conservator, but I would hope that they can remove the ink somehow, you know, like distilled water and distilled water and a Q tip does amazing things with patients. Oh, my God. OK, you know, there was a video that was going around the Internet recently about a painting that was being cleaned

and they were taking off years of varnish and had yellowed and had a really sepia color. And underneath the painting was very like vibrant and had a lot more, you know, had cooler tones. Is that real when they take it? When they really? It's amazing in dresses, like I've seen videos of dresses where they just submerge these dresses that kind of have a yellowed tinge to them and then they bring them up

and they're beautifully white. So what we think of like how things looked back in 200 years ago because we do have a varnish over everything. Yeah. But no, they were everything was bright. I know we have such a sepia memory. Very much so. Do you have a favorite artifact or one that you just every time you see it or think about it, you just go, oh, that's so cool.

There's quite a few. I mean, like I said, about Jack London, that does have a special place in my heart and his wife, Charmin, is starting to have take over my love for his stuff. I started to love her stuff more and more, the more I know about her. So anything that she had, there's a holster that she that she had and she wore during their trips to the Pacific Islands, which was amazing.

There was there's a photograph of her in the holster, which I think it was Cosmopolitan magazine. I cannot remember. Damn. Back in back in the old days, like in the early 1900s, wouldn't publish the photograph because it showed a woman wearing a holster. So it was very like risque. But they probably had a whole article on like 14 ways to tickle his his bottom so that he loves you more.

Exactly. Yeah, totally. And she was very progressive, like an equestrian. She was like very adamant to not ride side saddle. And she even like altered her dresses. And like she was the first person to start altering her dresses so she can ride normal, like not ride side saddle. She's really awesome. Yeah. And when after Jack London passed away,

then she had like all of these like fun affairs with like Harry Houdini. Hello. Exactly. Time machine party with her. Yeah, totally. Charmin was her name. Charmian. Charmian. Yeah. She was Jack's second wife and was five years his senior. Scandals, gasp, smelling salts, faint and couch.

She was also a new woman, which was the old timey late 1800s term for feminist. I'm going to rename myself Charmian. I'm going to steal her life. I do. I do. Yeah. So anything of hers, you can still go to her powder room. And there's like a secret entry and a secret spiral staircase that is like it goes into her powder room.

It's really neat. Oh, man. Can the public access that? They cannot and they don't know where it's at. Oh, my God. OK. So this brings me to a question that I feel like I didn't know until I started working with the Natural History Museum. But what you see on display and in these like acrylic cases and with these placards that say what it is,

is a fraction of what a museum actually has in collections. We just toured a warehouse full of stuff that I like was boggled by like everything for bassinet or bassinets. Is that a bassinet? Is that what? I'm sure there were bassinets there. Yeah. To lanterns, to wagons and stuff like why? How do you choose what goes on display versus what stays in these collections that are off limits?

It's a very interesting selection. Well, where we toured today, like we walked past probably one aisle that we walked through had, I know, 200 more or more lanterns. So, you know, unless you're a lantern museum, you really can't display 200 or more lanterns. But we do keep them because people donate them and we don't want to turn down donations. The researchers are more than welcome to come.

And I think it's like this pretty much with most museums that if you're a researcher or if you're just someone that's researching your family history, you don't have to be like a professional researcher, you can just be anybody that's interested in something. Just as long as you search it out, I would be more than happy to open my doors and show you. But then also there's also rotating exhibits, too. And I think those I want to do more of those in my museums

where because I don't just have one museum. It's a very unique experience that I'm working in where I manage the collections of over 30,000 items in 22 different parks. What? So we can't get to them all. Unfortunately, like it's very hard to get to most of them, but most of them are collected in like a lump of five different locations. Wow. That's so many items.

Wait, 22 different parks, 30,000 items. Yeah. Do you how do you keep a record? Is there a spreadsheet? Well, there's multiple spreadsheets. We use what's called the TMS, the Museum System Database. OK. And many museums use it. The Smithsonian uses it. We are opening it up so that the public can go on.

If they want to research lanterns or if they want to research anything, really, fimbles or wigs or dairy containers, we have them. So you can just find them and then you can come and look up all your dairy containers and you'd be, you know. What is your house like? Are you very organized? Are you do you like knickknackery or do you are you very clutter free? Like, how is being a museologist change the way you live?

That is a good question. My house is orderly until you get to the very back room. Like, it's, you know, some people have like a junk drawer. I don't I wouldn't say in the back room is a junk room, but it's just a room at the end of day where you like open the door up and throw something in a closet real quick. But other than that, I do like older paintings or even if it's like a painting that a husband made of his wife

in the 1950s that I found in a thrift store, like I appreciate that. And I'll maybe purchase that and put it up in my house. What was it like getting the job of being a curator of all this? Like, what was the interview process like? And and how did you know you were qualified for it? And what happened when they said you had the job? Oh, so OK, this is a very unique situation to the California State Parks, which I encourage a lot of people who are interested in the field

to look into because a lot of people miss it. And it's a really great opportunity. So what I did was gain all this experience. I had four years of experience as a student assistant. And then I also apprenticed for a while. And so an exam opened up. So to get a job with the state park system, you don't just interview and like charm your way into a ranger's hat.

You have to take an exam first before they will even sit down with you, no matter how much they liked your hot dog cart. And you have to qualify within the top three rankings to be reachable, to be to have an interview for the job. So my God, yeah. So it was very intense. And I took the exam. I ranked one, which is amazing.

I was very happy about that. And then I then and then once you take the exam, you have to wait for a job to open up. Oh, my God. So a job did open up. Did you kill someone? No, but I you know, the job that opened up was an hour and a half drive away from my house. That's as laborious as as doing a hit on someone.

Yeah, totally. But you know, I don't mind. It's very peaceful drive. But so I live in Sacramento and the job that opened up was in Sonoma. And it was also my dream job because it involved Jack London State Historic Park. So I applied for the job and then I got it. And that's how it works.

How did they tell you that that you got it? Did they send over like a carrier pigeon or did they do something with antiquity to like send you a telegram? And no, I just heard my my boss get the call, you know, the call that reference check call. Oh, my God, it was amazing. I was in the other one on my desk and I just heard her like, oh, so good. Was she sad to lose you, though?

Yeah, she I think she hung up the phone and said, damn it, Ronnie. Oh, my gosh, did you celebrate? Oh, it was amazing. Yeah, what did you do? Did I actually tell? I'm sure I just probably went for like unlimited sushi. Yeah, that's my celebration. That's so dope.

So what is your day like? Like day to day, do you come in like see like if anything's been missing or broken or needs attending to or like, you know, you're up in Sonoma. I know that we had this scheduled for last month around Thanksgiving, but Sonoma was going through some of the worst wildfires in state history. Yeah. So my day to day schedule for since then, since October, has been kind of not day to day schedule.

Like I we did evacuate. We were able to we have an emergency evacuation plan. The fires were coming. It was very intense and we were able to evacuate all of the threatened areas, which included six moving trucks of objects. Oh, my God. And we brought them to the facility we're at today, which, you know, as you can see, this place is huge.

So it was able to house all of those artifacts and all of those objects. So we were able to get out. How did you pick, though? I mean, you can't move. You can't move several different homes worth of artifacts. Like how do you pick what to take? It's like it's like that horrible thing. Like if you had to evacuate your house in a fire, what would you take?

And you're like stuff by stuffed animal. But that but with like priceless artifacts in many locations. So the curator that I work with, who's been there for 30 years, she devised a disaster preparedness plan and which included a laminated sheet of objects to take first in the emergency, in any kind of emergency. So we just grabbed those laminated sheets and then we started evacuating those immediately. We had more volunteers than we knew what to do with. So before we knew it, we got everything that was on the list out.

And so we just then then what? So then we just started evacuating everything. And we did get out everything, which was down to what? Like down to the rugs and stuff or down to the rugs down to boxes of books. So we we did a great job. It was really cool. And things I'm very thankful to her because she had it all planned out. So it was amazing.

And then what's the process of moving that stuff back in? And none of the structures burned down? None of the structures burned down. We actually were thermo gelling, which is like spring, this big hose full of jello over all of the houses, the historic houses and structures. To if the fire came, then it would like not burn them. So we did that. The fire didn't come and we had to remove all that.

But we were able to get everything here. And then the process of moving it back has been that's what's taken so long. You know, it took like one day to get everything out, two days to get everything out. But it takes months to actually organize it and put it all back in. Oof, is there anything else that you're discovering and moving out? Like, oh, I didn't realize we had this comb that was fallen under a floorboard. I know, I don't think so. No cool discoveries.

You know, when you move, you're like, oh, my God, I forgot I had this bracelet. Well, one thing that has been pretty cool is we're go we were we've had time to go through the diaries of day to day occurrences at the museums from the 80s. Oh, my God. I don't know. When do you have time to go through these? So we were just flipping through a book and at one time in the 80s, California State Parks had a wine tasting bar set up in a museum, which is not allowed now.

Right. So now I'm thinking we need to bring back wine tasting bars. Just don't do it in like a historically preserved area. Yeah, next time. And hair gel and yeah, it's amazing. Like when I worked at the photographic archives as a student assistant, going through photographs of like the 1950s of curators smoking and drinking or well, mostly smoking over like historic artifacts. It's amazing.

Yeah, I wonder about that sometimes, like how much damage was done to artifacts just from people smoking indoors? Totally. It's yeah, like all the yellowing and stuff. You're like, how much of that is just like Winston Salem's? Well, even like archaeologists, I was talking to an archaeologist the other day and he's been doing it for 40 years. And he said that, you know, back in the early days, they would take the dung of different animals and just throw it at each other for fun.

But now you can find out so much information and things you didn't know back then. From there's this one archaeologist on Twitter I follow that I want to get. She's a bioarchaeologist and she digs through old toilets and and like some graves to figure out things about people. And I'm like, oh, my God, I got her on. I'm looking at you bioarchaeologist slash osteologist Steph Ham Hallfer,

a.k.a. Bones underscore Canada on Twitter. Yeah, what's the difference between a museologist and an archaeologist? Well, museologist is just focuses on the museum itself. Archaeologists are more out in the field working. They have a more of a science background and some museologists have a focus on the care and collection of objects, integrated pest management systems to monitor the objects, make sure they're doing OK. That's one of the worst things about my job is that you have to kill so many insects.

Like I'm setting up pheromone traps for moths. And, you know, but it has to be done. I think in one of your previous episodes, like someone said, like bugs are the worst. Yes. And the ornithologist who had been held up at gunpoint on the job said the worst thing about his job was carpet beetles. Yeah, carpet beetles are terrible. Cigarette beetles, carpet beetles.

The beetles have fun names, too, within the museum community. What do they call them? Well, just like cigarette beetles. Cigarette beetles. So you have to set up pheromone, pheromone traps where they're like, ooh, smells like ladies. And then they hop in there and they're like, yeah, exactly. It's kind of sad, too. But, you know, you take these special pheromone capsules

and you put them in the sticky traps and you can you smell anything? No. OK. You don't have long enough antenna. I guess not. They can smell like a molecule of a pheromone from miles away. Moths are a meat. They were they can detect it with their antenna. Let's talk about moth horniness.

So a female moth releases one billionth of a gram of pheromones to signal like a tiny winged Tiffany Haddish. And researchers have reported that a male Indian Luna moth can locate a female 6.5 miles, 11 kilometers away. They are like, let's get this on. So pheromone traps are like getting messaged by a bot. And then the bot kills you. Do you want to do some rapid fire?

Sure. OK. Now, you've listened to the podcast before. We got so many questions on Patreon. And I think you're a patron. I think did you do that so that you could cheat and look at the questions first? 50-50. I did it to support you and to also know what I'm getting into. That's amazing. OK. But before we take questions from you, our beloved listeners,

we're going to take a quick break for sponsors of the show. Sponsors. Why sponsors? You know what they do? They help us give money to different charities every week. So if you want to know where allergies gives our money, you can go to alleyword.com and look for the tab, Allergies Gives Back. There's like 150 different charities that we've given to already with more every single week.

So if you need a place to go, donate a little bit of money, but you're not sure where to go, those are all picked by ologists who work in those fields and this ad break allows us to give a ton of money to them. So thanks for listening and thanks sponsors. OK, your questions. These are patrons have asked Colin McCarville wants to know, how do you feel museums have evolved and how do you think they're going to change in the future?

Well, museums in America for for one have were set up by rich white men to promote rich white men. So so, you know, fast forwarding to modern day, they're evolving because I think museums need to interpret not what the rich white men's perspective is, but what the person of that time, the average person or the person, like everyone's perspective, including the rich white men's perspective, but also including the poor person that maybe isn't whites perspective.

So I think that's where museums right now are changing. And even in California, the school curriculum is changing with it as well, which is going to be pretty amazing in the next five years, you know, to see the change. So when you walk into maybe a museum that like is a mission, it talks more about the Native American life, not as someone that was saved by the mission, but someone that was, you know, held there against their will. So it's going to be pretty exciting, you know, exciting to be able to expand that education.

So the narrative is getting more objective than it has been in the past. So his his story is not I was thinking about that last night. Like I couldn't sleep last night and the word his story, it just kept coming back to me and I'm like, God damn it, I wish we could change the name of history. How do we change it? And I was just going through my head and I was like, our story, their story, like what can you change it to?

Our story, but you know what? And that sounds kind of weird or no, but probably his story, his story sounds weird too, if you've never heard it. So if you just keep calling it our story, then everyone will call it our story. I mean, language is elastic, so it evolves. So that's interesting that that's that's good to know that it's evolving like that. I never thought about it. Wasn't it weird to think about women's history, women's his story?

Like that seems so weird to me. That just gave me anger induced goosebumps. Oh, it's so crazy how barely out of the dark ages. Like you still are in so many dark ages. Like this is still a dark age. This is a dark. We're in a dark age. We're in a dark age. Laura Eisen wants to know, have you ever used cooler, weird stuff from the museum to impress a date?

Oh, unfortunately, I haven't. God, Ronnie, I know. You could steal so much cool stuff. What's the most expensive artifact you've ever dealt with or handled? That's such a cheesy question, but I'm sorry. I'm going to ask, you know, it's interesting because some of the artifacts are priceless. So we don't know how much, you know, so I'm just just from the sentimental point

of view, like just the other day I was holding Jack London's camera, which he's amazing photographer and took photos of the. What was it, the 1908, seven earthquake? Oh, oh, six. Oh, six in San Francisco and his photographs are amazing. So these photos appear in a book, The Paths Men Take published in 2016 and on the State Parks website, which I'm going to add to all the episode links at alleyward.com slash allergies. And side note, Ronnie also says that some artifacts that aren't on display

can get loaned to museums all over the world, kind of like a shirt that you lend to your roommate before a trip, hoping she doesn't get invested on it. We do, you know, share them. So other museums can display them and share the story of Jack London as well. Like, hey, we're doing a canoe exhibit. You got anything cool and you're like, do we? Totally. Yeah. Like, can you send, can you send it over?

Get it? Can you send it over? Sorry. I don't know what that was about. OK, Marianne Moss wants to know, how do you recommend tackling visiting museum when you're short on time? She always feels like she hasn't. She says, I always feel like I haven't done a place justice unless I've seen everything, but a lot of time that's not possible. And also follow up question, what do you do about museum fatigue?

Sometimes you're like, I'm so tired. I've seen so much stuff. I think you have, you know, the technology, let it work for you. So before you go, you know, if you're the passenger of a car and you're driving there with like your boyfriend or girlfriend, you have an hour to kill, just look it up on Instagram, on Yelp and something and see what what is there. And then, you know, if you want to breeze through a lot of it, fine.

But I think you should find one thing that you are interested in and really focus on it. OK. So have you heard of this thing called Museum Sage? No. So there's this thing called Museum Sage that it's like a program that someone started where and they're doing it at certain museums to where they'll take you and in the lobby and they'll blindfold you. What? And you start you pick like locations like turn left here, turn right here, turn over and they guide you up to whatever you choose,

whatever painting or sculpture or object. And before you take the blindfolds off, blindfold off, you think of a question you should like ask yourself deeply, something that you're struggling with. It could be like, you know, will will I ever get this job? Or what should I do with my life? Or what kind of car should I buy? Whatever you want to do, but you just think of it yourself and they take off the blindfold and you stare at whatever they show you

and you find the answer and that painting or whatever. Oh, my God, that's amazing. So I think always focus on one. You can always just choose one thing to really focus in on, because I think you can really find a lot about yourself or about anything you want in that one thing. I looked on their website, which is conveniently museum sage dot com. And they have videos, you guys, videos like this one,

where a woman named Kim asks a 12th century vase what to do with her career. So whenever you're ready, you can open your eyes. I'll be there to say Christmas. I know. OK, this is not what I expected. What will Kim do? I'm so invested. We have a tribe liaison who coordinates with the governor's liaison

with the Native Americans. And so it's very we're probably a little bit different in that regard since we are a government agency. Zoe Treplich, great question. Have you ever encountered any haunted artifacts or any objects that just gave you the willies? So there's a house museum that I take care of. And it's the Vallejo home in Sonoma.

And Vallejo's wife is known to haunt the house. What? And hate English speakers. So anytime you speak English in there, she gets very mad. No way. Yeah. Have you been there? I have been there. What does it feel like?

I wait for her to yell at me and she hasn't yet. I mean, I think, you know, when you want a ghost, you never happen. There are such jerks. Yeah, I always want it. Though there is. I also take care of a building called the Toscano Hotel. And one time I was trying to film a video for Instagram and the music wasn't working.

And I was like trying to do like a Billy Joel song to like some sort of weird thing or something. And then the music didn't work. But when I replayed it, there were men voices talking in the background. And there are definitely no men there. What do you believe in ghosts? Sure. Sure. Yeah. Sure. I'm open to it. I would love to see a ghost.

Um, you wouldn't be freaked out. I know. I would love for Jacqueline to come hang out with me. Yeah, he's just like your ghost homie. Mm hmm. Totally. Hannah wants to know, what is your favorite exhibit you've worked on? I was getting preparing an object to be on on display. And it was a dress made of human hair.

And so so I was picking out dead bugs from the early 1900s from this dress with like tweezers and microston like I had a lot of fun working on that. All in a day's work. Jennifer Overby wants to know, I've heard museums have basements, chock full of cool stuff hidden away. She so in terms of the collections, why are you so sneaky with your stuff and how do I get down there? Come see my stuff.

OK, always. Yes. If you're interested in anything that is it's not hidden away as much as it's taken like in proper conditions, the climate is proper for them to be stored. And like I said, if we have 200 lanterns, you know, you want to be able to take care of the lanterns and have them in a proper environment that can they can be there forever. So if someone does want to research them, they'll be there for them to look at. So just ask for more tours.

Yeah, you can you can get a tour if you ask if you ask, you can see stuff. Blake Hawkins wants to know on average, how many pieces in a museum's collection are authentic versus well crafted replicas? Now, if it's an actual museum, I would say most of it is authentic. But house museums are a different story because you do need to set up the house and make it look like it's from that time. And a lot of times you acquire houses, maybe a hundred years after the year you want to interpret.

So you do a piece together objects from that time period, but maybe not necessarily from that house in specifically. OK, so there might be a phone on the wall that is of the same year, but it wasn't that particular phone that was used. Yeah. And if you can go off of like photographs, you try to match things up as much as best you can. Claudia, Louise wants to know if you ever feel overwhelmed by the amount of history around you.

No, never. I love the amount of history around me, though I do feel overwhelmed that I should know everything. So I guess in a sense, yeah, because there's so much to know, and especially with my position, having 30,000 objects in 22 different parks. And each park has its own like hundred history that spans hundreds of years. So it is, I guess that is overwhelming in a sense. Yeah. Do you get texts or calls in the middle of the night?

Like, ah, some broke, or is it like from the fire? Yeah, when we had the fire, it's like, OK, let's rally the troops and let's get this going. Oh, I was so worried. You were like, can we postpone the interview? And I was like, yeah, I think that's fine. Like your entire city is on fire and you are a curator of museums. Yeah, that's that's a good idea. Jason Newman from the Facebook group wants to know,

is there a friendly rivalry between different museums of the same type? Like, or do natural history museums make jokes about modern art museums? No, actually, I think that there's a good relationship between the museums for me, especially. I think that it works. We work great together. You guys play nice. Yeah, totally. You're not like super museum bitches.

Britt Pitcher wants to know, can I come be your friend? Of course. Nick Van Acker wants to know, do you have an artifact or specimen that you would love to see on display in a museum that never will be because it's too gross or too big or too fragile? Right now, there are some, you know, Native American objects that are used for ceremonial ceremonial purposes that probably won't ever be displayed. And also, there are like, there's we have a shrunken head from an island

that probably won't go on display right now. So what some really neat stuff. Do you have a lot of human artifacts? Surprisingly, it's very interesting. Not necessarily human bones, but hair, hair is big. I mean, especially in Victorian era, you have a lot of human hair. They made a lot of Memento Mori's things out of that, right? Yeah, I need to look up how shrunken heads work, because I don't even know.

I'm like, do they take the skull out? I don't. I don't get it. I saw my first one when I was like 10 in a Ripley's Believe It or Not exhibit. And I've been, I don't know. Does it haunt, does the image of it haunt you? It's creepy. Yeah. It's very creepy. You know, there's a curio store in in Seattle

that's just like on the pier that has a couple of mummified humans. And I'm like, how does that work? I'm like, is that legal? Yeah, I don't understand how that works. Corpse in like a dead, it's very weird. Side note on that. So yes, to make a shrunken head, one first removes the skull and then stretches the face skin over a small wooden ball and boils it.

So in terms of DIY project, I give this one a pass. Now, these were ceremoniously made in the Amazon rainforest. They were thought to harness an enemy's power. And then the tourism trade caused a bump in sales, both real and of fakes in the early 1900s. And that is where we get the term headhunting. Ding, horrifying. Also, that shop on Seattle's waterfront is called Ye Olde Curiosity Shop.

Very on the nose. And it's been there owned by the same family for four generations since the 1890s. And the mummy that's just straight up on display in a glass case, like a fucking croissant, is named Sylvester. And I just went down. I want you to know a two hour rabbit hole about him. But I'm just going to condense it and say he's thought to be a Wild West outlaw who was shot in the gut and quickly embalmed in arsenic by a con man named Soapy.

But then he fell into the hands of the Seattle Curio Emporium in the 1950s. Also, he got shot in the face with buckshot at one point in his life. Never went to a doctor and his skin just healed over it. He's not for sale, but evidently it is legal to buy and display human remains. However, birth control pills are not available over the counter. And you can't buy wine coolers in some counties. Oh, well, OK, back to rapid fire. These are great questions.

OK, Heather Crowther wants to know who writes the blurbs next to the artifacts? Is it a curator, a historian? Who gets that job? Probably depends on the museum. For California State Parks, we have an interpreter who writes the exhibit panels. OK, does the research and everything. And so for me, I'm a curator right now. So museum technician, technically, which is pretty much a curator.

So I don't get to do that, but we do have input. Our museum people chill. That's my own question. I think so. Or are they uptight because they're like everything has to be perfect? I think it depends. OK. On age. OK. No, it really doesn't. I mean, I'm not ages, but yeah, I think the

honestly, I think the older someone is that has worked in a museum, you know, they've been there for like 30 years or something. So it's their baby. And then when something's your baby, you do become protective of it. So, you know, you have these new young museum professionals that are like, what, let's give the world this. And then, you know, people that have been there for 30 years are just a little more protective. Yeah.

Amy Tenberge Tenberg, I'm sure I'm saying that wrong. Great question. What are the most annoying things visitors do? She says people so often dampen her enjoyment of museums with their behavior. How do you stay sane working with that every day? Like, what do visitors do that you're like, what, no? Touch, touch, touch, like reach across any kind of velvet rope and a stanchion. Side note, those velvet ropes that are used in museums and nightclubs

to convey just like don't are called stanchions. And they come from the French for beam or support. And did you know you can buy them on Amazon for like $90? So for less than a Benjamin, you can erect a velvet rope on your own porch and you can feel like a very elite baller every time you come home. OK, back to museum etiquette. People don't care. Selfies and selfies are fine. But, you know, selfies over the stanchion

or trying to touch things that you shouldn't, it boggles my mind. Like, you can go on YouTube and watch all these crazy mishaps of people just wanting to touch things. It's so weird. I don't get it. Shannon Feltis says, real talk, do you have that ancient tablet that makes the museum come to life at night? No, no. To be fair, he's probably lying. He probably does have an ancient magical tablet and is just not telling us. OK, so your job, what is your least favorite thing about your job?

What sucks? Oh, I knew you were going to ask this. And I guess it would just have to be the paperwork when you're, you know, filling out loan agreements. That's not fun, but it doesn't like suck, suck. I mean, even if I'm like working on something out like a gravestone or out in the rain in the middle of Boatheonapa State Park, you're still in the middle of Boatheonapa State Park and next to a gravestone. So, yeah, I don't know.

So it's mostly the deskie. Sure. Yeah. Right. Admit it. Yeah, desk stuff. Who wants to do desk stuff when you can just go across the hall and fiddle around with an object? Yeah, although, yeah. And you're allowed to touch it because you're wearing gloves and stuff, right? Totally. Right. And because you're responsible if it breaks.

Yeah, exactly. Favorite thing about your job? Oh, just honestly, just going. So I get to my work every day before the sun comes up. Really? Yeah, I get there at seven in the morning. And so I leave the house at four or get up at four fifteen every day. I know. So it's pretty crazy. But I get there and I get to like, I'm the first one there. And I love just like having the keys and opening the door to my building.

And it's like a wooden door and these 1800 barracks. And it's just I just like walking into it. It's it's fun. This is a I should figure this question out myself. I might have to Google this, but why do museums smell so good? Why do old books smell good? What are we smelling when we smell old, cool stuff? I just think we're smelling history.

Yeah, I think history smells good. Yeah, I was just, oh, I just got a cologne that I've never haven't tried yet, but it's called book. What? Yes, it's amazing. So I'm like excited to try it so that I don't even know who makes it. I just got for Christmas, like a little sample of it. But someone was like, oh, I know you would like this and it's just book. Oh, my gosh, I would need to order that.

OK, quick aside, why do old books smell so good? Well, I just Googled the shit out of this. And it turns out that paper is made of cellulose and lignin from wood pulp. And when they degrade, they throw off volatile organic compounds that smell a lot like vanilla and almonds. So it turns out there are few colognes formulated to smell like old books and they have names like paperback in the library book. And dead writers.

But I applaud all of them for not opting for the less huff friendly name of Bookworm. Do you have any future goals? Like, is there anything in terms of being a museologist that you're like, I want to do this before the end of my career? Totally. I do think that a lot of exhibits can be updated and can be more inclusive.

And I do want to change that. So I do have that as a goal to see what Ronnie Klein's day to day life as a museologist entails. Follow his very wonderful Instagram. It's museum Ronnie. And as long as you're there, you might want to check out granny the dog, which is his scruffy rescue pup, who's very cute. I am proud to say I was her first follower.

I was on that. He was like, hey, I've got in boom, follow. You can also follow allergies or Ali Ward with one L on Twitter or Instagram. You can join the amazing Facebook allergies podcast group, which is adminned by Aaron Talbert. Thank you. And Hannah Lippo, who just moved to Boston in case anyone in Boston needs a new, awesome, smart friend.

We're going to miss her so, so much in California. I can't even talk about it without crying, but I'm so proud of her for this adventure and for her work as an attorney for the ACLU there. Hello, Boston. I am relying on you to be cool and make her feel at home. OK, thank you, Stephen Ray Morris, for editing this on a very, very tight turnaround while I succumbed this week to various shit storms, such as a New York blizzard and the flu, very, very slow hotel Wi-Fi.

The theme song was written and recorded by Nick Thorburn of the band Islands. And if you make it through the credits, you know, I share a secret with you. OK, here's the secret for this week. I've shoplifted one time in my life. Because I can't deal with the guilt of doing it otherwise. And it was when I had very low blood sugar and I was in a right aid and I had to get a cliff bar like immediately. I was feeling very woozy and the line was out the door.

They were taking forever and I stole the cliff bar. It was carrot cake flavor. I feel bad about it still to this day. And at one point I thought about getting a carrot cake cliff bar and somehow anti shoplifting it and smuggling it back in. But I thought that would be weirder. So right aid, I'm sorry. I owe you probably two dollars and sixty nine cents or something.

OK, bye bye. You