Archive for the ‘Technological Advances’ Category

The Wren’s Nest is a Radio Celebrity! Thanks, B-Side Radio.

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B-Side Radio interviewed our fearless leader and (equally not-threatened-by-fear) docent Jeri for their latest show, “Found.”  Listen to the podcast here — our story comes in at the 21:30 mark…

…and is great.

Because of our location, we weren’t able to curl up and listen to this chat when it first aired.  Sadly, that privilege was only for the highfalutin’ city folks of Seattle, Chicago, Boston, Austin, and Syracuse.  (Dandies listening to XM/Sirius were also entitled to the honor.)

In fact, we don’t even know when it did air, though our educated guess is “recently.”  Luckily for us, the podcast works just as well and our listening experience was a delight.  Hope yours is too!

P.S. Thanks to Katy Shrout for being a great interviewer, as well as the mother of the 4-year-old who generously lent us her red wagon for the Decatur Book Festival.  It had cup holders!

Photo: Trebor Scholz

Brer Wear — Now Featured at the Wren’s Nest Online Store

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Have you taken a gander at our online store yet?  It’s new, up, and running, and we’re pretty proud of it.

But hey, what’s that?  Local celebrity bloggers the Asian Cajuns are in our store too?  How did they get there?!  Answer: THE MAGIC OF THE INTERNET!

While our friends Lauren and Catherine are not for sale, the shirts they’re wearing sure are.  We asked them to model the critter tees for a few reasons:

a. They are far more photogenic than old Closed Eyes McGee over here and her boss, Vermilion-Pate.  Plus they do things like use professional photographers.

b. They have a fashion blog!  A popular one at that.  If their endorsement of the tees isn’t a ringing one, I don’t know what is.  Their endorsement is especially helpful since we’re shy in a 7th grade wallflower kind of way — we’re sure there are people out there who would like us, if only they knew we existed.  Maybe now a few new folks will find their way to our land of tricky rabbits and surprise machetes.

c. Sometimes we just get sick of seeing our faces all over this thing.  Just kidding!  We’re totally self-obsessed!  But we still like variety.

Even if you’re not in the mood to shop, I encourage you to hop on over to the store.  You might just enjoy our descriptions of the items.  They took hours — hours! — to compose, and the effort shows.  I think.

Writing (and Righting) History on Wikipedia

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A few weeks ago I was inspired to start editing the Joel Chandler Harris Wikipedia page when I read an article based on erroneous facts about Harris quite obviously culled from Wikipedia, everyone’s favorite encyclopedic punching bag.

Wren’s Nest Blog Original Gangstas might recall this is not our first encounter with the Joel Chandler Harris Wikipedia page.  Way back in 2007, one ambitious editor included some, uh, fan fiction –

Harris’ page hasn’t been vandalized again, but it has remained far from complete.  The criticism and praise of Harris were irrelevant, and the actual information on his life was minimal.

So, I decided to edit and expand the Joel Chandler Harris Wikipedia page as judiciously as possible, drawing from diverse, respected sources.

For a long time I felt uncomfortable editing Wikipedia on a topic where I have such an inherent, genetic bias.  But, I realized a few things once I started editing:

• Editing Wikipedia is a lot of fun.
• No matter how many times we link to the New Georgia Encyclopedia article and no matter how questionable the source, folks are going to use the Wikipedia page.
• Short of a Disney release of Song of the South and my subsequent interview on Oprah, this is probably the broadest way for us to execute our mission effectively.
• My work is only the start!

Please take a look at the article and let me know what you think.  If you’re feeling limber, I encourage you to help edit the article where you see fit.

I’m not quite done — particularly with the journalism section — but it’s a start at least.

Part One: We Don’t Want You To Miss A Historic Preservation-Related Thing

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Throughout the week, Lain and I post some pretty darn interesting things (to people who like historic preservation) on a little website I like to call Twitter.  Maybe you’ve heard of it.

We also know that some of you have not jumped on the Twitter bandwagon, and have thus missed those posts.

Not anymore, friend, not anymore.

We’re going to try to regularly round up recent tweets from @thewrensnest.  Expect more links than you can shake a stick at.  Oh, and just so you know, the museum itself speaks in first person on Twitter and has no shortage of opinions.  I hope you enjoy.

Some oldies but goodies to set the mood:

• Typing is hard. Because I’m a house.
• (On Super Bowl Sunday) Note to self: please do not catch on fire today.
  
• What happens when you have fresh paint on your outside and there’s a tornado warning? I’m about to find out.

• Drat! The humans found my 45 star flags. I still don’t trust that Oklahoma.

• ATL Alleycat Black History Bike Race used me as one of their checkpoints. Thanks, humans.

More (recent posts) to come shortly!

Brer Rabbit and Dialect in Early Educational Film Strips

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In 1965 the students of Mercer Elementary in Shaker Heights, Ohio served as guinea pigs for use of educational film strips in the classroom — the wave of the future!

The experiment, Project Discovery, sought to demonstrate the effectiveness of audio/visual learning in school.  It’s credited with jump starting the academic film industry and toppling a few textbook publishers along the way.

Brer Rabbit is featured prominently in this film about Project Discovery, and the kids from Shaker Heights have a few things to say about the southern accent.

The entire film is 30 minutes and excellent.  Near the end they let Philip talk for a few minutes, and goodness gracious it is hilarious.  If this hadn’t been the greatest challenge of my life to date, I would have embedded the whole thing here.

(h/t Gregg.  Thanks!)

Wren’s Nest in the Atlanta Business Chronicle and Other Notes

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Three things today:

1. The Wren’s Nest is featured in the Atlanta Business Chronicle because we do things like “blog” and “tweet.”

The highlight is definitely this photo of Lain and his all-child posse.  Since it’s an understandable question based on the photo — no, he did not father all of them.

I’m going to assume that most of you rubes don’t have subscriptions to the Atlanta Business Chronicle, so you can read the first couple paragraphs online or you can glance at this .pdf that we just stumbled across.

2. It’s Ms. Nannie‘s birthday today!

Ms. Nannie’s daughter called to remind us of this special day (it’s totally on the calendar, derr) and to let us know that Ms. Nannie didn’t want anyone to pay her any mind. Too late, Ms. Nannie.  Help us wish Ms. Nannie a happy birthday!  Fan mail and comments are encouraged.

3. Our plea for Wren’s Nest Publishing Company students is featured in Creative Loafing’s excellent blog, Fresh Loaf!  Thanks to Thomas Wheatley for that one.  Who knew Twitter could be used for good?

Historic Tourism and Steve Martin’s King Tut Sketch on Saturday Night Live

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Amelia introduced me to the classic Saturday Night sketch, “King Tut,” with Steve Martin.  Have you seen it? It’s very funny.

Just before the King Tut saxophone solo, the satire really stung me.  Steve Martin sings, “He gave his life …for tourism.”

That line really made me think about what we do at the Wren’s Nest.  Well, that one and “he’s my favorite honky.”

It’s hard to ignore the fact that the Wren’s Nest staff (especially us bloggers) are not unlike what Steve Martin satirizes above.  See–

• “Kids!  Read Brer Rabbit stories.  We’ll give you a tshirt!”
• “Dads!  We have Brer Rabbit golf balls in our gift shop.  They’ll keep you out of the Briar Patch!”
• “Internet!  We have this goofy blog (and now a Twitter account)!”

Sometimes it’s tricky to balance (a) a mission that requires commitment to historic preservation, (b) the need to bring in earned income, and (c) the waning attention span of the public in an increasingly competitive and wired world.  In other words, it’s easy to forget that we’re here to preserve the heritage of African-American folklore and the legacy of Joel Chandler Harris.

Ideally everyone would come clamoring in for tours of an historic home to hear the Brer Rabbit stories, especially since they are such a unique and indispensable part of American culture.  Too bad it doesn’t work that way.

So, I guess my question is this — when we’re competing for tourists and field trips with the likes of the Aquarium and the Coke Museum, are our gimmicks really that bad?

Better yet, have you seen any other museums that’ve successfully raised awareness on the cheap without sacrificing their integrity?  We didn’t have much integrity to begin with, so I guess we have a leg up there.

Wren’s Nest Branding Gets Stampy*

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We have a Wren’s Nest stamp!  This is an exciting, exciting day.

It’s the little things, folks.

I’ll let you know when our Wren’s Nest branding iron comes in.  I kid, I kid.  We would never brand an animal.  Not until we have a full herd, anyhow.

*No, not this Stampy.  Though I wish.

Follow The Wren’s Nest On Twitter

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The Wren’s Nest has its very own Twitter account!

No, not Lain, and not me.  The house.  Really, it types pretty well considering its lack of fingers and all.

If these walls could talk – and, apparently, they can – they would say “Follow me on Twitter! I’m a hoot!”  To be fair, the house has been in the tweeting business for over 100 years.

If Shaquille O’Neill can do it, anyone (or thing) can!

Wren’s Nest Conservation Update — Installing Data Loggers

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This week I installed data loggers throughout the Wren’s Nest that measure relative humidity and temperature.  It’s the first step in planning for a new and exciting HVAC system.

Our HVAC system was installed about twenty years ago.  Since that time, there have been tremendous advances in technology and efficiency.  Perhaps you have heard of a little thing I like to call “computers.”

Plus, an aging system often hemorrhages money.  As you might have guessed, ours is no exception.

To evaluate your HVAC system properly, you’re going to need a lot of data.  Like, a year or two’s worth of data.  Hence, we’ve put data loggers in just about every room, though I can’t always remember exactly where.

From what I’ve gathered about HVAC systems in historic preservation settings — which is, admittedly, very little — there are two schools of thought:

1. “You need a system that’s going to cost $30,000.”
2. “You need a system that’s going to cost $400,000.”

That’s… a difference.  I think it breaks down to being pretty darn efficient for $30K or being ridiculously efficient for nearly half a million dollars.

Luckily for the Wren’s Nest, many house museums are finding that their HVAC systems are over-designed and inefficient.  I wonder what it’s like to discover something in your museum is over-designed.  A boy can dream, I guess.

The most exciting part of data logging is that once a month I have the honor of collecting the data and refreshing each data logger.  It’s almost hard to believe I get paid to do it.