I was too tired yesterday to write about my first day at
NERGC. In a word (or three) it was
awesome!
I left my house later than expected, and stopped for
breakfast somewhere along the three-hour trek, but I still managed to arrive in
Manchester in time to find parking and to grab my registration packet before
things got started. I spotted Heather Rojo
in the lobby, but didn’t get a chance to introduce myself.
My first stop was the First-timer’s session. The purpose of the session was to orient
newbies to the convention. I didn’t
really learn anything that I couldn’t have learned from reading the paperwork
in my registration packet, but it was nice to have some time to adjust to being
in conference-mode.
The next stop was the opening session in which SandraMacLean Clunies, CG, spoke about mill workers in the Lawrence and Lowell,
Massachusetts areas. Using three
specific individuals that had been researched, she was able to bring the
time-period to life easily, providing a bit of humor to go with it. Looking around the room at my fellow
attendees (850+ was the count that I heard), I could see that I was clearly
among people like myself. We weren’t learning
about history like it was taught to us in school. We were getting to know individuals as
clearly as if they were standing in front of us, being introduced by a mutual
friend. The side-affect was learning a
bit about the history of millwork during the early to middle 19th
century. My take-away, actually, was to
check if millwork may be why my Charles Jenkins may have ended up in
Massachusetts before the Civil War.
In between the opening session and the next session I
remembered something about conventions and conferences. People don’t walk as fast as I do. It’s not that I hurry, but I have long
legs. I had to keep reminding myself to
take smaller steps while negotiating the lobbies.
In the afternoon I was able to follow the “Photographs” track
of the agenda. While I’m not sure that I
learned anything that hadn’t been covered in the reading that I’ve been
doing. It was fun to listen to the
speakers, and how passionate they are about what they do. Especially entertaining was Michael Strauss,AG (“…and my son Levi. -pause- Yes, Levi
Strauss…”). I loved his stories about
finding old photographs of his hometown and family.
The last session of the day almost literally left me with my
mouth open in amazement. ColleenFitzpatrick, PhD, walked through the processes she had used to identify a few
photos. First, she talks quickly (at
least for this New England boy). Next,
the amount of information that she gave was staggering, and the logic that she
used to solve the mystery of a bar photo was more than a little impressive. I left with a mental note to check out her
books when I get a chance.
So, my first day plans of immersing myself in conference
culture and learning about photographs were both successful. I did notice, though, that none of the
speakers talked about photos much past the turn of the 20th
century. I’ve also noticed this in my
reading. That leaves about a hundred
year span of photography that doesn’t seem to be covered much. I wonder if there’s an opportunity there, or
if I just haven’t come across anything authoritative yet.
