Why I don't worry about the NSA

Yesterday was a museum day for me. I spent a good chunk of it doing data entry in PastPerfect, but when I'd get up to stretch I did the usual digging around in filing cabinets and other spaces as I slowly figure out just what all we have. I'm a volunteer and only go in one or two days a week for a few hours at time so my efforts at cataloging and organizing are not moving particularly fast. Well, one of yesterday's discoveries was a box of 5-1/2 inch floppy disks. They were all neatly labeled and appear to have some interesting material stored on them: family trees, notes on local history, etc. There must be a couple dozen. Depressing.

Why is it depressing? Well, among other things, when was the last time you saw a 5-1/2 disk drive on a computer? Unless someone took the time to print out hard copies of whatever is on those disks, that work is gone forever. Not only are 5-1/2 inch drives a historical curiosity, odds are that whatever program was used at the time no longer matches up with its many generations later descendant. When the disk drives evolved from 5-1/2 inch to 3 to compact disk, I transferred various files. Not long ago I tried looking at some of the stuff I wrote 25 years ago, back in the days of WordPerfect 4.2. I had the latest version of WordPerfect, but it could no longer open files written in the multiple generations earlier version. The same thing happens with files done in early versions of Word.

Long, long ago, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth (the early '80s), I worked at a daily newspaper that used a Compugraphic typesetting system. The files were stored on 8-inch floppies. I wonder if there's a machine left on the planet that can read those disks now. Probably not.

And this is why I don't worry about the NSA or other government snooping a whole lot. As a society we tend to live in the Now with no thought of past or future. The guys working for the NSA are every bit as inculcated with that mindset as the rest of us. I think we can take it as a given that they're going to be just as gung ho as everyone else when it comes to constantly updating and getting the latest version of their various spyware programs and data storage systems, possibly more. After all, it's the techno-geeks who always want the latest version of anything. Back when the government spies were typing out transcripts of conversations and filling file boxes with hard copies, information would live forever -- or at least until silverfish and roaches got into the boxes and ate the paper. Well, information may still live forever, lurking in some NSA "cloud" (aka server farm in Utah), but I'm willing to bet that the more time that elapses, the less retrievable that information will be. Some programmer will have a bright idea, she'll tweak a couple lines of code, and decades of snooping will disappear behind a software wall. And, yes, the data will still be there and theoretically retrievable but will anyone bother? If you run a query and get a null result, how would you know that the null result is an artifact of the software and not an actual reliable answer?

So what happened to the 5-1/2 inch disks I found? The circular file, of course. Technology has moved on; the disks aren't usable. I kept a couple as artifacts to include in a display at some point in the future, but most got tossed. I felt the usual twinge of guilt about throwing away someone's hard work, but you can't win them all.

It was, however, a nice reminder that I need to periodically do hard copy reports of the data I've entered in PastPerfect. If we're going to have an inventory, it needs to be in an old-fashioned paper-filled notebook as well as on the computer.

Anyone know any corrupt election board officials?

I have a voting machine I need to break into.

First, though, I need to clean off a remarkably thick layer of diesel oil smut. The machine was donated to the museum yesterday. It came, if I've got the provenance straight, from L'Anse Township, although I could be wrong. It could also have been the Village. I need to do a little more research before formally accessioning it.

In any case, it's been stored for quite a few years in the same building the local tourist and recreation association uses for housing the snowmobile trail groomer. It's been exposed to a lot of diesel fumes. When the guys first wheeled it in yesterday, I thought it was black. After I started cleaning the device I discovered it's actually a pale gray color on the top part and a darker color on the bottom. The black was just built-up diesel smoke. I stopped cleaning after going through half a roll of paper towels -- I'll bring in a bag of rags from home to finish it rather than burn through our paper towel allotment for the year. As far as I can tell, the machine has been closed up tight enough that there isn't too much dirt on the inside, but so far all I've been able to see is a compartment at the top in the back. That part doesn't lock; it flips open so you can get at the storage space for the crank that raises and lowers the machine.

I cranked it up to confirm that the main lock, the one on the front, was indeed locked. It was. So are the other locks. It's still got the seal on it from the last time it was used in an election, which is kind of neat. It's also kind of a nuisance. The key to the machine and the machine itself apparently parted company over a decade ago. I'm not sure when L'Anse Township switched to using optical scan machines, but I have a vague memory of using one in 2000. We either need to track down a locksmith (aka spend real money) or drill the locks out. I'd rather not destroy the locks if we can avoid it.

I did email the township clerk to ask if he had any keys kicking around the Township Hall that might fit the machine, but that's a really long shot. I'm willing to bet when I get a response email from him, the answer is going to be No.

Once the machine is clean and the snow is gone so we can actually get at our storage building, that's where the machine will go to gather dust for two years. When 2016 rolls around, though, it's going to be a star player in an exhibit on voting, voting rights, and politics. Maybe we'll even dress one our mannequins to match the picture shown above. For now, though, I just want to get it cleaned up, documented, and make sure the curtains don't need repairs.

This donation is, incidentally, one of the fun things about volunteering at a museum. You never know just what's going to come rolling through the front door.

Thinking about donating Grandad's fishing stuff to a museum?

You might want to go through it first to make sure there's nothing stashed in it that you'd prefer the whole world not know about. I was cataloging a stack of odds and ends that included a Helin Tackle Co. pamphlet devoted to explaining the wonders of a Flatfish lure. Something tells me the old dude figured out that his fishing books were one place his significant other would never bother looking for anything risque. This was tucked in the pages:

Definitely an early 1950s classic pose. Of course, back at the time both the picture and the pamphlet were new, the old dude wasn't that old, maybe in his 40s, and obviously interested in more than just fish. 

I have a hunch that one of these days I'll stumble across actual porn, which will then raise some interesting cataloging questions. It would qualify as historic material, but would it be relevant to our museum's mission? And do I bother noting just who made the donation so future generations will know exactly who to thank for the vintage smut? 

You betchum, Red Ryder

Since I started volunteering at the county historical museum, I've stumbled across a lot of oddities. The museum has always been a 100% volunteer effort. A few of the historical society members have actually been historians (or at least had a B.A. that qualified them to teach high school history classes), but most have been and still are enthusiastic amateurs, folks who got interested in one aspect of local history -- the Lac Vieux Desert trail, Frederic Baraga's missionary work -- or in genealogy, and one thing led to another. They're enthusiastic, they enjoy learning more about local history, they love interacting with museum visitors, but they're still amateurs. Thus, it's no longer much of a surprise to me when I stumble across something a tad odd in one of the display cases or realize something has been wildly mislabeled.

We're in the process of getting ready to open for the 2013 summer season. I've been working on a new exhibit. When I feel like a break, I amble around the building and do minor puttering and dusting. I'm always noticing new (to me) stuff because our museum is like a lot of local museums: it's got a lot of stuff crammed into not a whole lot of space, most of which isn't labeled particularly well and often doesn't even share a common theme or time period. One corner of the museum, for example, is sort of the Native American corner, except it's pretty much a jumbled mess. Anyone hoping to learn much about the local Anishinaabeg is probably doomed to disappointment. The display case has an odd mix of artifacts donated by various people, there are some nice baskets but no indication as to where they came from or when they were made, and some of the items are just plain odd.

Well, I noticed that things had slid over time in the case, probably the effect of years of vibration from traffic on US-41. I decided to straighten the artifacts out, maybe do some dusting, and more or less neaten things up a bit. That's when I spotted the item pictured to the right. Well, not the whole set. Just the bow, and the string was missing. I am, however, a child of the '50s. I know a child's toy bow when I see one. I looked at it carefully tucked in there with the pine needle baskets and other (probably) genuine Native American artifacts. Holy fuck, no wonder the local Indians hate us. The stupid, it burns. Can one have a head*desk moment if you're not at a desk?

The Little Beaver bow is now in the same case as a Red Ryder bb gun. It's the right size and color to match the one pictured, so I'm assuming that's what it is even if there were no rubber-tipped arrows with it. Fairly soon there will also be a label providing some context. I do, however, find myself wondering just how many years that kid's toy was on exhibit as though it was a genuine Native American bow? From the day the museum opened? There was enough dust in that case that it could have been in there for 20 years.

Amateurs. . .

Another head*desk day at the museum

I spent a few hours at the local county historical museum yesterday. After I rejoined the county historical society last year, I looked around to see where my skill set would be most useful to the museum. It didn't take me long to figure out that the archives were a mess. Over the years, the historical society has been remarkably successful in obtaining donations of artifacts and documents. The holdings include records from local businesses and fraternal orders, family histories, scrapbooks, and various historic documents. There is a wealth of material. There was one thing that society had apparently never possessed, however, and that was someone who knew how to file.

The first time I looked in a filing cabinet, my immediate reaction was to mutter, "Holy shit," and then close the drawer quickly. There were multiple 4-drawer filing cabinets, and each one was a mess. Unlabeled file folders, folders that were labeled but had contents that didn't match up at all with what the label said, multiple file folders with the same name. Naturally, nothing had ever been cataloged or accessioned; finding aids were nonexistent. This wasn't a surprise; most people don't join historical societies because they love to file. They join because they're interested in some aspect of local history and enjoy talking about it with fellow enthusiasts. When I asked the other volunteers how they ever found anything, the answer was "Jim knows where everything is." They apparently believed Jim was going to live forever, which, of course, no one does.

So I asked Jim [the historical society president] if it was okay with him if I took a stab at creating finding aids and getting the archives into some sort of order. His response was an enthusiastic yes. That was back in June. Since then I put in a few hours a day one or two days a week at the museum slowly going through the vertical files.

I never trained as an archivist so I do have moments when I wonder if I'm doing it right -- I'm definitely doing some stuff wrong because the historical society has never had the budget to purchase the right supplies (buffered acid-free file folders, for example) -- but I do know the alphabet (more or less). I've also heard that you're supposed to create finding aids after you're done cataloging, but I'm doing it more or less simultaneously. The nice thing about everything being computerized is that it'll be easy to either clump or split subject headings as the collections sort themselves out. As long as the catalog/finding aid is a Word file, it'll be easy enough to find almost anything by using the Find function.

One sure thing is that every time I go in, there will be at least one head*desk moment, sometimes several. It isn't just that stuff is misfiled or badly labeled. There's also the frustration of finding truly nifty things that have been literally vandalized by well-meaning people who didn't know better -- e.g., historic photos that have information written on the front with a ballpoint pen -- or interesting newspaper clippings that have no identifying information (what newspaper printed the article and when?) or are incomplete. I've found a lot of second pages of articles with no first page to accompany them and vice versa. You know, a clipping with no context or incomplete content isn't particularly useful to anyone, either an ordinary person looking for genealogical information or a scholar doing academic research.

My head*desk moment yesterday came when I found several No. 10 envelopes tucked to one side in a file drawer. Each one was just bulging with newspaper clippings; none of the clippings included the name of the paper and almost none had the date of publication. It is, incidentally, positively amazing just how many newspaper clippings it's possible to cram into one business-sized envelope.

One envelope was labeled "local businesses" and turned out to be full of box ads for various businesses in Baraga County. There was, of course, no information given on which newspaper or papers the ads had been clipped from. A few of the ads did have dates written on them, so it's possible to know that during 1948  a local hardware store was having a 3-box cars sale on new refrigerators. (Not just one box car load of refrigerators, mind you, but three! They must have been counting on a lot of demand for new appliances.) Unfortunately, the dates were written in ink right on the ads -- not above or below it or on the back of the clippings, but right in the ad. Which means, of course, that not only is that ink going to make the paper rot faster, it makes the ads harder to work with for curatorial purposes. As soon as I saw the ads, I thought they'd be cool to work with to create a photo montage for a background in an exhibit case highlighting local businesses, but all those handwritten dates would be a bitch to photoshop out.

Then I opened the envelope labeled "deaths," looked at the mess, realized it included not just obituaries but also marriages (which really makes one wonder about the label on the envelope), and decided it was time to quit for the day. Even my CDO has its limits.

Should I frame it?