Road Reports

MoMS Intern Reports on Summer Projects

I had an absolutely wonderful time interning with Museum on Main Street this summer. The work was great and the people were even better. I was very excited to research and create two online exhibits to be featured on the Journey Stories website: “Gateway of Possibilities: Ellis Island” and “On the Road to Gold Mountain: Chinese Workers and the Transcontinental Railroad.” In addition, I conducted research for a section of The Way We Worked, a MoMS exhibit in its early stages of development. I learned so much during the course of my internship and my experiences at SITES have truly been invaluable. My co-workers were such a joy to work with and we shared a lot of great moments together. I am sad that I have to leave MoMS in order to finish my last year of graduate school. I can only hope that someday I will be lucky enough to work at a place as great as SITES.

-- Heather Maclean, George Washington University, Washington, DC

 

Heather with her farewell cake.

 

Four great interns (from left): Heather Maclean, Tara O'Connor, Roxanne Berschler, and Krista Schmidt. Thanks for all of your work!

Try Out the New Journey Stories Website

Drop by the new Journey Stories exhibition website at http://journeystories.org. Using a great program called Omeka developed by the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, we've organized a website that allows each of the host states and communities for the exhibition to create online exhibitions based on their own local collections. We've also created a "Share Your Story" link that enables all visitors to the website to tell us their own personal journey stories, or those of their families.

We look forward to giving all of our web visitors and each of our host communities a chance to share their journey stories with the world.

-- Robbie Davis, MoMS/SITES, Washington, DC

Key Ingredients Website Mentioned in New York Times Blog

Check out the following link to a wonderful blog entry from the New York Times on the "American Cookbook Project" section of the Key Ingredients exhibition website.

http://papercuts.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/31/mouths-wide-open/index.html?ref=dining

The wonderful recipes and stories that visitors to Key Ingredients and members of the general public have left on the website over the years are really spectacular, and as Rachel Harris noted in her entry, often very touching. A recipe for Blinn, a Polish potato pie, always stays with me because of the personal story that accompanies the entry:

"I have fond memories of my grandmother making this when I was a child...recipe brought with her when she entered this country at age 14. I can't believe at the age of 14 she kissed her parents goodbye at the train station in Poland, knowing she might not ever see them again (and she didn't) to come to this country for a better life."

That's powerful stuff -- clear evidence of the role foods play in how we remember our families and our communities. As we've been working on MoMS' new Journey Stories exhibition and exploring the stories of immigrants to America, how they traveled here, and the elements of their culture that they brought with them, it is easy to see how food, family, community, and culture are so intertwined. America's food history is full of individual expressions, but it is also grounded in the wonderful foods and traditions that Americans bring from other places and carry with them for generations.

Don't forget to leave your story and favorite dish with us! Just visit the Key Ingredients website at www.keyingredients.org and click on the "American Cookbook Project".

-- Robbie Davis, Museum on Main Street/SITES, Washington, DC