Hellowood Project Page

Our project page went up on the Hello Wood site. You can click here to see it.

The Cloister and Chapter House project is about developing structural detail and method-based investigations utilizing interpretations of traditional timber-framed constructs. We propose a standard assembly that can be used to construct an array of building types and could conceivably be expanded upon until infinity.

The project incorporates the Cathedral and Ruin to investigate the juxtaposition of temporary and permanence: habitation and visitation. Beyond adaptive re-use, to simply adaptive use. The existing grid system used to build the Cathedral will be be used to construct a Cloister, enclosing the stone foundation of the Ruin and creating an actual courtyard at the Cathedral site. Inside and around this courtyard, the Chapter House will be constructed.

Hello Wood Project Village 2017

Lucas and I will be attending the Hello Wood Art and Architecture program in Budapest again this year. Our project was selected by the jury yesterday and we will be one of 14 teams to build an installation. We have proposed to continue the work on the Alt-Cathedral we built last year, with the addition of the Cloister and Chapter House project. We are very excited.

Yikes! its been three months

When You Get Tired of Wearing Heels

That was the name of the email today from the Imperial Valley Desert Museum.

Since returning from Alaska, the Desert Museum has been a whirlwind of activity. We entered 2017 with a new direction called "The Year of the Outdoors." This year we will focus on hiking and camping and getting millennials into the desert.

It has been an insane start with new staff, a new direction, and a new board.

We have camping and hiking gear all over the museum and a bunch of new stuff in the gift shop. I will have to make up some time and rewind back to where we have come from!

Alaska Humanities Forum Mini Grant

When I came to the Museum of the Aleutians it was immediately apparent that two things had to be done; the museum needed to complete an inventory of the collections and needed to spend the next year focused on collections engagement.
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In the first 90 days, we were awarded an Alaska State Museums grant for the inventory, and an Alaska Humanities Forum mini grant for the community engagement.

Though a small grant, the Humanities Forum is allowing the museum to host three "mini" exhibits aimed at showcasing portions of the collection as they are inventoried. Tonight, we opened the first exhibit. "Focus on Collections: Grassweave Baskets."

Today, we had 120 kids from the elementary school come through the exhibit, and tonight we had a "mini" reception for about 20 people.

In the last two weeks we have re-inventoried every basket in the collection, and every basket has been put on display. Though very remote, the museum was set up with some stellar equipment and has the capability of doing pretty cool stuff in house. even with a small staff of three, we were able to turn out a very professional looking exhibit. It will be up for the next six weeks. Then another "mini" exhibit will take its place.  

Today was a big day, and I was very proud of how much work our new staff put in to making it successful. It was a cool day - oh, and also the first blizzard.

Giving Tuesday

Today was Giving Tuesday. The day when our self-driven, consumer-oriented, capitalistic culture is supposed to give back.

The day started with a friend sending me a story from overseas entitled, "After five years, has Giving Tuesday caught on?"

That was the Marketplace story that ran today on NPR.

At the Imperial Valley Desert Museum the Giving Tuesday campaign raised just under $2,000 from 16 donors. It was an average of $120 per person. This is four times what we raised last year.

About half of the people who gave I know personally. Two of them I know intimately. So yes, NPR, it has caught on. Giving Tuesday is a success. Or is it...

The surprising thing to me is that out of the 300+ members of the museum, the 11 people who sit on the Board of Directors, and the five people we employ, only 16 people donated to the museum on our Giving Tuesday campaign.

I understand that people give their time, and their energy, and their support, but at some point you have to GIVE. I think that is what the founders of Giving Tuesday set out to achieve. A day when we would give back. Not our time, but our money.

I think my family spent around $600 between Black Friday and Cyber Monday. I got one thing I wanted. But today, on Giving Tuesday, we gave to three organizations totaling $170.

I feel so smug in my benevolence. But should I? I received a dozen or more requests in my inbox today from organizations that I really believe in and that I really want to support. But, evidently, the things I want are more important than the things I believe in.

That should be a lesson to us all. 100% of the Education Programs at the Imperial Valley Desert Museum are funded by donations. Today, people gave 30% of what we were hoping.

I will go buy a new Coach purse for my wife. You decide which kids don't get to come to the museum.    

What is an Adventure?

I have been writing this blog for almost 10 years. But between 2013 and 2015, there were only 9 posts. I have been going though my blog in the last few days! I have been the most productive and have had the most professional success between 2013-2015. I am bummed out that I did not share this. There should have been a lot of pictures to share between these three years...

Blog posts are better when they include a picture. But there are a lot of posts that are just text. Boring! 

but then again, these are some pretty cool tires. I have written about Jeeps before. But I have not really expressed my obsession. These tires will be paid for in just a few days. I wish I could see them, but I am in Alaska, where I walk five miles a day because I do not have a car. Soon, however, these tires will be on a 2014 Wrangler, and an even better set will be on a 2000 Wrangler. 

But I digress. I don't think I have ever even posted a picture of my 2000 Wrangler

Soon come. Soon come. . 

Research and Researchers

For the first 60 days that I was at the Museum of the Aleutians, we had a researcher in the building every day. Marjolein Admiraal, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Gronigen, in York, England, came to do isotope studies on 4,000 year old stone bowl cooking vessels. Then, Kale Bruner, a Ph.D. candidate from the University of Kansas, came to do a Minimum Nodule Analysis study at another 6,000 year old site. She is looking for "standard technological attributes to reconstruct lithic nodules brought to and reduced at different archaeological sites."

Her work was amazing. She started with our collections of thousands of unsorted flakes - the trash left when making a stone tool - and sorted them by color and then by geological grain pattern. She analyzed the grain by placing each flake under a microscope. She worked in the museum every day for 8 weeks and identified more than 50 nodules, or cores,  in each of the three assemblages. A core is the piece of rock that a paleolithic hunter would start with when making a tool.

I would normally consider the stuff she was working with as trash. I never understood the value of these small pieces of rock. But her dissertation is ground breaking and has opened my eyes to a whole new line of research

This week, our new Collections Manager came onto staff. We have initiated a new strategic direction, with a focus on staff directed research. The first thing she is working on is an National Science Foundation emergency grant to complete excavations at an archaeological site that is eroding along one of the beaches. I have been monitoring the site since I got here. It is an unprotected site that is being looted as it erodes. The Aleutian Islands are ground central for climate change. And both the archaeological collections at the museum and the sites around the islands offer research opportunities to show how quickly the climate has shifted in the past, and how humans have adapted to these shifts.


It is exciting stuff. I wish I had the background to do the actual research. The science is cool. But evidently it is my job to put the science into accessible words and programs so that everyone can benefit. In the last 60 days we have been awarded three small grants that I have written and we will be producing a series of four quick temporary exhibits focused on our research collections. That, I think, will this weekend.