Just returned from the second part of our interview with the bottle diggers (radio documentary project). The whole time we talked to these guys (two brothers), they were digging a trench, sifting through the remains of an old city trash dump in use from 1895-1910, and pulling out all sorts of collectible treasures: bottles, marbles, pottery, porcelain, and glass syringes. It seems that the local doctors all made their own medicines, which were put in their own embossed medicine bottles. They were quite excited to find a few rare pieces: a sealed case gin and a bottle of electric bitters. These two diggers have done this for a couple of decades, and are part of a local amateur archeological society. Each brother has his own particular type of bottle that he collects (one miniature whiskeys, the other soda bottles in the "torpedo" style), and they are able to fund their own collections by selling most of what they find on their digs. Apparently, if you can find bottles that are cobalt blue, they are sure-fire sellers because ordinary collectors like to put them in their windows.
It was really great to be around the rhythm and excitement of the dig, and to see the digger's face light up with hope and joy when a bottle would emerge from a shovelful of century-old trash.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
What a great post. How cool that people still dig for buried treasure. (Actually the part about the doctors making their own medicines reminded me of that scene in "It's a Wonderful Life" when the doctor makes the medicine wrong because he is so upset about his son getting killed and almost poisons someone by accident . Oops! That was one of the movies you didn't like ....)
I think it's interesting that you are doing a radio documentary project -- I'd like to hear more about that. I've only done interviews for the print media.
The post made me realize just how different your climate is than mine. Temperatures have ranged from -16 to -8 F this week and you'd have to shovel through a lot of snow and frozen ground to find anything here!
I have multiple interests in the audio medium. One is to do some "engaged scholarship" about the local area for the community radio station. Another is to work with the audio format as an alternative way of doing scholarship altogether (mixing sound and soundbite with commentary, critique, or theory). The audio essay can take advantage of not only radio broadcasts, but also can be placed on websites. I'm sure that there will be audio bogs and academic podcasting before long. Still another advantage of the audio form is the easy way it can be used for the merging of art, satire, activism, consciousness-raising, etc.
And you don't need a big, expensive studio to do most of this kind of stuff. Dr. Gym-Partner teaches a graduate class on audio documentary as a form of ethnography. Dr. Yidg and I have worked on audio performances, audio essays, and audio culture-jamming projects. So, G-P and I thought it would be fun to work on something together besides going to the gym and riding bicycles.
Oh, and it's in the upper 60s here today. I'm sure everyone feels awful for me.
Interesting! It seems like audio documentary could be especially effective to bring atttention to envrionmental justice issues and things like that. So often things like sewage treatment plants, nuclear waste sites, etc. are located in neighborhoods of people who don't have political clout, money, or the education to fight the system and protest waste being dumped near their homes. But these people could have a voice, if someone interviewed them.
In class the other day, we read an interview with Rachel Bagby, the woman who helped get the community garden movement going in Philadelphia. She's older, uneducated, and African-American. I think an audio interview would have been more powerful than what we read because the written version cannot capture all the rhythms of her voice.
What a freaky set of overlapping interests. One of our doctoral students (who is working with Dr. G-P) is writing his dissertation on community gardens. And yes, I think it is great to mix media. And some media are more effective than others--depending on topic, context, or rhetorical goal.
One of my students did her senior honors project on community gardens in New York City. I learned all kinds of interesting things. For example, on a hot summer day, the air temperature in a community garden is about 11 degrees cooler than on the street. I have a sister who had a plot in a community garden in Manhattan. I've always been fascinated by gardens in the city.
It's going to go up into the 20s here tomorrow. It'll feel like a heat wave after the week we've had.
Post a Comment