Talking House

Andrew and I took another trip to the Minnesota History Center today and our first stop was my favorite exhibit.  Recreated inside one room of the museum is a house.  That house, which still stands in East St. Paul, MN, has been home for dozens of Minnesotans, and has echoed the changing landscape of that neighborhood.  What I love about the exhibit is the lack of celebrity in its tenants.  These are the truly middle class, all but lost in history and painstakenly recovered by the hardworking team of historians at the museum.  The Schumachers who built the house were prominent members of society at the time, but their relatives didn't stay around in Minnesota after their parents deaths.  After they moved to a new house across the street, they turned the house into a duplex, and later a triplex, thus making it a rental home for decades. 

I love that so many "average" americans are memorialized in this exhibit.  Just people that worked, had small tragedies, gave birth, moved on.  I could spend hours in this exhibit learning about their simple lives, looking through their photos, reading about their passage through the house.

Its everything I love about scrapbooking built into a massive "altered item" that would suck up all the tallypoints if you could post it!

This quote, from Ali Edwards blog, sums up my feelings:

Leo Buscaglia : The majority of us lead quiet, unheralded lives as we pass through this world. There will most likely be no ticker-tape parades for us, no monuments created in our honor. But that does not lessen our possible impact, for there are scores of people waiting for someone just like us to come along; people who will appreciate our compassion, our unique talents. Someone who will live a happier life merely because we took the time to share what we had to give. Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have a potential to turn a life around. It's overwhelming to consider the continuous opportunities there are to make our love felt.

I think the museum affected Andrew in a special way.  After we came home I left immediately to clean a house.  When I came home it was to two poems he had written.  Poems!  Be still my heart!

Comments

[Dolores]

OH I love museums, love history!

[Dawn Scruggs]

love your new header! Love the colors of it! Sounds like a fun time!