This post is part of a series featuring behind-the-scenes dispatches from our Pohanka Interns on the front lines of history this summer as interpreters, archivists, and preservationists. See here for the introduction to the series.
This summer, I have had the privilege of interning at Minute Man NHP in Concord, Massachusetts. My primary station here is the Wayside: Home of Authors. Right about now, you might be wondering what the Wayside is. That’s alright, I didn’t know what the house was until just this summer. The Wayside was the home of Louisa May Alcott, Nathanial Hawthorne, and Harriet Lothrop (or Margaret Sydney) – all prominent authors in the 19th century. This house also stood witness to the “shot heard round the world” and provided brief shelter to a fugitive slave. This house is a gold mine of history, yet with all this history comes challenges.
This post is part of a series featuring behind-the-scenes dispatches from our Pohanka Interns on the front lines of history this summer as interpreters, archivists, and preservationists. See here for the introduction to the series.
I have not been able to escape Freeman Tilden’s grasp over the course of my three summers with the National Park Service. His writings and ideas seem to be everywhere, not out of pure coincidence, but because of the fact that nobody has eloquently and concisely gotten at the heart of what historical interpretation is quite like he has. In Interpreting Our Heritage, a book so ubiquitous that it might as well be hailed as the interpreter’s holy scripture, Tilden asserts that “the chief aim of interpretation is not instruction, but provocation.” This isn’t meaningless fluff; rather, it’s an important concept that guides what I do every day on the job. Visitors should walk away from an interpretive program with more than just a story in their heads, and it’s up to interpreters to make sure that’s the case.
The sites contained within Minute Man National Historical Park, where I am spending the summer, enjoy a timeless historical relevance due to their association with the opening of the American Revolutionary War. As a result, just about everyone who visits knows something about what happened here. Indeed, the “shot heard round the world” still seems to be ringing in people’s ears today. Some of the knowledge people bring with them is true, while other parts of it border on myth. The relative comfort afforded by a largely shared past seems to give visitors at Minute Man NHP the confidence to share their thoughts candidly in exchanges with historical interpreters throughout the park.
The famed “minute men” from which the park derives its name are the subject of a great deal of mythologizing. Many enter the park with an idea of “embattled farmers” with no military training somehow managing to fight off one of the most powerful armies the world had seen since the legions of Rome. While a popular misconception, it is one I frequently address in living history programs, in which I adopt the appearance of a member of a colonial militia company.
In colonial kit, I am not portraying anyone in particular, and am still just Jon Danchik. As a result, my exchanges with visitors are unhampered by a need to keep my experiences and mannerisms grounded in a different time.
This post is part of a series featuring behind-the-scenes dispatches from our Pohanka Interns on the front lines of history this summer as interpreters, archivists, and preservationists. See here for the introduction to the series.
About seven months ago, I was asked during an interview for my current internship what I thought the National Park Service could do to gain the interest of more millennials. This question was posed to me in light of the fact that I am a member of the millennial generation. And what was my incredibly insightful answer, you may ask? “I don’t know.” There were some rambling and incoherent sentences before I finally delivered that bombshell of a response, but that was my final answer, much to my embarrassment. Now that I am almost a month into my second National Park Service Internship at Minute Man National Historical Park in Concord, Massachusetts, I feel like I can answer that question, even if I am seven months late.
The author and her supervisor, Leslie Obleschuk, in front of The Wayside: Home of Authors. Photo courtesy Michelle Blees, June 29, 2016.
What millennials want is personal significance. Yes, another earth-shattering answer from yours truly. It seems so obvious – maybe that’s why I didn’t think of it earlier in my interview – but like many other humans, millennials want to see themselves in whatever story a specific National Park is trying to tell. Often times, I feel like older generations think of millennials as some new subspecies of humans and they are trying very hard to figure us out. Yes, we tend to be more tech-savvy with shorter attention spans, but like everyone who came before us, we are a bit selfish in the sense that we want to understand why something is important so that we can care about it. Continue reading ““Of the Human Heart”: Personal Significance and the Key to Interpretation”
