It's hard to believe I've already been working on my internship for a month. This week was by far the most fun and interesting week I've had yet. I'm pretty shy, but I feel like I have finally broken out of my shell a little bit at work and have been talking to my coworkers quite a bit. There was a retirement party and potluck on Tuesday for a bunch of people I didn't know, but all of us archives people sat together and chatted. There was a volunteer there as well who used to work in the archives. That seems to be a common thing at the State Historical Society. People retire, but then they come back as volunteers. I think that is a pretty good sign that they like their jobs. Thursday we all went to lunch at this place downtown called Lucca and I had an awesome (and slightly strange) sandwich. Brie provolone, mayo, and vegetables.
On Tuesday I also got a bit of a tour of the State Historical Society. It's weird that I've been there so many times but never realized how much behind the scenes action there is. I went to the reading room, which was a lot bigger than I thought it was going to be, and met the reference librarian up there. The reading room still has a card catalog! That was about enough to make me SQUEE. I also met an archivist who worked with photographs and a few other people. It took some time out of my day and was a nice break from the usual going through boxes.
But I did find some weird stuff in the boxes this week. To name one, I find a mask that was made out of a photograph of a person's face and then cut out and attached to a rubber band. I pulled it out and asked everyone else if they knew who the guy was since I figured he was probably some political guy (the boxes I'm going through I related to politics) but no one knew who he was. It's a mystery. I also found this lovely cartoon (excuse the bad cell phone picture).
It wasn't all fun and games though. I did end up finding two of the worst death certificates I'd seen so far. It was a twenty-five-year-old woman who was shot by her husband. The next certificate was a man's name so I figured it was the husband killing himself. No. He shot his three-year-old son. Ugh, I felt sick when I saw that.