Finding my element
Becoming a St. Louis Art Museum guide
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The back entrance of the St. Louis Art Museum has a façade of deep brown brick. Once a week when I was a little kid—maybe 7 or 8?—my mom and brother brought me there to take an art class. We made prints with string and glue, and plates from clay. While I don’t remember the subject of my prints, I do know that my plate captured the head of a cat with pink ears and green eyes, and blue and green stripes decorated the underside.
After the first couple weeks of class, my brother, two and a half years younger than me, started to have a regular refrain. “Not this place again!”
But indeed, three decades later, I find myself once again going to the art museum each weekend. This time, it’s because I’m training to be a museum guide.
Something beautiful about this endeavor is how I came to apply for the volunteer position. A few days after welcoming St. Louisans into my yard for the Sustainable Backyard Tour this past summer, a new friend and I were texting. He said, “It was so awesome to see you in your element!”
My element?
It’s amazing how other people, even people new to us, can sometimes see us better than we see ourselves. I knew I loved and felt energized hosting for the tour, but I hadn’t thought of it as a broader way of interacting with people. My friend’s comment got me thinking about how I could enjoy its this particular spirit of exchange more often.
And so, I am on my way to leading tours at my beloved St. Louis Art Museum.
GSP update: More interviews and a promising book
For my research on the Grinnell Students for Peace, I’ve interviewed three more folks involved in the early 1960s antiwar student protest movement and had a second interview with another of my sources. I called on her, I admit, primarily because I was longing for some perspective from an elder (a term that I adore and use with great respect and fondness) who has been an activist through a difficult world throughout their life. We both found the conversation soothing and encouraging.
An exciting discovery in my secondary research is the book by sociologist Rebecca E. Klatch of UC San Diego, with the fabulous title, A Generation Divided: The New Left, the New Right, and the 1960s. In it, she shares her findings from interviews with a few dozen members of both the YAF—Young Americans for Freedom—and the SDS—Students for a Democratic Society. And the story actually starts in (and before) the early 1960s, which seems uncommon in historical accounts of the protest movements of that time.
While the Grinnell student protestors were not members of the SDS, the causes of both groups aligned. And as for the YAF: the students counterprotesting the Grinnellians were among their membership. Klatch’s interest in the students of the SDS and YAF is very much in line with my interest in the students for nuclear disarmament, and I know that both her findings and her method will be a great influence on my research.
Mentioned in this issue: The St. Louis Art Museum and A Generation Divided: The New Left, the New Right, and the 1960s, by Rebecca E. Klatch of UC San Diego.