Teletubbies in Tibet: the importance of preserving audio & video archives

Yes, there really are Teletubbies videos in Tibet. Who knew! (But no, those are not the kind of resources I am advocating for preservation.) This past week, I saw the film "Tibet in Song", directed by Ngawang Choephel (who was actually at the screening for a discussion afterward), a documentary concerning the effects of Chinese occupation on traditional Tibetan music. While it is the cause for much of the disintegration of Tibetan culture, I do not want to get too much into the political aspect of the situation. Instead, I feel it is important to consider the benefits of documentation and access to resources on audio or video.

There are no laws in place prohibiting traditional Tibetan music as there once were, but it is still highly discouraged and Chinese music is instead blasted over loudspeakers around some Tibetan towns. As a result, many younger people no longer know real Tibetan music. However, there exists an archive library and museum in Dharamsala, India founded by the Dalai Lama that houses much of this forgotten music, the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives.

I highly recommend seeing the film, or at least the trailer: http://www.tibetinsong.com/

Director of the film, Ngawang Choephel, on right

Digitization of collections like are quickly becoming high-priority projects for many archival and cultural institutions. They are expensive, very time consuming, and tedious work because of the fragile condition of many of the films, photos, and objects. Yesterday, I visited the American Jazz Museum in Kansas City with a few other grad students. The museum has recently opened a new area, the John Baker Film Collection, where at this point only about ten percent of the old "soundies" and other clips, mostly from the 1920's to the 1940's, are available for viewing. It's a large undertaking to inspect each film, slide by slide by slide, often stopping to repair a crack in the film, and then allowing the film to play one last time, hoping it stays together well enough to gather what is left.

Anna Mae Windburn, singer, with director William Alexander

du fromage, but not of the French variety

Alright, it's time to learn to make cheese! This is an Imeruli cheese, from the Republic of Georgia, but a simple farmer's cheese and probably the easiest to make as far as cheese goes.

Some things you will need:
• Milk – 1 gallon, whole
• Buttermilk - 1/4 cup (or ½ cup plain yogurt)
• Rennet: 1/4 tablet rennet (e.g. Junket brand, though it's not specifically for cheese, it's usually the most easily available (at Whole Foods)) or 10 drops of liquid rennet (cheesemaking.com)
• Salt: non-iodized sea salt


• A food thermometer (that measures at least 60 to 100 F)
• Large wooden spoon
• Stainless steel pot with lid-- MUST be stainless steel! Sterilize it by boiling little bit of water for about 15 minutes and then draining it.
• Strainer
• Cheese cloth, also sterilized

This cheese process takes place over two days, so plan accordingly! It's quite easy to take 15 minutes before you go to sleep to start, and then it's ready to go in the morning.

Day 1

1. Warm the milk to 68oF in the sterilized pot and put aside.

2. Blend in buttermilk. Cover with the sterilized lid and let sit at room temperature overnight (or 8-10 hours).  

Day 2

3.Warm milk up to 86oF (constantly mix with the spoon).  

4.Dissolve ¼ tablet of rennet (or 10 drops of liquid rennet) in ¼ cup (120 ml) cold water. Add dissolved rennet to warmed milk and mix with the spoon. Remove from heat.

5. Cover the pot and set aside and DO NOT DISTURB! After about 40 minutes to an hour, take a look and test the milk for completed action of rennet ("clean break").  To test for “clean break” put your index finger into the milk and lift the top layer of the milk up (which should be like a Jell-O). The mixture should be firm and should have a crack when the finger is lifted. If it’s not ready, allow more time without stirring or disturbing the pot. 

6. When it’s ready, cut the curd with a long knife into half inch cubes (cut straight down to bottom repeatedly parallel to the previously cut side. Then rotate the pot 90 degrees, cut as before. Repeat this once again.
7. Place pot over a very low fire, stir curd with cleaned bare hand by reaching down to bottom, gently lifting and stirring. Cut larger curds as they appear. Do not mash or squeeze.  

8. Continue stirring for 15 minutes until the curds are about 95oF warm. Heating higher will make for a harder cheese. You can also add some salt in at this point if you like. Remove from the stove.  They should look like your typical curds and whey after all the stirring:

9. Place curds in a cheese cloth and over a strainer. Squeeze the mixture together to remove almost all the liquid and give a desired shape.  

10. Leave the cheese over a strainer for a few hours (or even overnight) to ensure that excess liquid is removed. I've been pretty creative with this part, constructing my own cheese press out of a plastic food container with poked holes and placing a can of food on top for weight. It's not necessary and you can certainly simply use cheesecloth only and form a ball, but it's fun to experiment!

11. Sprinkle some salt on the cheese from both sides and store in a container with a lid. Leave the salt to achieve desired flavor but once ready, wash the cheese with cold water and remove the salt.

secrets of the silk road

Mummies just might be the number one object that comes to mind when one thinks about museums, and especially those from Egypt. But what about the others? Say, from western China? Up until last week, a traveling exhibit titled Secrets of the Silk Road was the only way to see these mummies, naturally preserved I might add, outside of China. But now, at the request of the Chinese government, they are back home, with their last museum stop cut short just days before its grand opening.

Since last summer, the exhibit had already traveled from the University of Southern California to the Houston Museum of Natural Science and was just ready for opening at the Penn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology when the museum was unexpectedly notified that it could not display the objects and instead would have to ship them back. The museum apparently complied with this and as a replacement opened the exhibit with photographs of the objects. In addition, the museum re-created "dummy mummies" of paper mache-- a 14-year-old visitor could not tell the difference between it and the "real thing". They also kept the live camels out as part of the opening. Hmm. So why were the objects (supposedly) sent home? The museum will not explicitly say.

One reason is that through the DNA testing that is usually conducted on archaeological finds, these mummified humans were found to not be ethnically Chinese. On top of that, they come from the separatist Uighur region in western China, Xinjiang, and some speculate that the Chinese did not want bad press or extra support for Uighur claims of autonomy.

Whatever the reason, it is quite an unfortunate situation for the Penn Museum who spent about 2 million dollars to bring in this exhibit, and who had to refund $50,000 of pre-purchased tickets to visitors.

chemicals, poisons, toxins

Sounds like fun, doesn't it? That's what I spent yesterday learning about in my collections class. Who knew there were so many bad things floating around in museums. I figured we would just be learning about the poor arsenic-lined taxedermied animals common from the 1700's up to the 1970's in natural history museums, but there are far more problems than just arsenic floating around, some mostly because of museums (stereotypical) status as old places and the resulting old practices that we've now learned are not so good for humans or the collections. We've got pesticides, DDT, Hantavirus, lead, tetanus, old stored medicines, radiation (from some rocks and minerals in collections), fungal diseases, mercuric chloride (the stuff that makes you mad as a hatter) and asbestos, just to name a few. And did you know copy machines release ozone (which is a respiratory irritant)? And if you are working in an office you should not have your desk right next to the thing? I didn't.  (It really made me think about how many bad chemicals we use even in our daily life. I now feel the need to go live outside just to escape it all.)

After we spent an hour discussing OSHA in the classroom yesterday, our class took a tour of KU's Natural History Museum. We will be doing a project this semester that consists mostly of cataloging and cleaning BIRDS! Long-dead ones that is, that have been on display at the museum for some time now. We went back to one of the storage rooms and were taking a look at all the pretty feathered things, when I look up and resting up in the rafters is a GIANT alligator! I'd never seen one so big. It, too, had visited the taxidermist long ago and was not in very good shape. Since we saw the underside, it had a long slice down the middle of it to frame the skin, and it was not closed. Not a very appealing sight to begin with, but I pointed it out to my friend, and all she and I could think of was the arsenic we had just heard about was surely just floating down to us...

Now, this probably wasn't the case since the people working in this museum are the same ones who had just warned us of the health hazards, so hopefully this alligator was not as old as it looked!

Speaking of birds, the Smithsonian actually has a Feather Identification Lab at the National Museum of Natural History, created during the 1960's. Currently, one of their projects is to use the remains from bird strikes on airplanes to research patterns and identify species; this information is then used to modify habitats surrounding airfields.

Smithsonian bird collection

Side note: I love the Google.com design today (in honor Jules Verne's birthday)

the snowpocolypse

What a fantastic blizzard that was! Still, it did not seem nearly as bad as they made it out to be. I suppose other areas may have gotten it worse. It seems like this winter we haven't been able to get a break between the melting of snow and the coming of even more. Here's a great satellite photo taken by NASA of yesterday's storm:

NASA images 

At work on Monday (with international students whose home countries include quite a range of environments), we had to make sure the students understood just how much snow there could possibly be. Of course the five students from Tibet (a.k.a. the Land of Snows) seemed unfazed, whereas some of the others were in disbelief. At times I wonder if some of these students have any idea what Kansas is really like before they come here. We had to warn them of the wind chill, and frostbite, and what shoes to wear, good socks, etc. I hope they all came out of it alright.

After shoveling the snow in front of the house this morning, I went on a much-needed snow hike, about 6 miles, which felt wonderful after being shut in all day yesterday. It's too bad I don't have cross country skis, because the fields would have been perfect for it! As it was though, the drifts made it somewhat difficult to discern deep and shallow snow. It wasn't uncomfortably cold though, and everything sure was beautiful!

last day before classes!

When I think about it, it has been a long break since the middle of December! I officially have my first class of the semester tomorrow, collections management, and I also start working regularly again. I'm excited about my classes this semester, with collections being my primary interest in museums, and then I've also got Anthropology in Museums and Conservation.

Finishing at least one of my knitting projects was also on the agenda for this last day of free time, and I successfully did just that:

 When I find new patterns to try, I get excited and start them immediately, so it seems I've always got at least 5 different projects going. This one was a pot holder, and the only reason I did it was to see if I could do the pattern, since it's not so large. I used scrap yarn, which is unfortunately acrylic, so I can't actually use it as a pot holder. That's alright though-- it's still pretty!

the joys of still being in school

I have to say, I'm glad I'm back in school. These breaks between semesters are great! It's given me a chance to finally visit my sister in Virginia (for New Years! Fun!), as well as somewhat manage the arduous task of preparing internship applications for this coming summer (not so fun!).

My trip to Virginia included Richmond as well as DC, and scoping out museums for future "use". I was lucky enough to have several people to show me some neat places. Ever been to Occoquan? No, it's not "Aqua-quan" as I originally thought the name to be. Hey, they told me it was down by the river, so that spelling just made sense! It's a darling little place outside the city. Not to mention, it's close to Ikea (which we also visited)!

The break has also allowed for much-needed magazine perusing, knitting, and painting. You know, for those winter days when there is just no enjoyment in being outside. One new project I plan for this lifetime is to construct a green wall. You know, plants that grow on a wall. A vertical garden. This one will be filed with the rest of my ideas for when I have my own house, I suppose. I hope to eventually have a sun room for this purpose, but perhaps the dining room will do?

Ok, that is actually a restaurant in New Zealand (Foxglove in Wellington), not a private dining room in a home, but what a great idea! I think it fits perfectly.

For now, I guess something like this will have to do for the single bedroom I call my home: