Why it’s important to know your heroes

“If you know your history and you know where you came from and you know who your people are and you know who your heroes are – congratulations because you have no idea how important that is until you DON’T have that.”

Dr. Megan Springate

Dr. Megan Springate compiled a list of more than 750 sites relevant to #LGBTQhistory and created a map to go with it. Shortly after her work was finished, the Gill Foundation donated money to the National Park Foundation to complete a theme study of LGBTQ history in America for the NPS (National Park Service). They asked Springate to lead the project. What resulted was a 1,200-page document, freely available on the NPS website, which provides a broad overview of LGBTQ history connected to physical places in the U.S.

You can access that document here: https://bit.ly/3ZJ7MBQ

TRANSCRIPT

In this live chat, Monica Rhodes interviews Dr. Megan Springate, an historical archaeologist. They discuss the importance of preserving cultural heritage and the power of storytelling. Dr. Springate shares her experiences working on the 19th Amendment Centennial commemoration and the LGBTQ+ theme study for the National Park Service. She also highlights the value of working intersectionally and the need for representation in historic preservation. Overall, the conversation emphasizes the significance of connecting with the past and the impact it has on shaping the future.

Highlights

(93) #4thofJuly | 3 & A Possible Live Chat with Dr. Megan Springate – YouTube

Transcript:

(00:00) good morning good afternoon wherever you are I am Monica Rhodes and it gives me great pleasure to introduce this new video series well not so new anymore since we’re a month into it already but this is July so this is the July version a series of three and a possible and as we know histories are often

(00:22) multi-layered and this name of this show is no exception so if you’re a Spades player then you know the phrase this this is what you would use when you’re predicting how many books you have in your hand in order to win uh three and Apostle also represents the essence of cultural preservation which is not just

(00:40) a conversation about the past but it’s a conversation with the future as well so it’s predictive in nature and then finally through this series I will be chatting with experts in the preservation space and asking three and possibly four questions per interview uh so as you all know this is free-flowing

(00:58) It’s a conversation uh with my community of practice and folks that I like hanging out with and appreciate the work that they do so without further Ado I’d like to welcome you to the show and welcome Dr Megan springate into the conversation good to see you Megan good to see you too hey how’s it goes oh and

(01:17) you know I can’t complain life is good right now uh but but this conversation is about you so Megan could you tell us a little bit about you know your background what you do um all the things sure so um I am an historical archaeologist by training um but I have sort of Taken what I’ve learned in interpreting material culture

(01:44) and I’ve been most recently applying it to um places right so places Landscapes buildings they are um they’re all basically artifacts that you can’t put in a paper bag and take into the labs but the the sort of thinking about the material world and its effect on people and how people move through it has like just like been part

(02:10) of my training um I did my first archeology in 1987 I was like 16 years old probably not coincidentally the same year I don’t know maybe coincidentally the same year that I came out um to myself um so it was really interesting to navigate a live away archeology summer camp for a senior social science credit

(02:33) and being queer at the same right like it was yeah it was a it was a summer school live away summer school and that’s where I fell in love with archeology I was like I get this I understand this and it’s I love the puzzle and I love the uh being able like archeology is really really good at the everyday right all

(03:00) the stuff that doesn’t make it into the archival record that doesn’t end up in court documents right it’s like the everyday stuff that people don’t put in their diary right it’s like what did you eat what’d you eat off of it what you know what what Cutlery do you have like all of these really sort of daily minutia that

(03:19) like people don’t record but are so rich to talk about people’s histories I love I love doing this work so I’m an historical archaeologist now I started on a pre-contact site and I the thing that I love about this work is um finding the stories that haven’t been told or have been silenced because I just like that moment when

(03:47) you’re looking at artifacts or you’re you know rummaging archives or whatever and it’s like you find these stories about these people and you’re like why didn’t I know that how come I never learned that in History Class oh wait I totally know why I didn’t learn that in history class because right racism

(04:07) sexism white supremacy all of the above right not a rich dad white guy um but these these stories of everyday people doing amazing things like and then and then connecting those to the broader like the larger Narrative of American history I love it I just like I love I love everything about it yeah and then

(04:33) sharing them yeah so is there a particular I know you said you got started on a pre-contact site um and I know the work that you’ve done for the National Park Service and others are you know 60s 50s 40s 70s they you know some more I won’t say that’s contemporary but certainly not not indigenous history for example

(04:54) um but is there a particular period that you you focus in on or that you like to explore um I did um so I went from pre-contact fell in love with archeology and then did my first like many years later I did my first uh historic Field School and I was just able to connect with that I think in a in a in a way that was like

(05:19) made sense right yeah um because on the pre-contact site we’re you know we’re looking at these Hearth features and we’re looking at like shatter from making tools and bits of pottery and and I was like this is really cool but I don’t understand it right like um but then I got into the historic and and I guess because I grew up in a

(05:47) historic period And I ate you know all these things I it made sense to me and they were pieces that I could fit together and like I could understand what I was looking at um and I have like mad respect for pre-contact archaeologists um who do that work and uh but it’s just it’s just not me um and I’ve done I did commercial

(06:09) archeology for a number of years so um several kinds of permits require um archeology or or uh historic preservation like historic architecture um assessments right so I did I worked for six or seven years at a commercial archeology company and experience on everything everyone everything from like free contact to

(06:36) swedes on the Delaware River to 1930s farmsteads to you know fine Metals refining in Newark and Military sites and it was just and you asked me if there’s anything that I really really love so here’s the thing I have to I fall in love with every project I’m working on right like it’s um even if I’m doing like a cell tower

(07:07) right like I just I have to get sort of emotionally invested I get invested in those projects um for me it’s really really important that the site that I honor the site’s history yeah right um and and sometimes that means like going to the mat with your colleagues about whether this is important or not

(07:32) because it’s like no like there’s stories here that are important to tell just because it’s the and you know Farmstead um there’s there’s like stuff going on here and uh right it’s very it’s very common to say well you know we’ve already got all these 1890s farmsteads we don’t need another one so therefore

(07:55) it’s not significant um or if it’s in the 20th century it’s too recent and I’m like have you looked at the calendar lately uh yeah significant but um by age I mean you know we’re all born in the 1900 and 1980s 1900s so absolutely say it like that and it sounds terrible I do appreciate you not taking us into

(08:30) the world of like you know section 106 and NEPA um because that because those are some of the things that happened behind the closed doors um that are necessary processes uh for preservation to happen um but but you know these conversations are about stories yeah and things that people connect with but you know for all

(08:50) uh that are watching there’s a a regulatory layer um possibly not as sexy but nonetheless very important extremely important um so so Megan no no I was just gonna say I’m not one of those people who finds regulatory stuff sexy but I know that there are people who do and like we need them also really it doesn’t happen without that

(09:17) that tourist space so the conversations those meetings that are very important to make sure that all voices are heard and accounted for it um so with that being said Megan what are you what are you up to these days what’s what’s going on in your world um so I recently started a job with American conservation experience working

(09:38) with the National Park Service I am one of two national coordinators for melon postgraduate Humanities fellows um so they’re funded through the Mellon Foundation uh working in partnership with the National Park Service American conservation experience and the national park Foundation um to work with specific parks and work

(09:59) with each other to help the Park Service really sort of expand the stories that they tell about American history some of the projects that are not in my cohort we’re still in the getting parks to to sign up um part of my cohort but um excuse me they’re two-year fellowships and some of the ones that are starting

(10:22) in September they range from uh Punk and Go-Go in Washington DC study to um looking at how indigenous knowledge traditional knowledge and Western science can speak to each other to working with a residential school records to doing women’s history right like the the gamut is huge and I’m so excited to see what what the fellows

(10:57) um what they do right it’s there’s a lot of excitement around it and I think um um I think the park service is going to see a real difference and I think the public is going to see a real difference uh as we move through this project oh man that’s that’s exciting because as we know you know both working will you you

(11:17) know work with the Park Service I’m like was on the partnership side um but there’s there’s so much that Park Rangers interpret interpretive Rangers um are just kind of getting all this information and you know requests are coming all the time um and so to bring in some fresh perspective people who are

(11:35) in the early parts of their careers um you know have that funded by uh you know a funder like melon who’s doing incredible work I think this is this is you know this is fantastic this is like the perfect storm of you know funding with interests and Parks uh and supporting the work of of you know our

(11:55) colleagues who work for NPS who are doing so many things every time I’m excited too because um like the pandemic has been terrible right for everybody I mean we’re I don’t think we’re handling the Fallout particularly well but that’s another conversation um but in the Park Service they really had to Pivot from all these in-person

(12:20) programming to a lot of virtual stuff and so these fellows are coming in at a time when um there’s there’s a lot of work in the digital space and the virtual space that I think is really really exciting like we saw I was at the time during the pandemic I was the national coordinator for the 19th Amendment Centennial commemoration

(12:44) for the park service and to see to see people just like like on a dime um switched all their programming and then we saw Parks like collaborating across the country and doing like virtual it was like it was super cool so I’m really excited um to see these fellows sort of like take that and and run with it yeah and I

(13:05) also think it demonstrates like the you know the possibility I think a lot of um you know federal agencies have a um you know sometimes a a perception of being you know bureaucratic um you know challenging very challenging to kind of move and spin the things but I think uh that’s a testament to MPS um their ability to to shift when

(13:29) necessary to meet people where they are and during the pandemic that was virtually um and so I I also I was uh at the park Foundation at the time and just saw this upswing of all this programming that just went went online um and so it was you know a beautiful thing to see during that time it was it

(13:47) was amazing yeah and it’s really exciting I mean being in a play there is nothing like being in a place like there just isn’t right um it’s the same with art there isn’t there is nothing that compares to seeing an original piece of art in person right like first time I saw Salvador Dali’s persistent of memory which is like

(14:07) smaller it’s about the size of my computer screen it blew my mind right like but not everybody can not everybody can get there yep wait for all the reasons right money time transportation ability disability all the things right and so you can get a sense of what it’s like in a virtual space and and that’s cool

(14:35) because because it gets people excited yeah yeah before we before we uh pivot because I’d like to hear more about the work that you that you accomplished as a 19th Amendment coordinator as well as the work that you did around the lgbtq uh study for uh the Park Service um I I yeah I want to hear a little bit

(14:57) more about how Parks if they’re interested in in getting a fellow how they could work with you um to to connect to this to these funds to the support that they need how does that process work so perfect timing because the request for proposals for parks to host a fellow opened on June 30th so your timing is impeccable as

(15:19) always um the they close on August 1st at 11 59 PM Eastern so there’s like about a month to get the applications in um if you’re behind the firewall uh Park Service you’ll find a SharePoint site that has all kinds of information about it um you can also email the park Foundation it’s on the grants website of

(15:45) the park Foundation or you can email me it’s Megan underscore springgate at partner.nps.gov and I can like put you in directions for folks who are not in the Park Service uh who can who are not looking to apply for to post fellows the applications to be a fellow should be live like September October

(16:14) um and they’re two-year gigs so um it’s it’s about two years working with a park and mentors um to do the work and then there’s also time in included in sort of what the work plan is um to to do your own research and prepare yourself for a for your future career so yeah that’s all worked in there man I I

(16:39) just can’t it’s not a park service commercial but I just can’t stress the value enough of these types of experiences I mean it’s how I started my career uh in the compliance division of the north it’s now region one but it was the Northeast region then and it’s like it just kind of opened up this world uh

(16:57) that um that I didn’t know at the time that you know those things that I learned I ended up implementing those in the different programs that I uh that you know I helped create for the park so it’s good to have that background too that um so you can speak across the silos right it’s so important to be able to

(17:19) be able to communicate with the public with your peers with The Regulators with the historians with like the science right Museum folks collections conservation everybody’s speaking English but it it you know you can have a conversation to be like I know you’re saying words that I understand but I don’t understand

(17:44) them when you put them all together right or what are these acronyms you know every everything oh God yeah we all have our acronyms so I mean to be able to to have those experiences and take them all with you and be able to sort of translate across is um is really helpful when I was I was working on the lgbtq theme study

(18:07) so I I wrangled the lgbtq theme study for the National Park Service it came out in 2016. um you know we had it’s not like every other theme study it’s a little bit different it’s a lot different it’s 1200 Pages it’s available free on the National Park Service website um but I didn’t have just historians right

(18:31) like I’m an archaeologist I wrote a couple chapters we had um early career historians you know some of the like Titans agreed to to write for this um or or peer review uh but there were also you know Community activists um we had a newspaper reporter Tracy Bain who uh out of Chicago who ran the windy city times for decades um wrote a

(19:01) chapter um we had geographers um archaeologists journalists historians public historians preservation professionals because all of these ways to come at the past and preservation and then these stories they’re all valid um they’re just they’re just a different spin um and and I wanted so part of the theme

(19:31) study was to be intersectional and part I you know I’ve done a lot of sort of thinking about how to do work intersectionally because you can’t say well now I’m going to talk about gender and now I’m going to talk about class and now I’m going to talk about Ray like it doesn’t work right the minute you try to

(19:48) talk about them separately your subject just vanishes right right because because we’re all intersectional exactly so you you have to this this approach we’re many things at one time as absolutely and it takes more pages but one of the ways of sort of working intersectionally is is the multiple voices and multiple

(20:11) perspectives right and so you get sort of this larger universe talking about similar things and and this sort of core pieces kind of come together in the middle and so it was really important to have all these different professionals um yeah telling you know speaking from where they came from because

(20:30) theme studies are about natural register like National register National historic landmarks so it’s about filling out that government document which is a national register nomination it’s a lot less painful if you tell yourself I’m not telling the history I’m filling out a government form um because there’s like a way to do it

(20:48) but all of those takes all of those perspectives all of those ways of coming at that we’re all valid and worked um but right there was you know had to have conversations you know it had to be Place based and for some of the historians not to dis on historians but like historians don’t often do place-based

(21:14) work and so they were like yeah I’m talking about San Francisco or I’m talking about New York or I’m talking about Miami or I’m talking about Chicago or Reno and it’s like no I need I need I need an address of where the thing happened I need to be able to like get in my car and go to that place and stand in that

(21:35) spot that’s what I mean by play Space like I need those specifics um we got there yeah hey Ricardo are you good to good to have you join us um so yeah it’s a challenge but it’s also really really rewarding um the the stories that come out when you insist right on an intersectional perspective yeah right like

(22:10) yeah yeah we were we were you know I mean the other thing I think about go ahead so um yep there’s me looking please just punch with the theme study um on my on the left is the director of the park service at the time John Jarvis and on my right is the Megan I’m having some internet issues are you okay yep

(22:42) uh on the right is um Sally Jewell who is the Secretary of interior at the time and behind us is uh a panel from the AIDS quilt that they um they brought in for the release of the theme study um yeah I mean originally we thought the theme study would be you know pre-stone wall Stonewall to HIV HIV to activism right

(23:07) like we already knew we weren’t going to stop at 50 years because that was going to already put us um before Stonewall and also in like how how can you tell uh the lgbtq history of America and not talk about HIV and not talk about um act up and not talk about queer nation and not talk about same-sex marriage and

(23:30) not talk about trans uh rights and all of these things so we were actually editing editing the text right up until like right up until it had to be finalized days um but yeah we got the scholars together we were like here’s our life’s little timeline and they were like absolutely not that is a white

(23:51) male cisgendered Urban middle class uh history um and that is not that is not the history that we’re doing and I was like oh yeah you are absolutely correct that is not the history we’re doing um and so we took a thematic approach to sort of that intersectionality and so that was really really rewarding and

(24:15) working intersectionally is super messy yeah but it’s so rewarding like just when you it it eliminates these tidy narratives um and I love messy history like uh don’t give me don’t give me an don’t give me a narrative from you know A to B a to c like give me the whole mess because people are complicated history is

(24:55) complicated but also fascinating so yeah I I am a big fan of messy history I understand there’s reasons you want like chapters and textbooks but also it’s all connected yeah the thing I appreciate about the you know the approach to the theme study um because it’s like it’s the the process is as important as the final product or

(25:24) the outcome 100 yeah and um am I back I’m back uh we had folks who worked on this you’re you’re bringing all these voices you’re back okay can you hear me okay okay so I was let me say this real quick and apologies y’all I’m still in Italy so you know my internet is going in and out you know it’s hard life over here

(25:57) so so here’s here’s the thing so I was saying uh you know I appreciate the process of it right so sometimes it’s not the the product it’s it’s as important how did we get there who did who did I get a chance to bring along how are we doing and thinking differently about how we want this to be different and it all it all is it’s in

(26:19) it’s in the details it’s in the how you get there um and I found that when you are when you do that messy work that is the heavier lift because that it it’s always easy to do the easy thing that’s why people do it because it’s the easy way to to do it um but the work that we’re talking about the work that you led

(26:39) um that requires a little bit more of us um and I think we and and I’m certainly am proud to see what you and the other colleagues uh created uh as an outcome of that of that collaboration and I also say yes it helped fill in some gaps or start to fill in some of the gaps that exist on the national register related

(26:58) to lgbtq history um but it also encouraged state and local governments uh to do their own studies I was involved in the DC lgbq2 lgbtq plus uh context study um and that was that was important and it built on the work Megan uh that uh that you that you helped lead yeah it it has legs like it still has

(27:22) legs and it’s uh it was 16 to 23 it’s seven years oh my god um seven years ago it was released and it’s still right it’s still getting used and people are teaching from it and people are right and that’s amazing but one of the things that I really moves me as a queer person is when folks find it and they rates are working on that study

(27:55) was like super emotional I mean same-sex marriage became legal in 2016. there were like decades before that of of fights about it right so you know the government on the right you know on the Congressional Record saying horrible awful things about queer folks right like just the worst of the worst um

(28:23) and I mean I came out in 87 so my options were as a lesbian were I could be a predator I could be a victim I could be crazy or I could be dead like those were my options um and so the fact that a federal government who until recently at that time had been sort of out to get me um me be you know queer queer folks

(28:48) wanting to document queer history and Heritage and places across the United States saying no you’re important and your history is important like I cried like a baby and lots of people um working on this were like really moved and and it was really an emotional experience to do the work yeah um and to have a history is like

(29:30) really something right if you if you have if you know your history and like you know where you came from and you know who your people are and you know who your Your Heroes are and like you have a set like congratulations like really like it’s like you have no idea how important that is until you don’t have that

(29:53) um and I think you know I think this idea of sort of representation having come out in 87 and that in that environment um I think has really stuck with me and has really sort of driven why I do this work that I do yeah facilitate and tell these stories but I I I really enjoy when folks find the theme study

(30:19) and um because it was also specifically written that’s a member of the public can pick it up and and read it and understand so we had to like weed out a lot of the jargon yeah it’s it’s a big deal and and it was it was beautiful to to read and the thing that I remember um that I remember we I think we talked

(30:42) about this at one of the events connected to the study was that the uh like the emotional labor that comes along with this work like the work is the work is good but if you are somehow connected in some way uh to the work that you’re doing there’s a there’s an extra layer uh that’s there that we don’t often talk about Megan

(31:02) um and I don’t know I don’t know why because like maybe we’re all trying to kind of keep this distance like you know we’re objective objective we’re professionals this is what we are we’re putting our hats on and we’re preservationist today you take it off you know you go back into all the other identities uh that you have that’s such

(31:21) crap though that’s not how it actually works yeah right it’s just that’s ah and why shouldn’t there be Joy in the work that we do why shouldn’t we like get excited and get emotionally involved and fall in love with our projects like why should why is that unprofessional you know like yeah it’s a good it’s a

(31:45) good question to ask it’s it’s one that I that you know that I revisit from time to time it’s like you know how much how much do you show here in this space and what is this what does this look like or you know what how do you contain some excitement here but also we have this professional spacing or what do you

(32:05) do with the the pain um that you have to to to to carry and to preserve and to talk about that work and and you feel that in a deeper Type of Way um so yeah I actually worked with a fella um who left his who left uh commercial preservation yeah because he said he said uh I feel like a funeral director

(32:32) wow right like I feel like I’m doing all this work so that they can tear it down or pave it over or dig it up right because like right National register doesn’t protect you from that it just means you have to do a little more work pay a little more money but it doesn’t it doesn’t stop anybody from tearing anything down yep and he really

(32:53) felt like it it was crushing his soul to sort of um sort of carry these places through this destructive process when he got into this work because he loves the work and he and he left yeah and I was like yeah yeah it’s it it this where it gets heavy it gets heavy um but you know to to quote Frankie Beverly and Maze there’s

(33:23) there’s Joe and Payne uh and sunshine and rain so it’s it’s it’s it’s it’s it’s it’s it’s the um it’s not easy but it’s it’s but it’s worth it I love the con I love working with the public yeah and when you can a lot of folks sort of move through I don’t understand it but a lot of folks move through the world

(33:46) um sort of disconnected from history from what’s around them from how their life connects to the broader history I mean I did too I hated local history when I was a kid I lived grew up in a small town and I was like uh but um no I have come I have come to realize like all history is local like all of it

(34:07) is local so all of these local things connect to these broader themes um I forget where I was going it’s totally fine no that’s all right that’s all right I mean you you’re right it is all it all is local and you know just to to let folks know some of the strongest preservation laws are at the local level

(34:29) like those that’s where most most of the teeth are and as as Megan pointed out you know National registered designation doesn’t necessarily protect the historic site from things happening um but those those local stories because people are so invested and you know these places and you have politicians who will will

(34:45) get up and and go to the mat um for these historic buildings and places that matter to communities yep yep yeah and it’s a national register listing triggers a local ordinance then that’s where it doesn’t get torn down yeah yep this is good so you know Megan we we’ve gone a lot of places in this conversation uh uh so here’s a here’s

(35:07) you know here’s something that I’m thinking about is um you know I’ve used this hashtag like 50 years ahead because I’m thinking about um you know the work that we’re doing is really a conversation with the future like yeah we’re you know the past is our medium it’s this it’s the lens in which we you know see things see to see the

(35:26) world you know see who we are I understand um identity and culture and history and Legacy and nationhood and all of these things um are rooted in our past but they’re really conversations about who do we want to be what parts of our ourselves of our Collective history do we want to bring into uh the future and we want to

(35:46) communicate to Generations that haven’t been born uh so I’m just curious from like from your perspective and um you know the the work that you’ve done that you’ve LED uh what are what are some of the things that you’re thinking about that uh that you know young professionals who are coming up where where should they be what should

(36:05) they be thinking what questions should they be grappling with what do you think yeah well I mean definitely you want to connect from where you are right so being a queer immigrant I immigrated to the States from Canada um shapes how I interact with the world and shapes the questions I’m going to ask

(36:28) about the past um people will tell you that that is not objective uh uh uh work and it’s like but it’s actually better work because because you’re asking questions that other people won’t think about and that is a plus when you’re trying to understand stuff yeah um when I was working with the 19th Amendment commemoration uh sometimes we

(36:51) would run into stuff like we you know you talk about um you know African-American women working for the right to vote and you talk about you know some of the crap that they had to deal with and and the violence and people would be like but that’s we shouldn’t talk about that because that’s not who we are and it’s like if you look

(37:12) at this sort of messy history it’s like that’s absolutely who we are but what I hear you saying is that’s not who what who we want to be and and that is an opening to to work to make a better Society right when somebody says that’s not who we are it’s like well the data says actually yes um but it’s if that’s an opening to say

(37:40) well you know you you we need to face the past we need to face that we need to say that is who we collectively are and that is our history collectively even if you think it’s not your history like you think it’s queer history or you think it’s Latino history or you think it’s whatever history like it’s still

(38:00) American history it’s still your history um so when people say that’s not who we are it’s like what I hear is that’s not who I want to be yeah and and that is that is an opportunity to have these conversations and to sort of move the ball forward um I think moving forward I think we’re gonna see a lot more work

(38:22) with the silenced histories the silenced um stories that that just have not been I mean just have not been sort of seen to be important preservation um and it’s like look you gotta like part of I’m gonna say it part of the part of the reason I think that that a lot of these sort of marginal places where

(38:53) marginalized communities live um [Music] are are not included right apart from the history of the national register which is like it started in 1966 like literally you look at some of those early nominations and it’s like pretty building um right it itself is an is an artifact of its history but um I wonder what would happen if we

(39:21) this is a little inside baseball uh for folks the the national register like you have to have integrity to be listed um but a lot of pressure is put on that physical yeah architectural significance the architectural significance versus like the important social cultural history the people and I just I wonder what

(39:45) would happen if we flipped those sections on a register nomination so instead of the building description first we put the significance history description first anyway um but I I think we’ll see more and more of those communities finding ways to to um have those places that are important to them recognized and preserved

(40:14) and I think well I hope right that we will see more and more folks from those marginalized communities finding ways to to get into historic preservation and do that work because um people are always going to say you have you have a self-interest by doing women’s history or queer history and it’s like a

(40:39) yes um B there’s nothing wrong with that yeah and see a Good anthropologist will tell you you always want an Insider to help you with those things right um and if if if the people whose history it is can do that work that’s even better right um right now that takes some of us holding the door open and consciously making decisions about

(41:05) who we work with and how we frame that work and how much Authority we have and it’s hard to let go of authority right like but I have a PhD I am like that nope um I’m just I’m just here to facilitate yeah um I’m here to facilitate those stories being told uh I think virtual reality right like it’s coming we might as well use it

(41:35) right and as I said there’s nothing there is nothing that replaces being in a space there’s nothing that replaces seeing a piece of art in real life but with virtual reality like folks can go to those places they can have tours in those places and you can recreate the past and move through those spaces and some of the

(41:58) early work on um oh God going back to like second life and stuff archaeologists would go in the second life and and build their sites um I’m gonna pronounce it wrong in Turkey they went to recreate what this place would be like using the archaeological record and they were like oh my God like what does the light look

(42:19) like what does it sound like what is it is there smoke in this building or not smoke in this building right it was they it opened up this Avenue to have all these conversations about environment that archaeologists hadn’t really thought about before so when you’re trying to recreate those places so I

(42:41) think I think we can get a lot of rich thinking not just cool visiting not just cool virtual visiting but also some nice rich thinking about taking the archeology and really making it not just three-dimensional but four-dimensional right you get the time what is what happens to the light is this like during a day

(43:05) like what is that feeling what does it smell like what does it look like um some really really really really cool stuff has come out of that sort of thinking about about space in the virtual and virtual yeah man yeah Megan I think these are all all great suggestions and I and the the point that really resonate you know one I’m a huge

(43:27) fan of leveraging technology is a storytelling strategy and a way to make these stories more accessible to all different types of people um but then the other thing is this idea uh around the reordering of um you know what do we think is important is it the building or is it the the community or the people that made this building

(43:48) significant I think that’s um that’s a really really important point and this you know this has been an incredible conversation you know it it also reminds me that we haven’t caught up in far too long in person so when I’m back you see uh I’m looking forward to to hanging out and uh having a longer discussion uh 100 yeah

(44:11) for sure for sure well Megan thank you so much this has uh been a fascinating conversation I appreciate your time and uh looking forward to seeing you uh very soon thank you and I mean the answer is it’s the people yeah yeah all right no problem and hang on for a second and so for those who um are still

(44:35) on uh please uh tune in next week we will host uh Mr Teddy Pierre out of New Orleans who is a master Craftsman uh in masonry uh uh we had a done working cemeteries so if you enjoy cemeteries enjoy learning about masonry please come to the conversation with Teddy next week and with that being said have a great

(44:58) day and thank you all for watching thanks y’all

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