The Planning of Programs

With one successful event in our Paths of Peace in Crisis series complete and two more following shortly, I took the chance to sit down with our Programs Producer, Jonathon Eder, and chat about this series.

Each year, Jonathon crafts programs which center on the same themes as our lobby exhibits, bringing in local and national experts to highlight new ideas. For example, in 2010, Alan Khazei and Pamela Hawley expanded our A Life of Service by highlighting cutting edge ways to make a change in our world while Pulitzer Prize winning author John Matteson grounded us in the nineteenth-century context of radical thinking. (Hint: find these programs and more in our streaming video archive!)

Last year, we enjoyed programming on both the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible as well as our lobby exhibit, Finding Peace. However, as we moved into 2012 and thought ahead to the blustery winter months Boston usually sees, Jonathon chose to develop cozier after-work events for January, February and March.

"This series really wanted to go a little bit deeper into the concept of finding peace in the areas that are more personal," he explains. "We naturally associate wintertime with more intimate gatherings. It's kind of nice to have that more casual, closer, contact between presenters and receivers. It suits the season."

Unlike other programs where the speaker provides a lecture, the Paths of Peace in Crisis series hopes to draw out our attendees into a conversation, and start a dialogue that can continue through the series.

The series began with two presenters, Dr. Shelley Rambo (left) and Michelle Walsh (right). Their session highlighted, as Jonathon put it, "the theological perspective that trauma defines our entire world, even if one individually has not undergone a traumatic experience, it is so prevalent that everyone will be touched by it." As hoped, the session was defined by the ideas of our very diverse audience. Participants spoke from personal experience and different faiths about ideas of trauma, disease, suffering, and healing.

The next two sessions will continue to explore these ideas. By examining spiritual autobiographies on February 16, participants will discover two women who not only discovered their own paths through crisis by writing, but left inspirational words to support others who followed. On March 15, we will actually have the opportunity to meet trailblazing women of today in a panel of female chaplains. Why chaplains? Because they maintain a sense of inner peace in a situation of chaos which, as women, may even be compounded by the prejudices of their peers. Whichever, or both, you attend, you should walk away with a new idea of how you can be a peacemaker in the world.

P.S.: Live far away from the Library? Not to worry, we'll post videos online! We wouldn't forget about you!

Writing about a Writer

And I’m happy to officially announce that our exhibit title is… almost decided! Like the exhibit itself, it’s been hard to sum up all that Mary Baker Eddy was as a writer in just a few words. I can, however, tell you that, “Write Away!” and “Write Now!” did not make the cut, despite our punning tendencies.

As I alluded to in an earlier post, we’ve been whittling away at our content over the past few months. What we’ve come up should be a pretty exciting display: our exhibit panels will form a ring around Eddy’s desk, chair, and other furnishings from her study. Although we won’t be copying the space exactly, visitors will get a sense of the environment in which Eddy worked, from the sculpture in the corner to the two clocks spaced around the study. 

To make sure that we get everything just right, we’ve taken team trips to our storage space, where our curator, Pam Winstead, showed us the objects that we’ll use to furnish the space including Eddy’s desk and a few key knicknacks.

Mark Thayer, our Creative Director and exhibit designer extraordinaire, also led us in a few mock-ups of the exhibit space itself, where we arranged to-scale cutouts of furniture and tested visitors' abilities to reach around panels using office furniture. This is always important to protect our historic objects from little fingers.

The panels around this space, however, will tell the real story. And how else could we really tell the story of Eddy as a writer, except through her own words and the words of those who knew her? So expect excerpts from reminiscences, Eddy’s own letters, and autobiographical fragments.
The exhibit is drawn from the primary source data that fills our archives and the expertise of our staff who navigate those written accounts, scrapbooks, photographs, and the objects themselves. (Read more about researchers here.) As the exhibit writer, I received folders and folders of material to distill into a brief story.

Every writer works a little differently, and I’m a visual one! So, for this exhibit, the research was thus divided into color-coded snippets of information and organized thematically and chronologically on my cube wall. A few fine fall weekend days with my laptop in an obliging park and the script was ready for group editing. To do this, we actually copied the exhibit text up on a whiteboard and attacked it as a group, wordsmithing and editing down to the last detail to get everything factually correct and faithful to Eddy’s story.

While I can’t give anything away just yet, I can tell you that there will be a few surprises when the exhibit opens next April, even for those already familiar with Eddy’s story. We’re so excited to share this important part of her life and work with everyone, online and in person!

Presenting a very special book

Now I don't know if anyone has been eagle-eyed enough to notice, but our online King James Bible is currently open to a different page from the original copy in Research & Reference Services. Each month, the Bibles turn to a new page, and are supposed to correspond. This November and December, however, they'll be moving out of sync. I sat down with our Senior Curator, Alan Lester, to ask him why.

Alan's colleague, Pam Winstead, originally worked with the team responsible for our 400th Anniversary of the King James Bible Celebration display. Curators pay special attention to books that are displayed open for a long time and do a lot of work to protect them. One common practice is to turn their pages periodically over time. I asked, why?

"It's similar to Newton's first law of motion—a body in motion tends to stay in motion..." he explained. "If books are left open for any length of time there's a memory. They tend to want to stay in that position. So when you close them, they don't close all the way." Even more concerning, Alan added after a moment, "with older books, the components are less flexible and you can break the binding."

To protect our book—which dates from 1611—the team carefully selected passages at carefully spaced intervals in the Bible. That way, the binding was stressed evenly throughout the book.

Unfortunately, the passages selected for November and December, both in the New Testament, were too close to each other. Our curatorial team ruled that the potential for damage was too great and the team went back into the Old Testament to select pages that would make a bigger change. And it turned to our advantage. Many of the attendees at our recent lecture with Adam Nicolson [click here for the video!], author of God's Secretaries: The Making of The King James Bible, had a particular interest in this page from Ruth, which happened to be very appropriately spaced.

Why were they so interested? Because our Bible is one of the very few prints containing a typographical error. In Ruth 3:15, it reads "he went into the citie" instead of the correct "she went." Some speculate that these 'He' Bibles are in fact the real first editions of the King James Bibles, making the 'She' Bibles second editions. Others claim that they are a variation, an error made on one of the many presses, all producing the Bible at the same time. In either case, 'He' Bibles like ours are the rarer and we were delighted to be able to show this page to our guests on October 30.

So the Bible remains safely encased in its UV-filtering plexiglass case, carefully monitored for light and humidity levels. And, as Alan says, "We'll see at the end of the year whether we have been successful."

We'll keep our fingers crossed and, in the meantime, enjoy this incredible opportunity to see such a beautiful piece of history! To check it out online, click here.