Links
NAI Blogs
Legacy Magazine: Departments
- Administration
- Commentaries
- Community-Based Interpretation
- Connecting Children to Nature
- Costumed Interpretation
- Feature Stories
- From the Editor
- In Training
- Inspiration
- Interpretation in For-Profit Tourism
- Interpreting Indigenous Cultures
- Interpreting Public History
- Interpreting Rivers
- Interpreting Sports
- Interpreting the Universe
- Interpretive Paths During a Bad Economy
- Interviews
- Planning & Design
- Research
- Restoration in Interpretation
- Speaking
- Stewardship of the Oceans
- Sustainable Architecture in Interpretation
- Sustainable Recreation and Tourism
- Technology
- The Frontline
- The Interpreter
- Visitor's Views
Archive for April, 2009
-
The Alamo, San Antonio, Texas
Posted on April 27, 2009 | 2 CommentsIt seems like each culture has a story of a battle where “few fought against many.” From my perspective, living here in the western U.S., perhaps the most famous battle took place at the Alamo in 1836. -
Feedback: Embracing the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Posted on April 22, 2009 | 1 CommentLike many of you, I have a love-hate relationship with feedback. What author and business expert Ken Blanchard describes as the “breakfast of champions,” I consider more like eating vegetables—important, but not necessarily enjoyable. Lack of training, lack of time, fear of confrontation, fear of failure, and painful memories of being at the receiving end of bungled performance reviews are just some of the issues that many of us suffer from “feedback aversion.” -
Opposite Sides of the Pond: A Student’s Perspective
Posted on April 17, 2009 | No CommentsDuring the fall of 2008, I had a unique experience as an intern and a visitor to many European historic sites. My perspective as a student of public history gave me the opportunity to look at techniques employed in museum exhibits, historical preservation, and archives. I couldn’t help but compare how museums in European countries displayed and interpreted their history compared to those in the United States and other European countries. Below are my observations regarding the differences between how interpreters on two continents approach public history. -
Telling Stories in Someone Else’s House: Heritage Areas & Public History
Posted on April 12, 2009 | No CommentsHistory can make its presence known in just about any public space. Consider the commotion on Grafton Common in Massachusetts. It seems that in May of 1654, the general court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony approved John Eliot’s request for an Indian praying village at Hassanamesit (Grafton, Massachusetts). Centuries later, the discovery that the original landscape, still wooded, was up for sale brought an unusual coalition together to ensure that this rare and significant landscape would be preserved forever. Some remarkable archaeology has discovered that the Nipmuc presence continued on this landscape well into the 19th century, long after the Nipmuc people were thought to have vanished. The celebration of the preservation of the praying village at Hassanamesit was a result of many hours of community members getting together, forging new relationships, doing some of the tough work of overcoming old history, and making new history. -
Community History in the Canadian Rockies: Students Combine Stories and Technology to Map Their Town
Posted on April 6, 2009 | No CommentsIt started beneath the earth, 175 million years ago. The Pacific tectonic plate inched under the North American plate. Land masses collided and enormous slabs of rock were forced upwards—the Rocky Mountains. Backdrop, destination, and testament to the area’s rich geological and social history, the snow-capped peaks surround the town of Banff in Alberta, Canada, and occupy a central spot in its past—and present. -
The Poetics of Interpretation
Posted on April 1, 2009 | 13 CommentsIn Interpretation for Park Visitors, William Lewis introduces the concept of the interactive threesome. In describing this dynamic “Y” intersection where You the interpreter meets Your visitors at Your site, Lewis inspires the poet in me to see the similarities between the interpretive and poetic processes. After all, at the heart of interpretation is a poetic sensibility that is dynamic, creative, and inspiring.