This week, I’ve really been diving deep into the project I’m working on. The project, organizing and then digitizing a variety of photos taken by one John David Snyder, is based on a random box discovered by my site, The Detroit Historical Society, in their collection. As far as I’m aware, no one really knew it was there, but it seems to have been gifted to the society in 2014. It’s a really intriguing project, looking at an entirely different era of Detroit history. Unlike the popular image of today, this Detroit was rapidly constructing new housing in the immediate post-war years, industry was thriving, and countless local companies were building and painting these new projects. Eastern Michigan University wasn’t even called that yet in these photos! The society, ostensibly independent from the city but asked to take over custodial duties of certain things, works to hold important historical artifacts in the public trust. Unlike some organizations which focus their efforts on one specific community to better utilize all of their resources, the Detroit Historical Society tries to serve the entire public, to pretty remarkable success. In their collection, they have dozens of artifacts from a Michigan based beer company, century-old photographs of the city, letters from mayors to city councilmen and women, and board games and toys of the like that would have been used by Detroit children. However, a central problem of this trust is that the society oftentimes takes on more artifacts than it has the storage for, highlighting a burden to the work of preserving the history of the entire community.
Moving on to less depressing things than the knowledge that society doesn’t fund enough for the Historical Society to hold and preserve everything, I’ve been having great experiences with the rest of the cohort. The meetings as a group have led to some incredibly interesting conversations, while our outings have given me a chance to interact with others in a less formal professional setting. While it has been hard to organize all fifteen fellows, I’ve been able to experience the city and other events with a variety of others in the group, getting to know everyone, if not very well, at least enough to continue going out with them. We’ve also managed to organize larger get-togethers, including a potluck just this night where we all gathered in one of our apartments. The sharing of food, conversation, and awkward laughs (owing to a certain card game inappropriate for a professional blog post) really helped pull us together, if not as close friends, at least as a shared cohort with a desire to enact social change. I look forward to the experience of volunteering with others this Saturday and other plans we’ve made to explore more of the city and just interact outside of professional opportunities.
