I don’t have a lot of connected, comprehensive thoughts right now, so here are some sort-of related but mostly disconnected ones:

Being passionate about deaccessioning is being passionate about access, about objectives, about intentionality, about mission, and about your audience. This conversation is about relevancy, impact, and divergence from a disorganized state of collecting (hoarding) and from using preservation as an excuse.

And I want it to keep happening, and I want to be a part of that happening.

I had my first experience a few days ago when I was introduced as a Collections Assistant, rather than a work-study student. Real life.

We carried several boxes of Guatemalan textiles into the library, and I sorted and counted them and tied them up in bags and put them in the freezer. And it was normal, as the job goes, but it was exhilarating.

At graduation our instructor’s speech, which was fantastic, mentioned my classmates’ research, in all it’s amazing variety. Sitting there I realized yet again that I have been surrounded by awesomely brilliant people these past two years. I am sad to see us all disperse, and I know the future will fling us even farther from each other, but I am honestly excited about everyone’s paths. We’re going to do awesome things with awesome people in awesome museums.

This summer I want to camp and hike and generally be outdoors in the Pacific Northwest, and I want to be with friends. It took me longer than I would have liked, to make these friends, but now we have the summer and I’m very grateful for it.

I just finished reading Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. I’m still ruminating on it, some, but I really enjoyed it. It reminded me how much I love words. It was the kind of book I could not put down and I haven’t read one of those in a couple of months. It was simply enthralling.

And I am watching Season 3 of Sherlock for about the fourth time.