1. Create a User Account for musemoftheperson.org

• Under Share Your Story on the navigation panel at the right side of the page, click Register.
• Enter a Username of your choice and your E-mail address.
• Click the blue “Register” button. A password will be e-mailed to you.
• Click on the link in the e-mail message to log in to your new account.

2. Create a “Post” of Your Story

When you log in, your Dashboard page appears.

• Click Posts on the left side of the page.
• Under Posts on the left side of the page, click Add New.

The Add New Posts page appears.

• In the empty field near the top of the page, enter the title of your story.
• Use the larger field below to type, or paste from a file you have copied, the text of your story.

Note: Be sure to compose your story and save it on your computer before you post it on the museumoftheperson.org site. You can write your story using software such as Word, or a plain text editor (for example Textpad or Notepad). This back-up file of your story is a good safeguard.

3. Format Your Story; Add Images, Media Files, and Hyperlinks

You can now format and spellcheck the text of your story with the menu of icons. (For example select/highlight a word you would like in bold and click on the “B” button.)

To insert a photo in your story, click the image icon on the Upload/Insert bar. Click Select Files. You can then browse for a photo file on your computer, highlight it, and click Open. A window with the photo and its information appears. Optional: Choose the image size, placement, and enter a description. Click Insert into Post.

You can insert a hyperlink to a webpage or file on another site.

• Select the text that describes what you are linking to and click on the  link icon.
• Type in the full internet address and click Insert.

Under the Publish menu on the right side of the page, click Save Draft.

4. Preview Your Story

Now you can see what your story will look like, before you actually publish it.

• Under the Publish menu, click Preview.

Click the back arrow at the top left of the browser window to return to your post. If you want to change anything before you publish your story, you can continue editing. If you want to come back later to finish, just make sure you’ve saved your draft, then click Log Out at the top right of the page.

5. Publish Your Story

• Under Categories on the right side of the page, check the box for Text Stories. If your post is primarily a link to a multimedia file, check Audio Stories or Video Stories.

Optional: You can help make sure search engines can find your story if you choose some key words (tags) that describe your story’s content (for example, Kentucky, Lake County, orphans, 1960’s, Presbyterian, etc.).

• Enter your key words in the field under Post Tags on the right side of the page. If you don’t enter tags, the site manager may do so for you after you submit your story.
• Click Save Draft again.

Now your story post is finished. 

• Click the blue button that says Submit for Review.

Posts on the site are moderated to make sure no spam, etc. is published. Your story will be visible online as soon as possible, usually within one or two business days of submission.

Thank you for contributing to the Museum of the Person USA!

If you have questions about how to compose a post and use WordPress software, check their help information at “Getting Started with WordPress“.

E-mail other questions to the musemoftheperson.org site manager.

The Expo is being held at the Twin Lakes Recreation Center this year. Stay tuned for more details about how you can share a story on May 7th!

Listen to Streets of Bloomington 2009. E-mail Producer Jennifer Jameson.

(Monroe County, Indiana)
July 27, 2005

In connection with the 50th anniversary of the Monroe County Fair (at its present site), the Museum of the Person gathered memories from visitors of all ages. The “Story Tent” was erected on July 27, 2005, Senior Citizens Day. As our first Story Tent event, we learned much about the technical aspects of videorecording in public places, coping with the rain and wind, and recruiting people to talk and share stories.

WHAT I ENJOY ABOUT THE FAIR

Nancy Sage

“To me the fair is a sense of community. No matter what community you are a part of. I just think the fair just brings a sense of community. The farming aspects and from the cities and towns too. It’s just kind of a time to pull it all together.”

Jake VanDeventer

“You make a lot of friends at the fair. It’s a fun experience. You get to see all your friends from school you don’t see over the summer. Have fun, you’ve got the carnival and just everything.”

Boyd Haley

“I like the fair. I like almost all the food because it’s all good. I like going out to the commercial building because they have a lot of nice things that people will give away, especially rulers…Pretty much my entire family is in the fair on my dad’s side. I like coming out to the fair. It’s a fun experience and not many people can say that their family has been in the fair for so many years.”

FAIR MEMORIES

Rebecca Stuart

“I expect I pretty much grew up with it. It was 4-H, exhibiting products that we made during the summer and then we went to the fair…Our products then were clothing and baking. Not too much else because I didn’t take any animals to the fair. We didn’t have anything like as many projects as the 4-H kids have available to them now.”

Richard Stuart

“My earliest memory of the fair is being in town on Saturday when the fair was held on College Street and also on Kirkwood on the south side of the square. But my dad wasn’t interested and he was doing his shopping. I was just a small youngster with him. I saw the exhibits and the animals lined up but he wouldn’t stay for any of it so I didn’t have too much fair experience in my early years. We’ve had a lot of things happen out here, we could almost write a book…I guess about the funniest thing I could think of, we had a person that had a booth for marijuana for medicinal purposes. Of course they paid the money for the booth so we couldn’t rule them out. We got a lot of complaints from the public on it being there. One fellow came into the office one night where I was working. He was just raving about it. He said, ‘I’ll go down there and tear the thing out myself.’ I told him you better not. You’ll be in trouble with the police if you do. He thought a moment, he banged his fist on the counter and he said, ‘this is a free country, they shouldn’t be here’.”

Suzette Gilchrist

“I love the animals, especially the horses. All I wanted to do was be around the horses. I had several friends who were older and they would enter their horses. They were out in the arena and they were riding their horses. I thought that was the most wonderful thing I’d ever seen in my life.”

Charlee Lyon

“Coming to the fair like when I was four. I rode some little rides and I talked to the clown. I got my face painted and some balloons. It was really fun!”

WINNING RIBBONS

Rebecca Stuart

“My most exciting time at the fair was the year that I won the purple ribbon for cookies and discovered I was going to get to take them to the state fair. That was a pretty high point there.”

Ada Whaley

“We’d enter cakes or cookies or embroidery. We use to make a lot of cookies and breads, zucchini bread. I got blue ribbons on a lot of things I did.”

FAIR FOOD

Suzette Gilchrist

“Our church started the Dragon Ears booth because they needed a fund raiser…They’d have church members volunteer…My husband and I volunteered and we came out like 6:00 in the morning because you have to keep the vat going. I remember standing over this vat all day. I thought I’ve been cooked myself…I’ll never forget that vat. It’s just a basic dough, like a pizza dough. In fact many times they would have these hunks of dough and they would have to sit and rise. Then you would start to pull it. We had some people who could twirl them just like pizza. You didn’t want them as thin as pizza but you didn’t want them too thick because if they’re too thick, then they’re too doughy. Sometimes there would be holes. They put them in and you’re dipping and moving them down, just like a production line. When it gets to the end, they just dip them out and let them drain, sugar them down with cinnamon and sugar. It just melts and becomes really crisp and the taste is really good.”

Rebecca Stuart

“Don’t forget the cinnamon rolls. The first time he comes out here after the food vendors have been set up he’ll bring cinnamon rolls home that night.”

Richard Stuart

“I always tell people it’s embarrassing to go to another county fair and the cinnamon roll man sees me, calls me out by my first name.We pretty much have our favorites. We like the pork chops. We like the stand that has the pork barbeque sandwich. We have another stand that has taco salad and another stand that has a good meal every so often.”

International Day for Sharing Life Stories

Bloomington, Indiana Events
May 12-May 17, 2008

For details about events being held 5/12-17/08, please open this Word document: Schedule of Events: International Day of Life Stories in Bloomington, Indiana .

In 2001, Bloomington, Indiana area residents photographed subjects of personal significance in the everyday lives of people with disabilities. Participating photographers were people with and without disabilities, including those who had never before used a camera and those who had many years’ experience doing photography. Participants also told their stories following completion of the project. Contact the project coordinator.

To see the stories and photographs, click on the links below.

Don Robinson’s Story

Karin May’s Story

Cheryl Downs’ Story

Brenda Ikerd’s Story

Back to Projects page.

For my mother, my hair was always a big problem.
Every time I came near her, she whipped out a comb and tried to rearrange
my bangs. Even after I went away from college, the first thing she did
when I came home for a holiday was to sit me down and begin to brush the
hair away from my face. The real trouble was that my mother’s hair was
thick, a beautiful chestnut brown, glossy and long, with a natural wave.
She could arrange it in many ways, always attractive. My hair was baby
fine, thin and stubbornly straight. It was black and shiny, but there
was no way it could be arranged gracefully on my head-it always ended sticking
out in every direction. The Dutch bob I had worn all through my pre-teen
years was the way it would behave in a dignified manner.

When I was fifteen, it was inevitable that mother
would insist that I have a permanent. In 1935, the beauty shop business
was still in a primitive state. The instrument of torture which made curls
was a tall, floor-lamp shaped machine on wheels, with a series of electric
cables hanging form a pole. The wires ended in clamps, one of which fastened
to each strand of hair to be curled. After being shampooed, the hair was
dipped into an acrid, foul-smelling solution, wrapped in foil s trips and
clamped one at a time onto the machine. I was sure I would be electrocuted
when the machine was switched on, but all that happened was a sizzling
noise and a concentrated gust of the permanent wave solution that blew
into my face and caused an immediate headache and a feeling of nausea.
To distract myself, I began examining my surroundings. The room was large,
bare and clean. The ceiling was very high, covered with sculptured tin
tiles, painted white. Three sinks, and three chairs and tilted drainboards
were lined up against one wall, and three chairs with hooded dryers were
against another wall. The permanent wave machine to which I was fastened,
sat in a corner, next to a table of magazines. I realized I was a prisoner,
and visualized myself running away, flying down the street, still attached
to the machine, rolling along behind me. The ticking of the timer brought
me back to reality and to calm myself, I began sorting through the magazines.
I had never seen any of them before. Our reading at home was Harper’s and
Atlantic Monthly, American Magazine, and McClure’s and Delineator for fashions.
Here I found True Confessions Magazine, and several movie magazines. On
examination, I found them to be from another world, about which I knew
nothing. I could not identify with them in any way. My headache worsened
and I wondered if I could hold out. And then the timer finally rang.

The operator came over and slowly removed the
clamps, took off the foil papers one by one, and led me back to the shampoo
chair. After another quick shampoo I was taken to the mirrored table where
I had bid a fond farewell to my straight hair, a couple of hours before.
I looked, with horror, at my reflection-Kinky, wet black snakes crawled
all over my head. As the attendant combed my hair, pulling through snarls
and tangles, the odor was still stifling. When I was combed to the assistant’s
satisfaction , the stylist came in and began separating strands of hair
and forming them into pin curls, which he fastened with metal bobby pins,
all around my face, on top of my head and across the back of my neck. I
was led to a dryer machine, stuck under the hood, and left to toast. The
metal pins burned my head and my ears, and the heated permanent solution
steamed around my nose. My face began to swell up. (Many years later, this
was explained as an allergic reaction).

When the pin curls were combed out I had a head
as big as a basketball. It didn’t belong to the rest of me. But then the
stylist began doing clever things with a comb and brush, turning some of
the hair under, brushing some of it back, until it began t o look like
the pictures on the wall – but not like me. When he was done, he backed
off with a sigh, very pleased with his creation.

I felt strange as I walked home. I wasn’t me,
any longer. I really didn’t know how to act. By the time I got home, the
wind and scarf had tangled and mashed the arrangement created by the stylist.
It never looked the same again. Mother and I combed at it, brushed it,
and when mother wasn’t looking, I even took the scissors to it. I finally
got it under control to the point that I was willing to expose myself at
the basketball game. The first person I saw as I walked into the gym was
the man who had wor ked on my hair a few hours before. He looked at me,
looked away, and looked back again with a strange expression on his face.
I nodded at him, and quickly moved on. Later, his wife told my mother that
he hadn’t recognized me at first. He couldn’t imagine what I had done to
with my hair – it had looked perfect when I left the shop.

After a night’s sleep, I realized my new hair-do
was hopeless, and I combed it down as straight as I could. For weeks I
trimmed the ends, smoothed it out, and finally achieved about the same
effect I had before the permanent – a straight, short Dutch bob, smooth,
neat, uncomplicated.
My first permanent
was my last one.

Image courtesy of The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis

I was born in Bethlehem, PA, an historic community whose culture has been influenced by those who settled and named the town on Christmas Eve in 1741. Known as “Moravians,” they were descendents of those who followed the teachings of Czech reformer John Hus, one of the earliest leaders of the Protestant Reformation. While their roots date back to the 15th century, their numbers, today, are relatively small and, yet, their gentle approach to the Christian faith has had an impact on a variety of cultures and individuals up until the present time. Among the blessings which I received from my association with the Moravian Church is an understanding of religion as a matter of the heart. This, in turn, has given me the ability to approach the holy in a spirit of humility and love; to value the dignity and worth of every human being; to cherish simplicity; and to celebrate my faith and my life in song. Indeed, the gift of music has been integral in my own spiritual journey.

When I think of the ‘culture’ in which I grew up I can hardly distinguish between my family and my faith community. The two are closely intertwined. My home and my church were places where I was affirmed, challenged, corrected, nurtured and taught to care for the world and the people around me. Holidays were celebrated in both places in simple, but meaningful ways. A spirit of grace and good humor colored my days. Friends from distant places and varied cultures were always welcome in our home and often celebrated special occasions with us.

Education was valued highly by my parents and was also part of my heritage of faith. I was encouraged to ask questions, to challenge assumptions, to develop my own understanding of the divine nature. That approach led me to believe that life was a gift; that the world was full of wonders to be explored and enjoyed; that all people had within themselves the capacity for great good, as well as horrific evil. I came to understand that life, itself, is a journey and that there is a Power that can help us to find our way, if we keep our minds and our hearts open. Moments of quiet reflection alone, the reading of sacred texts, conversations with respected others, community worship – all of these things helped me to develop a personal relationship with the very Source of Life. The ability to celebrate my individuality, to understand my limitations, and to accept the fact that I am loved is what I have come to call ‘grace’ and it is that word which, most clearly, defines my own concept of God. The spirit of the historical figure named Jesus has been a unique force in my developing spirituality.

I would have to say that the most challenging experience of my life, up to this point, was coming to terms with the fact that I am gay. I did so in my early thirties, after five years of marriage, and after the birth of my two children. Major heart surgery and the death of my father would rank as significant moments in time, as well, but nothing compares in my life to the pain and confusion, the guilt and frustration, the ultimate liberation that came from acknowledging a sexual orientation that is different from the norm. It, quite literally, changed my world. And, yet, at the same time, it deepened my own faith, as I sought to utilize the variety of spiritual resources within and around me. What I had learned from growing up in the Moravian Church helped me to acknowledge and affirm my differences as a gay man; to forgive myself for mistakes I made and people I hurt in my ‘coming out’ process; and, ultimately, to find ways to help others who struggle with this unique life dynamic. This has, now, become my life’s work, coordinating an office that provides support for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender students and information on glbt issues to the campus where I work and the larger community in which I live. Over the twenty years in which I have done this kind of work, I have been privileged to know and learn from people from any number of cultures and races, and religious backgrounds. For me, all of this speaks of a Creator who values diversity.

What I would want others to know is that just as life, itself, is a journey, so, too, is the process of ‘coming out’. It is a matter of asking ultimate questions like: Who am I? Will I know love? How can I find my place in the world? In the midst of answering those questions for myself I would say that my own coming out has been a kind of ‘resurrection’ experience. After living in a closet (tomb) for a number of years, a place where darkness often reigned, I chose to come out into the light – to face my ‘demons’, as it were. I chose to learn more about who I really am and, for me, new life followed. Paraphrasing the words of another, I came to know the truth and that truth has set me free. My hope is that as others follow their own spiritual path they would know the joy that comes from such enlightenment.

Growing up I was raised Mexican Catholic. It may seem strange that I add the “Mexican” part, but for those who are familiar with Latin American history may know why. The world that I grew up in is a mixture of many cultures and beliefs. The dominant being that of Spain “Catholic” and indigenous groups from what we now know as Mexico. The Spanish priests who came to the new world made great efforts to convert the indigenous communities from their way of life. Needless to say, many of the indigenous people were not easily converted. At some point the Catholic Church discovered an easier way to make those changes by merging Catholic ideology with that of the indigenous.

When I think of the “culture” in which I grew up I can hardly distinguish between my family and my faith community. The two are closely intertwined. My home and my church were places where I was affirmed, challenged, corrected, nurtured and taught to care for the world and the people around me. Holidays were celebrated in both places in simple, but meaningful ways. A spirit of grace and good humor colored my days. Friends from distant places and varied cultures were always welcome in our home and often celebrated special occasions with us.

One example is that of my favorite holiday “The Day of the Dead”. While its name may give you images related to Halloween, it is not even close. Its origin goes back to Aztec celebrations dedicated to children and the dead held at the end of July/beginning of August. It was later moved by Spanish priests so that it coincided with the Christian holiday of “All Saints Day”. This is a family event where we welcome back to our homes the souls of the dead and visit their graves (often spending the night at their site). I remember family members telling us stories about those who had died and offering them their favorite dishes, flowers or something that was very special to them. It is an interaction with both the living and the dead in a way of recognizing the cycle of life and death that is the human existence and knowing that we are more than ourselves and that we are not soon forgotten.

Today while I still hold to some of the beliefs and traditions of my childhood, I would not consider myself a good Catholic. Mexican, Irish or any other. I guess I am what I have been referred to as a “Salad Bar Catholic”. While it is a crude way of articulating it, it is someone who practices what they like and leaves what they don’t. For example, I don’t put value in the church’s stand on abortion, homosexuality, status of women, fear in God or letting others interpret for me my faith. I do believe that spirituality is a process guided by charity, humility, honesty, selflessness, integrity and love to name a few. I do believe there is a higher being because I have seen God in its people.

While in India, Mexico, and Morocco, I had the opportunity to see three very different religions (Hindu, Christian and Muslim) be a powerful force in people’s lives. Religions while distinctive in their ideology, values, and practices realize a similar effect. In these countries stricken with great poverty and instability, its people found strength and courage in their faith to go on. Where their beliefs and faith is the one stability filled with unconditional devotion and love. I have also seen people in this world who give without limit, who put others before them, and who model what it is truly praiseworthy.

Now, I do want to point out that I am not so naïve to ignore that while there is goodness, there are also those who twist and corrupt religions, faiths or beliefs. But at the end, I believe that every God is a true God. Every faith and belief is a true faith and belief.

My earliest memory of the church is a received one. As Unitarians in the small town of Hobart, Indiana, in 1949, my parents brought me in my infancy to the congregation not to be “baptized”, of course, but to be welcomed. I am told that I was given a red rose to commemorate my entry into the church, which I accepted with a Whitmanesque yawlp, as the rose accidentally pricked my finger. Hence, from the beginning, I learned my church was a place for unbridled individual expression.

This emphasis on individual religious choice was supported on a regular basis as my brother and I, seeking release from Sunday morning shirt and tie would occasionally assert: “We’re Unitarians; we choose not to go to church today.” Our parents had no comeback for that.

Generally speaking, however, going to Sunday school was not burdensome. The church lay within a few blocks of home, easy walking distance through the always interesting small town neighborhood. It was the desirable small town atmosphere, with a New England-like Unitarian church that, indeed, drew my parents from Hyde Park in Chicago, with their three small children, to an 1850’s brick farmhouse only blocks from school and stores. I later learned from my mother the perhaps apocryphal tale that the Unitarian church in Hobart, founded in 1874, was a compromise alternative available to citizens tired of the feuding within the mainline Lutheran and Methodist congregations at the time.

Growing up Unitarian meant that as young people we were encouraged to be free thinking about religion. I recall studying a book titled “The Church Across the Street” and taking “field trips” to other churches and synagogues, with debriefing sessions afterwards. By junior high school we were seriously debating morality and politics – I remember being introduced in Sunday school to a map of South East Asia (Viet Nam) as a Freshman, in 1964. By 1967, I was fervently against the war, though on humanitarian and not specifically religious grounds.

As a junior in college at the University of Chicago, with a very high lottery number (34), I was fated to the draft and reclassified 1-A. As I felt it wrong to evade the draft through deception, I assembled a petition for status as a Conscientious Objector. While I could point to the influence of the church in forming my anti-war beliefs, the Unitarian church is not, per se, a “peace church” as it eschews dogma of all kinds. Hence, my petition for CO status was denied, yet my conscience was never fully tested as, soon after, General Hershey declared a complete moratorium on the draft (1972).

Now, thirty five years later, I see a war not unlike that encountered by my own young generation, with brave young people returning home in caskets and on stretchers, while arrogant leaders claim god to their side in a righteous battle of good and evil. It is, I think, this appropriation of religion for power on earth that I find most reprehensible about the entire institutional edifice of religion. Indeed, I feel that many people have turned away from “the church” for this very reason and sought a more personal spirituality.

For me, even spirituality, however, fills no void. Certainly I appreciate the mysteries of the universe. I have experienced total awe at the sight of Mt. Ranier, the power of a good thunderstorm, the blueness of the sky, the sweet smell of honeysuckle and the wonders of my daughter’s birth. I suppose these things and events might be considered spiritual in some sense, yet I see no compelling reason to lend transcendency to these things which are, in of themselves, in their own right, astonishingly present. These encounters leave me feeling not diminished but perhaps inconsequential while, paradoxically, enriched and privileged to have lived. Perhaps it is this notion of the numinous, the experience itself, unmediated by word, that, for some, approaches the spiritual. Yet, I believe the anchor of this experience lies in our humanity, not in our spirituality. It seems to me that the truth of the statement, “we are of one body”, lies in its literalness and, moreover, that this truth can provide the basis for a morality that can save the earth as we (should) know it. In this sense, religion is not part of my life. Faith in the potential goodness of people, however, is another story.

And death? For me, I foresee no transcendence beyond the memory of loved ones and the Einsteinian notion that matter can neither be created nor destroyed. My wish, as offered, again by Whitman:

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering.I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,I sound my barbaric yawlp over the rooftops of the world.The last scud of day holds back for me,
It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow’d wilds,
It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.

(from Leaves of Grass)