Katie Buesch

Election Day

Today was election day in the United States.

I woke up early to walk my dog around the neighborhood and the sky was red- it reminded me of the saying “red in the morning, sailor take warning”.

I drove downtown and on the side of the road there was an ambulance and firetruck tending to a person laying face up on the sidewalk- one of the workers laid a thin grey blanket over the person while another tore open a plastic bag containing a black body bag.

The wind picked up in the afternoon and it reminded me of a time back in 2017 when I did a dive into learning about wiccan-new-agey spirituality traditions- wind can be a cleansing force or a harbinger of change, perhaps those are two sides to the same coin.

On a whim, perhaps to help keep positive and avoid looking up election results, I searched “voting” in Spotify and had the chance to listen to some songs that were, perhaps very tangentially at times related to voting. In general they included some peppy tunes, empowerment songs, and Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You”.

“Where is the Love?” by the Black Eyed Peas also came on and it struck me how differently that song hits now compared to when I first heard it around 2010. Today, it made me feel hopeless. My own life is going pretty good, much better than I could have hoped for but in the larger scheme of things, it really feels like we’re on the precipice of a shift in this country while at the same time regressing to fear. We’ve been teetering on the edge, multiple edges, for years now and I keep wondering if this is finally the shakeup that throws us over the edge. Perhaps we already went over that edge years ago and we’ve been tumbling ever since. Rome didn’t fall in a day after all.

I was able to see the documentary “Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project” today too. For the first time in my adult life, I saw a video recording from a news broadcast of the second plane hitting the World Trade Center on 9/11. There was also a clip of Obama’s acceptance speech from when he became President-Elect back in 2008. Seeing the clips on election night 2024, sixteen years later, was surreal given how much has happened in those ensuing years.

The sunset today painted the sky red, recalling the saying “red at night, sailor’s delight”. Even the atmosphere isn’t too sure where it stands.

We’re in for a few likely rocky weeks so buckle up, drink plenty of water, check in on your friends, and maybe go sit in the sun for a little bit. We’ll regroup on the flipside.

-Katie B

Dispatches from Grad School

I’m more than halfway through my third semester of grad school and there is a light at the end of the tunnel- I have one full semester of classes left, followed by two internships and my thesis, which equates for me to about a year and some change. Thesis planning is in full swing, internships are being lined up… and I’m already plotting what I’m going to do with my spare time on the flip side.

When people ask me about grad school, I describe it as a really expensive book club- the courses are mainly seminars with discussions after all. It might be a book club on steroids- I don’t know of any book club that expects its participants to read sixteen books all about Reconstruction in sixteen weeks for instance.

Overall, I have actually enjoyed the experience for the most part. Some classes have been better than others, but they’ve all exposed me to things I might have not otherwise been exposed to, including books, topics, and ideas, and that’s probably one of my favorite parts about it. The cohort has been pretty great also, there are people at many different stages in their lives and careers from straight out of undergrad to older folks coming back around to graduate school to advance their careers. I do think I’ll miss it when it is all said and done, but I’ll be happy to have had the experience and happy to move along to other things.

This fall, an article I cowrote with members of the Eureka Chinatown Project for the Humboldt Historian will be hitting shelves in Humboldt County. It’s a combination of two ideas that I’ve been mulling over for a while: one about the history of the Eureka Chinatown Project and one about the Fowl mural painted by David Young Kim. I wrote up the Fowl article first and sent it over to the ECP group which spurred the creation of the longer history of the ECP article. I was happy to hear some of the more active ECP folks were interested in picking up the pen to write the history and recent work portion, including ECP founder Brie Mirjah and Vicki Ozaki, Amy Uyeki, and Sheri Woo who were also members of the original ECP team. Shoutout to Alex Service for coordinating the effort with the Historian editor, Wendy Platt Hill. I have other Eureka Chinatown article ideas jangling around in my head that I’ll probably sit down to hash out hopefully this summer or during one of my upcoming trips north.

Tomorrow I’m headed to the State Library to do some research in their archives. They have a few collections related to Chinese history in California including immigration of women, wage payment, and Chinese operated stores. The California State Library has its own publication called The Bulletin that publishes articles about research using California State Library materials so I’m looking into writing something for that, and the research will likely help with my reconstruction of Chinese daily life in Eureka by using information from elsewhere to fill in some of the broader blanks in Eureka’s context.

One thing that I have been thinking a lot about is that I wish I was better at cramming writing and research into my daily life, even while in grad school. I haven’t been doing nearly enough work on the Eureka Chinatown research for example. I was hoping that my thesis would allow me to really dig deep and get more of that done, but because writing a book about Eureka’s Chinatown wouldn’t necessarily be helpful in the long run for my career trajectory, I’m going a different route. I ruminate a bit on my sad lack of progress on Chinatown research, then remember I’m in school and have a lot else going on, then ruminate on how maybe I should realign my priorities to be able to accomplish the things I want to do, despite the fact that that list is really dang long. It’s times like this I wish I was retired and could pursue these interests full time, but I’m only what, 28? Lil too early for retirement. If only I had joined the FIRE movement when I was born!

When I’m driving from place to place, I’ve been listening to the podcast Drafting the Past. I found out about it while at the American Historical Association conference in San Francisco in January, which was awesome by the way. Drafting the Past is an interview show where the host interviews different authors with a history background (most of whom are writing history, but also some who are fiction authors who have training in history). Its been refreshing to hear about all the different ways that different people write history but one thing that keeps coming up for me at least is how these folks are fitting writing into daily life. Most of the interviewees are professors, many are also parents. They all have different strategies – some set aside time every day to write, some write in any spare moment they have using talk to text or various word processors on phones or computers, some have to set aside solid blocks of time to write with no distractions.

Coincidentally, I am enrolled for a non-credit class that provides a (zoom-based) space for people to come together every other Saturday for a block of 3 hours and work on projects, which I’ve found has been incredibly helpful for me. I can get by writing or research done, in this case for my thesis, then anything else done throughout the week is just extra. It makes me feel like the process is slow going, but steady progress is still progress, even if it feels slow. It is really easy to forget that.

It’s getting late and it’s time for me to log off so I’ll leave it at that for this evening. Progress is progress, even if it is slow. Goodnight everyone.

Looking Up at the Border Wall

Today, I got to see the US-Mexico border wall in person. At a far distance, it was already a pretty insidious landmark in the distance, a neat and orderly scar across the chaparral of southeastern San Diego county. It got taller and taller as we approached, leaving the pavement of Campo for the dirt road leading right to the wall. I got a picture with the Pacific Crest Trail Southern Terminus, I’d consider a landmark of American freedom and purpose, with that monolithic wall in the background.

I was surprised that you can just walk right up to the wall- with the exception of some Border Patrol agents who cruised by us to see what we were up to, access to the wall is open, you can stand next to it, touch it, stick your arm through it, heck, one person said they even scaled 10-15 feet of it once before sliding back to the ground just to show they could for a (cringey in my mind) photo op. How many people actually climbed that 40 foot or so wall, went over, and fell to the hard packed gravel ground, and are seriously injured or even killed? We as Americans have the freedom to jokingly climb the wall- other people do it because they have to, no matter the consequences.

I kept my comments to myself- one of the people in attendance had a husband who worked for the Border Patrol and it didn’t seem to be the right time or place for that kind of discussion- but it did stick with me, the sadness of seeing that huge, ugly wall. It did not make me feel safe, it made me feel a lot of other things though- angry that the money spent on that eyesore could have been used for dozens of other things, like improving the immigration process so people in danger and seeking asylum didn’t have feel their only option was to immigrate illegally. The wall made me feel sadness for the animals that could no longer migrate across these fake lines in the sand. This wall makes some people feel safe, but it doesn’t protect us from the violence already here from white nationalists, Neo-nazi, incels, and the like, and I feel fear of the continuing onslaught of violence perpetrated by those groups. I thought about the communities split by the fence, communities that have moved freely across the border long, long before the ideas of borders even existed, and I reflected on their efforts taking place with this iron curtain as a backdrop.

The permanence of that wall makes me think of a poem we once read in high school titled “Ozymandius” by Percy Bysshe Shelley. The gist of the poem is that the narrator heard a story from a traveler about a half buried and rather decrepit looking statue in the desert of a former king named Ozymandius. At the base of the statue is the text:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
“Ozymandius” by Percy Bysshe Shelley.

One interpretation of the poem can be summed up in another quote or adage I guess:

Man Plans, God Laughs
Yiddish proverb, but also sometimes attributed to various sections of the Bible.

I wonder if in a couple hundred years, the border wall will go the way of Ozymandius- forgotten and abandoned posts in the desert. However, it’d probably be even better if it came down before then, and this country began to lead with compassion instead of fear.

One can dream (and fight).

Upcoming Presentation and New Publications!

Well, so much for posting here regularly! I’ve been keeping busy though, and have some exciting announcements.

I’ll be presenting on December 17 at 10 am as part of the San Diego Chinese History Museum‘s Chinese American Experience and Beyond Speaker Series! The presentation is titled “Eureka’s Chinatown and the Curious Case of Wing Hing v. the City of Eureka”. The presentation will be taking place over Zoom, and you can register to attend here. I believe this will be recorded as well so if you sign up but can’t make it, you can view the recording afterward. This is big! This is a really popular speaker series with folks tuning in from around the world and I’m excited to be able to share my research on such a big stage.

I recently finished up the last class I needed to start my Masters program and the final project was to create a HistoryPin collection based on research conducted over the course of the semester. This collection, titled Eureka’s Historic Chinatown Businesses is now live! The link is also on my Current and Past Work page as well. I hope to add more pins to this and related collections to provide another outlet for the Eureka Chinatown story and the story of the Eureka Chinatown Project.

One thing I wasn’t able to invest much time into in over the course of the HistoryPin project was a thorough investigation of the Census records for Chinese residents in Eureka and Humboldt County as a whole. When I dipped my toes in, there were some very interesting stories that popped up so I hope to spend more time this winter working on transcribing and analyzing those records. Transcribing is a great rainy day activity after all!

Back in mid-November, the Eureka Chinatown Project made the front page of the LA Times. How crazy is that! I was interviewed for part of the story, and the visual aids from the ECP walking tours I started back in May 2021 appeared in the article, along with quotes from dear friends Brie D’Souza and Jeannie Pfaelzer. Many other Eureka Chinatown Project folks worked behind the scenes to meet with the journalist and photographer to put together that article and we were all blown away at the result. It’s amazing to see this work resonating on a level like that.

Coming down the road, I have applied to present another class on Eureka’s Chinatown for OLLI at Cal Poly Humboldt in the spring so keep an ear out for that. With grad school looming large, I may be stepping back from doing big presentations for a bit, but we’ll be playing that by ear.

Happy holidays! -Katie

A Trip to the Museum

On Sunday, I went to the Crocker Art Museum with some folks from Meetup- if you haven’t heard of it, it’s an app for people to meet new people through group activities. On the third Sunday of the month, the museum hosts a “pay what you will” day so we took advantage of that for a visit. Art museums aren’t usually my scene, they make me a bit sleepy and my eyes cross after a while of seeing so many things for hours on end. There was one room at the Crocker though that caught my attention- I didn’t catch the name of the wing, though, I’ll try to get back over there and update this post with that info (and perhaps some better pictures). I was delighted to see a few paintings that aligned with my research. The interpretation was also interestingly done, with the inclusion of the “Look for” section that for some paintings almost made it like an I Spy- much more fun for the person who might not really be an art person but is there anyway.

The image below, “Chinese Restaurant”, can also be viewed online here via Google Arts and Culture.

Theodore Wores was only 24 when he painted “Chinese Restaurant”!

I unfortunately forgot to take a picture of the title card for the image below, and it’s zoomed in counterpart. It is a scene from 1874 San Francisco, around the area of 500 Sansome St. None of these buildings still stand today, as this area is in the Financial District of San Francisco. I was surprised that Chinese workers were pictured, however they do feature some strongly stereotyped features, particularly in how their eyes are drawn, when compared to the “Chinese Restaurant” image above.

One thing that is interesting in this zoomed in section is the man with the carrying pole or a yeo-ho. In 1870, a law was passed in San Francisco, the “sidewalk ordinance” banning the use of these tools- a law that almost solely impacted Chinese immigrants in the area. The 1870s were a period of economic depression, and there was a spike in laws against various Chinese tools and customs during this time, something called “legislative harassment”. A more complete list of these various laws and even some of the court cases that ruled them unconstitutional can be seen here. It’s interesting that the artist in the painting above depicted the men with a carrying pole while that tool was likely still outlawed at the time.

An example of a man carrying a *yeo-ho*. Courtesy of the Cal Poly Humboldt Special Collections.

Overall, a nice Museum, and now that I found out they accept NARM (North America Reciprocal Museum Association) membership cards, I’ll probably head down there again soon to spend some more time in the room these paintings were in and maybe stare at the landscapes a little longer. I do enjoy landscape paintings…

Yosemite! Dang near life size! (for real, this painting was probably… 10 or 12 feet long and 6-8 feet tall)

Want to be a NARM and ROAM member too? You might after seeing the staggering list of places that you can get in for free (or cheap) with a NARM and ROAM membership card. California State Train Museum? Sign me up! My “Home Museum” is the Clarke Historical Museum, which offers reciprocal membership on their $100 Patron membership tier- A lot of other museums have reciprocal membership on their $150-$200 or higher membership level, so the Clarke Membership is a good deal if you’re looking for the NARM and ROAM benefit- plus it’s supporting a small local history museum doing some great work in Humboldt County 🙂

Drumroll Please…

After a few weeks of wondering, I received my email today that I was accepted to Graduate School at Sacramento State! Yay!

The last few weeks at work has been emotionally taxing for a few reasons, so this made my day for sure, and maybe even my week- although I do get to go hang out with a coworker’s puppy later this week, so that should also be a bright spot. I’m excited for the opportunity to have discussions with people, read good books, write, and continue working on my Chinatown research alongside other people that are also excited about doing history.

I know I may be idealizing a bit- plenty of folks roll into grad school still not 100% sure of what they’re interested in, and there will probably still be people trying to coast their way through. I’ve come to learn there will basically always be people doing that kind of thing no matter where you go. Despite that, I am excited and eager to get started and make some progress forward, and work towards getting back into the field of history, whether that’s in museums, grants, or something else entirely.

Besides my Chinatown work, I’ve had the opportunity in my day job to work on an outreach program to share information about the grants program I work for with Tribes- our statutory mandate for the program includes that we serve Federally and State recognized tribes, but none ever apply, so I’m doing some research to better understand why and propose changes to make the program more accessible. Despite grants administration definitely not being the field I thought I’d be working in, I am glad for the opportunity to make some change and promote equity in the program. It’s been a bit of a teaching opportunity as well- some of the questions I’m asking haven’t really been asked before, but I’m lucky to be working with folks who are open to thinking in different ways, have connections to share, and are willing to learn more.

That’s the update for now!

Geography of Chinatown

The Chinatown related project I’ve been working on most recently has been “Geography of Chinatown.” It’s for a Public History seminar class that I’m enrolled in, where the main assignment is to use the website HistoryPin to highlight a historically underrepresented community by literally putting them on the map with images and other multimedia and narrative to tie the story of a community together. I immediately thought about recent conversations around the future of the Eureka Chinatown project, which consisted of thoughts about creating an AAPI Chamber of commerce or some other support network for AAPI businesses in Eureka and Humboldt County. Earlier this year, I had been working on a research project to better understand the businesses that were impacted by the Wing Hing v. City of Eureka court case (which later became an article in the Humboldt Historian), so businesses were on my mind.

An unnamed vegetable peddler, Cal Poly Humboldt Special Collections

There was so little information available or compiled on Chinese businesses specifically in Eureka, including their owners and operators, what they dealt in, and even where they were located. In an ongoing quest to humanize Eureka’s historic Chinese population, I figured this would be a good place to start, since businesses are frequently referred to in things like government documents, which tend to contain information on populations who might not have their own extant records. I was beginning this journey with the Wing Hing v. City of Eureka court documents, one advertisement for “Kang Hop Co” which thankfully had a vague address, and the 1886 Sanborn maps for Eureka- unfortunately the year after the expulsion happened.

I went over to FamilySearch, good ol’ Mormons and their extensive and free to access database, and began sifting around their documentation for 1870 and 1880 census records in Eureka, writing down names, occupations, and ages. Unfortunately, the records didn’t list home addresses or work addresses. Many of the Chinese people listed though worked as servants or cooks, and were listed in the same households as non-Chinese individuals, indicating they were live-in cooks or servants, so my next step will be to try and track down the non-Chinese inhabitants, located their homes or workplaces, and map those with the information on the Chinese worker who lived there. I was surprised to see that some of the congregate living areas were actually outside of individual homes- there were a number of Chinese workers associated with a nearby shingle mill for instance, and some associated with a “Hospital and Almshouse” which I need to locate still.

Page of the 1880 Census from FamilySearch. Kang Hop and his household are listed on the top three lines of people recorded.

A major breakthrough came from Eureka Chinatown Project member and friend Vicki Ozaki- If you’ve seen the annotated Sanborn Maps in any of the presentations I’ve done, those have come from Vicki. I love that map as it has made a huge difference in the interpretation we can do about the Chinatown story and I will always be thankful to Vicki for her work in assembling it. I had posed a question to the Eureka Chinatown Project email group and Vicki sent over a Sanborn Map that she had found nestled in a collection related to a lawsuit about the Eureka waterfront and who owned certain areas. That collection contained the maps that we had all been hoping to find but didn’t think existed: the 1884 Sanborn Map for Eureka. Not only was it the map from before the expulsion, but a number of Chinese businesses were specifically labeled as Chinese owned. With that map, we went from knowing the specific locations of three businesses to knowing the locations of nine Chinese owned businesses.

Chinatown and nearby “Chinese Washouse” and “Washee” (which has been determined to be “Tung Sing Washing and Laundry”, shown below)

Chinatown is outside of this image, to the right.

Work continues on this project, but it has been a really interesting one so far. I’ve reached out to railroad historians to try and determine where Chinese workers who were listed as working on the railroad might have been working during the 1880 census and calling around to track down testimonies of Chinese businesspeople who were part of the Wing Hing court case. The testimonies were passingly mentioned in the work of a past local historian, Lynwood Carranco, and unfortunately they have proven to be incredibly hard to locate despite supposedly being located at the County courthouse, a few blocks from where Chinatown once stood.

There are a lot of things that I probably won’t ever be able to find out for certain- census records are noticeably incorrect or incomplete likely due to language and cultural barriers so it can be impossible to track people before they came to Humboldt, or after they were removed, and missing business records means we might not know for sure who owned or worked at a given business. Piecing together what we do have is more than what we did have, and is progress towards a better understanding of this community on the eve of a historical, tragic event.

Stay tuned for more updates- you can subscribe to my blog on the homepage of this website to get automatic updates on my progress!

An update…

It’s been a few months since I last wrote! Since then, it’s been a bit of a whirlwind with a new job, new places to explore, new friends to make, and hobbies to get back into- like Archery! As time has passed, it’s been becoming more and more clear that this was the right move to make., even if on occasion I find myself asking if it was.

Since May, I’ve:

Shot in three archery competitions, and placed 2nd in one and 3rd in the other two (after only picking a bow back up in May and the first shoot was in June!) I’ve been able to reconnect with people I knew in college as well since luckily some of them are still in the sport- and are going to help me retune my bow thank goodness.

Had my 4th article published in the Humboldt Historian (“The Curious Case of Wing Hing”, which you can check out over here).

Started class at Sacramento State, the last class I need to be able to get into the graduate program there. The class is project-based, so I’ll be (of course) doing something about Eureka’s Chinese population. I’m looking at researching Chinese owned businesses and Chinese workplaces in Eureka. Even thought I’m only a short way into the research, a few very interesting things have come up so far. I’ll likely write an article on it, so stay tuned.

Made some new friends! I’ve started a tradition with one of them to check out restaurants that feature foods from places outside of the US. We tried to pick a place that had food neither of us had tried before and the only thing we could come up with was Eastern European. It was really darn good. Sour cream with everything! I also hosted a tea party for something like 24 people in a park with my vintage tea cups, and everything. That was a lot of fun. I’ll be doing another one for Halloween in October and am really looking forward to it. I also split 10 rolls of sushi at a place with three other people and holy cow I think it will be a while before I eat sushi again because that was A LOT.

Read every day for 125 days (and counting). The local library here had a reading challenge where if you read a certain number of books over the course of the summer you’d get a tote bag and a free book. I read every day, won the book and tote bag and just kept on going. My stats are kinda crazy- 6472 minutes, 5554 pages, 26 books read (thanks Beanstack for keeping my count going) . Wowza!

I’ve also been working on the sign that will accompany the Clarke Museum’s “The Sun Set Twice on the People that Day” Mural by the late Brian Tripp and the Karuk Mural Team. The Mural went up in 2021 but a sign never got made- I had been working on it when I moved away, but luckily the Clarke team has given me the green light to do the footwork on putting it together. Perhaps that will be complete by the beginning of 2023, but I’m not sure when it would be hung up due to budget and all. You can help support that project by sending some money over to the Clarke Museum with the note “Mural Sign”.

Summer flew by and I’m looking forward to a more restful fall- I was go-go-go most days and need a break! The fall and winter is when I’m more of a homebody, cozied up under a pile of blankets with tea and a book and perhaps some more research- I was recently asked to help with some introductory research for the Folsom Historical Society’s coming Chinese Heritage Museum, which is really exciting. I look forward to digging more into that in the coming months.

I want to do more to keep this website updated more regularly, especially this blog. Time gets away from me but I want to prioritize it. You can help me out by subscribing to help keep me accountable!

Talk to you soon 🙂

Moving On

Two weeks from today, I’ll be spending my second night in Sacramento, my new home for the foreseeable future. After almost 8 years in Humboldt County, I am moving onward and… southward.

It’s going to sound ridiculous, but one of the main catalysts for this was running into a family friend at Christmas in 2021. She mentioned she was going to be going to graduate school- or was at least applying to. Grad school had been on my list for so long, and, having a slight competitiveness streak, I seriously asked myself “Why are you not in graduate school? You graduated college a whole year early for goodness sake.” It’s not really the best reason to go to graduate school, but it was a kick that I needed to seriously pursue the idea while evidence piled up around me that it was time to move on.

I had been feeling stuck- in my relationships, work, mentally, emotionally- for a while. Some months would be better than others, some weeks would be better than others. Sometimes I felt that I’d stay at my museum job forever, raising wages enough that turnover rates would go down and we’d finally get a dehumidifier for the Native wing. Then, other times, the leaking roof and relentless politics would make me want to bury myself in the native plant garden until huckleberries sprouted out of my hair. These ups and downs aren’t unusual to me- howdy there depression and anxiety my old friends- but I began to realize as I more seriously thought about graduate school that while I liked my job and the experiences I had, I wanted to be in a situation where I was doing more of the stuff that really got me excited like leading tours and writing research articles that open people’s minds to the transformative nature of historical understanding, and a little less of the relentless administrative work of running a non-profit. I loved the flexibility in my job, but some days I would get home, walk Parker and fall over exhausted from the mental and physical demands of the job. I’m what, 26? Is this all there is? Man, I hope not.

My work with the Eureka Chinatown Project was sometimes the thing I needed to get myself through the day- research that had a purpose, that would be used to enlighten the public and broaden perspectives. It was exciting to find the next news article that brought up all new questions or made me laugh (one local paper, the Ferndale Enterprise had beef with the Eureka papers at the time and made no attempts to cover their disdain for their neighbor- a sentiment that I’ve heard from many locals is still a thing to this very day, almost 140 years later). Through the History Method and Theory course I took, I dove deeper into a key aspect of the 1885 expulsion: the lawsuit filed in 1886 against the city for reparations due to the Chinese residents who were expelled. (This story will likely be in the Fall 2022 Humboldt Historian and is the subject of a talk I’ll be giving for the San Diego Chinese Historical Museum/SDSU, see here for more info on that).

Piecing these interests together, I found out that if I wanted to keep working on this aspect of history in the Western US, I’d need to stick around California and where better to go than Sacramento, with its renown history MA program, relatively affordable cost of living and proximity to the legendary (in my mind) California State Railroad Museum. I determined I’d work on getting a job in the area and then put together where I’d go from there in terms of taking the last class I need to apply for the MA program. I began applying at Museums, and when I didn’t get call backs, or the job postings looked suspiciously out of date, I got kind of desperate and began applying for seasonal State Park jobs.

I had done the seasonal life for two seasons, and while it was at times interesting and other times pretty destabilizing (granted, I was just out of school and going through a bit of an existential crisis while living in a bit of a death trap house), I figured it would be a way in the door back into State work. I figured do some Seasonal time, work on school, then slide my way into the museum section of the State Parks with the “optional” Masters that so many of the job postings requested. It didn’t turn out that way. It went surprisingly better.

My friend Erika was a bit surprised when I told her I was applying for bottom of the barrel entry level jobs. “dang girl, aim high! You are so worth it! You led a museum through a pandemic and brought it out better on the other side, you deserve so much more than a seasonal job.” I didn’t really take her advice and ended up applying for the seasonal jobs anyway, where the interview committee encouraged me to apply for some other jobs in the same office.

Low and behold, I land a permanent (still entry level) job, but one that has capacity for growth. A friend in Parks recited the whole progression of the job for me, from where I was to the peak of the classification, which was Superintendent of Parks. The office culture was stable, extremely low turnover, usually from people retiring or getting promoted, with opportunities for travel, the ability to work from home, and those sweet State benefits. And, most importantly, it would get me to Sacramento in the summer with time to sign up for my last class before I could apply for the MA. Pieces fell into place, and then time simultaneously took off and slowed down at the same time.

I started packing in early April, made my announcements to the surprise of my coworkers and colleagues, and began training others in the office to pick up the things that would need doing in the inevitable gap between my leaving and the next person starting. My lunch schedule suddenly filled up, along with my weekends. I saw less of my boyfriend and more of my research, friends I hadn’t seen in a long time, and social media. I felt more connected than I had in weeks, maybe months. Friends began helping me make connections in Sacramento by introducing their friends to me over Facebook Messenger so there might be at least one friendly face waiting in Sacramento for me when I arrived. Many promised to visit- which I highly doubt, it’s something like 5 hours one way to Sacramento, and some even offered to become pen pals- also a bit of a long shot, but I appreciate the effort. Between school, the possibility of getting back into archery, volunteering at a museum, walking Parker, and some research I’d keep working on for the Eureka Chinatown Project, I don’t have to worry about not having enough to do or not being able to meet people and make new friends. Sacramento is no Humboldt Redwoods (where I was so isolated I made some pretty bizarre decisions in dating), and definitely no Eureka with its bunches of humans trying to eck out a living in a precarious place with an even more precarious economy and housing situation.

I began to let go, acknowledging that each place I went, it very well might be the last time that I see that place for a few months, years, or ever. I’ve never had a terminal diagnosis, but if something were to happen and I knew I was on my way out, I figure it might have a similar peaceful feeling of letting go of the things that are beginning to move away from you. I however have the benefit of knowing exactly when my last day will be in this town, and I also understand that unless Humboldt County is swallowed up in a tsunami, this place will still be here, working in its funky dysfunctional way and changing. This place will remain, but it surely won’t be the same. Knowing that, I’m also ok with the fact that while I’ve grown with this place, it’s time for me to move somewhere else and grow some more alongside a new shore in a new place.

I wouldn’t say I’m sad. I wouldn’t say I’m happy. I’m not leaving here angry at this place for crushing me, although I could say that we had some near misses. I am content.

It’s time for moving on.

Back to School

[This is from back in January- I hadn’t made my plans to go to graduate school known back then and, well, living in a small town, word gets out one way or another, so I was being cautious. Now that people know that is the rapidly approaching plan, it’s probably ok to publish this post.]

Tomorrow, I am going back to school.

Sort of. I’m taking one class- it’s on how to do proper historical research.

When I was in college, I was in the unusual situation of only being in school- I didn’t have a job, school was my job. I really enjoyed being in school, even having to run from the top of one hill to the top of another in 10 minutes to make my classes. Well, maybe not that. The rest of it was pretty enjoyable though.

It’s hard to believe that I got out of college in 2017, almost five whole years ago at this point. I told myself I would go work for a few years, maybe one or two then go back to school when I knew what I wanted to get my masters in. The timeline stretched out a bit- I had flexibility in my job and my interests changed multiple times- and then of course the global pandemic. It’s now pretty apparent that I have the length of time in a museum to qualify for jobs elsewhere, but not the degree so now is the time.

One catch though- my background isn’t in history. The graduate advisor I’ve been speaking with gave me two courses I should plan on taking so I could get into the Masters program, one class being this history method and theory class and one being the senior seminar (sometimes called capstone) class for history undergraduates. Luckily, I know the teachers teaching the courses so it’s not a huge undertaking to get all signed up for them. It is a bit funny, showing up at a history cohort in their last semesters and being like “I am in this class now, hello classmates”.

While making dinner tonight, it crossed my mind a bit frivolously- what am I going to wear on the first day? It’s tradition for me to have a good first day outfit mostly for myself to honor the excitement of a new semester. This pandemic has really cramped my style though. I used to wear dresses on the daily, and now my go-to is jeans and a t-shirt. Part of that is because I finally got tired of being cold and not wanting to change clothes between warmer clothes to walk Parker and work clothes, then back to warm clothes for the evening walk.

I could go bold with my Museums are Not Neutral t shirt, or go professional with a nice blazer and stick out like a sore thumb in laid back Arcata, or just jeans and a t-shirt to blend in with everyone else. Backpack or no? Maybe I’ll break out some of the earrings I’ve been buying on Instagram. Shoes- likely running shoes since I’ll have to park far away to avoid having to pay for parking and schlep myself all the way up to the second floor of a building on the top of the main hill on campus. The last time I made the hike up there, likely 2019 at this point I realized I really needed to do more walking. Maybe tomorrow will be a little better with all the hiking I’ve been doing with Parker.

One of the textbooks for the class arrived at my house a few days ago and I eagerly sat down to read some of it- the other three should show up tomorrow. It feels a bit like Christmas Eve. I figure this time around, attending a class while also working full time, is going to be rather different than when I was a full time student, but it’ll be a good trial run for me to see how I can make it work, as I’ll likely have to do that when I get into the actual Masters program.

Here’s to honoring the excitement.