Both metaphorically and literally that is.
I spent a shortened day in the archives today transposing the annual reports and minutes for the Physical Culture Committe responsible for the physical department at the Minneapolis YWCA during 1894-1896. The irony I find for most people digging in the archives is that you have no idea what the hell you’re looking for. It’s not like digging for treasure (Michal was right!) because when you’re digging for treasure X marks the spot, right? I did find some interesting stuff though. As some may know I’m looking for connections between sports and performance. Yesterday I found out that the YWCA held an exhibition of their classes at the Lyceum Theatre. I also found out (not in the archives) that Dudley Allen Sargent was originally an acrobat in the circus. I’m still not totally sure what I will do with these little morsels.
I also found some interesting tidbits as I dug in my garden. When we moved in the former residents of this house left us a nice pile of burnt crap in the clearly unused garden in the back. Since we’ve been fostering Ellie she’s also decided that the garden is the ideal place for her toilet. So, yesterday I began to clean it up and dig it up. In the process I found a lot of nails. That’s right nails. All sorts of nails straight, bent, ones with swirlies going down, big ones, little ones. Oh and bottle caps. These items really followed a general theme. In front when I was pulling weeds I frequently found shards of glass. Again, digging must rarely result in treasure, although I suppose one person’s garbage is another person’s treasure.
While I don’t have any conclusion about what I found in the archives yet, I do have some thoughts about what I found in my garden. Our house has over a century of history to it. According to numerous sources it went through some fairly difficult times relatively recently including two fires (which we found out about after we moved in). I don’t know how long it’s been since someone paid attention to the garden, but the earth around our house has been spitting out its pain the last few weeks, belching up glass and metal. Hopefully it likes the lavendar I’m about to shove in its face a little better.
Funny. Our garden is full of weird glass and metal crap, along with some creepy bones and some sand that looks like lightning struck it – all fused together. At about 1.5 feet down we found almost a whole plate of glass that was mostly intact, like someone had put it down there for something? Weird… It’s crazy to think about what’s in the ground – I read about this guy who built a robotic metal detector in England and has been finding TONS of old coins and historical artifacts. Just sooo much under the ground there!