In previous blogs I have written about the times, when transcribing manuscripts at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, I have come across some innocuous item that catched my attention because there was just something about it, and where pursuing that lead went, sometimes finding an accepted version of history needs to be corrected.
I became personally involved in the reclamation of history from those who have revised it according to personal, religious, and political beliefs, lack of understanding os a person or event’s significance, or, as in my cased having terms and events softened for the comfort of those reading the history. You do not get the feel of the historic moment is, having been callked “faggot by a politician in a very public forum loses something if that quote is reduced to, “He called him the F-word).
No, he didn’t.
Between what I had been experiencing with my transcriptions and seeing my own history telling a story unfamiliar to me about a person I was not, and with the initial announcement that the last Gay bar on the South Coast of Massachusetts was closing, signaling the need for such places has lessened as society became more educated, I saw a need to begin collecting the history of the Gay Community on the South Coast and to that end spoke to leadership of the New Bedford Whaling Museum about the idea and wrote to the Network of leaders of various organizations in the city who has appointed itself as the representatives of and the speakers for the Gay Community without asking us if that was acceptable.
I have written about their insincere response to inquiries about a history committee and faced the false approach of the organization’s need to look good by claiming they had already implemented something, but whose actions related to it are insulting dismissive and reveal this is of no real interest, and after previously sending the ship log entry that so far seems to still hold the title of the first actual mention of Homosexual activity on a whaling vessel all over cyberspace making claiming the discovery tiara, and, although not being contradicted in my claim received information among which was a log entry dated 50 years before the events I had found but discovered after mine as a researcher was compiling climate data from the weather notations in 19th Century whaling log books, and some general comments from all who responded that can be summed up that there had to be but no one has found a reference.
Having had experiences as a teacher where an educational sound and beneficial program is introduced, the unfamiliarity of the person whose blessing is sought but withheld because they just don’t get it, I set up a meeting with the President and Head of Curation at the New Bedford Whaling museum to discuss a way to collect more such entries and gather this information and anything related to it to be made available to researchers, expecting to be in volved in some academic and frustrating meeting.
To my surprise, after having the differences in museums and research institutions and how a museum would house and archive discoveries but was not set up to discover was explained to me, the process of having an entity to collect such information and archiving it at the museum began. It has to be separate from but a close partner with the museum.
It was a role I thought the existing committee that had yet to meet and will, perhaps again in six month would want to play especially with looking way back into the city’s major claim to historical fame, whaling, and finding us there.
I could die tonight.
The process here was having a second log book entry forwarded to me, a meeting set up and held with two major players at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, coming up with a name, and, as much of a Techno-Peasant as I am, with the help of two gentleman at Google, establishing a domain name, a website, and an email address so people can send anything they might find.
And within less than two weeks of my first approaching the Whaling Museum, the Quigley Institute for Non-Heterosexual Archival Archaeology was born with the web address www.gaywhalers.org.
I chose to call it an institute as a center implies a central physical location, and my apartment cannot be that place.
I used Non-Hetersexual in the title as before, during, and after the present time our understanding of human sexuality has grown and we are learning of new variants constantly. I don’t care what you are, if it is not Heterosexual you’re in.
Those who remember record stores and as the result of someone saying, “I don’t know the name but it goes….” and everyone in the store, employees and customers, help in the attempt to remember, will understaand why, rather than have people try to remember some complicated list of names or the correct letters in the alphabet, I just went with Gay.
One word, three letters, easy to remember. It was also the word I fought under.
Simplicity.
Archival Archaeology involves going back into accepted history to discover what was mistakenly omitted, what was changed, or what was modified to make those unpleasant moments in history more palpable to modern times, omitted and disguised because of the personal, political, and religious beliefs prevalent at the time, or simply revised for any number of reasons. It involves restoring the vocabulary at the time to it was, after it has been modified by those preferring comfort over fact.
It brings events and people to light for a full understanding.
It corrects the “historical record” and restores history to what was, warts and all, not what is wanted, and sometimes can prevent the passing on of purposeful or accidental revisionism by making the facts known before misinformation sets in.
We safe the past and the people.
In my own case, had I not been able to correct the errors in my own story, all that would have been real in what I had seen would have been my name.
Presently, the Institutes attention is on whaling crew men because that is where my interest is at the moment and it was in whaling that we found some hidden people. The possibility is that as more people get involved and more leads have to be followed, the archaeology will spread to other areas.
Some of the local families of prominence who had begun the city as a small sea port and guided it through its hay day had what in old times might be referred to as a Skeleton in the closet which, with research, might actually have been the other half of a committed relationship.
The page is in its early stages and it is hoped that knowing at least that the idea for the research has been mentioned, those interested will move.
The institute does not control anything. It does not direct, nor does it assign.The only person who can pass judgment on the value of a led followed is the one following it and will see whether or not it ends up somewhere predictable or, better, surprising.
Eventually I will add a forum page, but that sounds like a complicated task so it is an expectation at the moment where people can exchange ideas and finds and, perhaps, researchers will discover others with the interest.
It also answers the basic question when someone has found something interesting, “Now what do I do with it?”
This is just one attempt to get the ball rolling and if something better comes along based on its ability to find hidden history and not on being able to control a process, assume the process, and limit what could have been, either this institute will fold, or someone with a better approach than clearing house collecting and being a conduit between research and a museum is welcomed o keep i going in is bs form as his is no a shool assignment with a due date, by what will be an ongoing process as history tends to get longer with time.
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