Hello Readers and welcome back to the Hometown Heritage blog!
Today I would like to tell you about some updates to the Gary Ernest Smith Exhibition that is coming in August. We have lined up a few guest speakers for the Art Tour Odd Thursdays. For those who do not know, the Art Tour Odd Thursdays are odd Thursdays during the Exhibition and are tours of the Exhibit lead by various hosts, aside from the one. The first odd Thursday is a general tour day, with tours happening every half hour. Bill Clark, Hometown Heritage Board President and Perry businessman, however, leads the next odd Thursday. Betsy Peterson, local Perry artist, leads the third tour, and Adrienne Gennett, ISU Curator of Collections and Education, leads the fourth tour. We have many other exciting events planned during the exhibit. For instance, there will be classes for home schooled and elementary students that will allow them to discover the stories and techniques of Gary Ernest Smith’s Artwork. If you want to know more about the exhibit, as well as get updates about events and other programing during the event, you can find more here. Also, stay tuned to the blog for updates as they happen! You can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter, as well as sign up for our newsletter to get information sent directly to your email. See you next week readers!
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Good afternoon Readers!
Summer is in full swing, and July 4th is quickly approaching. Because of this, I thought that today we would look at what the holiday was like in Perry in years past! For instance, the parade seems like it used to be much more ornate than what we have now. As you may know, now the parade is mostly a collection of floats, with a people walking around handing out candy to the kids. However, did you know that the Perry High School Marching Band used to participate in the parade? As you can see in the picture, the parade in 1969 included the old Perry High Band. This is quite a bit different then what it is like today. For starters, the uniforms are a lot different: simple black and white instead of the more elaborate blue and white uniforms of today. In addition, the band does not march in the parade anymore. As far as I know, they do not even start practicing until for marching band until August! Going back another ten years, we discover another event that is missing from today’s 4th of July celebrations. In the second picture, you can see a group of girls who are in a room in the Hotel Pattee. These girls are the candidates, according to our records, for a 4th of July queen! It seems that the residents of Perry used to vote for a queen for the 4th and, I am assuming, a king as well. The girls in this photo are, starting from the left, Judy Hastie, Sheri Mullen, Phyllis Hall, Joyce Neal, and Bonnie Crouch. This fun tradition does not seem to be active anymore, and it makes me wonder why. Did the people of Perry simply stop choosing candidates? Or was the tradition ended for a specific reason? Readers, do you know what happened to this tradition? If you do, please tell us in the comments below! In fact, if you have any memories of some lost 4th of July tradition, please share them with us, too, and have a good 4th of July weekend! Hello again Readers! Yesterday I had the chance to attend a lecture at the Hotel Pattee given by Lynette Pohlman. It was a great lecture, and I learned a lot about Visual Learning in relation to paintings. Today, I thought I would share some of that knowledge with you, so that when the Gary Ernest Smith Exhibition comes in August, you too can use Visual Learning to interpret his paintings! Last night I learned that there are three steps when it comes to Visual Learning: Describe, Interpret, and Evaluate. The first step, describe, is actually a little harder than it may appear at first glance. In this step, you have to describe what you see in the painting. However, you can only describe things that you can say for certain are fact. For instance, in “Red Barn With Workman” next to this post, you can say that there is a red barn, as that is a fact. However, ignoring the title of the work, you cannot say that the man must be a farmer, because from the painting there is nothing that indicates as a fact that the man is a farmer. That would be an interpretation, which we will get to next. So, for the first stop you must look at the work of art and describe it using only things that are facts that you can see. The next step in Visual Learning is interpretation. As you can see above, interpretation takes into consideration what you think the painting is about. Using the “Red Barn With Workman”, we can interpret that the man in front of the barn is probably the farmer. Maybe he is taking a break from his duties? Asking questions is another big part of interpretation. As we learned, being in a group helps a lot with interpretation, because you can ask each other questions. Each person will have their own ideas, and everyone can bounce ideas of each other to develop their knowledge of the work of art. The final step in Visual Learning is evaluation. In this step, you make your final evaluation of the work in front of you, and decide if you like it or not. Do not worry about liking every painting, as Lynette said last night there will always be things we like and things we don’t like. Also, don’t worry if the work gave you more questions than answers. Lynette said this was a good thing, as it would bring people back to see the painting again and again to try and learn more about it. If you want to learn more and Visual Learning, tell us! We can arrange another lecture or show the footage that Hometown Heritage recorded of the first lecture. Good Afternoon Readers,
Those of us here at Hometown Heritage are happy to inform you about the first event related to our Gary Ernest Smith Exhibition! Speaker Lynette Pohlman, Chief Curator and Director of University Museums at Iowa State University, will hold a learning and discussion session about how to connect with the artwork we see. She will be speaking at the Hotel Pattee on Tuesday, May 31st from 5 - 7 p.m. Gary Ernest Smith, Idaho artist, will have a display of his distinguished art in Perry and in Ames beginning in August and lasting through December. Programs for the Art Show will need volunteer guides here in Perry. We invite you to this May 31st event to introduce you to connecting with the artwork of Gary Ernest Smith. We hope you will be inspired to pass the connection to others in Perry through the planned programming. This will also be a great opportunity to prepare yourself for the upcoming Exhibit, so that you can have a deeper connection with the pieces of art that will be on display both here and in Ames. If you plan to attend, please let us know by sending an RSVP to info@fcctrust.org. We encourage all of you to attend! Good afternoon readers! I’m excited to inform you all of an upcoming event that Hometown Heritage and the Hotel Pattee are presenting! To celebrate the opening of the Hometown Heritage QR Code Tour at the Hotel Pattee, we are presenting Art and Seek: a Digital Art Treasure Hunt. This event will take place in the Hotel Pattee on February 11th, starting at 5 p.m. and ending at 6:30 p.m. Everyone is welcome to attend! QR Codes are small, square barcodes that when scanned, bring up a related website or article. In the Hotel, these codes are installed next to pieces of art. Scanning one of the codes will bring up the Hometown Heritage website, and give the scanner information about the art. Some of the art also has a narrated audio clip talking about the art, the artist, or both. We see it as a chance for everyone to learn about the art at the Hotel Pattee, or at least about some of your favorite pieces. Art and Seek will be a night of fun, starting with instructions of how to download and use a QR Code scanning application to your smartphone. There are many applications available, and many of them are free to use. If possible, downloading an application before coming to the event would save some time. We suggest the “i-nigma” app, as it is free and works on both Apple and Android smart phones. There will also be a question sheet to fill out, based on the information that can be obtained by scanning the QR codes. The first few people back from the hunt, with the correct answers, will win some prizes! There will also be wine, cheeses, and other refreshments available, provided by the Hotel Pattee. Again, the event is free and open to the public, so we encourage everyone to attend. I hope to see you all there! Hello Readers! Today is another short blog post, but we wanted to get the word out to all of you about an event coming up this month. Hometown Heritage and the Perry Historic Preservation Commission are pleased to invite you to the unveiling of a new relief for the Wall of Witnesses in Perry, Iowa. The new relief depicts Michael Kanealy, who was not only the owner and operator of Michael’s Pub for 25 years, but also a longtime supporter and promoter of Perry. The Perry Historic Preservation Commission chose to honor Mike after receiving numerous nominations earlier this year, and Newton artist Rick Stewart created the relief. The unveiling and a short program will take place on Friday, December 18th in the gallery of the Town Craft Building at 4:30 pm. There will be light refreshments, and the event is free and open to the public. I hope to see you all there to honor Mike at this special event. Hello once again, readers!
Today is going to be a bit shorter of a post, because I wanted to take this time to inform you all that this weekend is Art on the Prairie. Now there are plenty of places to go this weekend to find art and other things, but I encourage you all to come down to Hometown Heritage! We will be open from 10:00am to 5:00pm on Saturday and from 10:00am to 4pm on Sunday. During these hours, we will be hosting Pete Malmberg, the chief curator at the Forest Park Museum and the Historical and Cultural Resources Coordinator. He will be showing about 10 pieces from the Bill Wagner collection. The Bill Wagner collection is a collection of white and black drawings done by Bill Wagner about anything that he thought might have historical importance in the future. If you wish to know more about the collection, click here. In addition, this is a perfect chance for all of you to come down and see our office. So please, I encourage all of you not only to come to Art on the Prairie, but to also stop by Hometown Heritage! Hello Readers! Today, I have an announcement about an event that is taking place this weekend. Perhaps many of you have heard this already, but Perry has lately had a Community-Wide read of the book Enrique’s Journey. This book is a nonfiction piece by Sonia Nazario about the perilous journey of Enrique, a Honduran boy, to travel from Honduras all the way to the United States in order to be reunited with his mother, who left eleven years earlier so she could send back money to try to feed her starving family. If you have not read it yet, there should be some copies at the Perry Public Library if other people have not already checked them out. Anyway, the event that is happening this weekend relates to this book. Sonia Nazario herself will be here on Sunday, October 18th, at the Performing Arts Center at 2:30 pm to talk about Enrique’s Journey! Not to mention that, if you have not been able to get a copy of the book yet, Beaverdale Books will be selling them after Ms. Nazario’s presentation, and will be signing them. This presentation is made possible thanks to Humanities Iowa, in partnership with the Perry Public Library and Hometown Heritage and a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the American Library Association (ALA). It is part of a bigger project over the next year called Latino Americans: 500 Years of History. This project will have many events, ranging from talks and presentations like this one to a progressive dinner featuring dishes from Mexico and Central America. I highly encourage all of you to attend these events! Finally, if you wish learn more about stories similar to Enrique’s, you can read Sonia Nazario’s article that was published in the New York Times this past Sunday here: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/11/opinion/sunday/the-refugees-at-our-door.html?_r=1 Hello Readers! To a lot of us, Perry seems like a small, innocent little town. However, Perry is not quite as innocent as it seems. There was once a time when Perry was a hub for things that were far from innocent. Let me tell you of a story of one such time. The year was 1923 and a big group of people had gathered in Perry. Most of them were dressed in white, but not everyone belonged to the same group. The first group of people were Nurses and Sisters, who had come to oppose the second group. The second group, supposedly composed of mostly men, were members of the Ku Klux Klan. Charolette Kaster, who donated a photo of the event to us, also gave us a brief history of the event, as told by her grandmother. It is as follows: “The KKK came to Perry in about 1923. In addition to motivational speakers, there were a group of "thugs" from out-of-town who had come to organize Perry and promote their organization. Some in Perry resisted, and were threatened with burning of homes and businesses if they did not participate. The first meeting was a large crowd, many of whom were curiosity seekers rather than Klan followers. There were some number of men who donned the white robes and hats/masks, whether by belief or fear, only each knows for himself. There was to be a parade of the KKK during a holiday. As they lined up, these Sisters dressed in their uniforms stood forward and blocked the street. None of the Perry men would harm the Sisters, so they disbanded. They did meet later that night, burned a cross in someone's farm field, but nothing further came of it. It was the beginning of the end for the KKK in Perry.” There are a few other stories about the KKK and the march that they held here in Perry. One quote, which we believe is from George Soumas, talks about how his father knew who people were in the march because he could recognize their shoes. According to other photos we have in our catalog, the KKK also had a building in town that they used for meetings and parties, according to the photo. We even have a Perry Chief article about the march, which you can come and see in the database here in the Town Craft building. The most interesting thing that we have in our archives from the dealings of the KKK here in Perry, however, is an actual outfit worn by a member, complete with the hood. As you can see, Perry is not quite the innocent town that it may appear. There are plenty of other stories about the KKK’s dealings in Perry, but you will have to go out and discover them for yourself. Hello Readers! (And sports fans!) Have you ever wondered if any famous athletes have come to little old Perry, Iowa? Well, hold on to your stadium hot dogs, because I have quite the story for you! Long ago, on an October day in 1922, Perry faced Pella in a good old-fashioned baseball game. The weather did not exactly co-operate. Everyone was worried about the game being rained out, a problem that is all too common today as well. Eventually, the game did start, and the athletes played it just like any other game. Each team took their turn, and at the end of the day, Perry won the game with a score of twelve, while Pella only had a score of four. So far, this all sounds like the average baseball game and not anything interesting at all. However, here is where this story gets amazing! Thanks to the American Legion, who paid what I can only assume was a decent amount of money, both Perry and Pella had a special member on their team: Perry had Babe Ruth, and Pella had Bob Meusel! That is right, Perry once hosted the world famous Babe Ruth thanks to the hard work and contributions of the American Legion. Not only did he come and play for the Perry team, he also stayed at the Hotel Pattee, along with Bob Meusel. In fact, if you every have the chance to stay at the Hotel Pattee, there is a photo of Babe and Bob in the bowling alley on the lower level. Most of this information comes from a very old Perry Chief. It took quite a while for me to find it, since we keep old scans of different Perry newspapers on microfilm (and I misread the dates at first as well, oops!). Still, there are many interesting things in the old newspapers. If you ever have the chance, look over some of the old newspapers you may have lying around. Not only is there bound to be some interesting stories, but also just the advertisements can hold some value and entertainment. I saw one while I was looking about a quote "swaggerest" (the ad actually uses this made-up word) villain. That, however, is a story for a different day. |
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