Business as usual

It is hard to keep up on a blog when I don't have internet! And life has started to settle into a pattern so there isn't too much to write about.

One question I am asked by family and friends about my time here is how do I know what I am going to do everyday since I have multiple places/projects that I am working on. Well, two days a week it is pretty easy to know.

Mondays I work at the Historic Beverly/ Rich Mountain Battlefield Visitor Center in Beverly. This involves answering the phone, attending to visitors, and working on other projects they have me doing. Currently that means helping build exhibits and designing a temporary exhibit on Laura Jackson Arnold, Stonewall Jackson's sister who lived in Beverly.

Tuesdays I work in Buckhannon, WV at the Upshur County Historical Society. While there, I work on processing collections (artifacts and documents that have been donated) and organizing the new computer system they have to manage the collections. I am also writing an article for the newsletter that will be published next year about a small town called Hampton. Some of this work I am able to do from home an additional day each week.

Other days, I either come in to work in Beverly on those projects or others, depending on the need. And these coming weeks I will be doing some historic preservation work. The Riverside School, the old African-American school in Elkins, is being stabilized after having gone into disrepair for many years. The plan is to have an education and resource center as well as museum about the African-American heritage of the Elkins area. We are also working on restoring the windows in City Hall simultaneously.

I also have the opportunity to do some conservation work, whether it be wilderness surveys, tree plantings, trail surveying, or tree surveying.

So one of the best things about my job is that there is always something new and different to do!