Me and General Slocum, chilling out, shooting the breeze, as one does

Christina was recently reading me the riot act over not posting enough about my new job, which is pretty much the most awesome thing ever. My response was that with my camera broken and now out of commission entirely, I didn't have any pictures of my fabulous (broke) new life in Chicago to post. "What's all this about pictures?" was her response. "Words, woman, words are where it's at! The blog is made of words! Words upon words of words, making a rainbow quilt of language!" Or something to that effect - it was late, I was tired, and the cell phone connection to Hawaii was sort of crap. So in that spirit, I want to tell you all a funny little story about my life in the costume collection.

A lot of what I end up doing at work is dusty and dirty. Last Wednesday, for instance, I got to work, unwrapped myself from the cumbersome winter gear that is uniform here in Chicago, and was promptly handed a swiffer. My mission? To clean the Chic Chicago gallery. "Chic Chicago" is the big costume exhibit that was mounted earlier in 2008. One of the best-received exhibits at the museum, it's a trip down the memory lane of fashion in Chicago. All the outfits displayed in the exhibit are considered haute couture or designer and were worn and owned by some of Chicago's most prominent women throughout the history of the city. It's a beautiful exhibit and lots of fun to look around, but what I was doing on Wednesday was getting up on the platforms and swiffering around the mannequins, hunting up dust. To do this, I donned a lab coat and latex gloves, in case I ended up having to touch one of the dresses. And then, to complete the look, I had to remove my boots and socks. They would have left marks on the display platforms, you see, scuffing up the exhibit. So there I am, in the middle of an open exhibit, scampering around antique and vintage gowns, some of which cost more than my four years of private university education combined, in a white lab coat, science-y looking latex gloves, and my stockinged feet. It was pretty absurd. I also felt a bit strange getting up close and personal with all these beautifully-clad blank-faced fiberglass mannequins.

So yeah, dirty. All of this, though, brings me to the point of this post: that a lot of what I do is awesome but it's usually the tiny little moments that make me realize it. Recently, for instance, one of the other interns and I were working in storage, cataloguing objects in the military uniforms section. At least 3/4s of the costume collection is made up of women's clothes because, let's be honest, throughout history women's clothes have been WAY more interesting than men's (the one possible exception to that rule being the clothes worn in the court of Louis XIV, because man, those dudes looked crazy). We do, however, have a sizable military costume collection, which is what we were working on. Military hats, to be exact, with a few ethnographic caps thrown in (you have probably never touched as many Masonic and Shriner hats as I have.)

One of the coolest hats I handled was an officer's cap from the Civil War. Union, of course, because this is Illinois, home of Lincoln, etc. etc. Navy blue (like I said: Union) with a silk braid across the bill and gold stitching forming laurel leaves at the front, it was ridiculously tiny. It also had an old tag on it, declaring that this was the cap worn by General Henry Warner Slocum (1827-1894.) Which begged the question: was this hat worn by a man named Henry Slocum who LATER became a general, or was he a general when he was wearing it? In the early 1860s he would have been in his mid to late 30's, right? So a little young for a general, but during the Civil War they went through generals like kindergarteners go through crayons, so age wasn't necessarily a great determinant for figuring out his status.

Regardless of whether he was a general during or after the Civil War, I got a little thrill out of holding a hat that had seen so much bloodshed and history. The bloodiest, most traumatic and heartrending of wars fought on American soil, the battles that turned brother against brother, and this lame little wool cap saw them all.

And then I handled another hat, this one extraordinarily dusty (and see? dirt comes up again. Full circle!) It was tan felt, with a wide flat brim that was covered in tan stitching details. Swirling around in curli-cues, the stitching was a remarkably detailed and even decorative touch on a hat that was otherwise entirely functional. And what did this very dirty hat's ancient tag say? "Taken from a Wyoming Indian at the Battle of Wounded Knee." Amazing, right? I mean, this hat was stolen off a man who, in all likelihood, was one of the 300 Native American slaughtered at the massacre. This hat was part of the battle (if you can call it that) that essentially ended the 100-plus-year conflict between white settlers and Indians. Maybe I'm geeking out over history to much, but I really couldn't get over this. And the dirt that I was complaining about? Some of it was probably original dirt from the battle. I had 120-year-old dirt and dried blood and Indian DNA and all sorts of other cool and creepy stuff all over my gloves and lab coat and clothes.

When I got home I looked up Henry Warner Slocum on Wikipedia. According to that venerable fount of knowledge, Slocum was a major general during the Civil War and later represented New York in Congress. One of the youngest Civil War generals, he earned criticism due to his slow movement and indecision on the battlefield at Gettysburg, earning him the nickname "Slow Come." So there you have it: from the hallowed battlefields of Gettysburg to the blood-washed site of a traumatic massacre to the humorous and infantile nickname of a young man who clearly had some time-lag issues, all through a bunch of gross old hats. See? My job is way cool.

Oh, and because it feels wrong to post this without ANY pictures, here is old "Slow Come" himself: