It has been a number of years since I last joined the annual writerly mania known as NaNoWriMo, but I used to be a regular participant. For the uninitiated (do any remain?), the event’s endearingly awkward title is short for “National Novel Writing Month,” a challenge that, since 1999, has dared writers to commit to…
Archival Detritus
The Trouble with Silver Linings
A few weeks ago, an exhibit that I co-curated and designed while an MA student at the University of Missouri-Kansas City was removed from the Missouri State Capitol. I had only found out the day before that the pop-up traveling exhibit Making History—made of twelve stand-alone panels—was in the Capitol building, in the Missouri State…
Why “Archival Detritus”?
The phrase “archival detritus” first popped into my head several years ago, while on a research trip in Arkansas. I took the photo above—a box of photographic slides that had been digitized—and posted it to to Instagram, with “archival detritus” as the caption. I didn’t mean much by it then, but the phrase wormed its…