York Corner
Two Saturdays ago, Megan Anderson told us that she found the York region so "gorgeous" that she didn't look forward to the summer's ending.
Megan, as we reported here last week, is one of this summer's Elizabeth Perkins Fellows - graduate scholars who've competed among others from around the country for the distinction of working on individuated projects at (and for) the Old York Historical Society for 12 weeks starting in late May.
The society has been running that program since 1988, but Megan told us that this is the first time since 1993 that all four fellows selected have been women, and Megan feels that's bred an exceptional closeness among them.
During their stay in York, they live in the servants' quarters of the Elizabeth Perkins House, and Megan said of that arrangement, "I couldn't have asked for a better set of roommates."
Each of the women brings a different background to this experience, she added, but the differences have proved complementary, and she reported that, already, with the end of their term now edging near, "We're making plans to visit each other."
Megan told us a bit about each, and we'll report on that and on a meeting with one of the three others - but we want to speak first about a couple we met at Jefferds' Tavern when we were interviewing Megan.
They were Ed and Marilyn Mulligan, from Somersworth, N.H. Marilyn had grown up there, they told us, and Ed had grown up in nearby Dover, and indications were (though we could have been wrong) that they'd not strayed far from home: one year ago last month he'd retired from work as a culinary arts teacher at Somersworth High School, and she'd retired from a job as a lunch worker in the same school.
In their retirement, they reported, they'd been tooling about to visit all the regional historic sites they'd never had time to see before. They'd recently visited both Hamilton House and the Sarah Orne Jewett House in South Berwick, and when we met them they were in York to see what Old York had to offer.
Alas, by the time they arrived it was too late in the day to do justice to all that, so Megan, who was ticket-seller that day, advised them to return when they'd not be rushed - and that decision freed them up to chat a bit.
Megan's project at Old York, as we've already noted, involves market research to determine how the museum can best attract tourists, and on how it can best engage the local community, and we found ourselves wondering in what category she'd peg the Mulligans - though we didn't ask.
Rhea Gavounas, the other Perkins Fellow we met at the tavern (where she graciously gave us some time before rushing off to conduct a tour) called her chief interest "visitor studies research," and she labeled it "a cross between sociological research and marketing research." It asks, she said, such questions as whether museum visitors are using exhibits in ways they're expected to, and it attempts to determine what messages they're taking away.
At Old York, she's been helping a company redesign the society's website, and she's been organizing focus groups for open-ended discussions to "bring the visitor's voice into the process."
To these efforts Rhea, who's 27, brings a quite extraordinary background, we discovered.
She was raised in Dallas, Texas, she told us, but has spent the last nine years in Lafayette, Colo., outside of Boulder, while earning three degrees from the University of Colorado. The first was a degree in anthropology earned in 2000, the second, yet another undergraduate degree, earned in 2003, was in fine arts, and the third, a master's degree earned in May of 2006, was in museum studies.
Her expertise at computers, she said, came while she was pursuing that second degree when she worked a full-time job (for which she got certified) helping faculty and staff utilize computers in the university's writing program.
And Rhea had some other eye-popping news: she and her fiancé, Scott Steele, who've been together now for six years, are planning to be married late next year on a yacht anchored off either Corpus Christi or San Francisco, those two cities picked because their airports offer direct flights to Thailand, where Rhea and Scott plan to spend their honeymoon.
Why Thailand? One reason: Scott, who's now working on an undergraduate degree in sociology at Metropolitan State College in Denver, taught English in China for a summer and is drawn to the Far East. Another: Thailand, eager to attract tourists back after the tsunami, is offering attractive rates. Still another, in Rhea's words: "We'd never go there otherwise!"
We have an idea, if we could talk with each of the other two Perkins Fellows, we'd come up with some comparable exotica, but we're limited by the brief summaries provided by Megan.
Here they are.
Ashley Guinn, from Spicewood, Texas (near Austin), earned her undergraduate degree from Notre Dame and is now working on a master's degree in public history at the University of South Carolina. Her project at Old York has her revitalizing the living history program and devising new pre-visit materials.
Emily Nichols, the only New Englander in the group, is an undergraduate history major at Bates College who has long summered in Kennebunk though she hails from West Hartford, Conn. At Old York, she's been active in the junior-docent program.
As for summer life in the Elizabeth Perkins House, Megan said to us, "We all feel blessed. Not a single one of us can wake up, look out a window there, and scowl."
And even the most frustrating of days, she added, is set straight by the view at sunset over the river.
So who, under these circumstances, would want summer to end?
