Documenting the Day
I woke up at six AM, and went back to sleep until about ten-past seven. I got up, checked email and Facebook, replying to my cousin's post.
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| Figure 1. Facebook posts |
I recalled The Daily Show's "moment of zen" in which they played the YouTube clip of the little girl crying about the election.
Then I drank coffee and showered. When my housemate Jost came out of his room into the kitchen to make breakfast for himself, I asked him if he'd voted already, and he said yes, at home the previous week. I said that I'd also voted already, but by absentee ballot. Then I left for campus. There was still frost on the ground as I rode my bicycle through my Bryan Park neighborhood. For the thousandth time, I noted the tangle of political signs sprouting weed-like on lawns from Walnut to 3rd Street. The photo here does not do justice to the tangle on the lawns of other houses.
I reached Ballantine Hall around 9am and went to browse the GSAC book sale. Some grad students there already had "I voted" stickers on their clothing.
I put in a couple of hours as a volunteer at the book sale. One grad student AI who bought a large stack of books commented that she was embarrassed to carry all of them like that to class for fear of looking like a dork in front of her students, to which I felt compelled to reply "No, you look scholarly!" Later, upon learning that I was volunteering for GSAC, Whitney said to me, "Look at you, getting involved." After my hours were up, I picked up a few newspapers on my way out of Ballantine Hall.
Then I returned a Hitchcock DVD collection to Wells Library. Posters hung on the main doors telling people that tonight the media wall would be showing the live election results broadcast. Next I ate lunch at Tudor Room. After lunch I went to Kirkwood Ave to get a haircut, where I learned a little about the 6pm drinking law. As I crossed the street to enter the barbershop, I saw a line of elementary school students marching west down the sidewalk, some with sandwich board placards, chanting something inaudible but enthusiastically. Their backs were to me and they were far away, so I don't know what they were marching for, but I imagine they were either reminding people to go vote or they were advocating on behalf of one of the local races--I recall that one of the local races has to do with an education-related position.
After my haircut, I went to the bikeshop to get a new chain and to fix the shifter. I arrived home at 3:30pm and studied at my desk. At night (maybe around 9pm) I went over to Lauren's house to watch the election results with some other folks. We had some food and conversation about voting. Two of the lads declared that they had abstained from voting. This was a point of contention about which we had previously argued, so we did not get into it again at this time, it now being a moot point for this election.
Lauren told me that earlier in the day, "the young people were upset the campus voting place ran out of stickers!" I thought that was cute. By "young people", she meant the undergraduate residents of Global Village, where she works. We started watching the election results as reported on Nate Silver's blog, mostly because watching the streaming video of the news channels was annoyingly full of banal chatter. However, the vote counts that were being displayed online were often in flux and unreliable, and also stressful for me, since they showed Romney winning.
To escape the stress of watching the election returns, we started watching Netflix videos of Louis CK. We all laughed and relaxed. But even as we did so, we had another laptop on and refreshing Silver's FiveThirtyEight blog--but at least that way we could check it on our own terms. We were all relieved when the totals swung in Obama's favor, and then once he won we were quite happy. Around that time, it became 11:00pm, and we switched to the live stream of The Daily Show.
Unfortunately, The Daily Show wasn't as funny as I had hoped it would be. The Colbert Report was a little better. After that ended, I went home, posted on Facebook, and fell asleep.
Curating the Day
The exhibit would be focused on election day in Bloomington through an IU graduate student's milieu. The day might be curated using a mixture of media and live reenactments, as at the Indiana History Center in Indianapolis.
Media
One part of the exhibit could use touch screens to allow visitors to browse a collection of photos and video that show scenes from Bloomington city and the university as people went about their day. Examples of photos: houses with campaign yard signs, polling booths and buildings, people picketing/demonstrating, volunteers on campus telling folks where to vote, as well as scenes of everyday life unrelated to the voting, including the Mother Hubbard's truck, homeless folks in People's Park, college students scurrying across campus, students studying. As for video, there should definitely be a variety of the campaign ads, including a special segment on negative campaign ads and a different special segment on the impact of SuperPacs. Another special segment should focus on video clips from satirical shows such as The Daily Show, SNL, late night talk shows. Another special segment would be all about YouTube videos. Finally, a special segment showing clips from news programs covering both the election and other events that were happening simultaneously--some of these should be about the referendums that legalized marijuana and gay marriage.
As for live reenactments, the two sites that most lend themselves to recreation are the house and the barbershop.
The IU House in Bloomington
Going down the hallway in the history center, you would see the painted exteriors of a house with actual campaign signs posted outside, recreating what you'd see when passing through the Bryan Park area. Enter the "house" and you enter a living room with a dining room beyond, which also contains a small desk. There's a couch, chairs, big TV, dining table, and a couple of laptops. Live actors within the house would be aged 21-37, some students, some not. They would be able to answer questions about how they experienced the election day and the events leading up to it. Perhaps the election day itself could be depicted, so the election day itself might unfold during the hours of operation in the museum, and the actors would react to news on the TV or to Facebook posts and engage each other in conversation. The actors would portray people of varying political persuasion and ages, some of whom could speak with experience about watching the 2000 election and how they were worried about similar shenanigans happening again. Others would be Leftist anarchists who boycotted the polls. One would be a moderate Republican. History Center visitors could interact with all of these actors.
The College Town Barber Shop
After entering the barber shop, you could interact with a wide array of characters, male and female, young and old. They could be of various political leanings and have insight into not only the campaign and issues of the day, but also the mechanics of voting and the laws surrounding it--such as the no alcohol before 6pm law. Someone might mention the parade of elementary school children that walked down Kirkwood holding signs and chanting. Newspapers published that day could be available on racks for visitors to pick up and read, the papers performing as scripted things that visitors would want to interact with. The mix of people in the barbershop might allow for both national and local community politics to be discussed, since not all the folks would be from Bloomington, and some patrons (e.g. me) might have had significant amounts of time overseas, thus allowing for international comparisons to be made.
Voting Records
The research library would have polling data, voting records, and district maps, which researchers could peruse. These could be comparable to national averages and other results from Indiana counties.
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