And So It Begins
...Again

This was my first week of classes for the Spring semester. I was originally signed up for four classes, but I just got another part-time job at the Wisconsin Historical Society (WHS), so I had to drop one of them. Of the three classes that I'm taking, two are online courses. So I have to physically attend only one class. And it's only once a week (but 2.5 hours long). That class also has a practicum requirement of 10 hours a week working on an archival collection at the WHS. Which means I'll be living at the WHS this year, what with my two separate jobs there and the practicum class.

It was interesting; there are 13 people in my archives class. All but two of us wear glasses. And the professor wears glasses. And the three people who work at the WHS who came and spoke with our class also wore glasses. And my two bosses there wear glasses. I feel like I need to go out and buy some fake glasses so I can fit in. Hey, Joleen--where are those fake glasses you had made? Then again, you have a tiny head so they probably wouldn't fit me.

The archival collection I have to organize and process for my class are the papers of Clarence Irving Zimmerman. Well, they told me that that's his name, but when I looked at the stuff in the boxes everything said James G. Zimmerman...so I don't know what's up with that. He graduated from the UW in 1903 with a degree in (electro)chemical engineering, and later became an inventor. Upon my cursory inspection of the materials, he seems to have focused on batteries, car stuff (possible car batteries, I haven't quite figured this out yet), and color photographs. And I saw a sketching for a mechanical pencil complete with mechanical eraser. And lots of notebooks full of equations that make no sense to me. Me stoopid.

Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon Alert: For my job at the WHS, recently I've been organizing/inventory-ing architectural drawings. Many of them are by Frank Riley. So the other day I was googling James G. Zimmerman (not much out there on him that I'm finding), and came upon an article that said that he lived in a house built/designed for his wife by Frank Riley. Weird!